So maybe someone remembers that earlier this year, TheMajinZenki, cccmar, Xanathis and I (who have recently adopted the marginally catchier group moniker "LIPEMCO! Translations") put out a translation for the PCECD Sailor Moon game? Well, we're back at it again, this time with Madou Monogatari I: Honoo no Sotsuenji (Sorcery Saga I: The Fiery Kindergarten Graduation). We've just released the patch today, so if you're interested, get it while it's hot:
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/5805/
Here's some footage of the translation in action:
If you're not familiar with it, the Madou Monogatari series is the dungeon crawler predecessor to the Puyo Puyo games, originating as a trilogy for the MSX2 computer and later seeing ports and sequels on a smattering of systems. Its primary features are cute visuals (...with some exceptions), automapping, and tons of voice clips. This particular version is an expanded port of the first game, featuring Arle's quest to pass her kindergarten graduation exam by retrieving three magic orbs from a tower full of monsters. It offers all the improvements you'd expect from a CD port and then some, with new visual scenes, high-quality audio, near-full voice acting, and plenty of new monsters and events.
I think if anyone knows this game for anything, it's probably for its extreme rarity. It was released absurdly late in the system's lifespan -- December 13th, 1996, exactly 24 years ago today -- and unsurprisingly wasn't a big seller, as a result of which it was commanding prices of 40-50 thousand yen at auction circa 2011, a number that's certainly only gone up since. It's also one of the handful of games that outright require the Arcade Card to run, which probably didn't do anything to help sales. But more importantly to our group, it's a Madou Monogatari game, and since, together or as individuals, we've worked on translations for like 5 games in the series at this point, it was pretty much inevitable that we'd give this one a go sooner or later.
While the translation itself wasn't too difficult, what with this being the third time TheMajinZenki's translated the same game (seriously), the hacking posed some interesting technical challenges. The in-game text was pretty typical stuff, though I did take the trouble to convert the dialogue boxes from three lines to four and implement dynamic word wrapping, but the cutscenes...Well, I was determined to subtitle everything, and I managed it, but it took longer to do than the rest of the game combined. I think I've figured out why most PCECD fan translations either do a dub or just provide the cutscenes as a text script. And hell, this one was a softball, with only
three visual scenes, all running off of a common cutscene player. I can only imagine the horror of having to deal with your typical CD game that has dozens of scenes, each with its own little code overlay...
Anyway, it's a neat little game, so I hope a few of you will check it out. While the gameplay is honestly rather so-so compared to the Mega Drive port, the visuals and sound are top-notch, so I think it's at least worth a peek...though I may a bit biased here.
And to anyone who's played this game before and remembers the most painful part of the experience: I added the ability to skip voice clips by pressing a button
I also fixed the broken cheat codes for viewing the cutscenes; check the readme for information.
If anyone plays this on real hardware, please let me know if it runs correctly. I've unfortunately only been able to test on emulators, so there's plenty of things that could go wrong. (Don't forget that you'll need an Arcade Card, though!)
Hope you enjoy!
Topic: Madou Monogatari I: Honoo no Sotsuenji translation (Read 2706 times)
