
Patch  version 061030 (yymmdd)
Readme version 061030 (yymmdd)




                               King Colossus

                         English Translation Patch
                               by M.I.J.E.T.




  History
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

061030 Works on a real Genesis now.  Script revised slightly.
060114 Fixed checksum error.
060108 Now works with a hacked version of the rom file.
051203 Fixed a compatibility problem.  Q & A section updated.
051123 Initial release.




 Overview
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a translation patch for the Mega Drive game "King Colossus", by Sega.
It is a very high quality patch, both in the translation and hacking
departments, and is perhaps the first "dual-language" (i.e. it supports both
Japanese and English) fan translation of a video game.




 Applying the Patch
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hopefully included with this document is a patch file in the pretentiously-
named IPS format.  You can use any program that supports this file format
to apply the patch to your ROM file.

Alternatively, you can use the supplied executable program to apply the
patch.  The program will read the IPS file (which should be kept in the same
directory as the program) and will open two file requesters: one for loading
the original ROM file and one for saving the patched ROM file.  It will
check the ROM file (de-interleaving it if necessary) and will fail if there
is something wrong with the file.  A normal IPS program cannot do this as
it has no idea what it is patching.  The program has not been extensively
tested, so if you have problems (or simply don't trust a foreign executable
file) you always have the option of using a different program.  Another
reason you might want to use an alternative program is because it is not
compatible with your computer...

Please note that you are morally obligated to own an original copy of this
game in order to use the "ROM file".  I got my copy for around $10, and I'd
definitely say that it's worth the price.




 Playing the Game
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once you've patched the ROM file, simply load it up in your favorite
Genesis / Mega Drive emulator, console copier, or flash cartridge.

Since this is a dual-language game, you must set the country code to USA
to play it in English.  If you want to play it in the original Japanese,
set the country code to Japan.  Note that in this mode it will not be
identical to the original Japanese version; the windows are larger, some bugs
have been fixed, and many name limitations were changed.  Also, some of the
non-script text will still be in English.




 Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

IPS File Size   62484 B (61.0 kB)
  Patches         391
  Data          60521 B (59.1 kB)


Simple Patches (no large data blocks, no assembled code)
  Lines in File   545 (includes comments and whitespace)
  Size of File 13,806 B (13.4 kB) (CRLF format)

 Code & Data Patches Combined
  Number          330
  Total Size      736 B

 Code Patches Only (these are generally < 4 instructions, not assembled)
  Number          245
  Total Size      496 B


Assembly Code (not including simple code patches [less than 4 instructions])
 Subroutines       41
 Instructions     566 (excludes non-instructions, like data constants)
 Lines in File  1,665 (includes comments, whitespace, and data constants)
 Source Size   19,608 B (19.1 kB) (LF format)
 Binary Size    2,910 B (2.8 kB)
  Code Size     1,978 B (1.9 kB)
  Data Size       932 B (mostly font data)


Script
 Banks              5
 Original      35,309 B (34.5 kB) (double it for approx. size in JIS format)
 Translated    53,443 B (52.2 kB) (again, this is as formatted in the ROM)
 Characters    Hiragana, Katakana, Alphanumeric (upper & lower), symbols

Other Text         ~2 kB

Readme File
 Size          35,639 B (34.8 kB) (CRLF format)
 Lines            839


Most impressive is the number of code patches (245).  This means the code
was patched in 245 different locations.  Some of these are hooks into my
41 assembly language subroutines, which were necessary when the original
code couldn't simply be overwritten.




