City Connection has announced the next games in its Saturn Tribute line — and they’re a little saucier than previous entries.
The publisher announced today that it’s bringing the Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai franchise’s Saturn entries to the Nintendo Switch this December. Released throughout the Saturn’s life in Japan only, they’re yellow- and red-label mahjong and adventure/dating simulation games featuring naked anime girls.
You can watch the trailer here:
According to the official website, the lineup will include:
- Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai Special + Remix
- Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai II
- Suchie-Pai Adventure: The Throbbing Nightmare
- Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai Really Limited Edition
While there’s no word yet on a Western release, City Connection said on its official website that it will sell a compilation of all four titles in Japan on a physical cartridge Dec. 8 as well as each game individually on the Japanese eShop.
The physical cartridge’s price is set at about 6,900 yen, which converts to about US$50 these days. On the eShop, Suchie-Pai Special, II and Throbbing Nightmare will cost about US$15 each, while Really Limited Edition will cost about US$22.
Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai Special + Remix is a combination of the first two Suchie-Pai games on the Saturn in which players compete in a mahjong tournament. According to its entry on Sega Retro, Special was a 1995 port of the arcade original that removed explicit nudity to get a yellow label rating, while Remix was released later in the year with the arcade version’s nudity restored for a red label rating.
Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai II, released on the Saturn in 1996, was an arranged port of the series’ arcade game sequel that challenged players to solve a kidnapping case — and play mahjong, of course. It had a red label rating.
Suchie-Pai Adventure: The Throbbing Nightmare, an original game for the Saturn released in 1998, switched genres from mahjong to top-down adventure. It included minigames and a dating sim mode but its explicit content was toned down from previous entries to a mere yellow label rating.
Finally, Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai Really Limited Edition was itself a compilation released in late 1998. According to Sega Retro, its first two discs contain reworked versions of Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai Special and Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai II, with the stripping scenes replaced with tamer versions from the PlayStation ports, while the third disc contain additional content, including a new short adventure game based on the same system from Suchie-Pai Adventure Doki Doki Nightmare. Like the previous entry in the franchise, it had a yellow label rating.
The Switch re-releases may not have as much skin on display as the original Saturn titles, judging by a line on the official website that reads, via machine translation, “The visual scenes in the game will conform to current rating standards.” How much censorship will be applied remains to be seen.
The publisher also plans to sell a physical “super deluxe edition” for about US$217 that will come with a drama CD, a vocal collection CD and a keychain as well as a download code for the sixth Suchie-Pai release on the Saturn: Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai Secret Album.
Secret Album, originally released in March 1999, was less of a game and more of a multimedia disc. It included galleries, glossaries, quiz games, pseudo-chats with characters and interview videos.
City Connection said it has no plans to sell Secret Album on eShop — it’ll only be obtainable as a download code in the physical deluxe edition.
Saturn Tribute games are the Saturn originals running on what City Connection calls the Zebra Engine, which dataminers have found appears to be a modified version of the SSF emulator.
So far, four games have been released in the line: Cotton 2, Cotton Boomerang and Guardian Force, which came out last year, and Layer Section & Galactic Attack, which came out in April.
During an April 2 livestream announcing Layer Section & Galactic Attack, City Connection announced their intention to bring several other Saturn games from Taito to modern consoles: Puzzle Bobble 2X & 3, Elevator Action Returns, Metal Black and Cleopatra Fortune. There’s been no further news on those since then, with the Suchie-Pai annoucement seemingly coming out of nowhere.
Previous Saturn Tribute titles hit the PlayStation 4 and Steam in addition to the Switch, but there’s no mention of those platforms for the Suchie-Pai collection yet.
Edit to the original story as of July 26:
A day after announcing the Suchie-Pai collection in Japanese, City Connection announced it in English, confirming a release on Western eShops that will coincide with the Japanese launch on Dec. 8.
The publisher recommended that customers buy the physical versions of Suchie-Pai through its shop to import them.
City Connection also made it clear that the games will not be translated into English.
Check out more information about the games on the newly uploaded English version of Suchie-Pai’s product page here.
Danthrax is a contributor to the Shiro Media Group, writing stories for the website when Saturn news breaks. While he was a Sega Genesis kid in the ’90s, he didn’t get a Saturn until 2018. It didn’t take him long to fall in love with the console’s library as well as the fan translation and homebrew scene. He contributed heavily to the Bulk Slash and Stellar Assault SS fan localizations, and has helped as an editor on several other Saturn and Dreamcast fan projects such as Cotton 2, Rainbow Cotton and Sakura Wars Columns 2.
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