CONTENTS

• Burning Pro Wrestling
• Jikkyo Pro Wrestling Max Voltage '97
• Super Fire ProWrestling X Premium
• Q&A

I first came across SFPWXP about a year or so ago. At the time, it looked promising, but I lost interest due to its text being in Japanese and emulators being unable to run it properly. (Probably due to copyright problems, Human has never tried to produce a version of any of the Fire Pro games for sale in the US.) After keeping an eye on the emulation scene for a while, I was able to find some emulators that ran the ROM fairly well and I happened upon a translation patch by Sydra. This provided me with a method of playing around with the ROM some, which became somewhat addictive. Around this time, I also became interested in some rumors about extra moves and possibly characters in the ROM.

Based on these rumors and a background in CS, I played around with the binary code in the SRAM file to try to figure out how character graphics and moves are encoded. By doing this, I could test the ROM to see if any of the rumors were true. The main problem at that time was trying to work around a checksum value at the end of the SRAM. If this value did not match the binary code, the ROM would wipe the SRAM clean when it was run. The short version of the story is that it worked. I was able to find out lots of information about the ROM by analyzing the SRAM over a week or two. Included in the information was the letter codes for the game's labels.

After my success in the SRAM (which actually did not answer any of the rumors), I decided to use the information gathered to branch into the ROM. While looking for the pre-made ROM character records, I stumbled across a table containing a massive number of character codes. After a little analysis, I figured out that this was the main ROM's message table and I also figured out how to change it. Around this time, I had started writing small utilities to manipulate the SRAM data- mainly experimentally.

Based on the amount of information gathered, I decided it would be a worthwhile use of time to take a break from the analysis and complete the translation Sydra had started. The problem was that I could not, and still can not, read Japanese. So when faced with such a dilemna, look for the most logical solution. I emailed Sydra. After some correspondence through many emails, Sydra restarted his efforts to translate the ROM. As he sent me translations, I would use a Linux utility I wrote to patch them into the ROM.

During this time, I also began pulling the small utilities I had together into one utility, SFHack. My intention was to provide a method to move characters between SRAMs and store them in seperate files so that players did not have to take twenty minutes to add an edit wrestler from a web template. Also, I hoped that making it easy to move characters on the web would allow creators to have more time to work on the quality of the characters. The main problem with the characters of the time was the lack of logic, which is somewhat time-consuming.

Well, eventually the translations were finished and SFHack continued to grow. Thanks to many people, the utility and patches got distributed pretty well. Somewhere along the way, I became somewhat of a regular at the Fire Pro Heaven message board. There I met many of the people who helped out considerably at different points, including suggestions and providing me with general information. Special notice should be given to Chip who volunteered to by the webmaster for the Firepro Project web site while I worked on the stuff. Without his efforts, no one would probably have seen the things I made. Of course, it goes without saying that the Sydra deserves the majority of the credit for the translation patches since he did the translations (also some of the move translations were provided when I cross-referenced a SFPW6MS moves list translated by Kagura with the X Premium ROM). Among some of the other major contributors were Jules (my utility tester), Joel The Cat, Dark Crow, CrowStinger (provided the baseline ROM- I think that was the correct name), and PM. There were many others along the way who also helped and I apologize for not being able to list all of you here.

• Locale: The names used to refer to techniques of the wrestlers make up the patches' "locale." The original game was made in Japan and used many names that are unfamiliar to wrestling fans in the US and other parts of the world. The original names are contained in the Japanese Locale patches. The English Locale patches use a modified set of names to make it easier for non-Japanese players to use the game's Edit capabilities. As not everyone will agree on what a move should be called, many moves may not be named what you would expect them to be. Please, do not send us any emails about this.
• Names: Apparently the copyright laws in Japan are not as strict as they are in the US. This game contains the images of 104 wrestlers, of which 95 of them are actual people. However, to avoid being sued, Human Corporation (the makers of the Fire Pro series) renames the wrestlers. The Original Names patches contain the fake wrestler names that first appeared in the game when it was released. The Real Names patches contain the real names of the wrestlers that the game's wrestlers were based on.
• Color: During the creation of the patches, I ran across some special codes that add color to the text. I used these to color code the moves so that one could quickly know what moves are pinning moves, submission holds, and illegal holds. The colors used to denote these are blue, yellow, and red respectively.

