Earlier this week, burntends took to X (formerly Twitter) and Discord to request help hacking and debugging an English patch of legendary dating sim Tokimeki Memorial: Forever With You for the Sega Saturn. This request appears to be on behalf of the translation patch team, composed of hitomi2500 and a translator.
Videos accompanying the “help wanted ad” — seen in the post to the right — demonstrate the patch in action.
The Tokimeki Memorial: Forever With You translation effort came to light in early 2022 when hitomi2500 shared on the SegaXtreme Discord server that they had located and “fished out almost 32,000 lines of text,” determining that said text was encoded in standard shift-JIS — see the screenshot below. Burntends posted a proof on concept on SegaXtreme in March that year, accompanied by a solicitation of help for the sole programmer, hitomi2500.
Those interested in contributing to the project can contact hitomi2500 on the SegaXtreme Discord.
Hitomi2500, the hacker spearheading the Tokimeki Memorial patch, has been active in the Sega Saturn homebrew community for many years, with ports of Amazing Studio’s 1998 cinematic platformer Heart of Darkness and Artemio’s invaluable 240p Test Suite, and a Sega Saturn Save Parser tool, to name just a few of their many contributions.
Burntends, who appears to be acting in a signal-boosting role for the Tokimeki Memorial team, has contributed in varying degrees to past Saturn and Dreamcast hacking projects, namely the Sakura Wars Columns 2 and Rainbow Cotton English patches, both efforts led by the prolific romhacker Derek Pascarella (ateam), as well as the Bulk Slash English patch led by Lacquerware.
While game-breaking bugs present in a 2024 beta of the Tokimeki Memorial Saturn patch — made available to a select few for testing and feedback — have been known for some time, it is unclear if these specific issues are still plaguing the translation effort.
SHIRO!’s own TraynoCo encountered a couple while streaming the beta in September and October last year. TraynoCo’s playtesting witnessed text corruption, visual glitches, and software freezes during dialogue selection and while performing daily activities, which rendered the game unplayable in most cases. Images above show the exact moment of two of the aforementioned crashes.
SHIRO! reached out to burntends for more information regarding the request posted to X but has not yet received a response.
Konami developed Tokimeki Memorial and first released it on the PC Engine in 1994 before porting it to multiple fourth- and fifth– generation consoles and computers — including the Sega Saturn, where it was titled Tokimeki Memorial: Forever With You, in July 1996.
Produced in part by Koji Igarashi of Castlevania fame, the game’s compelling narrative, stat-building, and schedule micro-managing served as a major inspiration for the developing dating sim and visual novel genres. Tokimeki Memorial now boasts an expansive multimedia franchise of its own with a substantial fan following.
Despite its legendary status, the Tokimeki Memorial series has remained a Japanese exclusive.
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