================================================================================= ====================Armored Dragon Legend Villgust Side Story==================== ======================================V.1.00===================================== Genre: Action RPG Source language: Japanese Patch language: English Authors : Supper/TheMajinZenki/cccmar ================================================================================= CONTENTS ================================================================================= 1. Armored Dragon Legend Villgust Side Story - General Info 2. Hacking Info (from Supper) 3. Translation Info (from TheMajinZenki) 4. Game Tips 5. Patching Instructions 6. Disclaimer 7. Credits ================================================================================= 1. Armored Dragon Legend Villgust Side Story - General Info ================================================================================= This time around we decided to do a retranslation. We checked out the old version of the patch and found many inconsistencies, most likely due to the lack of any context. As of now, there's no LP of this game in Japanese, we had to make one so as to be able to translate the game correctly. This game is basically an action RPG, a side story/prequel to the main franchise. You start out as Murobo, the chosen warrior of the Goddess (named Windina/Undine in various incarnations of the franchise), who is tasked with helping the Hero from another world reach the world of Villgust in order to save it. To accomplish that, the player has to find all the members of Murobo's group and help the inhabitants of the land with their troubles. The game plays like a mixture of a top-down RPG with a side-scrolling platformer during the battles, somewhat similarly to Gargoyle's Quest, but with experience, stats and equipment. There are inns where you can rest, and also churches in which you can cure poison/revive your fallen characters. What is more, there are your typical shops with weapons, armor and usable items, as well as enchanters who can improve your weapons. You will need to learn various enemy patterns in order to succeed in combat, and remember which status ailments they use. There are also a few simple puzzles, like using items to construct something or using specific items in battle. All in all, this is an interesting late Famicom game which plays completely different from its Super Famicom counterpart (that one is a much more typical JRPG). We wanted to give it a facelift of sorts. So, we hope you will like the fruits of our labor! ================================================================================= 2. Hacking Info (from Supper) ================================================================================= I'd never heard of Villgust before this project, but I guess I'm partly to blame for us doing it anyway. When I joked that once all the remaining Famicom games were translated, the fan translation scene would just start redoing all the awful old patches from 1998, cccmar chimed in with, "Hey, that reminds me of this Villgust game"... and here we are. The existing translation patch by the rather notorious J2e Translations came out on August 21st, 1998, making it just over twenty years old at this point. For context here, at that time, AOL was the dominant force in the American Web industry, hype for the upcoming Zelda: Ocarina of Time was reaching a fever pitch, and Sega fans were eagerly anticipating the release of the Dreamcast to bring the company out of its Saturn-induced rut. Times have changed just a bit. I didn't play the old patch until after we'd completed our own, and, well... where do I start? First, I really respect the effort it took to produce a fan translation back then. The emulators were primitive, the tools were nonexistent, and what documentation of the hardware there was was often half-wrong. I'm sure making a full-game translation patch was a monumental effort regardless of quality, and I probably couldn't have done much better if I'd had to work with the resources the original group had. On the other hand, there's no two ways about it: it's a bad translation. Really, really bad. It's hard to tell how much was due to space restrictions, how much was the translator and/or Babelfish not knowing what they were doing, and how much was just somebody saying "I don't like this dialogue, let's change it" -- but however it happened, the results are pretty painful. If you compare J2e's translation of the intro to ours, you'll see it's missing most of the details (the "hero from another world" part got lost entirely!), with many lines that are basically made up... and that's probably as good as their translation gets. Before long, you run into dark sorcerers screaming "Assholes! Who dare enters my territory?". Or Murobo musing "This rabbit is very delightful, but it inhibits us." when he's actually supposed to be saying "This is no mere rabbit, but a messenger of the Goddess". Or every single instance of "village head" being mistranslated as "butterfly" (they're both "chouchou" in Japanese, sure, but no one picked up on lines like "there's a butterfly fixing a boat"?). After the first couple of towns, whoever was supposed to be editing the text seems to have basically given up, and things rapidly descend into incoherent gibberish with the occasional bout of profanity thrown in for good measure. Seriously, compare the patches if you have time, it's pretty amazing. Things have come a long way in twenty years, and since that level of quality is mercifully no longer acceptable, I'm glad to have the chance to give the game its due. No made-up dialogue, no abbreviated names, no bizarre bugs (right?)