Indeed. I'm glad the translators for Trails from Zero/to Azure got a job from the devs. Each of those games have more text than the LoTR book trilogy. Such a massive undertaking with no expectation to be compensated.
They are. I used to do it. I never tackled a project as big as any of these RPGs, and let me tell you, it's hard work. I'm sure by now people have developed a lot of amazing tools to make some stuff easier, but when I did it you were literally opening a ROM in a hex editor and trying to make sense of it. We had tools to search for patterns which would HOPEFULLY reveal the font/text system. You'd find a word in the game, like "hello" and search for patterns in the ROM that had the same differences. H is the 8th letter in the alphabet. E is 5th, L is 12th, O is 15th, so the pattern there is --3, +7, +0, +3. So if you can find 5 bytes together with those differences, you may have just found the alphabet system in the game. So, apply a filter to the hex editor that says 0F=H, and extrapolate that below and above that value to map out the whole alphabet... you're still going to have to change stuff around and experiment a lot to find all the punctuation and special characters and weapon icons, and line breaks and other control characters... That's what you do for the very simplest of ROM hacks... what the people in the projects in these videos have done is likely about 20x more complicated than that. I haven't done it for MANY years, but some of the people who were doing it way back when I did are still at it and have really developed into professionals. But yeah, the level of work these guys do is nuts. It's really fun to crack the code and make it all work though, if you're into that sort of thing.
It is an incredible time to be a Sega Saturn fan. My sincerest thanks to the translation teams who give us gems after gems to keep the Saturn alive and well. I hope we get Princess Crown soon. It's my most awaited fan translation project. Great video as always Sega LordX
I remember Sakura Wars was such a huge thing in Japan. It was on all the media back then and probably the most hyped Saturn game, surpassing the coverage of many Playstation games
I remember an anime freak in school was in love with Sakura Wars, he was also a big Playstation freak as well. I think that I broke his heart when I told him that it was based off of a Japan only Saturn game. He had no idea.
Several PC Engine CD games are also getting modern fan translations. The Saturn and the Genesis have such different libraries, I kind of feel like the Saturn library is the next-gen of the PC Engine library. Both have massive catalogues of great, unique games that stayed in Japan.
The only thing the Genesis and Saturn seem to have in common is the solid library of shoot em ups, other than that most of the Genres the Genesis shined like platformers, sports games and beat em ups are mostly replaced by rpg's, fighting games or visual novels.
@@oscarzxn4067 right, which along with more shoot-em-ups than any other console, were all found on the PC Engine in the 4th generation. If you want a Saturn-like 16-bit (yes, I know it's actually 8-bit) console, it's the PC Engine + CD, bot the Genesis, even if you include the Sega CD.
@@samlepirate4845 To be fair Hudson were supporters of all 3 consoles that gen, so I'd say that vibe is mostly given by most devs rather than only Hudson.
I really appreciate your content man. I often struggle some mornings but watching your videos before heading off to work puts me in such a better mood. I look forward to every new instalment, thanks for your hard work. I never had a Sega Saturn growing up but I'd love to get my hands on one today just to catch up on what I missed back in the day.
After seeing the Bulk Slash voice work, it made me realize that I can actually contribute in the homebrew community. I do a lot of community theater & radio shows so I would love to get a chance to voice a character in a Saturn translation/localization project.
@@dexocube It is inspiring and I think it maybe a turning point for the Saturn community. At this rate the quality will only rise from here and now there’s a standard to meet.
the Shining Force III translations will always be the tops for me, i LOVE Shining Force III and getting to play the whole game rather than just Disc 1 that the states got, Shining Force Central's community has my sincerest thanks.
@Wiegraf lol Fire Emblem is much harder in that regard, since when your troops fall in battle, they stay down. the trick is to level up your group as much as you can without it getting too grindy.
@Wiegraf you dont need them, you start leveling up via the first battle then onward, the Leader has a spell called Egress, you kill all enemies but the main enemy, then you have the Leader cast Egress and start the battle over again.
@Wiegraf They level up naturally, they are very weak at the beginning, the strategy of the game is how you position your characters and use their abilities to your advantage, keep distance to avoid being surrounded, use potions and healing spells, for me the final boss of sceniario 1 was the most difficult battle in the game because of how few characters I recruited throughout the game, I played it a bit carelessly, buying items and going straight to battle and ignoring everything else. I finally finished scenario 1 tonight, starting scenario 2 tomorrow.
Love Bulk Slash and it’s new translation, I’ve been playing it almost non-stop since it came out. Looking forward to the eventual Bulk Slash review, it’s probably my favorite Saturn game.
I am glad that you got to enjoy Bulk Slash :) I have so many things to say but, in short, Sega Saturn is a console that deserved so much love from us but it never received it and nearly faded into existence and now these fans translations and how people are enjoying them is like our apology letter to the Sega Saturn console. I am glad that Saturn is finally getting the love it deserves.
I truly appreciate this it's crazy there's a few other projects going on not just fan translation. Hoping for so much more DiGiValentine has done a whole bunch of work with a the NiGHTS beta as a matter of fact c: and I forget the other dude that he's currently actually remaking NiGHTS in the unity engine?! It's awesome
I keep up pretty well with the Saturn translation scene, and I appreciate you showing it some love. I'm still anxiously awaiting the day I can play Tokimeki Memorial: Forever With You in English on my Saturn. Probably not your sort of game if you don't like Sakura Wars, but I'm insanely curious about it.
I'm really happy to see more and more Saturn game being translated and that's great of you to speak about it... Now i wish for Dragon master Silk, Princess Crown and both Slayers Royal to get their own patch. Yoh, i've waited for years, can wait a little more... but not much :p
Man this is incredible on so many levels! First of all it's all the motivation I need to boot the old girl up again and secondly the Increased exposure of these fan translations will sure encourage the other groups who either started or have paused their projects to get them underaway! Sega Saturn for absolute life!
Sega single handily destroyed the Saturn. They were praising it when it launch but once the market share went straight to the ps1 they gave up on the system.
@@maroon9273 More when they left so many good games in Japan, where the SS outsold the N64. The Saturn was doomed due to lack of trust by Sega itself, and terrible management, it is just ridiculous how RPGs were carrying a shit ton of sales for PSX while Sega management neglected to localize those same RPGS for the Saturn.
@@joseluki sega was neglectful, imagine sega ported all of their rpgs to na and release phantasy star 5 including 6, 7. Sega forgot about their ips and Japanese Saturn games.
“Slather up a giant shit sandwich with mayonnaise.” Wtf my dude, CHIIIIIILLLL lol But a solid yes. Derek Pascarella and others have really put in serious work to bring these treasures to us in the SEGA SATURN & SEGA DREAMCAST communities. It’s been a great few years for retro gaming. Doubtlessly, the pandemic and working from home really accelerated these types of things, despite slowing down many other things.