 List of Changes (not exhaustive)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name limit increased from 4 to 8 bytes ([han]dakuten characters take 2 bytes)
Changed various string size limitations
Added or changed several characters in the font
Added a new control code to make use of the last line of text w/o limitations
Increased the size of the normal text window
Increased the size of the location name window
Increased the size of the arena rankings window
Increased the size of the weapon rental window
Arena rankings now have an appropriate suffix (i.e. "1st" instead of "No. 1")
Many modifications to the name entry screen
 Lower-case characters can now be used
 Starting location changed
 All kana characters are still available
 Added katakana 'VU' (voiced 'U') just for fun
Many modifications to the pause menus
 Changed the size and location of the windows
 Translated the text
 Fixes to the window movement and overlapping
Workaround for unlimited string bank sizes
Subtitled the kanji in the opening credits
Fixed some spelling errors in the ending credits (required additional fonts)
Auto-detects the country code and shows English / Japanese text accordingly




 Translation Accuracy
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The script was translated by a native speaker of English with the help of
a native speaker of Japanese, who has lived in America for around five years.
Although I translated everything, I could not have completed this project
without the help of my Japanese friend, who checked my work and helped me
with the parts I didn't understand.  Thanks to him, the script is so much
more robust than it would have been, as he explained many of the unstated
implications and subtleties contained with the text and provided much more
natural-sounding English translations, as opposed to my dry, literal ones.

A lot of editing was performed on the script.  I often edited a single
string a half-dozen times or more until I was satisfied with the results.
While editing, I normally checked the string in-game, as text that looks
OK in my editor sometimes doesn't "work" during the game.

Anyway, due to all of the above, you'd definitely see some differences if you
compared the two scripts side-by-side.  This is normal for a good translation
of such disparate languages and should not be misconstrued as evidence of
inaccuracy; if the tenses are "wrong" or some superfluous adverbs are missing
it is not because we didn't understand the original.  Rest assured that I
was especially careful when translating the most important parts of the
script and always had my Japanese associate check them (and his translations
were often far more liberal than mine because he would render it the way he
would have said it in English; in other words, he would translate the idea,
rather than the literal meaning).  No important information was "lost in
translation".

In conclusion, I hope you find this translation to be of very high quality.
I believe it to be both accurate and well-written and I hope that you enjoy
it as much as I have.




 Translation Notes
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The following is a list of certain things that I consider inappropriate for
a translation, with examples from commercially translated games (although
many unofficial translations contain them as well) that I recall.  You may
or may not agree with me, but I encourage translators to at least consider
the suitability of the following items for their work.


My translation does not contain...

 - inside jokes (Legend of Mana: Cafe "Sorry Carl!")

 - pop culture references (Chrono Trigger: Ozzie, Flea, and Slash)

 - inappropriate allusions (Legend of Mana: "El Hazardous")

 - name changes (within the limits of transliteration, of course)

 - colorful accents (especially not British punk accents, ugh)

 - anachronisms (usually these are unintentional)

 - censorship (not that I care, but some people make a big deal out of it)
              (and not that there was much worth censoring anyway)


And I tried to avoid...

 - idioms (a few were unavoidable, and some are actual translations)
 - spelling errors
 - grammatical errors
 - punctuation errors
 - spacing and alignment errors
 - inconsistencies (these are tough to check, especially in large scripts)

Obviously no one would intentionally make errors, but I wanted to show
the things that I checked for and was careful about; I've seen way too
many sloppy translations.  Actually, there ARE a few intentional grammatical
errors in the script, in order to make it sound more natural.  There aren't
many and you probably won't notice them, unless you are well acquainted with
the rules of grammar, as they are very minor and would sound normal to a
native speaker of English.  Please bear in mind that the script represents
spoken dialogue, not formal writing.




 Transliteration Notes
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

When transliterating names I normally took a direct romanization and then
tried to make it look and sound better for English speakers.  I generally
used whichever I felt was the better choice for the r/l, b/v, and s/th pairs
and dropped extraneous vowels.  Occasionally the letter 'h' was used to help
clarify pronunciation and 'ph' was often used in place of 'f'.  Finally,
once or twice I replaced long 'a' vowels with 'ar'.  Other than that, I
rarely changed the vowels, so they should generally be given a Japanese
pronunciation, if you know how.  This even applies to 'oo', which is NOT the
rather ill-conceived romanization of 'ou' but represents 'o-'.



