Snatcher in English v0.6.0 for MSX2/2+/TR By Daniel Caetano (daniel@caetano.eng.br) HomePage: http://www.caetano.eng.br/snatcher/ "Snatcher" is a game developed by Konami. It was enhanced and translated by Fudeba Software (2001/2003). þþþ 2.0 What is "Snatcher in English"? Many years ago (1988) Konami released am adult japanese-only MSX game called Snatcher. The game was a great sucess in Japan, but no one really knows why it was never released outside Japan. Some years later, a "child" version of it was released, using an RPG engine, instead of the original "graphical adventure". This game was called SD-Snatcher and was released in Japan, too. The first (and AFAIK, the only) version of Snatcher was released in a non-japanese language was the Sega CD version of Snatcher, which was in english. It was complete, with the three acts (the MSX version has only two of them) but it was somewhat changed because it could be played by children and most of original Snatcher's jokes were "adult" ones. So, people that doesn't know japanese was really missing something: a great adult graphical adventure by Konami that almost no one outside Japan was able to play. The idea of the translation is old. It first arose when the first public translations were released (such as SD-Snatcher, XAK series, etc), by a "company" called Oasis. Oasis even started to translate Snatcher, but they'd not finished it. I don't know why they abandoned this work, but I noticed that Snatcher translation (such as Metal Gear 2 and Illusion City) is clearly more difficult than others, which means thousands(!) of hours debugging, disassembling, coding and testing. Also, many tools were developed to allow this work. I can't imagine this translation to be finished without tools like Ricardo Bittencourt's BrMSX, Adriano's M80/L80, Claudio "Cyberknight"'s Gremlin, my own disassembler MSXDASM and my own script extractors and importers... (as well as OS/2, since debugging the game using BrMSX under Windows was really annoying!)... Without those, thousand hours of work would easily become millions of hours. The help of my dear friends was also important. I should thank some of them here, because without them this translation would never see the day light: - Artemio Urbina - First dumped the original Snatcher text. - Sent me a perfect gift (An original SD-Snatcher). Without it I think I would never had finished this english version. - Takamichi Suzukawa - Spend thousands of hours translating the japanese dumped text to english. - Helped with my doubts about the translation - Ricardo Bittencourt - BrMSX was great for debugging. Too bad you moved to Windows. Windows is just crap to debug anything. - Adriano Cunha - M80/L80 for PC... is just great! (^= - You stimulated me to start this work... q^= If you had not created Uzix, I would spent all those nights creating it! (^= - Thanks for all ASM tips you gave, in special for international keyboard support for Snatcher. - Thanks also with the help on the "Exit-to-DOS" routine that will never see the day light, since DOS2 is too wild to allow me exit from the game without harm it. - Beta Testing! - Dante Nishida - Hey, man... you saved me a lot of time translating the graphical data (still in work, but great progress!) - Beta Testing! - Reinaldo Quaresma, Jun Kim, Leandro Pereira - Your help about "jokes"' translations in portuguese version will never be forgotten. - Beta Testing! - Luciano Sturaro - Beta Testing! - Edison Moraes - MSX Top Secret was the "number one" resource of information about MSX hardware! - KonamiMan - MSX2 Technical Handbook was too much used in this development, man! You are a real fudeba! (^= After these notes, I would like to say I really hope you enjoy this nice game. SD-Snatcher is "cute", but the story plot on Snatcher is much better. (^= Finally: Do not sell games made as a hobby. It's all about FUN. þþþ 3.0 Original Files Files on the original ZIP archive are: SNATCHE0.DSK Boot disk, plus utilities. Required. SNATCHE1.DSK First game disk. SNATCHE2.DSK Second game disk. SNATCHE3.DSK Third game disk. Disks 1 to 3 are in a "proprietary format", so you cannot type "dir" and see its contents. But disk 0 contains the following files: AUTOEXEC.BAT Will automatically load the game COMMAND.COM DOS 1.x Command DSK2SAV.COM Utility to extract SaveGames to a .SAV FDSAVE.COM Utility from T.Tsujikawa to dump disks INSTALL.BAT Simple script to install the game on