
                       (insert elite ascii graphic here)


                     Ganbare Goemon! 1.01 (22 March 2010)
                             Official Readme File!

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I. Introduction
II. Project
IIa. Project Members
IIb. Tools
IIc. History
IId. Known Issues
III. End-User Information
IV. Thx
V. Legal stuff that would never hold up in court

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                             Introduction

Hey everybody. This is a project that's been a LONG time coming, and I'm 
pretty damn glad to see it finished, considering the fact that I started it
about ten and a half years ago. And, you know, this translation really
couldn't be for a better game: the game that "started it all" and began the
Goemon series of that Konami had going for a while. It's great fun, though
confusing without a FAQ of some sort, and is just such a classic Konami game.
It's got a very very basic River City Ransom fighting style going on, with
some confusing mazes and hidden secrets in the style of the Goonies II. You
should probably check it out sometime.

So here's the story on the translation: back when I was first starting my
translation news site and patch archive, I had to playtest a LOT of games. I
tried out the old translation of Ganbare Goemon by Neo Demiforce from back in
1998, and it was frustrating because the game was fun as hell, but the patch
was for an old FFE dump of the ROM that no one used anymore and that no
emulators even played. I WANTED to play it, though, and I was under the
impression that not much in the game was actually translated, so I decided to
translate it myself as a fun project.

After getting Xeur to translate the script, I realized that inserting the
script was going to be a huge pain, and instead of doing that I decided to
hand it off to my friend kueller to finish up. His translation was pretty
functional, but none of the pointers were changed, stuff was taken out, and
it was generally kind of a slipshod work all told (graphics aside). Fast-
forward to 2009 and I hear that there's EIGHT endings in all, and only the
first one is done. I want it to get fixed, but since kueller's long gone and
I don't want to continue his work without his permission, I just decided to
do the whole thing from scratch myself. So there you have it.


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                               Project

I had hoped to release this on October 15 of last year, which would have been
the ten-year anniversary of the project (as far as I know), and I would have
met it if I'd actually worked on it. As such, I got all the graphics and the
script inserted, and then just kind of forgot about it for a few months.
Whoops!

While no doubt not impressive by most ROM hacker standards, this is by far the
most advanced translation I've ever done. A small assembly hack was added to
the between-level map screen to display the text horizontally rather than
vertically, and I had to do some HELL of messing around with the palettes and
attribute tables to have the title screen looking as good as it does. All of
that kind of thing is a first for me, so I'm pretty proud of the end result
over here.


Members:
--------
Spinner 8 (http://donut.parodius.com)
  - text hacking
Xeur
  - text translation
Beckey (http://stringtheory.nfshost.com)
  - graphic design

(While kueller's and Demi's translations were used on occasion as a frame of
 reference, and both my and kueller's projects are based off of the same
 translated script, it should be stressed that all hacking work is entirely my
 own.)


Tools used:
-----------
Microsoft Windows 7 by Microsoft Corp.
  (http://www.microsoft.com)
FCEUX 2.1.2 by zeromus, adelikat, et al.
  (http://fceux.com)
Nestopia 1.40 by Martin Freij
  (http://nestopia.sourceforge.net)
Tile Layer Pro 1.1 by Kent Hansen
WindHex for Windows 2005.4.20 by Bongo`
  (http://stealth.romhack.net)
Thingy 0.98 by necrosaro
Atlas 1.06 by Klarth
JWPce 1.50 by Glenn Rosenthal
  (http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html)
Lunar IPS 1.01 by FuSoYa
  (http://fusoya.eludevisibility.org)


Patch history!
--------------
Version 1.01 - Corrected translation of the secret message that appears when
               you hold A+B while powering the system. What does it mean? You
               tell me, man.
Version 1.00 - All text translated, including text that was likely dummied out
               of the final game. All graphics translated, aside from a few
               that were left alone for aesthetics.


Known Issues
------------
- When jumping diagonally it is possible to get stuck in the background at the
  top of the screen. Normally you can jump back to the standard playing field
  and continue as normal, but there are places where you appear to sink into
  water and will die. This was present in the original game.

- On the passes, the pixels that make up the word "PASS" are transparent,
  which makes the background colors visible behind it. This was also in the
  original game, but the characters were drawn so that it wasn't quite as
  noticeable.

- The password that you receive after finishing the game was left alone, so it
  remains in Japanese in case you want to write it down and use it. Good luck
  to you, too, since I have no idea what it's used for, and the game has no
  way to input the password in the first place that I can see.

- Along those lines, there are many graphics and lines of dialogue in the ROM
  that as far as I can tell aren't present in the game itself. They've still
  been translated, but if you run across them they may sound awkward due to a
  lack of context. If you see anything off, send me an email at
  spinner_8@parodius.com and let me know. A save state and an explanation of
  how to duplicate the issue would be incredibly helpful.


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                               End-User

Back in the day this section used to have information about how to patch this
translation so you can play it, but patching has become easy enough at this
point that no one really needs the help. So instead, let me write up a little
mini-guide. You'll be glad you read it!

