Dragonball Z Gaiden: Plan to Eliminate the Saiyans
English Patch
Version 1.00 IPS
Current Release: Apr. 29, 2007
Intial Release: Oct. 30, 2006
by Twilight Translations
copyright 2006
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1. Introduction
2. Development
3. Notes
4. Patch History
5. Bugs
6. Credits
7. Acknowledgements

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1. Introduction

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Dragonball Z Gaiden: Plan to Eliminate the Saiyans is the fourth and final DBZ RPG released
for the Famicom. It was released on August 6, 1993 and is probably one of the last games
to be released for the Famicom. Unlike its predecessors, this game does not follow any
arc in the manga/anime. Instead, this game features an entirely original storyline made
especially for this game.

The gameplay is very much like the other DBZ RPGs, with a few notable exceptions. This time
around the card battle system has been given an upgrade, allowing you to choose different
cards to form combos. If you string together the right cards, the character will be able
to perform one of their signature moves. 

Gone are the days of leveling up. So, beyond figuring out the card combination for each
technique, there's really no reason to not run from every enemy you encounter. This is
really a weak point, in my opinion. The frequent enemy encounters only serve to frustrate
the player for no real reason. Defeating a boss nets you a rise in HP and allows you to
use one more card per turn, which is rather useless.

The one thing that was added that I really like is the Auto Move feature. This makes
traveling around the maps (which are pretty big compared to past games) a lot easier.
The thing I can't understand is, seeing as how this game was released after The
Legend of the Super Saiyan (Chou Saiya-jin Densetsu) for the Super Famicom, why they
didn't simply remove the card-based movement system. Entering training and healing houses
require you to land on the building using a card that has either a dumbell or a heart
respectively in the bottom right corner.

Dragonball Z 3: Killer Andriods (known as Hot Battle! The Androids in some circles,
more on this in a little bit) is the third DBZ RPG released for the Famicom. It was
released in 1992 by Bandai. DBZ3, as I will refer to it from here on, is a
continuation of the first two Dragonball Z RPGs for the Famicom:
Dragonball Z: Assault of the Saiyans and Dragonball Z 2: Lord Freeza's Fury (an
English patch is available for the former from Twilight Translations, while the
latter is still in production).

Overall, I would have prefered a sequel to Dragonball Z 3 that finished up the Androids/Cell
saga. I wish they had based the aforementioned Legend of the Super Saiyan around the
Androids/Cell sage instead of the Saiyans/Namek sage, but that's me.

Also, a direct-to-video OVA was released in conjunction with this game that was essentially
a visual walkthrough for the Famicom game. It features brand new animation and I'd really
recommend checking it out if you can find it. Personally, I found the OVA more enjoyable
than I did the game. Also of note is an interactive version of the OVA was released a
couple years later for the Playdia system.

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2. Development

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After I finished translating Assault of the Saiyans, I decided that I'd tackle all of
the DBZ Famicom RPGs. In the summer of 2005 (or earlier) I started working on dumping
the text from the remaining three games. I was trying to convince a close friend of mine
(Crotanks, who, at the time of this writing, is exporting more awesomeness than the states
of Chuck Norris and Steven Segal combined) to take up hacking, so I suggested he work on
Gaiden and we'd release it under the Twilight Translation flag. Actually, this is where
the idea of Twilight Translation first sprang up.

Anyway, Crotanks was up for it and so I helped him learn the basics of the trade and walked
him through most of the process. He built the table, found all the text, and dumped all the
scripts. This is where D.D.S. enters the picture. He had signed onto help me out with
DBZ3 and unbeknownst to me at the time, he had also signed on to help Crotanks with Gaiden.

Since originally the patch was planned to have any compression or assembly level hacks
implemented, Crotanks was going to handle the entire project, but then we released that
the translated text simply wasn't going to fit. Luckily by this time I had learned ASM
and how to add my beloved huffman compression. So once the editting and formatting was
complete, I took over as the head of the project.

As far as things went on the assembly side, I'd estimate that nearly 90% of the routines
that I was interested in were copied and pasted directly from DBZ3's source. As such, I
merely copied and pasted my code for DBZ3 and tweak it. Even with the dictionary and huffman
compression, there still wasn't enough room for the text, though! I ended having to create
a program (WordCount) to generate an additional dictionary to compress the game further.

Finally the game was ready for testing, so I brought back snesmaster and mrfreeze (who
had previously helped with testing DBZ3) and they gave the Beta patch a run through.
Fortunately there was only one major bug (and that was caused by a typo), which I fixed
pretty quickly.

