Ninja Gaiden: Ninja Gaiden Stage & Difficulty Select

This game has been out for over 30 years, but most people have never
passed it. Why? Because it's so damn hard that most people never want to leave their NES on for the weeks it will end up taking to pass it. Plus, you only get one chance to fight Malth with full health; if you die, well, screw you. You can either start the entire game over, or you can try to beat him with less than full health, which is essentially impossible to do. This patch fixes everything, keeping that game still very challenging, but finally fun to play.

Patch Features:

* Select any stage to start on that you normally would be able to continue on after dying. Simply press Left or Right at the static title screen (the one that is shown after pressing Start once) to select the stage to start on. The starting stage is clearly displayed below PUSH START.

* Select any stage to start on, including ones that you normally could not start on, in other words, the boss stages. Simply hold Select while you press left or right at the static title screen to select the stage to start on.

* Cut scenes that normally are shown before a stage are shown if that stage is chosen as the starting stage. For those who really want to cheat, all cut scenes except the ending can be shown this way by selecting the appropriate stage. Since this wasn't the intent of this feature, the final scene cannot be selected this way; you still have to beat the final boss.

* The ability to make the game not screw you over when you die while fighting one of the forms of the final boss. Normally, if Ryu dies while fighting any form of the final boss, the game forces the player to return to stage 6-1! 6-1 isn't that bad, but 6-2 is HELL, and not something you want to have to play over and over. With the patch, when the game is started normally by pressing Start, dying while fighting any form of the final boss will still send Ryu back to 6-1. But, if you don't wan't to be screwed over and would rather return to 6-3, simply hold down Select while pressing Start at the title screen to start the game.

*A number of grammar and punctuation fixes were added. Probably the most noticeable are changing "SHINOBI" to "Shinobi" and "Ninja Dragon" to "Dragon Ninja". The rest are things like changing some "the"s to "a"s, fixing capitalization, changing "." to ",", etc. This game has such a great script. Great grammar keeps the reader from getting distracted.

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ReadMe-DvD_Translations-Ninja_Gaiden.txt

This file should be viewed using a mono-spaced font like "Courier".
Use a font size where 79 columns are visible.

Please don't distribute the ROM file in patched form.
Please don't distribute the DvD_Ninja_Gaiden_revB.ips file without this file.
Thanks.

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NINJA GAIDEN

Stage & Difficulty Select

for the Nintendo Entertainment System
Copyright 1989 by Tecmo

Enhancement Copyright 2021 by DvD Translations
Patch Version: Rev B Release Date: October 27, 2021

DvD Translations
dvdtranslations.eludevisibility.org

Code Editing: DvD
Graphics Editing: DvD
Testing: DvD

ReadMe: DvD

----------------------------------- CONTENTS ----------------------------------

INFO

(1) Ninja Gaiden Game Series
(2) If You Read Anything, Read This

USING THE PATCH

(3) Patching the ROM File
(4) Playing the Game on a Flash Cart or Emulator

ENHANCEMENT DETAILS

(5) Why DvD Chose to Enhance THIS Game
(6) Why YOU Should Bother Playing THIS Game
(7) DvD's Hacking Comments
(8) Project Timeline
(9) Software Used In This Enhancement

------------------------------------- INFO ------------------------------------

(1)------------------------ Ninja Gaiden Game Series --------------------------

"Ninja Gaiden" was the largest action game series made by Tecmo before they
merged with Koei.

"Ninja Ryukenden", the original Famicom name of the game, meaning Legend of the
Ninja Dragon Sword, is the first game in the series. Three games in total were
made for the Famicom and all three were released for the NES. All allow
infinite continues but are still notoriously difficult to pass.

All three Ninja Gaiden games are themselves part of the parent series of Tecmo
Theater games which were released for the Famicom, designed to have high
quality cut scenes. Although Tecmo Theater Vol. 1 was also eventually released
for the NES it was highly modified for the western market. The other three
Tecmo Theater games were not released outside of Japan.

Tecmo Theater Vol. 1 - Captain Tsubasa
Tecmo Cup - Soccer Game
Tecmo Theater Vol. 2 - Ninja Ryukenden
Ninja Gaiden
Tecmo Theater Vol. 3 - Ninja Ryukenden II - Ankoku no Jashin Ken
Ninja Gaiden II - The Dark Sword of Chaos
Tecmo Theater Vol. 4 - Captain Tsubasa II - Super Striker
Tecmo Theater Vol. 5 - Ninja Ryukenden III - Yomi no Hakobune
Ninja Gaiden III - The Ancient Ship of Doom
Tecmo Theater Vol. 6 - Kyatto Ninden Teyandee
Tecmo Theater Vol. 7 - Radia Senki - Reimei Hen

After the Famicom, Ninja Gaiden games continued to be made for many systems.
The first three games were ported to the SNES.

(2)-------------------- If You Read Anything, Read This -----------------------

DvD Translations enhanced version of "Ninja Gaiden" features:

* Select any stage to start on that you normally would be able to continue on
after dying. Simply press left or right at the static title screen (the one
that is shown after pressing start once) to select the stage to start on.
The starting stage is clearly displayed below PUSH START.

