This article includes machine translated text from Japanese interviews. The original Japanese text will be shown beneath each translation. If you are fluent in Japanese and believe there is a grossly mistranslated section in this article, please contact the author via email at nick@segasaturnshiro.com
Big shoutout and thank you to Jason Steele of FilmCow for agreeing to be interviewed for this article.
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One thing I really like about the Sega Saturn fandom is we never seem to run out of new things. New translations, leaked unreleased games and fun development stories are abundant. On top of all this, there are hundreds of unlocalized Japanese games most western fans have yet to play. Some are less playable than others thanks to those pesky language barriers, but one dedicated non-Japanese speaking fan smashed through headfirst to play Omakase! Savers.
The fan in question is Jason Steele, known to many as FilmCow. Not only does he make cartoons about unicorns getting their organs harvested, he also streams video games just about every night — and every Saturday is Saturnday. Yes, weekly Sega Saturn streams every Saturday night. Each visit to The Video Game Valley steps further into Jason’s treasure hoard of video games.
His overall collection boasts more than 3,600 games as of this writing, stretching across well over a dozen platforms. His ever growing Saturn collection holds at least 500 different games, demos, reproductions and variants. Most of the North American games are in his possession.
On the Saturnday of March 13th 2021, he began playing Omakase! Savers, seemingly going in blind. Usually, when a language barrier is unbreachable in the Valley, Jason will accept his fate and throw in the metaphorical towel. At first glance, this semi-text heavy adventure seems like it would produce the same result. But with an FMV intro sequence this fabulous, how could you not give it a chance?
If you are reading this paragraph without having watched the entire Omakase! Savers intro sequence linked above, stop reading, open that video and watch the entire thing. It will likely be the best 85 seconds of your day.
Jason told me he bought this game for the sole purpose of streaming it, due in part to the colorful artwork.
“I like to browse cheap import listings on eBay, specifically looking for cover art that sticks out to me,” he explained. “Omakase! Savers looked like it would be a good fit for my stream, and it was only $10, so I ordered it. If I didn’t have the stream as motivation, as well as viewer donations to fund the game purchases, I would likely have completely missed out on playing this one.”
Omakase! Savers was developed by Japan Media Programming, a now defunct company known for several other adventure games and dating sims for the Saturn and Mega Drive. This game never made it out of the island nation, never graced another video game platform, and does not appear to have any sequel. It was released in Japan on February 23rd, 1996. You likely noticed some Sonic the Hedgehog characters in the intro. This is a Sega published game, rich with other references to both Sonic and the Sega Saturn itself.
When you finish sitting through the intro, the first cutscene, and the aforementioned intro a second time — you begin your adventure playing as three magical girls.
“(The three girls) stumble upon a 400 year old artifact that grants them magical powers and the task of tracking down various yōkai that have been let loose on their town,” Jason described.
Similar to Magic Knight Rayearth, you control the girls in a familiar 2D top down perspective with chibi looking sprites. There is a decent amount of plot and dialogue, but the experience is still palatable if you cannot read it. Its progression is easy to follow, and there are plenty of wild full motion video cutscenes throughout to keep you entertained. Sometimes the ghosts are stealing cakes, while others haunt the paintings of an art exhibit. They can only be stopped by the likes of these three magical girls.
“It’s a text-heavy game, but surprisingly playable for people like myself who do not speak Japanese,” Jason said. “Most tasks give you waypoints to follow on a map, and the combat is simple enough that you don’t need to understand the tutorial text to grasp what it’s asking of you. That being said, when I’ve played the game I’ve done so while streaming to an audience that includes a few people who do speak Japanese, and they were able to help me the couple of times I did get stuck. I think it’s worth checking the game out even if you don’t speak Japanese, but definitely be ready to make use of a translation app if you’re not sure how to progress.”
I won’t go too deep into the plot for a couple of reasons: I would certainly hate to spoil the experience for anyone interested in playing it… and because Jason and I can’t read or understand the dialogue. Though cutscenes make the basic events easy to understand, exploring empty cake shop after empty cake shop, looking for the ghost responsible for this sweet delectable crime.
The map Jason is talking about divides your town into nine sections. Flashing blue dots on the map tell you where to go. You talk to people inside places like empty cake shops, supermarkets and classrooms to gradually learn where all these gosh darn cake stealing ghosts are hiding. You have a yōkai detector, blaring off when you are near any mean spiritual beings.
