SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI 2
ENGLISH TRANSLATION V1.00
Copyright 2004 Aeon Genesis
http://agtp.romhack.net

ToC

1.About Shin Megami Tensei 2
2.Patch History
3.Patch Credits and Contributors
4.Known Issues
5.Application Instructions
6.Troubleshooting

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1.About Shin Megami Tensei 2
----------------------------
Shin Megami Tensei 2 is interesting in that it is both
a direct sequel to SMT1 and yet really does not require
familiarity with SMT1's story to play. In the end, Shin
Megami Tensei's hero decided on a neutral path, defeating
both Archangel Michael and the Ashura Lord in the great
Cathedral, and went on to establish a neutral republic.
It lasted for maybe ten years, but was overtaken by a
Mesian revolution lead by an elite squad of Temple Knights.

As the decades passed, the post-nuclear environment slowly
became more and more hostile, and the Mesians took control
of the government, making worship of any "false" god illegal
and employing the Temple Knights as an inquisitorial police
force. As the habitability of Earth's environment decayed,
the Mesians began the "Millennium Project" at the site of
the Cathedral, creating an enclosed, domed city atop the
ruins of old Tokyo. This city came to be known as "Tokyo
Millennium."

Following a mass migration into Millennium, the Mesians
established a caste system of sorts. The more elites within
Mesianic society were allowed to live in the district known
as the Center, free of worry and with want for nothing.
The lower second-class citizens lived in the other districts
around the Center. It is in one of these, the Valhalla area,
that a man with no name is found fighting off a pack of
demons. Taken in by an old, failed gladiator and trained to
fight in the arena, he was given the name "Hawk" and has
made it to the finals...

As a note, you -can- opt to have the game enter the default
names for the characters, but this skews you heavily towards
Law. Here are their default names; if you input them normally,
the game will not penalize you for using the defaults.

Aleph  - The main character.
Beth   - A Temple Knight from the Center who is assigned to be
         Aleph's partner.
Gimmel - An extremely intelligent man, Gimmel is the overseer of
         the Arcadia area.
Daleth - Aleph's approximate equal, Daleth is your main rival.
Zayin  - Of all of the major players, Zayin is the strongest. His
         role is a special one...
Hiroko - Hiroko's relation to Aleph is special. She initially
         shows up in the Valhalla area searching for a child who
         was kidnapped from the Center by a scientist...

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2.Patch History
---------------
SMT2 was started only a few months after SMT1 was finished. Thanks to
someone who has requested to remain nameless for a huffman decompressor
for the text, and thanks to myself who managed to rig up a small
byte-swapper program, a script dump (one which was MUCH nicer than the
SMT1 dump) was obtained in the late summer/early fall of '02. A few
low-level programming problems persisted, but those were fairly easily
conquered and a beta was ready after about a year.

The problem was that due to some folk (who will also remain nameless) the
board on which the betatest was being run got wiped, and the explanation
of bugs and links to savestates were lost. I did manage to recover most
of the screenshots, corrected what I could, and launched a second test.
What you see is the product of that.

May 7, 2004 - Initial version 1.00 Release

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3.Patch Credits
---------------
THE SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI 2 TEAM
Main Team:
Gideon Zhi - Project leader, Romhacker
Ian Kelley - Translation

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4.Known Issues
--------------
--Some of the demons are, as Ian likes to say, still speaking pidgin. For
  example, there's one that says "Are you really Don't you think?" There's
  not much I can do about this, due to the nature of how the demon dialogue
  is stored. On the whole though, it should work pretty well.
--Demon dialogue when using bronze boxes does not behave in quite the same
  manner as it does in the original Japanese version. It doesn't crash the
  game, though.
--The end of game credits are stored as sprites. Too many of 'em display
  on-screen at any given time, so some of the names will probably be missing
  letters. Not much I can do about this, unfortunately...

Otherwise, there are no known issues. If you find any, please post
about them on The Pantheon (http://donut.parodius.com/agtp)

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5.Application Instructions
--------------------------
If using ZSNES, make sure that the patch has the same name as your ROM.
In other words, if your ROM is called "smt2.smc" make sure the patch
is "smt2.ips" okay? If you're using a Mac, a Mac IPS patcher is
available. Check the AGTP Links page. If you're using a copier, you
probably already know how to patch the ROM :) Be sure to apply the
patch to a clean copy of the ROM, and make sure your ROM DOES NOT HAVE
A HEADER!. If you right-click the ROM and select Properties, it
should read "Size: 2.00 MB (2,097,152 bytes)". SNESTool can add
your headers for you easily, and you can find it at
http://rpgd.emulationworld.com
In the utilities section, click on the IPS Tools link.
The answers to the questions it asks you do not matter unless you're
using a copier to play the game.

An easy way to tell if the game has a header or not is that if you do
the above and the game does not run, it probably does have a header.
Use SNESTool to remove it. And don't whine about SNESTool not working
in Windows XP, it works fine for me and I'm running on XP Pro.

-----------------
6.Troubleshooting
-----------------
--If the game does not progress past the ATLUS splash screen at startup,
  read the above section on application instructions (specifically on
  header removal.) Make sure your ROM is not read-only when you remove
  its header. Also make sure that if you previously hard-patched the ROM
  and the game crashes as described, you will need to re-apply the patch
  a clean, Japanese original ROM.
--If you jump to level 99 at the very beginning of the game, you ROM has
  been hacked, and not by me. Find another. Thank you.