The following names were translated, rather than simply transliterated, and
should be pronounced as in English

 DEZAIA   Desire
 SHIRIOSU Sirius
 GANI-ME  Ganyme(de)
 KURISU   Kris

...and some that are (probably) French (pronounced as in English, however).

 ROA-RU   Loire
 PARISU   Paris

Finally, it wasn't clear whether or not they meant Orpheus for this one, as
the pronunciations are significantly different, so I just transliterated it.

 ORUFESU  Orphus

That was one of the few vowel changes; I didn't like "Orphes" or "Orfes".
And speaking of vowel changes, here's the other major one:

 KARURIMU Carleem

As with Orphus, I imagine most people would instinctively give the word
the correct pronunciation, based on the way it looks.


Oh, and yes, Iria is the exact romanization for that particular name.




 Hacking Notes
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

This hack required a lot of work.  I had to do quite a bit of disassembly
and ended up getting pretty familiar with the inner workings of the code.
It took about two weeks of full-time (all day, every day) hacking, not to
mention a few days worth of minor bug fixing and adjustments during the
translation phase.

One of the more annoying aspects of this translation hack was the excessive
amount of inlining and hard-coding employed by the original programmers.
For example, the code for the save menu uses the SAME VALUE hard-coded in
SIX different places!  And from a quick look at my patch source file, I
can see that those changes only amount to about half of what needed to be
changed for that particular menu, not including the hooks into my assembly
language subroutines.  Another example is that there are probably half-a-
dozen text decoding routines, all with minor variations.  And simply
changing the size of a window was never sufficient; there were always two
to six subroutines for actually rendering that specific window that needed
to be changed as well.

Attention to detail ended up requiring many additional days of work.  You
cannot imagine the amount of effort it took to get everything "perfect".  The
pause menus alone probably took half of a week to finish, as so many things
had to be changed, even the way the windows scroll.  Many of the things I
fixed probably would not even have been noticed, but I am something of a
perfectionist; I could have taken the easy route and not bothered to increase
the window sizes and string length limits, which probably would have saved me
a week of overtime hours working on this hack.

Another problem was the overuse of buffers.  I had to fix several buffer
overflow errors cause by the increased size of the strings.  In many cases
there was no practical reason for some of the strings to be copied to
memory (or sometimes even the cartridge RAM!)  Rather than increasing the
size of the buffers (and risking address conflicts), I used some clever
code hacks to increase the limits without changing the sizes of the original
buffers.

On the positive side, the credits and the "game over" screen were already
in English, although I still ended up having to fix a few things.  The
ending credits were particularly annoying because of the variable width
font; I had to make some additional character combinations in order to
correct their English.  Anyway, please don't think that I'm complaining about
all this; I just want to show that "reinserting" a translated script is often
no way near as simple as it sounds, especially when it is done properly.

So far I've found at least four different compression schemes used in this
game; it seems like every kind of data has its own compression method.
I didn't bother trying to recompress anything as there was plenty of free
space left in the ROM.  I ripped all the decompression code, which came
in handy several times.

My code is usually pretty efficient, but you might notice some seemingly
unnecessary stuff.  The reason is because I always try to be as careful
as possible when patching foreign programs, so there is some code in there
to emulate calculations that my subroutines didn't need.  I also refused to
trash any registers unless the original code was obviously doing so
immediately after me.  Even the upper word of data registers was preserved
and if the original programmers felt it necessary to clear an entire
register, so did I.  In my opinion, it's not worth the risk of introducing
subtle bugs just to save a few bytes or make the program run unnoticeably
faster.

Sadly, there was one thing I missed and that was the fact that certain
control codes mixed in with some of the strings are read as words instead
of bytes.  This can cause misalignment errors, a misfeature of the 68000
which will crash the game on a real console and can cause problems on
some emulators.  The original developers handled this by inserting a dummy
byte for alignment purposes, when necessary, but this was a very poor
solution to the problem.  Since my emulator completely ignores misaligned
accesses I was unaware that some of my translated strings had the control
codes in the wrong places.  Now that the game has been tested on a real
Genesis I hope that my patch is now error free.  Alignment errors are an
amateurish mistake, so this is somewhat embarrassing, although the way it
occurred in the data could have been missed by any expert.  It was very
unfortunate that things worked out this way, because if it weren't for
those stupid control codes being treated as words my patch would have
been perfect upon its initial release; the only practical difference
between the first release and this final (hopefully) version is that a few
of the strings were padded for alignment purposes.  No other problems
were ever brought to my attention.




