********************************************************************************
*              Madou Monogatari A: Doki-Doki Vacation (Game Gear)              *
*                          English Translation Patch                           *
*                              v1.0 (28 Jan 2020)                              *
*                                                                              *
*                               Filler -- Translation                          *
*                               Supper -- Hacking                              *
*                        TheMajinZenki -- Additional Translation               *
*                               cccmar -- Testing                              *
*                          Oddoai-sama -- Testing                              *
*                        Kingofcrusher -- Special Thanks                       *
********************************************************************************

On the first day of her summer vacation from Magic Kindergarten, four-year-old 
magician-in-training Arle Nadja has decided to go visit her grandmother on the 
other side of the Fairy Forest. Since she's such a big girl now, Arle is even 
allowed to go by herself! But on the way there, she comes across a strange man 
with wings and horns who wants to cut down the forest to build an amusement 
park. Determined to save her fairy friends' precious forest, Arle sets out to 
put a stop to this heinous evildoing.

Sorcery Saga A: Vivacious Vacation (Madou Monogatari A: Doki-Doki Vacation) is a 
dungeon crawler by Compile, and a prequel to the original Sorcery Saga trilogy. 
It was initially released for the PC-98 home computer in a three-game bundle 
with sister games Madou Monogatari R and S. Later, it was ported as a standalone 
title to the Sega Game Gear, which is the version this translation targets. As 
is typical for the series, this port bears only vague similarities to the 
original version; the story and dungeons are almost entirely new.

This patch fully translates the game into English.

                    ****************************************
                    *          Table of Contents           *
                    ****************************************

  I.   Patching Instructions
  II.  Character Introduction
  III. Basic Gameplay
  IV.  Authors' Comments
  V.   Version History

                    ****************************************
                    *       I. Patching Instructions       *
                    ****************************************

You'll first need a ROM image of Madou Monogatari A: Doki-Doki Vacation for the
Game Gear. It should match the following specifications:

  No-Intro filename: Madou Monogatari A - Dokidoki Vacation (Japan).gg
  CRC32:             7EC95282
  MD5:               AB0D1EB20AC63A984D874A885CA2588D
  SHA-1:             C027AA76FE0E09A2D1B982EEA0DF2C8B687AADF7

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 to 1 MB, so don't use 
ancient patching utilities that don't support that.

                    ****************************************
                    *      II. Character Introduction      *
                    ****************************************

This section is taken from the game's manual, and was graciously translated by 
TheMajinZenki from scans provided by Sega Retro. Looking at the original manual 
as you read this is highly recommended -- the art is quite excellent!
https://segaretro.org/images/a/aa/MMADDV_GG_JP_Manual.pdf

  It's July 22. Today, Arle turns four.
  Tomorrow is the beginning of her super long summer vacation from Magic
  Kindergarten.

  Having turned four, Arle has been granted one of her dearest wishes:
  she is finally allowed to visit her grandma, who lives on the other side of
  the Fairy Forest.

  And so, carrying a lunch box made by her mom and a present for her grandma,
  Arle proudly enters the Forest.
    
  --------------
  - Arle Nadja -
  --------------
  
  A young magician in the making.
  She's an energetic four years old,
  attending Magic Kindergarten, Kitty Class.
  Apparently, her main reason for visiting
  her grandma is to spend a fun summer vacation
  away from her mom's nagging...or so she thought.
    
  ------------
  - Red Puyo -
  ------------
  
  A type of Puyo Puyo.
  A short-lived magical creature,
  destined to vanish into nothingness
  if four of them group together...
  And yet it always keeps its spirits up.
    
  -----------------
  - Carbuncle...? -
  -----------------
  
  ...-shaped pouch. Really, it's just a pouch.
  Honest.
    
  -----------
  - Fairies -
  -----------
  
  Arle's friends from the "Fairy Forest".
  Bound by a powerful friendship, they had her swear
  that she wouldn't get a boyfriend before they can.
    
  ---------------
  - High Flower -
  ---------------
  
  A walking higher plant.
  The watering can is its lunch box (water).
    
  ---------------
  - Sword Beast -
  ---------------
  
  A sickle weasel. His prized pair of
  sickles is engraved with the name of
  the master artisan who crafted them.
    
  -----------
  - Owlbear -
  -----------
  
  A rowdy creature with very sharp claws.
  He has the ability to read his opponent's heart.
    
