Sword of Kalin (or Kalin no Tsurugi if you’re Japanese, or Karin no Ken if you are GameFAQs) was Square’s first foray into the world of RPGs on the NES. For a game released in 1987, it isn’t too bad. It has elements of many “staple” RPGs in its gameplay (read: derivative), but that doesn’t make it boring, even by today’s standards.

The game plays kind of like a cross between Ultima, Ys, and Dragon Warrior. Enemy encounters and exploration occur much as they do in Ultima: you explore the world one screen at a time, and running into an enemy takes you to a battlefield. On the battle field, you run into things kamikaze style, as in Ys. The menu interface is very much like Dragon Warrior.

It makes for an interesting blend and will certainly give you something to do when you’re feeling bored and very “1987″ on a given evening, and don’t feel like beating Dragon Warrior for the 27th time.

This is an English translation of Kalin no Tsurugi for the Family Computer Disk System.

Well, most everything is translated and bug-free, excepting a minor issue that occurs sometimes when you use way more healing potions than you would ever need to.

Filler and satsu handled the scripts, and KingMike handled the translation. Congratulations to KingMike! This translation marks the four-year anniversary of his group.

Note that the game does require the use of a DOS program included in the ZIP archive. The utility is required to properly expand the disk image files before the translation can be applied.

• Kalin no Tsurugi (Japan) [b].fds - NOINTRO
• CRC32: 679D8E23 (With Header)
• ---------------------------------------------------------
• PATCHED CRC: 2F1F14E9
• ---------------------------------------------------------
• Headerless version of this rom is D7025151. You MUST apply the patch to a headered version of the rom. Applying the patch to a headerless version will cause the game to freeze at a black screen and make an annoying noise on load.
• You must expand the rom with the included diskexp.exe program before patching it. This program will make good identical changes to the file with or without a header, but will not add a header for you, so just make sure you're using a rom with a header. After expanding, the rom CRC should be 5835B0CA if you started with 679D8E23.
• Find a version of the rom with a header, or add the header below in a hex editing program.
• Header: 46 44 53 1A 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00