 Consistency Notes
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Much of what I've written could be construed as advice to other hackers
and translators.  With that in mind, here is a partial list of the
consistency checks I performed after the script was translated and edited.
Hopefully they will prove useful.  Inconsistencies often go unnoticed, but
eliminating them makes your work look much more professional.


	all proper names
	inconsistent stuttering (search for '-')
	inconsistent capitalization of names. For example...
	 Castle <X> but "the castle of X"
	 King <name>, else king (lowercase) (same with prince(ss) and queen)
	 "The" (e.g. The <name>) vs. "the"


Inconsistent alternate spellings
	Goodbye vs. Good-bye (both are considered correct, at least by some)
	OK Ok ok okay
	(For the next two, I use both spellings for their different nuances)
	alright (more of an expression) vs. all right ("allright" is wrong)
	anytime vs. any time
	anymore (from now on, at present) vs. any more (additional meanings)

Spell-checkers can't catch typos that are correctly spelled
	your you're
	it's its
	their there they're
	were where we're
	then than

	unintentional double spaces
	comma not followed by a space
	repeated words (e.g. the the) (make sure the spell-checker does this)
	that that (not all spell-checkers check this; it can be legitimate)
	repeated words between lines (line breaks can mess up spell-checkers)


There are many, many more homophones (as well as homonyms and homographs) in
English, but there isn't much point in listing them; I only included the
most common ones that I could think of.

Some of those checks require manually searching for and checking every
instance of a word, which can be tedious.  All in all, I probably found
less than half-a-dozen typos or inconsistencies during this phase, but
that was after lots of editing; your mileage may "very" ;)



"How to Stutter Correctly"

Well, stutter however you want, just be consistent... ;)

Right       Wrong    Sound
-----------------------------
W-Who	not Wh-Who  (hu sound) (note the irregularity of this one)
Wh-What	not W-What  (wh sound)
Th-This	not T-This  (th sound)
Sh-She	not S-She   (sh sound)
Th-That not Th-that            (watch out for inconsistent capitalization)
I, I    not I-I                (personal pronoun 'I' is a special case)
I, I'm  not I-I'm              (same with 'd, 'll, etc.)
I-It    not I, It   (ih sound)




 Original Bugs
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are all the bugs in the original game that I have found.  Please check
this section carefully before reporting a bug; if it is in here already then
it's probably never going to get fixed...

Note that there are a few minor plot spoilers in this section.


In the very beginning, if you try to leave the room before talking to Muuk,
the color of the text will be wrong.  This is a bug in the game flow, not the
script, and is not trivial to fix.

There's another one at the end of the first chapter, when Muuk speaks to
Flora as you are leaving.

Before you fight Desire, her text is green at one point.

It's actually not an original bug, but there is a slight textual error
during the "second audience" scene.  You probably wouldn't notice it, even
if you were looking for it, and it was necessary to make the text appear the
way I wanted it.  I'd be pretty impressed if anyone found it...


The statues in the shrine will give you garbage messages if you return
there later on.  Sometimes they'll give you real messages too; the game is
reading the right string number in the wrong bank.  Actually, sometimes it
will read from the correct bank, which might explain why this bug went
unnoticed.
 I fixed some of the garbage by adding extra strings to one of the banks that
it reads from, but I couldn't do this for the other bank because there was
already a string assigned to that number.  Hence you will get to read part
of the ending...
 As with the color errors listed above, there's no easy way to fix this
because the error is probably in the game's data, which is likely compressed,
and would require a lot of reverse engineering.  Since there is no reason
to go back to that area anyway and since most people probably don't know how
to retrigger these messages, I don't think it's worth the time to try and
fix this bug.

