                            Super Monkey Daibouken
                          English Translation Patch
                 by GAFF Translations (pluvius3 @ gmail.com)
                      v1.00 (Created September 15, 2015)
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*TABLE OF CONTENTS*
 -----------------

I.    VERSION HISTORY
II.   INTRODUCTION
III.  INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE
IV.   KNOWN BUGS
V.    CREDITS
VI.   TECHNICAL NOTES
VII.  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND CLOSING WORDS


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I.  VERSION HISTORY
********************

v1.00 (09-15-15):  First release.


******************
II.  INTRODUCTION
******************

This is an English translation patch for Ganso Saiyuuki: Super Monkey Daibouken
("Original Journey to the West: Super Monkey Adventure"), a game released for
the Nintendo Famicom in 1987 by VAP.  As the name suggests, it's an adventure
game of sorts based on the classic Chinese novel, Journey to the West.  In it,
you have to guide Son Goku and his band of pilgrims across Asia to the mystical
land of India, where the Buddha awaits to show them the way to total
enlightenment.  On the way, there are a number of obstacles, including the
game's soul-crushingly low movement speed and bad hit detection.  Chrontendo
named this game the worst game released for the system before 1988, beating out
such luminaries as Takeshi no Chousenjou and Hoshi wo Miru Hito.

I decided to translate this game because it had a relatively low amount of
Japanese in it which was appropriate for my skill level in the language.  I was
inspired by the Japanese gaming show GameCenter CX spending a whole season's
worth of short segments on it.  This hack provided some neat challenges,
including my first DTE routine.  I estimate the patch took me a few weeks to
do in my free time.  Please enjoy.


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III.  INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE
***************************

1.  Download and install Lunar IPS or a similar IPS patcher if you haven't
    already.
	
2.  Get a copy of the Super Monkey Daibouken ROM.  No, I don't know where.
    The correct ROM is identified by GoodNES 3.23 as the verified good dump.
	
3.  Apply the desired patch to the ROM using the aforementioned IPS patcher.
    The patcher should automatically expand the ROM for you if it's anything
	like Lunar IPS.


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IV.  KNOWN BUGS
****************

None at this time.  I tried to stick to unused ROM space for my hacks but this
may lead to unexpected behavior that I did not encounter in my testing.  I also
hacked the title screen in a very ugly way and anyone who can do a better job
should feel free to do so.


***********
V.  CREDITS
***********

Rob "Pluvius" Browning: Hacker, translator/editor, tester


********************
VI.  TECHNICAL NOTES
********************

There were two main problems that had to be solved in order to do a decent
translation hack of Super Monkey Daibouken.  The first was an issue of screen
space while the second was an issue of ROM space.

Text in the game is displayed by itself on a blue screen in between events. The
text is only printed one line at a time, even in the ending, but there were some
instances where I needed two lines for a reasonable translation.  Fortunately,
for whatever reason, the text routine actually outputs two lines worth of data
to the screen, the second one being blank.  So all I had to do was add code that
forced the game to recognize a second line and save it in the appropriate
location.

For the ROM space problem, I had to implement a DTE routine.  I only had space
for twelve entries, and even with the DTE I had to edit the translation down
considerably to get it to fit in the limited space available (I literally did it
with only one byte to spare).  However, just about everything there should be at
least as comprehensible as the original Japanese, and I think the terse English
fits this kind of game pretty well.  I also had to tweak the game's routine for
auto-centering text to make it work properly with the DTE.

There were two blocks of unused ROM that I utilized for the code.  One block at
$71A3 (address $F193 in the debugger) appeared to be raw assembler code probably
left behind during the game's coding process, and certainly wasn't used by the
game in any way.  The other block is at $49E8 ($C9D8 in the debugger) and seemed
to be unused map data, probably somewhere in the middle of the ocean where you
can't reach.  I moved the code in the latter block as far to the end as possible
to minimize the chance that a determined player might cause it to be loaded
improperly.


****************************************
VII.  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND CLOSING WORDS
****************************************

Thanks to:

VAP, for developing and publishing this game.

Nintendo, for making the system this game runs on.

GameCenter CX, for being a great retro gaming show and inspiring me to do this
hack, and SA GCCX, for translating the show.

Klarth and RedComet, for creating Atlas and Cartographer, two script utilities
that made editing the main block of text very much less tedious.

The developers of FCEUX, the very useful debugging emulator which I used for
this entire project.

Romhacking.net, for hosting this hack and many others like it, as well as
providing useful hacking information.

RedComet again, for his helpful DTE tutorial.

The NESDev Wiki, the premier resource for NES hacking information.

And, of course, you for reading and playing.

Questions, comments, criticisms, and bug reports can be sent to
pluvius3 @ gmail.com (without the spaces obviously).  Please put "Super Monkey
Daibouken" or something similar in the subject line so I will know what the
email is about.  If you alert me to a bug, I will fix it in a future update and
give you credit.

Copyright 2015 GAFF Translations, all rights reserved.