The Masters '98 - Augusta National Golf Club (USA) English Patch Rev. 1.0

Introduction:
  "Harukanaru Augusta - Masters '98", or "Faraway Augusta - Masters '98" is the penultimate release in T&E Soft's nine year franchise of Japanese-exclusive licensed golf titles set at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, USA.  It would be succeeded the following year by the Windows release "Harukanaru Augusta".  Despite its notoriety, Augusta National rarely appears in video games and won't be seen again until the 2011 title "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters".
  Although titled "Masters '98" it was released December 26th, 1997--the same year Woods took the Green Jacket and most of the records in a stunning turnaround victory.  It would be the final N64 release that year and second golf title on the system.
  Gameplay is the same across the entire license.  Press A while the swing meter rises to set the height of the swing, and again at the bottom to set the point of impact.  The closer to the center of the red line the nearer to the center of the ball the club strikes.

  This game is a kissing cousin of the USA/PAL exclusive "Waialae Country Club", another golf title using a later revision of the same engine.  Labels for Skins Play are provided but the feature isn't present in Augusta; Japan prefers to be rather discrete when promoting gambling.  Waialae also added in SRAM backup for non-portable settings, though a save bug tied to replay data led to a second revision being released.  However, that also means it did not require a "Save/Load" menu.
  One has to wonder how Augusta passed submission check; no N64 logo is displayed, there is no Controller Pak management in the menus, and it supports the Rumble Pak but lacks messages to switch paks during play.


Notes About Controller Paks:
  The game can be played without a Controller Pak but it is required to save data.  Unlike Waialae, no SRAM is present on the cart.  You will need one Note and 34 Pages.  You must explicitly save (most) changes to your game from the option on the main menu.  The Note name and GUID was not changed, so saves should be interchangable with the Japanese version.
  No Controller Pak manager was implemented in the menus, but holding Start on controller 1 as the game boots will enable a simple manager.  From there Notes and their assigned Pages can be erased.
  Oddly, you will only be asked to repair a damaged Controller Pak if you hold Start to enter the Controller Pak manager.
  Starting a new match will overwrite saved continue data without any displayed warning, unlike its younger cousin.  However, editting or deleting a character currently in a round will display a warning.
  The game is also compatible with the Rumble Pak though there don't appear to be insertion and removal messages.


Patching:
  The patch will only apply to a ROM in native byte order (big-endian).  Attempting to patch something else will result in a completely unhelpful checksum error.  Xdelta patches can be applied with the aptly-named xdelta patcher.

Harukanaru Augusta - Masters '98 (Japan).n64
Internal checksum:
09AE57B1 182A5637
MD5:
A02A4FB4B93E9847348440652CEF8D4D
SHA-512:
231B9F5E10AACC28AFFFD6FB1DC4AE652DDA58BC50C0B190B68F92DB5384F21B506E880AC66EBBD29B45CEB60AFD5A48AF1884A295FF78984FDA390C70003801


Localization Notes:
  *) Voice remains untouched and will continue to be unless somebody happens to know a couple actors willing to have their voices mutilated for free.
  *) The title has been localized on account of being several thousand miles less remote.  "Harukanaru" means something along the lines of "far off", "far-flung", or "distant".  The target audience in this case is the USA, potentially players from Georgia, but in any case part of the same nation.
  *) JPEGs are used for many of the backgrounds and it is not possible to losslessly edit lossy images.  Hopefully the degradation in quality isn't terribly noticable.  Apologies.
  *) With so many instances of "y" in place of "yd" for yards it made sense to just be wrong all of the time in the name of consistency.
  *) There is an instance where "trajectory" had to be translated as "flight" to prevent reorganizing a dozen or so menu elements.  It's a poor choice of words, but hopefully the lesser of many evils.
  *) Some of the strings are informed by Waialae, in part or in whole.  That's more true of gameplay messages than menu dialogs.  All were TLC'd and still represent their original meaning.
  *) Hole details have been editted for brevity when they would otherwise replay too quickly.  The scroll rate fits the provided text into 39.97 seconds, regardless its length.  Plus, do you need three sentences to explain the phrase "Amen Corner"?  No, you don't.
     Some information has also been editted when it exclusively applied to the Masters tee.  In general these were directional phrases like "left of the tee" or "x distance from the tee".  Now, they still provide the same information but have been generalized to apply to either case.
     Details on shots occationally replace vague filler like "skillful" (such as specifying a draw or fade), and additional alternate suggestions are provided when particularly bad advice is given.  When professional golfers stray away from a suggested difficult setup leading to a delicate shot, what about the poor novice gamer who is relying on these course guides for some hints on how to at least double bogey?
     Also note that these courses have changed over the last couple decades--both intentionally and unintentionally--so if you're looking for practical advice be certain it pertains to their 1997 configuration.

Other Notes:
  *) The ultraHDMI deblur algorithm fails on certain jpeg backgrounds at the end of Masters rounds.  These screens are blending text with, effectively, an additional blur, confusing the output of the deblur.  It is suggested to turn it off with this game.
  *) Some emulator plugins have trouble displaying the fake water reflections properly, which in the worst case removes the ground.  This also applies to the translation patch.  Check the emulator and/or plugin's compatibility with the original game.
  *) The Controller Pak manager at boot may not run on all emulators, or it may be impossible to log an input before it checks if Start is held on controller 1.
  *) As a point of curiosity, this particular Controller Pak manager is shared with other titles--primarily SeTa games--and is the only known commercial software to utilize the font embedded in IPL3.  It was very likely example code both companies utilized for final product.

-Zoinkity
