We previously reported that the indie visual novel writer Waitingforyouguys had created an original visual novel for the iPhone in Japanese, and had also released a “lite” demo version in English. That English version had been translated from Japanese by the original author, and although the translation was decent it did exhibit some issues. Despite those issues, the Lite version of the app is currently averaging 4.5 stars with 97 ratings.

Since the time of the original article, the entire script has been re-translated from scratch by Akira, a translator with some experience translating visual novels. This has resulted in a significant improvement of the translation quality. The full version in English is now available for purchase in the iTunes app store for $1.99. The free Lite version has also been updated to version 2.0 with the revised script.

Depending on reading speed, the total play time for the full version is somewhere between 1 and 3 hours. The app store’s story description, reflecting the new translation, is as follows:

Toru Fujiwara, who transferred to Sangu high school met a beautiful girl named Yuri on the first day.
At the same time, a new girl named Rita came from Scotland with a secret goal in her mind.
Toru enjoys his school life with Yuri and Rita.
But he is getting involved in battle for Kisaragi-no-Hogyoku (Gemma Februarii).

[update 12/10] In celebration of the release, the full version is free on the iTunes store until December 15, 2011.

They’ve been posted up for a while now, but only recently has anyone bothered to make the basic tools that can unpack and repack translated text into things. A forum member, toolbox, has posted up a set of tools, and a quick guide to using them.

The tool handles the System 3.x series of engines, so it doesn’t handle the (relatively) newer System 4 games that are available. However, translators now have a new set of games to consider working with.

The tool, with guide, is available for download: alice_trans-v0.2.zip