A fan translation of Down the World: Mervil's Ambition (ダウン・ザ・ワールド, ASCII, 1994), a role-playing game with turn-based battles on an isometric grid. You lead a small party, give it standing orders (Fight, Strike Fast, Outflank, Keep Dodging, Run Around, Intercept) and use the command menu (Cast, Item, Act) in battle. Between battles you explore towns, shop and follow the story.
You play the legendary hero that Gao, a knight from a fortress, has crossed worlds to find; the hero's name is yours to choose. Along the way: Imelda the Witch, a mirror into the human world, and the Land of the Bud of Life.
The whole game is translated: dialogue and narration, the title and file select, battle menus and orders, spells, items, party and place names, the shops and the About Sara chapters. Free and non-commercial. The patch contains no game data: you apply it to your own copy of the Japanese cartridge.
What's new in 1.2.0-beta
- 46 messages that were still in Japanese are now in English: the townsfolk of Flowerlandria (the Wishfire, the Warriors of the Round Table and the House of Gacha), two shopkeepers' greetings in Darkun, and a gatekeeper's reply to Gao's playing.
- Names that are Japanese wordplay are now translated instead of spelled out: the sleep spell is Snoozy, the paralysis spell Numb-Numb, the charm spell Ooh-La-La Heart, the dancer is Sparkling Kyoka, her favorite drink is Tingle Wine, the hammer Whoosh Crash says what it does, and the monsters Whatsitski and Junky Jewel get their jokes back.
- Sara's spell is now an English anagram: its four words, Ora Evi Ves Ra, rearrange in the final puzzle into REVIVE O SARA, as the Japanese spell rearranged into a plea for Sara to live again. (The old romanized words could not be rearranged into anything in English.)
- Every name in the game has had its final review; the rest are unchanged.
- The field menu's heading reads in full, WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?, on two lines (it was cut short).
- Two more menu headings are written in full instead of cut short: the item window asks WHAT WILL YOU DO? (it said WHAT NOW?), and the X button's travel window asks WHERE ARE YOU GOING? with DIRECTION and ALONG THE WALL (they said WHERE?, PATH and WALL).
- The status page: the title (KNIGHT OF THE BLUE TEARS) sits under the name, and ATK and DEF no longer touch the window border.
- In battle, picking a target shows the monster's English name; it showed broken letters.
- The save screens are all in English and whole: both overwrite warnings, YES / NO, LOAD FAILED and SAVE FAILED, and the Turbo File pages.
- In the item list, a short item name no longer shows the end of the longer name drawn before it.
- In shops, the SELL list no longer shows an extra page of repeated items (with 8, 15, 16 or more things to sell it counted one page too many).
- In shops, the BUY / SELL / QUIT menu keeps its right border and the item list no longer covers the end of QUIT; this holds in both kinds of shop.
- The About Sara cursor points at the chapter list instead of the window title.
- The developers' hidden debug menus are in English and whole, down to the event and music number prompts. They are not reachable in normal play.
- The patch no longer depends on whatever the console's memory held when it was switched on.
1.1.0-beta (2026-10-12)
- Menus and place names can now show periods, commas and apostrophes: "RICH MAN'S HOUSE", "PRINCESS NASIA'S CASTLE", "VILLAGE AT WORLD'S END" and 21 more place names read properly, and the About Sara pages are written in punctuated sentences instead of running capitals.
- Characters now call you "Hero" instead of the old-fashioned "O hero".
- Small numbers in conversation are written as words ("the six sages", "only three tears", "the tenth knight"). Prices, stats and menus still use digits.
- Imelda the Witch laughs "Hoh hoh hoh!" instead of a Santa-like "Ho ho ho!".
- Poi says "eh" only where the Japanese puts Poi's verbal tic at the end of a sentence, and Jiba no longer borrows it.
- A sleeping Joshua snores "Zzz... zzz...", and item shopkeepers are labeled "Item Shop".
Patch your original Japanese ROM with the new file (a BPS patch does not apply on top of the previous beta).
| File | DownTheWorld_EN_v1.2.0-beta.bps (577,820 bytes) |
| MD5 | e196c7cfbe9f70a5049568cf454cb309 |
| SHA-1 | ec08916a5da524c04195d8cf2304b040a28d09af |
Down the World: Mervil's Ambition (Japan), headerless, 2,097,152 bytes.
| CRC32 | F1110FAD |
| MD5 | f72d2187295b9803e29e810cbd2c78da |
| SHA-1 | 75df5e4e2d577703eededdeba2314924dae32263 |
| Patched ROM (4 MiB) CRC32 | 4EE2C1AA |
| Patched ROM SHA-1 | 311d66c4e9ec2ee88ed9c9a3f86017df0c1b4da1 |
- Use a headerless copy of the Japanese ROM that matches the checksums above. A file of 2,097,664 bytes has a 512-byte copier header: remove it first.
- Apply the
.bpswith Flips, RomPatcher.js or beat. A BPS patcher checks the source, so if it refuses, your dump differs. - Play in an accurate SNES emulator (bsnes, Mesen, snes9x) or on a flash cart.
- The developers' hidden debug menus run their labels from the left edge of the screen to the right one, so the window has no margin. They are not reachable in normal play.
- Not yet played from start to finish by a person. Every screen with text was brought up by the game's own code and compared with the Japanese cartridge, and every message was read back in English. Bug reports are welcome: say which screen and what you were doing.
E-mail phil@tttships.co with the version (1.2.0-beta), what you were doing, a screenshot, and a save state if you can.
Translated by CODEC BABEL's AI agents under the direction of the project's human lead; no other team's patches, scripts or tools were used. Original game © ASCII 1994, Chinfa Kang, Susumu Matsushita Company. This patch is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.