Thank you for all the love you've shown the Sega Saturn. Ive always loved it amd you've shown me so many great games that only make me love it more. Its such a wonderful console with its own vibe. Im glad it seems to have a thriving fan base
Damn, when you showed Soul Hackers in the intro I was hoping that it had gotten a translation too. I know it's on the 3DS, but I want to play it on my Saturn or PS1.
It's really great that these translations are being made. The quality of these are astonishing. I remember translations of some RPGs back in the late 90's and it seemed like the fan translators back then were just trying to be edgy with as much swearing in the dialog as possible, glad it's being taken much more seriously now. Hopefully we see a lot more Saturn translations since so many games for the console never left Japan.
I have been following most of these projects, and it is amazing how many translations have been released within the last few years. One additional that I am really looking forward to is Princess Crown, which is currently being worked on.
bulk slash is a game I've discovered only a few years ago but has since become one of my favorites. I'm so happy to know it has a fan translation! going to check it out now!
Oh man I'm really gonna have to start getting into Saturn Emulation now. This is all so cool! I can't wait until Princess Crown gets its translation. I've been following that project for like, 7 years now but I'll wait as long as I need for it!
I hope that Slayers Royal 1 and 2 for the Sega Saturn will get a fan translation one day! Out of the existing translations I only played Sakura wars though.
Awesome, awesome video! I keep an eye out for Saturn translations but you covered some I didn’t know about! It is just amazing to see the Saturn library and community growing after all these years!
I’ve spent all my gaming time in the last 6 months or so playing Japanese only games that got translated on my fenrir. Policenauts, linkle liver story, and Sakura wars have been some of my favorites so far. I am currently playing Lunar on my Saturn, and have Grandia and shining force 3 queued up:) I had never heard of volhallian, so thanks so much for the heads up, it’s on my list for sure now!
Pandamonium and you got me hyped over a lot of these translations, especially the ones I’ve already played on PSX. Super stoked you finally gave FirePro the time of day since you and I had a back and forth about it since your wrasslin video. Didn’t really serve it any justice but I’m glad you you mentioned it. Hope you actually give it the time of day for yourself. That and eventually the AJPWs on Saturn and especially Giant Gram on Dreamcast. Then the NJPWs on PS. You’ve really missed out on what wrasslin games were meant to be bitd.
been a sega fan my whole life and finally got my hands on a saturn and have been appreciating your channel more then usual to learn and understand how wonderful this system is.
I really appreciate all the work these groups do for us mortals. There's SO MANY games left in the past, but are now apprecaited because of these groups. Amazing time to be a Saturn Fan. Also SoTN on Saturn has a patch for the slowdown, havent tried it myself but its something to look into.
What I want to know, is WTF happened with the music on every port and "upgrade" remaster? SegaCD (US) opening music makes the cinematic a thumping, exciting call to adventure. The others are like.. slow, smaltzy anime soap. And they replace most of the other absolutely rocking tracks. Just one of the best ever soundtracks, and every "upgrade" guts it completely. I'd love the upgraded visuals with OG music and sound.
The passion of gamers to translate, japanese only games is something i really appreciate. I still hope that someone, translates Secret of Mana 2 and 3 one day.
what? Those have been done forever now and is also officially translated by Square. (Not really sure what you mean by 2 and 3, but 1 is Final Fantasy Adventure on Gameboy, 2 is Secret of Mana, and 3 is now titled Trials of Mana)
I'm glad you did this topic as it is a great reminder of games I wanted to try, but hadn't gotten around to, as well as several I really didn't know much about as well. And it really is such a cool thing to see translation projects aimed at the Saturn in recent years. Back in the day, I never thought Dragon Force 2 or the unreleased chapters of Shining Force 3 would ever see translations. It's amazing the work people put in to translate and modify these old games. I remember the hype for Grandia back in the day. I forgot how good it looked. By the time it came out for the PS1 -- and I understand why playing it there bothered you a bit -- I had other games holding my attention and other priorities going on that I never played it. Bulk Slash looks like my kind of 3D game. It really looks great in motion. The night scenes look especially good and would have made for great screenshots in magazines and on the box. I know I would have gotten excited. I would definitely have tried Sakura Wars back in the day, but it sounds like too much of a slog to me now. As you say Lunar Silver Star is good for casual RPG fans, it sounds like one I need to play. I'm definitely casual with those and Phantasy Star 4 is one of the few I'll go back to again and again thanks to the fast pace of it. I also appreciate translations, like Cotton, for games that don't really need it. Knowing what's going on is a nice bonus to great game play. Bare Knuckle 3 with a translation comes to mind as a good example of that. Yeah, even a poorly-ported Symphony of the Night should still be a good experience, and playing it in Japanese with English text is already my favorite way to play it on PS1 as I don't like the original dub. Linkle Liver Story looks really cool as well, and I didn't learn about that one until a few years ago, perhaps from this channel. Anyway, great video and topic.
The one i am waiting for, for almost a decade now, is Princess Crown. The work on it is so slow and updates are so rare it's really frustrating. I wish they would at least release unfinished builds or something like that.
I knew this vid wa s coming soon, this is my SLX most wanted vid… so thanks SLX, sincerely thanks. When I discovered your channel i was a guy who look fondly to his sega past and love your vids for the memories they brought (I didn’t had any hardware or games) and you were like 25ish thousand strong. Today I owned 4 different Saturn models among other sega power systems and games
Panzer Dragoon Saga was more "Saturn Final Fantasy VII" than Grandia. Grandia charismatic characters and epic sense of adventure makes it "the Saturn Chrono Trigger".
Bulk Slash looks so cool! Can’t believe I didn’t know about this game prior. Also, on an unrelated note, seeing a SEGA logo on a Gameboy Colour game is surreal as hell.
Found this channel trying to find our what Saturn games I want to get outside of the few I knew of. Saturn has been a black hole in my gaming library and I'm planning to get the system and an ODE soon to experience what I've missed. Your videos are very well done and are helping me figure out what I want to play on the system. Thanks!
Thank you so much for this video! I hope you revisit it when there's new projects or one gets completed. I'm always so thankful to all the teams doing these and the Saturn is in dire need of some fan translations. I first got into this world when I found the PC Ys I&II translations by Nightwolve & Deuce (rip) back in the early 2000s and was blown away. Then once voices started becoming more prevalent in JRPGs with the PS2 era I got several Undubs to put the JP voices back in. You have many games on there I was not aware of and I grabbed all the patches!
Sakura Wars is a fun experience oozing with production value, but the battles are like SFIII or Vandal Hearts for children. I liked it more than I thought I would after waiting so many years, I’d love it if they translate the Saturn sequel. Policenauts was pretty much exactly like I had dreamed of after playing Snatcher on Sega CD when it was a new game so many years ago, not as scary or atmospheric as Snatcher, but more of a legit world building effort. Shining Force III, Scenarios2&3/Special disc, is still probably the most amazing project and all 4 discs are probably my favorite game of all time.
