********************************************************************************
*                     Mahou no Shoujo Silky Lip (Mega-CD)                      *
*                          English Translation Patch                           *
*                           by Stargood Translations                           *
*                              v1.0 (03 Jul 2026)                              *
*                                                                              *
*                               Supper -- Hacking & Translation                *
*                               cccmar -- Editing & Testing                    *
*                          Oddoai-sama -- Testing                              *
********************************************************************************

Ten-year-old Lip is just a below-average student at magic school, seemingly
destined for mediocrity. But that all changes when she's abruptly summoned
before the Supreme Warlock and selected as a candidate to become the next queen
of the Land of Magic! Sent to the Human Realm for training, Lip must learn human
customs, navigate new relationships, and – of course – use her magic powers
to overcome (and cause) many problems. Can Lip earn enough assessment points to
beat her rival, the mighty and aristocratic mage Isabella, and take the throne?

Mahou no Shoujo Silky Lip (Magical Girl Silky Lip) is a 1992 adventure game
for the Sega Mega-CD, developed and published by Telenet Japan under their Riot
brand. Heavily inspired by magical girl shows of the '70s and '80s, it features
the novel framing device of formatting the game into "episodes" in the style of
a television series, complete with opening and ending theme songs. Though it has
an explorable overworld and some semblance of RPG elements, a large focus of the
game is its distinctive emotion-based conversation system: the player chooses
between angry, sad, and happy responses, with the results affecting both Lip's
"emotion levels" and overall score, which in turn influences the ending (a
concept sometimes cited as a precursor to Sakura Taisen's "LIPS" system).

This patch fully translates the game into English. It also attempts to improve
general playability by cleaning up some of the clunkiest aspects of the
interface and adding an in-game map (see section III, "Additional Features").

                    ****************************************
                    *          Table of Contents           *
                    ****************************************

  I.    Patching Instructions
  II.   Running the Game
  III.  Additional Features
  IV.   Known Issues
  V.    Authors' Comments
  VI.   Special Thanks
  VII.  Version History

                    ****************************************
                    *       I. Patching Instructions       *
                    ****************************************

======================
== THE EASY VERSION ==
======================

  1. Go find "Mahou no Shoujo - Silky Lip (Japan).zip". It should contain 35
  .BIN files and one .CUE file.
  2. Extract the contents of the ZIP into the "splitbin_patch" directory.
  3. Drag-and-drop "Mahou no Shoujo - Silky Lip (Japan).cue" onto
  "binpatch_usbios.bat".
     - If you want to play the game on a Japanese console, use
     "binpatch_jpbios.bat" instead.
  4. To run the game, load "Mahou no Shoujo Silky Lip EN [v1.0-UsBios]
  SplitBin.cue" into your emulator.
     - Use the "JpBios" version instead if you patched for a Japanese console.

==========================
== IF THAT DOESN'T WORK ==
==========================

Everybody seems to think my patching system is too complicated, which seems to
stem from my attempt to support all the common ISO formats instead of just
saying "go find the ROM I have and find a way to use this xdelta file on
it." Sorry, I guess.

I'd rather not drop support for the extra formats, but I also have no desire
to spend a bunch of time developing a bespoke multi-platform custom patcher
for every game I work on, so if the instructions above didn't work for whatever
reason, I'm afraid you'll have to do a little reading to figure out which of the
included patching systems to use. I'd probably care more about this if I wasn't
pretty sure 95% of people are just grabbing pre-patched ROMs off third-party
sites anyway.

  +----------------+
  | THINGS TO NOTE |
  +----------------+

  The Mega-CD's region locking system means it's impossible to make a game
  region-free. Every game must be keyed to one specific BIOS (Japan, USA,
  or Europe). Two versions of the patch are included: one that can be played
  on the Japanese BIOS, and one that can be played on the USA BIOS. Choose the
  appropriate one for your needs. Don't use the wrong version, because the USA
  version won't work on a Japanese console and vice versa.

  The European BIOS isn't supported because the game won't run correctly on PAL
  consoles.

