------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ReadMe-DvD_Translations-DvD_Translations-Ghosts_'n_Goblins_+.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_Ghosts_'n_Goblins_+_revA.ips file without this file. Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GHOSTS 'N GOBLINS + for the Nintendo Entertainment System Copyright 1986 by Capcom Enhancement Copyright 2025 by DvD Translations Patch Version: Rev A Release Date: September 21, 2025 DvD Translations dvdtranslations.eludevisibility.org Code Editing: DvD Graphics Editing: DvD Testing: DvD & 1AM ReadMe: DvD ----------------------------------- CONTENTS ---------------------------------- INFO (1) Ghosts 'n Goblins 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)--------------------- Ghosts 'n Goblins Game Series ------------------------ "Ghosts 'n Goblins" is one of the larger action game series made by Capcom, currently ranking #12 by number of unit sales. It is a notoriously difficult platformer series. It also spawned a side series called "Gargoyle's Quest", the first two of which were much easier and contained RPG elements. "MakaiMura", the original Japanese arcade name of the game, meaning Demon World Village, is the first game in the series. The Famicom game is fairly faithful port of the arcade game. Ignoring the puzzle and cell phone games, there are currently 5 games in the Ghosts 'n Goblins series and 3 in the Gargoyle's Quest series. The home versions listed are the original versions, but many were ported to other systems. Notice that Gargoyle's Quest II is really late NES game that came out after a Genesis, Gameboy, and Super Famicom game came out. In Japan it was later ported to the Gameboy. Arcade Home MakaiMura Sep 1985 Famicom Jun 13, 1986 Ghosts 'n Goblins Sep 19, 1985 NES Nov 1986 Dai MakaiMura Dec 1988 Mega Drive Aug 3, 1989 Ghouls 'n Ghosts 1988 Genesis 1989 Red Areemer: MakaiMura Gaiden Gameboy May 2, 1990 Gargoyle's Quest Jul 1990 Chou-MakaiMura Super Famicom Oct 4, 1991 Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts Super Nintendo Nov 1991 Red Areemer II Famicom Jul 17, 1992 Gargoyle's Quest II NES Oct 1992 Demon's Blazon: MakaiMura Monshou Hen Super Famicom Oct 10, 1994 Demon's Crest Super Nintendo Nov 1994 Goku MakaiMura PSP Aug 13, 2006 Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins Aug 29, 2006 Kaettekita MakaiMura Switch Feb 25, 2021 Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection Feb 25, 2021 Note: Areemer is a-ri-i-ma-a in Japanese. In Japanese, the "i" is pronounced like a hard e in English and two "a"s in a row sounds like "Ahhh" which is typically translated as "er". You normally see this translated as Arremer, but to me that doesn't make me pronounce it correctly. (2)-------------------- If You Read Anything, Read This ----------------------- DvD Translations enhanced version of "Ghosts 'n Goblins" is titled "Ghost 'n Goblins +". It felt like a fitting name due to the large number of features it adds: 1 Issues: Stage Select: a) You have to enter a complicated password to activate the stage select screen. b) Stage select forces you to select a stage EVERY TIME you die! c) You can only select Round 1! d) You cannot select the weapon you had previously that you want to continue with. e) Only player 1 chose the stages for both players. f) Stage select always allows selecting stages that you would not normally be able to continue at. g) The Intro and Map are never shown after selecting a stage. Fix: Stage, Round, and Weapon select is automatically activated whenever 1 PLAYER or 2 PLAYERS is selected on the main menu, but only activated for each player one time before playing. Each player gets to choose on their controller: - Any Stage: A and B buttons - Round up to 9: Right and Left on the Joypad - Staring Weapon: Up and Down on the Joypad - By default only valid stages and weapons for that stage are allowed to be selected. Simply hold down Select and all stages that can be started from are allowed and all weapons, even those that would be impossible to have for the that Stage and Round combination, are allowed to be selected. - Press Start when your are done to start the game with all choices selected If Stage 1 A is chosen for Round 1 the Intro is shown, otherwise the Map is shown. Why: Even with infinite continues, this game is ridiculously hard. Even good gamers will usually take days to pass it the first time. The original Stage select was basically useless. Stage, Round, and Weapon select allows you to continue where you left off after you turn off your NES. After almost 40 years, this will allow average but dedicated gamers to finally pass the game without cheating. After almost 40 years of playing this game, I finally beat it without cheating and I went from hating this game to actually enjoying it. Now, as for beating it on Round 2... The game can go higher than round 9. You can easily play round 10 by beating Stage 7 of Round 9. If someone can play through the whole game at Round 9 without cheating and pass it then there is a reason to do this. Since stage select is the only way to start the game, and since the Intro is only shown when first starting the game, without this the Intro would never be shown. Additionally, the map is shown as that is what would normally happen when continuing. 