Princess Crown (Sega Saturn)

This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article?

Princess Crown is the first game directed by George Kamitani, who would later grace the world with games such as Odin Sphere and Dragon's Crown. A PSP port was released in 2005, followed by a PS4 one in 2020 (bundled exclusively with 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim in Japan).

Oddities

There are various typos and some Engrish in the game's text:

• Save game manager messages:
  • "The SAVE-FILE has crashed."
  • "BACK-UP RAM is lacking."
• In the opening:
  • "A LONG LONG AGO..."
  • "PROSPERPINA RUN A WAY AT TOP SPEED"
  • "KNOWING THAT SIDRAEL WAS TAKEN BY THE DEMONS, GRADRIEL WENT TO FACE THE GREATERDEMONS, BUT THIS CAUSED THE GATE TO UNDERWORLD."
• Locations on the map:
  • DWALF LAND (corrected as "DWARF LAND" in later official materials)
  • NUTSBILL
  • DORANGORA
  • EARTH ON TRUSE TERA
• Enemies banners:
  • TARANTURA (TARANTULA)
  • CAPTAIN BIGFOOK (CAPTAIN BIGHOOK)
  • CHAOTHIC EYE
  • NECRO-SAMANSA (Necro-Samantha)
  • VORGLODO
• Battle banners:
  • "ENCOUNTER WITH MONSTER", "ENGAGE WITH ENEMY"
  • "GET EXP" (Exp gained counter)
  • "TREASURE MENU" (it's actually a lists of the items dropped by enemies)
  • "FALLDOWN FROM THE BOOKWORLD" (gameover screen)
  • PORTGAS (name used over the health bar, despite being spelled as "PORTGUS" in the opening and other sources)
• Credits scroll ^[4]:
  • TOTAL DESIGN & MAIN PLANNING
  • RPG BLOCK & MONSTER PLANNING
  • SCENARIO WRIGHT & VILLAGERS SET
  • EVENT DRAMATIZE EDIT
  • MOTION EDIT TOOL & MONSTER PROGRAM
  • EVENT DRAMATIZE PROGRAM

Debug Features

To do: Find other features still undocumented

Setting this code while booting the game will enable some debug features, which require use of a controller plugged into the P2 port: 06022b7f 01

• On the title screen, pressing B will unlock all books.
• During gameplay, pressing Start will show the current event file in use, and you can warp to a different event by changing the numbers with the D-Pad and pressing Start again. Setting an invalid event number cause the game to freeze.

Unused Content

Events

To do: More notable examples

Some dialogue lines were left unused in the final game. Some notable examples:

• An entire event and a few side quests were removed from Edward's book. These events can net you Drops (event file 109_00_0.EVN). In that event, a fairy gets kidnapped by a Slavewood and Edward gets to decide whether to rescue her (and get one Drop) or leave her to the puppet (and get a different Drop).
• A transition screen when changing scenes ("一方その頃、ヴァレナディン城では・・" in 015_00_1.EVN)
• Jestonai lines if Gradriel fails the training with Kwein (removed lines in 000_06_0.EVN)
• Many empty events with no content in 000_07_*.EVN.

Characters

To do: Look for unused sprites in .CHR files

Unused characters names found in the main executable:

Unused Text

Unused ASCII strings found in the main executable at offset 0xA69E0:

• MISS FIRE! (MISFIRE?)
• RENZOKU
• HAMENIGE

Enemies

Some bosses were possibly meant to be reused as regular enemies, as suggested by the banner graphics found in COMM.PAK, which is used by the Notice Drop item to show the enemy names before a random encounter occurs:

• NECRO-SAMANSA (Necro-Samantha)
• DOPPLEGANGER
• GOLGODA
• VOLGRODO
• LARVA (book form?)

Revisional differences

To do: Check added/removed lines in these event files

The Sataroke re-release has a lot of changes, suggesting some adjustments made to the enemy AI.

Interestingly, these changes were not ported to the PSP version, which has the same .PRG files from the original revision.

There are also some minor changes in these event files:

000_02_2.EVN
015_01_4.EVN
041_00_3.EVN
041_00_4.EVN
041_01_4.EVN
045_00_3.EVN
061_00_1.EVN
061_00_2.EVN
074_02_2.EVN
074_02_3.EVN
074_02_4.EVN
079_03_1.EVN
081_00_0.EVN

References