  +-------------------+
  | SUPPORTED FORMATS |
  +-------------------+

  - Multi-file BIN+CUE (35 BIN files, 1 CUE file)
  - Single-file BIN+CUE (1 BIN file, 1 CUE file)
  - ISO+WAV (1 ISO file, 34 WAV files, 1 CUE file)

  +---------------------------+
  | DISC IMAGE SPECIFICATIONS |
  +---------------------------+

  (if you don't understand this, just ignore it)

  http://redump.org/disc/42137/
  Redump name: Mahou no Shoujo: Silky Lip
  CRC32:       93706707
  MD5:         1afaf073316761f03d619b2c93292e44
  SHA-1:       d0675e1c42e1e8967819f65448dccb78f4a3084f

  +-------------------------------------+
  | A. HOW TO PATCH: Multi-file BIN+CUE |
  +-------------------------------------+

  Most "archival" sites seem to go for this nowadays. If you got your download
  off the now-defunct Myrient or some successor, this is what you have.

  INSTRUCTIONS: See "THE EASY VERSION" above.

  +--------------------------------------+
  | B. HOW TO PATCH: Single-file BIN+CUE |
  +--------------------------------------+

  What your run-of-the-mill shady piracy site tends to offer.

  NOTE: If you have an IMG+CUE ROM, it's actually the same as BIN+CUE, just with
  a different file extension. Rename it from ".img" to ".bin" and then follow
  the steps below.

  INSTRUCTIONS:
    1. Copy your ROM files to the "redump_patch" folder.
    2. Run "DeltaPatcher.exe".
    3. Use the GUI to apply "Mahou no Shoujo Silky Lip EN [v1.0-UsBios]
    Redump.xdelta" to the BIN file. (If you want to run it on a Japanese
    console, use the "JpBios" version instead.)
    4. Rename the BIN to "Mahou no Shoujo Silky Lip EN [v1.0-UsBios]
    Redump.bin". (Change "UsBios" to "JpBios" if appropriate.)
    5. To run the game, load "Mahou no Shoujo Silky Lip EN [v1.0-UsBios]
    Redump.cue" in your emulator. (Use the "JpBios" version if appropriate.)

  ALTERNATIVELY:
    If the above instructions don't work, try putting your ROM in
    the "auto_patch" folder, then drag-and-dropping the BIN file onto
    "binpatch_usbios.bat" or "binpatch_jpbios.bat". To run the game, load "Mahou
    no Shoujo Silky Lip EN [v1.0-iso-UsBios].cue" in your emulator. (Use the
    "JpBios" version if appropriate.)

  +--------------------------+
  | C. HOW TO PATCH: ISO+WAV |
  +--------------------------+

  Less in vogue these days, but no doubt still around.

  INSTRUCTIONS:
    1. Copy your ROM files to the "auto_patch" folder.
    2. Drag-and-drop the ISO onto "isopatch_usbios.bat". (Use
    "isopatch_jpbios.bat" if appropriate.)
    3. To run the game, load "Mahou no Shoujo Silky Lip EN
    [v1.0-iso-UsBios].cue" in your emulator. (Use the "JpBios" version if
    appropriate.)

  +--------------------------+
  | BUT I DON'T USE WINDOWS! |
  +--------------------------+

  Well, neither do I, when I can help it.

  If you're on a Linux derivative, Wine should run the build system just fine,
  though you'll probably have to invoke the BAT files from the command line
  manually ("wine cmd"). There might be some Mac equivalent, but I wouldn't
  know.

  Of course, if you're smart enough to not use Windows, you're probably also
  smart enough to find an xdelta patcher for your system and manually apply one
  of the .xdelta files to whatever ROM you have. The only thing that requires
  some additional work is a multi-file BIN+CUE; you'll need to manually merge
  the BIN files first (cat them all together in track order).

  Or, of course, you can just wait for somebody else to do the work for you and
  go find their download later. It seems to be the most popular option.

                    ****************************************
                    *         II. Running the Game         *
                    ****************************************

You'll probably have to have a USA or Japanese BIOS image to run this game in an
emulator. See your emulator's instructions for how to set this up.

This translation was primarily tested using ares. It should run the game with
minimal issues, and is recommended for emulating this unless you have some
reason to use something else.

RetroArch and Genesis Plus GX reportedly run the game fine as well.

As of this writing, BlastEm's latest developmental versions can run the game,
but the CD drive emulation has many issues that cause it to sporadically fail
to load files in their entirety, resulting in frequent "random" freezes and
crashes even in the unmodified game. For that reason, it's very much not
recommended...though if you're willing to savestate constantly, it should
otherwise work fine.

We haven't tried other emulators. The good ones will probably give you good
results, and the bad ones may or may not do something. It's better not to expect
too much out of something older like Gens or Fusion.

And compatibility with real hardware? No idea. If you try, let us know if it
works.

