Donkey Kong Land III GBC English Translation v1.3 by Blaziken257 I. Intro -------- Donkey Kong Land III was originally released in English for the Game Boy and the Super Game Boy in 1997. Later, in 2000, it was released for the Game Boy Color (titled Donkey Kong GB: Dinky Kong & Dixie Kong), but only in Japanese. This hack translates the Game Boy Color version from Japanese to English using the original English script. So, since 2012, you can finally enjoy Donkey Kong Land III in English -- in color! II. Version history ------------------- As of this writing, the most recent version of the Donkey Kong Land III English patch is version 1.3. It was released on October 13, 2022. Version 1.0 (Oct. 13, 2012) --------------------------- The initial release. Version 1.1 (Dec. 27, 2012) --------------------------- Various improvements have been added: - World maps have their animations restored. - This was removed from the Japanese version, including the retail version as well as the prototype from the September 2020 gigaleak. - In Time Attack mode, your last time is displayed in the bottom of the screen. - This was present in the retail English releases, but removed in the Japanese version (inclding the prototype and final versions). - The Jetty Jitters demo is fixed so that the Kongs make it to the end of the level. - This was desynced in the Japanese version. - When playing the card matching game and winning it under a very fast time (30 seconds or better), Bear normally congratulates you. The text was adjusted a bit: - In version 1.0 of the patch, when Bear tells you the cheat code on the title screen, UUDLR is used to represent Up, Up, Down, Left, Right (like in the GB version). - In version 1.1 of the patch, arrows are used instead, which look neater than abbreviated letters. - When Bear, Wrinkly, and K. Rool speak, a bug, which originated in the Japanese version, occurred where a glitchy tile would appear for a very brief moment. This has been fixed in version 1.1 of the patch. - When attempting to boot the game on a monochrome Game Boy, the font in the error message was adjusted slightly. - The level Karbine Kaos is now in lowercase to differentiate itself from the boss, KAOS. - Bonus stage descriptions are now in lowercase. - Credits are updated to include myself. The typo in "THE END ?" (from the GB version) was also fixed. Version 1.2 (Nov. 17, 2014) --------------------------- Further improvements have been made: - The bug that prevents backup files from being read (which originated in Donkey Kong Land 2) has been fixed, allowing backup files to be used when a corrupt file is present. - More information can be found in Section VI: Bug fixes. - The bonus counter bug, which causes the counter to continue decreasing to zero after losing to a bonus stage (which also originated in Donkey Kong Land 2) has been fixed. - More information can be found in Section VI: Bug fixes. - On the world map screen, the level and world names on the bottom of the screen print slightly more quickly when traversing through the map. The difference is only noticeable if you view it in slow motion. - Bear's "Sorry chimps, your credit won't stretch that far" dialogue has been restored, and it appears randomly (50% of the time) when you attempt to buy something that you cannot afford, just as it does in the Game Boy version. - This text was missing in the Japanese version. - In Cape Codswallop's Sheepy Shop, when you have less than 8 Bonus Coins, Bear's dialogue includes a leading zero in the numeral 08 (i.e. "I need to see 08 of those Bonus Coins!"), just as it does in the Game Boy version. - (In the Japanese version, there was a space instead of a leading zero, which carried over to English patches v1.0 and v1.1.) - Bear is now fully animated, like in the retail English releases. - Bear was originally animated in the Game Boy version, but his animation was removed for no apparent reason in the Game Boy Color version. Version 1.3 (Oct. 13, 2022) --------------------------- - Some sprites have been fixed: - Skidda is colored purple to make it more consistent with Donkey Kong Country 3. - Krusha (a.k.a. Knocka) remains green when picked up by a Kong. Previously, he turned to red, the same color as all other barrels when picked up. When thrown and broken, he still turns to red, which is actually consistent with both the SNES and GBA versions of DKC3. - Karbine's fireballs and Bleak's snowballs are now given different colors. Karbine's fireballs are now red, and Bleak's snowballs are now blue. - Krusha was renamed to Knocka, since the former name was likely an error. This includes the credits, as well as Bear's hint in The Lost World that references Knocka. - In a bonus stage, when the player has 10 or fewer seconds remaining, the music increases in tempo with every passing second. This is a custom feature inspired by bonus stages in the SNES versions of DKC2 and DKC3. - Note: An early work in progress implementation was unofficially stacked on top of the v1.2 release on romhacking.net. That implementation first increased the tempo at 10 seconds remaining, and then at 5 seconds. The new implementation in v1.3 is more gradual and increases the the every second, which is more consistent with the SNES games. - Every overworld map now has a consistent color palette with the text, "!", and DK Coin graphics. The Japanese version previously colored these maps inconsistently. - When