First mod: replace the Japanese Opening song with the better original gamecube opening song

[(Shadow)]

Download this from google drive and unzip the files here:
:\Steam\steamapps\common\Tales of Symphonia\P12E\Data\TOS_Server\Rawdata\WIN\MOVIE

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1pdv12au4sqd3BRZm9QQk9lSTg/view?usp=sharing

My friend Yuuka Kazami put this together but we both had a hand in it.

It will replace both the PS2 and GC opening with the original gamecube song, which most of all of us loved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkFKjpmyK0M

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=614049505 mod page.

[(Shadow)]

Originally posted by Little Game Fairy:

That's cool, though I like the Japanese song much better.

I'm so happy that Namco Bandai included the Japanese song, and Japanese voice acting, in Tales of Symphonia Chronicles, and the Steam version of Tales of Symphonia.

I've missed having the Japanese song, Starry Heavens, since originally playing the game on the Gamecube.

That's wonderful for people who like the japanese song, i don't care if they do, i'm not attacking them for it. I get attacked because I have a different opinion than them and so do other people, a lot of us grew up with this song and this being my first Tales game back in the day having this song back was important to me because it didn't feel right without it.

Yet people are going to attack me because I like something other than their precious J-pop and the fact that i have a differing opinion.

In my opinion the gamecube opening is better, that's me.

People who love the japanese opening, good for you, you have it, this mod isn't for them.

[Runathir]

Originally posted by Yuuka Kazami:

Just to point out, i did this for the people who are nostalgic to the GC release, i actually like the japanese openings. i may do the original GC music and PS2 music mods.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I would actually really enjoy that. Particularly the orginal GC music. Love this mod btw, and am using it as my primary intro. I'm afraid I don't care for the PS3 remixes of the Japanese songs, but I would love to have the original Starry Heavens music as my secondary intro if you decide to mod that as well!

[Kidd]

You wouldn't happen to know how to decompress and re-compress the music found in the BGM.AWB archive? I'd love to swap places of the in-game songs Starry Heavens (heroic) and What I Can Do (heroic) to make the game experience more similar to playing on GameCube (the first was replaced by the latter in PS2 and forwards).

Similarly, I know a lot of people would like to have English voices with Japanese skits. That would probably be doable by overwriting the Japanese archive with all the non-skit English voice lines.

I'd love to do make both of these fixes if only I knew how to de/compress. I've been able to decompress using VGMToolbox but it seemingly can't re-compress again.

[Shinrin Cole]

Originally posted by Runathir:

Originally posted by Yuuka Kazami:

Just to point out, i did this for the people who are nostalgic to the GC release, i actually like the japanese openings. i may do the original GC music and PS2 music mods.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I would actually really enjoy that. Particularly the orginal GC music. Love this mod btw, and am using it as my primary intro. I'm afraid I don't care for the PS3 remixes of the Japanese songs, but I would love to have the original Starry Heavens music as my secondary intro if you decide to mod that as well!

This is already done, but it also contains the original japanese version GC versoin, look in the mod section to find it. and extract the one that has PS2 in the name.

Originally posted by Kidd:

You wouldn't happen to know how to decompress and re-compress the music found in the BGM.AWB archive? I'd love to swap places of the in-game songs Starry Heavens (heroic) and What I Can Do (heroic) to make the game experience more similar to playing on GameCube (the first was replaced by the latter in PS2 and forwards).

Similarly, I know a lot of people would like to have English voices with Japanese skits. That would probably be doable by overwriting the Japanese archive with all the non-skit English voice lines.

I'd love to do make both of these fixes if only I knew how to de/compress. I've been able to decompress using VGMToolbox but it seemingly can't re-compress again.

Sadly the changing of music is limited into what you can do. the file size has to be the same or lower than the current song in the game. also you would need to loop the song, and that's not easy to do in itself. Now for the english voices with japanese scripts.. it's possible to do it, it would just take a lot of time to do so. But also you will probably run into the same restrictions as the songs as well. I don't know what will happen if you just move the files from the english to the japanese folder, just back it up before you try. Also funny to note, the few files for skits, that are in the english folder are just copies of the japanese skits, the game just refuses to load them.

[Mathieulh]

"better"?, They removed this outstanding Openings by Day After Tomorrow from the Original Japanese game to a broken opening with no vocals when they did the awful English localisation, I fail to see how this is "better"

[Kaldaien]

I honestly don't remember this song from the original GameCube release. I think that says a lot about how much we "loved" it :) All of the instrumental English openings have been utterly forgettable.

[(Shadow)]

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

I honestly don't remember this song from the original GameCube release. I think that says a lot about how much we "loved" it :) All of the instrumental English openings have been utterly forgettable.

To each their own, I know a lot of people loved it.

[Kaldaien]

That sounds fine, like something you'd actually hear at the opening of a video game. The version that shipped with the actual GameCube game, though, is like elevator music it is so bland.

[Miraglyth]

Originally posted by Make:

but I found the remix pretty cool which plays before a certain cutscene

I always wondered about that. The opening in the English translation was a new theme, so was this track different in the Japanese version, or was the opening actually a remix of this one?

I remember the Symphonia English opening, but was never fond of it. Especially the start, where it doesn't even try to match the tone or changes of the video scenes.

But the Nintendo-led localisations managed to pull of something even worse with the Phantasia GBA release the following year - they just reused the world map theme completely unchanged for the opening.

[Somnides]

I'm trying to do the same thing with the old PS2 and GC songs since the two version we have in this port are not the originals (they are known as "ver.2013").
I have successfully changed the PS2 opening, but I'm still struggling with the Gamecube theme. How did you managed to get the .ADX song file from the op.h4m movie ?

[Shinrin Cole]

Originally posted by Somnides:

I'm trying to do the same thing with the old PS2 and GC songs since the two version we have in this port are not the originals (they are known as "ver.2013").
I have successfully changed the PS2 opening, but I'm still struggling with the Gamecube theme. How did you managed to get the .ADX song file from the op.h4m movie ?

There's already a mod for it, just look up under the guides under modding.

[Somnides]

Originally posted by Yuuka Kazami:

There's already a mod for it, just look up under the guides under modding.

Oh, great! Out of curiosity, how did you managed to demux Starry Heavens from the H4M movie ?

[Shinrin Cole]

i just used a youtube video. :)

[Yarlick]

Hey, Shadow, thank you for creating this topic with this "mod".
But honestly, I will keep the Original "GCN" Opening since the one posted here appeared on the American Version.

[Runathir]

Originally posted by Yuuka Kazami:

Originally posted by Runathir:

I can't speak for anyone else, but I would actually really enjoy that. Particularly the orginal GC music. Love this mod btw, and am using it as my primary intro. I'm afraid I don't care for the PS3 remixes of the Japanese songs, but I would love to have the original Starry Heavens music as my secondary intro if you decide to mod that as well!

This is already done, but it also contains the original japanese version GC versoin, look in the mod section to find it. and extract the one that has PS2 in the name.

Ah, I had not thought to look in the Guides section for mods. In that case, thank you again! Now everyone can choose exactly which 2 out of the 5 total intros they like best and use them, and there will be no need to argue over which are best.... or is that just wishful thinking? ^_^