               Snatcher in English v0.6.0 for MSX2/2+/TR
                           By Daniel Caetano
                        (daniel@caetano.eng.br)

                               HomePage:
                   http://www.caetano.eng.br/snatcher/


      "Snatcher" is a game developed by Konami. It was enhanced and
                 translated by Fudeba Software (2001/2003).



þþþ 1.0 WARNING!

	THIS SOFTWARE IS NOT  FREEWARE! KONAMI  OWNS THE  COPYRIGHT FOR ALL
DATA, CHARACTERS ETC. YOU SHOULD  NOT RUN THIS  GAME IF  YOU DO NOT OWN THE
ORIGINAL COPY OF IT.
	THE TRANSLATED TEXTS AND TRANSLATION  CODE *ARE* FREEWARE, BUT THEY
CANNOT BE SOLD OR DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION FROM THE AUTHORS.
	NEITHER KONAMI NOR FUDEBA SOFTWARE  ANSWER FOR  ANY TYPE  OF DAMAGE MADE ON YOUR  COMPUTER OR YOUR  DATA BY THIS  SOFTWARE. USE IT  AT YOUR OWN
RISK!

	We don't  think that this program  can damage your  system. We  are 
only warning you, because this is  a 'hacked' code and it's hard to predict
everything.


þþþ 2.0 What is "Snatcher in English"?

	Many years ago (1988)  Konami released  am adult  japanese-only MSX
game called  Snatcher. The  game  was a  great sucess  in Japan, but no one
really knows why it was never released outside Japan.
	Some years later, a  "child" version of  it was  released, using an
RPG engine, instead  of the  original "graphical adventure". This  game was
called SD-Snatcher and was released in Japan, too.
	The first (and AFAIK,  the only) version of  Snatcher  was released
in a non-japanese  language was the  Sega CD version of Snatcher, which was
in english. It  was  complete, with the  three  acts (the  MSX  version has
only two of them) but it  was somewhat  changed because  it could be played
by children and most of original Snatcher's jokes were "adult" ones.
	So,  people  that   doesn't  know   japanese   was  really  missing
something: a great adult  graphical adventure by  Konami that almost no one
outside Japan was able to play.
	The idea  of the  translation is old. It first arose when the first
public translations  were  released (such as SD-Snatcher, XAK series, etc),
by a "company"  called Oasis. Oasis  even  started to  translate  Snatcher,
but they'd not  finished it. I don't know  why they abandoned this work,
but I noticed that Snatcher  translation (such as Metal Gear 2 and Illusion
City) is clearly  more difficult  than others, which  means thousands(!) of  hours  debugging, disassembling, coding and testing.
	Also,  many  tools  were  developed  to  allow  this  work. I can't
imagine  this  translation  to  be  finished  without  tools  like  Ricardo
Bittencourt's BrMSX, Adriano's M80/L80, Claudio "Cyberknight"'s Gremlin, my
own disassembler MSXDASM and my own script  extractors and importers... (as
well as OS/2, since  debugging the  game  using  BrMSX  under  Windows  was
really annoying!)... Without  those, thousand  hours  of  work would easily
become millions of hours.
	The help of my dear friends was also important. I should thank some
of them here, because without them this translation would never see the day
light:

