Guide: Mario Kart Wii Text Editing Made Not A Nightmare

Back in 2009, if you wanted to edit BMG text you had to hex edit it manually. Then, the SZS Explorer allowed for text editing if keeping the character count the same. In 2011, the BMG Editor allowed for text editing of any length. Nowadays, there's a much better tool that converts the text of the whole game to a .txt file that can then be converted back, without having to mess with .bmg files. If this sounds good to you, here's how to do it! You'll need to use Command Prompt which may seem a little daunting, but in reality it's just a couple commands so it's simple.

Here is how to do it on Windows. I'm sure other operative systems do the job fine, but I have no clue.

1. Download and install Wiimms SZS Tools: https://szs.wiimm.de/download.html (may require a reboot)

2. Extract the Mario Kart Wii filesystem if you haven't already, and go inside "Scene" then "UI".

3. The files that contain text are the ones with a letter. Each letter is a different language, and it may look different depending on the region of the game you have extracted, so check out Documentation: Mario Kart Wii - UI Files for more information on what each file is.

4. Press Windows + R and type "cmd". This will open Command Prompt.

5. Type "cd", a space and the folder where all the files are.

6. Type wszst BMG Race_X.szs > abc.txt where X is the letter of the language of the file you want to extract, and abc.txt is whatever you want the .txt file to be named. Make sure it's Race and not any other file, because Race_X.szs contains all the text in the game, while other files only contain what they need.

Alternatively you may find all the .txt files for all languages here: https://szs.wiimm.de/download/bmg/ (only use the official ones though, everything else is a bit outdated)

7. Edit the text you want on something like Notepad or Notepad++. Keep in mind that the game still has some text length limits, for example, track names cannot be longer than 32 characters. Also keep in mind that you can only type characters that are in the game's font (or if you're using a custom font, the characters that are in that font.) You may also check out Syara's Extended Font, which includes many new characters: http://wiki.tockdom.com/wiki/Normal_Style_Font_(Extended_Font). Unsupported characters will show up in-game as [?].

8. When you're done, press Save. You can delete any textlines you haven't edited, but I always keep everything.

9. Go back to CMD and type wszst patch -q Race_X.szs --ignore --patch-bmg replace=abc.txt where X is the letter of the language of the file you want to modify, abc.txt is whatever you named the .txt file, and Race is the type of file you want to modify. For more information, check out Documentation: Mario Kart Wii - UI Files, or you can just do it with every single one.

10. Load these new files on the game, and your custom text should appear. If you want to change the text again, repeat from step 7.

Hope this helped!

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