The Saturn version of arcade puzzle game Cleopatra Fortune was released worldwide for modern platforms today, its publisher announced.
City Connection said the game is out now on the Nintendo e-Shop, the PlayStation Store, the Xbox Store and Steam for a standard price of US$14.99. However, there is a launch discount of 10 percent on the e-Shop and Steam, making it $13.49 there for a limited time.
Cleopatra Fortune is a falling-block puzzle game that was originally released for a home karaoke machine called the Taito X-55 in late 1995 before coming to arcades in fall 1996 and then the Saturn in early 1997. It eventually made its way to the Dreamcast and PlayStation in 2001. Only the PlayStation port was localized for the West.
The re-release offers new options for unlimited credits, changing the speed at which blocks fall and selecting any stage in Mystery Mode — aka story mode — regardless of whether it’s already been cleared, according to its official webpage. That’s in addition to the features all of their S-Tribute releases have through a menu that can be called upon at any time during gameplay: rewinding it, slowing it down, saving and loading save states, and setting scanlines.
The game features tutorials and a story mode that are almost entirely in Japanese. Predictably, City Connection has not hacked an English translation into the game, just as it has not for its other Saturn re-releases.
But Cleopatra Fortune has straightforward puzzle game mechanics and some of its user interface was in English to begin with, making it playable enough for non-Japanese speakers. And as with all of City Connection’s S-Tribute releases, the menus for the wrapper around the Saturn game are also in English, traditional Chinese, Korean, French and Spanish.
For those who’d like to see the tutorial instructions in English, Personasama on Twitter tweeted a video taken from Taito Legends 2, a PS2, Xbox and PC release that apparently included an English translation in its version of Cleopatra Fortune:
Another Twitter user reported that the game does feature lag, as all Saturn Tribute releases have, but apparently not enough to make it unplayable:
This isn’t the only Saturn re-releases coming before the end of the year from City Connection — 2D sidescrolling shooter Elevator Action Returns is set to release next week followed by a collection of saucy mahjong games in the Suchie-Pie franchise the week after that.
As Shiro reported at the time, the S-Tribute release of Cleopatra Fortune was announced alongside Elevator Action Returns at the beginning of November.
Modern releases for these games weren’t a complete surprise. During an April 2 livestream announcing another game in the S-Tribute line, Layer Section & Galactic Attack, City Connection announced their intention to bring several other Saturn games from Taito to modern consoles: Elevator Action Returns, Cleopatra Fortune, Puzzle Bobble 2X & 3 and Metal Black. There’s been no further news on Puzzle Bobble or Metal Black since then.
S-Tribute is short for Saturn Tribute. City Connection appears to use the “S-Tribute” label for the Saturn games from Taito that it’s handling, while games like Cotton 2 and Suchie-Pie are from other publishers and sport the “Saturn Tribute” label. It’s unclear why a distinction is made there, but some sort of copyright entanglement behind the scenes is the likely cause.
So far, five games have been released under either label: Cotton 2, Cotton Boomerang and Guardian Force, which came out last year; Layer Section & Galactic Attack, which came out in April; and today’s Cleopatra Fortune.
S-Tribute and 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.
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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