MAGICAL DOROPIE
ENGLISH TRANSLATION VERSION 1.00
RELEASED 08-05-02
BY VIDEO SMASH EXCELLENT
http://www.flammie.net/vse/

Contents:

1.  About Magical Doropie
2.  Credits
3.  What's Done
4.  Known Issues
5.  Recommended Emulators
6.  How to Apply the Patch
7.  How to Play
8.  The Krion Conquest and Some Ways In Which It Differs From
    Magical Doropie
9.  Contact Info
10. Special Thanks

------------------------
1. About Magical Doropie
------------------------

Sometime in the late 80s, Vic Tokai released a really obvious Rockman
(Megaman) wannabe on the Famicom called Magical Doropie, and it turned
out not to suck as much as it could have.  It was actually a fairly
decent platformer starring a little witch named Doropie, and it had
fairly decent between-stage cutscenes to advance the plot.  Sometime
after that, Vic Tokai's American branch decided to release an English
version, which they called The Krion Conquest.  However, in some
inexplicable random fit of malice, they decided to cut out all plot
save the intro, as well as make other miscellaneous changes.  The
game's new "ending" was a particular slap in the face.  Judging by the
number of references on the Internet, The Krion Conquest (TKC) was
apparently played by no one, including me.

Things remained as such until March 22nd or 23rd or something, when I
was tired and bored and avoiding real work and happened to click on the
Magical Doropie (MD) ROM.  I recognized the cool intro as being part of
TKC (briefly a target of my boredom earlier), but the next scene was
new to me.  Once I realized the plot had been gutted, I decided to see
if I could possibly reinstate it and give MD a second chance in
English.  Through Just Enough Boredom and Just Enough Success, I got
the whole thing done in about a week, upon which I let it sit for over
four months until I finally got off my butt and found some web hosting.
And so here we have MD's second incarnation in English, which I'm sure
will also be played by no one.

----------
2. Credits
----------

Romhacking, translation, editing - Shih Tzu
Beta testing - Gideon Zhi
Fonts - toma

--------------
3. What's Done
--------------

Version 1.00 - First and hopefully only release!

  - All cutscenes translated.  Everything else already in English.

  - Pre-boss screens slightly adjusted for spelling and grammar,
    because I'm anal.  Also so no one would think they were my fault.
    Left alone otherwise.

---------------
4. Known Issues
---------------

  - There is one instance of a character's mouth not moving when it
    looks like it should.  The original Japanese line didn't require
    the character to open their mouth (it's not as interesting as it
    sounds).  I chose a translation that fit the scene over one that
    fit the mouth.  Theoretically, I or someone else could possibly
    fix this by locating the cutscene data, but I'm not up to that.

------------------------
5. Recommended Emulators
------------------------

I tested this mostly in FCEUltra, but that has some graphical glitches
in the intro.  Nester (official and unofficial) plays the intro fine,
as does NESten.  All three do the same weird thing on the pre-boss
screens, and I think it's actually supposed to look that way.  Pretend
it's cool.  (Epileptics beware.)

-------------------------
6. How to Apply the Patch
-------------------------

Put the patch (the IPS file) in the same directory as an unpatched
Japanese Magical Doropie ROM.  Use your favorite IPS patcher, such as
IPS.EXE or SNESTOOL.EXE, to unite the two in feverish ecstasy.  If you
know what you're doing, you don't need these instructions, and if you
don't know what you're doing, these instructions probably don't help,
so then go to the excellent patching FAQs at The Whirlpool
(http://donut.parodius.com/) or J2E (http://www.j2e.org/).  If you
really can't get it to work, email me.

--------------
7. How to Play
--------------

Gameplay controls:

You control Doropie, the titular witch.  That last sentence is very
serious and please do not laugh at it.

  LEFT and RIGHT - Move left and right.
  DOWN - Duck.
  A - Jump.
  B - Fire.
  HOLD B - Charge the shot.
  UP+B - Fire upwards.
  DOWN+B - Fire while ducking.
  START - Pauses and opens Doropie's spell menu.  Scroll up and down
  and push START again to choose the current spell.

The spells are all available from the beginning and cost nothing to use
except as noted.  They are as follows:

  NORMAL - Normal.  Doropie fires weak shots and can charge up to fire
  a powerful one.

  FIRE - Summons a firebird to kill all non-boss enemies on the screen
  at the cost of some life.  Be careful not to select this by accident,
  as its effect is immediate.  Cannot be charged.

  FREEZE - Identical to NORMAL except the charged shot briefly freezes
  enemies.  Frozen enemies thaw very quickly and can't be used as
  platforms a là Metroid, so I don't find it all that useful.

  BALL - Fires a ball at an angle that will bounce off three walls
  before disappearing.  Invaluable for killing enemies in hard-to-reach
  spots (the second screen is a good example).  Also note that you can
  slightly adjust the trajectory by firing up.  Cannot be charged.

