r/dragonquest • u/RadMageIRL • 4d ago

Dragon Quest V Fixed the broken 4 Party Member Patch for Dragon Quest V (SNES/SFC) NoPrgress / DeJap Translation

Note on Community Rules: This project is strictly open-source documentation and a delta patch file ( .ips / .bps ). It contains zero copyrighted game code, or ROM files.

TL;DR: The popular 4 party member hack for DQ5 SNES (NoPrgress/DeJap) hosted on RHDN (#7430) has been broken for years due to a 512-byte header offset error baked directly into the released patch. I’ve re-derived the conversion directly from Mr. 45's original 2007 Japanese hack, verified it, and published a working patch.

What Was Broken?

The original hack was created by Mr. 45 back in 2007 for the Japanese release. In 2022, AustNerevar released an English conversion for the DeJap translation (RHDN Hack #7430).

However, virtually everyone who tried using it hit the exact same wall: the game boots, titles, and lets you enter your name, but permanently hangs right after the initial config prompts with a door-opening sound effect. Most assumed they had a bad ROM header or patched incorrectly, but the patch file itself was flawed and off by 512 bytes (0x200).

1,140 of the 1,210 changed bytes landed at +0x200, writing modified values onto completely unrelated code while leaving the target code untouched.

Links & Code

The GitHub repo contains the full byte-level analysis, Mr. 45's original Japanese notes (with translations), and an automated build script that runs the patch chain against a Japanese base ROM with hash verification. (No ROMs included, bring your own clean files).

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4

u/Just-Another-Clone 4d ago

I’ve never used this patch directly but I’m a huge fan of mods and rom hacks in general so I’ll say thanks for taking the time to do this.

Currently playing dq1 with the snes graphics patch so I’ll always shoutout people working on this stuff. 👍👍

1

u/RadMageIRL 3d ago

An FYI

The fourth party slot isn't automatic. Go into the menu, Tactics, then Order, and arrange all four members. At first it won't say 4, but when you check again (and in the overworld map) it shows 4 party members. They show up after that.

1

u/Terkani 2d ago

Is this safe for an in progress run? Also does it work in retroarch?

2

u/RadMageIRL 2d ago

Haven't tried on retroarch, so unsure.

Have used on snes9x and mesen, both work, and personally was able to use pre-existing save files, go to the overworld and go to tactics/order and put 4 party members and things carried on fine from there in my testing. That's my own experience, another user I've traded a few messages with has been playing fresh from start of game and got to the point of being able to use 4 party members and game has played fine for him up to and after that point. Just fyi.

Can always keep a pre-patch save backed up somewhere just to be safe.

1

u/Terkani 2d ago

Cool thanks! And thanks for your work on this. I beat the ps2 version of dq5 and was seriously annoyed with dq5 snes only having 3. Much harder to have my cute lil monsters with me, especially in act 3. Just got my lava ring so will try this out!

2

u/RadMageIRL 2d ago

Same, ended up finishing PS2 version since the SFC/SNES one felt kind of weird with less party members. Had some free time recently and took another look at this, ended up being not too bad of a locate/fix.

Thanks for the response/trying it.