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| Starblade Virtual Console Arcade -- English Patch |
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This patch translates the Japan-only VCA release of 1991's Starblade, the
early polygonal shooter by Namco. The game was reasonably playable in
Japanese, with some trial and error and a bit of patience, but this should
make things a little simpler.

NB: Nothing region-related is changed by this patch: the game is still Japan
region. Any standard method for launching out-of-region titles should work.

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| What's been translated? |
 -------------------------

The game itself really doesn't need a translation; it's all fully voiced, in
English, so this patch only affects the menu: the various settings screens,
the tooltips, all of the popup notices ("Are you sure you want to return to
the title screen? All progress will be lost," etc.), the instructional
graphic, the button prompts and a massive number of error messages.

 -------------------------
| What wasn't translated? |
 -------------------------

The banner, strap screen, home menu and the digital manual are all unmodified.
None of them are necessary for playing the game--the manual doesn't even
bother to explain any of the menu settings anyway, so the in-game
instructional graphic is about equally useful.

There were a couple of lines I was never able to find a context for: in with
all the menu strings is an apparent option called "Works" which looks like it
must have been removed. If it ever does appear, the translations will probably
be poor, because I didn't understand their purpose. There were also a few
lines like "Action is missing!" that I never saw in-game, so same deal there.

 ----------------------------
| How do I apply this patch? |
 ----------------------------

Due to the complexities of patching a Wii WAD, this patch bundles some tools
to extract, patch and rebuild the WAD. In theory, a patch could be made that
altered the WAD directly, but it would be huge and include most of the game's
assets due to the patcher seeing the newly encrypted file as completely
different to the original.

However, not everything can be included here, so there's also a couple of
files you need to add to the "Starblade" directory:

 - common-key.bin

 - an unmodified, regulation Starblade v257 WAD, renamed to "StarbladeJP.wad".
   According to No-Intro, it should have the following specifications:

     File:   Star Blade (Japan) (v257) (Arcade) (Virtual Console).wad
     Size:   18528512
     CRC32:  DA0559AD
     MD5:    DB62A9800550B8173BF5863A3FC13297
     SHA-1:  41DD1D161D47F89C0F5F94AFD58023C9492BD95A

Don't ask me where to find them.

Place both of these files in the "Starblade" directory, remembering to rename
your Japanese WAD to "StarbladeJP.wad". Then, launch the following batch file:

     Apply Patch.bat

This will do some behind the scenes grunt-work that will result in a new file
in the "Starblade" directory: 

     StarbladeEN.wad

This is your English-translated game. To play it, do whatever you usually do
with your WADs; we're not getting into it here.

If you want or need to perform the patch manually, e.g. because you're on a
different OS, the details of what's going on here aren't anything too complex.
You need to unpack the WAD so that 00000002.app is exposed. Patch this file
with the "StarbladeENPatch.xdelta" file included here, using your xdelta
patcher of choice. Then repack the WAD and you're done.

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| Licenses |
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This archive bundles apps from BFGR WadTools v0.39a, a GPLv2 package. Source
for these tools can be found in the "src" directory.

Also bundled is the xdelta3 v3.0.6 binary, a GPLv2 project with source
available at Google Code:
     https://code.google.com/p/xdelta/source/

---

Sincerely,
   Vague Rant