Retro Hackers LogoGuestLog in

Summer Tree
News
Database
Users
Projects
Game Ports
Videos
Music
Material
Feedback

Seiken Densetsu Restoration

Original game : Final Fantasy Adventure

Platform : GB

Author : CasualCollision

Release date : 29 July 2019

Category : Improvement

Patch version : 1.0

Modifications : G

Downloads : 1261

ROM Information

No-Intro Name: Final Fantasy Adventure (USA)
(No-Intro version 20130802-061634)
ROM/File SHA-1: 8B93C55EE2660C60CF86DD70058F96ACE98782C8
Patched ROM/File SHA-1: E24EB4A11E553B9FB085570E03C855C5532D68CD

Hack description

Seiken Densetsu is the first game in the Mana series. However, upon localization, the title was changed to Final Fantasy Adventure in North America, and Mystic Quest in Europe. On top of this, there was some minor censorship done to the game. This hack aims to restore the English localization back to the original title, with censors removed. Therefore, all regional changes to the graphics except for the HUD have been reverted.

Included are both an IPS patch and a BPS patch; each are identical in function, so which one to use relies solely on personal preference.

Screenshots

Contributions

ContributorType of contributionDescription

Reviews

This simple hack completes its task except the script was overlookedKallisto2021-11-25Version 1.0

This romhack has indeed uncensored the graphics that were changed when it first came over the west long long ago.

However, the script was not uncensored and anyone can find out more about the changes by Gouki of Borg that made a guide of Translation Differences throughout the game. One of these examples was that Lee wanted Virgin's Blood, but this was never stated in the NA version.

Despite this the hack I can still recommend but hopefully someone will do an update for this game to fix the script someday which is the only thing it needs now.

Restoration and CorruptionJosephine Lithius2020-04-01Version 1.0

Update: Upon further investigation, it would appear that there's some sort of bizarre incompatibility between VisualBoy Advance and, apparently, any given US Final Fantasy Adventure ROM. I tried playing a completely unmodified version of the game and I still got the SRAM corruption bug. In fact, it happened even earlier than it did while playing the ROM hack. However, I haven't encountered any problems while playing the European version, "Mystic Quest." Furthermore, I haven't thoroughly tested the US game in any other emulator, so it's very likely to be limited to the specific version of VisualBoy Advance I'm using. (VBA doesn't have good Super/Game Boy/Color compatibility, to begin with...) So, I apologize for the misinformation.

Update 2: Sometimes, it's the simplest thing that breaks a game. Save states. Loading save states under certain circumstances – such as loading an older one, then a newer one – will break the SRAM. It's just as simple and complicated as that.

However, the Experience/Level mismatch still happens, regardless of emulator, and since it was undocumented and doesn't match even the Japanese game, I still can't recommend this. Thank you for reading and, once again, I apologize for my mistake.

Original review

This is a very simple patch made to do a very simple task: de-censor the game and give it the original title screen.  To that end, it does its job well.  However, this comes at an unexpected cost...

Players will no longer be able to save their game.

I started playing Final Fantasy Adventure with this patch and once I got beyond a certain point, the SRAM became corrupt and I could no longer load nor save my game.  Instead, VisualBoy Advance actually crashed.  Every.  Single.  Time.  I couldn't even do RAM Searches to find cheat codes, anymore.  The emulation flat-out refused.  I've never had a game do that, before.  The SRAM file is just that messed up.

In addition, something about this patch alters the Experience Point/Level Up data in an odd way that goes completely unmentioned in the documentation. See normally, the player can reach their first level-up at 16 Experience Points.  For whatever reason, this was increased to 263!  In the normal game, this is the required XP to reach Level 5.  If the player grinds their way to Level 2 (in this hack), the next level-up value is 402 – the base game XP value for Level 6.  In other words, it seems like the Experience/Level data has been shifted by 5.  While this does eventually balance out as stronger monsters give more Experience Points, it also makes the beginning of the game much harder than it needs to be.  I feel like this might be related to the SRAM corruption I mentioned, rather than a legitimate feature, though.

Lastly, the BPS and IPS files give ROMs with completely different hashes.  While the BPS gives a ROM that matches the given "Patched ROM" hash (starting with "E24EB"), the IPS file changes the ROM's hash to one starting with "8CC16."  I'm not sure if this matters since the ROMs are functionally-identical, but I figured it was worth mentioning.

All that being said, I do not recommend this patch.  I'm all for de-censoring games, but the SRAM corruption makes this virtually unplayable on real hardware (unless you're marathoning it) and the shift in the XP/Level data table is either undocumented or unintended, but definitely unexpected and unwanted.