“The game is split into four different episodes, with each episode consisting of a search and discovery section and a combat section. After you’ve discovered enough clues as to the nature and location of the yōkai, you confront them in a bullet-hell style fight that involves weakening and then sealing the monster away,” he added
A combat sequence typically pits you against several smaller ghosts swarming around the arena, and the boss (or ghostly cake thief in the case of the first fight.) Press A or C when near enemies to attack. Gameplay will pause, allowing you to select which enemy to hit. Then FMV animations show your magical girl performing the move, typically a fireball looking hadouken thing. Another FMV will show your enemy either getting hit, or dodging the move. While I am not exactly sure how the programming decides whether an enemy gets hit, it seems they have a greater chance of dodging the further you are from the enemy. A mini map in the lower left hand corner shows you which enemies are within firing range. You have a health bar, a mana bar and a timer. The strategy involves balancing decisions on which small enemies are worth getting rid of to allow more real estate in battle — all without running out of health, time and mana. Your mana meter does generously recharge over time.
One impressive technical feat are the high quality FMV cutscenes that fill the entire screen. Appropriately, “.FIL” files appear to be the proprietary format used for these clips when looking at the disc‘s contents. They are in a folder called “FILM,” so I can only assume those are the FMVs. I could not find a converter for them online.
Many full motion videos do not fill the screen on Saturn without using an MPEG card. They otherwise display in a smaller frame, typically with solid black borders surrounding them. Another Saturn game that manages full screen FMV without an MPEG card is Corpse Killer: Graveyard Edition. But the large FMV files take up two discs, while the Sega CD original takes up one disc. The “FILM” folder on Omakase! Savers sucks up about 321 megabytes, devouring more than half of the grand total 522 megabytes of game files.
Throughout his stream, Jason noticed a heavy use of tropes. You can almost match the color schemes of these three protagonists and their personalities to the Powerpuff Girls.
“The game follows the “magical girl” formula pretty closely, and each of the three main characters is modeled after a common archetype (the sweet girl, the hot-tempered girl, the tough girl.) The characters are all pretty two-dimensional, but the abundant use of tropes means it’s easy to follow along with the story even if you don’t speak Japanese,” Jason explained. “The FMVs are filmed and acted with a lot of love, and so the whole thing comes across as charming instead of soulless. The game might be full of tropes, but it loves those tropes and has a lot of fun with them.”
While playing Omakase! Savers myself, I was able to use Jason’s stream as a sort of “guide” when I got stuck. There exists no translation guide online (not that I could find at least.) Jason also appears to be the only person to upload an entire playthrough of the game, via his stream vods.
Yet even through these veils of obscurity, Jason and his viewers managed to uncover a great deal of info about how the trio of trope came to be.
“A viewer of my stream, Arne, sent me a website that had archived a Japanese gaming magazine’s interview with the three leads from Omakase! Savers,” Jason tells me.
The fan website is surprisingly still online. At this time of writing you, don’t need to throw it in the Wayback Machine to load it.
“The bulk of the interview is them discussing their real-life personalities and lives. At one point Saeko Chiba, who plays the orange hero, mentions that the balance of the three characters in the game was directly influenced by Magic Knight Rayearth.”
I asked Jason if he noticed any similarities between Omakase! Savers and Magic Knight Rayearth.
“They’re both “magical girl” games with three lead characters and top-down 2D gameplay, although Omakase! Savers is much smaller in scope (and likely budget.) Interestingly, all three of the leads from Omakase! Savers played the live-action versions of Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu for Magic Knight Rayearth’s Game Gear and Saturn advertisements, so it’s easy to see how the inspiration came about.”
An excerpt from their interview on the fan website:
Saeko: “The three of us were in a commercial for the Sega game “Magic Knight Rayearth.” So it seems that the age of the three of us was well balanced.”
Kai: “We auditioned for “Savers” separately, but we decided that the three of us were the best, so we were accepted. We decided that if we were going to be in the game, we should also sing the opening song.”
Hidemi: “And so the unit “FEEL” was born.”
— Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator —
Original text:
――その南少のメンバーから３人がピックアップされたわけだ。
紗子 セガのゲームソフトの「魔法騎士 レイアース」のＣＭに３人で出ていました。それで３人の年齢とかバランスがとれてるってことがあったみたいです。
佳以 「セイバーズ」のオーディションはバラバラで受けたんですけど、やっぱりこの３人がいいねってことで、受かったんです。ゲームに出るんなら、オープニングも歌っちゃえって。
未 で、ユニット「FEEL」が誕生したんです。
As indicated in the interview, the three actresses/singers formed the group FEEL. This appears to be SEGA using music performances by the trio to cross promote their game — and ultimately, the Sega Saturn. This almost parallels Sega of America using The Bygone Dogs as cross-promotion, with its soundtrack in Cyber Speedway and the Ghen War theme song.