* Select any stage to start on, including ones that you normally could not
start on, in other words, the boss stages. Simply hold Select while you
press left or right at the static title screen to select the stage to start
on.

* Cut scenes that normally are shown before a stage are shown if that stage is
chosen as the starting stage. For those who really want to cheat, all cut
scenes except the ending can be shown this way by selecting the appropriate
stage. Since this wasn't the intent of this feature, the final scene cannot
be selected this way; you still have to beat the final boss.

* The ability to make the game not screw you over when you die while fighting
one of the forms of the final boss. Normally, if Ryu dies while fighting
any form of the final boss, the game forces the player to return to stage
6-1! 6-1 isn't that bad, but 6-2 is HELL, and not something you want to
have to play over and over. With the patch, when the game is started
normally by pressing Start, dying while fighting any form of the final boss
will still send Ryu back to 6-1. But, if you don't want to be screwed over
and would rather return to 6-3, simply hold down Select while pressing Start
at the title screen to start the game.

* A number of grammar and punctuation fixes were added. Probably the most
noticeable are changing "SHINOBI" to "Shinobi" and "Ninja Dragon" to "Dragon
Ninja". The latter was changed to match the Ninja Ryukenden script which
says "Replace... Good news... become a dragon ninja..." The rest are small
things like changing some "the"s to "a"s, fixing capitalization on "Father"
when Ryu's using it as a name, changing "." to ",", etc. This game has such
a great script. Correct grammar keeps the reader from getting distracted.

Don't buy repro carts! They are expensive. They don't support bug fixes for
patches because they can't be modified in the future. If they aren't built
from scratch they destroy a real cart. Every time a donor cart is used to make
a repro, it raises the scarcity and price of that real cart. If you still want
to spend your money on a multiple repro carts, instead of buying a single flash
cart, buy them from a vendor who only makes carts from scratch with new boards,
chips, and housings.

------------------------------- USING THE PATCH -------------------------------

(3)------------------------- Patching the ROM File ----------------------------

How to patch the ROM file:

You need:

1) A NES file. The file needs to include the standard 16 byte iNES header
followed by the program disk image data. With header, the ROM file is
262,160 bytes in size.

The header should be as follows:

4E 45 53 1A 08 10 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

You must have a 16 byte header for this patch, but even if your header
is wrong, this patch will fix it because it replaces the whole thing. So,
if you have a file without a header, you can just insert 16 of any byte at
the start of the file.

I'm not telling you how to get the NES file, but once you do, call it
"Ninja Gaiden+.nes".

ROM CRC32: 0x11f953f6

3) Patch File: DvD_Ninja_Gaiden_revB.ips

4) An IPS patching program
Remember to patch the file only AFTER it has a header.

Recommended IPS patching program for IBM PC: Lunar IPS.exe by FuSoYa
Recommended IPS patching program for Mac: UIPS by Lucas Newman

Using Lunar IPS / UIPS:

a) Double-click "Lunar IPS" / "UIPS"
b) Click "Apply IPS Patch" / "Apply Patch"
c) Choose "DvD_Ninja_Gaiden_revB.ips"
e) Choose "Ninja Gaiden+.nes"

(4)------------- Playing the Game on a Flash Cart or Emulator ----------------

All emulators and flash carts that can play the original Famicom file can play
the enhanced game.

The PowerPak flash cart emulates it perfectly.

Games designed for the original Famicom/NES hardware have one or two 16k
program banks and one 8k character bank. Later, all games made for the NES
used special mapper chips to expand the size of the addressable ROM beyond
these limitations. Some even included RAM for the character bank, instead of
ROM. This game uses MMC1, the first custom mapper Nintendo made. MMC1 was
specifically made to port Famicom Disk System games to cartridges, but it
was also widely used to make unique games for the NES and to port games using
3rd part developer custom mappers that Nintendo generally did not allow
outside of Japan. Although MMC1 supports SRAM saving, this game does not have
any save feature; hence the reason for this enhancement.

Game file size: 8 x 16 kBytes of Program ROM
16 x 8 kBytes of Character ROM
256 kBytes
262,144 Bytes
+ 16 Byte Header
= 262,160 Bytes

----------------------------- ENHANCEMENT DETAILS -----------------------------

(5)------------------- Why DvD Chose to Enhance THIS Game ---------------------

I've owned a complete mint copy of this game for over 30 years, but I never
passed it. Why? Because it's so damn hard that I never wanted to leave my NES
on for the weeks it ended taking me to pass it. Plus, you only get one chance
to fight Malth with full health; if you die, well, screw you. You can either
start the entire game over, or you can try to beat him with less than full
health, which is essentially impossible to do.

(6)---------------- Why YOU Should Bother Playing THIS Game -------------------

Once you can "save" the game by using the level select, the challenge is
reasonable and the game is really fun. It's still hell to beat the 6-2, but
everything else is reasonable. Why Tecmo didn't give this game a password in
the first place is beyond me. The cut scenes look as good today as they did
when the game first came out; absolutely amazing. Playing the game this way
keeps it challenging but makes it fun, more like having the password save of a
game like Castlevania III.