2 Issues: Ending Credits: a) Ending credits are only shown after entering a special code. b) The "good" ending is only shown when beating the game on the 2nd Round. c) When winning 2nd round, after the good ending, the player dies. When continuing, the player starts at Round 3 Stage 7. Then because you always get the bad ending after round 2, once the final boss is defeated, you go back to the Stage 1 A of the next round without dying. Beating round 4 and higher always gives you the bad ending and takes you to Stage 1 A of the next round. So, you never get to play round 3 except for Stage 7. d) 4 typos were introduced when the game was transferred to the NES from the arcade game - 1 typo in the bad ending: DEVISUT - 3 typos in the good ending: CONGRATURATION, COURAGEOUR, ARE_ Fix: On Round 2, the Ending Credits shown when any button pressed. On Round 3 and higher, the good ending is shown and the ending credits are always shown. After seeing the ending, the game always continues on Stage 1 A of the next round. All typos were corrected in both endings to make the ending match the arcade game. Engrish not adjusted, just typos fixed. Why: The player should be rewarded, not punished, for passing any round higher than 1. The Credits screen is nice to see, and shouldn't require a password just to view it, but the change allows the user to still get the default experience of not seeing the screen. Or, a player can challenge themselves and get a fun reward for passing the game a 3rd time. Players should be able to play Round 3! Even though the game always has had a lot of Engrish in the endings, the arcade game did not have any typos. 3 Issues: Title Screen Menus: a) 1 PLAYER is always selected by default when the Main menu is shown. b) The 2 player continue menu, shown after selecting CONTINUE after playing a 2 player game or a player 2 only game always defaults to ONLY 1UP. c) Main menu allows the blank row where CONTINUE is shown after dying to be selected before playing the game. Fix: After dying, CONTINUE is selected by default on the Main menu. The 2 player continue menu default selection matches whatever was previously played. When CONTINUE is not an option, the row cannot be selected. Why: Most of the time you want to continue after dying playing it the same way you did before. This saves tons of time especially for a 2 player game. Selecting the blank Continue row offers no features; really it was a bug added when the Continue row was added for the Famicom conversion to the NES. Continuing on the Famicom required entering a special code every time you died! 4 Issues: Map is shown every time you die. Fix: a) The map can be completely bypassed by pressing any button, except for Start, on the player's controller. b) While the map is scrolling ANY button pressed will immediately cancel it and start the game. Why: Map is annoying to have to see EVERY TIME you die, but that was the intent of the designers. So, by default it is always shown (when the intro is not shown) but the player can easily bypass it. Note that Start had to be ignored for totally bypassing the Map otherwise pressing Start to select the Stage would have always bypassed the map; this is not an issue as Start is not the normal best button to press to bypass the map anyway. 5 Issues: Player 2 cannot do a lot of things: a) pause/un-pause the game b) choose anything on the menus c) cancel the demo Fix: Each player can pause and un-pause their game, but not the other players. Either player can control either of the menus and cancel the demo. Why: Playing a player 2 only game was a pain before because you had to constantly switch between controllers. The issue applied to pausing. It's clear this was a hold over from the Famicom version of the game since player 2 does not have Start or Select button on a Famicom. 6 Issues: Player Ready Screen a) Screen locks up when the player has more than 9 lives. b) Screen doesn't display what round you are playing. Fix: Player Ready Screen now properly displays up thru 99 lives and doesn't lock up with any number of lives. The Round, which was never displayed before, is now shown on the Player Ready screen. To keep the change as minimal to the experience as possible, it is only shown on Round 2 and higher. Rounds above 9 are displayed as letters. Why: Locking up is a game breaking bug... that no one probably ever saw because you'd have to be a god to gain enough lives without dying! Never seeing the round was generally as you'd be a fool not to know what round you were playing unless you never turned the game off for years. But, now that you can select your Round, it really helps to see which one you are on, since you might accidentally choose the wrong round and no know it. Also, it is nice to see the screen change when you are playing Round 2. 7 Issues: The ONLY 2UP game always starts with showing player 1 dying. Fix: Playing ONLY 2UP doesn't show the player 1 dying. Why: It was lazy programming that just implemented the player 2 only game by playing the 2 player game and simply killing player 1 right off the bat. 