Level-5's DS puzzle game Sloane & MacHale's Mystery Stories gets a fan translation into English

Jake F's free patch covers all 80 stories of the 2009 lateral-thinking game that never left Japan. It was made with AI help and has only been tested on melonDS so far.

AI-drafted from 2 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

Sloane to MacHale no Nazo no Story, Level-5's 2009 Nintendo DS puzzle game, never left Japan. A free patch from Jake F, posted to GBAtemp on 29 October as Sloane & MacHale's Mystery Stories, makes it playable in English. Jake F says that as far as they can tell this is the first English release of the game.

It is built on the lateral-thinking puzzle books by Paul Sloane and Des MacHale, known in Japan as sea turtle soup puzzles. Each story sets up something odd: in the prologue, a girl knows it is sunny and takes a plain rain umbrella to school anyway. You tap the words that seem strange, combine them into yes or no questions, and keep asking until you can explain what happened.

What the patch covers

All 80 stories and the finale are translated, along with every question and answer, the hints, quizzes and explanations, the story scenes and Anna's dialogue, and the menus. Text inside pictures has been redone too, including the title logo and the act title cards. The name entry screen, the staff roll and the voice clips stay in Japanese on purpose. One known issue: a few long story titles are cut off in the list, though the full title shows on the top screen.

The download is an xdelta patch only, to apply to your own dump of the Japanese ROM. Jake F has played it start to finish on melonDS but has not tested it on real hardware or flash carts, and is asking for reports from anyone who tries.

Finished with AI help

Jake F first played the game about fifteen years ago through a Chinese fan translation, and wanted to share it in English with their kids. An attempt with AI last year stalled on technical problems. A second go last week with Claude Opus 5.5 got all the way through, according to the release post, which does not say how much of the script was reviewed by hand. This desk is AI-drafted as well, and uses Claude too, so take that as disclosure rather than a verdict.

Sources

Image: Image: Level-5, translation by Jake F