Following Hydlide and Silpheed back in December, D4 Enterprise has released its next PC-88 port on Switch via their EggConsole line. This time, it’s Märchen Veil (Part 1), initially released in 1985 for the PC-8801mkIISR.
If you’re unfamiliar with Märchen Veil, isn’t that just the best? Not knowing about a game that was just reissued? I actually do know Märchen Veil because of the Famicom Disk System version released in 1987. I don’t own it, but it’s one of the cheapest and most common games on the system, so I always see a copy when I’m looking for new ones to try. I haven’t bought it simply because I was afraid of the language barrier.
I bring that up because I wondered how D4 Enterprise addressed the language barrier since the story is told through cutscenes with Japanese text. The screenshot still shows the game’s text in Japanese, but I wanted to be sure, so I bought it and tried it out.
Did they translate this PC-88 game? No. It’s still in Japanese (also katakana, confusingly). To be fair, I don’t think it’s impossible to play for English monolinguists. No direction is given within the game; you just won’t understand the cutscenes. The story is of a prince who is changed into a hooved Pan-like creature and his quest to regain his human form.
Speaking of no direction, I started the game and walked directly into what looks like a kiddie pool and died instantly. It’s a game from 1985; it’s probably going to be pretty cryptic.
On the other hand, as a Westerner without much experience with the PC-88, the EggConsole line is pretty exciting to me, with or without translations. The series is a spinoff of D4 Enterprise’s Project Egg service, and a number of the planned titles have already been announced, such as the PC-88 version of Ys and A Ressha de Ikou.
I’ll keep you updated, simply because this interests me and I want to. For now, EggConsole Märchen Veil is available on the Nintendo Switch eShop.
