The Crest of Gaia

Crest of Gaia - Battle Menu

The Crest of Gaia (also called Gaia no Monshou) is a game continuing the wars between King Sieghart of Elthlead and Boser, the prince of Darkness who rules Velzeria. This game covers the story between when Boser revived the powers of Chaos, up until Sieghart uses the Haja no Ken to seal Boser and the demons within Velzeria (the seal later broken by Digos in Langrisser I).

The Crest of Gaia is mostly a retelling of the first game, Elthlead, but with a scenario driven play system. The game features three modes of play: Scenario mode, Construction mode, and Campaign mode. The units and plot of Gaia are somewhat the roots of what would form Langrisser I a few years later.

The font used in this game is an 8×8 fixed width I designed specifically for this game. There are a few instances where letters touch vertically, but usually that does not happen. The font is designed for use on a real Television screen, where scanlines would solve that problem. If your only option is emulation, scanline emulation at 25 percent would probably help.

Crest of Gaia - Scenario Prologue

The menu borders used in the hack come from Langrisser I: The Descendants of Light, a PC-Engine CD title. The image borders were designed by me in an attempt to emulate a rounded, wooden frame look.

The script for the game was translated from the Sharp X68000 remake of the game, as that release was much clearer in meaning (more differentiation between King Sieghart and his kingdom) and the use of kanji just made it much easier to understand than the hiragana-only PC-Engine script.

The translation is 100 percent complete.

Files

English Patch v1.0
This is the English patch for the game (last updated Dec. 19, 2003). It translates all text, improves all image and window borders and includes a full-color, 22 page English instruction manual with maps, gameplay information, easter eggs, credits and more (PDF format).
gaiatools v1.0
These are the tools I used for the translation. It includes a script dumper, inserter, a title screen dumper, and a tool to convert the bitmap back to PC-Engine sprite mode.