Everyone in Sirius gives garbage messages later in the game.  Once again,
the strings are being read out of the wrong bank.  I was able to fix the
strings for everyone except the dead guy; his string is the same as the
old man's so there's nothing I can easily do about that.

Update: talking to anyone in Sirius later in the game will also screw up
the messages for just about everyone else!  To fix this, talk to anyone
in Distaria or get the "gate is firmly shut" message in Distaria Coliseum.
As with all of the above, this is an original bug and I'm very pessimistic
about fixing it.  Based on what I know, the problem is probably in the
game's data, and it could take weeks to figure out how the internal
structures are arranged.  I'm usually not too enthusiastic about fixing
other people's bugs...


When there is more than one color of text being displayed simultaneously,
all the text will be the same color as the last one used, when the lines are
scrolled out of the window.  My script has been arranged to avoid this.

Moving off of "other items" onto a valid item won't print the string.
You can't normally get enough items to do this anyway, so it's no big deal.
Actually, I seem to have inadvertently fixed this...

The pause menu is too short and the sword pointer overlaps part of it.
The original game designers didn't seem to care, and fixing this would be a
lot of trouble due to the way the menu is rolled up and moved around.

In the ending, it looks as if some of the scenes are cut off.  This was
intentional; if you pay attention, you'll notice that each scene shows
less and less on both the top and bottom.  Quite an interesting bit of
direction, especially considering that it's a game, and an old one at that.


 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
| The rest of these are things that probably wouldn't get blamed on me, but |
| have been documented for your interest anyway.                            |
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------


Sometimes sprites will change position slightly during the cutscenes.

It's possible to get a character who is following you (but not closely)
to walk through solid walls.

It is also possible to attack through solid walls.

The way the game handles tile overlays (i.e. either on a second plane or
using sprites) isn't perfect.  You can occasionally see parts of your weapons
appear when going through an underpass.  You can also see similar effects
if you jump in certain places, such as the first cave.

It is possible to place the Lost Eyes in the statue without triggering the
message.  The door opens, however, and you can elicit the message later,
if you want.

In Kazard, it isn't necessary to light the torches if you jump correctly.
It isn't a big help and it might have other consequences, so I wouldn't
recommend skipping that part.  Also, once you jump to the other side, it's
possible to enter the king's chamber by jumping diagonally on either side
of the walkway near the door.  This is absolutely no help, since you can
just walk through the door once you're across, but it's interesting.

In Lufelia, some of the sword pointers in the pause menu are gray, while
others are not.

It's possible to get trapped in Ganant's hidden room if he isn't there to
send you back out.  You can't save, so if you don't have enough MP to cast
Exodus there's nothing you can do.

There's a fake passage in Lina's room later in the game.  It seems to be the
same as in the dragon cave; there's a hole in the wall, you just can't enter
it.  Also, earlier in the game it is possible to get underneath the throne
in that room.  I have a screen-shot of this, if anybody wants to see it.

The ending credits are cued to the music, so they don't start for quite
a while; the game has not crashed.




 Q & A
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: This patch doesn't work!  What do I do?

A: Make sure your ROM file is not in an interleaved format.  It's also
   possible that there is more than one version of the game, or your copy is
   corrupt.  If you have problems, try using the program that I wrote to
   apply the patch; it checks for the above issues.  If my program doesn't
   work for some reason, you can try a different IPS patching program, but
   you will lose the benefit of having your ROM file checked.

   If there is more than one version of the game, let me know and I'll try to
   support it.


Q: Why is the text in Japanese?!?

A: This is a dual-language translation patch; if it detects that it is
   running on a Japanese system it will use the original game script.
   If you are using an emulator, make sure the country code is set to USA.
   If you really want to play this game, in English, on a real Japanese Mega
   Drive system, then contact me.


Q: Are state files from the original Japanese version still compatible?