Which brings us to today. I'm extremely proud of the patch. Everything should be top-notch
and provide any Dragonball Z fan with a weekend's worth of enjoyment. Plus, I'm giving
English players a shot at something not even the Japanese gamers had access to: Vegeta.
In the original Japanese game, Vegeta, though a member of your party, is controlled by
the computer. Why they made a fan-favorite unplayable, I don't know. I do know, that it
was a matter of changing one byte to gain control of him though. If you'd rather play the
game the way it was meant to be, I've included a patch that retains the CPU-controlled
Vegeta.

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3. Notes

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Unfortunately, I had to abbreviate some of the characters' techinque names in order for
them to fit within the various windows. I even had to employ squishy tiles in a few places.
These are easily the low point of the patch, but they in no way affect your experience.

The "you are here" bubbles that appear above your character on the overworld map are
still in Japanese. I didn't think I could fit the translation in that small of space, so
I left it.

The Tenkaichi Budoukai mode may or may not be completely playable. The only emulator that
will run this game is one in the FCEU family (FCEU, FCEUD, FCEUXD, FCEUXD SP) and FWNES.
I couldn't get complete a single tournament in either the Japanese rom in FCEUXD SP, so
I know for a fact it's not the patch causing it. I'd like to test it with FWNES, but it
doesn't work with Windows XP and I'm DOSBOX-retarded.\

Due to the nature of the card system, I've included screenshots that show the combination
for every technique. There's a few places where NPCs will give you a card combination, but
unless you can read kanji, it won't help. Feel free to use them or not.

The only thing I would have liked to do is add the translation credits below to the credits
roll at the end of the game. Sadly, space just didn't permit. Be sure to read the
acknowledgements section below to see who did what!

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4. Patch History

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-Version 1.00 IPS

 The patches are now available in both NINJA format and the more common IPS format. NINJA
 can apply both or you can use LunarIPS. No changes have been made to the contents of the
 patches.

-Version 1.00

 Everything is translated and thoroughly tested. That doesn't mean that there aren't
 still bugs lurking around, just that we didn't find them. If you find any read
 below in section 5 for reporting them.

 Included are two patches:

 *dbzg.rup - The english translation.
 *dbzg_veg.rup - The english translation plus control over Vegeta when he becomes a
  member of your party.

 Both patches are in NINJA format, for information on this see the official site at:
 http://ninja.cinnamonpirate.com/

 Over all, I'm extremely happy with this patch, and do not see an update needing to
 be made in the future.

 Please note that the rom only works in FCEU (and its offshoots) and FWNES. Rocknes
 won't play the game, nor will NEStopia. This isn't due to the translation; the original
 unpatched roms will not play either. I suspect there are more than just these two that
 won't play the rom, though. If you're emulator of choice doesn't work, you may consider
 switching to FCEU temporarily. See section 3 above for more information.

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5. Bugs

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There's one minor bug in the items menu. If you have 2 pages worth of items, the '1' will
flicker and become a two. I had to rewrite a little of the VRAM routine for the Roulette
card to work properly and unfortunately this bug is a side-effect. It shouldn't cause you
any problems whatsoever, though. I couldn't think of a way to fix this without breaking
a lot of things. It might be fixed in a future release or it might not.

Other than that, there are no known bugs. However, if you manage to find one, I would like
the following sent to me: a screenshot, a save state in FCEU format before the bug occurs,
a brief description of the bug (even if you think it's obvious), and the circumstances
under which it occured. Send that to my email at redcomet at rpgclassics dot com with
Dragonball Z Gaiden or something similar in the subject line (so I won't trash it with
the mountain of spam I get every day).

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6. Credits

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Dragonball Z Gaiden: Plan to Eliminate the Saiyans
Translation Team:

RedComet - Programmer (me)
Crotanks - Script Extraction

D.D.S. - Translator
Elf - Graphics

Testing and QA Team:

snesmaster
mrfreeze

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7. Acknowledgements

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In addition to the people listed in the Credits section, a few people deserve a special
mention, without whom, this project would have gone no where fast and ended up being
"just another dead DBZ translation":

* The fans - The fact that my site has gotten about 5000 hits since DBZ3 was released
  proves you care; I appreciate that.
* RHDN's Script Help Board & the many wonderful translators who frequent it.
* ROMHacking.net - a great place for getting help, feedback, and spreading news.

...And all the ones I cannot remember, which, knowing me, is a lot.