HD LEIAME.TXT Portuguese version of this file. MSXDOS.SYS DOS 1.x boot data README.TXT This file SAV2DSK.COM Utility to import .SAV SaveGames SNATCHER.000 File that says to SNATCHER.COM it is running from a floppy. SNATCHER.COM Game loader. SNATCHER.FNT Font file, used by the loader. SNATCHER.IMG Opening image, used by the loader. SNATCHER.INS Install helper SNATCHER.SCR Extra texts to the game. þþþ 4.0 System Requirements and Supported Systems These are the requirements (play from disk): - Any MSX2 or later - BDOS 1.0 or later - 144KB of Mapped RAM (plus 32kb if BDOS2 is used) - 128KB of VRAM These are the requirements (play from harddisk): - Any MSX2 or later - BDOS 2.2 or later - IDE or SCSI harddisk - 192KB of Mapped RAM - 128KB of VRAM Aditional supported hardware: - Any SCC cartridge (*) - Any SCC+ cartrigde (*) (*) The SCC/SCC+ must be in: a) any non-expanded slot b) an expanded slot that is not shared with the memory mapper or the disk interface and BDOS or MainBIOS. þþþ 5.0 Features Besides the original game features, the following features were addes: - The game speaks your language (he he =^) - Automatic support for turbo on CIEL and Turbo R computers - The game is playable on HardDisk - When playing on harddisk, SaveGames are made in a .SAV file. - Fast Play Mode, using CONTROL key (AKA "NumLock Mode") - Automatic detection of SCC/SCC+ slot - CAPS light indicates read/write on HD þþþ 6.0 Installation To play the game you just need to boot with DISK0. Anyway, you should like to play it on harddisk. Playing on floppy is just annoying. There are two ways of installing it on hardisk: manual and automatic. 1) Automatic - Boot from your harddisk MSX-DOS2. - Select the drive to install and create the directory. p.e.: C: [enter] MD SNATCHER [enter] - Place DISK0 on the floppy and change to it. p.e.: A: [enter] - Use INSTALL.BAT to install it. p.e.: INSTALL A: C: \SNATCHER [enter] - Follow the instructions on the screen, when the installer asks for other disks, do it. - If everything is ok, you can play typing: SNATCHER [enter] - If the game doesn't run or doesn't seem to be working ok, try the manual method. 2) Manual - Boot from your harddisk MSX-DOS2. - Select the drive to install and create the directory. p.e.: C: [enter] MD SNATCHER [enter] CD SNATCHER [enter] - Copy these files from disk to harddisk. p.e.: COPY A:DSK2SAV.COM C: [enter] COPY A:FDSAVE.COM C: [enter] COPY A:SAV2DSK.COM C: [enter] COPY A:SNATCHER.COM C: [enter] COPY SNATCHER.SCR C: [enter] **DO NOT** copy SNATCHER.000! - Place DISK1 in the drive and dump it. p.e.: FDSAVE A: SNATCHER.001 - Place DISK2 in the drive and dump it. p.e.: FDSAVE A: SNATCHER.002 - Place DISK3 in the drive and dump it. p.e.: FDSAVE A: SNATCHER.003 - If everything is ok, you can play typing: SNATCHER [enter] - If the game doesn't run or doesn't seem to be working ok, try to pray, offer a virgin to the gods or something. You may also try to contact me. =^) þþþ 7.0 Playing Snatcher Snatcher controls are the usual on Graphical Adventure games. You should use the keys 0 to 9 to select an action. After you receive Metal Gear, you will be able to save a game, using the normal menu system (following the options: ). SHIFT may be used for two things in the game: - point your gun - move Metal Gear's light. In both cases you'll need to push (and keep) SHIFT key, and then select the area where you want to shot or point the light. To do it, imagine the screen is divided in 9 pieces: +-----+-----+-----+ | | | | | | | | +-----+-----+-----+ | | | | | | | | +-----+-----+-----+ | | | | | | | | +-----+-----+-----+ Use the following keys to select the area: +-----+-----+-----+ | | | | | 7 | 8 | 9 | +-----+-----+-----+ | | | | | 4 | 5 | 6 | +-----+-----+-----+ | | | | | 1 | 2 | 3 | +-----+-----+-----+ Or... +-----+-----+-----+ | | | | | 7 | 8 | 9 | +-----+-----+-----+ | | | | | U | I | O | +-----+-----+-----+ | | | | | J | K | L | +-----+-----+-----+ That's all. (^= þþþ 8.0 How contact us? You find more information on Snatcher Translation HomePage, on the Internet: http://www.caetano.eng.br/snatcher/ There you'll find all versions of Snatcher to download. If you just want to contact the authors, you can send e-mails for us. If you have some idea on the system works, tips on programming, bug repots, etc, send an e-mail to Daniel Caetano, at the address: daniel@caetano.eng.br Please, send your comments and suggestions (and, of course, bug reports!)