A: No.  They may work partially, but some stuff will definitely be missing.
   Ideally, you should save your game on the original version and use that
   same SRAM file for my version of the game, as saved games should still be
   compatible.


Q: I found a spelling/grammatical/punctuation error!  What should I do?

A: Well, I hope there aren't any errors, but if you do find one please
   let me know about it so I can correct it.  Assuming it is a legitimate
   error, you will be credited for finding it.

   Note that there are a few grammatical errors that are intentional, usually
   with stock phrases.  If you're sharp enough to notice them, then go ahead
   and report them anyway.


Q: I found a bug!  What do I do?

A: There are several minor errors that exist in the original game.  I have
   documented all the original bugs that I know of in another section of
   this file.  If the bug you've found is not listed there, then please
   contact me so I can investigate it.  This includes "color" errors (where
   the text appears in the wrong color), some of which are errors in the
   flow of the game, rather than the script.  See the aforementioned section
   for details.


Q: MAJOR BUG!  Why is everyone giving me messages from earlier in the game?

A: You went back to Sirius, didn't you...
   This is a bug in the original.  I wrote more about it elsewhere in this
   file, but to fix it all you need to do is talk to anyone in Distaria, or
   attempt to enter Distaria Coliseum.  Once any of these correct messages
   are displayed, everything will be back to normal.

   To avoid triggering this bug in the first place, don't talk to anyone in
   Sirius after you finished the Lufelia area.  Not that they have anything
   interesting to say anyway...


Q: May I suggest changes to your script?

A: Sure.  If you honestly believe it would improve the writing, I will be
   glad to consider it.  However, I spent quite a lot of time editing the
   script and checking how it reads within the game, so you probably
   won't find too many awkward sentences and such.  At least I hope not...


Q: I see "s's" in your translation.  Don't you know that you're supposed to
   leave off the _s_ of possessives for proper names which end in _s_?

A: Although that practice is common in journalism, many authorities
   discourage its use.  Strunk only prescribes it for certain classical
   names (e.g. Jesus) while Gregg recommends a pronunciation-based
   approach.


Q: You put a comma after the final element in a series.  Don't you know that
   you're not supposed to do that anymore?

A: Yes, that's what my elementary school teacher said as well.  However, as
   in the previous case, this is "newspaper grammar".  It can cause ambiguity
   and it removes a valuable visual cue, just to save a little space.
   Garner's book on usage has a nice discussion of this point.


Q: Why are you dropping names and acting all professional, like some sort
   of English Major?  What a jerk...

A: Well, perhaps you might come to believe that some of the rules of English
   that you were taught (like the prohibition against ending a sentence with
   a preposition, for example) are actually questionable.  Furthermore, you
   might want a more reliable reference than the readme file for a video game
   translation patch...

   You are correct, however, professionalism, formality, and elitism are
   silly.  So are things like funerals, weddings, honor societies, and...


Q: Shut up!

A: Sigh... That's not a question, but let's move on to a different subject...


Q: Who is Makoto Ogino?  Is this based on a manga?

A: Makoto Ogino is the author of the manga "Kujaku Ou", which translates as
   "Peacock King".  Based on what I've read of the game box and instruction
   booklet, it seems Makoto Ogino was brought in to direct and write the
   script for King Colossus, or "Tougi Ou".  I am confident that it was a
   completely original work, at least at that time.

   Incidentally, there are rumors that this was a port from some unidentified
   8-bit system.  I believe this to be inaccurate information.


Q: Why does my name get truncated sometimes?

A: The name buffer is eight bytes, but the (han)dakuten characters (the kana
   with accent marks) take up 2 bytes each, so it will truncate your name if
   necessary.  If it does, you will see the truncated version in the
   confirmation window, so pay attention.  If you are only using Roman
   (i.e. English) characters, as most people are likely to do, your name can
   be up to eight characters long and will never be truncated.


Q: What is the main character's default name?

A: There isn't one.  The instruction booklet refers to him as "the hero of
   the story", or something like that.  In the original game, if you select
   "END" without entering anything, you get four blank spaces for a name.
   This was fixed; now it is impossible to have a completely blank name.