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 131,088 bytes in size. The header should be as follows: 4E 45 53 1A 08 00 21 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 "Ghosts 'n Goblins +.nes". ROM w/ proper header CRC32: 0x87ed54aa 3) Patch File: DvD_Ghosts_'n_Goblins_+_revA.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_Ghosts_'n_Goblins_+_revA.ips" e) Choose "Ghosts 'n Goblins +.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 very early simple mapper called UNROM that alowed expanding the program ROM and required on board RAM for character RAM. Game file size: 8 x 16 kBytes of Program ROM 0 x 8 kBytes of Character ROM 128 kBytes 131,072 Bytes + 16 Byte Header = 131,088 Bytes ----------------------------- ENHANCEMENT DETAILS ----------------------------- (5)------------------- Why DvD Chose to Enhance THIS Game --------------------- I've owned a copy of this game for over 30 years, but I never passed it. Why? Because it's so damn hard. And if you collect a bad weapon, you are screwed, although, it's usually possible to keep playing a level until an enemy drops the one you want. Even with this this enhancement it took me over 3 weeks to pass Round 1. (6)---------------- Why YOU Should Bother Playing THIS Game ------------------- Once you can "save" the game by using the stage, round and weapon select, the challenge for Round 1 acceptable. And you can turn your NES off an play other games between playing it without having to use the original stage select which constantly forces you to have to pick the stage you want to play. It really transforms the game from the worst thing you've ever been subjected to, to a reasonable game. It's still hell fight the Red Areemers, probably the most random attack pattern enemy ever created, clearly much harder than any boss in the game, and the ghosts at level 6 that always pop up right on top of you. I would question why Capcom didn't give this a password save at in the first place, but it's really not something Capcom generally did. In fact, the maker of the arcade game specifically did his best to make it as hard as possible whenever he saw the beta testers doing well at a certain point in the game. Before this, some people probably never passed 2 B. Many others, probably never passed 3 B with it's hellish amount of Red Areemers. Still others might have given up at Stage 5 or 6. And those that did finally pass the game, often totally gave up when after beating the first round, when they found that had to play it all over again on a harder setting, not knowing what sort of an ending they would see after doing so. With this stage, round, and weapon select and an NES flash cart you will finally be able to play levels you've never played before. Playing the game this way keeps it extremely challenging but makes actually somewhat fun to play. Passing it, without cheating, will allow you to brag about doing something that few others have done. (7)------------------------- DvD's Hacking Comments --------------------------- Like always on these level select hacks, I made this hack for myself. 1AM was starting on playing Gargoyle's Quest and I wanted him to see the game it came from. When seeing how brutal it was, I knew it needed a stage select hack. At first, I had forgotten about the built in Stage Select feature, but once I tried it, I remembered why I had forgotten about it: it's terrible in every sense of the word. I knew I needed to fix all the issues to make the game fun. I'm really proud of how this one turned out. With all the enhancements, making the gave experience what it should have always been, the Ghosts 'n Goblins + named seemed to really fit the end product. (8)----------------------- Project Timeline Highlights ------------------------ Aug 11 2025 - Project started Aug 19 2025 - Most of the simpler features added such as preventing the Map from showing, each player controlling themselves, stage select automatically working and only showing on the first round (mostly) and the ending credits always working Aug 26 2025 - Full Stage, Round and Wepon select completed Aug 28 2025 - Can stop map after it starts to scroll added Title screen updated Sep 12 2025 - Fix and enhancement of the Player Ready screen completed Sep 20 2025 - New variables added to separate the stage select password entry variable from the ending credits password entry variable and to use unique stage select variables for each player finally getting the stage select to properly display at the right times for a 2 player game. Beta testing finally beat all stages of Round 1 with all possible weapons on real hardware. Sep 21 2025 - ReadMe Written Released (9)-------------- Software & Hardware Used In This Enhancement ---------------- * Emulator FCEUX 2.6.6 by zeromus, adelikat * Disassembler, Table Dumper, & Relative Searcher Table Dumper Pro (version 25.9.3) by DvD * Hex Editor Beyond Compare 4.4.2 Licensed Version by Scooter Software * Disassembled code manipulation & 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 987654321098765432109876543210987654321 123456789012345678901234567890123456789