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======================Shadow Brain=====================
========================V 1.0==========================
Genre: RPG

Source language: Japanese

Platform: Famicom

Patch language: English

Author: aishsha/Pennywise

E-mail:	aishsha@gmail.com
		yojimbogarrett@gmail.com
		http://aishsha.blogspot.com
		http://yojimbo.eludevisibility.org/
 
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Pennywise's comments
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This translation has been long talked and
procrastinated about for years now. It was first
suggested to me by an associate and then mulled
by aishsha and I until we finally decided to work on it.
He did most of the hacking and translation, then I took
over for the final rendition with help from a few
friends.

aishsha did the lion's share as usual. He expanded the ROM,
expanded the dialogue box, and a myriad of other hacks. Not
to mention translating the game on top of everything. One thing
that baffled him and myself was that the programmers treated the
stack like normal RAM addresses with routines that r/w from
the stack address range. Anyhow, I also contributed to some
of the hacking. I didn't like how you could only have one
screen of text for the BBS and town info terminals. So,
I hacked the game to display multiple screens of text.

With the hacking out of the way, I focused on my playthrough
and edit of the text. Over many IRC sessions spanning several
months, Ryusui and I poured over a ton of text. All the chats,
BBS, and town info text were greatly thanks to no more limitations
and a variety of misc and story text was made new by us.

The game is noteworthy in that it came with a VHS tape
that contained the backstory for the game. This video
has been uploaded to Youtube, but it's very poor quality.
We'd be interested in adding subtitles to the video, but
we'd first want to make our own copy of the video.
The only problem is that we don't have the means to do
that and would welcome help in ripping the VHS.

One last tidbit is that this game has some sort of JPOP
connection with the band Alfee. There's maybe one or two
references to the band in the script and at least one of
the band members wrote/composed a song for the game and/or
soundtrack.

At first glance, the game looks like a blatant Megami
Tensei clone. I absolutely hated that game, but actually
found this game to be kinda fun. Naturally, the grinding
nature of the game was a chore, but there were other
aspects about the game I found cool. Most notably, I
loved all the chats on the Network. It provided a lot
of context and character to the game, that otherwise
wouldn't have been there.

The game might also be slightly unfinished. There are
various locations in Playland that don't do anything.
They are either there for show or were intended to be
something that never panned out.

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aishsha's comments
======================================================
Well, this project started like ages ago for me when a
person (I think it was ASchultz, one of my first
editors) approached me with a suggestion about this
game. I looked into, found it quite complicated back
then and postponed the project till better times. Better
times came in year 2014 when I was already confident
enough in my skills. The point is that this is one of
the hardest hacks I have ever done, and I've basically
redone a good part of the game to make it run expanded
and fit all the hacks back in, while testing everything
to make sure the game wasn't broken.

The game itself, as Pennywise already mentioned is a
SMT-like false 3D crawler in a (surprise-surprise for
poor ol' NES) totally sci-fi world.

For those of you willing to know the whole plot I highly
recommend reading the intro script and watching a video on
YouTube (both are found in the same file attached to
this very archive). Otherwise you'll be thrown out in
a middle of nowhere - that's how this game actually
starts.

In any case, enjoy the game we've put so many efforts
to, and BUY the game if you like it!
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Patching Instructions
======================================================
Due to changes made to the ROM, the patch is in BPS
format. You either want to download a program called
beat by byuu or Floating IPS, which can be found here:

http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=11474

Apply either patch to the Japanese version of the game:

Shadow Brain (J).nes

We would be highly grateful, if you find some time to 
contact us with proposals or corrections. Information
on found bugs or corrections would be highly 
appreciated.

P.S.

Support the game industry by buying used games!

Even if the money doesn't go to the developers
directly, as the games become rare and harder
to find, the price goes up, and people become
more inclined to buy new releases "while they can!"

======================================================

Credits go to:

aishsha - hacking, translation, testing

Pennywise - hacking, testing, editing

Ryusui - translation

harmony7 - misc spot translations

cccmar - testing

Hubz - testing

Xanathis - testing

All those who contributed into this process.

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Compiled by Pennywise. April 2016.