------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ReadMe-DvD_Translations-Ninja_Gaiden.txt This file should be viewed using a mono-spaced font like "Courier". Use a font size where 79 columns are visible. Please don't distribute the ROM file in patched form. Please don't distribute the DvD_Ninja_Gaiden_revB.ips file without this file. Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NINJA GAIDEN Stage & Difficulty Select for the Nintendo Entertainment System Copyright 1989 by Tecmo Enhancement Copyright 2021 by DvD Translations Patch Version: Rev B Release Date: October 27, 2021 DvD Translations dvdtranslations.eludevisibility.org Code Editing: DvD Graphics Editing: DvD Testing: DvD ReadMe: DvD ----------------------------------- CONTENTS ---------------------------------- INFO (1) Ninja Gaiden Game Series (2) If You Read Anything, Read This USING THE PATCH (3) Patching the ROM File (4) Playing the Game on a Flash Cart or Emulator ENHANCEMENT DETAILS (5) Why DvD Chose to Enhance THIS Game (6) Why YOU Should Bother Playing THIS Game (7) DvD's Hacking Comments (8) Project Timeline (9) Software Used In This Enhancement ------------------------------------- INFO ------------------------------------ (1)------------------------ Ninja Gaiden Game Series -------------------------- "Ninja Gaiden" was the largest action game series made by Tecmo before they merged with Koei. "Ninja Ryukenden", the original Famicom name of the game, meaning Legend of the Ninja Dragon Sword, is the first game in the series. Three games in total were made for the Famicom and all three were released for the NES. All allow infinite continues but are still notoriously difficult to pass. All three Ninja Gaiden games are themselves part of the parent series of Tecmo Theater games which were released for the Famicom, designed to have high quality cut scenes. Although Tecmo Theater Vol. 1 was also eventually released for the NES it was highly modified for the western market. The other three Tecmo Theater games were not released outside of Japan. Tecmo Theater Vol. 1 - Captain Tsubasa Tecmo Cup - Soccer Game Tecmo Theater Vol. 2 - Ninja Ryukenden Ninja Gaiden Tecmo Theater Vol. 3 - Ninja Ryukenden II - Ankoku no Jashin Ken Ninja Gaiden II - The Dark Sword of Chaos Tecmo Theater Vol. 4 - Captain Tsubasa II - Super Striker Tecmo Theater Vol. 5 - Ninja Ryukenden III - Yomi no Hakobune Ninja Gaiden III - The Ancient Ship of Doom Tecmo Theater Vol. 6 - Kyatto Ninden Teyandee Tecmo Theater Vol. 7 - Radia Senki - Reimei Hen After the Famicom, Ninja Gaiden games continued to be made for many systems. The first three games were ported to the SNES. (2)-------------------- If You Read Anything, Read This ----------------------- DvD Translations enhanced version of "Ninja Gaiden" features: * Select any stage to start on that you normally would be able to continue on after dying. Simply press left or right at the static title screen (the one that is shown after pressing start once) to select the stage to start on. The starting stage is clearly displayed below PUSH START. * Select any stage to start on, including ones that you normally could not start on, in other words, the boss stages. Simply hold Select while you press left or right at the static title screen to select the stage to start on. * Cut scenes that normally are shown before a stage are shown if that stage is chosen as the starting stage. For those who really want to cheat, all cut scenes except the ending can be shown this way by selecting the appropriate stage. Since this wasn't the intent of this feature, the final scene cannot be selected this way; you still have to beat the final boss. * The ability to make the game not screw you over when you die while fighting one of the forms of the final boss. Normally, if Ryu dies while fighting any form of the final boss, the game forces the player to return to stage 6-1! 6-1 isn't that bad, but 6-2 is HELL, and not something you want to have to play over and over. With the patch, when the game is started normally by pressing Start, dying while fighting any form of the final boss will still send Ryu back to 6-1. But, if you don't want to be screwed over and would rather return to 6-3, simply hold down Select while pressing Start at the title screen to start the game. * A number of grammar and punctuation fixes were added. Probably the most noticeable are changing "SHINOBI" to "Shinobi" and "Ninja Dragon" to "Dragon Ninja". The latter was changed to match the Ninja Ryukenden script which says "Replace... Good news... become a dragon ninja..." The rest are small things like changing some "the"s to "a"s, fixing capitalization on "Father" when