Final Fantasy IV Advance Stripper Restoration Patch [Archive]

Dark Knight Kain

12-13-2005, 06:05 AM

From the readme:

For whatever reason Nintendo felt the stripper was a little too much for the E10
rating and censored it out of the US release. Not only that, all dancers were forced
to wear dresses. However, all they did was move the dancer's graphics to another part
of the ROM and edit them, making it easier to restore than I originally thought.
All this patch does is copy graphics the original graphics over the new ones.

Given this fact, it should also be possible to restore these graphics with a PAR/GS/CB
code, but I'm not going to bother trying.

One day after release... most stores didn't have it yesterday... is that a record?


C:Serverxampphtdocszopharoldwwwthreadsattachmentsf f4astripper.zip

The 9th Sage

12-13-2005, 07:48 PM

> For whatever reason Nintendo felt the stripper was a little
> too much for the E10
> rating and censored it out of the US release.

God damn it...after seeing the commercial, I saw Cecil's Dark Wave, so I was thinking OMG, finally...they realized they don't have to censor this game for the US audience....

<img src=smilies/banghead.gif>
http://www.xanga.com/ZeldaDDhttp://x76.xanga.com/4fe1811b647a82128109/b2044670.gif

Insert some funny quote or something here.</a>

Dark Knight Kain

12-13-2005, 08:29 PM

> God damn it...after seeing the commercial, I saw Cecil's
> Dark Wave, so I was thinking OMG, finally...they realized
> they don't have to censor this game for the US audience....

Meh, it's not that bad, the only other real censorship is the Porno Magazine has been changed to simply Magazine, but the item description and what happens when you use it let on to what it really is <img src=smilies/thumb.gif>

To be honest I couldn't care less about that dancer, I just wanted to see if I could fix it. I actually like the way the dancers look in their dresses better...

Audigy

12-13-2005, 08:57 PM

> God damn it...after seeing the commercial, I saw Cecil's
> Dark Wave, so I was thinking OMG, finally...they realized
> they don't have to censor this game for the US audience....

The game has an E rating. The game will sell more copies with an E rating.
One changed sprite is pretty insignificant compared to other things they could've done.
What else was changed for the "worst"?
I haven't picked the game up yet (I preordered it... it's waiting for me at EB) but from the screenshots I've seen, I'm expecting an awesome localization. They left in "You spoony bard!" :D
--

http://www.oddigy.com
beadsprites and PSFs, oh my!

Dark Knight Kain

12-13-2005, 09:00 PM

> What else was changed for the "worst"?

Look up <img src=smilies/thumb.gif>

Seriously, even with the E10 rating it was left alone (I love Cecil in the opening "Damnation!" heh, heh, you don't hear the full word enough anymore), there's your standard FF8+ profanity and all. Very good localization, the game itself is based on the WSC version so a few of its bugs crept in, but other than that it's great. Music is awesome, by the way.

Audigy

12-13-2005, 09:09 PM

> Very good localization, the game
> itself is based on the WSC version so a few of its bugs
> crept in, but other than that it's great. Music is awesome,
> by the way.
>

Yeah, according to TSSF, the music contains an assload of "phrase" samples - which gives the illusion that more instrument channels are playing simultaneously. It annoys me when games "cheat" by using phrase samples... makes it harder to use the sequences. ;) It usually sounds great though. (for instance, the clarinet that plays during Kingdom Hearts in Traverse Town... yep, all phrase samples. There are individual samples of one or two measures at a time.)

Also... tell us about the bugs that are still present in the GBA version.

I'm really excited. I can't wait to leave work and head to EB where I will bust some heads if they have not unpacked the box that contains my copy yet. <img src=smilies/banghead.gif>
--

http://www.oddigy.com
beadsprites and PSFs, oh my!

Dark Knight Kain

12-13-2005, 09:38 PM

> Also... tell us about the bugs that are still present in the GBA version.

There's an odd bug with the turn order, rarely (Or not, I haven't encountered it yet myself, but others have said its happening every battle) a character will get a second turn right after their first.

There are no items hidden in Rosa's house...

The Ice Rod (And I'm assuming Flame and Thunder Rods as well) only target one monster. I don't think this is a bug though, I think it was done on purpose to make you use the actual magic more often.

A lot of battle formations start out with you targeting the monster in the back for whatever reason.

They're still using sprite flicker for transparency even though the GBA can do it the correct way.

(Not a bug) The menu font is tiny, it's smaller than the one used in FF1&2 DoS, yet they still use abreviations in the menus where whole words would've fit (My guess is they switched to this font late in development and never bothered to expand these)

Status menu loads slow compared to the others.

