Silviana (FDS) Mute's English Patch (Version 1.0) http://mute.vblank.net/ Silviana was an Ys knockoff released in the summer of '88 by Pack-In-Video. It's a semi-interesting twist on the genre -- rather than controlling a boy as he strives to save the princess or the world, you play a girl (Silviana) who's just trying to get medicine for her mother. Along the way, you'll drink tea, collect flowers and dolls, and converse with cute little dinosaurs. Despite the predominance of pink in the palette, the game itself should be pretty familiar. As in Ys, attack and defense are automatic, which means you basically run into the enemy until one of you dies. You don't gain levels, so the only way to improve your chances is to collect items: hearts to extend your life gauge, weapons to increase offense, and shields to increase defense. While you're looting chests for them, though, there are two kinds of traps you'll need to watch out for. THORNs poison you, which isn't so bad; SCYTHEs kill you, which does kind of suck. Luckily, there are consumable items called THIRD EYEs that, when equipped, automatically alert you to traps. If you run out, the game has a quick-save feature that can and should be abused. There's a more permanent regular save available, too, but, depending on your emulator, you may be better off using save states. Until you have the BRONZE SWORD (for sale in the nearby town), you won't be strong enough to enter any of the caves. After that, the most important items are BREAD (restores hit points), POPPIES (cure poison), and TULIPS (warp you back to your house). The other items either handicap enemies or temporarily increase your own stats. To use the currently selected item, press A; to bring up the status screen, press Select. To get started, you'll need five things: use a patching program (1) to apply the accompanying patch (2) to the original Japanese disk image (3), which you then load into an FDS-capable emulator (4) in conjunction with the disk system BIOS (5). I imagine this patch has a pretty small audience and that everyone in the audience knows, and knows where to get, all of the above. I nonetheless recommend testing and backups at every point in the process. Also, if the patch appears to do nothing, make sure your emulator's not keeping its own copy of the image. This is the part where I ask you to write in with any bugs or typos, but it's far enough after the fact that I doubt I could fix them -- which anyway would go against the bootleg, fly-by-night, "my God what were they thinking?" spirit of romhacking in general. - Mute (16 November 2002, 23 March 2007) Notes: (*) "the summer of '88" -- Two years later, Pack-In-Video released another version of Silviana for the MSX. The graphics were improved and the intro revamped, but otherwise it was the same game. (*) "the original disk image" -- might turn up with the subtitle "Ai Ippai no Boukensha" (something like "Loving Adventurer").