_______________ ________ / _____ _____ \ / ______ \ / / | | \ \ Nightcrawler's / / \ \ \/ | | \/ / / \ \ | | / / ____\/ /\___ /\_____ | | /\___ ___/\ /\___ /\ | | //--\\ |/--\\ |/----\\ | | |/--\\ //--|| ||--\\ / / | | || || || ` || || | | || ` || || || || / / | | ||__|| || ||____|| | | || ||__|| || || \ \ | | \____/ || ||_____/ | | || \___|| || || \ \ \ \ /\\/ || | | \/ \/ \/ \/ / / \ \ / / || | | \/ \ \______/ / || \ / (c)2016 All rights reserved. \________/ \/ ` *********************************************************************** Heracles no Eikou IV - Kamigami kara no Okurimono Glory of Heracles IV - Gift from the Gods English Translation Patch presented by: Nightcrawler's Translation Corporation http://transcorp.romhacking.net Version 1.0 February 17th 2017 *********************************************************************** Table of Contents 1.0 Information 1.1 Patch Information 1.2 Distribution and Licensing Information 1.3 Copyright Information 1.4 Disclaimer 2.0 The Project 2.1 History of the Project 2.2 Words from the Translator 2.3 The Team 3.0 About the Game 4.0 Credits of who worked on this Patch 5.0 What you will find in the Patch 6.0 Known Issues in the Patch 7.0 Special Thanks 1.0 Information 1.1 ****Patch Information**** This patch when hard patched correctly will result in a VALID checksum. This patch was created for use on an original ROM that has: * NO header * CRC32: 920A738E * No-Intro (http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1002/) identified as Heracles no Eikou IV - Kamigami kara no Okurimono (Japan), Version 1.0 The 'TransPatch.exe' custom patching application can be used to ensure you have the correct ROM and patch, and apply the patch to headered or non-headered ROMs automatically. This is the recommended way to apply the patch for novice patchers. The patcher should work on Win95/98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/7/8/10, as well as Linux under Wine. It should be self explanatory to use. You will be asked for your ROM file and your IPS patch file. The program will alert you if any errors are found or upon a successful patching job. An xDelta format patch is also provided for reliable patching in all other cases. xDelta patchers are available on all platforms. Popular choices are: * MultiPatch (MacOS X) - http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/746/ * Delta Patcher (Win/Linux) - http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/704/ * xdelta UI (Win .NET/Linux Mono) - http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/598/ Patch History: * 1.0 - December 26th 2016 - Initial Release * 1.1 - February 17th 2017 - Fixed garbage tiles on weather related commands - Fixed all reported grammatical, spelling, consistency issues 1.2 ****Distribution and Licensing Information**** This patch is licensed under the Creative Commons Deed as: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) This means you are free to share, copy, or distribute the work under the following conditions: * Attribution: You must give appropriate credit and provide a link to the work's website. * NonCommercial: You may not use the material for commercial purposes. * NoDerivatives: You may not alter, remix, transform, or build upon the work and distribute the modified work. A full copy of the license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) can be found at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ The only files found in the official distribution archive are 'readme.txt', 'goh4ev10.ips', 'goh4ev10.xdelta', and 'TransPatch.exe'. If anything else has been found in this archive, this is not an official distribution. Only official distributions may be distributed freely for public use per the license. 1.3 ****Copyright Information**** Heracles no Eikou is a 1994 trademarked, copyrighted property of Data East Corporation. Nightcrawler's Translation Corporation is not affiliated with the above company in any way. Nightcrawler's Translation Corporation title, melodies, and all logos are not to be used under any circumstances without the expressed written consent of the original creator/s. 1.4 ****Disclaimer**** No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. Nightcrawler's Translation Corporation, Nightcrawler, nor any affiliates of the aforementioned shall be held liable or responsible for any losses, damages, injury, and/or legal consequences due to the misuse, or illegal use, of any of the files contained within this archive. 