approaching K. Rool in K. Rool's Last Stand, the dialog he gives was now fixed if you beat the game and have 12 watches. - More information can be found in Section VI: Bug fixes. - In boss stages, the Big Boss Blues music now plays at a consistent tempo each time you visit a stage. - More information can be found in Section VI: Bug fixes. - The Kong's positioning is now consistent when finishing Bear's card game, compared to every other instance. - More information can be found in Section VI: Bug fixes. - On the file select screen, any instances of "file" were changed to "game" to for better consistency with the retail versions and other games in the DKC or DKL series. For example, "Select a file" was changed to "Select game". - The demos that appear after waiting on the title screen have been overhauled. There are four new custom demos, and the other ones where the Kongs die were redone from scratch. See Section VIII: Demos for more details. - Credits were altered to remove myself from the English translation. This is a reversion from patch v1.1. - An alternate patch was added that uses a different title screen, and is based on the one found in early English copies. III. How to play ---------------- In order to play this English translation, you will need: - A ROM of the Japanese version. - For legal reasons, the ROM does not come with the ZIP file. You will need to find it yourself -- do not ask where to get it. Alternately, you can get the cartridge and find a way to dump the ROM yourself. - The ROM should be titled "Donkey Kong GB: Dinky Kong & Dixie Kong". If it is titled "Donkey Kong Land III", you have the wrong game -- you want the Japanese game for the GBC. - Ensure that you are not using a ZIP file. If you are using one, unzip it so that it is a .gbc file. - The ROM should be a good dump and unhacked. DO NOT use an older pre-patched English ROM or any other pre-patched ROMs! - The base ROM and patched ROM can optionally be verified by calculating the ROM's MD5 hash. You can use https://www.romhacking.net/hash/ to perform this. - Base ROM MD5 sum: 22afe691095c65f34aeaba3c283b2a9c - Patched ROM MD5 sum (original title screen): 8ACCAFBB4286ED6507EC8678B364C18E - Patched ROM MD5 sum (newer title screen): E1E06631635A0E41503C43BA0A08F888 - A patch file. Multiple files come with this ZIP file, ending in extensions .bps and .ips. Two of each format are included here for convenience, but you only need to use one. (See the Patching section below to decide which patch to apply.) - An emulator or a flashcart. There are numerous emulators that you can use, but some recommended ones are: BGB, mGBA, Gambatte, etc. These are easy to find with through a web search. - The 3DS Virtual Console emulator is also compatible through the New Super Ultimate Injector. - This game is also fully compatible with Everdrive flashcarts, such as the X7. A. Patching ----------- This ZIP file comes with two patching files: a .bps file and an .ips file. Choose one; BPS is the recommended format, mainly because the format has safeguards in the event of a user error (e.g. applying the patch to the wrong ROM). The easiest way to patch the ROM is through the web app at romhacking.net: https://www.romhacking.net/patch/ This can be used for both formats. Since it is done through the browser, this can be done on different types of devices. To apply the patch: 1. In the ROM file field, select the unmodified ROM. This should have a .gbc extension, not .zip. 2. In the Patch file field, select the BPS or IPS file. - There are two patch files for each format, with the filenames DKL3 English v1.3 Original Title and DKL3 English v1.3 New Title. The difference between these is that they have different title screens, based on the original English revisions. Use the screenshots in the ZIP for reference when deciding which patch to apply. 3. Your patched ROM should be downloaded, and should have (patched) at the end of the filename. Most browsers save it to your device's Downloads folder by default. 4. Place the patch to the desired location, and optionally rename it, and enjoy the English hack! NOTE: If you used a BPS file and received a "Source ROM checksum mismatch" error, make sure that you used the correct ROM file! The fields should be as follows: - CRC32: 28d7e8d3 - MD5: 22afe691095c65f34aeaba3c283b2a9c - SHA-1: 55b133b739a5472d477336647cb9ec97b7fa85a2 NOTE: If you use an IPS file to patch, there will be no warning for if you use an incorrect ROM. If you have trouble playing the game after patching, double-check that you used the correct ROM (given the parameters above) or use the BPS file instead. Other methods can be done via desktop apps: - BPS: beat (http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/893/) - IPS: Lunar IPS (http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/240/) IV. Translation information --------------------------- The text in this hack is based on the original English script; however, the font is based on the original DKC font, as opposed to the DKL2 and DKL3 font, resulting in a cleaner look and having lowercase in addition to uppercase. Other things worth noting: - Re-Koil, Minkey, Knik-Knak are known as Rekoil, Minky, and Niknak in this patch, just as they were known in the original English DKL3. This is different from their DKC3 names. Part of the reasoning behind this decision is because certain level names and dialogue use the