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* Final Fantasy V) advance : Sound Restoration Hack  *
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** By Bregalad **
August 17th 2010
Version 1.0

1) Introduction

While Final Fantasy VI advance is a pretty decent port of the SNES game Final Fantasy VI, it's pretty much agruable that the sound port was bad. I find it's really not acceptable to ruin this soundtrack like that.

Since my FF5 Advance hack I figured a lot more about this sound engine, and I went much further into restoring the sound. I resequenced all songs of the game and inserted them back into the ROM, basing myself either on the original FF6 advance songs, from radom MIDI files available on www.vgmusic.com (that I had to retouch a lot) or just sequences I have entierely made myself. I also made use of the engine's reverb feature (which were originally left unused) to have songs sounds better (and more like the SNES). I also had to convert all SNES instrument to GBA format and insert them into the ROM. With about 70 songs and 70 instruments to convert, you bet it was a long work. In the end this was very much worth the effort, because this frees up so much ROM space (due to the music being sequenced in a efficicent way) that there was a lot of free ROM space created. Added with a lot of ROM space whth was already unused, it allowed me to insert some streamed songs.

So that way I was able to remplace those opera songs with the ones that were played by Tokio's orchestra. All the sing parts are sung by real opera singers (instead of the *very* crappy synthetic SNES/GBA voices)

I must admit I am very pround of the result, almost all tracks sounds equally good or better than their SNES originals. In fact for a good part of the songs, I bet a random guy can't tell which one would be SNES and which version would be my hack without looking. In all cases, I hope people will like this hack.

2) Changes that make this hack.

This hack changes the following things :
- All songs of the games sounds identical or very close to their SNES counterparts
- The major part of the opera is played by a professional orchestra. All the voices part are sung by professional singers.
- The sound is not in stereo any longer. This was sacrified to be able get a better quality sound and good-sounding reverbation (the GBA has only 1 speaker anyways).
- The wind and rain SFX sounds like on the SNES
- The cursor moving SFX was altered to sound less annoying (all others SFX are untouched)
- A surprise awaits for you in the "music player" you get if you beat the game

3) Bugs

I find a bug where sometimes a small lag is audible when opening the menu. I have no idea whether I introduced this bug or if it was already in the original. Don't blame me please.

As far I know this is the only minor bug with this hack. Anything not mentionned above shouldn't be altered. If anyone finds something please contact me.

4) FAQ

Q: I've never played the SNES version of FF6, or even any SNES game, should I use this hack ?
A: Most of the instruments of FF6 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 FF6 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, unless there is a bug I'm not aware of. If you notice anything this is a bug and you should report it to me.
   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: I already put a lot of work into FF5 and FF6, I guess I'm very likely done with it. I released info about all my finding about the sound engine on www.romhacking.net , so anyone can go into the world of hacking the music of GBA games. 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 ?  / I also want to make a GBA music hack. How should I proceed ?
A: Many GBA games use the same engine as FF5 and FF6 advance, so the same answer as above would apply for the games that uses this engine. If you want info about the engine, go to www.romhacking.net, and search for "sappy sound engine" info on the GBA.

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. PS : The .IPS file is large because of the streamed songs. The ROM is not expanded by the way (size is 16 Megabytes).

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 VI 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, although don't blame me if they aren't).

Versions
1.0 (august 17th 2010) : All music tunes are fixed and sound very close to their SNES counterpart, opera stremed songs are instered in the ROM.

7) Special thanks :

- Squaresoft 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)

- Autors of GoldWave

- Autors of MIDI-editing program Calkewalk Express

- www.vgmusic.com for proposing open sequenced Final Fantasy music.

- Tokio's orchestra, whoever conducted it, and the solists for the opera songs.
