Aretha English Language Patch V1.00


Introduction:



	Japanese Developer:				Japan Art Media Co., Ltd.
	Japanese Publisher:				Yanoman Corporation
	Japanese Release:				November 26, 1993
	English Patch Production:			Dynamic-Designs



Dynamic-Designs Patch History:



	V1.00:  Initial Dynamic-Designs Release:	September 03, 2018
        


Dynamic-Designs Production Credits:



	Project Coordination:				Wildbill
	Hacking/Tools/Bug Fixing:			Bongo`
        Assembly: 					Bongo`
	Translation:					Filler
	Translation Support:				Eien ni Hen
	English Graphics:				Taskforce
	Story Writing:					Wildbill
        In-house Editing:       			Draken
	Splash Page:					Taskforce
	Beta Testing:					Draken, MariusB, and akualung
	Splash:						Taskforce



NOT FOR SALE INFO

This game in English or patch to make it English is
NOT for sale under any circumstances!  If you paid
for this game in any way, including in a cartridge,
demand your money back immediately!  File a complaint
with your credit card company and/or paypal as well!
Especially if you obtained this game in cart form!



Overview (adapted from http://www.mobygames.com/game/aretha_):

In a far away land, war was raging, as an evil ruler sent his troops to invade the castle of a mighty king. His minions stormed the castle and burnt it down. The king could not escape his fate, and the villain thought no one was spared by his wrath...

Present time. You are Ariel, a little girl who lives with her old wise grandmother in a small house near a mountain range, north to the forest. She just turned ten, and the grandmother sends her on a seemingly simple quest: to go through the forest to Nineveh, the nearby town, and to meet there a certain person. But what starts as a simple assignment soon develops into the quest for magic powers of Aretha, the ultimate battle against the evil, and the discovery of Ariel's own true identity.

The game is a console-style RPG, where Ariel and her party travel on the world map, through forests, mountain paths, and caves, occasionally visiting towns and fighting monsters in turn-based combat viewed from first-person perspective, using a variety of physical and special attacks. 

From our release write up at D-D's home page:



Bugs remaining from the original game that may occur and can possibly be fixed.

1. Spinning world glitch - This is an original bug. If anyone encounters it, please send us a save-
state from and SNES-9x emulator. What happens in this: At the end of a battle, very rarely, the
landscape will spin and keep spinning instead of returning to an overworld view and full character
control. If tghis happens, you may beed to return to your previous SRM save and be set back to that
point, so save often!  
 


Production, Testing, and Thought Processes:

I've really enjoyed my part in creating this English patch. The quality of everyone's efforts leads
me to the realization that everything we've achieved is due to a strong team effort. It's the
dedicated contributions of each member who recodes, translates, designs fonts, redraws graphics,
writes story scenes, and tests the developing product that ensures a successful conclusion.

Let add that anyone in the world is free to pursue this "not for profit" hobby. This means that any
human who inhabits this planet has free rein to start in the same places we did and create stories and 
finished products that suit their own personal interests, motivations, and tastes.

Finally, we will NOT be releasing Aretha-II, the direct sequel to this game, concurrently.

-Wildbill


Patching:

Contained within this archive is an IPS (international patching system) file or a patch file in another
format for the end user's convenience that when used in conjunction with a ROM file will make the
game playable in English.

Do note, as I touched on above, that this patch is a result of countless hours of love and labor.
Hence, they are not meant to be sold at any price under any circumstance, be it in digital form or
burnt into a donor cart's ROM chip.

To patch the ROM file, one needs to procure a patcher for their preferred format, a widely available
class of programs, many of which can be found at http://www.romhacking.net/ for one source.  A few
can even be found on our download page for your convenience at
http://www.dynamic-designs.us/downloads.shtml.  Search at the bottom under utilities.  We did not\
write these utilities.  We merely provide them as a convenience.

At some point, ROM sites may upload pre-patched ROMs of our Aretha translation. Obviously, Dynamic
Designs cannot endorse playing these versions.  Neither will we support resolution of any associated
problems. Moreover, pre-patched ROMs may float around the web for years.  Only by downloading
patches containing just our original work from D-D's web site may gamers obtain revisions to these
patches - if any - and take advantage of possible bug-fixes and corrections.


Information pertaining to the Aretha ROM:

Country Japan
Internal CRC 7761
CRC32 395BADE3
MD5 DDF4920AE09530DA94EAE230FDFFD3C4
SHA-1 AF4960F2EEC19EA7910A268BF8FAD266518DBCFA
SHA-256 91F8C264F50051C5C9FADD4DF09FBB6CA8B5B54A5BA6652AD133BA103B77317D
ROM Speed 200ns (SlowROM)
ROM Size 16 Mb
ROM Bank LoROM
ROM Type Normal + Battery
SRAM Size 64 Kb
Internal Title ARETHA               

Common Filenames

Aretha (J).sfc (GoodSNES v0.999.5)
Aretha (Japan).sfc (No-Intro 2011-12-24)
Aretha (NTSC)(Jap)(1.0).sfc (Zapatabase 2011-01-30)


Notes:

1. Not all ROMs will necessarily be patch-able with our file.

2. If the ROM you attempt to patch has a header, you may need to remove it.

3. A number of tools are available to remove headers: SNESTool, Smile, Toolbox, etc.  



Size before patching: 2.00 MB (2,097,152 bytes)

Size after patching: 2.50 MB (2,621,440 bytes)


Alternatively, most emulators support a feature called soft patching, which keeps the ROM file
intact, merging the patch data only during run time. To make use of it, make sure both the ROM file
and the IPS are in the same directory as your emulator of choice and have the same name, but not the
same extension. Do note that this is case-sensitive.  (Also, do note this soft patching is only
available using the IPS patch file, and may NOT work with the other patch file formats.)


i. e.:  Aretha(E).smc and Aretha(E).ips will trigger soft patching at the emulator's run time.




Emulator Compatibility:

The patched game works fine in the emulators I have used: ZSNES and various SNES9X.




Special Thanks:

The "usual suspects"! I am shocked, SHOCKED AGAIN, that we have finally released Aretha - English!
In the order of performing critical tasks, thanks Bongo`, Filler, Taskforce, Draken, MariusB,
and akualung!


Dedicated to Filler.


Readme 2018 Dynamic-Designs