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Family Tennis
Japanese > English Translation Patch
Patch version: 10-05-2015
README by goldenband, 10-05-2015
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

****************************
I.  CREDITS
****************************

goldenband              Project lead, hacking, README
Dwedit                     Header Fix
pacnsacdave            Title screen, tournament banners, and end match screens
MrRichard999           Hacking & touch ups
Felix88                     Pep talk & ending translations


****************************
II.  ABOUT THE GAME
****************************

There are a lot of terrible tennis games for the NES, both licensed and unlicensed. If you play through the 

console's library, you'll run into a succession of duds, some of which are among the sloppiest and/or dullest 

titles on the NES. Only one or two approach "okay" status, and even those are mediocre at best.

What a sad irony, then, that the best tennis game ever made on the Famicom -- and one of the best ever made 

for ANY cartridge-based home system -- was also the ONLY one that stayed in Japan. (Sigh.)

Namco's Family Tennis is a class act among tennis games, and it's a crime that it was never localized for the 

overseas market. What makes it so great? Well, here are some of the reasons:

-- The game's 16-player roster features all the best players of the mid-1980s.

True, they're mostly hidden behind pseudonyms -- Boris Becker, for instance, is given the name "BOOM-BOOM" 

in hiragana -- but their identities are completely obvious. There's even a group of 16 additional real-life pros who 

show up in tournament brackets, like Tim Mayotte and Hana Mandlikova, though you never face them in matches.

-- The game's players actually play very much like their real-life counterparts.

Very few games from ANY era manage to pull this off, but Family Tennis does it! Play as Lendl, and you'll win a lot 

of points by hitting a wide serve followed by a booming forehand, just like Ivan in real life. Meanwhile, if you're 

McEnroe or Navratilova, your left-handed volleys will be the key to success, and if you're Becker, it's all about 

that booming serve. When you're facing the CPU, it uses those same tactics. It's classy, thoughtful stuff that 

shows the designers cared.

-- The game's controls are clean and intuitive.

Other than an initial learning curve on the serve, Family Tennis is easy to pick up and a dream to control. One 

button's for a hard shot, the other for a lob, and these are modified both by the D-pad and by context in the 

ways you'd expect (pressing towards your opponent = a hard, deep shot that's more likely to go out).

None of the tortured control schemes used in other games show up here; Family Tennis plays more like real 

tennis than any other 8-bit game I've tried. You can play power tennis or hit floaty junkballs, and both styles of 

play are viable; you can aim your shots without needing to start swinging two seconds before the ball reaches 

you, and yet accuracy and precision are rewarded. 

-- The game's AI is a worthy but fair adversary, and you can set your own difficulty level based on the character 

you choose.

Most tennis games fall into one of two categories (sometimes both!). Either you find a pattern against the CPU, 

and soon win point after point mindlessly; or the CPU becomes a ridiculous beast in later matches, and you have 

to rely on exploits to get past its impenetrable defense.

Not so with Family Tennis. The CPU doesn't cheat and isn't superhuman, but it's not a pushover either, and it's 

more than happy to hit winners past you if you let it. Once you get the hang of the game, true, you'll win most 

matches with relative ease, but it never feels like you've signed up for a data entry job, and every point tends 

to be different. When facing a tough customer like Boris Becker, picking up his serve is never a sure thing...and 

watch out for McEnroe at the net!

If the game does get too easy, just pick a weaker character. Lendl can blow opponents off the court with his 

big forehand, but you'll have to take a far more tactical approach with Gabriela Sabatini, who has no real weapons.

-- The path to beating the game is challenging but reasonable, neither too short nor too long.

To get through each of the game's six tournaments you have to win four 3-set matches in a row, after which you 

get a password (given to you by your coach). This is basically the same system used in games like Super Tennis, 

and it strikes a nice balance, keeping things from dragging on too long but also making a victory feel like a real 

accomplishment.

-- The final tournament (Cosmos) is played in outer space!

What's not to like about that? The ball even falls off the court and into the void when you hit it out of bounds.

****************************
III.  INSTRUCTIONS
****************************

This patch should be applied to the "Family Tennis (J).nes" ROM in GoodNES. 

Here is more of the ROM information

    Family Tennis (Japan).nes - NOINTRO
    CRC32: 373BDA95
    MD5: 9A09514B9F3969D50A41D7EF0B76F7DF
    SHA-1: 6C9207083E69ECB8CBA1B65F15117AFE6A22FA11
    SHA-256: C44FB2498F550B35B39955590DEDA4A6626BB757917EE314CE3C588BFBEA616E

In addition to the translation, it will also correct an error in the ROM header that makes the game 

display improperly (except when played in emulators that use an internal checksum database to automatically 

correct the error).

****************************
IV.  BUGS/LIMITATIONS
****************************

No bugs known at this time, but the six-character limit did force us to abbreviate some names:

WILAND = Wilander
LECONT = Leconte
MCENRO = McEnroe
CONNOR = Connors
NAVRAT = Navratilova
SABATI = Sabatini

When you speak with your coach, there are a pair of junk characters (I:) that appear next to the number of points 

you've earned. We haven't figured out how to get rid of those, but if anyone can, let us know via PM or message 

board post at ROMHacking.net.

****************************
V.  HISTORY
****************************

goldenband started this project in 2011, armed with little more than a text editor, a hex editor, a tile editor, 

and a command-line relative search program. Using those tools, plus a Japanese-language page about 

Family Tennis that described the players and named their real-life counterparts, he was able to translate 

the Japanese player names and figure out a few other things about the game.

After that, however, he ran into the limits of his hacking ability AND Japanese-language ability. And so the project 

sat around for four years, until a chance comment about the unreleased partial translation on a 

ROMHacking.net thread led MrRichard999 to get in touch in 2015.

Once MrRichard999 was on the case -- and with the help of Felix88 and pacnsacdave -- the translation 

was complete within just a month or two!

****************************
VI.  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
****************************

Thanks to Dwedit for the info necessary to fix the header issue, all the way back in 2011.

Thanks to Pluvius, whose text file format I've shamelessly cribbed for this README. :-)

Thanks to Namco for making a great tennis game for the Famicom/NES -- something that's incredibly refreshing, 

after playing all the junk that's out there -- even if they never bothered to localize it for the overseas market.

And finally, thanks to the Japanese message board poster who identified all the game's players, including some of 

the ones who don't actually appear in the game -- that was incredibly helpful when I was researching Family Tennis. 

I'm pretty sure it was post #17 on this page:

http://hayabusa6.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/tennis/1233500957/

This poster also rates the game's male players, as follows:

NAME       SERVICE  STROKE  VOLLEY  FOOTWORK

Lendl      A        A       C       A  
Becker     A        A       A       A
Edberg     B        B       B       B
Wilander   B        A       C       B
Mecír      C        C       B       A
Leconte    B        B       B       B
Noah       B        B       C       B
McEnroe    C        B       A       A
Connors    C        A       B       B
Borg       B        A       C       B
Cash       B        B       B       B
Fukui      D        C       C       C

This is a helpful analysis, but I'm not sure it offers a complete picture, as Lendl's forehand is certainly stronger 

than his backhand (for example). Still, beating the game with Fukui would clearly be a real challenge.