DKL3 enemy names, ruling out the possibility of typos. - However, as of the v1.3 patch, Knocka uses the DKC3 name, as opposed to Krusha, due to the name being different entirely. - KAOS is spelled in ALL CAPS, like in the SNES version of DKC3, but unlike the GBA version. However, the level Karbine Kaos is in lowercase, because this is not meant to reference the boss. - Some punctuation was fixed, most notably in K. Rool's Last Stand, as well as some of Bear's dialogue. - In Wrinkly's dialogue, Kremlings is now spelled correctly. - In the Japanese version, both Wrinkly and Bear had some missing dialogues, which are restored. A. Title screen --------------- The title screen was edited; it is a combination of the English and Japanese title screens. The Donkey Kong GB: Dinky Kong & Dixie Kong logo was replaced with the original Donkey Kong Land III logos. As of v1.3, there are two separate patches to reflect the differing English logos. One patch is based on the retail English v1.0 logo, while the other is based on the English v1.1 logo (also used in the 3DS Virtual Console). B. Bonus screens ---------------- The text here was translated, like everything else, but for the "Find the Token!" and "Bash the Baddies!" screens, the color palette for the text was changed as well. Except for the "Collect the Stars!" screen, the text was in different shades of pink, which became more noticeable with the thicker font and the dark outline. Not only did this make the text look ugly (and inconsistent), but the pink text was likely the result of an oversight. C. Rareware logo screen ----------------------- Similar to the title screen, this screen is a mixture of the original Japanese and English screens. While the screen is mostly taken from the Japanese version, the "Donkey Kong GB: Dinky Kong & Dixiey [sic] Kong" text was changed to "Donkey Kong Land III". D. Monochrome Game Boy screen ----------------------------- The screen that appears when attempting to play this on a Game Boy was also translated to English. The game title uses the font from DKC2 for the SNES, reduced to 4 colors. The main message uses a custom font with prerendered text, made entirely from scratch. This design is subject to change if it receives negative feedback. V. Restored features -------------------- When Donkey Kong Land III was converted to the Game Boy Color, certain features were inexplicably removed (likely due to time constraints), but were restored in this patch. - Most notably, the world maps and Bear lost their animations. The English hack, from version 1.1 onwards, restores the animated world maps. Bear's animation has also been restored, starting with version 1.2. - In the Time Attack screen, your most recent time is no longer shown in the Japanese version. The English hack, starting from version 1.1, restores this feature, so that your most recent time is once again displayed on the bottom of the screen. - When talking to Wrinkly, he has two different dialogues when he greets you in the Game Boy version (which is random every time), but only one in the Game Boy Color version. All English patches (from v1.0 onward) use the same two dialogues that were in the Game Boy version. - Similarly, when talking to Bear and attempting to buy something that you cannot afford, he has two different dialogues for this situation in the Game Boy version; one of these appears at random each time. In the Japanese version, he only has one dialogue for this. Due to this, English patches v1.0 and v1.1 originally had only one dialogue for Bear as well, but starting with v1.2, both of the original dialogues have been present. VI. Bug fixes ------------- Besides translating the game and restoring features that were removed in the Japanese version, some bugs that were originally present in retail copies of Donkey Kong Land III (and in some cases, Donkey Kong Land 2) were fixed. (See https://www.mariowiki.com/List_of_Donkey_Kong_Land_III_glitches for a list of bugs.) Here is a list of bug fixes: - When on the title screen, and waiting for the music to end without pressing any buttons, a demo of Jetty Jitters is played. This demo was designed for the original English version for the Game Boy; the Game Boy is slower than the Game Boy Color. The Japanese version for the Game Boy Color is heavily reliant on the Game Boy Color's faster CPU, which is about twice as fast as the original Game Boy. This extra speed causes timing issues, and causes the demo to desync, preventing the Kongs from making it to the end. The version 1.1 English patch, and all subsequent patches, tweak this demo slightly so that the Kongs are able to make it to the end of the level. - When losing to a bonus stage, the counter that is used for enemies or stars does not reset to zero. Due to this, when defeating an enemy in the main level (i.e. outside a bonus stage), the counter can continue to decrease. Once this counter reaches zero, the sound effect that is used when the Bonus Coin appears can be heard. This bug originated in the English version of Donkey Kong Land 2; in that game, collecting bananas also affected the counter. The English version 1.2 patch fixes this bug, so that the counter no longer decreases outside a bonus stage. - In both Donkey Kong Land 2 and III, for each save file, there are also two additional backup copies of them. The intention of the developers was that if any of the main save files were corrupt by