  ------------
  - Bankrypt -
  ------------
  
  A dead broke lich.
  So poor that he can't even pay attention.
    
  --------
  - Boss -
  --------
  
  The director and site foreman of the
  Satan Builder construction company.
  He's a very big deal.
  He wants to turn the Fairy Forest next
  to Arle's house into an amusement park.

                    ****************************************
                    *         III. Basic Gameplay          *
                    ****************************************

Sorcery Saga A is a dungeon crawler, but has a few unusual features compared to
other games in the genre. Here's a quick overview of the gameplay.
  
  ***************
  * Exploration *
  ***************
  
  The main part of the game consists of first-person exploration. In this mode,
Arle can walk around and search for items, stairways, and so on.

  Controls:
  
    D-Pad Up/Button 1    Move forward one square.
    D-Pad Left           Turn to the left.
    D-Pad Right          Turn to the right.
    D-Pad Down           Turn to face the opposite direction.
    Button 2             Open the Main Menu.
    Start                When a menu is open, pressing Start will show a help 
                         message explaining the currently selected item.
  
  While exploring, the screen consists of five parts:
  
    Top-left        Area view.
                    Shows what Arle is currently looking at.
                    
    Top-right       Arle's face.
                    Indicates Arle's current health.
                    
    Bottom-left     Compass.
                    The four icons indicate Arle's current orientation. The 
                    direction at the top of the compass is the one Arle is
                    currently facing.
                    
    Bottom-right    Message window.
                    If Arle finds something or someone, text may appear here.
                    Also displays the amount of gold Arle has.
                    
    Screen border   Experience meter.
                    Arle earns experience for defeating enemies. As she does, 
                    the gems around the edge of the screen will light up.
                    Once all the gems are lit, Arle will gain a level and
                    become more powerful.
  
  Unlike traditional RPGs, this game doesn't use concepts like "hit points" or 
"magic points"! Instead of numbers, Arle's current state is shown by her 
expression. If she's in good health, she'll be happy and smiling, but if she's 
hurt, she'll frown or looked pained.
  
  Another clue to Arle's status is the music. If the normal background track is 
replaced by "unhappy" music, Arle is very low on HP or suffering from a status 
problem.
  
  *************
  * Main Menu *
  *************
  
  While exploring, the Main Menu can be accessed by pressing Button 2. It
contains the following options:
  
    Map             Opens the map, showing Arle's current position and 
                    orientation.
                    As Arle explores, the map will automatically be filled in 
                    with the locations of walls and doors. Note that some
                    features aren't recorded on the map.
                    When the map is open, press Up and Down on the D-Pad to 
                    switch between previously-explored floors.
                    
    Magic           Allows Arle to cast spells.
                    Note that spells used in this way may have different 
                    effects from when they're used in battle.
                    
    Items           Opens the Item Menu.
                    From here, Arle can use the items she finds while 
                    exploring. Press the Start button after selecting an item
                    to receive an explanation of its effect.
                    
    Save            Allows Arle to update her journal, saving current progress.
                    Up to four save files may exist at once.
  
  **********
  * Battle *
  **********
  
  While exploring, Arle will encounter many enemies that she must defeat in
order to progress. When an enemy appears, the game switches to Battle mode.
  
  In Battle mode, Arle and the enemy will take turns attacking each other. 
During her turn, Arle can do one of four things:
  
    Magic           Allows Arle to cast spells.
                    Arle is a magician, so she can't attack enemies physically!
                    Instead, she can cast spells to do damage, heal herself,
                    or cause other effects.
                    
    Items           Opens the Item Menu.
    
    Run             Attempts to run from the battle.
                    Note that there's a chance Arle won't be able to escape, 
                    and certain battles may be impossible to run from.
                    
    ?               A very mysterious command that apparently has no effect.
                    Perhaps it will have some use later...?
  
  During battle, the current health of both Arle and the enemy is indicated by 
the messages shown when they're hit by an attack.
  
  Arle has a limited supply of magic power. While basic attack spells don't 
require any magic power to cast, most other spells will deplete Arle's magic 
power when used. If Arle runs out of magic, she won't be able to cast most 
spells. Whenever Arle gains or loses magic power, a message indicating the 
amount remaining will be displayed, so make sure to use magic-restoring items
if it gets low.
  
