Amidst Shiro’s continuing coverage of the leaked Sega Fiscal Year 1997 brand documents and all of the breaking news last week, there are a few smaller stories to catch up on. So here’s a roundup of what we’ve missed over the last couple weeks.
Atelier Marie Remake releases
The Atelier Marie Remake released Thursday on modern platforms.
Notably for Saturn fans, the digital deluxe version includes an emulated version of Atelier Marie Plus, a version of the game that released on the PlayStation in 1998. That version included most of the Saturn port’s additional content. And in this week’s release, it’s been translated officially into English.
That’s 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 available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4 and 5 for US$69.99.
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 was announced in mid-February with a confirmation of its English localization coming just over a week later.
Virtua Fighter vinyl soundtrack shipping now
The Virtua Fighter soundtrack on vinyl record started shipping a little over a week ago on July 8.
It’s a two-disc LP that includes a full-color double-page spread jacket with two different arrangements of music from the arcade and Saturn versions of the seminal 3D fighter.
Those in North America can order a copy from Cartridge Thunder’s website for US$44.
Those in Europe can buy it from Black Screen Records for €48 or from the official European Sega Shop itself for £59.99.
Australians can get a copy for AUD$89.99 from Pixel Crib while anyone in Japan can buy it for 9,350 yen from Disk Union.
Some people already have gotten their orders, like this person on Twitter:
The vinyl release was announced in March, as Shiro reported at the time.
Idol Mahjong 4 remaster coming to Switch in Japan
City Connection announced a remaster of Idol Mahjong Final Romance 4, a mahjong game featuring scantily clad women that originally appeared in arcades before being ported to the Saturn in Japan in May 1998.
The remaster is likely to remain in Japan, too, considering the Saturn original on which this version is based wasn’t in English in the first place. Its release date and price are still to be determined outside of a general 2023 release year.
The official website says that the remaster will feature a higher resolution as well as “visual corrections” made by Gomoku Akatsuki, who was in charge of the original game’s character design.
In the July 7 announcement tweets, the publisher also said a “Special” version of Idol Mahjong Final Romance 4 will be released on PC on Aug. 25 along with the two other games that got Saturn ports, Idol Mahjong Final Romance R and Idol Mahjong Final Romance 2, all in one package.
The official website for the PC versions says that Idol Mahjong 2 and R are remixes of the arcade originals and the Saturn ports, with mouse support added and difficulty tweaked to make them easier to play. New undressing visuals drawn by Akatsuki for this release will be included as well.
The games originally were developed by Video System, who went on to develop F1 World Grand Prix and its sequels on Dreamcast.
The Saturn ports of 2 and R had red rating labels indicating full nudity, owing to their release dates in August 1995 and March 1996, respectively, before Sega of Japan instituted a ban on full nudity in Saturn games in October 1996. Since Final Romance 4 released a couple years after that, it had a yellow label, indicating partial nudity. That’s likely why only 4 is coming to the Switch while R and 2 are releasing on PC — Nintendo recently began enforcing a ban on full nudity in newly released Switch games.
The Idol Mahjong Final Romance series is different from the other mahjong series featuring scantily clad women that City Connection released on Switch late last year, Suchie-Pai. While Suchie-Pai was labeled as part of City Connection’s Saturn Tribute line of emulated Saturn re-releases, Idol Mahjong is not, although it still falls in line with the publisher’s trend of bringing old Saturn games to modern storefronts in some form.
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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