﻿********************************************************************************
*                       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.