(Not a bug) Some menus are laid out wierd (Shop menu, for instance, places Exit right beneath Sell, instead of next to it. There's plenty of room in the menu for it to be in the traditional place)

(Not a bug) The Copper Hourglass is just called Hourglass for whatever reason. Silver and Gold varieties retain their names... I think this has to do with the font again, Copper Hourglass was probably too long to fit with the DoS menu font.

(Not a bug) The regular magic menu lists spells in three collumns, while the battle menu has two collumns. Three collumns worked in battle in DoS, and with this tiny font there's most definately enough room for the English names... it makes it hard to sort your spells.

I only got to the Antlion cave in the Japanese version and Kaipo in the English version, so I really don't know what its like later on (Waiting to get my actual cart before I go on)
 Edited by Dark Knight Kain on 12/13/05 09:12 PM.

The 9th Sage

12-14-2005, 01:53 AM

> The game has an E rating. The game will sell more copies
> with an E rating.
> One changed sprite is pretty insignificant compared to other
> things they could've done.

Aw, I know, I just feel like bitching about it. Dammit, we want our pixelated partial nudity. <img src=smilies/laff.gif>

Anyway, it doesn't mean I'm not totally pumped for this game. I'm very tempted to go and buy it tommorow.
http://www.xanga.com/ZeldaDDhttp://x76.xanga.com/4fe1811b647a82128109/b2044670.gif

Insert some funny quote or something here.</a>Edited by The 9th Sage on 12/13/05 09:54 PM.

Kitsune Sniper

12-14-2005, 05:54 AM

> There's an odd bug with the turn order, rarely (Or not, I
> haven't encountered it yet myself, but others have said its
> happening every battle) a character will get a second turn
> right after their first.

I can verify this. I'm also wondering why it is that enemies seem to, like, ignore me for two turns all the time.

Also, some special attacks (Kain's Jump, Yang's Kick) take TOO LONG TO COME OUT. Kain takes two turns, and Yang takes FOUR.

Otherwise, the game came out good. I'm gonna wait and see if there's gonna be a v1.1 release down the line, though. :p

Dark Knight Kain

12-14-2005, 07:00 AM

> Otherwise, the game came out good. I'm gonna wait and see if there's gonna be a v1.1 release down the line, though. :p

I know in the SNES era it was common but how rare is that now-a-days? I'm really hoping its only this buggy because they had to get it out on time and they'll take the time to fix it later. I can dream, can't I?
-Dragonsbrethren

Cless

12-14-2005, 09:51 AM

> (Not a bug) The menu font is tiny

If I can successfully decompress and recompress the font, as well as locate the width table, I'm am SO totally hacking this to something slightly larger and a 100 times easier on the eyes. But we'll see tomorrow...
http://www.tales-cless.org/Phantasian Productions</a>

Dark Knight Kain

12-14-2005, 10:02 AM

> If I can successfully decompress and recompress the font, as
> well as locate the width table, I'm am SO totally hacking
> this to something slightly larger and a 100 times easier on
> the eyes. But we'll see tomorrow...

I will worship you as my God. Please use the DoS font, I loved that one.
-Dragonsbrethren

Vampire hunter D

12-14-2005, 04:39 PM

The file doesn't work. It seems you've uploaded a corrupt file, and when I repaired it it didn't have an extension. So after extracting it with winrar I added the .ips extension and recieved a "This is no correct ips file" message. Bah.....

Kitsune Sniper

12-14-2005, 05:37 PM

> I know in the SNES era it was common but how rare is that
> now-a-days? I'm really hoping its only this buggy because
> they had to get it out on time and they'll take the time to
> fix it later. I can dream, can't I?

Well, if you follow GBA rom releases, there's a few v1.1 games in there, most notably Pokemon games.

We'll have to wait.

Dark Knight Kain

12-14-2005, 05:53 PM

> The file doesn't work. It seems you've uploaded a corrupt
> file, and when I repaired it it didn't have an extension.
> So after extracting it with winrar I added the .ips
> extension and recieved a "This is no correct ips file"
> message. Bah.....

You're the second person to tell me that, yet it works fine for me... <img src=smilies/eek13.gif>

I'll upload a new one later.
-Dragonsbrethren

JCE3000GT

12-14-2005, 07:22 PM

> > Otherwise, the game came out good. I'm gonna wait and see
> if there's gonna be a v1.1 release down the line, though. :p

> I know in the SNES era it was common but how rare is that
> now-a-days? I'm really hoping its only this buggy because
> they had to get it out on time and they'll take the time to
> fix it later. I can dream, can't I?

They better fix this shit. I'm disappointed in this game so far. The cart runs better than the ROM/Emu but not much better. After a day I gave the cart back to my bro and said "fuck it". I'm growing more and more irritated at this sloppy job, I won't even tell you how much they've fucked up the data organization...it makes the original SFC data look half-way organized. <img src=smilies/upeyes.gif> All this space they have and they can't take the little extra time and streamline it? If anything it would make the game not as sloppy and *gasp* maybe run smoother? And don't be surprised if FFVa and FFVIa are equally as bad.