                    ****************************************
                    *       III. Additional Features       *
                    ****************************************

Anyone who's played this game will be well aware that its interface is not
great. It's an early Mega-CD game, to be sure, but movement and interactions are
clunky even by 1992 standards, and the overall experience is bogged down by many
needless design deficiencies. This translation tries to work out the worst of
the kinks so it's easier to just enjoy the story. Some focus has also been put
on making it possible to play faster, as the game's structure encourages repeat
playthroughs to see alternate dialogue options.

  +----------+
  | City Map |
  +----------+

  An almost universal point of complaint about this game is its extremely large
  city overworld, consisting of a 7x7 grid of 49 largely samey areas which is
  very easy to become lost in.

  To address this, the translation adds an additional spell, "Mental Map." While
  in the city, this spell can be used to view a map showing Lip's current
  location and all major landmarks. The Start Button acts as a shortcut for
  viewing this map. (Note that pressing Start will bring up the map even in
  situations where Lip isn't normally allowed to cast spells; this was done
  intentionally for the sake of convenience.)

  +---------------------+
  | Overworld Interface |
  +---------------------+

  The use of the A Button to trigger interactions on the overworld has been
  heavily overhauled to reduce overall clunkiness.

  In the original game, pressing A acts as a shortcut for invoking the "talk"
  command from the menu, and that's it. It won't trigger "look" interactions
  even if you're standing in the right spot for one. And if there's not a valid
  target to talk to, you have to sit through a "there's no one there!" error
  message that gets very annoying very quickly.

  The translation modifies this to work the way you'd generally expect. Pressing
  A now acts as either "talk" or "look" as appropriate, and the error message
  has been removed. Occasionally, both interactions can be used on the same
  object, in which case you'll need to open the menu and choose the specific one
  you want to use.

  +-------------------+
  | Interaction Icons |
  +-------------------+

  When Lip is standing somewhere that a talk or look interaction is possible,
  an icon will be displayed over her head to indicate this. This change smooths
  out a few sections of the game where progressing requires examining a specific
  non-obvious location. It also makes it much easier to discover optional "look"
  spots, which were completely unmarked in the original game and pretty much
  impossible to find.

  +------------+
  | Walk Speed |
  +------------+

  The original game offers two walk speeds, "Normal" (1 pixel/frame) and "Fast"
  (2 p/f). The translation changes this to three speeds: "Slow" (1 p/f),
  "Normal" (2 p/f), and "Fast" (3 p/f). At speeds other than Fast, holding B
  acts as a "run button" that causes Lip to move at the next-highest speed.

  Additionally, the speed setting is now saved to the save file, so it's no
  longer reset after loading the game.

  +------------+
  | Text Speed |
  +------------+

  The original game has no options for text speed. It prints a character every 6
  frames by default, or every 3 frames if the A Button is held. No higher speed
  is possible.

  The translation changes this to make it possible to advance through text
  quicker. The base printing speed has been doubled to one character every
  3 frames to account for linguistic differences (an English translation
  of Japanese generally has around twice as many characters as the original
  text). Text speed is now a configurable option; the base speed is "Slow,"
  with additional options for "Normal" (2 frames/character), "Fast" (1 f/c), and
  "Instant" (no delays).

  The method for fast-forwarding text has also been overhauled. Now, printing
  text at a faster speed is done by holding the B Button. If the text speed
  is set to anything less than "Fast," this will be the Fast speed; otherwise,
  it will be the Instant speed. Pressing the A Button at any time while text is
  printing now prints the remainder of the text in the current box immediately.

  +---------------+
  | Miscellaneous |
  +---------------+

  - The fade-in/fade-out when moving between areas has been sped up.

  - In Conversation Mode, voiced lines can now be skipped with the A Button.

  - The intermission scenes in the classroom could originally only be dismissed
  by pressing Start. Now, this is done with the A Button.

                    ****************************************
                    *           IV. Known Issues           *
                    ****************************************

- Save files made with the translation aren't fully compatible with the Japanese
version due to saving additional settings, and trying to load them in the
original Japanese game will corrupt Lip's assessment points (though they should
work fine otherwise).

- We had one report during testing of the game hanging on a black screen with
the music still playing when trying to start the first episode's ending credits
in ares v144. The issue couldn't be recreated after many attempts and there's
nothing that would obviously cause it, so whatever happened, it's apparently
very rare. While it pains me greatly to release anything with a possible
problem, Mega-CD emulation and debugging remains sub-par, and there's only so
much I can do to try to fix an unreproducible issue that might be a bug in the
translation, the original game, or the emulator itself. If you can find any way
to make this happen consistently, please get in touch.

