Barver Battle Saga: Tai Kong Zhan Shi
From Sega Retro
| Barver Battle Saga: Tai Kong Zhan Shi | ||||||||||
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| System(s): Sega Mega Drive | ||||||||||
| Publisher: Ka Sheng | ||||||||||
| Developer: Never Ending Soft Studio | ||||||||||
| Sound driver: Data East/High Seas Havoc | ||||||||||
| Genre: RPG | ||||||||||
| Number of players: 1 | ||||||||||
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Barver Battle Saga: Tai Kong Zhan Shi – Mo Fa Zhan Shi (BARVER BATTLE SAGA 太空戰士 魔法戰士) is an unlicensed Sega Mega Drive role-playing game developed by Never Ending Soft Studio and published by Ka Sheng. Originally released exclusively in Taiwan in 1996, the game is notable for its relatively-high production values for an unlicensed title, and later received a popular English fan translation in 2010.
Sometime in the late 1990s, an unknown Chinese company machine-translated the game's text to Cyrillic and published the game in Russia as Final Fantasy. Featuring minor soundtrack changes and different packaging, this version is notorious for its abysmal translation quality.
Contents
Story
Humans and daemons develop civilization independently using technology and magic, respectively. Technology comes to triumph over magic, and the world is destroyed in an technological accident. Survivors continued without technology for a thousand years, until the old technology was discovered and returned to use.
Furthermore, the world is divided into four kingdoms, each representing one of the four natural forces and with four temples: Cruz, whose Moon Temple controls water, Galien, whose Sun Temple controls the earth, Zak, whose Star Temple controls technology, and Lear, whose Wind Temple controls wind.
Now the daemons have returned...
Gameplay
Hit 
to open a status menu with various options for controlling equipment and magic spells, checking status, saving, etc.
In towns and houses, 
talks to people.
Battles are menu-driven and turn based, making use of an Active Time Battle (ATB) gauge. Other games for the Sega Mega Drive that make use of the ATB gauge are Surging Aura and Tun Shi Tian Di III.
Enemies are visible on the map. Players have to touch an enemy to enter a battle.
Versions
Taiwanese
The first version of the game was released in Taiwan in 1996. The original title translates to The Space Warrior – The Magic Warrior; the game reuses thematic elements from previous Final Fantasy games released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It also implements a battle system similar to the ones present in Final Fantasy IV – IX, with an ATB (Active Time Battle) gauge and summon spells.
Russian (Chinese-made)
A notoriously poor (seemingly computer-generated) translation to Russian by some Chinese pirates was released in some unknown year under the name Final Fantasy. This version received a physical release, with a different title and cover from the Taiwanese version. Other than translating the text and changing the title screen, the Russian release also featuers different music throughout the game, including a different battle theme; the original battle theme from the Taiwanese version was changed to the victory theme in this version.
English translation
In 2010 the game was fan translated to English by djinn and SteveMartin. The patch changed the title to Brave Battle Saga: Legend of the Magic Warrior, what makes this version similar to the Taiwanese original in dropping the connection with Final Fantasy in the title. Nevertheless, thematic elements from the Final Fantasy series are still present, since the gameplay remains unchanged. This translation, unlike the Russian one, did not receive a physical release.
Development
Despite generally being accredited to Taiwanese developer Chuanpu, development was outsourced to the closely-related Never Ending Soft.
Physical scans
| Mega Drive, TW |
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 Cover
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 Cart |
| Mega Drive, RU |
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 Cover
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 Cart |
| Mega Drive, RU (alt) |
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Technical information
ROM dump status
| System | Hash | Size | Build Date | Source | Comments | |||||||||
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2MB | Cartridge | |||||||||||
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2MB | Two-byte difference with above ROM. | |||||||||||
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2MB | Referred to as "v0.9" in GoodGen. |