Due to the ROM containing many extra graphics, some of the characters' suits could be swapped with the alternate ones provided within the game. Among the alternate suits available were Sasaki's Power Warrior suit and suits for the second and third Tiger Mask (Misawa and Kanemoto respectively). Unfortunately, one of the internal tables is controlled by the same value that selects the players' portraits, so I could not select the Tiger Mask portraits for the two Tiger Masks without screwing up the suits. The patches below swap the specified characters to their alternate suits, but do not change the characters in any way except appearence. Also, before I get emailed about it, these patches use hidden labels that I put in some of the unused slots in the label table. They do not change labels in the ROM.
 

These patches perform various actions on the ROM. Some are fixes and some are provided to "undo" some of the actions of SFHack.
 

SFHack is an utility for altering the ROM (in FIG format) and SRAM files of SFPWXP. SFHack allows the player to do many things including Battle Royals that allow the characters to fight out of the ring, using the hidden Giant Baba graphic and portrait, transfer characters between SRAMs and modules, and randomize the opponent list in the Championship and Title circuits. The SFHack distribution contains documentation in the DOCS subdirectory. It also contains all of the patches available in the above tables and some example and batch files to help out users. SFHack is a command line utility and should not be run from Windows or from the Windows Run option. This utility should be used from a command line interface only. No GUI is planned for SFHack presently. A front end for SFHack called SFMenu was made by Crypt Keeper. I do not have the address to his site at the moment. Download the latest version of SFHack here.

Another problem with SFPWXP that became apparent during the testing stages of SFHack. This problem was the lack of information about the meanings of different categories and options in the Edit menus of SFPWXP. So, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a break from SFHack and write a document that gave explanations of the menu options based on the observations and translations gathered from many of the people who had played around with the ROM. After writing the based document, the FAQ was passed around so that inaccuracies and unclear comments could be removed. The resulting document, in my opinion at least, turned out pretty good. Thanks again to all contributors to the FAQ (the names and specific contributions are listed in the FAQ's Changes section). SFPWXP Character Modules

BPW was another game that immediately caught my attention. When I first saw the it, the ROM I found was already patched with Sydra's BPW translation patch. Using this ROM, I played the 18-man Battle Royal which, despite the low graphic quality, was very entertaining. After my success with the label table in SFPWXP, I decided to try to translate BPW again. So I emailed Sydra who replied that he was also willing to finish off the translation.

This translation is about 80% complete. Until I can get some translations for them, I am using some made up move names. Please do not email me about these- they are only temporary. Due to the restricted space in the tables, I had to use extra "hacked in" characters. This extra character set is added by the bpwchars.ips patch. All patches should be applied to the ROM for the full translation.

However, the basic matches are not really the point of interest in Jikkyo. Jikkyo contains a career mode called Max Voltage where you start as a rookie wrestler and work your way up through different federations, choosing when to train and how. As far as I know, no other game has ever tried to make a career mode of this type. Due solely to the presence of this mode, I decided to try to translate Jikkyo. Once again, Sydra agreed to help with the translation (which is obvious since I'm writing this entry) and I set to trying to figure out how to put the text in.

Well, this game is a nightmare. Translating this game is a truly masochistic experience. Unlike BPW and SFPWXP, labels sizes cannot be changed, which is requiring some really creative abbreviations on my part. So far, I've been able to insert moves names into Max Voltage and wreslter names (Sydra and others informed me that translating names is unreliable at best, not to mention time consuming- so I just made up some based on the characters' portraits). I have also put in most of the menus options that are commonly known. If anyone knows the meaning of other stuff that is still not done or, by some bizarre twist of luck, can read Japanese, please email me. This game is too big for any one person to try to translate. Due to an oversight when originally writing this page, I left out the fact that most of the information for the translation, up to this point at least, has come from Kactus Ken's Jikkyo FAQ. Sorry. Anyway, here's the goods.