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Glory of Heracles... Where have I heard that name before?

Most of the English-speaking world is familiar with Glory of Heracles through the DS game of the same name. But that is actually the sixth game in the series. Two Famicom, two Super Famicom and one Game Boy game came out in Japan as well, but none of these were ever officially translated and brought to Western shores. As of me writing this, Glory of Heracles 1, 2, 3 and Snap Story have all been fully-translated into English. Hopefully the Glory of Heracles 4 will follow suit soon.

So, who do we have to thank for the English version of Snap Story?

Yours truly is responsible for all the technical aspects of the translation (hacking, dumping, inserting, image-editing, etc.). Sure it took me almost 10 years, but I was able to get it finished eventually! But, of course, I couldn't do it alone. Without the translating prowess of xxxxxxx, my monolingual self could never have finished.

So, how do I play?

This game plays like a Dragon Quest game, complete with random battles and all that good stuff. You don't fully gain new party members, but as you level up (and at a few other points in the game), you can have gods join your party by visiting Olympus or their residence. With a god in your party, you have a choice to make in each round of battle. You can use the god, which will allow both Heracles and the god to take an action, but the god is vulnerable to attack. Or you can just have Heracles attack... if you don't have the god perform an action, the god cannot be attacked by the enemy. Other than this, the gods basically act like a regular party member... each has his/her own stats, magic spells and re-usable items. Unfortunately, gods cannot level up, so they're just as powerful when you first get them as they will ever be.

Pretty much everything else is pretty self-explanatory. Certain towns have temples where you can save, go to Olympus (to switch your god, heal your god or see how much experience you need to level up) or remove a cursed item. And this game has the same basic Inns/Equipment Shops/Item Shops/Damaging Floor Tiles/Adverse Effects/Etc. that every other RPG had at the time.

How about stats?

A quick run-down on the stats in the game:

LEVEL - Heracles' level. As you gain experience, his level increases. As his level increases, his stats increase and he's able to recruit more gods.
HP - I'm quite certain you know what this is if you're playing this game...
MP - MP allows you to cast magical spells. Heracles never learns any magic spells, thus his MP is always 0. Many of his godly companions can cast magic, though.
SKILL - Skill determines Heracles' attack stat. Take Heracles' skill, divide it by 4, and you'll get Heracles' unarmed attack stat.
AGILITY - Agility determines battle order. The character with the highest agility gets to attack first each round. Pretty simple.
ATTACK - Just what it sounds like. Higher Attack means potential to do more damage in battle.
GUARD - Guard is a defensive stat. But it doesn't work quite like it does in most games. Guard doesn't necessarily lower the base damage of an attack. Instead, the higher your guard, the greater your chance a given attack will do less damage or miss. But an attack may still hit for full damage, even with a high guard...

I'm one of those ultra-anal completionist types. Anything permanently missable?

Luckily, there's not too much in the way of missables in this game. The only thing is the God Sword, which happens to be the best weapon in the game. You can only miss this if you get the Zeus Sword and somehow lose it before you get the God Sword. Most items can either be purchased or stolen from enemies infinite times, but a few only have one available. The list is as follows:

Zeus Sword
God Sword
Zeus Armor
Zeus Shield
Earth Gauntlet
Angel Boots
Eagle Boots
MgScale