2.0 The Project 2.1 History of the Project The Glory of Heracles IV project has been going on for a ridiculously long time! It was first announced 13 years ago, back in 2003! While not all of those years were active years for the project, many of them were! In the early years progress was slow as it was competing for time with Wozz, Emerald Dragon, and the birth of ROMhacking.net. Soon after those items were completed and out of the way, I was plagued with other long term problems. Persistent medical issues, followed by a bad surgery, left me unable to work much on any projects for long awhile. Eventually around 2010, I started working exclusively on Glory of Heracles. I would say 2010 was the 'serious business' start of the project. I think it got kicked off when DaMarsMan (ROM hacker of Glory of Heracles III) got involved for awhile with some early menu work. That got me re-started on everything else. This also gave shape to several new endeavors during the next few years; such as the TextAngel utility, newer table standard, and a universal VWF project. Although those items have yet to make it to the public space, they were all used in some capacity for Glory of Heracles. Now there is unfortunately less motivation to work on those aforementioned side projects without a project to use them on! Oh well, perhaps in the next 13 years!? Somewhere along the way, our original translator Heart went permanently missing. It seems every translation project has at least one instance of that happening! Nothing new there. Luckily, the project got another kick in the pants in 2013 when nanashi joined the team. Having done the Glory of Heracles III translation, he brought much to the table. He touched up most of the old work, and forged ahead to complete the script for us. He even stuck around after that to endure all of the subsequent project headaches like formatting, consistencies, technical issues, testing etc. The longevity and hell of this project probably scarred him for life! The project got at least another 2 years of exclusive menu work. The scrolling menu system utilized entire background layers top to bottom and left to right. It was not possible to expand in several cases. So, we had to do an 8x8 VWF. That was the easy part though. The real nightmare started with VRAM management. First, there were over *200* submenus in the game. They could be used in various combinations in the main menu, battle menus, and shop menus. They could be used in different bitplane modes. Sometimes, they could even be used with full sprites and full color game foreground/backgrounds on screen too! Second, because the scrolling effects required entire background layers to be used, VRAM requirements were very heavy. It had to hold more than what was visible on a single screen at all times. Third, there were times where the game used mid-frame HDMA trickery to dynamically change the background VRAM locations to anywhere at different times during the same frame! These things made VRAM management a true nightmare. Even after all that, the super secret gate of hell hacking was about to open! The game already overran NMI (time between frames) in many instances leaving absolutely no time (technically NEGATIVE time) for me to transfer ANYTHING. I had to hack how the overworld and towns loaded. I had to hack how the battles were loaded. I had to hack how palettes were written. I had to hack a host of core game mechanics to buy some time to be able to do some transfers. There were times that I didn't think the project was going to be possible. I pulled out every trick in the book. I spread things out across multiple frames, deferring core game writes, reducing game data VRAM caching, and more. Finally, I got something that just barely worked and ran away as fast as my legs could carry me never looking back! It's been a long road. If I had to do it over again, I'd probably pass and let someone else do it! Ha! However, we know there's no do-overs in life. I took on the project, so all I could do was embrace it and see it to completion. Because, I just don't know how to quit to a fault! Once again, I really hope you'll enjoy several more years worth of my passion for and dedication to this hobby and community. I freely and proudly give you the opportunity to play Glory of Heracles IV in English. Thank you to all who have given me words of support, all who have given a helping hand to the project, and the fans of TransCorp and our community. As always, take it, love it, cherish it! 2.2 Words from the Translator (by nanashi) I remember my first encounter with this project back in 2005, when I was searching the net for a script of Glory of Heracles 3. GoH3 & 4 were among a bunch of older games I bought used in December 2004 and GoH4 was actually the first I played of the set. It might seem counter intuitive to play the 4th before the 3rd game but that's how I did it (the nicer graphics had something to do with it, probably). I only played Glory of Heracles 3 some months later and that one turned out to be the one to leave me awestruck when I beat it. I wanted to reread its story without having to play through it again and so I started searching the net for a transscript. It was fortunate for the GoH3 translation project that I didn't find the rather complete Japanese replay website for it at first, because otherwise I might not have offered to work on the translation. In return I got to see a diary entry that was cut from the game and there's no better way to get to know