Super Shell Monster Story II English Language Patch V0.90



Introduction:

	Japanese Developer:				Birthday and Hudson Soft.
	Japanese Publisher:				Hudson Soft.
	Japanese Release:				August 02, 1996
	English Patch Production:			Dynamic-Designs



Dynamic-Designs Patch History:

	V0.90:  Initial Dynamic-Designs Release:	November 10, 2020



Dynamic-Designs Production Credits:

	Project Coordination:				Wildbill
	Hacking/Tools/Bug Fixing:			Bongo`
        Assembly: 					Bongo`
	Translation:					Gerb, Wildbill
	Translation Support:				Filler, Wildbill
	Story Writing:					Wildbill
	Production Assistant and Alpha Testing:		SylerDean,



NOT FOR SALE INFO

This game in English or patch to make it English is
NOT for sale under any circumstances!  If you paid
for this game in any way, including in a cartridge,
demand your money back immediately!  File a complaint
with your credit card company and/or paypal as well!
Especially if you obtained this game in cart form!



Overview (adapted from https://www.giantbomb.com/daikaijuu-monogatari-ii/3030-45532/):

The player is once again embodying the Fire Shell Hero, a legendary champion of the friendly
shell monsters, who is summoned to help the shell monsters defeat the evil sorcerer Dark.
Dark has managed to locate six of the eggs of the Demon King, who was defeated in the previous
game, and used his magic to hatch all six into formidable monster generals. He plans to use
these monster generals and their armies to conquer the globe.

The gameplay is similar to Dragon Quest and other turn-based RPGs. The game also includes
side-quests and an empty lot of land that the player can use to build a settlement. This
settlement can have shops, arenas, inns and other useful facilities, but the player is
limited in space.


Bugs that are still in the released translation that may or may not ever be addressed.

1. Unpredictable possible save-state-induced glitches appear to randomly spur garbled text,
especially in regard to NPC dialogs.

The SSMS-II English patch may become unstable in an unpredictable manner whenever
save-states are used routinely while playing the game. Even more perplexing is that
what occurs with one player in a given place may not happen with another in that same
exact spot. However, something similar may occur somewhere else.

To repeat, this glitch appears to trigger when someone uses save-states routinely.
What happens is that a string spoken by an NPC will "scramble" with bits and pieces from a
different string or strings. This bug appears to be more prevalent around Grantham Castle
in the early going, but may recur later in Marinela Town. Therefore. the best opportunity
to play a trouble free game is to avoid using save-states.

The workaround for this "scrambled text" bug is to go back to a save point/location, save,
and reload the game. In all cases, whenever I did this, upon returning to the character formerly
speaking gibberish, he spoke his intended string correctly.

2. The Inez song to Andre, taught to a talented Porhoi Tree in Blauer Forest. In these
scenes, the lyrics to Inez's song appear to slow down from their initial tempo toward the
mid-point of the auto-scrolling text. Since we have no control codes for speed in this
game, this glitch cannot be corrected without shortening the translated lyrics to a length
that is unacceptable to us.

3.  Random graphic battle messages and the very final short ending credits still appear in
Kana. Given our present resources, these cannot be converted to English without
decompression, redrawing, and reassembly.



Caveat and Invitation:

In a MAJOR departure from our previous policy, we are releasing an unfinished patch. This is due
to both time factors and downsizing in the diversification of our production team. In no way are
we suggesting anything but positive support for all of our highly dedicated and hardworking
teammates in the past. It's simply that changing life circumstances for some of us have dictated
the realities of where we find ourselves today.

At this time, we active members of D-D cannot guarantee that we'll ever revise this patch in any
way. This means we may never release a Version 1.00. At the same time, we're not saying we won't.
As per usual, D-D will establish a feedback topic within the Super Shell Monster Story II forum
on our WWWBoard.  After receiving the patch "as-is" and playing the game, if someone comes along
who really loves this work and possesses the know-how to rectify certain technical issues, we will
be standing by, ready and willing to discuss the matter."



Production, Testing, and Thought Processes: (Wildbill)

I have really enjoyed my part in creating this English patch. The quality of everyone's efforts
leads me to the realization that everything we've achieved is due to a strong team effort. It's the
dedicated contributions of each member who recodes, translates, designs fonts, redraws graphics,
writes story scenes, and tests the developing product that ensures a successful conclusion.

Let me add that anyone in the world is free to pursue this "not for profit" hobby. This means that
any human who inhabits this planet has free rein to start in the same places we did and create stories
and  finished products that suit their own personal interests, motivations, and tastes.

That said, I'll add this:

For quite some time, I've deliberated over releasing this English patch to the general public.