Getting to finally play through Shining Force III Scenario II and III as well as Policenauts was the highlight of my time as a Saturn fan. 2 of the best Saturn games that were so cruelly denied to us back in the 90s... I am eagerly anticipating Wachenroder next!
I still own my copy of Grandia (love it) but I can easily tell from your footage that it runs better on the Saturn. I'm really impressed since I didn't know the Saturn could run an expansive RPG so well. I really thought the system's strength was just 2D games.
Awesome video, good on you for showing off these quality translations. Must have hit some kind of critical mass between people that can mod SS code and game translators, great news for Saturn fans. :D
Love your channel, man. This is great news to hear and I would've never known had I not discovered this gem of a channel. Thanks for what you do and see you on the next video drop.
@@SegaLordX I was a huge Sega Genesis fan, so when the next gen consoles came out, I opted for the Saturn. I loved my Saturn and it had some great titles and, let me tell you, I was so heartbroken when it failed. I still have my original Saturn and all the games I had back then. It's one of my treasures.
Great video covering an overdue subject. Glad to see translations are happening for the Saturn. I hope Dungeon Master Nexus receives a translation one day. It is the only immersive dungeon crawler on the saturn...
Oh man so many Sega Saturn games I never knew of and never got to play back then it’s such shame we people outside of Japan never got to experience so many games
The reason for the influx of fan translated Saturn, sega cd, and turbografx CD jrpgs is pretty simple: Machine Learning assistance makes it cheap and easy. It’s not a substitute for proper excellent human translations however.
@@pixelpoppyproductions most use ML as base and then proof and edit them by hand. That doesn’t mean it’s not aided by ML. Why even try to refute something that’s pretty damn obvious? What suddenly there is a booming interest in retro translations? Ao and Zero no kiseki are famously ML assisted. I’ve played every recent translated game. They’re no Working Designs ( save a few exceptions).
@@jamesyu5212 Not for the Saturn, which is the topic of this video. Grandia used the English Playstation 1 script, as an example. Others have been painstakingly hand translated and localized, like Bulk Slash. I can't think of any Saturn translations that were just run through an AI algorithm, except recent talk about doing Baroque that way as a proof of concept, playable beta patch (all text is stored as images, so fully translating to English in the provided space would be extremely difficult anyway). I'm not refuting anything "obvious" because I have been following this scene closely for years and I know what those people have put into it. You're making it seem like this trival thing - just put the script through google translate! But that is not anything close to what has actually been done. A lot of these games don't even have a text script you can copy and paste into an AI, it's all saved into image tiles which then have to be manually translated pixel by pixel into English. Or worse, hard coded into a video file. If you think you can do a better job - the Saturn community would love to have your talents!.
@@jamesyu5212 Yeah, I get your point of view too - and I have spent a lot of time using ML to translate German to "Engrish", which you can only really make sense of if you speak both. It's very obvious when it's been tool-assisted. I can see being put off by a lazy approach, but I don't think you could say any of these Saturn translations teams are lazy. :)
It's always good to see more of these games getting translated. The Saturn deserves a lot more attention especially the Japanese games that never got localized.
I prefered learning Japanese all by myself, so that I can play all Japanese games of history I want, instead of waiting for never coming translation patchs (or else, I could never have played "Tengai Makyou: The 4th Apocalypse" that I really, really enjoyed it, and I think that there are many other games on obscure systems like PC-98 that will never be translated). But those new translation patchs on Saturn are very good news.
PC-98 is so obscure in the West that even fewer people know/care about it than about learning Japanese, and that's already few enough. I hope translation AI will reach a level one day where on-screen translation for those difficult Asian languages will be acceptable instead of mediocre, like right now, and I say that also from perspective of someone who knows Japanese to some degree... it's generally not worth it to learn it 'just' for gaming, since most of those games were obscure even in Japan in the first place, and frankly, most retro stuff isn't that good anyway, and what is was usually localized (Sturgeon's Law totally applies to gaming). Well, not big franchises like Tengai Makyou or Sakura Wars, which are generally quite professionally made, but the PC-98 stuff - absolutely, a lot of it was just reprehensible. I think there's a PSP project going on for Tengai Makyou: The 4th Apocalypse, which makes sense seeing that PSP was a much more popular console in the West.
@@degenerategaming8797 For the 10-20% that is good, of course; and bad can also be fun, but more so to watch rather than play yourself. Finding hidden gems is always fun, even if there aren't many of them. I don't know the entire library, despite knowing Japanese well enough to play a good chunk of this stuff on my own, and Sega Lord X usually does a very nice job highlighting the better games. I hope he keeps doing so for a long time to come.
@@mariusamber3237 Learning Japanese for gaming is a very good reason (not more stupid than for work or something): this is my case, I am learning Japanese for 3 years especially for that goal, so that I will be not stucked by language barrier anymore (unless I am interested in some Korean, Chinese, or even Spanish games for example). 🙂 Between PC-88/PC-98/MSX/X68000 games, PC Engine games, Saturn games, portable console games, Playstation games, Nintendo console games, PC games, and even actual games (for example, on Switch, the adventure game "Buddy Mission BOND" by KOEI/Nintendo is not translated), there are MANY games that are not translated. Until we did not play those games, we cannot know if they are "not that good" (but even if this is the case, it remains very interesting to discover for me). I think the "Sturgeon law" is irrelevant to the situation: even if 90% not localized games are bad, if there are thousands or dozen of thousands of games, it remains dozens, even hundreds of interesting games to discover, more than we can all discover in a single human life. About the AI, first, I am not sure it will be really fonctional until my death. But anyway, I do not like depending on "machines" for doing something. Besides, even the AI may not give me some "cultural elements" to really appreciate games than playing it in comprehensible Japanese.
@@Rudolphhhhhh Well, Chinese I'd say is one of the best picks regardless of what you want to use it for. With Japanese, looking back at my own 5-year experience, I'm more hesitant to say the same thing (though I like the language itself). Most of the games I tried weren't really very good and I wouldn't play them without a speed-up button... especially nowadays that almost everything of note gets localized and you get pretty much all the big-hitters anyhow. Maybe I'm a bit jaded, but I wish for more really great games like some of the 90s gems... Fallout, System Shock 1 and 2, Jagged Alliance 2 and the like. A bit of a longing for my PC-gaming days, haha. Well, sure, I will give you that - there are some genres where you have to know Japanese to play absolutely all the best games (like VNs), but those are usually genres which are fairly niche in the West in the first place, and like you said - very unlikely you could play even just all the good stuff anyway. Either way, I'm also really happy about all those fan-translations popping up, because way, way more people will play those games that way. The Western markets are huge, and it's way easier to localize/fan-translate games from English into other European languages, even if it can be a telephone game (I recall reading about the bad first translation of Final Fantasy 7 into Spanish!). Everyone can make that choice on their own though, naturally. So, that's that. :)
Yes. I have a few of these. Hundreds of games locked because of language barriers! Great that fans are translating these and finally bringing them west.
