Dicing Knight.

What is Dicing Knight?The Bandai WonderSwan was a handheld videogame system from the turn of the millennium and Dicing Knight was its final, beautiful swan song. Like the WonderSwan itself, Dicing Knight was released only in Japanese and only in Japan. It has a mythic reputation as an addictively fun "dungeon crawler" (top down view, slay monsters, grab the gold), but instead of gold, what your knight is searching for is food. While the action during fights requires dexterity, much of the game is about wisely managing your resources while you grow stronger.

Many people have compared Dicing Knight to one of the earliest video games, Rogue circa 1984, because they both have randomly generated dungeons and strong Role Playing Game elements. (RPGs are known for having hit points, experience points, loot, and, of course, dice rolling to determine the outcome of battles). As someone who has actually played Rogue — I think I still have the manual that came with BSD UNIX — I can tell you there is one other, even greater similarity: dying of hunger, again and again.

English version

A decade after its debut, an English translation was hacked into the ROM by a fan. It is released as a "patch", meaning you have to already have the game to use the translation. You can download the patch from romhacking.net.

So far, no manual has yet been translated. The author has a web page which seems like a manual, but it is only in Japanese. I don't speak Japanese, but I'll make an attempt using machine translation and guesswork. Click here for my (extremely rough translation) Dicing Knight manual.

Likewise, no website (yet) has hints in English for the tricky parts of the game. Since there are some potentially frustrating points, I'll give some hints that I would have appreciated. Don't worry about spoilers, my vague oracles might help if you're stuck but won't ruin the fun of figuring things out for yourself. Click here for my Dicing Knight hints.

Vocabulary

For a game released only in Japanese, this game sports an impressive foreign vocabulary. Is the author a well-read polyglot? Where did he get these great words? It's possible he just took them from elsewhere, but I doubt it. The title of the game itself, Dicing Knight, is a clever pun in English. "Dicing" can mean gambling with dice, but it also means slicing something (usually food) into pieces. The author clearly meant both: when you slice a monster with your sword, dice spill out and, in a nice touch, whatever they roll, is the amount of damage done. From this I deduce the author has a mastery of both English and droll humor.

Here are some of the words I caught being used in the game and what I think they mean.

Agni, Hindu god of fire

Jabberwock, Beast from Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwocky

Jörmungandr, The Midgard Serpent, destined to devour Thor at the twilight of the gods.

Lindwurm, A wyvern (two-legged dragon)

Lotten Magius, Possibly corrupted Latin for "magic lottery"

Ouroboros, "The wurm that doth eateth its own tail"; Jörmungadr is an ouroboros, but so large he encircles the entire world

Quetzalcoatl, Aztec feathered-serpent god

Rondo, A form of music with a recurring leitmotif

R'lyeh, Lost city in Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft

And then, there's the name the author signs his work as:

Platine Dispositif, French, literally "flat (or platinum) device", but may mean something specific. (E.g., platine disque means "turntable".)

The Music

I read a review saying the music was atrociously repetitive. At the time, I'd just made it to the second level and thought, "Well, this Agni Rondo track isn't too bad. Maybe the reviewer didn't get past the first level." Now that I have progressed further, I am forced to admit the music is this game's weakest point. As you enter each level, a notice pops up telling you which song will be playing on a continuous loop, like Hell's Muzak, throughout the entire dungeon. One track in particular stands out to me as the absolute worst: Banned Ossuary. I don't know what an "ossuary" is, but I understand why they had to ban it.Secret menu tip: Press 'up' rapidly on the second joy pad at the start screen to access the hidden sound test menu. You can play all the songs. Lucky you. You can even turn off music for the start screen. Unfortunately, there is no way to disable background music while playing.

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