Background:

Video games get localized to many different languages and cultures, mostly for their intended local market as well as the biggest video game economies in the world. Be it Japan, the US, or localizations for several European languages, it's usually the bigger markets that get such treatment because it makes sense for a company to put resources on localization for the countries that would bring them more revenue.

Unfortunately, Israel is usually not considered for localization. Our country is pretty small without as many citizens as other countries, and Hebrew isn't a language that's as widely used as French, for example. Which is why it made the back cover Sonic Adventure DX's Israeli PC release all the more confusing to us IL Sonic fans. It's written entirely in Hebrew! And what's more, right around the time the game was released, the Hebrew dub for Sonic X was airing, showing the Israeli public what the Sonic franchise's characters might sound in their native language!

16 years have passed, and the problem of Sonic's weird place in Israel had pretty much died down, at least when it comes to the games. But that's where we come in! Out of a strong desire to finally see Sonic game in Hebrew, us at Team Kipod (Hebrew for hedgehog) decided that we'll just do it ourselves!

For this project we set out to translate as much of the game as we could by changing textures, fonts and even the game's dialog scripts, all to fit an Israeli audience, while still keeping the original text's meaning. It's pretty much the closest you'll get to a Hebrew release of a Sonic game!

Generally, we've edited:

- Fonts: "felix007", "Open Sans Hebrew", and such.

- Every written word on an in-game texture.

- The In-game dialog script (nothing to do with the coding, just literally what's written down there).

- The Story Screen texts.

- Chao information and Black Market text.

- Mission Mode text and related textures.

- HUD elements.

- The "INFORMATION" model in Casinopolis.

- Menu text and related textures.

Instructions & Notes:

Please use the 2004 US version of the game.

Steam users: Use BetterSADX or SADX Mod Installer to revert the version to the 2004 release. After that, place the files of the mod in the root folder of the game, and check the mod in the Mod Manager. Make sure to disable the Dreamcast Conversion and the HD GUI 2 mods, unless you will not notice a change. This mod will not work properly if SADX: Fixed Edition is below the Translation mod.

For those who own the disk: First of all, install the game normally. After that, install SADX Mod Manager and place the files in the root folder of the game. After that, place the files of the mod in the root folder of the game, and check the mod in the Mod Manager. Make sure to click on the "Install loader" button before you are saving the mod and playing.

Untranslated text:

• System Messages. (When exiting mission/trial mode and things of that nature)
• Adventure stage maps.
• Character instructions.
• ID Check text. (When going into Speed Highway as Sonic)
• Game Gear games menu, and the Game Gear games themselves.
• Song list. (When going into the Sound Test menu)
• The "Create New File" text. (When opening the game in the first time)
• The text that appears when setting up the controls in the game itself.
• The "Insert Disk 2 of Sonic Adventure Deluxe" and "Windows Media Player 9 is not installed" lines (When opening the exe itself). Impossible to fix without lines of code.

Known bugs:

• Word placement and sentence alignment in some areas in the game. Impossible to fix without lines of code.
• The Tornado/Tornado 2 bar in Sky Chase Act 1/2 is translated, but it does not appear in the game itself.
• In-game text errors with Amy's story, as well with the Hedgehog Hammer mini-game.

Credits:

Main Team:

• AniShalev - Main leader of the project, and had the main idea. In-game textures, Text transfering, In-game text translation.
• Shahars71 - Secondary leader. In-game text translation, Text transfering, text translation organization.
• Existing the Being - In-game textures, In-game text translation.
• UltraTaco - In-game textures.
• RetrOfir - Font editing, In-game textures, In-game text translation.
• Liran Piro - In-game text translation, Text transfering.

Special Thanks:

• Fizzy - In-game text translation.
• Sagi - In-game text translation.
• Baraksha - In-game text translation.
• NivCoil - Alpha/Beta tester.
• Arian (שועלי המשתעל) - Hebrew localization of the logo.

Other Credits:

• MainMemory, other - programmers of SA Tools.
• RikuKH3 - programmer of SA Text Injector.