I think the best part of Sakura Taisen is the combat actually, the visual novel is alrighty, it's cool and the dialogue is... harem anime levels, but the combat? Let's freaking go. It's a great turn-based RPG that can rival quite a lot of franchises out there, with your personal VN decisions affecting the gameplay too.
Still shorter than in Trials of Cold Steel / Persona / Fire Emblem games, when tutorial with talking and Social Sim parts can last 1-2 hours without ANY gameplay. Sakura Wars is shorter in Visual Novel segments than those games mentioned from me, but on other hand also gameplay segments are shorter.@@SegaLordX
You know Sega of America's president at the time is quoted as saying "Americans don't want to play RPGs". Sega should have given him a copy of FFVII as his severance and the FFVII sales figures as his termination letter. That would have been retribution for all of the games we were deprived of in the west.
As always, this is a great and informative video. Some of these translations are nothing short of equal to, or better than many early official localizations. The full on English dub of Bulk Slash, along with accurate subtitles, is insanely good. What really surprised me was Grandia. Having purchased it as an import game, it was never playable for me due to the lack of English subtitles. The PlayStation version wasn’t the same at all visually. It had lifeless water effects, a lack of building shadows, and mirrored sprites with less animation. Thanks to the new English Saturn fan translation version of Grandia, the bad port of the PS1 version on Steam isn’t needed. The emulated Saturn version of Grandia, running on Kronos, or YabaSanshiro, looks much better than the official HD port, which was actually supposed to use the Saturn graphics as a base, with the PS1 version’s English dub and subtitles.
Princess Crown translation sounds like it's almost complete. The translation team posts on the Rom Hacking forums and they've signaled they're reaching the finish line
Awesome video! This is an excellent look at all the stuff I always wanted to play back in the day but never got a formal release, being thankful for the PSone ports we did get. Great work as always even if as a huge fan of Sakura Wars I'm a little offended (real talk tho I get it, even as someone who loves the genre I'm not always in the mood for a slow burn).
Bruh you forgot to mention the English VAs in Bulk Slash cuz remember it wasn't originally released outside of Japan so the fan translation group has to cast English voice actors just for this game!
The retro community is so great, from translations, enhancements, fixes and much more. I believe I'm still going to see games like Advanced World War - Last of the Millennium, AnEarth Fantasy Stories and Cyber Doll in English one day, the Saturn still has so many great games to explore.
Aye.. It's time to fire my saturn once again and play some of these classics! "Granted I own a few on the ps1 but now I can play them on the saturn!!" Thanks for the Video SLX, Keep up the good work!
What’s happened is that Saturn interest has skyrocketed as Saturn emulation and computers have advanced to the point that anyone with windows 10 can play Saturn games after the two minutes of download it takes to get the roms and install retroarc.
Thank you for the compilation, long live the fansubbbers. Zanma Chou ougi: Valhollian, I'll look for it. Still hurts to see high caliber gems like Leynos 2 and Jinrei Taromaru still untranslated, I played Hulk Slash in japanese (emulator) and was excellent!, can`t wait to replay it now in english.
Thanks Sega Lord for this great video. Does anyone knows a place that explains the different way to play these titles? To play Sega Saturn titles. Any way. I have a Sega Saturn model 2 (fully mine) and a Saturn model 1 (bought in 1996 with my brother). I bought long time ago Policenaut the only time I visited Japan (thanks to a physics conference) but of course is in Japanese (I wish I had bought more games!!) I'm looking for an overview on how to play these Saturn games that involves: original hardware on new tvs, and emulators, and how to patch them. And I wonder if Sega lord or anyone did something about it. I'll check myself again and see if I found anything.
Fan Translator Groups are doing every Sega fan a favor, rectifying a mistake of not putting these games out to the World.
It’s incredible to finally have some of these easily playable on Saturn. Better late than never.
The Fan Translators working on all these projects are heroes pure and simple
Indeed. I'm glad the translators for Trails from Zero/to Azure got a job from the devs. Each of those games have more text than the LoTR book trilogy. Such a massive undertaking with no expectation to be compensated.
They are. I used to do it. I never tackled a project as big as any of these RPGs, and let me tell you, it's hard work.
I'm sure by now people have developed a lot of amazing tools to make some stuff easier, but when I did it you were literally opening a ROM in a hex editor and trying to make sense of it. We had tools to search for patterns which would HOPEFULLY reveal the font/text system. You'd find a word in the game, like "hello" and search for patterns in the ROM that had the same differences. H is the 8th letter in the alphabet. E is 5th, L is 12th, O is 15th, so the pattern there is --3, +7, +0, +3. So if you can find 5 bytes together with those differences, you may have just found the alphabet system in the game. So, apply a filter to the hex editor that says 0F=H, and extrapolate that below and above that value to map out the whole alphabet... you're still going to have to change stuff around and experiment a lot to find all the punctuation and special characters and weapon icons, and line breaks and other control characters...
That's what you do for the very simplest of ROM hacks... what the people in the projects in these videos have done is likely about 20x more complicated than that.
I haven't done it for MANY years, but some of the people who were doing it way back when I did are still at it and have really developed into professionals.
But yeah, the level of work these guys do is nuts. It's really fun to crack the code and make it all work though, if you're into that sort of thing.
Providing mostly non-professional, shitty translations 😂 👎
It is an incredible time to be a Sega Saturn fan. My sincerest thanks to the translation teams who give us gems after gems to keep the Saturn alive and well. I hope we get Princess Crown soon. It's my most awaited fan translation project. Great video as always Sega LordX
I remember Sakura Wars was such a huge thing in Japan. It was on all the media back then and probably the most hyped Saturn game, surpassing the coverage of many Playstation games
Is it an good game?
@@jjayala5512 the second one is much better. Third one on dreamcast as well
I remember an anime freak in school was in love with Sakura Wars, he was also a big Playstation freak as well. I think that I broke his heart when I told him that it was based off of a Japan only Saturn game. He had no idea.
@Deathstroke The Terminator thank you, English is not first and I needed human correction device in the computer. Can you help with all my comment
And even Sonic ...
Several PC Engine CD games are also getting modern fan translations. The Saturn and the Genesis have such different libraries, I kind of feel like the Saturn library is the next-gen of the PC Engine library. Both have massive catalogues of great, unique games that stayed in Japan.
The only thing the Genesis and Saturn seem to have in common is the solid library of shoot em ups, other than that most of the Genres the Genesis shined like platformers, sports games and beat em ups are mostly replaced by rpg's, fighting games or visual novels.
@@oscarzxn4067 right, which along with more shoot-em-ups than any other console, were all found on the PC Engine in the 4th generation. If you want a Saturn-like 16-bit (yes, I know it's actually 8-bit) console, it's the PC Engine + CD, bot the Genesis, even if you include the Sega CD.
