User blog comment:Velt211/Gakuen Drifting Story 2 Translation/@comment-31720212-20200316090122/@comment-31720212-20200318040316

Yes, there are other System signatures here as well. That cluster of ! at the start of the program are variable "set" calls. ] calls return control to the menu. The signature ]] at the end of the file. Your confirming that this block of code is the actual intro is also helpful, because I wasn't convinced the programmers were reading the archive right up until now.

Are you sure the first character is at 0x5572c and that it's a [? Because 0x1a is typically used to mean End of File, and sure enough most of the files end that way. It's actaully causing problems with the decompiler right now, although it's not the only one.

It's looking more and more like this might be a System program, but that raises the question of exactly how the text is encoded. That's what's currently throwing errors at me. You said that 0x86-FD were " the normal japanese bit, unaltered." What exactly did you mean there: identical to modern character sets? Is there any sign that there are ANY two-byte kana? Because if there's not, and the game really is restricted to 0x86-FD, aka <= 119 kana in a simple, 1 to 1 conversion, that's definitely workable!