--------------------

Now, translation aside, there are quite definitely...uh, a few known issues with
Silky Lip itself. It is, to put it mildly, not a very well-programmed game. The
translation fixes a few of the more severe problems, but frankly, there's far
more wrong with the game than anyone's interested in dealing with.

Here's a list of original-game bugs that have fixed, things that might seem like
bugs but aren't, and original-game bugs that *haven't* been fixed:

  ====================
  ==== FIXED BUGS ====
  ====================

  - Removed glitched graphics that were briefly shown whenever the dialogue
  window opened or closed.
  - In the original game, the right-side portrait window showed glitched
  graphics briefly whenever it switched to a new image. This has been greatly
  reduced in the translation, though not entirely eliminated due to sloppiness
  in the underlying design.
  - In the original game, trying to use the "look" command on anything that has
  a valid "talk" interaction but no "look" interaction will pop up an empty
  text box and immediately close it instead of showing an error message. The
  translation adds a message for this situation.
  - Messages shown after casting a spell now consistently wait for a button
  press instead of closing as soon as the text finishes printing.
  - The original game often doesn't properly wait for CD audio playback to begin
  before running cutscenes. As a result, the audio may not sync with the video
  (depending on the performance of the disc drive, the emulation environment,
  etc.). In the translation, all cutscenes should have consistent audio sync.

  Opening
    - A few one-frame graphic glitches have been fixed.

  Episode 7
    - Examining the dresser in Lip's room directly before or after Shake leaves
    on the evening of the second day would corrupt the palette and make the
    dialogue unreadable. This no longer occurs.

  ===============================
  ==== "WORKING AS INTENDED" ====
  ===============================

  - If you successfully look at or talk to something, the game no longer regards
  you as being in contact with it, so you won't be able to interact with it
  again unless you move first. This is mostly relevant in situations where both
  interactions are possible at once. While awkward, this is quite definitely
  a deliberately programmed behavior. This also affects spellcasting, which is
  the reason the game gives you contrived pretexts to move before using a spell
  ("step back, you don't want to hurt them!").
  - The "give" command not only isn't necessary to complete the game, it
  outright can't be used for anything. There are situations where it would
  make sense to use it, but even if you try, it just won't work. In fact, its
  description in the game's manual is simply "This command is not used." Points
  for honesty!
  - In the menu shown between episodes, checking Lip or Isabella's status,
  advancing to the page showing their magic level, and pressing the B Button
  will return to the previous page. This seems to be an intentional behavior
  rather than a bug, though it's an odd one.
  - Just to be clear, the choice prompt in the final conversation with the
  Supreme Warlock in Episode 11 is "Yes"/"No" even though that makes little
  sense for the question he's asking. This is not an error on the translation's
  part. It's even in English in the original game.
  - The entire battle system. Seriously. You might think that we screwed
  something up with it, but trust me, it's "working" exactly as well as it did
  in the original game.

  =====================================
  ==== KNOWN BUGS IN ORIGINAL GAME ====
  =====================================

  General
    - The game frequently forgets to clear the portrait box on the right side of
    the HUD at the end of conversations, causing the last NPC's portrait to get
    stuck there indefinitely.
    - There are many instances where interacting with something before or
    after the plot calls for it will pop up an empty text box and close it
    immediately.
    - Various locations have invisible interaction hotspots in places they
    clearly aren't supposed to be (for example, scattered around the road
    in front of the mansion in episode 5). Interacting with these just pops
    up an empty text box and closes it immediately. To avoid confusion, the
    translation won't show a notification icon when you're standing on one of
    these, but the hotspots themselves do still exist and can be interacted with
    if you know they're there.
    - For any movement speed other than "slow", terrain collision detection is
    kind of half-assed, and it's possible for Lip to clip slightly into walls.
    - Camera movement is pretty screwy and tends to bump around oddly if Lip
    repeatedly collides with a wall.
    - Scrolling the camera to the top of the school's locker room often causes
    it to get stuck, preventing you from leaving. To fix this, move all the way
    to the right side of the room, then go down.
    - When descending from the school's roof to the third floor, holding Left
    during the screen transition will cause you to immediately hit the warp to
    the second floor, despite a solid wall being in the way.
    - In some cases, trying to walk into a map exit that's been temporarily
    disabled will cause the game to lag until you stop trying to move toward it.
    - Reloading the game from save data will sometimes re-trigger messages that
    normally appear when you first enter a map.
    - Cutscenes occasionally have minor one-frame graphic glitches due to being
    kind of poorly programmed all around.
    - The hint messages that can be viewed from the menu often lag behind what's
    actually going on in the game (e.g. directing you to go somewhere after
    you've already arrived). In some cases, talking to an NPC can even cause the
    hints to revert to an earlier point in the scenario.
    - In some episodes, using the shower or the dresser in Lip's room will
    let you take her backpack off when she's supposed to keep it on to go to
    school. This is purely a cosmetic oversight.
    - Using magic with enough NPCs on screen (for example, when Lip is supposed
    to be introducing herself in the classroom) can lead to the casting
    animation not playing correctly due to lack of sufficient sprites.

