Final Fantasy II: FF2US Weapon Restoration

For those of you that are curious, FF2 was shipped off to the US as an easier and toned down version of FF4. One of the changes made was to remove all existence of 3 White Magic spells, Protect, Shell, and Dispel. You can see Protect (known as Armor) and Shell when fighting the Mind monster in the Lunar Core. Shell is seen as a counter to Holy or Meteo on the Mind monster. There are only 4 weapons that cast these spells, and these changes will allow to see the effects of these spells. The spells were never removed from the game... they are merely hidden and the spells learned by level had changed.

FF2US (SNES) - Weapon Magic Restoration Hack
Version 1.0a - 12/13/08
Created by Deathlike2
dlhacks@gmail.com
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Why does this patch exist?
--------------------------

For those of you that are curious, FF2 was shipped off to the US as an easier
and toned down version of FF4. One of the changes made was to remove all
existance of 3 White Magic spells, Protect, Shell, and Dispel. You can see
Protect (known as Armor) and Shell when fighting the Mind monster in the Lunar
Core. Shell is seen as a counter to Holy or Meteo on the Mind monster. There
are only 4 weapons that cast these spells, and these changes will allow to
see the effects of these spells. The spells were never removed from the game..
they are merely hidden and the spells learned by level had changed.

Note: To use spells that are attached to a weapon, you need to equip the weapon
first. In battle, select the Item command for the character equipped with the
weapon and hit the Up button until the equipped weapon is displayed. Select
the weapon twice and it should target like you were using an item or a spell.
Select the target and see what happens! Not all weapons have a spell.


What This Patch Will Not Do
---------------------------

This will not change what or when magic is learned. It will not restore
learning Dispel in FF2.

There is no point to applying this patch to FF4 Easytype (or even FF4). FF4ET
does not have the spells removed from the weapon, and thus does not need
the patch.


Weapons Affected
----------------

Defense Sword (aka Defender) - Protect
Murasame Katana - Protect
Elven Bow - Shell
Lunar Staff (aka Kinesis/Energy Staff) - Dispel


Patching
--------

There are patches provided for the following...

SNES (unheadered)
SNES (headered)

Note: Both patches should work on all SNES versions of this game.
This includes FF4, FF2US (SNES) 1.0, FF2US (SNES) 1.1, and FF4 Easytype.

I suggest you use NSRT to verify if your SNES ROM is a valid dump and
to determine if the ROM has a header.

Windows: http://www.romhacking.net/utils/400/
Linux: http://www.romhacking.net/utils/401/
Mac: http://www.romhacking.net/utils/484/

You should be able to use an emulator's software patching or LunarIPS
if hardpatching is needed.

This can be patched against J2e's translation or any translation that
does not move the spell data around.


Romhacking Info
---------------

Subtract 0x200 from all values if you are using a headerless ROM.

Modifications done at:
0x7939B - Lunar Staff
0x793F3 - Defense Sword
0x7947B - Murasame Katana
0x7958B - Elven Bow


Important Note
--------------

I don't have any issues using this hack/patch as a basis for another
hack/patch, particularly if it is to restore some of the spell list changes
from FF4. It would be nice if you mentioned my name, but it isn't required.


Credits
-------

zyrthofar made a nice editor that made the changes easy to check and verify.

JCE3000GT made an awesome complete hack (based on what was known at the
time) that got me interested in finding out more.

Dragonsbreathren for helping out when I didn't know any better way back when.
I got the inspiration for this hack from his hack.

Thanks to Lenophis for putting up with me on the forums.

Entroper wrote a pretty good FF4A doc sheet with addresses that I could find
what I needed to modify on my own.

Paladin wrote a pretty good FF4 reference sheet with addresses.


Final Fantasy II (USA).smc - NOINTRO
CRC32: 65D0A825
MD5: 4FA9E542B954DCB954D5CE38188D9D41
SHA-1: 2FA447E3E010CE8BA5B4E746F6609AA0E324D947
SHA-256: 680535DC1C4196C53B40DC9C2C9BC159A77802AB8D4B474BEF5DC0281C15AD06