Ryu's using it as a name, changing "." to ",", etc. This game has such a great script. Correct grammar keeps the reader from getting distracted. Don't buy repro carts! They are expensive. They don't support bug fixes for patches because they can't be modified in the future. If they aren't built from scratch they destroy a real cart. Every time a donor cart is used to make a repro, it raises the scarcity and price of that real cart. If you still want to spend your money on a multiple repro carts, instead of buying a single flash cart, buy them from a vendor who only makes carts from scratch with new boards, chips, and housings. ------------------------------- USING THE PATCH ------------------------------- (3)------------------------- Patching the ROM File ---------------------------- How to patch the ROM file: You need: 1) A NES file. The file needs to include the standard 16 byte iNES header followed by the program disk image data. With header, the ROM file is 262,160 bytes in size. The header should be as follows: 4E 45 53 1A 08 10 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 You must have a 16 byte header for this patch, but even if your header is wrong, this patch will fix it because it replaces the whole thing. So, if you have a file without a header, you can just insert 16 of any byte at the start of the file. I'm not telling you how to get the NES file, but once you do, call it "Ninja Gaiden+.nes". ROM CRC32: 0x11f953f6 3) Patch File: DvD_Ninja_Gaiden_revB.ips 4) An IPS patching program Remember to patch the file only AFTER it has a header. Recommended IPS patching program for IBM PC: Lunar IPS.exe by FuSoYa Recommended IPS patching program for Mac: UIPS by Lucas Newman Using Lunar IPS / UIPS: a) Double-click "Lunar IPS" / "UIPS" b) Click "Apply IPS Patch" / "Apply Patch" c) Choose "DvD_Ninja_Gaiden_revB.ips" e) Choose "Ninja Gaiden+.nes" (4)------------- Playing the Game on a Flash Cart or Emulator ---------------- All emulators and flash carts that can play the original Famicom file can play the enhanced game. The PowerPak flash cart emulates it perfectly. Games designed for the original Famicom/NES hardware have one or two 16k program banks and one 8k character bank. Later, all games made for the NES used special mapper chips to expand the size of the addressable ROM beyond these limitations. Some even included RAM for the character bank, instead of ROM. This game uses MMC1, the first custom mapper Nintendo made. MMC1 was specifically made to port Famicom Disk System games to cartridges, but it was also widely used to make unique games for the NES and to port games using 3rd part developer custom mappers that Nintendo generally did not allow outside of Japan. Although MMC1 supports SRAM saving, this game does not have any save feature; hence the reason for this enhancement. Game file size: 8 x 16 kBytes of Program ROM 16 x 8 kBytes of Character ROM 256 kBytes 262,144 Bytes + 16 Byte Header = 262,160 Bytes ----------------------------- ENHANCEMENT DETAILS ----------------------------- (5)------------------- Why DvD Chose to Enhance THIS Game --------------------- I've owned a complete mint copy of this game for over 30 years, but I never passed it. Why? Because it's so damn hard that I never wanted to leave my NES on for the weeks it ended taking me to pass it. Plus, you only get one chance to fight Malth with full health; if you die, well, screw you. You can either start the entire game over, or you can try to beat him with less than full health, which is essentially impossible to do. (6)---------------- Why YOU Should Bother Playing THIS Game ------------------- Once you can "save" the game by using the level select, the challenge is reasonable and the game is really fun. It's still hell to beat the 6-2, but everything else is reasonable. Why Tecmo didn't give this game a password in the first place is beyond me. The cut scenes look as good today as they did when the game first came out; absolutely amazing. Playing the game this way keeps it challenging but makes it fun, more like having the password save of a game like Castlevania III. (7)------------------------- DvD's Hacking Comments --------------------------- Rev A: At first I made this hack simply for myself. Even with the audio feedback, it was annoying to try to keep track of how many times I pushed up, I would have felt embarrassed to release it in that state, even though it was usable. I was stuck on stage 6-2 and so I switched to hacking a stage select for another game I've always owned but never passed: The Adventures of Bayou Billy. Once that patch was complete enough that it had a working display for the selected