  Main Menu
    - Opening the load or erase menu, then backing out and starting a new
    game will cause the game to pop up Lip's word balloon graphic and play her
    talking animation as the screen fades out, even though no text is displayed.

  Episode 1
    - When you first arrive in the city, you're placed in a special version of
    the map where one of the NPCs has different dialogue that directs you where
    to go. Leaving the initial map block and returning will put you back in the
    normal version of the map, where this NPC has nothing useful to say.
    - The region of the city containing the school and park is supposed to
    use a special alternate map file in this episode, but depending on which
    direction you enter the area from, the game may mistakenly use the normal
    version of the map instead. If this happens, the special event at the park
    won't happen, and the "green lady" who's supposed to give you directions to
    Shake's house won't do so. To work around this, walk several screens away so
    that the game switches to a new map file, then return (and if that doesn't
    work, try again in another direction).

  Episode 8
    - After fighting Isabella for the first time, returning to DomeDonald's and
    trying to use the stairs or enter the backyard will display a message from
    Chako even though she's no longer there. (And get her portrait stuck on
    screen for good measure.)

  Episode 9
    - On the second day, when you're supposed to go home and have a conversation
    with Ketcha, going to the school roof and back will immediately transition
    the game to the next day, when the chocolates have been mixed up.

  Episode 10
    - At the end of the conversation with the Gang of Three at the big building,
    the final line has Jinroku's nametag but shows Heiji's portrait.

  Episode 11
    - Talking to the shopkeeper at "Sigh Supply" (the optional location next to
    Teraoka Books that serves no purpose and you'd probably never even realize
    is enterable) results in bugged dialogue where Lip first tells him goodbye,
    then greets him and goes through their usual conversation.

                    ****************************************
                    *         V. Authors' Comments         *
                    ****************************************

  ----------
  - Supper -
  ----------

  I binged Doremi and now here we are. At least it wasn't Precure or I wouldn't
  even be close to done yet.

  This is one of those projects I know people are going to look at and go,
  "Dude, seriously? Why would you pick THIS?" And I suppose that's perfectly
  justified. This isn't a game anyone would mistake for a lost classic. Its
  flaws are many and readily apparent, and though I've done what I can to take
  the edge off the surface-level issues, no amount of polishing is going to do
  anything to fix the cracks in its structure. You'd need a ground-up remake
  if you ever wanted to get a truly good game out of this. And that's extremely
  frustrating, because at the core, there are a lot of really nice ideas here!

  --------------------

  Silky Lip was the brainchild of Shoujirou Endou, who at the time he designed
  it was all of 21 years old and had worked on exactly one other game in his
  life. Previously an animator and manga magazine editor, he joined Telenet
  Japan in 1990 because he wanted to create his own works; expecting to spend
  years in junior positions learning the trade, a game concept he proposed
  was instead immediately accepted, and, with no prior experience whatsoever,
  he found himself put in charge of a rookie development team and told to
  make a game. The result -- the Mega Drive game Beast Warriors, released
  internationally as Beast Wrestlers -- was by his own admission a complete
  disaster, yet his follow-up game proposal was accepted as well, and he
  continued on with the same team to his next project: Mahou no Shoujo Silky
  Lip.

  Telenet Japan is a developer with a reputation, and unfortunately not in
  a good sense. Their games often sported decent or even good visuals, but
  were consistently marred by mediocre to bad gameplay. The company's output
  during the early '90s was prodigious, and with few exceptions landed somewhere
  between "meh" and "ugh". Combine that company ethic with inexperienced staff
  trying to work with brand-new CD-ROM hardware, and it's pretty clear Silky
  Lip never had much of a chance. Having spent plenty of time under the game's
  hood, I can tell you it's a miracle they were able to actually get any kind of
  releasable product out of this at all.