a story inside and out than by translating it. So it was fortunate for me as well. DaMarsMan was scouting for translators on Nightcrawler's message board at the time and that's how I first contacted him. I also saw that Nightcrawler was working on the 4th installment but, as I said, I was very invested in the earlier game which I just had beaten. After I had finished the translation for GoH3 and basically dumped it on DaMarsMan, I found employment at NoE and did some professional translation work for a few years. So I wasn't around to help with testing and for checking the editing as the GoH3 patch was nearing completion. That turned out to be a mistake that I wasn't going to repeat, so when I finally joined the GoH4 project in 2013 I was intent to stay on board until the patch would release and I also resumed work on the already finished and released GoH3 patch to iron out some problems I had missed during the original translation phase. GoH3 is a tough act to follow. Although very well written itself and featuring many interesting gameplay innovations, GoH4 always suffers from inevitably being compared to its predecessor. GoH4 doesn't quite hit you as hard as GoH3 did with its plot twist. Instead it features several smaller plot revelations throughout the story that make for a more complex narrative in the end. Which is well paced and just as compelling as the one of its predecessor, and will have you glued to the controller during the final hours of the game. History repeated itself with Final Fantasy VII and its follow up FFVIII, the latter again overshadowed by the former despite its own achievements. Thanks to the critical acclaim scenario writer Kazushige Nojima received for his work on GoH, he was able to transfer to Square where he was asked to write a mysterious story for FFVII like the one in GoH3. And when he wrote FFVIII with a school setting and emphasis on romance, that echoed similar themes in GoH4. That isn't to say that the Heracles games and the FF games feature the same stories. They're quite different in fact. But you can see early versions of characters that would later populate Nojima's FF stories. Like Yunas, a saba breeder you will encounter in Bizerte, a port town in Egypt. She is but one of a hundred (!) playable characters. GoH4's body system is quite ambitious, and an interesting way to let the player choose their own avatars for their mute hero. Of course their backstories don't match the complexity of the main story, but especially in the early locations you can act out some story scenes by becoming the residents of those towns and experiencing their circumstances from each of their different perspectives. Think of them as playable NPCs. Everyone can be the protagonist, for a while. And in case of Yunas, she would later be the protagonist of her own games. Well, the summoner Yuna from Besaid would, but as I pointed out above, Nojima has a habit of further developing ideas and themes from his previous games. You could even say that the different stories are pieces in a puzzle that form a complete picture only when you know them all. GoH4 applies this concept in its 100 playable characters and their little stories. They all resonate with the mute hero's own character. We know very little about him (he doesn't speak, after all), but by knowing them, we get to know him as well. The Glory of Heracles games on NES and SNES are clones of Dragon Quest in an ancient Greek setting. The familiarity of the gameplay is comforting but it's when the formula gets shaken up that GoH makes a lasting impression. This happens in the narrative as well as in gameplay. Both in DQ and GoH, battles are seen from a first person perspective. GoH4 expands on this by dynamically changing this perspective between the different party members. Like DQ, the GoH games feature day and night cycles. GoH4 adds weather, which can be changed during battle to affect its conditions. The original DQ trilogy featured brave heroes that were guided by good kings, telling them their objectives. In DQIII, the young hero and the wise old king would even switch places for a while. A little taste of what awaits the hero, the promise of growing up to become a king himself. GoH4 raises the question of what happens when a youth has to walk in the shoes of a king before he gets to grow up, when he has to give orders instead of receiving them. 2.3 The Team (Aside from Nightcrawler) nanashi: It was a treat to be able to have nanashi do the translation because he also translated the script for Glory of Heracles III. This allowed us to stick with same styling and conventions, and give the two games in the series a similar feel. It's rare that you get to do that in the fan translation world. Different games in the same series are often done by different people causing discontinuity in styling and conventions. This can happen in the professional world as well sometimes, but we can all agree it's best if it can be avoided! I'm sure nanashi had no idea it was