
          ____
         / __ \___  ___ ___ _ __   __
        | /  \/ _ \/ __/ _ \ '_ \ / _`\
        | \__/\(_) |(_| (_) || | | (_| |
         \____/___/\___\___/_| |_|\__,_|   -     -
                         __ __ __ ___  _ __ | __| |
                        |  |  |  | _ \| /  /|/ _` |
                         \  \  \/ (_) |  /| | (_| |
                          \_/\_/ \___/|_| |_|\__,_|

      Cocona World (1987, SOFEL, FDS)
      English Translation Patch by InvisibleUp
      Revision 1 (2025-06-15)

      InvisibleUp   -- Translation, modification
      FutureFractal -- Lowercase font, disasm support

============================================================
============================================================

 SYNOPSIS
 --------
 Meet Cocona Tea! She's a magical princess who left her
 home on Pineapple Star to study magic. Now she stays in
 SOFEL's Forest along with her animal pals. She's new to
 living all by her lonesome, so you'll have to be her new
 caretaker. Help her practice her magic to protect herself
 from baddies, go shopping for food at the farmer's market,
 visit the hot springs and the seaside, play Bingo and tell
 your fortune, and finally go to bed after a long day of
 work and play.

 Developed and published by Japanese software development
 firm SOFEL in 1987, Cocona World is a unique potion, a mix
 of 1970s magical witch shows such as Mahoutsukai Chappy
 and Majokko Megu-chan, a dash of influence from The Legend
 of Zelda and the Hydlide series, and infused with the
 vibes of playing make-believe with a doll set.

 The resulting concoction is a pioneering achivement. It
 may certainly qualify as the first "cozy" game, and maybe
 one of the first "raising simulators". Although primitive,
 it paved the way for games such as Wonder Project J and
 Princess Maker. It also experiments with asynchronous
 multiplayer concepts later popularized by Animal Crossing
 through its various minigames. Although Cocona World
 didn't quite stick the landing and faded into obscurity
 even in its home country, its innovations certainly
 deserve it another look from a modern perspective.

 This patch fully translates the game into English.
 The instruction manual has also been scanlated. If a copy
 was not provided with this download, you can obtain one at
 https://invisibleup.com/projects/CoconaWorld

 PATCHING INSTRUCTIONS
 ---------------------
 To play this translation, you will need to acquire a
 headered copy of Cocona World. Any copy should work, but
 for best results, use one of the following known dumps:

 Name:  Cocona World (J-FDS)[Sofel][1987][!].fds
 Size:  131016
 CRC32: 3B433D9A
 MD5:   FBBA57AB34798F1CA6E2471F5B52FBE7
 SHA1:  DBA00B2304B4A7BFC0C3E1094742809ED6B0E118

 Name:  Cocona World (Japan).fds
 Size:  131016 bytes
 CRC32: 0B429E6C
 MD5:   8350E6839ACBAA99E6E145E537B93583
 SHA1:  6E5B8EB181D823052B051B76EA9CE94D895FDFDD

 The patch is provided in xdelta format.
 Use one of the following patching utilities:

 - Delta Patcher 
   https://github.com/marco-calautti/DeltaPatcher/releases
 
 - xdelta UI
   https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/Xdelta_UI
 
 For help, consult the documentation for the patching
 utility of your choice.

 TRANSLATOR'S NOTES
 ------------------
 I'll admit up front - I'm still pretty new to learning
 Japanese. Don't let that disuade you; the child-friendly
 language in this game and its supplimentary material was
 a good fit for my skill level, and imo a good way to get
 some practice in. If anyone more experienced notices any
 glaring issues, feel free to send an email to:

                 invisibleup@outlook.com

 All that said, this game struck me as *fascinating* from
 the moment I first laid eyes on it when digging through
 the FDS library. Well, really, my first reaction was "Oh,
 it's the witch from the alps!" At first glance, it seems
 like a dime-a-dozen Zelda clone, but what the heck kind
 of Zelda clone maps 'B' to "talk" of all actions? After
 looking at the manual and scouring old magazine scans for
 any scrap of information on this game, I couldn't believe
 that *nobody* had heard of this game. So, naturally, I pop
 the thing open in a hex editor and start hacking.