The Japanese Saturn is kind of the unofficial sequel to the PC engine, Hudson soft clearly chose it over the PC fx
@@samlepirate4845 To be fair Hudson were supporters of all 3 consoles that gen, so I'd say that vibe is mostly given by most devs rather than only Hudson.
I really appreciate your content man. I often struggle some mornings but watching your videos before heading off to work puts me in such a better mood.
I look forward to every new instalment, thanks for your hard work.
I never had a Sega Saturn growing up but I'd love to get my hands on one today just to catch up on what I missed back in the day.
After seeing the Bulk Slash voice work, it made me realize that I can actually contribute in the homebrew community.
I do a lot of community theater & radio shows so I would love to get a chance to voice a character in a Saturn translation/localization project.
Whoa!
The Bulk Slash fan translation is amazing, they really went all out
@@dexocube It is inspiring and I think it maybe a turning point for the Saturn community.
At this rate the quality will only rise from here and now there’s a standard to meet.
@@dexocube I couldn't agree more, the amount and quality of the work is astonishing!
the Shining Force III translations will always be the tops for me, i LOVE Shining Force III and getting to play the whole game rather than just Disc 1 that the states got, Shining Force Central's community has my sincerest thanks.
Same for me, I just reached the final boss in scenario 1, I really love the game and it's battle system, and I was never even a fan of RPG games
When they translated scenario 2 and 3, I literally cried! I waited so many years to play them!
@Wiegraf lol Fire Emblem is much harder in that regard, since when your troops fall in battle, they stay down. the trick is to level up your group as much as you can without it getting too grindy.
@Wiegraf you dont need them, you start leveling up via the first battle then onward, the Leader has a spell called Egress, you kill all enemies but the main enemy, then you have the Leader cast Egress and start the battle over again.
@Wiegraf They level up naturally, they are very weak at the beginning, the strategy of the game is how you position your characters and use their abilities to your advantage, keep distance to avoid being surrounded, use potions and healing spells, for me the final boss of sceniario 1 was the most difficult battle in the game because of how few characters I recruited throughout the game, I played it a bit carelessly, buying items and going straight to battle and ignoring everything else. I finally finished scenario 1 tonight, starting scenario 2 tomorrow.
I cannot stress enough how much I appreciate these talented and dedicated translators in the community.
Thank you for your hard work and dedication.
Love Bulk Slash and it’s new translation, I’ve been playing it almost non-stop since it came out. Looking forward to the eventual Bulk Slash review, it’s probably my favorite Saturn game.
I am glad that you got to enjoy Bulk Slash :)
I have so many things to say but, in short, Sega Saturn is a console that deserved so much love from us but it never received it and nearly faded into existence and now these fans translations and how people are enjoying them is like our apology letter to the Sega Saturn console. I am glad that Saturn is finally getting the love it deserves.
Sega Lord X: I'm not a fan of Sakura Wars
Me: Hand over your Saturn card 😾
Hey, I’m working my way through it. Slowly. Maybe with time it’ll grow on me.
I love Sakura Wars. From the time i started up the English translation I was blown away.
I truly appreciate this it's crazy there's a few other projects going on not just fan translation. Hoping for so much more
DiGiValentine has done a whole bunch of work with a the NiGHTS beta as a matter of fact c: and I forget the other dude that he's currently actually remaking NiGHTS in the unity engine?! It's awesome
I keep up pretty well with the Saturn translation scene, and I appreciate you showing it some love. I'm still anxiously awaiting the day I can play Tokimeki Memorial: Forever With You in English on my Saturn. Probably not your sort of game if you don't like Sakura Wars, but I'm insanely curious about it.
Fans like these are the best. I really appreciate them.
Me too. They keep things awesome.
Sakura Wars is fantastic, probably the best Saturn game. It took me a few times before it captured me, I highly recommend giving it another shot
Vandal Hearts has a special place in my heart. It was the first game a bought with my own money as an adult.
I'm really happy to see more and more Saturn game being translated and that's great of you to speak about it...
Now i wish for Dragon master Silk, Princess Crown and both Slayers Royal to get their own patch.
Yoh, i've waited for years, can wait a little more... but not much :p
Man this is incredible on so many levels! First of all it's all the motivation I need to boot the old girl up again and secondly the Increased exposure of these fan translations will sure encourage the other groups who either started or have paused their projects to get them underaway! Sega Saturn for absolute life!
Thanks for the roundup. I suspect that this is happening because Saturn emulation finally got good, so people now have a way to play these.
Sega management was completelly bananas leaving behind some of the best games that were selling wild in NA and EU for their PSX counterparts.
Sega single handily destroyed the Saturn. They were praising it when it launch but once the market share went straight to the ps1 they gave up on the system.
@@maroon9273 More when they left so many good games in Japan, where the SS outsold the N64. The Saturn was doomed due to lack of trust by Sega itself, and terrible management, it is just ridiculous how RPGs were carrying a shit ton of sales for PSX while Sega management neglected to localize those same RPGS for the Saturn.
@@joseluki sega was neglectful, imagine sega ported all of their rpgs to na and release phantasy star 5 including 6, 7. Sega forgot about their ips and Japanese Saturn games.
“Slather up a giant shit sandwich with mayonnaise.” Wtf my dude, CHIIIIIILLLL lol
But a solid yes. Derek Pascarella and others have really put in serious work to bring these treasures to us in the SEGA SATURN & SEGA DREAMCAST communities.
It’s been a great few years for retro gaming.
Doubtlessly, the pandemic and working from home really accelerated these types of things, despite slowing down many other things.
Thank you for all the love you've shown the Sega Saturn. Ive always loved it amd you've shown me so many great games that only make me love it more. Its such a wonderful console with its own vibe. Im glad it seems to have a thriving fan base
This makes me very happy seeing these games translated. Thanks for the upload man!
Amazing as always, the saturn community is really doing some amazing things over these years. And felt thats the 5 last years was very prolifelic
Damn, when you showed Soul Hackers in the intro I was hoping that it had gotten a translation too. I know it's on the 3DS, but I want to play it on my Saturn or PS1.
Who just had his backlog increased but couldn't be happier for it? 👍This guy.👍
It's really great that these translations are being made. The quality of these are astonishing. I remember translations of some RPGs back in the late 90's and it seemed like the fan translators back then were just trying to be edgy with as much swearing in the dialog as possible, glad it's being taken much more seriously now. Hopefully we see a lot more Saturn translations since so many games for the console never left Japan.
I have been following most of these projects, and it is amazing how many translations have been released within the last few years. One additional that I am really looking forward to is Princess Crown, which is currently being worked on.
I'm hoping we someday get Silhouette Mirage, Nanatsu Kaze, and Baroque.