... I hope this will give people the chance to experience the game as it was intended. Anyway, enough history, better make some actual comments about the hacking. After the Idol Hakkenden patch came out, several people remarked that they'd prefer not having words hyphen-broken across lines. Personally I'd rather have the more uniform line lengths, but since the people have spoken, I wrote an automatic line wrapper and used it for this project. Considering it saved me hours over formatting the text manually, I'm not exactly unhappy, but it still feels a little lazy. One thing I did find amusing: both J2e's hacker and I disabled the red color used for selected text, since the way attribute tables work means it would be impossible to fit more text in the small windows otherwise. (Or rather, J2e tried to disable this but only managed it in a few areas.) I don't like cutting features like this, but it's a pretty fair trade for more space and, considering cccmar thought the colored text was a bug at first, I don't think most people will miss it much. Well, enjoy your isekai-harem-toy-franchise-anime-spinoff-prequel game. It's actually not as bad as it sounds. ================================================================================= 3. Translation Info (from TheMajinZenki) ================================================================================= I didn't really know about Villgust before working on this game. It started as a series of toys that you could play some kind of tabletop RPG with, getting characters and equipment through gachapon. There's books, manga, an OVA, and there's still some following today apparently. At any rate, this wasn't a particularly difficult translation, and the story isn't exactly epic since it's only a prequel to what would be to come, but I think it's worth playing for its take on RPG battles (which is more like Gargoyle's Quest, in the sense that you are brought into a small action platformer stage). There's also an automatic mode which plays more like normal RPGs. What makes the game somewhat unique is the equipment screen, which updates the artwork of your characters depending on the armor they're wearing (which is a reference to the original tabletop game). It's also worth noting that we used the official character names (romanizations found in the OVA/on the figures), but we couldn't find them for the monsters, many of which seem to have made-up names. Anyway, I hope you enjoy. ;) ================================================================================= 4. Game Tips ================================================================================= 1. Always carry around a good supply of Antidotes/various types of Medicine. They will surely help you in a pinch, as spells can't be used too many times due to mana constraints. 2. Be sure to talk to all NPCs in the towns you visit. The exact triggers for the main plot events can be a bit esoteric at times. 3. Battle spells can be useful at times, but always carry a few Ambrosias later on in the game to replenish your mana! 4. Remember to sell your old equipment! You have a limited inventory and you don't need your old equipment in newer areas. Also, lvling up gives you a significant combat boost, so get a few levels when you feel underpowered. 5. You can use spells in battle (pick a spell -> use "up" + the attack button) and items (pick an item -> it will be used automatically). Use the Select button to open the inventory during the battles to pick a spell/item. ================================================================================= 5. Patching Instructions ================================================================================= We've included an IPS patch and a readme file in the package. You can use a program such as LunarIPS to apply the patch. Apply the patch to the original Japanese version of the ROM: Kouryuu Densetsu Villgust Gaiden (Japan).nes ================================================================================= 6. Disclaimer ================================================================================= This translation is a non-commercial and unofficial project which is in no way affiliated with the game creators or distributors. We don't own anything here and have no copyrights. We release this translation in the form of a patch. Please, don't ask us to send you the ROM, or where you can find it - we can't help you with that. You can redistribute this translation freely as long as you don't ask money for it and include this readme.txt file with it. We don't condone any form of commercial redistribution. Please, keep that in mind. ================================================================================= 7. Credits ================================================================================= Supper - Hacking TheMajinZenki - Translation Cccmar - Script Editing/Testing Also, thanks to RHDN for hosting our patch!