More Saturn games are being re-released on modern platforms — this time, it’s Metal Black, Bust-a-Move 2: Arcade Edition and Bust-a-Move 3.
Their publisher, City Connection, announced Wednesday night that the games would hit Steam on Feb. 1. They’re part of the S-Tribute — sometimes called Saturn Tribute — line of Saturn games running inside an emulator.
Bust-a-Move 2 and 3 will be packaged together, possibly with their Japanese counterparts, called Puzzle Bobble, while Metal Black will stand alone. There’s no word yet on a price, but other S-Tribute games have cost US$15 to $30.
While Steam was the only platform mentioned in City Connection’s tweet, the trailer on Bust-a-Move 2 and 3’s Steam page shows Switch, Xbox and PS4 logos at the end. Other S-Tribute games have released on those platforms, so it would make sense for these games to find their way there as well, but it’s curious why they haven’t been officially announced yet.
City Connection has yet to update its website with new pages for the games, either, as it’s done for other S-Tribute titles.
Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition released on the Saturn in the U.S. in September 1996, a month after it hit European shores and two months after its release in Japan under the name Puzzle Bobble 2X. It’s a bubble shooter puzzle game that featured infamously freaky cover artwork of a man with his eyes held open in the U.S.
Bust-a-Move 3 arrived in time for the Saturn’s last holiday season in North America and Europe in 1997, about eight months after it released in Japan in March that year under the name Puzzle Bobble 3. It’s another bubble shooter like its predecessor.
The games’ Steam page says they’ll offer players rewind, slow mode, quick save and load, unlimited credits and scanline features.
Unlike the Bust-a-Move titles, Metal Black never released outside Japan. It’s an apocalyptic-themed horizontal shoot-em-up that came out in May 1996. It’s loosely a sequel to Gun Frontier, a 1990 arcade game that got a 1997 Saturn port, with both games sharing some staff — Metal Black’s intro sequence and credits even identify it as “Gun Frontier 2.”
Its Steam page says it’ll feature rewind, slow mode, quick save and load, online rankings, unlimited credits, a stage select, scanlines and the ability and change the amount of energy increased when picking up NEWALONE items.
Metal Black is entirely in English, making it an easy sell in the West for City Connection — which has never hacked a new translation into Japanese games it re-releases — although some of its prose is … pretty awkwardly written.
Modern releases for these games weren’t a complete surprise. During a livestream last April announcing another game in the S-Tribute line, Layer Section & Galactic Attack, City Connection stated 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.
With the release of Bust-a-Move/Puzzle Bobble and Metal Black, there are no more Saturn Tribute or S-Tribute titles that have been announced but not yet released. It remains to be seen if City Connection will continue the line.
Elevator Action Returns and Cleopatra Fortune were just released last November, followed by an early November release for a collection of non-Taito Saturn Tribute games from the Suchie-Pie series.
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. 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.
So far, 10 games have been released under either label: Cotton 2, Cotton Boomerang and Guardian Force, which came out in 2021; Layer Section & Galactic Attack, which came out last April; Cleopatra Fortune and Elevator Action Returns, which came out last November; and the four games in the Suchie-Pai collection. which came out last December.
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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