Silviana (FDS)
Mute's English Patch
http://members.aol.com/m06115

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, carry around flowers and dolls,
and converse with cute little dinosaurs.

But despite the flowers, the dolls, and the predominance of
pink in the color palette, the game itself should be pretty
familiar.  Premise aside, its auto-attack battle system
follows very much in the footsteps of Ys.  Except where Ys
is usually considered a lost classic we were tragically
denied, Silviana -- with its annoying instant death traps,
steep difficulty curve, and shoddy object detection that
allows enemies to knock you back into inescapable walls --
has inspired no outpourings.  And yet somehow it still
manages to be fun.  Here's how to play.

As mentioned, 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 -- poison doesn't drain your hit points
in the Final Fantasy sense but rather slows you down so
it's harder to move -- which isn't so bad.  Scythes, on the
other hand, will kill on contact, 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 of third eyes, the game has a quick save feature
that can and should be abused.  There's a more permanent
regular save available, too, but since not all FDS
emulators write back to the disk afterwards, you may be
better off just using save states.

The most important items are bread (restores hit points),
poppies (cure poison), and tulips (warp you back to your
house).  Third eyes you already know.  Golems, puppets,
dolls, daffodils, and roses all either handicap enemies or
temporarily increase your own stats.  When you make it to
the first town, don't start buying bread and extra keys
till you have the bronze sword.  The sword will make the
surrounding caves much easier, and in turn will give you
enough money to then buy whatever you feel like.

That's pretty much it.  The select button brings up and
closes the status screen, start pauses, A uses the
currently selected item, and B is unused except to cancel
a purchase.  You'll quickly get the hang of it.

In fact getting the game to run, in English, is probably
harder than playing it.  You need five things in all: use a
patching program (1) to apply the accompanying patch (2) to
the original Japanese rom (3), which you then load into an
FDS-capable emulator (4) in conjuction 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 would be remiss, however, if I
failed to mention that it's generally a good idea to back up
and test the original rom -- or disk image, if you prefer --
before the patch even comes into the picture.  Also, if the
patch appears to do nothing, make sure your emulator's not
keeping its own copy of the rom.

Of the better FDS emulators, Loopynes was the only one that
refused to run the game.  Try Famtasia instead, especially
if speed is an issue.

I guess this is the part where I ask you to mail me with
bug reports, misspellings, and what have you.  Were this a
meticulously edited, Dark Force reprogrammed, top shelf
translation, I might.  But considering that it's probably
closer to the bootleg, fly-by-night, "my God what where they
thinking?" school of romhacking, don't worry about it.

 - Mute (November 16, '02)

P.S. The game's subtitle, according to FDS Spray, is "Ai
Ippai no Boukensha," or something like "Loving Adventurer."

P.P.S.  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.