  Defeating enemies causes Arle to earn experience. As she does, the experience
meter around the edge of the screen will fill (see "Exploration"). Once it's
full, Arle will gain a level, increasing her power and restoring her health.
  
  ********
  * Tips *
  ********
  
  * If Arle tries to walk into a wall, she'll bump into it. This technique can 
sometimes be used to uncover secrets. If you come across a suspicious place, try
bumping into it and seeing if anything happens.

  * Pay attention to the map! Make sure you explore every area possible, or you
might miss important events. Sometimes, you may have to get additional skills
before you can visit every space on a level, so make sure to occasionally check
levels you've already visited (Up/Down/Left/Right Buttons on the map screen) for
blank areas.
  
                    ****************************************
                    *        IV. Authors' Comments         *
                    ****************************************
  
  ------------
  -- Filler --
  ------------
  
  In an effort to dump scripts for the remaining Game Gear games without English 
translations, I figured out the text encoding and dumped a script for Madou 
Monogatari A on June 16th of 2018. There was another ROM hacker interested in 
working on Madou Monogatari II originally, but when that fell through I reached 
out Supper and crew around mid-February 2019 to see if they'd like to tackle the 
remaining Madou Monogatari/Sorcery Saga games.

  Fast forward to early April of 2019, I'd passed the Sorcery Saga II/III 
scripts on to theMajinZenki for translation. Figuring he had enough on his 
plate, I thought we should split the work-load; I'd translate Sorcery Saga A 
while he worked on Sorcery Saga III. Little did I know that I'd have events 
going on in my personal life that would push my translation work back further 
than I'd anticipated.

  Despite that Supper and I reconnected around September and work resumed on the 
Sorcery Saga A script. I finished up a first draft translation in early December 
2019, and I worked on editing/re-writing until mid January 2020.

  I'd ended up translating the first game on the Game Gear with Steven Seehorn 
which was released way back in 2010. It's not my best work in retrospect, so I 
wanted to be sure to put my all into Sorcery Saga A, both to display how I'd 
grown in 10 years, and also to do right by the work Supper/theMajinZenki/cccmar 
had done with II and III. Also, there were wording and style conventions 
established in those releases of which I was mostly unaware.

  I decided to just start translating as if I were not working on an established 
series, and set my own conventions assuming that the editing team would be 
better able to normalize wording with the previous releases than I would. I feel 
like this was the right choice for me, as it let me be a little creative and 
have some fun with the project, though some of it would likely not make it into 
the final script.

  On Translation Choices

  Momomo's Discount Dungeon - This is げきやすのももものおみせ, literally Momomo's Shop of 
Bargains. I took the liberty of translating this as "Discount Dungeon" to fit 
with the theme of the game and take advantage of some alliteration.

  Toadin - Originally カエルロッド, I believe this is a contraction of "kaeru" which 
means "frog", and the name "Elrod", "Kaeruroddo/Kaelrod". In order to get a 
similar effect I wanted to use the word frog or toad, and combine it with some 
kind of heroic or mythical name. In this case I used "toad" and the Norse god 
"Odin", a.k.a. "Toadin".

  Ribbitur - Originally ゲロゲーロ (Gerogeero), something like "Ribbit-riiibbit". 
Arle thinks this name sounds lame, presumably because it's just frog noises and 
doesn't sound very epic. In order to localize this joke I decided to take a 
similar approach as "Toadin" and try a contraction. I searched for the names of 
mythical swords and I believe I was tempted to go with "Frogarach" based on a 
sword from Irish myth, but I decided that the most commonly known mythical sword 
is "Excalibur". I wanted to keep the "ribbit" core of the joke, so was born the 
legendary sword "Ribbitur". I think it sounds sufficiently lame, right?

  Sorcerer/sorceress/sorcery - When I'd translated the original game there was 
no official localization of Madou Monogatari. That changed in 2013 with the 
localization of Compile Heart's Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God. 
Compile Heart is the successor to Compile, developer of Madou Monogatari, and 
Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God is called "Sei Madou Monogatari" in 
Japanese. With an official localized name now decided upon, the fan translations 
went with Sorcery Saga II and III respectively.

