=================================================================================
====================================Detective Sanma==============================
========================================V.1.00===================================
Genre: Adventure

Source language: Japanese

Patch language: English

Authors : Supper/TheMajinZenki/cccmar

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CONTENTS
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1. Detective Sanma - General Info
2. Hacking Info (from Supper)
3. Translation Info (from TheMajinZenki)
4. Game Tips
5. Patching Instructions
6. Disclaimer
7. Credits

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1. Detective Sanma - General Info
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Hello and welcome to Detective Sanma by Namco (or Sanma no Meitantei, as it was
originally called). This is a light-hearted murder mystery adventure game, in
which the entire cast is comprised of famous comedians (with Sanma Akashiya 
being considered one of the most influential ones in Japan). In terms of 
gameplay, this is a pretty standard adventure game. You have lots of commands,
like asking Sanma for help (the game is played from the player's perspective),
pushing, rotating, taking stuff, talking about various people, showing 
evidence etc. Your goal is to solve a murder that took place in a vault during
the party thrown in the estate of a wealthy entreprenuer. What is mor, his
diamond, the "Star of Africa, was stolen as well and has to be recovered.
You need to collect clues and evidence in order to move the case forward. 
There are also various minigames you can do for additional information or just
for fun. Importantly, new areas are unlocked with the progress, and you have 
a handy world map in order to see where you're going by using the "go to"
command. 

Another interesting thing about this game is that it's written almost entirely
in a dialect called Kansai-ben, used mostly in the Kansai region. 
We tried to render that in the script and hopefully we were rather successful 
at it! 

Also, special thanks go to Filler for the initial script dump that we used to
translate this game! 

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2. Hacking Info - from Supper
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This is definitely the most Japanese game I've worked on. That's not such a big
deal from the hacker's perspective, but props to Zenki for putting up with a 
billion obscure thirty-years-out-of-date pop culture references to get this one 
done. There's probably not much of an audience for it outside of '80s Japan pop 
culture buffs, but it is perfectly playable as a straight detective game even 
if the comedy stuff goes over your head, so I hope some people out there will 
take a chance on it.

There's not a lot to say about this one on the hacking front: it was a fairly
 straightforward conversion, with a few bumps in the road like the naming screen. 
I did end up doing more script editing than usual -- the original game uses 
Kansai dialect extensively, and since I live in the American South, I ended 
up getting tasked with adding the Southern dialect to the existing dialogue. 
I'm not the best person for it, but hopefully it's not too obnoxious. I tried
to give each character's accent a distinctive flavor so it's not too same-y.

I will note that the ability to hold B to advance the text faster is something 
I added to the translation. The original game prints text _very_ slowly, and 
even after doubling the text speed as I normally do for translations (the
English text is generally twice as long as the Japanese), it's still slower 
than I'd prefer. I'm very leery of adding "enhancements" to translations, 
but since this one is totally optional, I'm personally fine with it. So if
you want to be absolutely authentic, fingers off that B button.

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3. Translation Info - from TheMajinZenki
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Detective Sanma was different than most of my usual translation. The focus on 
existing real-life Japanese comedians from the 80s was somewhat unexpected, 
since I came in not knowing what the game was about. It wasn't very easy to 
translate due to the high amount of Japanese cultural reference that aren't 
exactly simple to convey, not to mention the fact that almost the entirety of 
the script is written in accent (mostly Kansai-ben or Osaka-ben).
There are references to old Namco games as well (such as Galaxian).
 
There's also an instance of goroawase used to conceal a number from the player. 
Since there is no equivalent concept in the West, we had to give the number
itself in the game. It doesn't make the game substantially easier though, as the 
original bit was also practically the full answer. I feel that even modern 
Japanese audience would miss most of the references, but even so it's a funny 
and quirky murder mystery. 

To sum it up best, imagine if the game was the same but had the cast of Saturday
Night Live from 1986-1987 instead. That's the best comparison I can come up with.
I hope you enjoy.

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4. Game Tips
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1. Always be sure to talk about every person using the 'profile' button. 
Sometimes it's necessary to unlock new locations/move the plot forward.

2. Some commands are used very rarely, whereas some others are used multiple
times throughout the game. Be sure to check the environments thoroughly, as 
there are often multiple ways in which you can interact with them (which often
leads to some funny stuff!) 

3. Be sure to do the minigame at the graveyard to get the ability to save!
It's at the very beginning of the game. 

4. This game has 4 different endings, with only one of them being the
"true" ending. Try various interactions to see all the endings! 

5. Some items have to be shown to other characters in order for them to 
give you more info. Sometimes you may need to resort to violence as well...

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5. Patching Instructions
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We've included an IPS patch and a readme file in the package.

You can use a program such as LunarIPS to apply the patch.

Apply the patch to the original Japanese version of the
ROM:

Sanma no Mei Tantei (Japan).nes

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6. Disclaimer
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This translation is a non-commercial and unofficial project which is in no way 
affiliated with the game creators or distributors. We don't own anything here 
and have no copyrights.

We release this translation in the form of a patch. Please, don't ask us to send 
you the ROM, or where you can find it - we can't help you with that.

You can redistribute this translation freely as long as you don't ask money for 
it and include this readme.txt file with it. We don't condone any form of 
commercial redistribution. Please, keep that in mind.

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7. Credits 
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Supper - Hacking, dialect editing

TheMajinZenki - Translation

Cccmar - Script Editing/testing

Filler - Initial script dump

Also, thanks to RHDN for hosting our patch!