going to take so many years to get the project done right after he signed on. I really commend him for sticking with me and continuing to aid in translation and script support right up until the very end. He was always patient through all of my over-extended life delays and I appreciate that. He had a passion that drove him to put some love into the project and do the very best job he could. I couldn't ask for any more than that. It only encouraged me to continue to do the same and push the project to be the best that it could be. DaMarsMan: DaMarsMan deserves some mention for his early menu and project organization work. He was also the ROM hacker for Glory of Heracles III, which once more aided us in closely coupling the two games by providing the work for that project. Although he eventually bowed out due to time and technical reasons, much of his early findings and work are still left in the project. It saved me a good deal of time there. In addition, his organized approach to the project while we were working together helped me up my game a bit too. As a result, this is probably my most organized project to date. Never discount the fact that other people can help you with personal growth as well during a ROM hacking project! Misty: Misty once again did some script editing for us after having previously done script editing for TransCorp's Magical Land of Wozz project. Of note in the script editing process was her addition of the Persian dialect to the script. Prior to that, the Persian characters simply spoke in broken English making them seem less educated. After reviewing the intention of the original script with nanashi, it was determined a dialect was a better fit to meet the true intention of the original script. These types of things don't always translate clearly from Japanese. It's also not that easy to add good dialect to a script. She also got us set up on a repository so we could all collaborate better on the script. I'm usually resistive and old school with that type of thing, so I'm glad she took the initiative and set us up! 3.0 About the Game Glory of Heracles IV is an interesting blend of Greek mythology, Pandora's Box, and the quest for eternal life. Although Heracles is in the title and the game, he is not the principle character. The game is actually the story about some other characters, with Heracles as a secondary intertwined quest. I really expected this game to be a Dragon Quest clone, but I got something much deeper in game play and story. The most notable gameplay feature is the body system. You can acquire and inhabit 100 different bodies throughout the game. Each body has its own set of levels, strengths and weaknesses, and unique skills for battle. The body you are in may have an effect on the dialog, solve a small puzzle with other characters for an item, or change behavior during battling. This provides some re-playability as you won't be able to develop and experiment with them all during a single play through. There are too many possibilities. There is also a seed planting system, blacksmith system, diary, myth guide, and bestiary. As a result, there are more menus in this game than any other SNES game I've ever seen. Over 200 submenus are used! You will never see them all in your first play through! The main plot follows the player, his friend Plato, and Epipha from the mythical city of Atlantis. Their fine professor has been researching possibilities of ever lasting life. Soon after the game begins, an event happens that transcends life as they know it. You will encounter life, death, Pandora's Box, Heracles, and even the gods themselves! You must unravel the mystery of what happened. You must help Heracles in his quest too. You will travel by boat, saba, submarine, and even on the legendary Pegasus! You will journey to the underworld, under the sea, and even to the heavens above! It is a good tale to be had for the 16-bit era! The Glory of Heracles awaits you! 4.0 Credits Here are the people that helped make this translation possible. Be thankful to all. ;) Hacking: Nightcrawler Translators: nanashi, Heart Script Editing: Misty Beta Testers: KingMike, Trunkz0r, Erik, MariusB, Princess Title Screen: FlashPV 5.0 What you will find in this patch: It's complete now, so you SHOULD find everything 100% translated! If you find any bugs, please report them at the TransCorp message board. Easter Egg: Unfortunately, due to how many years this project took, I did not do my long standing tradition of adding myself to the game this time. You would be looking in vein. Maybe next time. :) 6.0 Known Issues: None 7.0 Special Thanks Special Thanks go out to these people for contribution and help in this project. Without you guys, this patch may not have been possible! (in no particular order) Additional Special Thanks to: Gemini TransCorp message board supporters ROMhacking.net message board supporters I'm terribly sorry if I forgot anyone. I didn't mean to! It's been so many years and I'm getting old! : )