Dragonball Z 3: Killer Androids
English Patch
Version 1.00 IPS
Current Release: Apr. 29, 2007
Intial Release: Aug. 10, 2006
by Twilight Translations
copyright 2006
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1. Introduction
2. Development
3. Notes
4. Patch History
5. Bugs
6. Credits
7. Acknowledgements

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1. Introduction

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Dragonball Z 3: Killer Andriods (known as Hot Battle! The Androids in some circles,
more on this in a little bit) is the third DBZ RPG released for the Famicom. It was
released in 1992 by Bandai. DBZ3, as I will refer to it from here on, is a
continuation of the first two Dragonball Z RPGs for the Famicom:
Dragonball Z: Assault of the Saiyans and Dragonball Z 2: Lord Freeza's Fury (an
English patch is available for the former from Twilight Translations, while the
latter is still in production).

As far as RPGs go, DBZ3, like its predecessors, is a bit different. Instead of your
traditional RPGs (read: Dragon Quest clones), your movement and battle options are
decided entirely upon which of five randomly decided cards you chose. Some may allow
you to do extra damage in battle, while others may replenish some health. This
element of randomness associated with the card events adds a small amount of strategy
to an otherwise straight forward game. It's decidedly not for everyone, but you
should at least give it a shot.

One thing that is interesting to note is the ending of the game, which I won't spoil,
though you probably already know what happens if you're a DBZ fan. During the final
few strings, "the next episode of Dragonball Z" is mentioned. Whether there were
plans to make a sequel to this instead of Gaiden: Plan to Eliminate the Saiyans
(we're working on that one, too) on the Famicom or in place of the Legend of the
Super Saiyan on the Super Famicom (both of which were made after this game) is
unknown. If anyone has any information, I would be interested in it. See below for
contacting me.

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2. Development

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Originally I had only intended to translate Assault of the Saiyans, but the
prospect of playing as Vegeta was just too titillating to pass on. Actually, I
don't remember why I started working on this. But the story goes, I dumped the
scripts and posted an Ad on the now defunct Whirlpool in the summer of 2005 and a
man - no, a GOD answered: D.D.S.. He DESTROYED those scripts! In a matter of a
week or two I had all 6 text blocks translated and ready to sit on my harddrive for
the next year. Reason being, I wanted to take some time to invest in adding some sort
of compression to the game so D.D.S.'s wonderful work wouldn't have to be cut down
any. I went off to try adding this to Assault of the Saiyans, since, programming-wise,
it was a much simpler game.

Fast forward to about 6 months later and I slowly begin to resume work on DBZ3. Along
the way, I hit a few snags, and ultimately stopped work around March 2006 due to bugs
in my code, laziness, and my insertion tools needing an overhaul. I picked up the
project again in late May when I started work on revamping my compression tools to be
an all in one insertion tool. That took about a month, add in time to format the
scripts, and tweak various things and we end up in late July, when Alpha testing began. Big
thanks go out to snesmaster and mrfreeze for being such diligent testers.

There were a lot of bugs, too. Most were due to the NES's limited memory, which lead
to a number of things that I won't go into. For this reason, I'll have to really give
any future NES projects serious thought before jumping in head first, as I had been up
until now. Luckily a little "n00b" magic fixed the major problems. By that I mean, I
wanted to do like I've done in every situation since I learned ASM: hack the rom to
death. The solution was some meticulous use of a near-forgotten artificat: the squishy
tile; I bet you can't guess where they're used either.

Once Alpha testing finished, the bugs and glitches were fixed and the patch entered
Beta testing. Which brings us to now.

This has truly been one hell of a project. I've grown as a programmer and more, but
most importantly, after all was said and done, I enjoyed playing the game once it was
in English! The music, I think is really what helped though. Vegeta's theme and the
tune that plays during his and Goku's training sessions mid-game, really kept me going.
My only complaint is the track starts over when you open and exit a menu. Another thing
that made this game fun to work on were the people. Everyone who has been in involved
has been supportive (I bet D.D.S. thought for a long time his work was going to go
unused) and enthusiastic.

In the end, I hope the final product is a reflection of the many, many hours the team
has invested in this project.

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3. Notes

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While I tried my best to avoid it, a few of the ideas I originally wanted to implement
had to either be scrapped or reworked. But fortunately all of the major things were
added. One thing you'll notice, though, is the KI window is slightly wider on the right
side, giving the screen an non-symmetric look. Not much could be done about this without
introducing a whole slew of bugs. There are a few other windows with this problem, but
you probably won't notice it as much.

As for the translation of the technique names, the same goes for this as with the patch
for Assault of the Saiyans patch: they're translated how they're translated and nobody
wants to hear about how they're "wrong" from the DBZ/Inu-Yasha (they evolved, heh)
kiddies based on what some guy posted on his blog right before he coerced three thirteen
year old little boys to have sex with him. If you don't like them, tough; get a live
journal so you can whine about it.

That out of the way, I would like to say something about our decision to translate the
subtitle as "Killer Andriods" instead of the more popular, and widely known, "Hot Battle!
The Androids". I personally love the crazy Japanese titles used in the DBZ games and
movies, but there simply wasn't enough screen space to make it look as good as the
"Killer Androids" ended up. Props to Elf for doing such a phenomenal job on the title.

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4. Patch History

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-Version 1.00 IPS

 The patch is now available in both NINJA format and the more common IPS format. NINJA
 can apply both or you can use LunarIPS. No changes have been made to the contents of the
 patch.

-Version 1.00

 Everything is translated and thoroughly tested. That doesn't mean that there aren't
 still bugs lurking around, just that we didn't find them. If you find any read
 below in section 5 for reporting them.

 The patch is in NINJA format, for information on this see the official site at:
 http://ninja.cinnamonpirate.com/

 Over all, I'm extremely happy with this patch, and do not see an update needing to
 be made in the future.

 Please note that the rom only works in FCEU (and its offshoots) and FWNES. Rocknes
 won't play the game, nor will NEStopia. This isn't due to the translation; the original
 unpatched roms will not play either. I suspect there are more than just these two that
 won't play the rom, though. If you're emulator of choice doesn't work, you may consider
 switching to FCEU temporarily.

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5. Bugs

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There are no known bugs. However, if you manage to find one, I would like the
following sent to me: a screenshot, a save state in FCEU format before the bug occurs,
a brief description of the bug (even if you think it's obvious), and the circumstances
under which it occured. Send that to my email at redcomet at rpgclassics dot com with
Dragonball Z 3 or something similar in the subject line (so I won't trash it with the
mountain of spam I get every day).

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6. Credits

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Dragonball Z 3: Killer Androids
Translation Team:

RedComet - Programmer (me)
D.D.S. - Translator
Elf - Graphics

Testing and QA Team:

snesmaster
mrfreeze

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7. Acknowledgements

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In addition to the people listed in the Credits section, a few people deserve a special
mention, without whom, this project would have gone no where fast and ended up being
"just another dead DBZ translation":

* danke - helped me out with a few last minute translations and some odds and ends.
* Crotanks - my go to guy for all things DBZ. Seriously, this kid needs a hobby. *ahem*
* MO's Board & the many wonderful translators who frequented it.
* ROMHacking.net - a great place for getting help, feedback, and spreading news.

...And all the ones I cannot remember, which, knowing me, is a lot.

I hope you enjoy this patch. Expect more great (even some non-DBZ!) things from
Twilight Translations in the future! Until next time, enjoy!