Perfect timing for a video upload. I was scrolling unsuccessfully trying to find something to watch
Glad to help.
bulk slash is a game I've discovered only a few years ago but has since become one of my favorites. I'm so happy to know it has a fan translation! going to check it out now!
currently playing the grandia translation on my saroo. always loved the grandia series
Oh man I'm really gonna have to start getting into Saturn Emulation now. This is all so cool! I can't wait until Princess Crown gets its translation. I've been following that project for like, 7 years now but I'll wait as long as I need for it!
That Disney games compilation looks nice. Would be especially nice to see Phantasy Star Collection for Saturn done the same way.
He has looked into it. More complicated than Mickey/Donald. Especially PS4 since the entire game can't fit into RAM
@@knight0fdragon Damn. Thanks for responding. Appreciate it and all your work for Sega Saturn translations.
I hope that Slayers Royal 1 and 2 for the Sega Saturn will get a fan translation one day! Out of the existing translations I only played Sakura wars though.
If they do they may be able to get Lisa Ortiz to reprise her role from the anime. She recently participated in the Bloody Roar 2 redub project.
@@davidgill7412 oh! I didn't know that! It would be cool if the games would be dubbed one day! I hope at least for a subbed version at least though.
Awesome, awesome video! I keep an eye out for Saturn translations but you covered some I didn’t know about! It is just amazing to see the Saturn library and community growing after all these years!
I’ve spent all my gaming time in the last 6 months or so playing Japanese only games that got translated on my fenrir. Policenauts, linkle liver story, and Sakura wars have been some of my favorites so far. I am currently playing Lunar on my Saturn, and have Grandia and shining force 3 queued up:) I had never heard of volhallian, so thanks so much for the heads up, it’s on my list for sure now!
Pandamonium and you got me hyped over a lot of these translations, especially the ones I’ve already played on PSX. Super stoked you finally gave FirePro the time of day since you and I had a back and forth about it since your wrasslin video. Didn’t really serve it any justice but I’m glad you you mentioned it. Hope you actually give it the time of day for yourself. That and eventually the AJPWs on Saturn and especially Giant Gram on Dreamcast. Then the NJPWs on PS. You’ve really missed out on what wrasslin games were meant to be bitd.
been a sega fan my whole life and finally got my hands on a saturn and have been appreciating your channel more then usual to learn and understand how wonderful this system is.
I really appreciate all the work these groups do for us mortals. There's SO MANY games left in the past, but are now apprecaited because of these groups. Amazing time to be a Saturn Fan. Also SoTN on Saturn has a patch for the slowdown, havent tried it myself but its something to look into.
Always preferred the sega cd lunar games over the remakes, the remakes getting rid of random battles made grinding an absolute chore.
@@FloridaEbikes Yeah I had the sega cd ones back in the day and the PS1 remakes, grinding was absolutely horrid on ps1.
What I want to know, is WTF happened with the music on every port and "upgrade" remaster? SegaCD (US) opening music makes the cinematic a thumping, exciting call to adventure. The others are like.. slow, smaltzy anime soap. And they replace most of the other absolutely rocking tracks. Just one of the best ever soundtracks, and every "upgrade" guts it completely. I'd love the upgraded visuals with OG music and sound.
The passion of gamers to translate, japanese only games is something i really appreciate.
I still hope that someone, translates Secret of Mana 2 and 3 one day.
what? Those have been done forever now and is also officially translated by Square. (Not really sure what you mean by 2 and 3, but 1 is Final Fantasy Adventure on Gameboy, 2 is Secret of Mana, and 3 is now titled Trials of Mana)
I'm glad you did this topic as it is a great reminder of games I wanted to try, but hadn't gotten around to, as well as several I really didn't know much about as well. And it really is such a cool thing to see translation projects aimed at the Saturn in recent years. Back in the day, I never thought Dragon Force 2 or the unreleased chapters of Shining Force 3 would ever see translations. It's amazing the work people put in to translate and modify these old games.
I remember the hype for Grandia back in the day. I forgot how good it looked. By the time it came out for the PS1 -- and I understand why playing it there bothered you a bit -- I had other games holding my attention and other priorities going on that I never played it. Bulk Slash looks like my kind of 3D game. It really looks great in motion. The night scenes look especially good and would have made for great screenshots in magazines and on the box. I know I would have gotten excited. I would definitely have tried Sakura Wars back in the day, but it sounds like too much of a slog to me now. As you say Lunar Silver Star is good for casual RPG fans, it sounds like one I need to play. I'm definitely casual with those and Phantasy Star 4 is one of the few I'll go back to again and again thanks to the fast pace of it. I also appreciate translations, like Cotton, for games that don't really need it. Knowing what's going on is a nice bonus to great game play. Bare Knuckle 3 with a translation comes to mind as a good example of that. Yeah, even a poorly-ported Symphony of the Night should still be a good experience, and playing it in Japanese with English text is already my favorite way to play it on PS1 as I don't like the original dub. Linkle Liver Story looks really cool as well, and I didn't learn about that one until a few years ago, perhaps from this channel. Anyway, great video and topic.
Shining Force III was so good. I really need to play the other 2 scenarios.
Yes scenario 2 and 3 are really good, and in all, tell a great story!
I love Saturn focused episodes, and especially ones exposing us to foreign games
WOW thanks for showing Bulk Slash : I never heard of it and it looks awesome. You did an awesome work on this video, thanks alot ❤️.
It's pretty amazing what one can do in a hex-editor...
The one i am waiting for, for almost a decade now, is Princess Crown. The work on it is so slow and updates are so rare it's really frustrating. I wish they would at least release unfinished builds or something like that.
I knew this vid wa s coming soon, this is my SLX most wanted vid… so thanks SLX, sincerely thanks. When I discovered your channel i was a guy who look fondly to his sega past and love your vids for the memories they brought (I didn’t had any hardware or games) and you were like 25ish thousand strong. Today I owned 4 different Saturn models among other sega power systems and games
This is so cool. The Sega community is a great community.
Shoutouts to all the work going into bringing these games to a wider audience finally. Now to figure out how to work a Saturn emulator...
Bulk Slash is so awesome.
Panzer Dragoon Saga was more "Saturn Final Fantasy VII" than Grandia.
Grandia charismatic characters and epic sense of adventure makes it "the Saturn Chrono Trigger".
Agreed!
Bulk Slash looks so cool! Can’t believe I didn’t know about this game prior. Also, on an unrelated note, seeing a SEGA logo on a Gameboy Colour game is surreal as hell.
Been waiting for something like this. Now watching intently.
Hope you enjoy it.
Found this channel trying to find our what Saturn games I want to get outside of the few I knew of. Saturn has been a black hole in my gaming library and I'm planning to get the system and an ODE soon to experience what I've missed. Your videos are very well done and are helping me figure out what I want to play on the system. Thanks!
Thank yous to all the teams involved
Thank you so much for this video! I hope you revisit it when there's new projects or one gets completed.