Oh and that health and safety warning HAS TO FUCKING GO.
<img src=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v307/VonBlitzKrieg/3000gt_vr4.jpg>

Kitsune Sniper

12-14-2005, 07:42 PM

> Oh and that health and safety warning HAS TO FUCKING GO.

Yes, because a two second delay from playing the game is too much to handle.<img src=smilies/upeyes.gif>

The warning's there for a reason. Live with it.

JCE3000GT

12-14-2005, 07:56 PM

> > Oh and that health and safety warning HAS TO FUCKING GO.
>
> Yes, because a two second delay from playing the game is too
> much to handle.
>
> The warning's there for a reason. Live with it.

Then why do the Japanese not have it in thier game? It's there because we live in a fucking nanny country that fears some idiot kid is going to play it while epileptic or for like 24 hours straight or some shit. If the parents haven't taught the kid what he needs to know by the time he can play this game then I blame the parents. I'm, so yes it does impact me playing this game, and I'm not alone. So what's wrong with finding a method of patching it to prevent seeing it?
<img src=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v307/VonBlitzKrieg/3000gt_vr4.jpg>

Atma

12-14-2005, 09:40 PM

> Oh and that health and safety warning HAS TO FUCKING GO.
a vast amount of americans are stupid and will sue over anything they can, which is why its there.
do you buy stuff from http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-1wp6.htmlplay-asia</a>? if you do, help a bro out and buy from that link :)

Dark Knight Kain

12-14-2005, 11:52 PM

<blockquote>In reply to:<hr>

They better fix this shit. I'm disappointed in this game so far. The cart runs better than the ROM/Emu but not much better. After a day I gave the cart back to my bro and said "fuck it". I'm growing more and more irritated at this sloppy job, I won't even tell you how much they've fucked up the data organization...it makes the original SFC data look half-way organized. All this space they have and they can't take the little extra time and streamline it? If anything it would make the game not as sloppy and *gasp* maybe run smoother? And don't be surprised if FFVa and FFVIa are equally as bad.

<hr></blockquote>

You know, if I hadn't played Dawn of Souls I wouldn't even care, because all of Square's ports have been terrible, but DoS made me change my opinion, I thought maybe they'd start putting effort into their remakes, I mean they just came out with Origins and DoS mopped the floor with it, it did nearly everything right. You can complain about the difficulty, but at least everything worked great.

This is still fun, but there are so many things wrong with it, I was hoping I'd have a new version of FF4 and I'd never have to dig out my cart/CD again, but I guess not...

The did an excellent job on the translation though.

Somehow I don't think you should worry about FF5 & 6, like I said, they probably wanted this thing out, when did they announce it, a month ago? They won't have a choice but remake FF5 & 6, no WSC port is available for them...
-Dragonsbrethren

JCE3000GT

12-15-2005, 12:15 AM

> You know, if I hadn't played Dawn of Souls I wouldn't even
> care, because all of Square's ports have been terrible, but
> DoS made me change my opinion, I thought maybe they'd start
> putting effort into their remakes, I mean they just came out
> with Origins and DoS mopped the floor with it, it did nearly
> everything right. You can complain about the difficulty, but at least everything worked great.

DoS was practically perfect gameplay-wise. I thought they did an awsome job on that one. I think this one was rushed beyond belief. But, I do love it nonetheless. There just enough in here to LOVE this remake. I can forget about the tiny ass font, the menus, and some of tiny misc things that annoy me because the rest is very good.

> This is still fun, but there are so many things wrong with
> it, I was hoping I'd have a new version of FF4 and I'd never
> have to dig out my cart/CD again, but I guess not...

There are alot of things wrong with it...but let's take the fact that some of it is hacking related out of the picture...it's really good.

> The did an excellent job on the translation though.

Agreed, I'm playing through it and I find myself not pressing A on every chat window. I'm actually reading it.

> Somehow I don't think you should worry about FF5 & 6, like I
> said, they probably wanted this thing out, when did they
> announce it, a month ago? They won't have a choice but
> remake FF5 & 6, no WSC port is available for them...

Maybe, but that doesn't mean they can't F' it up. <img src=smilies/thumb.gif>
<img src=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v307/VonBlitzKrieg/3000gt_vr4.jpg>

Dark Knight Kain

12-15-2005, 12:22 AM

My biggest fear right now is FF5, somehow I wouldn't put it past them to not upgrade the graphics at all, which wouldn't bother me if they didn't upgrade FF4's graphics, but since they did it just won't look right beside them.
-Dragonsbrethren

hcs

12-15-2005, 12:36 AM

> DoS mopped the floor with it, it did nearly
> everything right.

did anyone else feel as I did that DoS was everything that FF Tribute was supposed to be?