Q: I don't want to read your translation carefully.  How can I speed it up?

A: In addition to the normal speed-up activated by holding the C Button,
   you can hold down any direction on the D Pad to skip the pauses as well.


Q: Is it OK to say "no" to people?

A: Yes, if you want to give the obvious wrong answer to any of the "yes or
   no" questions in the game, go right ahead; it doesn't appear to have any
   drawbacks and you'll get to see their reactions.  As with many games, the
   plot won't continue until you give the correct answer.  The only exception
   is at the end of the game; your answer determines the ending you get (and
   they are just different; there is no "good ending").

   I always wonder about this sort of thing myself, when playing a new game.


Q: What is "Demiglace Sauce"?

A: As you might be able to tell from the name, it's a French term for a
   type of thick sauce.


Q: What about the "Shura Sword"?

A: _Shura_ doesn't translate well, particularly as the name of a sword.
   It's written using the same kanji as the word Ashura and is used in
   the titles of several other games, such as "Rushing Beat Shura" and
   "Shura no Mon."  It definitely connotes violence, however.


Q: And what do the kanji on the title screen mean?

A: They are pronounced "Tougi Ou", which we translated in the game as
   "King Colossus", so the title screen is already "translated".
   I considered subtitling it, like I did with the opening credits, but
   I couldn't get it to look good; it either obscured the background too much
   or had an odd-looking location.


Q: I can't enter Castle Lufelia!  What do I do?

A: Even though Lufelia dramatically appears on the map, you're not supposed
   to go there yet.  In case you weren't paying attention, first you must
   go to Kazard, which is east of Sirius (although you might not have known
   that, since it was previously "unselectable" or because you couldn't read
   the map in the instruction booklet).


Q: Shields don't increase my defense, so what good are they?

A: They can block certain attacks.  When you aren't attacking, your shield is
   raised.  It comes in handy sometimes.


Q: Is it possible to get all the items?

A: Not the _item_ items, but all the equipment, yes.  Assuming you didn't
   miss the articles in places that can never be returned to...


Q: Shouldn't that guy's name be "Orpheus"?

A: It's possible that they were alluding to Orpheus, but the fact remains
   that the pronunciation is significantly different.  If it is an allusion
   then this is quite appropriate, as blatant references are not good style.
   Also, please note that Orphus in this game has very little in common with
   the mythological Orpheus.


Q: Why is this readme file so long?  I don't want to read all this!

A: I was bored while awaiting the last bit of help I needed from my Japanese
   friend.  I actually thought about chucking the entire thing, but then I
   remembered that there are a few important things about the patch in this
   file, so I decided to keep it.


Q: Is your patcher program safe?

A: No.  Anyone could replace it with a trojan and rewrite this readme to
   make it seem safe.  That's one reason why I don't include it with the
   patch itself.  It's up to you to decide which program to use to apply
   the patch, but unless you wrote the program yourself, there's always
   some risk involved.  This goes nicely with the next Q & A...


Q: How do I know your translation is accurate?

A: You can't "know" anything!  Life is all about belief and faith.  Elsewhere
   in this document I discuss the accuracy of this translation; it's up to
   you whether or not you believe it.  Faith, in this case, would mean
   actually playing this game, thereby acting on your belief that it is
   accurate.  That's what I believe anyway...


Q: Why are you acting like a philosopher now, you uptight freak?

A: I'm not trying to, I don't believe in philosophy and I...


Q: Shut up, loser!  You translate stupid, old video games!

A: That's not a...


Q: I said shut up!

A: ...




 Contact
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can attempt to contact any of us regarding the King Colossus translation
at the following email address:

tougi_ou@yahoo.com

I cannot guarantee a timely reply, or even that it will ever be read; check
the date at the top of this page to see how old this is.  The older the email
address gets, the less frequently it will be checked.

And on the web:

http://www.geocities.com/tougi_ou/KingColossus.html