I'm always so thankful to all the teams doing these and the Saturn is in dire need of some fan translations.
I first got into this world when I found the PC Ys I&II translations by Nightwolve & Deuce (rip) back in the early 2000s and was blown away. Then once voices started becoming more prevalent in JRPGs with the PS2 era I got several Undubs to put the JP voices back in.
You have many games on there I was not aware of and I grabbed all the patches!
Sakura Wars is a fun experience oozing with production value, but the battles are like SFIII or Vandal Hearts for children. I liked it more than I thought I would after waiting so many years, I’d love it if they translate the Saturn sequel. Policenauts was pretty much exactly like I had dreamed of after playing Snatcher on Sega CD when it was a new game so many years ago, not as scary or atmospheric as Snatcher, but more of a legit world building effort. Shining Force III, Scenarios2&3/Special disc, is still probably the most amazing project and all 4 discs are probably my favorite game of all time.
thanks, this was awesome to read!
Hope to see the Japanese Sega CD version of Shadowrun done eventually!
Getting to finally play through Shining Force III Scenario II and III as well as Policenauts was the highlight of my time as a Saturn fan. 2 of the best Saturn games that were so cruelly denied to us back in the 90s... I am eagerly anticipating Wachenroder next!
We have the exact same taste in games!
@@caseyhayes4590 if you like those, check out tear ring saga, Berwick Saga and Valkyria Chronicles. Damn fine SRPGs that deserve more love.
awesome video!! I didn't know the community is translating saturn games.
I love your videos, we will gladly continue our passion for our hobby of playing classic games and discovering new fan translations!
I still own my copy of Grandia (love it) but I can easily tell from your footage that it runs better on the Saturn. I'm really impressed since I didn't know the Saturn could run an expansive RPG so well. I really thought the system's strength was just 2D games.
Surprized I've never seen them referred to as "Fanslations".
Adding a lot of games to the wishlist with all these new translations.
Awesome video, good on you for showing off these quality translations. Must have hit some kind of critical mass between people that can mod SS code and game translators, great news for Saturn fans. :D
I had started to learn Japanese long ago just to play some awesome Japanese only games. Nobody can stop me now!
Love your channel, man. This is great news to hear and I would've never known had I not discovered this gem of a channel. Thanks for what you do and see you on the next video drop.
I’m glad I could help point you towards great projects like these. The more people that play Saturn the better.
@@SegaLordX I was a huge Sega Genesis fan, so when the next gen consoles came out, I opted for the Saturn. I loved my Saturn and it had some great titles and, let me tell you, I was so heartbroken when it failed. I still have my original Saturn and all the games I had back then. It's one of my treasures.
CLEARLY...you must've heard I'd finally received my TerraOnion in the mail so you'd decided to make this video just for me.
Thanks, Han Brolo!
always cool to hear about new translation projects! definitely planning on looking some of these up!
Great video covering an overdue subject. Glad to see translations are happening for the Saturn. I hope Dungeon Master Nexus receives a translation one day. It is the only immersive dungeon crawler on the saturn...
Fantastic work from the community! Waiting ansiously for Wachenröden to be the next one.
Oh man so many Sega Saturn games I never knew of and never got to play back then it’s such shame we people outside of Japan never got to experience so many games
This video has pure gold about those translated games! :D
The reason for the influx of fan translated Saturn, sega cd, and turbografx CD jrpgs is pretty simple: Machine Learning assistance makes it cheap and easy. It’s not a substitute for proper excellent human translations however.
That is absolutely false. The majority of Saturn translations have not used AI for the text.
@@pixelpoppyproductions most use ML as base and then proof and edit them by hand. That doesn’t mean it’s not aided by ML.
Why even try to refute something that’s pretty damn obvious? What suddenly there is a booming interest in retro translations? Ao and Zero no kiseki are famously ML assisted.
I’ve played every recent translated game. They’re no Working Designs ( save a few exceptions).
@@jamesyu5212 Not for the Saturn, which is the topic of this video. Grandia used the English Playstation 1 script, as an example. Others have been painstakingly hand translated and localized, like Bulk Slash.
I can't think of any Saturn translations that were just run through an AI algorithm, except recent talk about doing Baroque that way as a proof of concept, playable beta patch (all text is stored as images, so fully translating to English in the provided space would be extremely difficult anyway).
I'm not refuting anything "obvious" because I have been following this scene closely for years and I know what those people have put into it. You're making it seem like this trival thing - just put the script through google translate! But that is not anything close to what has actually been done.
A lot of these games don't even have a text script you can copy and paste into an AI, it's all saved into image tiles which then have to be manually translated pixel by pixel into English. Or worse, hard coded into a video file.
If you think you can do a better job - the Saturn community would love to have your talents!.
@@pixelpoppyproductions fair enough, the influx seems to be more on the turbografx cd side anyway. I somewhat yield to your premise.
@@jamesyu5212 Yeah, I get your point of view too - and I have spent a lot of time using ML to translate German to "Engrish", which you can only really make sense of if you speak both. It's very obvious when it's been tool-assisted. I can see being put off by a lazy approach, but I don't think you could say any of these Saturn translations teams are lazy. :)
It's always good to see more of these games getting translated. The Saturn deserves a lot more attention especially the Japanese games that never got localized.
Stumbled upon fan translations with Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 and wanted more, thanks for this upload.
I wrote on the search bar Standby Says you for the Sega Saturn and it led me here, too bad the game wasn't in here lol. Good list!
I prefered learning Japanese all by myself, so that I can play all Japanese games of history I want, instead of waiting for never coming translation patchs (or else, I could never have played "Tengai Makyou: The 4th Apocalypse" that I really, really enjoyed it, and I think that there are many other games on obscure systems like PC-98 that will never be translated). But those new translation patchs on Saturn are very good news.
PC-98 is so obscure in the West that even fewer people know/care about it than about learning Japanese, and that's already few enough. I hope translation AI will reach a level one day where on-screen translation for those difficult Asian languages will be acceptable instead of mediocre, like right now, and I say that also from perspective of someone who knows Japanese to some degree... it's generally not worth it to learn it 'just' for gaming, since most of those games were obscure even in Japan in the first place, and frankly, most retro stuff isn't that good anyway, and what is was usually localized (Sturgeon's Law totally applies to gaming). Well, not big franchises like Tengai Makyou or Sakura Wars, which are generally quite professionally made, but the PC-98 stuff - absolutely, a lot of it was just reprehensible. I think there's a PSP project going on for Tengai Makyou: The 4th Apocalypse, which makes sense seeing that PSP was a much more popular console in the West.
@@mariusamber3237 "Most retro stuff isn't good anyway"
Then why are you watching a Sega retro RUclips channel?