Dark Knight Kain

12-15-2005, 12:52 AM

> did anyone else feel as I did that DoS was everything that FF Tribute was supposed to be?

Too bad I lack any programming skill what-so-ever, I'm so tempted to make a FF4 Tribute.
-Dragonsbrethren

The 9th Sage

12-15-2005, 02:23 AM

> So what's
> wrong with finding a method of patching it to prevent seeing
> it?

Nothing. I'm rather glad my DS doesn't show that every time I boot up now.
http://www.xanga.com/ZeldaDDhttp://x76.xanga.com/4fe1811b647a82128109/b2044670.gif

Insert some funny quote or something here.</a>

KingMike

12-15-2005, 04:28 AM

> DoS was practically perfect gameplay-wise.

Except that the difficulty of the main quest of FF1 (hadn't played much of FF2) was almost a slap in the face, yes it was good.

Dark Knight Kain

12-15-2005, 06:00 AM

> Except that the difficulty of the main quest of FF1 (hadn't played much of FF2) was almost a slap in the face, yes it was good.

We're both referring to the game engine itself, I think we all agree they made FF1 a little too easy. FF2, on the other hand, was really changed for the best, it wasn't hard, but it was the first version I could stand playing through more than once.

And I just thought about something, there is hope for a version of FF4 with bugfixes, the European version isn't due out until "Q1 2006", meaning they have plenty of time to fix these little annoyances. If they're fixed I'm importing a copy for sure.
-Dragonsbrethren

JCE3000GT

12-15-2005, 09:35 AM

> Too bad I lack any programming skill what-so-ever, I'm so
> tempted to make a FF4 Tribute.

That's the sole reason why I want to learn VC++. Maybe someday I can take a course.

Oh and I just beat it (a little over 10 hours) and I left Cecil dead for a challenge and force of habit. Here's a screen of him killing Zeromus and his HP.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v307/VonBlitzKrieg/ff4a-end2.png

<img src=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v307/VonBlitzKrieg/3000gt_vr4.jpg>

C:Serverxampphtdocszopharoldwwwthreadsattachmentsf f4a-end.png

Dark Knight Kain

12-15-2005, 09:48 AM

Does the battle BG still scroll? I can't imagine the slowdown if it does...
-Dragonsbrethren

MegaManJuno

12-15-2005, 06:11 PM

Yeah, not sure why they did that with FF1... FFOrigins had an "Easy" mode and a Normal/Hard mode (don't recall exactly what it was called).

Easy was set up like FF1 on DoS, where the other mode was more in line with the original. I'm not sure why they opted to go only with the Easy mode setup from Origins in the GBA one...? I like some of the changes they made with Easy mode (spells relying on MP instead of the x number of castings per spell level), but it did seem like a cakewalk through the game overall.

JCE3000GT

12-15-2005, 07:20 PM

> Does the battle BG still scroll? I can't imagine the
> slowdown if it does...

Yes, even with max frameskip and max speed it wasn't close to full speed emulation.
<img src=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v307/VonBlitzKrieg/3000gt_vr4.jpg>

Atma

12-16-2005, 06:15 PM

> Yes, even with max frameskip and max speed it wasn't close
> to full speed emulation.

care to post a savestate or such at that point in the game (or just before)? I'd be interested to see if it does infact not play at full speed.
do you buy stuff from http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-1wp6.htmlplay-asia</a>? if you do, help a bro out and buy from that link :)

Dark Knight Kain

12-16-2005, 06:50 PM

<blockquote>In reply to:<hr>

Easy was set up like FF1 on DoS, where the other mode was more in line with the original. I'm not sure why they opted to go only with the Easy mode setup from Origins in the GBA one...? I like some of the changes they made with Easy mode (spells relying on MP instead of the x number of castings per spell level), but it did seem like a cakewalk through the game overall.

<hr></blockquote>

Origins took a lot of flak from "newschool" gamers for being too hard (Of course, their manhood wouldn't allow them to choose "Easy Mode"), I guess they toned it down for DoS. Honestly, I like the fact that they toned it down, I could never get into FF1 as much as I would've liked to, the beginning was just too long for my tastes, so DoS was good there, but they didn't balance it and pretty soon the whole game was too easy, even the extra dungeons weren't that hard.

I did find out that if you don't level up at all (As in, just fight normally, don't go out of the way to fight for experience or gil) the game retains some sense of challenge, I'm doing that right now.

FF2 was also a welcome releif, but I kinda wish they just chucked that old experience system that almost everyone hates...
-Dragonsbrethren