 On a technical level this wasn't terribly challenging. The
 Disk System format gives me plenty of space to add text,
 as well as a tiny bit of polish the original was lacking.
 The game itself seems competently programmed, and isn't
 exactly pushing the boundaries of the system. The use of
 the FDS's BIOS calls for drawing to the screen makes
 modifications quite easy for me. Text input screens in
 particular were astonishingly easy, as the game reads
 the tilemap to determine what character to place and where
 the cursor is allowed to move, making it trivial to create
 custom keyboard layouts.

 Really, the hardest part was the horoscope screen, with
 its 240 lines of dialogue and its dense screen layout.
 Interestingly enough, it seems to be moral advice towards
 its target audience of pre-teen girls. While translating,
 I scuffed out some gender-specific pronouns so that
 players of all genders and orientations can enjoy advice
 regarding their crushes or their partners, instead of
 explicitly assuming that you're attracted to men. I feel
 that the end result is the same, but it makes the game
 more accessible to modern audiences. I also altered a few
 references to overeating, gaining weight, etc. to a more
 generalized "be mindful of what you eat". In the fortune
 telling segment this isn't a huge deal, but Cocona
 protesting eating more than once a day by complaining that
 she'll get fat just seemed inappropriate to me. (She
 now just complains that she's stuffed.) Again, all in the
 service of accessiblity for modern audiences. (Also, I'd
 just feel uncomfortable NOT making those changes and
 then letting a kid play this...) Those are the only
 major translation deviations I'm aware of that weren't
 due to technical concerns.

 Speaking of Cocona's overworld text, because English
 doesn't use dakuten, I was able to expand her speech
 bubbles from one line to three. The size of the dialogue
 box led to some rather strained phrasing in a few places,
 but otherwise I'm fairly satisfied with the results there.

 I also chose to translate the instruction manual, as I
 feel it provides vital context and worldbuilding that
 makes the game a lot more enjoyable. (More translation
 projects should do this, imo.) That was quite the fun
 little detour in and of itself. Scans for the manual
 were provided by Gaming Alexandria. Raws are found at:
 https://www.gamingalexandria.com/wp/2018/10/cocona-world

 Note that I did Woolsey-ize a bit heavily here, either
 for technical reasons, to make it flow better, or to
 attempt to translate the meaning of the many, many
 pun-laden names present in the manual. For example,
 "Catty" was originally "Wagahai", an arrogant way of
 referring to yourself, and "Rockadile" was originally
 "Sonnwani", or "Harmful Gator" if that were one word.
 And then there's things like "Koraru Karu", which might
 be "Coral Call", or maybe "Choral Call". It's also the
 name of a cave. (I'm sure there's a pun here I'm not
 getting...) So now it's the "Coral Call Caverns".

 Either way, this project was pretty darn fun. I'd be up
 for tackling some other game in the future, ideally after
 studying Japanese a bit more. Perhaps another SOFEL title?
 Or something else entirely? Lots of possiblities...

 GLITCHES AND ERRATA
 -------------------
 - Don't save while Cocona is fishing. Cocona will attempt
   to continue fishing, and then warp to the top-left
   corner of the screen. This effectively bricks your save.
   (Glitch present in original Japanese version.)

 - The controller may seem to be unresponsive on text input
   screens and the Bingo minigame. This is a side effect of
   how the game is programmed. Just hold the button for a
   bit longer than you might normally.

 OTHER CHANGES MADE
 ------------------
 - Increased speed of number call in Bingo minigame
 - Added additional box-drawing characters to notebook
 - Added extra visual appeal to horoscope date entry screen

 IF YOU LIKED THIS, CHECK OUT...
 -------------------------------
 - Milano's Odd Job Collection (1999/2025, x-plat)
 - Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times (2008, Konami, NDS)
 - Azure Dreams (1997, Konami, PS1)
 - Lonesome Village (2022, Ogre Pixel, x-plat)
 - Neo Malta (2025, daiko, PC)
 - Drawn to Life (2007, THQ, NDS)
 - Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream (2000, Sega, DC)
 - Wonder Project J2 (1996, Enix, N64) [JP only]

 SPECIAL THANKS
 --------------
 My partner FutureFractal for writing some useful Ghidra
 scripts for me, drawing the lowercase font used just about
 everywhere in this translation, and being awesome.

 Yamada-kun for making an extremely helpful and polished
 gameplay video for Cocona World on YouTube, complete with
 trivia about glitches, cameos in other SOFEL titles, etc.
 Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X3dVan3CCw

 ...and you, for giving this a whirl! Thank you!
