A remake of Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salsburg is coming this summer, its publisher Koei Tecmo announced Thursday. The company is planning to release it on the Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam, according to the official website.
Atelier Marie is the first in developer Gust’s long-running Atelier series of potion-crafting RPGs. It was released on the Sega Saturn in December 1997 as “version 1.3,” having been ported from the PlayStation original that came out seven months prior. It added new minigames, events and endings, plus dialogue that changed based on the time of day and time of year — it used the Saturn’s internal clock and calendar to determine when you were playing it.
The remake appears to be set in a 3D world, as opposed to the original’s 2D isometric environments drawn with pixel art. It retains a chibi art style for the characters in the overworld, though.
Considering Koei Tecmo tweeted the announcement in English and made an English website separately from the Japanese one, it’s likely that it will be localized in English, which will be a first for Atelier Marie — all of its ports, from the PlayStation and Saturn to 2000-era Windows, the Dreamcast and mobile phones, have been Japan exclusives.
It’s unclear which version this remake is based on or whether it’ll retain the Saturn port’s added features.
More information on the remake is expected to come during the series’ 25th anniversary livestream on Feb. 20.
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.
Leave a comment