  SHIELD - Identical to NORMAL except the charged shot briefly throws
  up a shield against enemy shots in front of Doropie.  I find it too
  brief to be more than occasionally useful, but you can always throw
  it up anyway and pretend you're playing Out Of This World instead.

  BROOM - Fire to summon Doropie's broom, a tricky-to-use but
  all-important vehicle.  Hop on before it disappears, then fire in the
  direction you want to go.  The broom will disappear if it touches a
  wall.  You can safely jump if it's moving up, but if it's moving left
  or right it will zoom away.  Note that since Doropie cannot fire
  down, the broom cannot move in that direction.  Cannot be charged.


Cutscene controls:

  A - Speed up the text.
  START - Skip the current cutscene.


------------------------------------------------------------
8. The Krion Conquest and Some Ways In Which It Differs From 
   Magical Doropie
------------------------------------------------------------

Word on the street is that the original plans for MD's North American
release would have left it pretty much intact, with the name changed to
Francesca's Wand.  Why they dropped these plans is anyone's guess;
perhaps this is around the time Vic Tokai decided to get out of games
and the project's funding was cut.  Thanks for Skrybe for the info!

Anyway, as far as TKC goes, there don't seem to be any core gameplay
changes between it and MD, but nearly everything outside gameplay is
different or (usually) gone.  To wit:

  - TKC has all cutscenes save the intro completely excised.  The
    pretty screens introducing each round are also gone.

  - The intro is actually pretty much fully translated (the content is
    actually closer to the original than mine--I had to fit it all in
    twenty lines).  The Akudama Empire has become the Krion Empire,
    and Doropie has become Francesca.  The background in the witch-
    summoning scene has been lightened for some reason, and even more
    bizarre is the new rendition of Doropie/Francesca.  It's not bad,
    but what on earth was objectionable about the original?

  - TKC has been given a standard ugly-NES-game title screen.  The
    name is changed to The Krion Conquest, and the music has been
    adjusted to something more likely to appeal to 10-year-old boys
    (I guess).  The witch with the bare shoulders is of course out,
    even though that has an even greater chance of appealing to
    10-year-old boys.

  - The hexagram or whatever that announces the end of each sublevel
    is absent, of course.  I like the image of parents walking in on
    that one.

  - TKC lacks MD's continue feature.  You die, you die.  But that's
    okay, as it just makes it more satisfying to finally reach the
    ending, right?

  - TKC's ending is HORRID.  I'll spoil it for you right now (without
    spoiling MD) so that you don't have to wonder about it.  The
    final boss goes down, and without even the decency to fade the
    screen out, the words "YOU WIN!!" scroll up, followed by
    "CONGRATULATIONS!", an abbreviated MD credits list, and then "THE
    END".  I notice in particular they took out the part where they
    thank you for playing.  I think they hate us.

---------------
9. Contact Info
---------------

The Magical Doropie Translation - http://www.flammie.net/vse/
Shih Tzu's email address - intrabot@hotmail.com

Please feel free to send any comments, suggestions, critiques, and
(heaven forbid) bug reports.  I will not reply to ROM requests.  Sorry.
Magical Doropie can be located in about four seconds using Google.  I
probably can't help with any translation requests or romhacking
questions, as I suck.  I'll try to respond to emails promptly, but I'm
really terribly unforgivably bad at that, so if I don't reply and it's
not a ROM request, try sending a follow-up guilt-trip email.  That
works most of the time.  Ask my parents.

If you understand the above, feel free to change "intra" to "inter" to
get the correct email address.

------------------
10. Special Thanks
------------------

  - Vic Tokai for making the original game, as well as for dropping
    the ball on the English release so I could come along and fix it

  - toma for the excellent intro (SomeCrazyWackedOutFontBrotha) and
    cutscene (HappyFroggies) fonts

  - Mathonwy for hosting

  - Gideon Zhi for beta testing

  - SnowBro for Tile Layer, Tile Layer Pro, and Hexpose

  - Januschan for Translhextion

  - The Magical Kid's Doropie ImPerfect Guide
    (http://www5c.biglobe.ne.jp/~SNAKE/doropie/doropieindex.htm)
    for the kanji in a character's name

    (side note: A number of Japanese sites refer to the game as
    "Magical Kid's Doropie" for reasons I have yet to understand.
    The odd thing is that there are even graphics for a title screen
    that says "Magical Kid's Doropie" in the ROM, but they're unused,
    unless there's some secret way to unlock them.)

  - Skrybe for the info on Francesca's Wand

  - Drahktar for giving me that one CD, without which this honestly
    would not be happening

  - AND YOU



 ...except she IS titular!  I mean, check it out,
      they gave her sprite cleavage!