Shining Force II/Regional Differences

This is a sub-page of Shining Force II.

Unused Items

The ability to search in battle was removed from the international versions, meaning every chest and searchable spot only reachable in battle become useless set pieces. There is no way to gain either of the two following items, short of cheating or hacking. They exist in the level data for the Fairy Woods battle stage, but even with searching re-enabled, they cannot be found because their coordinates are not properly flagged to be search points.

The Life Ring is an accessory that can be equipped by any promoted character. It has a base shop value of 5000 coins, and does nothing when used. While equipped, the owner regains 5 HP every time their turn ends.

Mistranslated as "Right of Hope", the Light of Hope is a one-use item that casts the spell SHINE in battle. This item restores all MP for every character in the party.

Unused Behavior

Before	After

Because the ability to search in battle was removed from the game, international players didn't get to experience something that Japanese players did – monsters hiding in treasure chests! The way that battle searching is programmed requires a monster on those coordinates in the enemy layout, a search tile flag for those same coordinates, and the chest itself. If searched the chest opens and spawns the monster, without performing the give-item routine. The monster-in-a-box gets to immediately attack when triggered. Upon defeating the monster, the item from the treasure chest will be dropped by the monster, or if the character that killed the monster does not have sufficient inventory space the item goes into the Special Deals list and can be purchased. Note that the item in the chest and what the monster drops do not have to be the same thing. Monster drops are controlled entirely by a special table and event flags.

Title Screen

Japan	International

The title screen underwent some minor revisions. The subtitle was removed since the translated release wasn't branded with a subtitle, the copyright date was updated to 1994, and the trademark symbol was added.

Status Screens

When the game's font was redrawn for the international versions, it became standardized with a different baseline than the Japanese font. This puts all non-variable width text 1 pixel to the up and right from the original version, creating tiny gaps and buffer areas not originally present.

Japan	International

The character status screen underwent some minor revisions for readability.

• The "equipped" label uses pinkish font color tiles in the international versions to make it better stand out.
• Item and spell name strings are aligned to start at the top rather than the bottom row next to their respective icons to make room for two rows.
• The numbers for Attack, Defense, Agility, and Move were moved one digit to the left so they didn't hug the right side of the window so closely.

Japan	International

The ? marks for enemy level and experience point values were changed to N/A (Not Applicable) in the international versions. In Japanese under the magic column it says "Haven't learned" and under item it says "don't have." The English version standardized all of these messages to simply "Nothing" in pinkish font.

Japan	International

The Land Effect window supports two text lines in the English version. Because item names can have two lines, the English version's item use/equip window was heightened by 8 pixels to accommodate the extra tiles.

Japan	International

Because the Japanese version allowed a greater selection of characters in names, the name entry window is of course larger. The original game has a full set of English capital letters for use in specific areas.

The localization team opted to add a full set of lowercase letters in addition to adjusting the capital letters, then added another complete set of both in the pinkish-colored tiles seen in previous comparisons. The port also expanded the maximum name length from 5 to 7 characters – the longest name of any character on the team, which is CHESTER.

Japan
International

The party screens underwent more substantial changes. First, the spell and equipment window uses a different tile entirely to mark equipped items. In the Japanese version, it just uses the English capital E. The port couldn't get away with this same tactic and instead uses a brand new tile, a small colored E. The port also uses two lines per spell to afford more room for spell names. The level number was moved to the second line and its function there spelled out.

The stat window experienced some reorganization as columns were moved and deleted. Character names were expanded to 7 characters in the international versions, so the class column had to be moved to make room. The port also cut the HP and MP columns in the first page and expanded the labels for level and experience from LV and EX to LEV and EXP. The second page, toggled by pressing Left or Right, cut the current/max HP comparison down to just maximum HP. Characters are automatically restored to full health if they survive battle, and there is no way for them to take damage while roaming about, so this wasn't needed.

The two tiles for the MAX label are still in the international versions, unused.

Town Changes

Ribble

Japan	International

The sign on the Weapons shop is missing in the Japanese version, though the dialogue trigger is there in both versions.

Fairy Woods

Japan	International

• The most gameplay-important change between versions is an additional chest in the top-left corner of the map. The addition of the second Vigor Ball gives the player the option of promoting both Sarah and Karna, the only two non-promoted female Priests, to Master Monks instead of Vicars. This allows for a total of three Master Monks when adding Sheela to the equation.
• On the lower half of the screen, some of the gaps in the foliage use different tiles.
• The four small windows on the largest house were squashed into two large windows.

Japan	International

• This change applies to the upper interior of the house as well.

Japan	International

• The largest change was made to the Fairy Woods Bonus Stage's hidden path. In the Japanese version, there's only one way to access that area, along with a fair amount of red herrings and dead-end paths. The international versions have much more room to walk around, the removal of many warp tiles that lead to the overworld map, and the Bonus Stage can be accessed from the north and south sides.

Debugging Functions

The US version still has some debugging functions enabled. One is accessible on boot-up by quickly pressing Up, Down, Up, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, Up, Right, Down, Left, Up, B as the Sega logo enters the screen. A sound will confirm entry.

Now, when loading a saved game or after entering a character name for a new game, hold Start.

• Special Turbo: Makes menus and the unit selection cursor in battle move faster.
• Control Opponent: Places all enemy units under player control.
• Auto Battle: Makes all player units act under AI control. The AI is incomplete, however, and the game will crash if it tries to move an archer unit or cast an enemy-targeting spell.
• Game Completed: This sets the game's completed flag in RAM. In the Japanese version of the game setting this was the only way to change a new game's difficulty without having beaten the game first. (Thus making the higher difficulties originally unlockable bonus content.)

Ending

Japan	International

The picture at the end was given an animated effect in the international versions, and the border around the picture was removed.

Credits

Some of the staff titles were corrected for the International versions.

JP	INT
PROGRAM	PROGRAMMERS
GRAPHIC	GRAPHICS
MUSIC COMPOSE	MUSIC COMPOSER
DIRECTERED BY	DIRECTED BY
© SEGA 1993	© 1994 SEGA

(Abaxa: Original TCRF research)