MSX translation · Complete
Romancia
The English translation of Falcom’s side-scrolling Dragon Slayer adventure.
Amiga technology in an MSX translation
CBS Cruncher v3 packed the translated graphics and data.
Romancia used CBS Cruncher v3, the compressor I originally developed on the Amiga, to fit translated graphics and other data into the MSX release. Its use in this project was driven primarily by the graphics: translated visual assets needed efficient compression while preserving enough cartridge space for the rest of the English version. The same PCK format could be decrunched by compact Z80 code inside the game.
Read about CBS CruncherDecrunching directly from cartridge ROM
Removing the original RAM-source limitation.
The original Z80 decruncher expected the packed stream to be stored in writable RAM. For Romancia, I optimized it so compressed graphics and data could be read directly from cartridge ROM instead. Temporary writes were redirected to writable storage while the packed source remained in ROM; the decruncher routine itself still runs from RAM. This avoided copying each packed asset into RAM before decompression and made better use of the MSX memory available to the translation.
Original project home
Continue to the project archive.
The translation and its existing files remain hosted at MSX Translations. This page will preserve the personal story behind creating it.
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