GameCats Archive

Camp Fangamer 2018 was this past weekend. It was a fun and weird celebration of Fangamer’s 10th anniversary, complete with multiple Reids and VR chats. Mato & I had a business lunch meeting with the Legends of Localization GameCats (game catalogers) at a local 50s-themed diner. Witness Danny McElvis:

Mato described the meeting as “surreal” because he was discussing some in-depth Final Fantasy VI stuff and everybody knew what he was talking about. Lucklight, Dominator, DannyMcGee, and Luck’s friend Doge were there~

It’s over, it’s over! My quest to document the GBA port of Link to the Past in Japanese is over! All for this:

The friggin’ Cane of Somasoa! Which used to be called the Cane of Somaria in Japanese. Actually it still is called the Cane of Somaria in subsequent ports of the Japanese version… Nintendo got a little inconsistent.

To get that screenshot, I had to beat LttP regularly, then phase into the Palace of the Four Swords and beat 4 souped-up bosses and four versions of Dark Link. Since you can only unlock the bonus dungeon by beating Four Swords, and since FS is multiplayer only, I had to use a code to warp past the guy guarding the dungeon. Do you wanna traverse the bonus dungeon for yourself and see a different ending to LttP?

Use this code: 030038F0:20

Don’t talk to the guy guarding the dungeon! Just enable the code while standing in front of him and you’ll be warped past him. Then disable it and you can play through the FS dungeon.

And how long did LttP Somasoa% take?

Oh…

Back in like 2003 when Nintendo started releasing ports of NES and SNES games for the Game Boy Advance, I was really excited. Especially when my most favorite game was released: A Link to the Past. But when I played it, I was turned off by Link yelling every time he swung his sword. Not to mention the excruciating sound of phasing between the Light World and Dark World. I don’t think I bothered beating it on the GBA.

But now it’s time to Somaria% this game! Well, more than that – I’m also getting screenshots of all the text and creating many save states for future use.

O.G. San is on the prowl in Hyrule once again! But lordy lordy, I’d forgotten how strange the GBA version sounded. Some pieces of the Hyrule Castle song were simply missing, so it didn’t sound as important and intimidating as it did in the SNES version. And when I fell down that hole in the beginning, Link screamed :I

And the controls! The buttons are mapped strangely because the GBA has fewer buttons than the SNES controller. I had to complete remap them before I could comfortably play it. It’s also a bit easier – my magic bar filled up as soon as I got the Lantern, which doesn’t happen in the SNES version. And the enemies drop way more hearts.

Now that every popular Nintendo game is released over and over on whatever new digital service Nintendo happens to be running, it’s not exciting anymore. It’s exhausting. I pity the poor souls whose first experience with LttP was on the GBA.

Mato’s working on expanding the old article on the main site about the Cane of Somaria being renamed in the Japanese version of the GBA port of A Link to the Past (whoa, what a mouthful). I checked the WiiU VC and SFC Mini ports of the game over the weekend. As per the GameCats laws, I named the file “O.G. San” (but in hiragana cuz English letters wouldn’t fit):

Since I only needed to get to the Cane of Somaria and not worry about anything else, I ended up creating a pretty quick route that skips a lot of fat and goes straight for the meat:

1. Get the Magic Powder (good for turning Fire Fairies/Bubbles into regular Fairies)
2. Beat the Eastern Palace, get Pegasus Boots and run whenever possible
3. Beat the Desert Palace, buy Zora Flippers
4. Upgrade shield and boomerang behind the waterfall
5. Get to the Dark World
6. Get the hammer in the Dark Palace, use the Magic Mirror and leave without fighting the boss
7. Upgrade Magic, rescue the bird from the statue
8. Fly to Warp Point 1, get Ether Medallion
9. Fly to Warp Point 7, beat Swamp Palace
10. Fly to Warp Point 3, beat Blind’s Dungeon
11. Rescue the frog and upgrade sword
12. Fly to Warp Point 6, enter Misery Mire
13. Get the boss key using this guide
14. Use Magic Mirror to warp to the beginning of the dungeon, walk to big chest and get the Cane of Somaria

I haven’t timed myself, but I like to call this my Somaria% speedrun :]

One of the LoL game cataloging dudes is starting on Lufia 1 and found some infinite HP/MP cheat codes for the English game. He needed the same codes but for the Japanese version, so I did some quick ROM debugging and figured out the equivalent cheat codes. So, if you’re playing Lufia or Estpolis Denki and want infinite HP & MP, here are the codes:

Lufia 1
8236-0F34 – infinite HP
823A-0FC4 – infinite MP

Estpolis Denki (エストポリス伝記 ＊独自の改造チートコード)
08E90FBD – infinite hp (HP減らない)
08E94EBD – infinite mp (MP減らない)

It’s times like this that I’m glad I know technical stuff on top of translator stuff!

Yesterday, Mato & I started our game-cataloging journey through Super Mario Odyssey. We’re playing through both the English and Japanese versions and getting crisp, high-quality PNG screenshots of all the text in the game. We’re also streaming the journey! Join us on Twitch Mondays through Fridays at 5pm AZ time (currently MST), chat with us, and give us tips! We’ll be streaming on that schedule until we finish the game.

And here’s the archive of Day 1 if you missed it: