The Top Sega Saturn Stories of 2023

It’s been 29 years since Sega unleashed the Saturn upon the world, and despite the company washing its hands of the console after just five short years, news continues to be made about it to this day. In 2023, many of the headlines were made by fans themselves who are keeping the Saturn alive with projects in both the hardware and software space.

Let’s take a look at the biggest Saturn stories of this year.

10. Saturn BT development and sale

The BlueRetro project to make modern controllers usable with any device via Bluetooth birthed an adapter made just for the Saturn called the Saturn BT. The brainchild of Humble Bazooka, the Saturn BT finally went on sale in late August featuring support for analog mode, mouse and keyboard, multitap functionality, updatability when connected to a PC and more. Its injection molding and snazzy packaging gave the Saturn community a quality product for using any Bluetooth controller they want for their favorite games.

Relevant SHIRO! stories: Saturn BT Bluetooth Adapter’s Form Factor Is Finalized
SATURN BT – Bluetooth Adapter Overview
News Roundup for the Week of July 24
News Roundup for the Week of Aug. 21

9. Saturn core on MiSTer makes major strides

When the Saturn core of the MiSTer FPGA first went up for download last year, it was playable only in a technical sense. Plagued by glitches, a lack of sound and nonbootable games, it was a long way off from giving MiSTer owners a decent Saturn experience.

All that changed this year, as developer Sergiy Dvodnenko made huge strides with updates that added save support, drastically improved audio, enabled Gouraud shading and provided the ability to play PAL games. All of that was on top of fixing game-specific bugs to make much of the Saturn library truly playable and enjoyable.

By October, the core was added to the main MiSTer branch, symbolizing how ready it had become for primetime.

Relevant SHIRO! stories: Saturn MiSTer Core Gets First Update in Five Months, Adds Expanded RAM Support
Saturn MiSTer Core Update Squeezes into June
News Roundup for the Week of July 31
Saturn MiSTer Core Update Adds Save Support, Improves Audio
Thunder Force V Among Games Working With New MiSTer Core Update
Saturn MiSTer Core Gets PAL Game Support
News Roundup for the Week of Oct. 9

8. SAROO’s revival by TPUnix and sale on AliExpress

The dream of an all-in-one cartridge that could play games off an SD card, provide backup save RAM and have expanded RAM finally became a reality this year, as development of the SAROO project picked back up after an eight-year dormancy.

Chinese homebrew developer TPUnix has been working all year on both a circuit board design as well as firmware and made all of it publicly available on a Github. Since TPUnix has never expressed a desire to manufacture and sell the device on their own, intrepid sellers on AliExpress took a crack at it — despite the whole thing still being a work in progress.

Nonetheless, TPUNix has attempted to support the devices as much as possible now that they’re in people’s hands. There are still a lot of bugs to work out, but it’s a solid — if messy — start to providing another option to play Saturn games on real hardware.

Relevant SHIRO! stories: SAROO: A Saturn Flash Cart Re-emerges…
News Roundup for the Week of Feb. 27
News Roundup for the Week of August 14
News Roundup for the Week of Aug. 28
SAROO Firmware May Be Bricking Some Cartridges

7. Sakura Wars 2 fan translation announcement

One of the biggest Saturn franchises that fans were denied in the West was Sakura Wars, Sega’s fusion of dating sim and tactical strategy that became one of their most successful series in Japan. Fans eventually would rectify that oversight in part with a translation patch for the first Sakura Wars game in 2019 that was met with widespread acclaim — and a widespread yearning for a translation of the sequel.

We rung in 2023 with a surprise announcement that a fan translation patch for Sakura Wars 2 was underway from much of the same team that worked on the first game’s patch. It came with a translation of a Japanese demo disc for Sakura Wars 2, too, giving fans a taste of what’s to come.

The team gave an update on their progress earlier this month, still hard at work on graphical editing and bug fixing but with much of the translation now finished. Perhaps 2024 will give us what’s sure to be one of the biggest fan translations on the Saturn scene.

Relevant SHIRO! stories: Sakura Wars 2 English Translation Announced, Preview Demo Released
Sakura Wars 2 English Translation Progress Update

6. Long-lost secrets found in beloved games

Much of the Saturn’s retail library is nearly three decades old now, but there are still secrets being found by intrepid fans digging through code. This was a particularly big year for newly uncovered secrets, too — cheats enabled in Shining the Holy Ark by inputting particular names; secret characters in NBA Jam including announcer Tim Kitzrow; debug features in Nights into Dreams; and multiplayer modes in a Burning Rangers prototype. Even just this month, Bo Bayles found a playable dolphin in retail copes of Burning Rangers as well as the entirety of Clockwork Knight 1 in North American retail copies of Clockwork Knight 2 accessible via a cheat code.

Who knows what we’ll find lurking in our games in 2024?

Relevant SHIRO! stories: Burning Rangers Prototype With VS Mode Found
New Cheats Discovered in Shining the Holy Ark
New Debug Features Found in Nights into Dreams
Two Secret Characters (Tim Kitzrow and Fox) Found Playable in NBA Jam Tournament Edition on SEGA SATURN in 2023!
Bo Bayles Discovers Playable Dolphin in Burning Rangers
Clockwork Knight 2 Cheat Code Found That Unlocks First Game

5. Red Moon: Lost Days commercial physical sale

This year saw the first time a homebrew Saturn game was sold on physical media — Red Moon: Lost Days, a visual novel with RPG elements by Sansigolo and Neuromage Studios.

The game was released digitally on Itch.io in a “pay what you want” model in January before Neuromage began selling it a few months later on two discs with a jewel case and manual via RetroRoomgames’ website for US$24.99.

As there still is no way to replicate pressing the “wobble” found on retail Saturn discs, these are simply burned CDs that require a way to defeat the console’s copy protection, such as an Action Replay cartridge. Nonetheless, it might be as close as we’ll ever get to seeing a fan game get a retail-like treatment.

Relevant SHIRO! stories: New Visual Novel ‘Red Moon: Lost Days’ Launches for Saturn
Red Moon Lost Days Gets Physical Commercial Release

4. Tomb Raider Gold ported to Saturn

One of the Saturn’s most prominent games, Tomb Raider, got a PC-only expanded edition called Tomb Raider: Unfinished Business, also known as Tomb Raider Gold in North America. It added four bonus levels across two chapters that were never officially released for consoles.

A team of fans changed that in October when they heavily modified the files of the Saturn version of Tomb Raider to make a port of sorts of Unfinished Business. The effort took well more than a year, but it was well worth it for fans for whom it felt like getting a brand new Saturn adventure in 2023.

Relevant SHIRO! story: Fans Port Tomb Raider Expansion Unfinished Business to Saturn

3. Frogbull shows off Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII running on Saturn

When footage purporting to show Metal Gear Solid running on a Sega Saturn hit the Internet this October, there was a ton of buzz. One of the PlayStation’s most high-profile exclusives, a graphical showpiece, is on Saturn? It seemed too good to be true.

But true it was, as hobbyist developer Frogbull proved by giving playable code to fellow homebrewer XL2, whose publicly available code was used to make the Metal Gear Solid demo.

Frogbull even followed that up this month with footage of another PlayStation staple running on Saturn, Final Fantasy VII.

While he’s said that he doesn’t have plans to release playable builds to the public, it’s still a lot of fun to see Sony exclusives in all the Saturn’s quad-rendered glory.

Relevant SHIRO! stories: Video Appears to Show Metal Gear Solid Running on Saturn
XL2 Confirms Metal Gear Solid Prototype Is Real
Video Shows Homebrew Prototype of Final Fantasy VII Running on Saturn

2. English fan translations make waves

It’s been another banner year for patches that translate Japanese games into English. Tactics Ogre, Prisoner of Ice, Baroque, J.B. Harold: Blue Chicago Blues and Dungeon Master Nexus are among the Saturn games that fans have been able to play in English for the first time in 2023. There have even been some partial translations that remain works in progress like Mobile Suit Gundam, R?MJ: The Mystery Hospital and Saturn Bomberman Fight.

