Home thread for マルコと銀河竜 ✨🐉 (Visual Novel Reading Club) [currently 60% off on Steam!]

[Legato]

What is this?

We are going to be reading the VN マルコと銀河竜 as part of the Visual Novel Reading Club! Anybody is welcome to join us - it doesn’t matter if this is your first VN or if you’ve read hundreds. If you’ve read this VN before, feel free to join us for the discussions.

This VN is particularly accommodating for first-timers:

• A majority of it has voice-over.
• There are ~1000 images/stills and 6 movies, so it’s easy to tell what is happening.
• At 7 hours play time (for natives) it is rather short for VN standards, so you won’t be committing to months of reading.
• In the Steam version, you can switch between Japanese and English at any point with the press of a key.
• In all versions you can display both languages at the same time.
• It has a log in which you can see all spoken lines (outside of the movies), replay the audio and even jump back to the scenes.
• You can use texthooking to extract the dialogue so you can e.g. copy words into Jisho or here.

And if you’re not sure yet whether you’d like マルコと銀河竜: Both the PC and Switch version have free demos available, so you can test it before committing to it.

Steam Summary

Marco, an orphan with missing memories, and Arco, a dragon who rules the galaxy, were hunting for treasure in space! On one of their adventures, Marco was given a clue to the whereabouts of her mother. Their next stop, her birthplace - Earth!

General Info

• Platform: PC, Switch (all regions)
• Vndb Link: Marco to Ginga Ryuu | vndb
• Language difficulty: 4/10
• Average Game Length: 7 hours
• Text length: 82204 characters
• Hookable: Yes, via Textractor
• Voiced Audio: protagonist with voice acting
• Spoken Lines Replayable: Yes
• Trigger warnings: murder of a family member, human trafficking (“however these scenes are very brief and only mentioned a few times in passing” according to @senkuma)
• Assisting features:
  • In the Steam version: Instant switch between Japanese and English with a key press.
  • Dual language display.
  • Full log (except movie lines) with voice replay and the ability to jump back.

You can find the nomination post here.

Where to purchase

PC: Steam
Console: Switch version

Schedule

We’re going to begin reading on September 23rd, 2023!

Week	Start Date	Approx Character Count	Cumulative Character Count	Total CG image percentage	Stopping point description
Week 1	September 23	13700	13700	16%	Marco leaves the supermarket. The Ruri character screen is shown.
Week 2	September 30	13700	27400	around 33%
Week 3	October 7	13700	41100	around 50%
Week 4	October 14	13700	54800	around 67%
Week 5	October 21	13700	68500	around 83%
Week 6	October 28	13704	82204	100%

Weekly average: 13700 characters

Stopping points CG images

Any of the detail sections here contain a short description of what is happening and a screenshot inside a spoiler tag. We’re trying to get it as spoiler-free as possible.

Week 1: 16% CG progress

Marco leaves the supermarket. The Ruri character screen is shown.

…stopping points for week 2 to 6 are still a work in progress. If you’re the first to read to approximately the CG image percentage of any of those weeks and find a good stopping point that is as spoiler-free as possible, please tell us what is happening and post a screenshot inside of a spoiler tag.

How do I check my current CG image percentage?

1. Go back to the title menu (via settings window “TITLE MENU” or via File->Back To Title on Steam in windowed mode). No need to save, you can easily continue.
2. Select “Extras”.
3. Select “CG Mode”.
4. At the bottom you can find the “Acquisition rate”. This is the total amount of CG images you’ve seen, completely unrelated to the current save file.

Unfortunately there seems to be no way to find out the percentage for a save file, so you cannot easily retroactively find out the percentage for older scenes if you already played well past the point.

If you want to calculate backwards a few percent because you overshot a good stopping point you wanted to share with us:

• Every 10 images (two rows á 5 images) are ~1%.

(There are exactly 1040 CGs in the CG mode menu.)

Will you be reading with us?

• Yeah!
• Yeah, but I’ll start late
• I’m not sure yet
• I’m skipping this one
• I’ve read this before, but will join in the discussion

Which version will you be reading?

• PC
• Switch

[lunacodes]

In case it makes a difference for anyone, the VN is part of a couple of Steam bundles. So might be worth checking out, if you’re deciding between platforms: Marco & The Galaxy Dragon on Steam

[Legato]

For me the platform is pretty much always PC so I can use texthooking. Being able to have selectable text is pretty much required at my level.

And maybe we’ll even be lucky and there’ll be a sale on Steam before we start reading. It seems the game has been on discount fairly often even outside of regular sales. Pity we just missed the Visual Novel Fest sale…

[lunacodes]

@Legato

Pity we just missed the Visual Novel Fest sale…

How did I not know about this?! (not like I don’t have plenty to go through rn, but still)

[Legato]

We still need to figure out a schedule.

According to jpdb.io, this VN has 82204 characters. There are no chapters, but we have multiple suggestions on how we could split it (although we don’t know if any of them lead to good splits):

@senkuma

The scheduling is going to be a bit of an issue; Marco doesn’t have a progress counter of any kind, nor does it have a chapter structure. The closest thing it does have is a percentage count on how many CGs you’ve seen which could be used as a crude way of tracking progress, though that would require everyone to either continually back out the the menu and check their percentage, or be given descriptions of the CGs that may contain mild spoilers.

@Legato

Hmm… I think the ideal solution would probably be to find low-spoiler CGs/scenes like “they just left the restaurant”, but of course that would mean that someone has to read ahead.

@MrGeneric

As for scheduling, 9-Nine follows the “club leader reads ahead each week, picks an appropriate endpoint within a ballpark range of character amount per week,” and it works well. I’ve been running the Fatal Twelve club on a similar scheduling method (though I also went ahead several weeks to frontload the work). It works well enough, and keeps things running well for picks that don’t have perfect chapter dividers.

