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POCKET BILLIARDS: FUNK THE 9 BALL
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English translation project by PR Translations
Version 1.00 Released 14th Jan 2006
http://prtranslations.cjb.net

* Introduction

Funk the 9 Ball is a GBC game produced by TAM and released in Japan in
2000. It is a game where you play 9 ball billiards (a game similar to
snooker that I have no familiarity with outside this game) using
monsters called Tamappii that have special powers which affect the
game. Perhaps surprisingly, it was not the (fairly vague) Pokemon
connection that prompted me to work on this - I didn't discover it
until after I had already been sold by the game's truly bizarre cast
of characters. This is just a weird, fun little game, which I thought
deserved an English translation. So here it is.

Note: While playing the game, do be sure to occasionally check out the
menu that can be accessed by pressing Select while you're outside of a
billiards match. You can see details about all the Tamappii and items
you win during gameplay.

* The Patch

Included with this Readme file should be funk9-100.ips, a patch that
needs to be applied to a Japanese ROM of Funk the 9 Ball using a
program such as SNESTool or Lunar IPS. I will not supply you with the
ROM, but I shouldn't need to, since it's really not hard to find.

* What's Translated

To the best of my knowledge, everything is now translated. This
includes all the menus, dialogue, Tamappii names and descriptions,
item names and descriptions, and credits. All the graphical text
(which mainly consists of titles and manga-style "sound effects") is
translated as well.

This is the second released patch for the game (after version 0.65,
which was released on 28th Dec 2004). New in this patch are the
translations of the Tamappii and item descriptions. I also translated
the few remaining bits of graphical text that I hadn't done before.
Finally, I have gone through all the other text and improved accuracy
and clarity where appropriate.

* A Note on the Translation

My Japanese has improved a lot in the past year, and in general
I don't think I still need to give a warning about how accurate the
translation may or may not be. It's still heavily paraphrased in a lot
of places due to a lack of space (and hacking ability on my part), but
bearing that in mind, I'd say it's a decent representation of the
original game.

It's worth noting that every character in this game has some odd
quirk to their speech. I have attempted (often poorly) to represent
these in English.

Also, for the "Today's Fortune" descriptions ("Lucky Colour"
and "Lucky Item"), I had a 7 whole letters to work with. The result
is, in some cases, some severely abbreviated text. I'd try to find a
more creative solution, but these bits of text are picked at random
and have no relevance to the rest of the game, so... yeah.

Finally, much of the game remains untested. This is because I, uh,
kinda suck at it. I'm confident that there are no bugs, but if it
turns out that the game suddenly turns into a garbled mess at some
point, don't hesitate to contact me.

* Contact

Feel free to e-mail me (Philip Reuben) at tuxedotrout@hotmail.com
for the aforementioned reason, or if you have any other questions or
comments.

* Thanks

TAM, for making the game. Matio, for listening to all my ramblings,
playing the game for 5 minutes before getting bored, and pretty much
demanding that I translate Pokemon Card GB 2 (no, I won't be
translating Pokemon Card GB 2 in the foreseeable future.) The creators
of the tools I used to hack the game (most notably Kent Hansen for
Tile Layer Pro, BreakPoint Software for Hex Workshop, and Jair for his
Relative Search, Script Extractor and Script Inserter utilities). And
finally, Jim Breen for WWWJDIC, and all the posters in the history of
sci.lang.japan.

* Disclaimer

Put simply, what you do with this is your own damn fault. I am not
responsible if you download the ROM, or for anything you do with the
ROM or the patch. Please don't distribute the patched ROM, and please
include this readme file if you distribute the patch. The original
game is copyright 2000 TAM, and the translation and patch are
copyright 2005 Philip Reuben.