	- Artemio Urbina
	  - First dumped the original Snatcher text.
	  - Sent me a perfect  gift (An original SD-Snatcher). Without it I
	    think I would never had finished this english version.
	- Takamichi Suzukawa
	  - Spend thousands  of hours  translating the japanese dumped text
	    to english.
	  - Helped with my doubts about the translation
	- Ricardo Bittencourt
	  - BrMSX was great  for debugging. Too bad  you  moved to Windows.
	    Windows is just crap to debug anything.
	- Adriano Cunha
	  - M80/L80 for PC... is just great! (^=
	  - You  stimulated  me  to  start this  work... q^= If you had not
	    created Uzix, I would  spent all  those nights creating it! (^=
	  - Thanks for all ASM tips  you gave, in special for international
	    keyboard support for Snatcher.
	  - Thanks  also  with  the  help on the "Exit-to-DOS" routine that
	    will never see the day  light, since  DOS2 is too wild to allow
	    me exit from the game without harm it.
	  - Beta Testing!
	- Dante Nishida
	  - Hey,  man... you  saved  me  a  lot  of  time  translating  the
	    graphical data (still in work, but great progress!)
	  - Beta Testing!
	- Reinaldo Quaresma, Jun Kim, Leandro Pereira
	  - Your  help  about "jokes"'  translations in portuguese  version
	    will never be forgotten.
	  - Beta Testing!
	- Luciano Sturaro
	  - Beta Testing!
	- Edison Moraes
	  - MSX Top Secret  was  the  "number one" resource of  information
	    about MSX hardware!
	- KonamiMan
	  - MSX2 Technical Handbook  was too much used in this development,
	    man! You are a real fudeba! (^=

	After these notes, I would like to say I really hope you enjoy this
nice game. SD-Snatcher is "cute", but  the  story plot on  Snatcher is much
better. (^=

	Finally: Do not sell games made as a hobby.
	It's all about FUN.



þþþ 3.0 Original Files

	Files on the original ZIP archive are:

	SNATCHE0.DSK		Boot disk, plus utilities. Required.
	SNATCHE1.DSK		First game disk.
	SNATCHE2.DSK		Second game disk.
	SNATCHE3.DSK		Third game disk.

	Disks 1 to 3 are in a "proprietary format", so you cannot type
"dir" and see its contents. But disk 0 contains the following files:

	AUTOEXEC.BAT		Will automatically load the game
	COMMAND.COM		DOS 1.x Command
	DSK2SAV.COM		Utility to extract SaveGames to a .SAV
	FDSAVE.COM		Utility from T.Tsujikawa to dump disks
	INSTALL.BAT		Simple script to install the game on HD
	LEIAME.TXT		Portuguese version of this file.
	MSXDOS.SYS		DOS 1.x boot data
	README.TXT		This file
	SAV2DSK.COM		Utility to import .SAV SaveGames
	SNATCHER.000		File that says to SNATCHER.COM it is
				running from a floppy.
	SNATCHER.COM		Game loader.
	SNATCHER.FNT		Font file, used by the loader.
	SNATCHER.IMG		Opening image, used by the loader.
	SNATCHER.INS		Install helper
	SNATCHER.SCR		Extra texts to the game.



þþþ 4.0 System Requirements and Supported Systems

	These are the requirements (play from disk):

	- Any MSX2 or later
	- BDOS 1.0 or later
	- 144KB of Mapped RAM (plus 32kb if BDOS2 is used)
	- 128KB of VRAM

	These are the requirements (play from harddisk):
	- Any MSX2 or later
	- BDOS 2.2 or later
	- IDE or SCSI harddisk
	- 192KB of Mapped RAM
	- 128KB of VRAM

	Aditional supported hardware:
	- Any SCC cartridge (*)
	- Any SCC+ cartrigde (*)
	
	(*) The SCC/SCC+ must be in:
	  a) any non-expanded slot
	  b) an expanded slot that is  not shared with the memory mapper or
	     the disk interface and BDOS or MainBIOS.



þþþ 5.0 Features

	Besides the  original game  features, the following  features  were
addes:

	- The game speaks your language (he he =^)
	- Automatic support for turbo on CIEL and Turbo R computers
	- The game is playable on HardDisk
	- When playing on harddisk, SaveGames are made in a .SAV file.
	- Fast Play Mode, using CONTROL key (AKA "NumLock Mode")
	- Automatic detection of SCC/SCC+ slot
	- CAPS light indicates read/write on HD



þþþ 6.0 Installation

	To play the  game  you just  need to boot  with DISK0.  Anyway, you
should like to play it  on harddisk. Playing on  floppy  is  just annoying.
There are two ways of installing it on hardisk: manual and automatic.