The fan translation scene was highlighted by two efforts that excited fans the most, though: Stellar Assault SS and Silhouette Mirage. Full disclosure: I was on the English localization team for Stellar Assault SS, but I’m not highlighting it because I worked on it — it got an outsized amount of attention for the full English dub that was required to translate the game, considering it’s full of in-mission pilot banter and no on-screen subtitles. And Silhouette Mirage saw a lot of attention for being a well-known game from beloved developer Treasure that fans had longed to play on Saturn — where its graphics are better than the PlayStation port — for decades. The team behind Silhouette brought over Working Designs’ script from the Western release of the PlayStation version but announced plans to create their own translation to come soon.

The Saturn fan translation scene has fired on all cylinders since it finally picked up steam in 2019, and 2023 definitely kept that momentum.

Relevant SHIRO! stories: Tactics Ogre Saturn English Fan Translation Released!
Stellar Assault SS English Dub Patch RELEASED!
Prisoner of Ice Gets English Patch, Baroque Coming as Well
English Patch for Baroque Releases
English Fan Localization Finished, Released for J.B. Harold: Blue Chicago Blues
Fan Translates Dungeon Master Nexus into English
Mobile Suit Gundam Fan Translation BETA Release By ShadowMask and Team
Fans Release Completed English Patch for Silhouette Mirage
Updated Patch Adds Subtitles to Mystery Hospital’s FMVs
In-Progress Fan Localization of Bomberman Fight!! Now Available to the Public

1. Sega’s fiscal year 1997 brand review documents leak

It’s hard to be a fan of the Saturn and not wonder at some point, “What happened? Why did the Saturn fail?”

We got some answers when Sega of America’s Fiscal Year 1997 Brand Review documents leaked onto the Internet in July. The bombshell gave new insights into how the console fell apart in North America and what Sega of America attempted to do to stave off failure.

They paired well with a lecture given by former Sega president Shoichiro Irimajiri that were newly translated by MD Shock just a week later. He revealed details never known before about the development of Saturn’s hardware and how Sega of America operated leading up to and during the Saturn’s lifespan.

The revelations don’t give any solace to those who mourn the Saturn’s third-place finish in much of the world, but they do fuel imaginations about how things might have turned out differently had Sega made better choices.

Relevant SHIRO! stories: SEGA of America Internal Documents Made Public
Leaked Fiscal Year ’97 Documents Reveal Saturn Sales Numbers
Sega Fiscal Year ’97 Docs Were a Late 2021 eBay Purchase
Exploring SEGA’s E3 1996 Show Floor
Canceled Games of SEGA’s Leaked Fiscal Year ’97 Documents
PandaMonium Reviews Every Page of Leaked FY97 Docs in Livestream
Irimajiri Clears the Air Regarding SoA/Saturn
EDITOR’S CORNER PODCAST – EP 17: SEGA of America’s Revealing Self-Audit with Pandamonium Reviews
PandaMonium on Sega FY1997 documents to premiere this Saturnday

Honorable mentions

There’s been a lot of Saturn news in 2023. In fact, we here at SHIRO! posted about once per weekday this year! So let’s briefly mention some of the other stories that were considered for this list but didn’t quite make the cut:

• Spanish, French and Portuguese fan translations (Deep Fear, Resident Evil, Brain Dead 13, Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster, Myst, Shinobi X, Shanghai Triple Threat, WWF Wrestlemania, Prisoner of Ice, Astal, J.B. Harold: Blue Chicago Blues, Need for Speed, Sakura Wars)
• Sega revives five classic franchises at TGA 2023
• SHIRO! begins collaboration with The Sega Guys
• Cold Case homebrew 3D survival horror demo released
• Phøde announcement
• Retro-Bit finally releases analog Saturn controller and shows off Dreamcast pad
• Saturn Tribute releases: Metal Black, Bust-a-Move 2 and 3, Batsugun; Assault Suit Leynos 2 announced
• Rainbow Cotton localization and HD remaster announcement
• Saturn online developments (Shiro buying two cases of Xband cartridges for resale; partial translation of Shadows of the Tusk; Decathalete, Sega Rally and Virtual On tournaments)
• Daytona NetLink Edition is based on Circuit Edition
• Shining Force artist Tamaki Yoshitaka dies