  The germ of a fun game is there, in broad strokes. Everyone loves a good
  magical girl (anyone who doesn't definitely didn't read this far), and even
  though the story is shamelessly lifted from the 1975 anime Majokko Megu-chan,
  the basic concept of trying to earn a high enough score to become queen while
  balancing use of the limited resource of Lip's emotion points is a novel
  one that had potential. There are a lot of ways the idea could have been
  translated into an engaging game experience.

  But unfortunately, it wasn't to be. The game's half-baked execution completely
  wastes its own premise. Lip's emotions are supposed to be a limiting factor
  on the choices the player can make, yet that system is completely undermined
  because the game hands you a free spell that can reset them at any time
  without penalty. The battle system is so utterly botched and nonfunctional
  that the only fight that's even winnable is a single optional one near the
  start. And those assessment points the game constantly makes such a big deal
  about? They don't even do anything except change a handful of inconsequential
  lines in one of the endings.

  The much-touted "Conversation Mode" is an interesting idea on paper: have
  shallow but very broad dialogue trees, encouraging repeat playthroughs
  to see all the different variations and find the highest-scoring
  options. Unfortunately, the game lacks the ambition to make it stick. The
  story is linear, so every conversation must result in the same outcome no
  matter what, and thus all roads ultimately lead to Rome; you're constantly
  given choices, but never do they matter (except toward your total score, which
  again, is all but meaningless). Now, structurally, that's virtually identical
  to the fondly-remembered Yumimi Mix -- but the difference is that Yumimi Mix
  is clever and funny and visually rich, and the alternate scenes you get for
  going down different branches are a reward in and of themselves. With this
  game, the difference between being angry, sad, or happy is usually little more
  than "Lip says something slightly different". Is that really worth replaying
  the whole thing for?

  The many failings of the gameplay mean that Silky Lip basically rides entirely
  on its story. Unfortunately, I think most people wouldn't consider that
  especially well executed either. The individual episode plots are generally
  muddled, often meandering along directionlessly and ending abruptly with
  no sense of climax. I can't help but feel that Endou was trying to subvert
  expectations and take his plots in unexpected directions, but simply lacked
  ideas inspired enough to make it work. The core story of Lip and Isabella's
  evolving relationship at least sort of comes together, but it's hard to
  overlook how blah most of the experience is. And the framing plot simply
  doesn't work at all; the necessary depth just isn't there. Who is Lip? Why was
  she even picked for this competition? What's up with this creepy king dude,
  and why would Lip even *want* to be his queen? Don't expect answers to any of
  these questions!

  So there you go: three solid paragraphs excoriating the game I just
  translated. Perhaps you've sensed my dissatisfaction by now. Don't get
  me wrong: I don't hate this game -- I knew what I was getting into when I
  started the project, and if I truly felt it was without merits, I'd never
  have bothered with it at all -- but the fact that there's so much potential
  here, and that it's all but squandered, is what leaves such a bad taste in my
  mouth. As does the weird skeeviness that kicks in every once in a while, but
  I suppose that's perfectly on brand if you're trying to imitate a Showa-era
  magical girl show.

  Now, where does the game succeed? Well, most people probably wouldn't dispute
  that it's got a damn legit magical girl theme song. One Japanese review I read
  jokingly wrote that the opening is about 70% of the game's attraction, and
  that might not be wrong. The graphics also aren't too shabby for the time,
  particularly the big portraits for the conversation scenes. And it has a
  hilariously high-powered voice cast relative to the quality of the game and
  limited amount of voice acting. Seriously, you've got Sailor Mercury *and*
  Jupiter, Detective Conan, Elner from NOTED INTERNATIONAL SUPERHIT Galaxy
  Fraulein Yuna, Norio Wakamoto just for good measure...Honestly, this thing
  might have worked better if they'd just made an OVA instead.

  But at the end of the day, there's no denying that Silky Lip is quite a mess,
  and given the circumstances that produced it, I guess it was pretty much
  inevitable.

  --------------------

  So, if I'm so unenamored with Silky Lip, why go to such pains to make a
  translation of it?

  Well, I've been trying to put together a Mega CD translation project for
  a long time -- since before I was even working on PC-Engine CD games, and
  that's been quite a while now -- and you have to understand that not only
  does the Mega CD simply not have a lot of Japanese games, most of the ones
  anybody actually wants to play got an official international release of
  some kind. Silky Lip was not my first or even my second choice for a Mega
  CD project, but in the end, it was the one that actually came together. It's
  not all that long and the internal structure is about as simple as a Mega CD
  game can get, so it was clearly something I could crank out myself, which was
  apparently what it was going to take to actually get a damn project done.

