(insert elite ascii graphic here) Ganbare Goemon! 1.01 (22 March 2010) Official Readme File! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I. Introduction II. Project IIa. Project Members IIb. Tools IIc. History IId. Known Issues III. End-User Information IV. Thx V. Legal stuff that would never hold up in court ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Introduction Hey everybody. This is a project that's been a LONG time coming, and I'm pretty damn glad to see it finished, considering the fact that I started it about ten and a half years ago. And, you know, this translation really couldn't be for a better game: the game that "started it all" and began the Goemon series of games that Konami had going for a while. It's great fun, though confusing without a FAQ of some sort, and is just such a classic Konami game. It's got a very very basic River City Ransom fighting style going on, with some confusing mazes and hidden secrets in the style of the Goonies II. You should probably check it out sometime. So here's the story on the translation: back when I was first starting my translation news site and patch archive, I had to playtest a LOT of games. I tried out the old translation of Ganbare Goemon by Neo Demiforce from back in 1998, and it was frustrating because the game was fun as hell, but the patch was for an old FFE dump of the ROM that no one used anymore and that no emulators even played. I WANTED to play it, though, and I was under the impression that not much in the game was actually translated, so I decided to translate it myself as a fun project. After getting Xeur to translate the script, I realized that inserting the script was going to be a huge pain, and instead of doing that I decided to hand it off to my friend kueller to finish up. His translation was pretty functional, but none of the pointers were changed, stuff was taken out, and it was generally kind of a slipshod work all told (graphics aside). Fast- forward to 2009 and I hear that there's EIGHT endings in all, and only the first one is done. I want it to get fixed, but since kueller's long gone and I don't want to continue his work without his permission, I just decided to do the whole thing from scratch myself. So there you have it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Project I had hoped to release this on October 15 of last year, which would have been the ten-year anniversary of the project (as far as I know), and I would have met it if I'd actually worked on it. As such, I got all the graphics and the script inserted, and then just kind of forgot about it for a few months. Whoops! While no doubt not impressive by most ROM hacker standards, this is by far the most advanced translation I've ever done. A small assembly hack was added to the between-level map screen to display the text horizontally rather than vertically, and I had to do some HELL of messing around with the palettes and attribute tables to have the title screen looking as good as it does. All of that kind of thing is a first for me, so I'm pretty proud of the end result over here. Members: -------- Spinner 8 (I don't have a website but you can reach me @spinner_8 or the RHDN forums) - text hacking Xeur (?) - text translation Dirk Grundy (http://www.stringtheorycomic.com) - graphic design (While kueller's and Demi's translations were used on occasion as a frame of reference, and both my and kueller's projects are based off of the same translated script, it should be stressed that all hacking work is entirely my own.) Tools used: ----------- Microsoft Windows 7 by Microsoft Corp. (http://www.microsoft.com) FCEUX 2.1.2 by zeromus, adelikat, et al. (http://fceux.com) Nestopia 1.40 by Martin Freij (http://nestopia.sourceforge.net) Tile Layer Pro 1.1 by Kent Hansen WindHex for Windows 2005.4.20 by Bongo` (http://stealth.romhack.net) Thingy 0.98 by necrosaro Atlas 1.06 by Klarth JWPce 1.50 by Glenn Rosenthal (http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html) Lunar IPS 1.01 by FuSoYa (http://fusoya.eludevisibility.org) Patch history! -------------- Version 1.01 - Corrected translation of the secret message that appears when you hold A+B while powering the system. What does it mean? You tell me, man. Version 1.00 - All text translated, including text that was likely dummied out of the final game. All graphics translated, aside from a few that were left alone for aesthetics. Known Issues ------------ - When jumping diagonally it is possible to get stuck in the background at the top of the screen. Normally you can jump back to the standard playing field and continue as normal, but there are places where you appear to sink into water and will die. This was present in the original game. - On the passes, the pixels that make up the word "PASS" are transparent, which makes the background colors visible behind it. This was also in the original game, but the characters were drawn so that it wasn't quite as noticeable. - The password that you receive after finishing the game was left alone, so it remains in Japanese in case you want to write it down and use it. Good luck to you, too, since I have no idea what it's used for, and the game has no way to input the password in the first place that I can see. - Along those lines, there are many graphics and lines of dialogue in the ROM that as far as I can tell aren't present in the game itself. They've still been translated, but if you run across them they may sound awkward due to a lack of context. If you see anything off, please reach out and let me know. A save state and an explanation of how to duplicate the issue would be incredibly helpful. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ End-User Back in the day this section used to have information about how to patch this translation so you can play it, but patching has become easy enough at this point that no one really needs the help. So instead, let me write up a little mini-guide. You'll be glad you read it! Ganbare Goemon is thirteen levels long, and the goal of the first eleven is to collect three passes in order to get through the gated checkpoint. There's three ways to collect passes: they can be found in the secret passageway, in the underground chambers, or if you're lazy enough (and rich enough), you can buy them from certain shops. You don't need any passes in the last two levels, so don't even bother looking. The game doesn't tell you this either. Secret passageways are little 3D mazes that you can explore, and there's one per level. You can get a lot of treasure from there, plus they're the only place where you can get extra lives. The underground chambers are ALSO a secret, and the stairways to enter them can only be found by jumping over them. So yeah, you'll be doing a lot of random hopping around everywhere in the constant hopes of uncovering these stairways. That's basically it, so here's a rundown of most of the items you can get: - A slingshot (called "sling" in the pawn shop) will probably be the first thing you find. At that point you can put away that big pipe you hit people with and shoot at your foes from a distance. For whatever reason, you get the sling from those little pawing cat idols that appear from pots and such. - You can get shoes which will make you run faster. Very helpful! You can get a maximum of three. You get the shoes from some weird octopus mask that just looks like a coinpurse to me, if you find it from pots. Keep an eye out! - Food is in plentiful supply in the game, and eating dumplings or miso soup will instantly refill your health. You can also buy rice balls (which are embarrassingly called "food" in the pawn shop) that go into your inventory and will automatically restore your health if it ever goes to zero. - You can buy straw hats, helmets, and armor to protect yourself from various obstacles and projectiles. Like, a helmet will deflect falling rocks, and hats deflect those... little white... things... that birds drop on you. - In level 2 you'll notice the annoying taxi couriers that run around. If you run into one, they'll not only take some of your money, but send you back to the beginning of the level. SO annoying! To protect yourself, buy a Charm from a shop. It looks like a red price tag with the letter K on it. - Herbs are cool, but kind of annoying. They look kind of like a black beer can, and they'll instantly restore any health that you lose when you get hit, up to five times. Nice, but you can't control when it happens. If you have them in your inventory while in a 3D maze, you can press A+B to see a map, even if you don't have that maze's map in your possession. - Jumping around to find those stupid staircases is annoying as hell, but if you buy a candle they'll all be made visible to you for a limited time. - Also be on the lookout for scrolls while underground. There's only four in the game (including one on the first level!), and they permanently raise your maximum health. Damn, that was long. Remember back when video games actually NEEDED manuals? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thanks! This translation is dedicated to ReyVGM, owner of the Video Game Museum at www.vgmuseum.com. While playing through the game for his site he noticed that only the first of eight endings were translated, and was gracious enough to provide me with save states and screenshots for testing. It's safe to say that without him, this translation would have been MUCH more frustrating, and probably never would have existed at all. Thanks to Dirk, who came through one hundred percent with some great graphical designs, including a completely awesome title screen. Thanks to Xeur, one of my best friends from those heady early days of ROM translation. Thanks again for doing the script for me, and whatever you're doing, I hope you're well, and I miss you very much. Thanks to Sardius, who did a run-through of the near-final product and gave me some useful suggestions, not to mention that he totally inadvertently managed to break the game. If that's not the sign of a good beta tester, I don't know what is. Thanks to Procyon, who near-single-handedly wrote the best guide to Ganbare Goemon on the internet, at strategywiki.org. I spent WAY less time testing this game than I would have without that walkthrough. Check it out if you're having trouble with the game. Thanks to tummai and KingMike for some unsolicited help on the Romhacking.net forum. It saved my newbie self a good two hours that would have been spent flailing about and searching on my own (even though I tell myself I probably could've done it on my own... eventually). Thanks to InVerse, who I bounced ideas off of for a good long while during the period when I was considering using the game's subtitle "Karakuri Douchuu" as part of the title screen. Literally translated it means "tricky journey", but "tricky" in this case means "sly" or "clever" like a thief, not "difficult" as the phrase implies. Racking my brain for a suitable synonym that wouldn't sound too goofy took weeks, if not months, and eventually I came to the unrelated conclusion that the subtitle wasn't really needed anyways. Thanks again to oddigy for the webspace. You gave me webspace for years, for free, with no questions asked, and I've known you for years and years longer than that. You've been a real friend, and I'll always be grateful to you. Thanks to those who came before, namely Demi and kueller. Apologies in particular are long overdue to Demi, whose translation I finally was able to play just a few months ago, and it's a hell of a great piece of work that's just as complete as Dragoon-X's is (but still missing the other endings). If I had known back then how good that translation was, and how easy it was to convert FFE ROMs to something playable, I honestly would've never bothered with all this nonsense. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Legal Made-up Stuff Naturally, Ganbare Goemon remains the sole property of Konami, and this translation is not and has never intended to infringe on their intellectual property. It's being released to the fans, as a way to play the games they love with all respect that's due to them. In keeping with this hobbyist spirit, feel free to re-distribute this patch (this means YOU Underground Gamer! WAVES!), but it is forbidden to distribute this patch along with the Ganbare Goemon ROM image, either separately or pre-patched. Anyone doing so, does so entirely without my consent, knowledge, or approval.