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* Final Fantasy V advance : Sound Restoration Hack  *
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** By Bregalad **
September 6th, 2010
Version 1.1

1) Introduction

While Final Fantasy V advance is a pretty decent port of the SNES game Final Fantasy V, it's pretty much agruable that the sound port was bad. In Final Fantasy Anthology for the PlayStation, it already sounded significantly less good than the SNES version, but there it's really not acceptable to ruin this soundtrack like that.

While the the original SNES has 38 instruments, they made the remake with hundreds of different instruments, for the large majority sounding much worse. New instruments sounds very agressive and fuzzy, and just completely ruin the feel of the original songs in most tracks. Not only that, but the new samples are longer and take much more ROM space, for a total of about 3 minutes of samples at 18kHz. When I think the SNES samples only takes about 20 seconds in total at a similar rate, using them Square could have used the last 2.5 minues of ROM space for a cool stremed intro with a real orchestra, etc... When I think about that it really make me want to push the programmers of FF5 advance in their face. But instead of this I might as well hack the game to fix that problem.

This was a long work, for hundreds of instruments I had to find where they are used in the sound track, replace them by a SNES instrument, and fine tunine it so it is the right pitch.
I must admit I am very pround of the result, almost all tracks sounds equally good or better than their SNES originals. I hope people will like it.

2) Changes that make this hack.

Initially, this hack was only changing instrument data of the game. Eventually at a later time I found how to partially edit music data itself, allowing me to do another major rework of the hack, fixing even more songs, and restore some vibrato effects lost. In a third time I decided to fix a dozen of sound effects that sounded wrong or muffled on the GBA, to have something closer than their SNES version. This include Areo3, Aqua Breath, Flare, and some others (check the appendix for details).

Of all the hundreds of instruments on the GBA, only a great total of 7 instruments weren't replaced, for various reasons :

- The oboe solo parts in many songs. One of the oboe sounds better than the original in my opinion (altough other oboes were replaced by the original)

- Low tom with pre-applied echo in "Fate in Haze". It sound about the same and I was too lazy to repalce it

- Gong in "Fate in Haze".

- The crash cymals in all songs

- The electric piano used in "Reminiscence"

- The noisy noise in "Musica Machina".

- The castanets in "Dancer"

Also, most sounds effects are kept.

4) What could be improved

- Fix more sound effects (probably not necessary unless I get some requests)
- Add more streamed music (but other orchestal versions are inapropriate, too far from the original, too romantic, and there is not enough ROM space for them). There would still be space for about two separate 1'30'' songs I belive.

5) Bugs

When playing music, an instrument can play too early/too late randomly or not play at all.
This bug is in FF5's sound engine, and it was already there before my hack so I'm for nothing. Please don't blame me about that. This is very rare tough.

When consulting the bestiary directly from the title screen, the prelude will STILL play while the battle song corresponding to the on-screen enemy ALSO plays. I don't know how I managed to pull that glitch. To avoid that, you should load a saved game before consulting the bestiary if you play with the sound enabled.

Some songs are given new names from the SNES, and Reminiscence and The day Will Come are exchanged (what where they thinking ?). Anyway I don't feel it's my role to attempt to fix that.

6) FAQ

Q: I've never played the SNES version of FF5, or even any SNES game, should I use this hack ?
A: Most of the instruments of FF5 advance sounds horrible anyway. Even if SNES instruments doesn't sounds incredibly good by modern standards, they definitely sound better. So even if you never played the original SNES game and want to play FF5 advance, I strongly recommand you apply this patch on your ROM. However, to fully hear all sounds, you must use headphones that are able to reproduce bass sounds that the small GBA/SP/DS speakers can't.
Original GBA's and DS have a headphone jack, but for the SP you'll have to use a supid adaptator (stupid because mine broke).

Q: Does this hack affect anything else than the music in any way ?
A: No it doesn't, aside of the bugs mentionned above. If you notice anything this is a bug and you should report it to me.
   I've experienced slowdowns under Visual Boy Advance, but they don't happen on a real GBA or DS. By the way sound emulation isn't very good under VBA so if you have a way to flash the game to your GBA plese use it.

Q: Will you make a hack that restores the font/dialogue boxes/translation/etc.. of the SNES game ?
A: No I won't and I'm unable to. If you want that you should as well play the SNES original.

Q: Will you make a hack that restores the music of any other game in the Final Fantasy Advance series ?
A: If I get bored again, maybe I might consider doing a similar hack for Final Fantasy 6 advance. Altough doing so isn't too hard it's very long, so long that I'd rather use the same free time to play a whole FF game instead. I admit I would be happy if someone else would do it instead (the appendix explain how it's done). FF1&2 and FF4 advance probably doesn't sound bad enough for the need of such a hack in my opinion.

Q: Will you make a hack that restores the music of any other SNES game ported to the GBA ?
A: Most likely not, unless they have a smimilar music player such as the one found in the Final Fantasy Advance series that allows to listen the whole soundtrack easily.

Q: I want to improve this hack/make my own hack for another GBA game. How do you do it ?
A: Before contacting me read the appendix, it explain how to change instruments, and lists all instruments of FF5 advance.

Q: I don't understand anything about that long appendix
A: You don't have to understand any word of it to use the hack. Since doing it was long and tedious I took a considerable amont of notes while doing it, and I publish them with the hack so if I'm killed or something someone can still use my work without too much headaches.

Q: Will you send me a ROM ?
A: No, it's a IPS patch for legal reasons. You should be big enough to find a way to get a ROM by yourself.

Q: I can't apply your IPS patch to my ROM / It crashes when loading.
Q: On which ROM should the patch apply ?
A: You should use an european verison of Final Fantasy V advance only. The reason for this is that you can play it in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish, so more people are targetted by the hack. I did it on a file I dumped myself with my GBA linker, and it should be compatible with ROMs floating arround the undernet. It won't work with a USA or Japanese ROM (but saves seems to be compatible, altough don't blame me if they aren't).

Q: Is it normal that the IPS patch is that large ?
A: Yes, the patch is about 8MB large. The streamed orchestral intro, which uses about 5MB of space, is the reason for that. The remaining 3MB are various changes in sound samples and music data.

Versions
1.1 (september 6th 2010) : Another update. Fixes minor errors of version 1.0 and new (unreleased) songs are inserted in the ROM. Polyphony increased to 10 (hopefully doesn't cause too much slowdowns ?)

1.0 (july 6th 2009) : All music tunes are fixed and sound very close to their SNES counterpart, 10 sound effects are replaced by something close to their SNES version. First version to become public

0.9 (june 25th 2009) : All music instruments replaced or copied. Some songs still sounds wrong.

7) Special thanks :

- Square for making the Final Fantasy series

- Nobuo Uematsu for composing the music of this game

- Whoever at Square Enix who decided to implement the cool music player available once you beat the game (this hack wouldn't have been possible without it)

- Butcha for writing SNESSor

- Autors of GoldWave

- Tokyo's orchestra for the streamed intro