  Nobody really makes Mega CD translations -- in fact, I believe this is the
  first released English fan translation of a Mega CD-original game, though of
  course that's not to say it's without predecessors. It's not the first Mega
  CD fan translation ever; that honor goes to Jon Najar's work on the Phantasy
  Star text adventures, which was extremely well done but *did* target ports
  of existing Mega Drive games. It's not the first translation of an original
  Mega CD game period; that would appear to be the Arabic translation of Captain
  Tsubasa from a decade ago, whose quality I have no way of judging but can only
  assume had some skill behind it, considering the difficulty of getting Arabic
  text at all into a game that wasn't built for it. I believe there's also a
  translated fan recreation of the Urusei Yatsura game, but that's no more a
  Mega CD translation than my translation of the Saturn port of Yumimi Mix is.

  So this is some kind of "first", at least, which also meant I was basically
  on my own for getting it programmed. I was appalled to discover that there
  *still* wasn't any kind of "armips for M68K", and that pretty much everybody
  doing Mega Drive work seemed to rely on an ancient commercial assembler. As a
  result, I wound up putting together my own editing system by horribly hacking
  up clownassembler and writing a crude "linker" that uses its outputs to patch
  files. The result is far from ideal, but demonstrably gets the job done. My
  apologies to Clownacy for the butchered mess I made of his assembler, but he
  at least got a couple of (very minor) bugfixes out of the deal, so I hope he's
  willing to overlook it.

  Once I finally got the assembler to the point where I could write the macros
  I needed, the process of hacking the game was about 80% mundane. Silky Lip is
  so crudely put together that the developers actually dropped a full Shift-JIS
  font, totaling over 3,000 characters, into every single part of the game that
  needs to print any text. I can't overstate how absurd an excess this is --
  that font alone occupies almost a quarter of the primary RAM area, and only
  a fraction of it is even used (an average CD JRPG of this era might use 1,000
  characters in total, if that). Since English needs only a tiny portion of that
  space for a complete font, I had all the room in the world to add every little
  luxury I wanted, from an alternate italic font to fully-kerned variable-width
  printing to an in-game map that I didn't even bother compressing because there
  was such an unbelievable overabundance of free space.

  Meanwhile, the other 20% of the project consisted mostly of "what dumbass
  thought four palettes was enough for a 16-bit console". I thought adding
  subtitles to PC-Engine games was bad, but dear lord, the Mega CD is so, so
  much worse despite being the newer system. The lack of spare color palettes
  means the subtitles almost always have to piggyback off an existing palette,
  and that means you're totally dependent on the original game to hand you
  the colors black and white. And it does, most of the time...but then it does
  a fadeout somewhere that you need to have subtitles on screen, which means
  your subtitles fade out as well. So you force the game not to fade out the
  color white, but now some random white pixels in the background don't fade out
  either. So you have to patch over those pixels with special sprites that use a
  *different* white from a *different* palette for the fadeout. And don't even
  think about trying to change the colors mid-screen instead, because that'll
  make the VDP spit out garbage pixels! It's a mercy this game has so few
  cutscenes; I can't even imagine what a nightmare trying to do Yumimi Mix like
  this would have been.

  The translation side of things was largely unremarkable. This game is
  relatively short (67k Japanese characters; compare to 151k for my previous
  project, Emerald Dragon) and far from the most complicated material in
  the world ("Lip, Lip, konnichi wa"). Perhaps the greatest frustration was
  simply the constant deluge of Japanese names with no reading provided. The
  cook at DomeDonald's is named 修. A quick lookup shows that that could be
  "Osami", "Osame", "Osameru", "Kazaru", "Shuu", "Shuusaku", "Shuuji", "Su",
  "Tadashi", "Nakashi", "Nagashi", or "Yoshimi". How do you know which? Well,
  you don't. He's 修, and if you're Japanese, that's apparently good enough. So
  I called him "Shu" and hoped I read the writer's mind correctly.

  Having to translate all the dialogue branches did at least give me a little
  more appreciation for the game's writing; there's occasionally a decent laugh
  if you pick the right options (mostly the ones that involve getting Lip as
  pissed off as possible). Those are few and far between, though, and made easy
  to miss by the wide dialogue trees. I really feel like the game would have
  benefited from getting an established scriptwriter involved to sharpen things
  up, like Satoru Akahori did for the Yuna series. So much of it just feels
  bland.

