## Introduction

I've been following Sakura Wars starting shortly before the English release of So Long, My Love in 2010. In January 2010, I bought a copy of the Sakura Wars Complete Box—a compilation of the Dreamcast versions of the first four Sakura Wars games—from a vendor at MAGFest with the intent to play all of them after mastering the Japanese language. That day has yet to come, but several events in the last few years rekindled my interest in the series to the point of attempting to stream these games without the aid of guides. The first of these was the announcement of the series reboot in 2018. On November 4, 2019, LordBBH, an arcade game specialist on Twitch, played the arcade version of Hanagumi Taisen Columns as part of his MAME Roulette project. (By coincidence, he chose to use Kohran.) On December 15, 2019, the fan translation for the Sega Saturn version of the first Sakura Wars game was released, and I streamed it starting that evening.

It was at that point where I pledged to get involved with Sakura Wars fan translations by any means necessary. I have over five years of experience in software localization, but nothing really worth writing in detail about. I've always wanted to contribute my powers into a passion project like an elusive fan translation, and I had four games on my shelf whose director had always hoped would see international releases that never came to be.

I had no knowledge of the fan translation for the Saturn game being in development until the day of its release, so I really didn't want to miss out the next time. My efforts culminated in posting messages like "If anyone out there is working on any translation projects for Sakura Wars, I will send you my CV" to both social media and to Sega themselves, and then I learned about the English translation for Sakura Wars Columns 2 from reading its announcement on April 14, 2020, weeks before its release. I felt as though I lost another opportunity to get involved, because I failed to keep a close eye on the communities that track fan translation projects in progress. That, and thinking that statements of intent targeted to no one in particular was enough to get the attention of anyone actually doing work.

My chance finally came on August 30, 2021, when ValKiryuSonicEX, a viewer of my Twitch stream, alerted me to the WIP videos of the Sakura Wars GB fan translation by ComicMaster138. At last, a project that wasn't a week or two away from being finished. Even though there wasn't a call for open positions, I took my chances and left my credentials in the comments. On September 1, 2021, Burntends, the project leader, graciously invited me to begin work as editor and tester.

My motivation for joining fan translation projects is the many times I played a localized video game and seeing common grammatical errors and questionable localization choices where I thought about how I would have written lines differently. As I played mostly text-heavy games in the last few years for my stream, I started to become aware of the details of how text rendering and text boxes in video games worked. I believed that I can polish localizations in small, imperceptible ways that improve the presentation of the text, if only those in power would give me a chance. Now, I have one in a franchise I have passion about.

One of the common issues I saw in games published in the late 1990s and early 2000s are lines written to be slightly longer than the limit of the text box, so the last one or two words in a line has to continue into another box before continuing to the next line. It makes for awkward reading, especially out loud. This is not an issue for games where the lines can scroll, but Sakura Wars GB is not such a game. Because of this, I edited and rewrote lines to minimize these occurrences to the best of my ability, but this wasn't always possible due to the small size of the Game Boy Color screen limiting the area for text. Thankfully, Dan Jia's re-engineering of the text renderer allows for the localized script to be expanded to any number of lines.

## Quality of Life Improvements

For this fan translation, Dan Jia added some quality of life features not in the original game to make navigating the map easier. These were implemented at my suggestion after my testing revealed annoyances that I felt were avoidable.

- The status bar on the map shows the current date, time of day, and room name that the cursor is pointing to. In the original game, the bar only shows when the cursor isn't moved for several seconds. In the patch, the bar shows instantly after the cursor stops. This allows for room names to be shown immediately as in the original Sakura Wars games, which is intended to help the player familiarize themselves with the layout of the theater.
- When the cursor is pointing at a staircase, it changes to a graphic of a staircase leading up or down. A small arrow was added to the top-left to help keep track of the cursor's exact position. This is especially helpful when using the stairs on the top-left of the 1st floor map, as the hotspots for upstairs and downstairs do not have clear visual separation.
- Arrows were added near the staircases on the 1st floor map to more clearly indicate that it is possible to click on them to move between floors.

## Restored Content

Sakura Wars GB had a vast amount of cut content, some of which we have restored for this translation.

- The endings with each member of the Flower Division has the final line of dialogue voiced by their respective character. The ROM contains voice samples for all lines of dialogue in these endings, but they are unused. The translation restores these voices.
- In the Dreamcast version of Sakura Wars 1, the Long Day mode available after finishing the game shows barcodes in the rooms of the girls whose endings were completed. A TV adapter peripheral for the Game Boy Color was planned, but never produced, which would read these barcodes and unlock bonus content in Sakura Wars GB. Because this content is impossible to attain without this adapter, they have been made unlockable by different means:
  - Candy cursor: An alternate cursor for the map. Originally unlockable simply by using the TV Adapter, it is available in the Romando shop once it is open in the translation by reaching any ending.
  - Extra photos: There are two photos still in the ROM that can only be unlocked using the TV Adapter and then buying them the Romando shop. In the translation, these photos can be unlocked for purchase in the Romando shop by getting Sakura's and Iris' endings.
  - Portrait galleries: A mode in which all dialogue portraits for each character can be viewed. In the translation, it is unlocked by getting all endings.

## Other Notes
- The Start and Select buttons can be used on the map to travel between floors.
- The Message Speed setting will affect the animation speed of training scenes. If it is set to Fast, the animations will always play at high speed, as if the B button is held down.
- Sakura Wars GB takes place during the events of Sakura Wars 1. It is recommended that you have some familiarity with that game's setting and main characters before starting this game.

## Conclusion

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to study the Japanese language in high school and continued my studies informally ever since. Japanese is beautiful in how efficiently information can be conveyed compared to English, and I encourage everyone with any interest in Japanese media to at least try to study it, be it with free online materials or reputable textbooks. Even if you learn only the most basic fundamentals of Japanese, you'll be much better off than those who do not try. While I myself am nowhere near fluent enough to lead a localization project, what I have learned has afforded me career opportunities that would not have been possible otherwise.

In many ways, the story of Sakura Wars GB is coincidentally parallel to my own experience working on its translation: an unknown quantity, I was found by a capable leader and given a trial position among exceptionally talented Sakura Wars fans to prove myself worthy of their ranks. Editing the script for Sakura Wars GB has been fantastically challenging, testing my abilities non-stop in the two months I worked on it. This will be the first fan translation where my contributions are substantial enough that I can be credited by name, and I would like to once again thank Burntends for giving me a chance to earn this distinction.

\- The Opponent