EARTHBOUND: EarthBound: MSU-1 Hip Hop Journey

EarthBound: MSU-1 Hip Hop Journey

This rom hack adds CD-quality audio and some other features to the 1995 game "EarthBound" for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. When used with the custom-made PCM music pack (downloaded separately) the original soundtrack is replaced with all-new music sourced from (mostly) rap and hip hop beats.

These aren't covers of the original soundtrack, but is instead curated music that is meant to "match" the spirit of the game.

The end result is over 170 tracks replaced with an all-new soundtrack. Since these PCM files are uncompressed audio, they take up quite a bit of space and will have to be downloaded separately. You can find them available here:

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That's obviously the meat and potatoes of this rom hack, but there are other features as well, including being able to press Y to run, typo corrections, and bug fixes. See the readme file for more details.

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~~Proudly making rom hacks about once every 20 years~~


EarthBound: MSU-1 Hip Hop Journey
Version 1.0 (08-14-2019)
by Ballz

This rom hack adds CD-quality audio and some other features to the 1995 game
"EarthBound" for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. When used with my
custom-made PCM music pack (downloaded separately) the original soundtrack is
replaced with all-new music sourced from (mostly) rap and hip hop beats.


~~==INSTALLATION==~~
Apply this patch using your favorite IPS patching tool onto a clean
EarthBound US rom that does *NOT* have a header.

Put this newly patched rom into the same folder where you extracted the PCM music files, which can be downloaded here:

https://mega.nz/#F!thAkyYxJ!huyyjwS5Djpyk25Ci-iWsA

Make sure the rom's file name matches the PCM files. It should be
"eb_msu1.sfc" Also make sure you have "eb_msu1.msu" which is included in the
download with the PCM files.

This game is compatible with the sd2snes flash drive and with the most recent
versions of Snes9x (1.55 and up), bsnes, and higan.


~~==NEW FEATURES==~~
- Full MSU-1 soundtrack implemented (thanks Conn for original MSU-1 IPS patch
and ShadowOne333 for the CCS script conversion which I tweaked a bit)
- Press "Y" to run (thanks ShadowOne333)
- Music player hidden somewhere in the game. It's not that hard to find, so
you should stumble on it by accident sooner or later (big thanks to
Phoenixbound for fixing a major game crash issue with it)
- Greek alphabet has been redrawn and some letters have accents, sourced from
MaternalBound


~~==TYPO CORRECTIONS==~~
Too many spelling/typo changes to fully list, but some highlights:
- "unverse" to "universe"
- Paula now "prays from [the] bottom of her heart"
- "Mashroomized" now "Mushroomized"
- "bologne" is now "bologna"
- "cappuccino" spelled correctly
- The "Club Stoic" graphic on the building in Summers now reads "Stoic Club,"
matching the in-game dialogue.
- Using the protractor now gives a gender-neutral response (avoiding pronoun
misuse if Paula uses it)
- A lot of names are now consistent throughout the game. Some examples:
-- Brick Road (no more Brickroad)
-- Master Barf (no more Master Puke)
-- Lumine Hall (no more Lumine Hole)
-- Lilliput Steps (no more Liliput Step)
- Not a typo per se, but Pokey is now Porky, his canonical name. At least
I'm pretty sure it's canonical...


~~==SCRIPT CHANGES==~~
So I actually wanted to leave the original Marcus Lindblom translation alone
as much as possible. Because it's actually a pretty darned good for its time
and has held up well these past 25+ years. I also figured if you wanted a
more thorough relocalization, there are already projects out there for that
(MaternalBound, among others).

Having said that, there are a handful of occasions where I tweaked or
reworded something to make it clearer. For example, the Tessie watcher who
talks about UFO's originally made it sound like Tessie itself abducted a kid
and then flew to Stonehenge. That's been fixed. Another example was with the
bellboy reading the newspaper in Scaraba. His line after reading the
newspaper has been reworked to make it clear the newspaper gets its info from
rumors.

Overall it's pretty minor stuff like that, which I would only expect the most
eagle-eyed player to ever notice.


~~==BUG FIXES==~~
- The song order for Milky Well/Rainy Circle melodies has been fixed. They
were originally out of order.
- Two NPCs originally missing from Threed are now restored and in their
proper place (thanks ShadowOne333 and TragicManner). This bug was present
in both Japanese and English releases.
- The music in the Monotoli Building elevator ends abruptly shortly after the
elevator comes to a complete stop. I now have it properly looping (MSU-1
only).
- Two cops in Onett had their dialogue swapped from Mother 2. This really
doesn't change anything in-game, but now they're in line with the original
Japanese version.
- Lucky coin and Charm coin are now the same thing (I went with the "Lucky
coin" for both). In Mother 2 they are the same item, just one was meant to
be ridiculously overpriced in Summers. They have the exact same stats
otherwise.
- An old lady in Twoson gives some different dialogue options, depending on
who is in your party. It kind of got messed up in the original game, but
has been fixed here (thanks ShadowOne333)


~~==ITEM NAME CHANGES==~~
Some items have been renamed to avoid grammatical errors like "Ness found a
Insecticide spray." The full list of changed items is below, in case you're
using a guide or something and need to know what it was originally called.

ORIGINAL NAME NEW NAME
Insecticide spray Can of bug spray
Xterminator spray Super bug spray
Insignificant item Worthless item
HP-sucker Modest HP-sucker
IQ capsule Genius capsule
Charm coin Lucky coin


~~==FURTHER DISCUSSION==~~
Hopefully at whatever point in time in the future that you're reading this
readme file, at least one of the following places will still exist and
theoretically will have the latest version of this rom hack and music files
linked somewhere on them:

PK Hack Forum:
https://secure.fangamer.com/forum/Community/PKHack

Zeldix.net Forum:
https://www.zeldix.net/t1931-earthbound-msu-1

Romhacking.net:
https://www.romhacking.net


~~==SPECIAL THANKS==~~
- My wife, Patton, for humoring me and giving encouragement all these months.
- Conn for the original EarthBound MSU-1 patch that jump-started my project
in fall of 2018.
- The PK Hack Slack crew, but Phoenixbound and ShadowOne333 especially for
helping me with numerous little things (and a few big things) here and
there.
- Yatsuha for finding me the perfect Fat Jon song for the game's opening
scene, which probably is what officially turned this from "futzing around
to kill some boredom" into a full-blown rom hacking project.
- Tomato. His Legends of Localization EarthBound book was invaluable in
finding text oddities.
- byuu for creating MSU-1 and Ikari for implementing it in sd2snes. This
project literally would not exist without you guys.
- The makers of Coilsnake. You know what you did.





Database match: EarthBound (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Super Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20180813-062835)
File/ROM SHA-1: D67A8EF36EF616BC39306AA1B486E1BD3047815A
File/ROM CRC32: DC9BB451
File/ROM MD5: A864B2E5C141D2DEC1C4CBED75A42A85