  In any event, whatever headaches were involved, this was nonetheless one
  of the simplest Mega CD games I could have picked to translate, which was
  probably the deciding factor that overrode my reservations about its quality:
  I really, really wanted to actually finish a Mega CD project, and this was one
  I could plausibly get done. Which I now have, and if nothing else, I can take
  some satisfaction in having finally managed that.

  --------------------

  I'm sure all that griping really has you sold on Silky Lip, huh? For all my
  whinging, it's far from the worst Mega CD game. It's important to understand
  that it was an early title, released halfway through the system's first year,
  and even Game Arts didn't really know what they were doing at that point. In
  fact, compared to other games from the same period, this one actually scored
  rather well in contemporary reviews. Taken in context, it's really not all
  that bad. Perhaps I just take it personally because it's a magical girl game,
  and I feel like it *deserved* to be better than it turned out, even if that
  was never realistic under the circumstances.

  I think what frustrates me most of all is that it almost got a chance at
  redemption a couple of years later, when Telenet approved a PCECD port. This
  was pretty much exactly the full remake that the game needed to actually
  work: the backstory was expanded, the plot was almost totally rewritten,
  the graphics were completely redone in a more detailed style, the game was
  actually given a run button, etc. ...And of course it was abruptly canceled.

  Oh, and then 15 years later the IP was licensed to a hentai developer who
  turned the canceled remake into a porn game. Splendid. Let's not dwell on
  that.

  But enough already. This was an interesting project to put together, if
  nothing else, and something a little different. If you're far enough down the
  magical girl rabbit hole, it's probably at least worth a shot. And if you're
  a Mega CD fan looking for translations...well, there aren't exactly a lot of
  other options at the moment. At the end of the day, even if it falls far short
  of its potential, I hope you enjoy Silky Lip for what it is.

  P.S. A-Rank Thunder translation coming never. Ojamajo Adventure translation
  also coming never.

  ----------
  - cccmar -
  ----------

  Mahou no Shoujo: Silky Lip is a Sega CD game. How to best describe it? It's
  sort of an adventure game with stats which change depending on how the player
  reacts to various situations. There are three main kinds of reactions - angry,
  sad and happy. The goal is to become the queen of the Magic Realm; reactions
  determine the score, and the score determines the final decision.

  The game is rather unfinished in many regards, so a lot of the systems do
  not work as intended - that's why I'd suggest treating the game almost like
  a visual novel with some extra steps. As such, it has some fun moments,
  but my opinion is that it would've been better as a typical VN, without the
  additional city segments. It moves at a fairly speedy pace and the game's
  structure is like that of an anime - episodic, with an intro/outro song in
  each episode. It's also not too long, 5-6 h for a full playthrough. Enjoy!

  ---------------
  - Oddoai-sama -
  ---------------

  This anime game shows a lot of promise with some ambitious ideas introduced
  early on, but none of them get fleshed out enough to matter. The story kicks
  into high gear only to devolve into rather dry slice of life episodes in which
  the writing is all over the place and half the plot hooks are never truly
  developed. The area where you spend most of the game is huge and filled with
  wandering people, but they usually don't have anything meaningful to say and
  the story doesn't encourage you to go off tracks more than necessary. The
  conversation system, my favorite part, is more about the journey than the
  destination, not contributing much beyond livelier dialogues with minimal
  impact on the ending. Combat sequences are terribly clunky, completely
  pointless and thankfully rare. It's still very entertaining to watch it all
  unfold until the end, even if this skeleton of a game keeps falling short of
  providing an actual, cohesive gaming experience. Lots of good ideas here that
  were just poorly implemented.

                    ****************************************
                    *          VI. Special Thanks          *
                    ****************************************

Thanks to Clownacy for the clownassembler 68K assembler, which was used, with
some horribly hacked-in additions on my part, for building the assembly portions
of this project.

Per tradition, thank you to elmer for the bugfixed bchunk executable included in
the patching process.

Thanks to SadNES cITy Translations for the Delta Patcher program, which is
bundled with this patch as a convenience.

Thanks to contributors to MobyGames for their work compiling information on the
readings of the development staff's names, which was used as a reference for
translating the credits.

                    ****************************************
                    *         VII. Version History         *
                    ****************************************

v1.0 (03 Jul 2026): Initial release.
