Translate Japanese Note on Dig Dug Cart?

[T-Pac | 7,560]

A friend got me this copy of Dig Dug from a game store in Japan. It has a hand-written note on the side that I can't decipher.

I ran it through a photo-translator app, but it only picked out a few words - "other", and "difference version". (And obviously "ROM" is written on there in English.) Now I'm curious if there is something unique about this copy of the game.

Can anyone who knows how to read Japanese help me figure out what this says?

[T-Pac]

[spacepup | 2,405]

I'm definitely not fluent at all, but fortunately most of this is in Katakana.  My best attempt on a good chunk of it is:

Dig Dug
ディグダグ

ROM Label
ROM ラベル

Version
バージョン

I can't make out exactly the kanji before version.  If you can paste what your app pulled for that character, it could help.

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

Google Lens will translate it in real time on your phone.

[Gloves | 11,790]

32 minutes ago, Code Monkey said:

Google Lens will translate it in real time on your phone.

Google lens sucks lol. 

[spacepup | 2,405]

Automated systems do ok with printed text, but handwritten is quite a bit more complicated.  There are lots of nuances in the Japanese language system with characters that look VERY similar, but only slight differences, which makes it a bit more difficult for the computer to do it.  Diacritics in particular are very difficult to read correctly, ゛ vs. ゜ on a character for example, especially handwritten,  are easy to get mixed up, which modifies the reading.

Having said that, I use tools like this often to assist with projects, and they are very very helpful.  For general purposes, they can at least get the idea across on something.

Fortunately in this case, most of the characters are katakana which spell out phonetically as opposed to kanji which are much more complex.

[T-Pac | 7,560]

20 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

Google Lens will translate it in real time on your phone.

Thanks for the suggestion - I gave that a try.

Unfortunately, though, @spacepup was right about the automated system struggling with handwritten text. The only thing it translated was "prime version" (which, confusingly, was translated as "difference version" in my other app).

Still looking for anyone who can manually translate this if possible - machine translations aren't really helping me much here (although I really appreciate the input @Code Monkey and @spacepup!)

[T-Pac]

[spacepup | 2,405]

Can you change the destination text to japanese and then paste the kanji here?  That may help.

[fcgamer | 4,729]

I'm not seeing kanji on that label though; if there was, this would have been answered yesterday. 

I did ask a Japanese friend about it, but her response was very odd, to the point of being gibberish.

[fcgamer | 4,729]

Actually: @Brickman @Tanooki

These guys can read Japanese to an extent.

[spacepup | 2,405]

6 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

I'm not seeing kanji on that label though; if there was, this would have been answered yesterday. 

I did ask a Japanese friend about it, but her response was very odd, to the point of being gibberish.

This is what I'm talking about.  It could just be really scribbly.  It looks like kanji and not katakana or hiragana, etc etc.  I just can't make out what they intended to write here.

[fcgamer | 4,729]

5 minutes ago, spacepup said:

This is what I'm talking about.  It could just be really scribbly.  It looks like kanji and not katakana or hiragana, etc etc.  I just can't make out what they intended to write here.

The picture is too blurry and the text too small for me to make out what that is. For a kanji that looks like something I would write

Edited August 8, 2023 by fcgamer

[spacepup | 2,405]

@T-Pac All the above discussion aside, more important is the label on your cart.

If I had to guess, I think it's just a sticker identifying that cartridge and that it is a famicom cart for Dig Dug but with a more uncommon label.  Something like... Dig Dug ___ Version Rom Label.  

The more common Dig Dug label looks like this:

You can see from your picture, that the label is definitely different.  The example above is what the more common ones look like.  If you search around for Dig Dug Famicom carts, you'll see most like above - not like the image label on your cart.

It's possible the data matches the more common one, or that it is a variant, I'm not sure.  Perhaps @fcgamer would know about retail variants for this game.  You could dump the data to see if it matches the known hashes of a standard retail cart like above - if you need help with that let me know.

Regardless of whether the data matches or is different, you definitely have a much more uncommon label.

 

[spacepup | 2,405]

Ah, here we go:
https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/f1093084881

This is an alternate and much less common variant of the game.  It'd be interesting to see if the data matches the common one.

It looks like the one you have was originally released in the clamshell case, compared to the cardboard box for the common release.

A lot of the listings I see for it refer to it as a 後期版 or Koukiban, which roughly translates to "late version."

I see a few recorded sales of the game - and it looks like this version is worth about 5x the more common version.  [Just roughly speaking].

 

 

[Brickman | 3,993]

3 hours ago, fcgamer said:

The picture is too blurry and the text too small for me to make out what that is. For a kanji that looks like something I would write

Yeah I don’t recognise that kanji either. It is badly written. I tried searching by radicals in a dictionary but nothing came close to match it.

Looks like spacepup has deciphered the origin of the cart without knowing the kanji. Alternative version makes sense. The Namco carts were released in their design first then sometimes later released in a normal Famicom cart from what I have noticed. 

[Brickman | 3,993]

7 minutes ago, Brickman said:

Yeah I don’t recognise that kanji either. It is badly written. I tried searching by radicals in a dictionary but nothing came close to match it.

Looks like spacepup has deciphered the origin of the cart without knowing the kanji. Alternative version makes sense. The Namco carts were released in their design first then sometimes later released in a normal Famicom cart from what I have noticed. 

https://www.famicomworld.com/forum/index.php?topic=14293.0
 

Looks like I had it the wrong way around. The clam case carts are the later release. This thread suggests that Namco later released some of their original games in clam cases which dig dug was one of them. 

[T-Pac | 7,560]

Thanks @spacepup, @fcgamer, and @Brickman!

Sounds like the mystery is solved even without a translation - it's pretty neat that I ended up with a more uncommon release of the game.
(And that explains why my friend told me this was in a glass display at the game store instead of out on the shelves with the more common carts - I thought that was odd for a regular old copy of Dig Dug, but now it makes more sense haha).

[T-Pac]

[Tanooki | 4,936]

I haven't been around since last weekend, but yeah that seems correct and the translation wasn't going to happen with the clarity of that image vs the handwriting.  Thankfully it's a known.