TOKORO SAN NO MAMORU MO SEMERU MO
Translation by Psyklax
v1.0 (20170810)

CONTENTS
1. Intro
2. ROM Information
3. Background
4. Final Thoughts

INTRO
This is a 100% English translation of Tokoro San no Mamoru
mo Semeru mo for the Famicom (NES). This translation renames
the game to George Tokoro's Offense and Defense. The title
screen, the ending, and the game over screen have all been
translated, as well as several miscellaneous graphics.

ROM INFORMATION
GoodNES name: Tokoro San no Mamoru mo Semeru mo (J) [!].nes
CRC32: 285DB36B

BACKGROUND
George Tokoro is the stage name of Takayuki Haga, famous in
Japan as a comedian, TV personaity and singer-songwriter.
This game sees the player take the role of Tokoro, wearing
his trademark glasses. You must fight through several levels
armed only with a water pistol. In the first part of the
game, doors at the end of each level will take you to
different places, and there is randomness involved, such
that you can't be sure where each door will take you. Once
you reach Nerima, the second stage begins, and the game
becomes linear.

When you lose a life, a game over screen appears. The words
on-screen are a parody of the famous Japanese song Love Is
Over, replaced here with Game Over. The other words (which
have been roughly translated here) remain the same.
Additionally, the song's Taiwanese singer, Ouyang Fei Fei,
is listed here as "Ouyang Cafe".

FINAL THOUGHTS
This took WAY more effort that it should have! The devs made
some design choices under the hood that made hacking it a
bit tricky. It's partly because it's a small game, but some
of the decisions look a bit strange to me.

For example, both the game over screen and the title use a
system where each block of four tiles are defined, then a
"name table" of sorts is defined too. I can understand the
purpose of this (if there's a lot of repetition), but given
it's just for the game over and title screens, it seems to
me that the bytes saved (if any) just wouldn't be worth it,
especially as, with this system, they waste lots of bytes
defining the black background. At one point I thought I
should just replace the whole routine with one that says
"here's the tiles, put them on the screen", but I didn't
bother.

To add to the strangeness, all that data defining those two
screens is actually in the CHR-ROM, bankswitched into the
PPU, then copied into the CPU's RAM. A creative way to get
more code, but weird nonetheless.

At least my choice of title was good: there's so much
repetition that I could fit it all in the ROM with plenty of
space to spare. The ending used a different system, but
fortunately I was able to just put my new ending at the end
of the PRG-ROM and change the pointers.

All in all, it didn't take many days, but those days were
filled with too many hours than I feel were necessary. And
the game is really brutal, too! Still, I hope this
translation encourages you to take up the challenge!

Tools I used for this translation:
FCEUX (best NES emulator for debugging and hacking)
HxD (general hex editing)
WindHex32 EX (small amount of text work)
Tile Molester (graphics)

Psyklax
http://s346165667.websitehome.co.uk/psyktrans/