  As this was Sorcery Saga A, I used the term "sorcery" a lot in the script. 
Arle refers to herself as a sorceress, characters reference ancient sorcerers, 
and what were "magic spheres" in Madou Monogatari I, became alliterative 
"sorcery spheres". However, despite going with the sorcery name, the previous 
two entries apparently stuck with the magic/magician nomenclature and I believe 
Sorcery Saga A's wording has been normalize with those previous entries. I am 
fine either way, but I wanted to add this translation note in case folks are 
wondering why sorcerer/sorcery is not used more.

  Hitohadanugu - 一肌脱ぐ. This is used for a joke. It means to help out/pitch in. I 
read that it comes from taking off one sleeve of your kimono in order to help 
out more effectively. Kind of like rolling up your sleeves. It also sounds a bit 
like stripping down to skin. When Alioune offers to help Arle out, Arle 
misunderstands and says "Huh! W-Why naked?". In order to capture the spirit of 
this gag I tried keeping the offer to help, followed by a misunderstanding that 
could be slightly off-color. In this case "If it's for the sake of a friend I'll 
have to get my hands dirty too." "Huhhh! You're not getting your dirty hands on 
me!"

  Electro-magical girl - Ceelyn offers to teach Arle the magic "lightning". She 
says that now she too with be a "バリバリのまどうしょうじょ" (baribari no madou shoujo). This 
seems to be a play on "mahou shoujo" or "magical girl", but using the word for 
"sorcery" a.k.a "madou girl". Just saying, "now you'll be a sorcery girl 
crackling with electricity" didn't seem to quite get the pun across. I decided 
to use the word "electromagnet" with "magic" to get "Now you too will be an 
electromagical girl crackling with electricity."

  Eyeball grass (めんたまぐさ)/runner's root (いだてんぐさ)/crown weed (のうてんぐさ)/poison's 
bane (ドクけしそう) - There are 4 main herb style items in the game. Originally I 
thought that they may be referring directly to their effects (Seemingly: sight, 
speed, mind, and antidote), and was going to go with something like "vision 
herbs", "speed grass", etc. which I think is closer to how they are handled in 
Sorcery Saga II/III. However, in researching on this page: 
http://suwa3.web.fc2.com/data-kan/item/title/pc98123.html I learned that these 
plants have different effects depending on the game. From that standpoint I took 
the names to be more like common plant names such as "milkweed", or "bloodroot". 
As such, I decided to name them as above. I believe these have been normalized 
to match the other games, but I wanted to give them a mention since I thought 
they were fun.

  Bankrypt - Originally "Lich/Rich-poor". This is a pun on "rich/poor" based on 
how L/R is pronounced the same in Japanese. Calling this enemy type "rich-poor" 
didn't seem like it would get the pun across so I went with "bankrypt".

  Conclusion

  Translation-wise this project was both a blast and a challenge. While I 
enjoyed the chance to translate some fun puns and dialog, there were a lot of 
terms I had to research and things I mulled over on multiple checking and 
editing passes. In the end, I know I did the best job I could at this moment and 
I'm proud of the results. While I feel a little guilty for butting in on a 
series theMajinZenki had established a track record on, I enjoyed the chance to 
come back to a series I'd started translating a decade earlier, and to book-end 
the Game Gear Sorcery Saga so-to-speak.

  The final script is the result of the efforts of not only myself but also 
Supper and other folks testing and editing the script, and of course 
theMajinZenki's efforts on the previous 2 titles. I hope that you'll find this 
installment every bit as enjoyable as the previous, or at least as well produced 
from a localization standpoint, and I'd like to thank Supper, cccmar, 
theMajinZenki, and anyone else who helped with this project. This has turned out 
to be a very fun series of games on the Game Gear and I'm glad that more folks 
will be able to play them thanks to our efforts.

  As always, all work was uncompensated and is provided for free. My translated 
script is not to be used commercially in any capacity.

  ------------
  -- Supper --
  ------------
  
  Well, we couldn't let it end at 3, could we? Here's the next game in the Madou 
Monogatari series, and the last one on the Game Gear. This time around, the 
translation was handled by Filler, who also translated the first Game Gear Madou 
Monogatari game back in the day, so I guess we've come full circle.
  
  This game is a bit of an odd duck. Though it's superficially similar to the 
Game Gear ports of MM1/2/3, under the hood, it's running on a completely new 
engine written by a different team. This has some benefits (dungeon rendering is 
MUCH faster) and some drawbacks (the game can no longer print text a character 
at a time, which is fine by me considering what a pain it was to make that 
feature work with a proportional font in the other games). Mostly, it's strange 
that they even bothered with a new engine, considering it was used only for this 
one game. Perhaps they had ambitions of porting the other two games in the A/R/S 
trilogy, but scrapped them due to the Game Gear being dead in the water by 1995.
  