@senkuma

Since I’m already ahead I could read ahead some more to try and work out some pacing, though I actually realized that there might be a better way:

According to the steam achievements, there’s a total of 6 animated cutscenes (not including the OP) over around 8-12 hours of reading, so we could use those as our weekly benchmarks and would be around 1-2 hours of reading a week depending on your speed. The first week would be quite a bit shorter since the first animation plays at the very beginning, and the OP plays after about 45 minutes if I recall correctly, but after that the spacing between the OP and second animation would be very doable within a week. I can’t speak for the other gaps yet, but I’m probably gonna read ahead anyways since I was reading marco before the VN club was even proposed.

---

We can hopefully figure out specifics later, but for now let’s gauge the mood and reading speed / available time of the participants.

I’d be okay with…

• 4 weeks (20.6k characters/week)
• 5 weeks (16.4k characters/week)
• 6 weeks (13.7k characters/week)
• A slower speed

Select all options you think would be alright for the club. You can select as many as you want. Selecting slower options even if you are able to read quickly can open up the club for slower participants.

I think the fastest speed I could read at would be…

• 20.6k characters/week (4 weeks)
• 16.4k characters/week (5 weeks)
• 13.7k characters/week (6 weeks)
• Less than 13.7k characters/week

Both polls are anonymous.

[Legato]

Alright - thanks for voting, everybody! I’m glad to see that 6 weeks is the one that most people are at least “okay” with, because it’ll allow the 30% of people who selected that they couldn’t keep up with 4 weeks to also participate.

That leaves us with this approximate schedule:

Week	Start Date	Approx Character Count	Cumulative Character Count	Aprox total CG images
Week 1	September 23	13700	13700	166/1000
Week 2	September 30	13700	27400	333/1000
Week 3	October 7	13700	41100	500/1000
Week 4	October 14	13700	54800	667/1000
Week 5	October 21	13700	68500	833/1000
Week 6	October 28	13704	82204	1000/1000

For something more tangible, I propose the following:

The first person who finishes a week’s portion chooses a good break point close to the total CG images (which you can apparently see in the menu somewhere) and takes a screenshot of the end scene or the next scene, whichever has less spoilers. If we get something nice and easy to recognize like “After the next animated cutscene”, even better! We’ll then post that screenshot or that info into the weekly thread.

If anybody is reading ahead and wants to help out there in advance: That would be fantastic, thanks!

How does that sound? Any suggestions are welcome, of course.

[mikemike888]

Excellent plan.

I’ve read a bit on the Switch demo version but can’t see any image counters?

I’m about an hour in and probably reading at a slow pace (my first VN).

[Legato]

@mikemike888

I’ve read a bit on the Switch demo version but can’t see any image counters?

@senkuma mentioned that it’s somewhere in the menu - maybe they have more insight?

It’s also possible that it’s missing in the demo. At least the demo on Steam didn’t have the option to turn on Japanese subtitles for the animated cutscenes either.

@mikemike888

I’m about an hour in and probably reading at a slow pace (my first VN).

Nice - welcome to the club then! I hope it’ll make for a fabulous first VN!

[senkuma]

we confirmed that the extra menu (CG/music tracker) is not included in the demo back in the main book club thread.

Also for the weekly progress chart, it would be super helpful to add approximate percentages since that’s all the game shows you (even if the math is super easy).

[Legato]

@senkuma

we confirmed that the extra menu (CG/music tracker) is not included in the demo back in the main book club thread.

Oh, I must’ve overlooked that somehow. I thought we only established that the subtitle option doesn’t exist in the demo. Either way, that explains that!

@senkuma

Also for the weekly progress chart, it would be super helpful to add approximate percentages since that’s all the game shows you (even if the math is super easy).

Ah, I see - yeah, then we only need that percentage really instead of the total count. I edited it in the first post.

[mikemike888]

Interestingly, the Switch demo version does have the full options screen - dual subtitles and cartoon subtitles.

I will buy the full version for the Switch later on and see if the CG count menu appears…

[mikemike888]

Yes! The Extra menu is enabled and I can see the progress %…however it hasn’t carried my demo saves over

So tomorrow, I’ll mash the A button to get back to where I was.

I’m happy to try and find a spoiler free scene or phrase around the 16/17% mark if that helps?

[Legato]

That would be fantastic!

[mikemike888]

A good place to stop on the first week is when Marco arrives at the supermarket. That’s 16% progress according to the CG Mode.

Scene:

[silentservice]

@mikemike888

however it hasn’t carried my demo saves over

Seriously? Seems like such an obvious place to include a save carry-over. I started the demo and got sucked in, finishing it.
More listening practice never hurts though, right? Probably just use the auto-play feature and go for listening comprehension.
Does the full Switch version have a dual-language hot toggle though?

[mikemike888]

Yeah, I thought I’d make sure my Switch was still working ok and then couldn’t put the demo down. It’s great.

Shame about losing the saved games from the demo but never mind, no biggie.

I don’t think the Switch version has the dual-language toggle. I’m playing with dual language subtitles with a bit of a post-it covering the English text.

When I need to understand a word, I press X to toggle the log screen which shows both languages - that works well.

[silentservice]

@mikemike888

with a bit of a post-it covering the English text.

Just the thought of sticking something to my screen made my teeth hurt

Still, I’m going to take Switch over PC

[mikemike888]

I get that but post-it notes are barely sticky and my Switch has seen better days, so I can live with it.

[Legato]

Added this to the first post, thanks!

[Legato]

@Legato

And maybe we’ll even be lucky and there’ll be a sale on Steam before we start reading. It seems the game has been on discount fairly often even outside of regular sales.

Aww yeah… just in time for the book club!