However, the span of years that I've held this file is related more to losing the work that
contained the most recent revisions. I've been moving around quite a bit and even sold a major
residence, but try as I might, I couldn't locate that patch in any of the 20 or more storage media I
checked at multiple locations. Finally, I searched the files on a loose HDD once installed inside a
PC in which I had installed increased storage capacity, and there it was, buried within a sealed
packing box that was stored inside a shut-off room, along with dozens of other moving containers.

It took some doing, but my teammates finally convinced that a fair number of good people in the
world who really love vintage RPGs, folks who have extended enthusiastic and appreciative support
over several decades, deserved to play these fruits of our labors. As said before, we’ll build a feedback 
forum on our SSMS-II message board, and as always, we'll respond to congenially-offered inputs, as
well as errata involving grammatical oversights and such.

Here's the back story on how I became involved in coordinating the SSMS-II translation project.
It all started shortly before we released SSMS-I, a partially completed patch that Bongo`
extracted from a list of abandoned works. As we proceeded with the first game, my research turned
up that a sequel existed but in Japanese only. I played some of SSMS-II, then convinced Bongo` to
start working on an insertion system.

I translated 80% of SSMS-II by myself before bogging down, so I contacted Gerb (who translated
SSMS-I). He agreed to finish the 20%, as well as backstop everything I had done previously, and
working together, I thought we made quite a team knocking out the story. Bongo` found the complex
coding system to be quite tedious, but he kept hacking away at the challenges until everything
began taking fine shape.

Unfortunately, as mentioned above, we couldn't solve every little detail, but all who
participated in beta testing told me that SSMS-II is a really fine play. So here it is, released
despite my previous reservations. 

-Wildbill



Patching:

Contained within this archive is an IPS (international patching system) file or a patch file in another
format for the end user's convenience that when used in conjunction with a ROM file will make the
game playable in English.

Do note, as I touched on above, that this patch is a result of countless hours of love and labor.
Hence, they are not meant to be sold at any price under any circumstance, be it in digital form or
burnt into a donor cart's ROM chip.

To patch the ROM file, one needs to procure a patcher for their preferred format, a widely available
class of programs, many of which can be found at http://www.romhacking.net/ for one source.  A few
can even be found on our download page for your convenience at
http://www.dynamic-designs.us/downloads.shtml.  Search at the bottom under utilities.  We did not
write these utilities.  We merely provide them as a convenience.

At some point, ROM sites may upload pre-patched ROMs of our Super Shell Monster Story II translation.
Obviously, Dynamic Designs cannot endorse playing these versions.  Neither will we support resolution
of any associated problems. Moreover, pre-patched ROMs may float around the web for years.  Only by
downloading patches containing just our original work from D-D's web site may gamers obtain revisions
to these patches - if any - and take advantage of possible bug-fixes and corrections.




Information pertaining to the Super Shell Monster Story II ROM:


Size before patching: 5.00 MB (5,242,880 bytes)

Size after patching: 5.50 MB (5,767,168 bytes)

       Name: DAIKAIJYUMONOGATARI2 
    Company: Hudson Soft
     Header: None
       Bank: Extended HiROM
Interleaved: None
       SRAM: 64 Kb
       Type: S-RTC + Batt
        ROM: 40 Mb
    Country: Japan
      Video: NTSC
  ROM Speed: 120ns (FastROM)
   Revision: 1.0
   Checksum: Good 0x8528
  Game Code: AE6J
      CRC32: A6C98FFE
        MD5: A356461694F781EB64EE75A29AA984FF


Notes:

1. Not all ROMs will necessarily be patch-able with our file.
2. If the ROM you attempt to patch has a header, you may need to remove it.
3. A number of tools are available to remove headers: SNESTool, Smile, Toolbox, etc.  

Alternatively, most emulators support a feature called soft patching, which keeps the ROM file
intact, merging the patch data only during run time. To make use of it, make sure both the ROM file
and the IPS are in the same directory as your emulator of choice and have the same name, but not the
same extension. Do note that this is case-sensitive.  (Also, do note this soft patching is only
available using the IPS patch file, and may NOT work with the other patch file formats.)

i. e.:  SSMSII(E).smc and SSMSII(E).ips will trigger soft patching at the emulator's run time.



Emulator Compatibility:

This patched game works in most emulators and on real hardware.  We
cannot guarantee compatibility with all emulators, however so far it
has worked on all emulators we have tried it on.  Our recommendation
is SNES9X, ZSNES, HIGEN/BSNES or Real Hardware.




Special Thanks:

The "usual suspects"! I am shocked, SHOCKED YET AGAIN, that we have finally released Super Shell
Monster Story II - English! In the order of performing critical tasks, thanks Bongo`, Gerb,
Wildbill, Filler, SylerDean and Taskforce for the production support. Testers included MariusB,
Swordmaster, akualung, and Recca.



Dedicated to Gerb!


Readme 2020 Dynamic-Designs