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====================Armored Dragon Legend Villgust Side Story====================
======================================V.1.00=====================================
Genre: Action RPG

Source language: Japanese

Patch language: English

Authors : Supper/TheMajinZenki/cccmar

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CONTENTS
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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

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1. Armored Dragon Legend Villgust Side Story - General Info
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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!

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2. Hacking Info (from Supper)
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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.

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3. Translation Info (from TheMajinZenki)
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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. ;)

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4. Game Tips
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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.

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5. Patching Instructions
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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

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6. Disclaimer
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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.

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7. Credits 
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Supper - Hacking

TheMajinZenki - Translation

Cccmar - Script Editing/Testing

Also, thanks to RHDN for hosting our patch!