Knights of the Zodiac: Legend of the Gold Translation

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Finished title, thanks to Praveus. Good work!

INFORMATION

• Title: Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque: La Legende d'or
• Released in France in 1987 by Bandai
• Game Format: 256KB (2 megabit) PAL-NES cartridge

This is the French version of Saint Seiya 1.

This was based off an anime, and it appears to be a nice action/RPG once you get into it.

Although it does use passwords to save games, and I can't appear to save states correctly (RockNES won't save states for some reasons. It just gives a "Cannot write to file. Game was not saved" message, or something like that. NESten will save states, but they appear to corrupt after 2 reloads (loads save, then crashes the game). Other emulators I've tried don't seem to emulate the game correctly (Nesticle, Famtasia). FwNES will run the game, but fwNES doesn't have a speed stabilizer, so it'll probably run too fast. BioNES will run it, too.

    So, recommended emulator is NESten.

Nope, actually, I'd now recommend Nester. It displays the ROM correctly, and I can successfully save states. I shall enter passwords no more!

It appears to be a fairly easy translation. I will attempt translation as much as I can, then request help as needed.

PROGRESS

I am also working on the character bios, after you wait on the title screen. In the Famicom version, they were in English. But, the Bandai programmers changed them to French, and I have to change them back.

• Font table made. Translation should be easy, and short. It's uncompressed and only 32KB in size.
• Menus: So far, everything.
• Dialogue: Through Mt. Fuji is done, with some battle dialogue left, as well as some punctuation fixes needed.

I could put up more screens, but RockNES is only capable of saving one screen at a time, (I must rename each shot I take, so it doesn't get erased), and NESten doesn't have a screenshot option, so I can only take a snapshot of the entire Windows screen (which I must manually resize so as to not waste memory).

4/18/2001

• Wahh! Can't input Famicom version's code for bios after title (which was originally in English). Possibly because I put NTSC code in the PAL ROM? Maybe not. Oh well, shouldn't take too long. Nope, can't even cut and paste the text from the French original back into the translated ROM. Manual re-insertion necessary.

I don't anticipate any further need for help at this time.

4/22/2001

I believe I've finished the final font table. Fixed commas and apostraphes, I believe. Must play through later to check my work.

SCREENSHOTS

The battle scene. (major battles)                Win this fight, get the Sacred Armor.

Go places by speaking to Athena.                  I survived the fury of the dragon! Yeah!

In Mt. Fuji, you must locate the 4 dark soldiers. Those skulls hide secret pits that are, well, the pits.

Done through Mt. Fuji.

4/24/2001

Inserted in new lowercase font, which I think looks nice.

New lowercase font.                                    Same as above screen, new look.

4/25/2001

Uppercase font. Retesting my work so far, finding puncuation errors (some places it is because I can't fix a couple extra bytes.) I'm not sure if it looks very good. Sample password screen. Does it look okay, as far as being able to distinguish characters like Z, z, zero, O, 1, and l?

5/1/2001

Corrected Zodiac Signs. Fixed character bios. Release 50% patch.

5/9/2001

Yeah! I've figured out how to dump text from Hexposure. When I'm through translating the game (soon, unless I get help on Oddysselya), I'll release the script dump of my work, so somebody can do some last translations. I'm glad I may finally get a project in the done column! I'm glad.

5/11/2001

As I get further into translation, I find it more difficult to translate. I'll probably hack the pointers at the end, to put in better translations of some parts, with extended dialouge. Just thought I'd deliver another shot:

And I won't give up the translation.

Password near end

6/17/2001

Nearing the end! Completion has reached 67%. I'm releasing the text as a script, so if somebody translates, I'll insert it back into the game, and release! My first finished project!

Although, I had to cheat to see the ending, using the cheat password. I translated it to English, from the French password (which Bandai probably changed from Japanese).

The French cheat password (and on old patches is) TU.AS GAGNE!! TU.ES PASSE.. MAITRE!  Enter it as printed.

The English version cheat password is a translation of that:  YOUHA VEWON!! YOUVE PASSED. MASTER!

For those who don't want to cheat, I've blended the password into the background. Highlight that text if you want to know.

6/20/2001

Yeah!! I've done something new to me!! I was able to move around the text on the Data screen. I feel good. Which one looks better?

Old Data screen, with abbreviations.	New data screen. No abbreviations (and if I knew VA and FA's meanings, those'd be unabbreviated, too.)

6/21/2001

It is completed! Thanks to Metalhawk for finishing the script for me.

GAME STRATEGY

4/16/2001

Ok, I've figured out how to "level up" in this game. You collect Experience Points, and cash them in on the Data screen. You don't level-up in the traditional sense. When you have some EXP you'd like to use to boost your skills, press SELECT to go to the menu screen. Choose "Data".

Some explanation. The number on the left of each stat is the current value. The number on the right is the amount of Exp. needed to increase the value. Press A for increase, B to decrease (to get Exp. back).

In the first area of the game, you'll want to hang around, and stay until you have about 60 EXP. (After the "The battle has begun!" message clears, press SELECT, then exit the menu (B Button). Now enemies will appear. Fight carefully, as if you die, you lose all your work, and go back to the 16EXP you had from beating the 2 training fights. You also can't come back here. So, get about 60 EXP when you can. Now, you'll need more Defense (P.D.) and P.C. (Counter points?) for the first fight, so keep going until you have about 6 points of Defence, and maybe 4 PC. This will help you live in the Coliseum. As I said before, you can't gain EXP once you've left the shrine where you start the game.

Now, to figure out how to get my Cosmos and Points replenished after leaving Kido... 

4/20/2001

Good. I've figured out how to rebuild Points/Cosmos past Kido. It appears that when you die, all status up to the last time you went to the password screen is retained. You should then if you die, recover some Points, then use them to increase your Cosmos (leave the hospital first, then walk back in (having used all but 1 Point on Cosmos, and you'll recover full Points max.) It also appears that you gain Max. Points at certain events. When you go to the Orphanage, Points go from 20 to 40, and again in Moo (from 40 to 60) when you speak to the guy there.

This is a table of what statistics you get for the different signs, when you enter birth date at the start of the game.

How this works is, the first value is what your charcter will get for starting attributes, and the second is how much EXP. is required in order to increase the stat (see EXP. explanation above.)

I shall leave the stats as they are on the battle screen (unless I can figure out how to change that). Data screen stats have changed. Off., Att., Def. P.C. is Cosmos Points, but will have to be abbreviated to Cosm, unless I figure out pointers. I have it as Cosmo in the ROM, but the game automatically puts in the space that is between "Cosm" and the Cosmo value.

And I have to remember to get the Zodiac signs changed...

DOWNLOAD

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