  It's also a very strange game in terms of balance. I think most people would 
agree that MM3 was too easy, and the developers apparently tried to rectify that 
this time around. But while the game is even harder than MM2 at the start, to 
the point that we actually had a tester give up entirely after getting murdered 
by Puyos in the first area on every playthrough they attempted, the difficulty 
drops off throughout the game until by the end, it's almost as easy as MM3.
  
  It's hard not to feel like Compile was putting fewer and fewer resources into 
the Game Gear ports as time went by. Where most enemies in MM2 had 3-5 unique 
attacks, this game's are lucky if they get two. Many music tracks are recycled 
from previous games. Several sections of the dungeon are near-linear paths with 
nothing but random enemies and dead ends. Few monsters have unique reactions to 
the different attack spells; this game introduces a new Lightning element spell, 
but as far as I can tell, it's totally interchangeable with the other two. The 
game introduces fast travel...right before the final area, when you've already 
been everywhere you need to go. And so on.
  
  On the plus side, it certainly looks much nicer than MM3 did, dropping that 
game's "flat" artstyle in favor of one more consistent with the rest of the 
series. Enemy and spellcasting animations are more elaborate and make for a nice 
touch. The music that IS new for this game is great. Arle's still a pretty funny 
kid. And there's even a giant robot!...for a few minutes.
  
  So that's my review of Madou Monogatari A, hope you liked...oh, right, I guess 
I'm supposed to be commenting on this translation patch I spent a month making. 
Well, if you played the other MM translations I worked on, this one looks pretty 
much the same, which was harder to pull off than it might sound since the new 
engine meant I had to redo most stuff from scratch.
  
  While testing, we ran into a couple of bugs in the original game (furthering 
my narrative of this being a low-effort port). While it's not generally my 
policy to fix bugs in the original game if they don't touch on the translation 
in some way, I went ahead and fixed these since they do nothing but get in the 
way:
  * Saving and restoring the game in front of an event that immediately triggers 
a message in the left window, such as the statue at the frog pond, would cause 
the area behind the window to become permanently blacked out.
  * When removing key items such as the stone weights from the inventory, the 
game failed to check the final inventory slot. If the item the game wanted to 
get rid of happened to be in that last slot, it would be stuck in your inventory 
for the rest of the game.
  Hope no one feels like I've destroyed the game experience by getting rid of 
these!
  
  Filler put a lot of work into the translation, and I think it turned out 
splendid. For those coming to this game from the ones translated by 
TheMajinZenki, fear not: a good deal of effort went into keeping things 
consistent. Many of the original Japanese messages were taken verbatim or nearly 
so from previous entries in the series, and the same translations have been used 
wherever possible.
  
  I feel a little bad about this because it essentially threw out parts of 
Filler's work after he put so much effort into translating the full script, so 
I'd like to offer an apology for that. For another series it might not have been 
so important, but in a game where you're reliant on written messages rather than 
numbers to tell you basic information like how much HP and MP you have, 
maintaining consistent translations becomes absolutely critical. Keeping the 
same translations from the other games means that players coming to this game 
from the rest of the series don't have to learn a whole new set of conventions. 
If we'd planned further ahead, I'd have provided the script to Filler with the 
shared messages already filled in so they wouldn't have been retranslated and 
then edited out, but that's not how things worked out this time.
  
  Well, anyway, I guess that's that. It seems we've reached the end of the line 
on the Game Gear Madou Monogatari games. I can't believe Compile would abandon 
such a successful platform, but there you have it. That's not to say we don't 
have more coming, though. See you...well, eventually. Who knows when we'll 
actually finish this thing.
  
  P.S. Complaints regarding the translation of the "Doki-Doki Vacation" subtitle 
as "Vivacious Vacation" should be addressed to me. You could certainly get away 
with "Doki-Doki" in this day and age, but your average gamer's association for 
it is "literature club", not the "thrilling experience" it's meant to evoke 
here.

                    ****************************************
                    *          V. Version History          *
                    ****************************************

v1.0 (28 Jan 2020): Initial release.