Ganbare Goemon is thirteen levels long, and the goal of the first eleven is to
collect three passes in order to get through the gated checkpoint. There's
three ways to collect passes: they can be found in the secret passageway, in
the underground chambers, or if you're lazy enough (and rich enough),
you can buy them from certain shops. You don't need any passes in the last two
levels, so don't even bother looking. The game doesn't tell you this either.

Secret passageways are little 3D mazes that you can explore, and there's one
per level. You can get a lot of treasure from there, plus they're the only
place where you can get extra lives. The underground chambers are ALSO a
secret, and the stairways to enter them can only be found by jumping over
them. So yeah, you'll be doing a lot of random hopping around everywhere in
the constant hopes of uncovering these stairways.

That's basically it, so here's a rundown of most of the items you can get:

- A slingshot (called "sling" in the pawn shop) will probably be the first
  thing you find. At that point you can put away that big pipe you hit people
  with and shoot at your foes from a distance. For whatever reason, you get
  the sling from those little pawing cat idols that appear from pots and such.
- You can get shoes which will make you run faster. Very helpful! You can get
  a maximum of three. You get the shoes from some weird octopus mask that just
  looks like a coinpurse to me, if you find it from pots. Keep an eye out!
- Food is in plentiful supply in the game, and eating dumplings or miso soup
  will instantly refill your health. You can also buy rice balls (which are
  embarrassingly called "food" in the pawn shop) that go into your inventory
  and will automatically restore your health if it ever goes to zero.
- You can buy straw hats, helmets, and armor to protect yourself from various
  obstacles and projectiles. Like, a helmet will deflect falling rocks, and
  hats deflect those little white things that birds drop on you.
- In level 2 you'll notice the annoying taxi couriers that run around. If you
  run into one, they'll not only take some of your money, but send you back to
  the beginning of the level. SO annoying! To protect yourself, buy a Charm
  from a shop. It looks like a red price tag with the letter K on it.
- Herbs are cool, but kind of annoying. They look kind of like a black beer
  can, and they'll instantly restore any health that you lose when you get
  hit, up to five times. Nice, but you can't control when it happens. If you
  have them in your inventory while in a 3D maze, you can press A+B to see a
  map, even if you don't have that maze's map in your possession.
- Jumping around to find those stupid staircases is annoying as hell, but if
  you buy a candle they'll all be made visible to you for a limited time.
- Also be on the lookout for scrolls while underground. There's only four in
  the game (including one on the first level!), and they permanently raise
  your maximum health.

Damn, that was long. Remember back when video games actually NEEDED manuals?

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                               Thanks!

This translation is dedicated to ReyVGM, owner of the Video Game Museum at
www.vgmuseum.com. While playing through the game for his site he noticed that
only the first of eight endings were translated, and was gracious enough to
provide me with save states and screenshots for testing. It's safe to say that
without him, this translation would never have existed.

Thanks to Beckey, who after months of begging and guilting and yelling and
punching, came through one hundred percent with her great graphical designs,
including a completely awesome title screen. I'm still amazed at how well that
turned out, and I'm proud to have it in my translation.

Thanks to Xeur, one of my best friends from those heady early days of ROM
translation. Thanks again for doing the script for me, and whatever you're
doing, I hope you're awesome while doing it.

Thanks to Sardius, who did a run-through of the near-final product and gave me
some useful suggestions, not to mention that he totally managed to break the
game. If that's not the sign of a good beta tester, I don't know what is.

Thanks to Procyon, who near-single-handedly wrote the best guide to Ganbare
Goemon on the internet, at strategywiki.org. I spent WAY less time testing
this game than I would have without that walkthrough.

Thanks to tummai and KingMike for some unsolicited help on the Romhacking.net
forum. I didn't need the information they gave per se, but it saved my newbie
self a good two hours that would have been spent flailing about and searching
on my own. How sad!

Thanks to InVerse, who I bounced ideas off of for a good long while during the
period when I was considering using the game's subtitle "Karakuri Douchuu" as
part of the title screen. Literally translated it means "tricky journey", but
by itself it gives the wrong connotation, as "tricky" in this case means "sly"
or "clever" like a thief, not "difficult" as the phrase implies. Racking my
brain for a suitable synonym took weeks, if not months, and eventually I came
to the unrelated conclusion that the subtitle wasn't really needed anyways.

Thanks again to oddigy for the webspace. We've known each other HOW many
years? And we're HOW many hours away from each other? We need to rectify this
not-having-ever-hung-out situation, and quick!

Thanks to those who came before, namely Demi and kueller. Apologies in
particular are long overdue to Demi, whose translation I finally was able to
play just a few months ago, and it's a hell of a great piece of work that's
just as complete as Dragoon-X's is, and a LOT better polished. If I had known
back then how good that translation was, I honestly would've never bothered.
   
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                         Legal Made-up Stuff

Naturally, Ganbare Goemon remains the sole property of Konami, and this
translation is not and has never intended to infringe on their intellectual
property. It's being released to the fans, as a way to play the games they
love with all respect that's due to them. In keeping with this hobbyist
spirit, feel free to re-distribute this patch (this means YOU Underground
Gamer! WAVES!), but it is forbidden to distribute this patch along with the
Ganbare Goemon ROM image, either separately or pre-patched. Anyone doing so,
does so entirely without my consent, knowledge, or approval.