You can watch two of FEEL’s performances here:
Jason also found this: The trio’s theme song was made available for purchase in Mini CD format. Copies of the small disc occasionally pop up online.
When asked if he bought it: “Unfortunately I did not!” Jason exclaimed. “I’m keeping an eye out for a copy at a lower price, but spending over a hundred dollars for a mini-cd of the Omakase! Savers theme song feels like an absurd purchase in the middle of a global pandemic.”
Highly understandable.
“Another fun fact,” Jason adds. “One of the game’s two credited directors, Akira Nishino, also directed Sakura Wars 2 and 3, as well as Ristar on the Genesis. He later became head of Sega’s CS3 development studio and produced a large number of Sega games all the way through 2018.”
Another quote from the fan website interview:
Hidemi: “Once Kai falls asleep, she never wakes up (laughs).”
Kai: “One time, my room caught fire on location, but I didn’t notice it at all (laughs).”
Saeko: “Hidemi and I were asleep in another room and nothing was wrong. No matter how many times the manager woke us up, Kai was sleepwalking (laughs). Fortunately, it was just a blur.”
Kai: “When I woke up, the phone and other things were bent from the heat (laughs). But I had no idea (laughs).”
— Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator —
Original text:
未 佳以は一度寝たら起きないですね（笑）。
佳以 １回、ロケで部屋が火事になったことがあるんですけど、全然気付かなかった（笑）。
紗子 私と未は別の部屋で寝ていてなんともなかったんです。マネージャーさんがいくら起こしても佳以は寝ぼけていた（笑）。幸いボヤだったんですけど。
佳以 起きたら電話とかが熱で曲がっていました（笑）。でも全然知らなかった（笑）。
Despite Sega of Japan saving all these eggs for the Omakase basket, the return on their investment does not seem large. Someone on Jason’s Discord server found a source suggesting it sold just 18,000 copies.
On the bright side, it was well received by the few critics who reviewed it at the time. The Japanese Sega Saturn Magazine had three groups of reviewers score the game out of ten points. Omakase! Savers got two sevens and an eight. I tried translating screenshots of the reviews, but couldn’t seem to extract anything that made sense.
Omakase! Savers seems right at home on the Sega Saturn with its goofy combat mechanics, top-down sprite work and delightful Japanese town setting. Having played it myself, I think this is well deserving of a translation. Jason agrees.
“There’s definitely an audience out there for Omakase! Savers — not on the same scale as Grandia or Sakura Wars, but there are certainly Saturn fans who would enjoy playing a relatively short, goofy magical girl game. I feel strongly that every game is important to a console’s history — not just the big, critically acclaimed darlings, but also the weird experiments, the divisive games, and even the downright bad games. I would love for them all to get translated and become more accessible to a non-Japanese speaking audience. Fan translations are, of course, a very time consuming and completely unpaid act of love, so I guess my hope is that some day each game in the Saturn library finds a translator who loves it.”
The Sega Saturn legacy has a seemingly infinite supply of new surprises. From the majestic playable horse in Daytona USA, to mornings spent playing Saturn bomberman with seven people over waffles topped with blackberry compote — Omakase! Savers is absolutely no exception to this supply of surprise.
“There are days when you just want to sit down and play a game where you and your friends stop a yōkai from stealing all of the town’s delicious cakes,” Jason said. “When that day arrives for you, give Omakase! Savers a shot.”
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More about Jason: I asked how he got started with Saturn collecting. Turns out he has been with the benchmark of engineering excellence since the 1990s.
“I first encountered the Sega Saturn in 1996 at the Searstown Mall in Titusville, Florida. It was demoing Virtua Fighter 2, and that was my first time seeing a textured 3D game. I remember going to a family dinner that night and desperately trying to explain to my grandfather how life-like the graphics looked. About six months later I purchased a Saturn using a combination of birthday money, Christmas money, and an allowance advance from my extremely kind and understanding mother. I feel very lucky to have been a Saturn fan at that point in time, because trying to start a collection in the 2020s is unbelievably expensive. The bulk of the games I’ve added to my collection since then have been imports for my stream, and luckily most of those were still going for reasonable prices when I got them.”
I asked: If you could make any one of your cartoons/films into a Sega Saturn game, which would get the honor?
“I love the look of the 3D horse in Daytona USA, so any of my cartoons that involve a horse. The Sega Saturn needs more beautiful horses.”
Jason animated several horses and unicorns in his time. Perhaps a beat-em-up with Tricorn Lord of Fate, or a visual novel about taking horse dumps… Until then, we can at least pretend it’s the horse in Daytona with Gary as the one-man pit crew.
You can watch all four parts of Jason playing through Omakase! Savers here:
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