Simone D. Alemanno
Member
Suske en Wiske: De Tijdtemmers/Bob et Bobette: Les Dompteurs du Temps (Game Boy Color)
English Translation
English Translation
About the game
Suske en Wiske: De Tijdtemmers (in Dutch), or Bob et Bobette: Les Dompteurs du Temps (in French) is a platformer game developed by Standaard Multimedia and released by Infogrames in 2001 exclusively in Europe. It is based on the Belgian comic series of the same name, originally created by Willy Vandersteen and first published in 1945 on the De Nieuwe Standaard newspaper before being released as albums published to this very day. In English, the series is known as Spike and Suzy in the UK and Willy and Wanda in the US. Wikipedia
The story begins with Ambrose visiting aunt Sidonia one evening. While the two discuss a bit on a newspaper article regarding Krimson, who has escaped out of jail, Ambrose suddenly disappears. This alerts Spike and Suzy, whom are soon invited by Professor Barabas to come over to his laboratory. Arriving there, they discover Ambrose's bowler hat inside Barabas' time machine, and are tasked to travel back in time to find the missing fragments for the time machine and rescue Ambrose before it's too late.
This game was released only in French and Dutch (Flemish) languages, which makes it one of the few non-Japanese GBC games that haven't received an official English version.
History and technical details
Although I've known about this game for some time, plans for an English translation only came in mid-2025 after realizing no one else was interested enough in translating it. I opened the ROM in a hex editor, and, to my surprise, all the text for the two language versions was right there and then in ASCII format, therefore 100% editable into English. With my knowledge of French, I managed to translate some of the game's text in the French version - namely, the stage select screen, the "ROUND ONE" and "ROUND TWO" inscriptions and the start/password menu.
As far as actual dialogue goes, I only managed to edit the very first line in the intro cutscene. This is because the majority of the text in the game is rendered as a single string that scrolls inside a box from right to left (and I didn't want to mess with pointers at all), and for a stroke of luck the translated line was the same exact length as the original. However, I also hand translated other miscellaneous dialogue lines to keep for later.
In terms of translation, since the comic series is known with two different titles in US and UK, my best idea is to repurpose the language selection screen into some sort of "name selection" where the texts are the same, but only the main characters names change (Spike and Suzy or Willy and Wanda, you decide). Plus, by comparing the French and Dutch scripts together, I noticed there are some slight differences, so the English script will take a middle ground between the two for best results.
Funnily enough, the only thing in the game that was already in English is the DMG lockout screen.
What I need for the translation:
- ROM hacker/Tool programmer: they should be good enough with ROM hacking skills (especially at Game Boy/Game Boy Color ROM hacking) and/or programming to create a tool for text extraction/reinsertion.
- Translator: in addition to translating the text myself, I'll need the help of a native French or Dutch speaker with good knowledge of English language. If from Belgium, even better!
- Graphics editor: they should be proficient enough in art to edit the game's graphics. There's very little graphic text (the "FLITS" in the intro cutscene, the title screen and the "FIN"/"EINDE" at the end) but they need to be translated.
- Proofreader/Playtester: they will have to revise the script and test the game to check for any possible errors. Of course, I will be also testing the game on my end as well.
