Romance of the Three Kingdoms II (NES)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms II
Also known as: Sangokushi II (JP) Developer: Koei Publisher: Koei Platform: NES Released in JP: November 2, 1990 Released in US: September 1991 This game has unused graphics. This game has unused text. This game has regional differences. This game has revisional differences.

Unused Graphics

Portraits

001C: Hua Tuo	00B2: Sima Hui	00BF: Xu Zijiang

Unused portraits for the physician Hua Tuo and the advisors Sima Hui and Xu Zijiang. These three figures appeared in the PC version of this game, but in the NES and other console ports Hua Tuo was replaced by his medical book and the roles of the other two were folded into your appointed advisor.

Portrait Parts

Like other Koei simulation games, generals who aren't important enough to have a unique hand-drawn portrait have portraits composed from mix-and-match parts. In this game, the portrait parts are divided into 8 sets with each set containing 4 upper faces, 4 lower faces, 4 pairs of eyes, 4 noses and 4 mouths. A few of the available parts aren't used by any general's portrait:

Set No.	Part	Part No.	Graphic
1	Upper	2
6	Lower	1
6	Nose	3
7	Lower	1
7	Mouth	1

Nobunaga's Ambition II Leftovers

CHR ROM areas 0x47810-0x47FFF, 0x4B7F0-0x4BFFF and 0x57890-0x57FFF (all offsets in a headered .nes ROM image) contain leftover graphics from Nobunaga's Ambition II.

Also, in the Japanese Revision 1 ROM only, unused areas of PRG ROM are filled with data from the corresponding position in CHR ROM (in the Revision 0 and US ROMs, unused areas are filled with 0 or 0xFF instead).

Unused Text

In the Japanese version, the names of the items that you may obtain as "war spoils" upon capturing a province are stored in the ROM both as double-byte Shift-JIS text with kanji, and as single-byte kana-only text. Only the single-byte kana names are ever displayed; the double-byte names contain characters that aren't even present in the game's font.

Kanji (unused)	Kana (used)	Name in US version
孟徳新書	もうとくしんしょ	Meng De's new treatise
孫子の兵法書	そんしのへいほうしょ	Sun Tzu's war manual
太平要術の書	たいへいようじゅつのしょ	Book of Heaven
青�の剣	せいこうのけん	Luminous sword
倚天の剣	いてんのけん	Sword of Trust
七星の剣	しちせいのけん	Seven Stars' sword
青竜の剣	せいりゅうのけん	Black Dragon's sword
芙蓉姫	ふようひめ	A Ruby
大喬	だいきょう	A Pearl
小喬	しょうきょう	A Jade
芻氏	すうし	An Emerald
弓腰姫	きゅうようき	A Sapphire
赤兎馬	せきとば	The Red Hare
的盧	てきろ	Black Lightning
華陀の医学書	かだのいがくしょ	Hua Tuo's medical book
玉璽	ぎょくじ	Ruler's seal

The second character in 青�の剣 is encoded as a gaiji (system-specific character) but there is no corresponding character in the game's font table. Based on the context and reading, it is almost certainly supposed to be 釭. 青釭 (Qīnggāng) was the name of the sword Zhao Yun captured from Xiahou En at the Battle of Changban in the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms; the sword appears in many Koei games, usually translated as "Sword of Light".

Regional Differences

To do: More screenshots.

War Spoils

Japan	US

In the Japanese version, the category of war spoils that raise a general's Charm ability is "women". In the US version (as well as in more recent Japanese ports of this game on handheld consoles and mobile phones) these were changed to "jewels".

Sound Effects

The Japanese version plays melodic sound effects using the MMC5 sound channels. The US version plays them on one of the internal sound channels instead (although both versions of the game use the same mapper, the NES doesn't support audio input from the cartridge slot).

(Source: FCEUX bug report)

Revisional Differences

To do: There are many more..

Shen Rong's Loyalty

Japan Revision 0	Japan Revision 1	US

In the original Revision 0 revision, in Scenario 2 Yuan Shao's general Shen Rong starts with a normally impossible loyalty score of 255. It was corrected in Revision 1 and the US version (note that the difference between the Japan Revision 1 and US screenshots is due to random fluctuation, not a version difference).

Text Differences

Japan Revision 0	Japan Revision 1	US

In the original Revision 0 revision, the name of the general 桓楷 (Huán Kǎi) was incorrectly written as 韓楷 (Hán Kǎi). It was corrected in the Revision 1 revision. In the US version, his name was mistranslated as Huan Cheng (again, the difference in loyalty between the screenshots is due to random fluctuation).

Japan Revision 0	Japan Revision 1	US

When you go to withdraw a general whom you have sent as a spy to an enemy province, the Revision 0 revision displays the ungrammatical message だれをてったいますか. It was corrected in Revision 1 to だれをてったいさせますか (Withdraw whom?)