@@degenerategaming8797 For the 10-20% that is good, of course; and bad can also be fun, but more so to watch rather than play yourself. Finding hidden gems is always fun, even if there aren't many of them. I don't know the entire library, despite knowing Japanese well enough to play a good chunk of this stuff on my own, and Sega Lord X usually does a very nice job highlighting the better games. I hope he keeps doing so for a long time to come.
@@mariusamber3237 Learning Japanese for gaming is a very good reason (not more stupid than for work or something): this is my case, I am learning Japanese for 3 years especially for that goal, so that I will be not stucked by language barrier anymore (unless I am interested in some Korean, Chinese, or even Spanish games for example). 🙂
Between PC-88/PC-98/MSX/X68000 games, PC Engine games, Saturn games, portable console games, Playstation games, Nintendo console games, PC games, and even actual games (for example, on Switch, the adventure game "Buddy Mission BOND" by KOEI/Nintendo is not translated), there are MANY games that are not translated.
Until we did not play those games, we cannot know if they are "not that good" (but even if this is the case, it remains very interesting to discover for me). I think the "Sturgeon law" is irrelevant to the situation: even if 90% not localized games are bad, if there are thousands or dozen of thousands of games, it remains dozens, even hundreds of interesting games to discover, more than we can all discover in a single human life.
About the AI, first, I am not sure it will be really fonctional until my death. But anyway, I do not like depending on "machines" for doing something. Besides, even the AI may not give me some "cultural elements" to really appreciate games than playing it in comprehensible Japanese.
@@Rudolphhhhhh Well, Chinese I'd say is one of the best picks regardless of what you want to use it for. With Japanese, looking back at my own 5-year experience, I'm more hesitant to say the same thing (though I like the language itself). Most of the games I tried weren't really very good and I wouldn't play them without a speed-up button... especially nowadays that almost everything of note gets localized and you get pretty much all the big-hitters anyhow. Maybe I'm a bit jaded, but I wish for more really great games like some of the 90s gems... Fallout, System Shock 1 and 2, Jagged Alliance 2 and the like. A bit of a longing for my PC-gaming days, haha.
Well, sure, I will give you that - there are some genres where you have to know Japanese to play absolutely all the best games (like VNs), but those are usually genres which are fairly niche in the West in the first place, and like you said - very unlikely you could play even just all the good stuff anyway. Either way, I'm also really happy about all those fan-translations popping up, because way, way more people will play those games that way. The Western markets are huge, and it's way easier to localize/fan-translate games from English into other European languages, even if it can be a telephone game (I recall reading about the bad first translation of Final Fantasy 7 into Spanish!). Everyone can make that choice on their own though, naturally. So, that's that. :)
princess crown definitively needs this treatment.
Yes. I have a few of these. Hundreds of games locked because of language barriers! Great that fans are translating these and finally bringing them west.
I think the best part of Sakura Taisen is the combat actually, the visual novel is alrighty, it's cool and the dialogue is... harem anime levels, but the combat? Let's freaking go.
It's a great turn-based RPG that can rival quite a lot of franchises out there, with your personal VN decisions affecting the gameplay too.
I'd agree. But getting to that combat is such a slog for me. Those conversations just go on and on. I mean some are literally 30-40 min sequences.
Still shorter than in Trials of Cold Steel / Persona / Fire Emblem games, when tutorial with talking and Social Sim parts can last 1-2 hours without ANY gameplay. Sakura Wars is shorter in Visual Novel segments than those games mentioned from me, but on other hand also gameplay segments are shorter.@@SegaLordX
You know Sega of America's president at the time is quoted as saying "Americans don't want to play RPGs". Sega should have given him a copy of FFVII as his severance and the FFVII sales figures as his termination letter. That would have been retribution for all of the games we were deprived of in the west.
As always, this is a great and informative video. Some of these translations are nothing short of equal to, or better than many early official localizations. The full on English dub of Bulk Slash, along with accurate subtitles, is insanely good. What really surprised me was Grandia. Having purchased it as an import game, it was never playable for me due to the lack of English subtitles. The PlayStation version wasn’t the same at all visually. It had lifeless water effects, a lack of building shadows, and mirrored sprites with less animation.
Thanks to the new English Saturn fan translation version of Grandia, the bad port of the PS1 version on Steam isn’t needed. The emulated Saturn version of Grandia, running on Kronos, or YabaSanshiro, looks much better than the official HD port, which was actually supposed to use the Saturn graphics as a base, with the PS1 version’s English dub and subtitles.
Princess Crown translation sounds like it's almost complete. The translation team posts on the Rom Hacking forums and they've signaled they're reaching the finish line
Awesome video! This is an excellent look at all the stuff I always wanted to play back in the day but never got a formal release, being thankful for the PSone ports we did get. Great work as always even if as a huge fan of Sakura Wars I'm a little offended (real talk tho I get it, even as someone who loves the genre I'm not always in the mood for a slow burn).
Bruh you forgot to mention the English VAs in Bulk Slash cuz remember it wasn't originally released outside of Japan so the fan translation group has to cast English voice actors just for this game!
I mentioned the navigators were in English.
Thanks Sega Lord X for informing us on this. To all the people involved in all the projects thank you so much from a 46 year old gamer !
The retro community is so great, from translations, enhancements, fixes and much more.
I believe I'm still going to see games like Advanced World War - Last of the Millennium, AnEarth Fantasy Stories and Cyber Doll in English one day, the Saturn still has so many great games to explore.
I really hope the other Sakura Wars games get full English translations someday.
Aye.. It's time to fire my saturn once again and play some of these classics! "Granted I own a few on the ps1 but now I can play them on the saturn!!"
Thanks for the Video SLX, Keep up the good work!
Great video, Dave!
What’s happened is that Saturn interest has skyrocketed as Saturn emulation and computers have advanced to the point that anyone with windows 10 can play Saturn games after the two minutes of download it takes to get the roms and install retroarc.
Thank you for the compilation, long live the fansubbbers. Zanma Chou ougi: Valhollian, I'll look for it. Still hurts to see high caliber gems like Leynos 2 and Jinrei Taromaru still untranslated, I played Hulk Slash in japanese (emulator) and was excellent!, can`t wait to replay it now in english.
great video, very well done.
Thank you. Appreciate the comment.
I want the Princess Crown translation to finish. I must have it 😭😭😭
Thanks Sega Lord for this great video. Does anyone knows a place that explains the different way to play these titles? To play Sega Saturn titles. Any way. I have a Sega Saturn model 2 (fully mine) and a Saturn model 1 (bought in 1996 with my brother). I bought long time ago Policenaut the only time I visited Japan (thanks to a physics conference) but of course is in Japanese (I wish I had bought more games!!)
I'm looking for an overview on how to play these Saturn games that involves: original hardware on new tvs, and emulators, and how to patch them. And I wonder if Sega lord or anyone did something about it.
I'll check myself again and see if I found anything.
I got a video coming up covering some of that info. Stay tuned.
I knew you would do a great show on this!Thanks!