stage, even though I could not get the cut-scenes to play when starting a new game, I felt I should go back and add a display to Ninja Gaiden as well. It didn't take very long to do it and it looked really good. Title screen hacking turned out to be complicated because of the strange 4x2 tiles everything on the screen is made out of. I had to find to unused ones as well. What a pain. But, then always displaying Act I when the game starts bothered me. It would be cool to have it play the cut scenes, but I had a lot of trouble getting that to work for Bayou Billy. My goal was to at least have it display Act II, III, etc. Well, it was at this time that I learned that not only was Act I simply a tiny cut scene and that all the Acts were simply parts of larger cut scenes. The title screen was 2 different cut scenes. The main one shows everything on a loop from TECMO PRESENTS 1989 thorough the end of the movie. The 2 title screen cut scene is simply a static cut scene shown when start is pressed. The latter doesn't have the word TECMO at the bottom and everything is slightly lower. Once I figured all of that out, the hack to make the cut scenes show when starting a game on a stage besides 1-1 was very easy and the end result is just cool. With all this working, I pushed myself to finally beat 6-2. There I learned about how the final boss is nice because you only have to beat each form once but terrible in that you have to back to 6-1 each time you die. Well, that was no good. I had to fix that. But then I thought, not everyone would want the game modified like this, so I should hack in a way to optionally select this feature. While searching for an unused Page 0 byte, I found the script. I felt like fixing a few things that really bothered me. After writing this ReadMe, I decided to go through the script one more time and fix a lot more. Rev B: After releasing Ninja Gaiden, I immediately started on Ninja Gaiden II. After completing Ninja Gaiden II, not releasing it since I'm still Alpha testing it, I decided to add the features I added to Ninja Gaiden II to this game. I really like now how, unless you press Select, you are always selecting a stage that you normally would be able to continue at. It not even more replicates what I felt this game needed from the beginning, a password save ALA Castlevania III. I also added a tiny hack to reset the stage to 1-1 if you don't start the stage before the cut scene starts again. Enjoy! (8)----------------------- Project Timeline Highlights ------------------------ May 2021 - Project started May 11 2021 - First version complete; any level can be selected No visual indication Always shows the ACT I cut scene It didn't take too long to get to Stage 6-2. But, I felt like doing other things, like playing games... Oct 3 2021 - Level select visual indication added Oct 4 2021 - Title screen compression figured out Title screen hack complete Oct 5 2021 - Play selected cut scene hack completed Oct 9 2021 - I finally beat Stage 6-2. Modified to always go to Stage 6-3 when dying on the final boss I finally passed the game on my real NES. Some text corrections created New hack to select returning to 6-3 instead of 6-1 after dying using the Select button added Oct 10 2021 - Many more text corrections created Rev A version testing completed Rev A version released Oct 25 2021 - Started Rev B to bring further enhancements from our Ninja Gaiden II hack to Ninja Gaiden Started on requirement to hit Select to choose Stages that you normally could not start at Oct 26 2021 - Completed requirement to hit Select to choose Stages that you normally could not start at Added reset of Stage back to 1-1 every time the static title screen is re-displayed so that hitting start always takes you to the displayed stage Changed sound of stage select to match Ninja Gaiden II hack Oct 27 2021 - Fixed newly introduced bug for Cut Scene 6-5 text Rev B version testing completed Oct 28 2021 - Rev B version released (9)-------------- Software & Hardware Used In This Enhancement ---------------- * Emulator FCEUX 2.2.2 (FCEUX 2.2.3 has too many problems) by zeromus, adelikat * Disassembler, Table Dumper, & Relative Searcher Table Dumper Pro (version 21.05.18) by DvD * Hex Editor Beyond Compare 4.4 Licensed Version by Scooter Software * Disassembled code manipulation, script editing, & ReadMe creation Notepad++ by Don Ho and the rest of the Notepad++ team * Testing on a real NES PowerPak by retroUSB * Tile Editor Tile Layer Pro 1.0 by Kent Hansen * IPS Patch File Creator Lunar IPS by FuSoYa ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 987654321098765432109876543210987654321 123456789012345678901234567890123456789