******************************************************************************** * Magic Knight Rayearth (Game Boy) * * English Translation Patch * * v1.0 (06 Jan 2023) * * * * TheMajinZenki -- Translation * * Supper -- Hacking * * cccmar -- Editing and Testing * * Xanathis -- Testing * ******************************************************************************** One day, Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu – the three Magic Knights summoned from Tokyo to save the magical world of Cephiro – come across a mysterious painting during their travels. Startlingly, they find that none of them see the same image in it, but no sooner do they realize this than they are sucked inside, each landing in the scene they saw. Separated, the three must now search for a way to reunite. What is the secret of the strange painting and its inhabitants? Magic Knight Rayearth for the Game Boy is a 1995 role-playing game based on CLAMP's hit media franchise of the same name, developed by Pandora Box and published by Tomy. Short and to the point (though with many hidden extras for the inquisitive player), its RPG elements are heavily simplified with an eye toward accessibility to the series' target audience, leaving most of the focus on the story. One of no less than seven Rayearth games released in a one-year span, its developer would go on to make both a sequel on the Game Boy and a more ambitious and well-known Rayearth adaptation for the Super Famicom. This patch fully translates the game into English. **************************************** * Table of Contents * **************************************** I. Patching Instructions II. Authors' Comments III. Version History **************************************** * I. Patching Instructions * **************************************** You'll first need a ROM image of Magic Knight Rayearth for the Game Boy. It should match the following specifications: No-Intro filename: Magic Knight Rayearth (Japan) (SGB Enhanced).gb CRC32: 94838a81 MD5: 06b75e657debd1568f18d369cc2422dd SHA-1: 4f77031946e62772a241a9b5b046d7fcf6a28ea8 The patch itself is a standard IPS patch. Use a tool such as Lunar IPS to apply the IPS file to the ROM. The patch will expand the ROM, so don't use ancient patching utilities that don't support that. **************************************** * II. Authors' Comments * **************************************** ------------------- -- TheMajinZenki -- ------------------- Now, it's pretty obvious that this game was written very shortly after the anime had started airing, because the plot of the game begins after they start traveling with Mokona and there is very little reference to the actual plot, beyond the intro and the fact that everyone knows that Zagato is the villain. Excluding that, the game does whatever it wants with the excuse of being set inside an alternate world (no, I don't mean Cephiro). The plot itself is nothing to write home about, but the charm of the game comes from how the Magic Knights reacts to the world and the characters. Umi's chapter is probably the funniest, followed by Hikaru's chapter. Fuu's chapter suffers from being isolated from everything, being set inside a labyrinth, but she does have her moments too. If you're a Rayearth fan, I recommend checking it out, it's an early anime tie-in, completely different from the famous Saturn version. If you're not a Rayearth fan, you might be interested in this obscure Gameboy gem. At any rate, I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed translating it :) ------------ -- Supper -- ------------ I have to apologize to the rest of the group for my handling of this project; it really should have been out well over a year ago, but I managed to drag my feet on it so hard that it's only just now finished. Sorry, everyone. I'll try not to let it happen again. This project actually dates back to 2020, when my own studies of Japanese were coming along a little bit and I started looking at this game as something I might try out as a first solo translation project. It's relatively short and no one really cares about it too much, as evidenced by the fact that nobody bothered to translate it for 26 years, which made it seemed like a reasonable candidate. So I did a preliminary script dump, intending to come back to it once I felt sufficiently comfortable with the language. But at some point in 2021 TheMajinZenki really wanted a project to work on and this script was the only thing I had on hand, so I ended up handing it over to him instead. I guess my negai wasn't very yuzurenai. Honestly, it's probably for the best, since (the fact that he's an incomparably superior translator to me aside) he's actually watched the whole series and I've only seen the first season. Anyway, Zenki knocked the script out in short order, but by that time I'd gotten going on my actual first solo project, Galaxy Fraulein Yuna 2, and ended up putting this aside for a while. I really should have started on it once that was done, but I rather selfishly went for another one of my own projects instead, and by the time that was over it had been half a year and Rayearth didn't seem like much of a pressing obligation anymore. I finally got it together at the very end of last year and cranked this out over the holidays. I feel bad about the whole thing, so again, my apologies to everyone. Incidentally, it seems to be the fate of English Rayearth translations, official or otherwise, to get horribly delayed, cancelled, and/or mangled. Plans to air the anime in the US were ultimately scrapped (though that's probably a mercy, given what magical girl show dubs were like at the time). The Saturn game got delayed over three years, and when it finally did come out, it had a few, uh, issues. The translation for the first Game Gear game, which I worked on with filler some time back, was stalled for a good decade or so. The only previous attempt at translating this game was an abandoned effort from 2000, which was very…well, 2000. And now, there's this. Hopefully we've at least stayed clear of the "mangled" category. So, for all the trouble it caused, how's the actual game? Eh, it's not bad. It's not amazing, and I can see why no one bothered with it up to now, but it's not an unenjoyable thing to drop a couple-three hours on if you're a fan of the series. The RPG elements are so trivial that it's really closer to an adventure game than anything else, but that suits me just fine. And the music is fantastic – it takes a lot to impress me these days, but the battle themes are right up there with the system's best, and "Alone in the Dark Labyrinth" is so good it salvages Fuu's really dull dungeon!…almost. The composer also scored the more famous Super Famicom Rayearth game and reused a few tracks, so if you've ever played that, you'll recognize some of the tunes here. This was my first translation project on the Game Boy. I think it all worked out pretty smoothly – hacking a game on a popular system with reliable emulators available, what a novelty! It does snap my four-game streak of doing karaoke subtitles for vocal songs, though. I half-considered adding some to the theme song in the sound test just to keep it going, but in the end, sense (or more likely laziness) prevailed. I'm sure some people will be wondering if we're also going to do a translation for the other Game Boy Rayearth game, which technically has an existing translation hack but seems to suffer from the dreaded "couldn't use more letters than the original game" issue. Sadly, we have no plans for it at this time, because I'd rather not have a repeat of what happened with this project. Also, I've made Zenki suffer through far too many magical girl games already, even if Rayearth does have a few giant not-robots to make up for it. Not that they're in this game, mind you. In closing, I hope you'll give the game a try. It's not going to revolutionize your life, but if you don't expect too much, you just might come away pleasantly surprised. And be sure to bump into all the scenery and dead ends, because you never know where you'll turn something up… ------------ -- cccmar -- ------------ Magic Knight Rayearth is a late Game Boy game that's based on a famous (especially in parts of Europe/South America) early isekai franchise. The story here is unique to the game, so it should be quite interesting for the fans of the series. The game itself is very simple; there are basic trappings of an RPG, such as leveling/stats, but they are fixed. There are no usable items. The only three commands are Attack/Magic/Run. Scenarios can be played in any order, the only change is some flavour text though. The most interesting scenario in my opinion is the last one, as it has some puzzles, not just comedic text and such. Overall, the game is very short and simple, but fans of the franchise will find that it's quite humorous, and a breezy playthrough at that. So, have fun, whoever reads this! **************************************** * III. Version History * **************************************** v1.0 (06 Jan 2023): Initial release.