Seiken Psychocalibur Bad Image Fix by GAFF Translations (pluvius3 @ gmail.com) v1.00 (Created July 12, 2015) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *TABLE OF CONTENTS* ----------------- I. VERSION HISTORY II. INTRODUCTION III. INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE IV. KNOWN BUGS V. CREDITS VI. TECHNICAL NOTES VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND CLOSING WORDS ******************** I. VERSION HISTORY ******************** v1.00 (07-12-15): First release. ****************** II. INTRODUCTION ****************** Around 15 years ago, an English translation for the Famicom Disk System Zelda clone Seiken Psychocalibur was released by Toma, the Spoony Bard. While the translation itself is mostly fine (I only noticed a couple of possibly mispointed lines of text, but this game doesn't have much of a plot anyway so it dosen't really matter), the most popular dumps floating around for the game don't work well with it without some tweaking. This patch fixes the image recognized by the TOSEC group, making the game playable with or without the translation patch. This readme also contains instructions for making the No-Intro image compatible with the translation patch (see Technical Notes). *************************** III. INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE *************************** 1. Download and install Lunar IPS or a similar IPS patcher if you haven't already. 2. Get a copy of the Seiken Psychocalibur image. No, I don't know where. The correct image is identified by TOSEC as the only Japanese dump as of 7-12-15. 3. Apply this patch to the image using the aforementioned patcher to fix it. You can then apply the translation patch if desired. It doesn't really matter which order you use the patches, since they affect totally different areas of the image. **************** IV. KNOWN BUGS **************** None at this time. *********** V. CREDITS *********** Rob "Pluvius" Browning: Hacker, tester ******************** VI. TECHNICAL NOTES ******************** This patch fixes the following things in the bad TOSEC dump of the game: - Graphical glitches where the name of your character is found (in the registration screen, on the ststus screen, etc.) - Permanent loss of half of your max health once you take enough damage to reach that level. - An inability to complete the first area of the game because the boss monster doesn't drop the necessary item. There are likely other bugs in the bad image (I wouldn't be surprised if none of the bosses dropped needed items), but I didn't bother to test for them. The patch makes the TOSEC dump identical to a headered No-Intro dump. If you have the No-Intro dump, the only reason why the translation patch won't work with it is because it doesn't have a header. (You can be sure that your dump doesn't have a header if it is only 131,000 bytes in size.) You can add the header by doing the following: 1. Download and install a hex editor. I use HxD (http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/) myself. 2. Open the No-Intro image in the hex editor. 3. Insert 16 bytes at the top of the image. (In HxD you can do this by putting your cursor at the start of the file, going to Edit/Insert bytes... and setting the bytecount to 16. Make sure that the count is set to "dec" instead of "hex.") 4. Change those 16 bytes to the following: 46 44 53 1A 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 5. Save the file. Then you can patch it as normal. **************************************** VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND CLOSING WORDS **************************************** Thanks to: Imagineer, for developing and publishing this game. Nintendo, for making the system this game runs on. Toma, for creating the translation patch. HxD, the freeware hex editor that allowed me to easily fix the TOSEC image. The developers of FCEUX, the very useful debugging emulator which I used to test the image. Romhacking.net, for hosting this hack and many others like it, as well as providing useful hacking information. And, of course, you for reading and playing. Questions, comments, criticisms, and bug reports can be sent to pluvius3 @ gmail.com (without the spaces obviously). Please put "Seiken Psychocalibur" or something similar in the subject line so I will know what the email is about. If you alert me to a bug, I will fix it in a future update and give you credit. Copyright 2015 GAFF Translations, all rights reserved.