The Saturn community has become accustomed to fans creating translations for Japan-exclusive games and inserting them via patches. But it’s not every day that an official translation is found hiding inside a game’s code.
That’s just what was discovered in Kingdom Grandprix, a vertical shmup developed by masters of the genre Raizing. Well-known Saturn fan translator Malenko made the discovery while poking around in the code with the intention of possibly making a translation patch.
But with the full English script seemingly inaccessible, he needed some help to display it during gameplay. He turned to Bo Bayles, who needed a mere two days to figure out how to switch the game from using its Japanese text.
“I need to stress that while I poked the files and found the gold, Bo did all the heavy lifting figuring out how to make it actually display the included English,” Malenko told SHIRO! over Discord.
Malenko and Bo Bayles generously offered an SSP-format patch to enable English in Kingdom Grandprix to SHIRO! Patreon supporters, who can download it right now. For those who aren’t SHIRO! patrons, that’s OK — it’ll be available to everyone for free a week from now, and there will be a world premiere preview of it later today when TraynoCo plays the English patch live on the SHIRO! Show.
A comparison between the unpatched game, left, and the patched game that switches to the existing English localization.
The two hackers are going the extra mile. For Malenko’s part, he’s changed the poor English found in the original script to something that reads better to native speakers. That’s being included as a separate patch in the downloadable ZIP file.
Comparisons between the English localization that exists hidden inside Kingdom Grandprix, left, and Malenko’s revised English script.
Meanwhile, Bo Bayles has unlocked Kingdom Grandprix’s “Shooting Mode” in both patches. The mode normally requires a cheat code to unlock, accessible from the options menu. It makes the game play more like a straight-up shmup without any of the racing elements.
A comparison between the unpatched game, left, and the patched game that unlocks Shooting Mode.
Bo Bayles will write soon about how he accomplished this hack on his website, as he does with many of his findings.
When Kingdom Grandprix is hacked to display its hidden English script, a screen before the title switches from saying “this game is for use in Japan only” to “this game is for use in U.S.A only.” That leaves the tantalizing possibility that the game was intended for release in North America at some point but canceled. Although that North American release could have been intended for arcades and not the Saturn, with the English translation somehow surviving in the console port.
Shippuu Mahou Daisakusen Kingdom Grandprix was originally made for Japanese arcades in 1994 before getting its only console port to the Saturn in June 1996. Its English Wikipedia page says that it also came out in European arcades, although there’s no source provided to back that up, and its Japanese Wikipedia page makes no mention of it.
It adds a twist to the shmup genre by also being a racing game — the player flies faster the closer to the top of the screen they move, but that gives them less time to react to oncoming enemies and bullets. They can bump computer-controlled opposing racers into those enemies, though, or just fire a screen-filling bomb at them to slow them down. Branching paths allow players to explore 12 different stages, with a second loop through the game enabling them to play the stages they missed the first time. The original website for Kingdom Grandprix is still active thanks to publisher 8ing.
The “Shooting Mode” that removes the racing aspect is exclusive to the Saturn port. The port also has an option for playing in “tate mode” for those who can turn their television 90 degrees for greater verticality.
Players who download the translation patches’ ZIP file also will find a readme that says the patches are dedicated to a “Yuki Mei” who lived April 8, 2006, to June 19, 2023. That was Malenko’s beloved dog — rest in peace, little puppers.
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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