The Black Onyx
SG-1000

The Black Onyx is a very, very early dungeon crawler only released in Japan for some various old systems. I had attempted to hack it and translate it at one point, but there were weird glitches whenever certain bits of text were changed so I gave it up, not really interested in investing time in figuring out why. Then (thanks to KingMike) I learned that Bruce Tomlin had already disassembled the game and translated it, I just needed to compile the source code.

The compiled source code is the first patch, Black_Onyx.ips. Simply apply it the ROM and you're good to go.

But since I had the source code I thought I'd poke around a bit and change a few things I hated about the game. First of all the way the game blinks the screen in between movements drove me nuts, so I removed the calls to that blank screen routine when you're in the 3D maze. Next I hated the green colors used everywhere, so I edited the palettes to use grey instead of green (and blue doors instead of those ugly red ones). Finally I wrote a short routine to draw some graphics on the battle/shop screens instead of just plain black. I also changed the font to a nice gothic looking one I really like.

If you want to play the (in my opinion) enhanced version, use Black_Onyx_Enanced.ips instead.

Anyway, Bruce Tomlin (http://xi6.com/projects/) is the one who did all the work, I just compiled it, so he gets all the credit!