Power of the Hired English Language Patch V0.75



Introduction:

	Japanese Developer:				Masaya
	Japanese Publisher:				Masaya/Nippon Computer System Co. Ltd.
	Japanese Release:				December 22, 1994
	English Patch Production:			Dynamic-Designs



Dynamic-Designs Patch History:

	V0.75:  Initial Dynamic-Designs Release:	November 12, 2020



Dynamic-Designs Production Credits:

	Project Coordination:				Taskforce, Bongo`
	Hacking/Tools/Bug Fixing:			Bongo`
        Assembly: 					Bongo`
	Translation:					gerb
	Translation Support:				Wildbill
	Story Writing:					Wildbill, Taskforce
	Graphics 					Taskforce
	Beta Testing					Recca, Draken


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:

Description courtesy of Giant Bomb
(https://www.giantbomb.com/power-of-the-hired/3030-50731/)
with editing by Taskforce.

Power of the Hired is a strategy RPG for the Super Famicom
similar to Arc the Lad on PSX developed and published by
NCS's video game division Masaya. It was released exclusively
in Japan in late 1994.

The game features four player-named heroes that the player must
use to fight off overwhelming waves of enemies. The characters are each
able to summon two beasts to help in battle, and with the help of
these beasts the player is able to tactically conquer each of the
game's scenarios. Depending on the beasts summoned, the player
characters' magic will change and their spell composition will differ.
Several scenarios requires that the player act quickly to avoid catastrophe,
such as a burning bridge the player characters are stuck on that they
need to quickly vacate.  Some scenarios have multiple ways to beat the scenario.
Some scenarios also require you to protect other people while they are escaping
from danger.



Helpful Game Tips:

Once other playable characters have joined you, make sure on the Beast Select Screen that
you go to the top character portrait box and hit left and right to select other characters
so that you can also give them their own beasts.

All spells that show on the Beast Select Screen can only be used if the Beast that gave you
that particular spell is directly vertically or horizontally one square adjacent to the Beast
Master that controls them.  If they are anywhere else on the battlefield you cannot use the 
spells they've given you on the select screen.

Any scenario that lists more than one victory condition can be completed by doing one of the
conditions listed.  You do not have to do both (or more.)  Sometimes the text will have slight
changes depending on the condition you choose to satisfy.

However, this is also true for fail conditions.  If any one fail condition happens, you've lost
and the game is over. Even if there is more than one condition listed.  Only one will make you
lose the game.




Bugs that remain in the released translation that may or may not ever be addressed:

Due to the lack of anyone on the team currently who possesses the skills of assembly coding there
is an unresolved bug left in the text routine that occasionally corrupts a few letters of text at 
certain points in the game. These bugs are minor and only last for 1 or 2 letters but it can make
some text harder to read or appear with parts as gibberish. This bug does not happen a great deal
but it is scattered through the game here and there and we have to mention it. Some scenarios play
without issues while others might have a few screens with a word or two with text issues. Please do 
not report these bugs, there is nothing we can do about them at this time. 

The ending has a bug in it where text scrolls over other text (and also has the text bug mentioned
above.)  The text here is mostly readable but it will look messy.  This only happens in about the 
first six or seven small pieces of text and they're still readable.  The rest of the ending text
should work without issue beyond these few screens of text and these screens are really short bits
of text (which is still mostly readable.)

This bug might be resolved but I'm including it in case we missed something.  The magic menu might
become messy.  We think we've solved this bug but we can't rule out that it could happen at some
point if we missed any of the spell names causing issues.  

A couple of the spells appear to be broken in both our release and the original Japanese rom from what
we can tell.  These spells either won't activate or appear to do nothing once activated.  These spells 
might work and we just don't know what they're supposed to do but I wanted to leave a note about it
in case others noticed it.


Caveats and Invitations:

This game is not for everyone. It is pretty short but still quite tough for a strategy RPG.
There is no walking around on world maps.  Just like Arc the Lad on PSX it works by giving you 
a quick story rundown and scenario info then dumping you in battle. There are more story segments
once you are in battle as you play to flesh out the story. There is no exploration of any kind in
this game. Also expect to get frustrated on a few of the scenarios.  They can get really hard to
beat even with all the characters available to you.

As in the case of several of our recent patch releases, this one remains unfinished also. As
we have explained previously, both time factors and downsizing in the diversification of our
production team have dictated this reality. The dilemma remains to either share a fully
playable patch "as is" or keep it in "cold storage" indefinitely, hoping we will eventually
be in a position to build toward a more "perfect" patch.

At this time, we active members of D-D cannot guarantee that we'll ever revise this patch in
any way. Positive feedback and offers to help us correct any and all patch flaws and
shortcomings are invited via our "Power of the Hired" forum.



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 Shiji Hero Legend 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 Power of the Hired ROM:


Size before patching: 1.50 MB (1,572,864 bytes)

Size after patching: 1.50 MB (1,572,864 bytes)

       File: PotH(J).sfc
       Name: Power of the Hired   
    Company: NCS
     Header: None
       Bank: LoROM
Interleaved: None
       SRAM: 64 Kb
       Type: Normal + Batt
        ROM: 12 Mb
    Country: Japan
      Video: NTSC
  ROM Speed: 120ns (FastROM)
   Revision: 1.0
   Checksum: Good 0xBCEA
  Game Code: ALUJ
      CRC32: CF276C80
        MD5: 4296780E368C36B59DE3C17AE9148F87




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.  

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.:  Power of the Hired v0.75.smc and Power of the Hired v0.75.ips will trigger soft patching at the emulator's run time.



Emulator Compatibility:

This patched game works in most emulators and on real hardware.  We
cannot guarantee compatibility with all emulators, however so far it
has worked on all emulators we have tried it on.  Our recommendation
is SNES9X, ZSNES, HIGEN/BSNES.  The game has not been tested on real
hardware at this time.



Special Thanks:

As always, lately, I am shocked, SHOCKED, that we have finally released "Power of the Hired" in
English! In the order of performing critical tasks, thanks Bongo`, Gerb, Taskforce, Wildbill, 
and Recca for the all you do. 



Dedicated to Taskforce! (Thanks for the dedication Wildbill, Draken, Bongo`, Filler, Recca and all the Dynamic Designs helpers. -Taskforce)


Readme 2021 Dynamic-Designs
