Super Star Force English Translation Patch by GAFF Translations (pluvius3 @ gmail.com) v1.00 (Created October 26, 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 (10-26-15): First release. ****************** II. INTRODUCTION ****************** This is an English translation patch for Super Star Force, a shoot-'em-up developed and published by Tecmo in 1986 for the Nintendo Famicom. It was the sequel to the earlier Star Force, which was an endless vertical shmup that was massively popular in Japanese arcades and was also released in America to less success. Unlike its predecessor, Super Star Force has an in-game plot and two possible endings, is somewhat non-linear, and includes Zelda-like on-foot sequences and NPC encounters. All of this makes it highly similar to the later NES game The Guardian Legend, though Super Star Force does not quite reach that level of quality. As with my last translation (and likely the translations I do for the foreseeable future), I came to this game by way of the excellent Chrontendo 8-bit Internet gaming show. This will probably be unlike my previous translations in that this game may actually be of interest to a sizeable chunk of the retrogaming community. *************************** 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 Super Star Force ROM. No, I don't know where. The correct ROM is identified by GoodNES 3.23 as the verified good dump. 3. Apply the desired patch to the ROM using the aforementioned IPS patcher. **************** IV. KNOWN BUGS **************** None at this time. I did see some weird glitches where you can blow up invisible objects on the ground, but I'm pretty sure those were in the original game. If anyone can figure out how to trigger the Engrish intro mentioned below, let me know and I'll hack it back in. *********** V. CREDITS *********** Rob "Pluvius" Browning: Hacker, translator, tester Thanks to Ivan Rorick for translation help with a few unusual sentences. ******************** VI. TECHNICAL NOTES ******************** The hacking for this game was fairly straightforward. The text in most places was printed using a standard text routine with dakuten being printed separately in the space above each line of text. This made editing the dumped script in preparation for translation a bit of a pain, but it also wasted a lot of ROM space which I was able to reclaim. In addition, there was a lot of free ROM space outside of the text blocks (including an Engrish intro text that was unused), so inserting the script was essentially painless. Beyond that, I only had to hack in an English font (most of which was already provided by the game) and change the graphical Japanese text on the status screen. The only real problem which caused me to edit the script down a little (but not so anyone would really notice) was the limited amount of space in the text window. And I was probably still being a bit conservative in my editing. The hardest part really was just the translation itself. I was able to translate most of the text to my satisfaction by myself, but it was slow-going. Thankfully most of the sentences were fairly simple and had context clues. If anyone with better skills in Japanese than I notices anything egregiously wrong with my translation, please feel free to drop me a line. **************************************** VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND CLOSING WORDS **************************************** Thanks to: Tecmo, for developing and publishing this game. Nintendo, for making the system this game runs on. Chrontendo, for being an informative show about the 8-bit era and giving me the idea to do this hack. Klarth and RedComet, for creating Atlas and Cartographer, two script utilities that made editing the main block of text very much less tedious. The developers of FCEUX, the very useful debugging emulator which I used for this entire project. Romhacking.net, for hosting this hack and many others like it, as well as providing useful hacking information. The NESDev Wiki, the premier resource for NES 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 "Super Star Force" 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.