ARM9 menu string pool

String pool location

• File: arm9_full_plaintext.bin (BLZ-decompressed ARM9, 723 KB)
• Pool start: file offset 0xa6e44 → RAM 0x020a6e44
• Pool end: file offset 0xa6f88 → RAM 0x020a6f88
• 26 string records, total span: ~324 bytes (varies; record sizes differ)
• Strings are SHIFT-JIS-style packed bytes (game's internal short encoding)

"Plaintext-ARM9" trick

The original ROM ships ARM9 in BLZ-compressed form (564,488 bytes at ROM offset 0x4000). Editing the embedded string pool in place is awkward because the strings live after the BLZ-decompressed boundary. Patching the Nintendo SDK module-params field CompressedStaticEnd := StaticBSSStart (where StaticBSSStart = 0x020A87A0) makes the boot ROM skip BLZ decompression entirely — the ARM9 is loaded as plaintext at boot. Decompressed size: 723,032 bytes (0xB0858). Validated in notes/arm9_passthrough_test_RESULTS.md. See BLZ & the plaintext-ARM9 trick for the full format breakdown.

Slot widths

The patcher fits each EN string into the slot's pre-allocated byte width. Slot column = byte budget. Strings that overflow even the canon shortened form are marked CO (canon-overflow) and will be restored if a pool relocator is added later.

ARM9 pool — 26 strings

Overlay single-string slots (ov047 / ov059 / ov065)

Overlay 096 — NPC interaction menu (20 strings)

The friend-chat / NPC interaction menu. All fresh translations except Mystery and Rumors which lean on Game 1 corpus parallels (ふしぎ → mystery, ウワサ → rumor) and Berry's which is the shop name carried verbatim from friend-chat dialog. The first slot (<<<) is canon-overflow for "Back".

Overlay 170 / 171 — equip + remake slots

Two late-game / extra-event overlays. The equip slots align with Game 1 canon (みにつける → Equip); the remake slots ship as a fresh translation of つくりなおす, choosing "Remake" over the more literal "Redo" to preserve the dress-up meaning.

Currency canon

Game 1's official Konami currency name is Ritch (not "Mira"). Evidence: 66 corpus hits, including the standalone slot-form リッチ → Ritch. The 6 currency tier strings: 1リッチ → 1 R, 10リッチ → 10 R, …, 100000リッチ → 100000 Ritch.

Slot budgets vs canonical EN length

20 slots cannot fit the full Konami EN canon within their fixed slot stride. The constraint is structural: each slot is allocated a pre-computed byte width in the pool, and any string longer than that byte width would overrun into the next slot. A pool relocator that rewrote the pointer table and grew the pool would relax these per-slot byte budgets; that is not currently in scope. The table below records the gap between the byte-budget-fitting EN and the longer canonical Konami EN so the cost is visible. The currency tiers and "Change wallpaper" / "Change flooring" are the highest-information-loss cases; Hat off, No spex, and Release are close-enough-to-canon semantically.

Slot accounting

Source

• notes/arm9_overlay_translations_final.md — full string list + budgets
• src/translator/_patch_arm9_overlays.py — patcher
• notes/arm9_passthrough_test_RESULTS.md — BLZ-skip trick validation
• arm9_full_plaintext.bin — decompressed binary used for patching