Farland Story 1
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Translation by BTAxis (contact at BTAxis@gmx.net)
Special thanks to _Bnu
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ABOUT THIS TRANSLATION
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I started messing with PC98 games a while ago. Some games on that system truly rock, and so many people are missing out on them, mainly because of one reason: all of the software available for it is in Japanese. Partly because of this, and partly because I thought it might be fun, I tried to modify several of the games I have collected.

Several initial tries failed. Either the game used a text-encoding that was impossible to work with (Dragon Knight 4), or the game didn't allow me to change parts of the text (Gakuen Bomber), or the game flipped after I changed the length of a script file (Angel Halo). Finally I found a game that suffered from none of these obstacles: Farland Story.

Farland Story is a strategy RPG game, a bit like Langrisser except quite a bit simpler. The script isn't too big (60KB), but to compensate there are seven installments of the series. I may someday translate all of them. Or not.

I did most of the work myself. I translated the text using JWPce and my own crappy understanding of Japanese. I edited all the files with UltraEdit, which I consider a very fine text-editing and programming tool. The script for Farland Story was a little tricky to figure out, it took me a while to find out that a new line must not start with either w, a, q, e, a or k. But it turned out allright in the end.

It took me almost two weeks to get all of it done. I started my work just as the winter break was starting, and I spent a fair amount of time each day on it. The last translation I finished on December 31st, with only five more hours to go in 2002.

I said most of the work, but not all. I had help and support from my good friend _Bnu. He aided me in installing the game onto a hard-disk image (for which I myself proved too stupid), and he beta-tested the game after I finished my initial translation.

And now it is finally done. All the text in the game that will show up has been changed. I only regret that I couldn't find a disassembling tool that can handle the NEC V20 architecture, because I had to settle for some crappy names in the executable. But that is but a minor flaw in an otherwise enjoyable game.



NOTES WHILE PLAYING
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- You will still need to use a Japanese font to play the game. Some characters are still in doublebyte, and I didn't feel like changing something that worked fine.

- The man called Balzar is really called "black knight", but since I could find no reasonable way to squeeze "black knight" in six letters, I just gave him a name. For the same reason, some enemies or items don't have their proper names. Until I finde a nice PC98 disassembler/reassembler, this will stay that way.

- The game isn't very hard. If you want to have a fun time playing, then don't do your best too much in the first missions, because otherwise you'll be left with an uninteresting mid-game. Try fighting with inferior equipment until you can't get through anymore.