(7)------------------------- DvD's Hacking Comments ---------------------------

Rev A:

At first I made this hack simply for myself. Even with the audio feedback, it
was annoying to try to keep track of how many times I pushed up, I would have
felt embarrassed to release it in that state, even though it was usable.

I was stuck on stage 6-2 and so I switched to hacking a stage select for
another game I've always owned but never passed: The Adventures of Bayou
Billy. Once that patch was complete enough that it had a working display for
the selected stage, even though I could not get the cut-scenes to play when
starting a new game, I felt I should go back and add a display to Ninja Gaiden
as well. It didn't take very long to do it and it looked really good.

Title screen hacking turned out to be complicated because of the strange 4x2
tiles everything on the screen is made out of. I had to find to unused ones
as well. What a pain.

But, then always displaying Act I when the game starts bothered me. It would
be cool to have it play the cut scenes, but I had a lot of trouble getting
that to work for Bayou Billy. My goal was to at least have it display
Act II, III, etc. Well, it was at this time that I learned that not only was
Act I simply a tiny cut scene and that all the Acts were simply parts of
larger cut scenes. The title screen was 2 different cut scenes. The main one
shows everything on a loop from TECMO PRESENTS 1989 thorough the end of the
movie. The 2 title screen cut scene is simply a static cut scene shown when
start is pressed. The latter doesn't have the word TECMO at the bottom and
everything is slightly lower.

Once I figured all of that out, the hack to make the cut scenes show when
starting a game on a stage besides 1-1 was very easy and the end result is
just cool.

With all this working, I pushed myself to finally beat 6-2. There I learned
about how the final boss is nice because you only have to beat each form once
but terrible in that you have to back to 6-1 each time you die. Well, that
was no good. I had to fix that. But then I thought, not everyone would want
the game modified like this, so I should hack in a way to optionally select
this feature.

While searching for an unused Page 0 byte, I found the script. I felt like
fixing a few things that really bothered me.

After writing this ReadMe, I decided to go through the script one more time and
fix a lot more.

Rev B:

After releasing Ninja Gaiden, I immediately started on Ninja Gaiden II. After
completing Ninja Gaiden II, not releasing it since I'm still Alpha testing
it, I decided to add the features I added to Ninja Gaiden II to this game.
I really like now how, unless you press Select, you are always selecting a
stage that you normally would be able to continue at. It not even more
replicates what I felt this game needed from the beginning, a password save
ALA Castlevania III.

I also added a tiny hack to reset the stage to 1-1 if you don't start the
stage before the cut scene starts again.

Enjoy!

(8)----------------------- Project Timeline Highlights ------------------------

May 2021 - Project started

May 11 2021 - First version complete; any level can be selected
No visual indication
Always shows the ACT I cut scene

It didn't take too long to get to Stage 6-2. But, I felt like
doing other things, like playing games...

Oct 3 2021 - Level select visual indication added

Oct 4 2021 - Title screen compression figured out
Title screen hack complete

Oct 5 2021 - Play selected cut scene hack completed

Oct 9 2021 - I finally beat Stage 6-2.
Modified to always go to Stage 6-3 when dying on the final boss
I finally passed the game on my real NES.
Some text corrections created
New hack to select returning to 6-3 instead of 6-1 after dying
using the Select button added

Oct 10 2021 - Many more text corrections created
Rev A version testing completed
Rev A version released

Oct 25 2021 - Started Rev B to bring further enhancements from our Ninja Gaiden
II hack to Ninja Gaiden
Started on requirement to hit Select to choose Stages that you
normally could not start at

Oct 26 2021 - Completed requirement to hit Select to choose Stages that you
normally could not start at
Added reset of Stage back to 1-1 every time the static title
screen is re-displayed so that hitting start always takes you
to the displayed stage
Changed sound of stage select to match Ninja Gaiden II hack

Oct 27 2021 - Fixed newly introduced bug for Cut Scene 6-5 text
Rev B version testing completed

Oct 28 2021 - Rev B version released

(9)-------------- Software & Hardware Used In This Enhancement ----------------

* Emulator

FCEUX 2.2.2 (FCEUX 2.2.3 has too many problems)
by zeromus, adelikat

* Disassembler, Table Dumper, & Relative Searcher

Table Dumper Pro (version 21.05.18)
by DvD

* Hex Editor

Beyond Compare 4.4 Licensed Version
by Scooter Software

* Disassembled code manipulation, script editing, & ReadMe creation

Notepad++
by Don Ho and the rest of the Notepad++ team

* Testing on a real NES

PowerPak
by retroUSB

* Tile Editor

Tile Layer Pro 1.0
by Kent Hansen

* IPS Patch File Creator

Lunar IPS
by FuSoYa

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987654321098765432109876543210987654321 123456789012345678901234567890123456789

Database match: Ninja Gaiden (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20210216-231042)
File SHA-1: CA513F841D75EFEB33BB8099FB02BEEB39F6BB9C
File CRC32: 11F953F6
ROM SHA-1: 15F245161179AB1959B7DC20E82ADD024D23AA3D
ROM CRC32: 7C4A72D8