any means (such as dust residing in the cartridge), but any of the backup copies were still working properly, these would be used instead. However, both of these games have a bug that prevents the backup copies from being used at all, and due to this, it is possible to see a corrupt save file when playing the game. The English version 1.2 patch fixes this bug so that backup copies are used when needed, which makes it highly unlikely that you will ever see a corrupted save file. Note that if the main and backup copies are all corrupted, the data is impossible to recover, and your save file will be erased in this situation. - In the Japanese version of the game, whenever there was scrolling text (from Wrinkly or Bear), a buggy tile would appear at the beginning of the text for one frame before the text would start to print. This was fixed in the English patch from version 1.1 onwards. - When entering K. Rool's Last Stand, when the game checks which message should appear, all retail versions check if the player has EXACTLY 6 watches to determine if the player has enough. This resulted in a bug where having 12 (after beating the level) would give the wrong message telling the player to come back with 6 watches and the DK Coins. This check was fixed from exactly 6 watches to 6 or more watches, as of v1.3. - In boss stages, the Big Boss Blues music would have a slightly slower tempo than normal if the user already entered any stage (a boss or non-boss stage) after power-on. This was fixed as of v1.3 so that the music would play at a consistent tempo. (The faster tempo is used all the time, since it is closer to the music used in boss stages in the SNES version of DKC3.) - In Sheepy Shop, after finishing Bear's card game, the Kong now stands in a constant position to any other situation, as of v1.3. VII. Known issues ----------------- This hack was thoroughly tested in BGB, 3DS Virtual Console, Everdrive GB X7, mGBA, and Lameboy, so in theory there shouldn't be any added bugs. Nevertheless, there are known minor or obscure bugs that originated in the retail games that remain in the English patches. A list can be found here: https://www.mariowiki.com/List_of_Donkey_Kong_Land_III_glitches If you encounter a bug in this game, check the Super Mario Wiki page above to ensure that it was not introduced in the patch. If you come across a bug that is not listed, try it in a retail game to see if the bug is reproducible there. If you tried that and are convinced that it is a patch bug, contact me (under the Contact section below). VIII. Custom demos ------------------ On Donkey Kong Land III's title screen, after waiting for the music to end, a demo is played showing various levels of the game. Different demos can be accessed by pressing Select, Left, Up, or Right, and this applies to both the retail games and the patch. Each press cycles through a different demo, but after returning to the title screen, it will play the default Jetty Jitters demo unless you press the aforementioned buttons again. The patch changes things so that four new custom demos were added, and existing ones were fixed or replaced entirely. Retail games: - Demo 1: Jetty Jitters (desyncs in the retail Japanese version) - Demo 2: Rickety Rapids - Demo 3: Whiplash Dash - Demo 4: Deep Reef Grief English patch: - Demo 1: Jetty Jitters (with Japanese desync fixed) - Demo 2: Rocketeer Rally (new) - Demo 3: Rainforest Rumble (new) - Demo 4: Black Ice Blitz (new) - Demo 5: Rockface Chase (new) - Demo 6: Rickety Rapids (replaced with a new custom demo) - Demo 7: Whiplash Dash (replaced with a new custom demo) - Demo 8: Deep Reef Grief (replaced with a new custom demo) IX. Distribution ---------------- You are free to distribute this patch and use it, as long as you do the following: - Don't take credit for this patch; I put a lot of hard work into it! - Don't remove the README file. - Only distribute it in patch form; do not distribute the pre-patched ROM. This could expose you to copyright issues if you do. - Please don't create reproduction carts for this patch, as it is not meant for other people to profit off of. If you see one on sale online, please do not buy it, as it was done without my permission, and buying it is supporting piracy. In addition, bootleg carts in general are ironically known to sometimes contain anti-piracy measures that crash the game on emulators. X. Credits ---------- Thanks to: - Nintendo for creating Donkey Kong. - Rare for creating the Donkey Kong Country and Land series. - BGB for having such a useful debugger and disassembler. - Gaz (from DKC Atlas) for some early feedback. - Blaziken257 (myself) for the hacking. - Shiny for indirect contributions for sprite fixes for Skidda, Knocka, Bleak's snowballs, and Karbine's fireballs (through Data Crystal notes). - Last but not least, yourself for reading this and playing the translation. XI. Contact ----------- I, Blaziken257, can primarily be found at: - DKC Atlas: http://dkc-atlas.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=91 - The Cutting Room Floor: http://tcrf.net/User:Blaziken257 - Discord: Blaziken257#2132 - A DKC Atlas discord can be found here: https://discord.gg/qPCcTcF - The forum locked new registrations at some point years ago, so if you do not have an account in the forum, you can still use the Discord server! I am often busy, so if you send me something, please wait at least a week for a reply.