	1) Automatic
	   - Boot from your harddisk MSX-DOS2.
	   - Select the drive to install and create the directory. p.e.:
		C: [enter]
		MD SNATCHER [enter]
	   - Place DISK0 on the floppy and change to it. p.e.:
		A: [enter]
	   - Use INSTALL.BAT to install it. p.e.:
		INSTALL A: C: \SNATCHER [enter]
	   - Follow the instructions on the screen, when the installer
		asks for other disks, do it.
	   - If everything is ok, you can play typing:
	        SNATCHER [enter]
	   - If the game doesn't run or doesn't seem to be working ok,
	     try the manual method.

	2) Manual
	   - Boot from your harddisk MSX-DOS2.
	   - Select the drive to install and create the directory. p.e.:
		C: [enter]
		MD SNATCHER [enter]
		CD SNATCHER [enter]
	   - Copy these files from disk to harddisk. p.e.:
		COPY A:DSK2SAV.COM C: [enter]
		COPY A:FDSAVE.COM C: [enter]
		COPY A:SAV2DSK.COM C: [enter]
		COPY A:SNATCHER.COM C: [enter]
		COPY SNATCHER.SCR C: [enter]
		**DO NOT** copy SNATCHER.000!
	   - Place DISK1 in the drive and dump it. p.e.:
		FDSAVE A: SNATCHER.001
	   - Place DISK2 in the drive and dump it. p.e.:
		FDSAVE A: SNATCHER.002
	   - Place DISK3 in the drive and dump it. p.e.:
		FDSAVE A: SNATCHER.003
	   - If everything is ok, you can play typing:
	        SNATCHER [enter]
	   - If the game doesn't run or doesn't  seem to be working ok, try
	     to pray, offer a virgin to the gods or something. You may also
	     try to contact me. =^)



þþþ 7.0 Playing Snatcher

	Snatcher controls are the  usual on Graphical  Adventure games. You
should use the keys 0 to 9 to select an action.
	After you  receive  Metal Gear, you  will be able  to save  a game,
using the normal menu system (following the options: <Metal Gear><Save>).
	SHIFT may be used for two things in the game:
	  - point your gun
	  - move Metal Gear's light.
	In both cases you'll need  to  push (and keep) SHIFT key, and  then
select  the area  where you want  to shot or point  the  light.  To  do it,
imagine the screen is divided in 9 pieces:

	+-----+-----+-----+
	|     |     |     |
        |     |     |     |
        +-----+-----+-----+
        |     |     |     |
        |     |     |     |
        +-----+-----+-----+
        |     |     |     |
        |     |     |     |
        +-----+-----+-----+

	Use the following keys to select the area:

	+-----+-----+-----+
	|     |     |     |
        |  7  |  8  |  9  |
        +-----+-----+-----+
        |     |     |     |
        |  4  |  5  |  6  |
        +-----+-----+-----+
        |     |     |     |
        |  1  |  2  |  3  |
        +-----+-----+-----+

	Or...

	+-----+-----+-----+
	|     |     |     |
        |  7  |  8  |  9  |
        +-----+-----+-----+
        |     |     |     |
        |  U  |  I  |  O  |
        +-----+-----+-----+
        |     |     |     |
        |  J  |  K  |  L  |
        +-----+-----+-----+

	That's all. (^=





þþþ 8.0 How contact us?

	You find more information on Snatcher Translation HomePage, on the
Internet:

	http://www.caetano.eng.br/snatcher/

	There you'll find all versions of Snatcher to download.

	If you just want to contact the  authors, you can send e-mails for
us. If you have  some idea on the system  works, tips on  programming, bug
repots, etc, send an e-mail to Daniel Caetano, at the address:

	daniel@caetano.eng.br

	Please, send  your comments and  suggestions (and, of  course, bug
reports!)

