System Sacom fans rejoice — an English patch that translates the Saturn version of 1997 FMV horror adventure game “R?MJ The Mystery Hospital” into English is on the way courtesy of prolific translation patch-maker Kitchen34.
Saturn fans know System Sacom for The Mansion of Hidden Souls and Lunacy — aka Torico — thanks to those games being officially released in the West. But the developer made several more that never left Japan, and Mystery Hospital is one of them. System Sacom teamed up with Bandai to make “R?MJ The Mystery Hospital” and released it on the PlayStation in November 1997 about a month before porting it to the Saturn.
Last year, a fan translation team — including EsperKnight, SnowyAria, Carogdin and blametherobot — made the PlayStation version more accessible to English speakers with a patch. Now, with that team’s blessing, Kitchen34 is working to bring their translation to the Saturn version.
Kitchen made threads on SegaXtreme and French retro gaming forum Delta Island over the weekend to announce the new effort.
“I am resuming the translation from the team that previously worked on it for the PS1,” said Kitche, who’s a native French speaker. “Everything will be duly credited, of course; it’s a straightforward conversion of the translation.”
He posted a short video Sunday showing his progress.
Then on Tuesday he posted a Sega Saturn Patcher-compatible SSP patch file to let the public give it a try. You can download it here.
“I believe I have obtained 85% of the sprites, both in 4 bits and 8 bits,” Kitchen said. “It’s progressing well.”
Kitchen has released a litany of translation patches for Saturn games, primarily into French and Spanish. This is the first time he’s putting out an English patch, although he said that he plans on creating a new French patch for Mystery Hospital once he’s done.
On their PlayStation patch’s Romhacking.net page, EsperKnight and company described The Mystery Hospital thusly:
The events of R?MJ take place in the summer of 1999. Hajime and Tomowo rush to the S.T.G. Hospital after hearing their friend Ryo was in a suspicious motorcycle accident, but they’re trapped in the hospital after an explosion seals their exit. Together with Aya, a nurse who looks after Ryo, Hajime and friends must find a way out while deadly pathogens threaten to end their search for freedom. There’s something else amiss about this hospital, however. Strange paintings depicting an ancient civilization decorate the hospital walls. Just what is the Asmos Legend?
R?MJ is an interactive horror game with full voice-acting and movement like Kenji Eno’s D, where a video plays to show the player’s selected movement. In addition to looking around for items and solving puzzles, the player must utilize the “5 senses button,” which acts as an additional way to investigate. Other characters will prompt you for these moments, such as “what’s that smell?”
While the two console versions are likely identical, the PlayStation version of Mystery Hospital comes on two discs while the Saturn version only uses one, possibly thanks to better video compression.
The Japanese Wikipedia page for The Mystery Hospital says that the “R?MJ” portion of the title means “Revenge? Mutation Jack.”
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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