The Saturn is on people’s minds in all corners of the world — from the Japanese developers of Yakuza to the French fans on the Delta Island forum to a U.K. cross stitch enthusiast on Bluesky. Let’s take a look at what they’ve been saying and doing this week.
Saturn too complex for Yakuza games
In an interview Monday with Japanese gaming website Automaton Media, a pair of executives at Ryu ga Gotoku Studio downplayed the chances of Saturn games ever appearing in a Yakuza game.
Yutaka Ito, technical director of Yakuza Studio, and Ryosuke Horii, producer and director of the recently released Yakuza Kiwami 3, answered questions about the 12 emulated Game Gear games they included in the series’ latest entry. During the interview, Automaton Media asked about other systems, including the possibility of Saturn games.
Ito said the Saturn is so complex to emulate that it might be faster to make direct ports of games for which they have the source code. He also said that there aren’t many arcade games compatible with the Saturn — in other words, ST-V Titan games — so that would make it difficult to place them in game centers within the Yakuza games’ cities.
There are 79 ST-V Titan titles. But many of them are third-party games that Sega doesn’t own the rights to, they’re not really games — like the “Print Club” photo printing programs — or they have other licensing issues that would make them too difficult or expensive to include in a Yakuza entry. Based on a SHIRO! review of the list on Sega Retro, only about 16 Titan games would have a chance of being used:
- Sports Fishing
- Golden Axe: The Duel
- Baku Baku Animal
- Virtua Fighter Remix
- Sports Fishing 2
- Puzzle & Action: Treasure Hunt
- PriCla Daisakusen (aka Princess Clara’s Big Adventure)
- Virtua Fighter Kids
- Decathlete
- Dynamite Deka (without the Western version’s Die Hard branding)
- Puyo Puyo Sun
- Groove On Fight: Gouketsuji Ichizoku 3
- Columns ’97
- Hanagumi Taisen Columns (Sakura Wars Columns)
- Winter Heat
- Taisen Tanto-R Sasissu! (a Puzzle & Action spin-off)
Ito and Horii didn’t address why a Saturn home console with home console versions of its games couldn’t be found somewhere in a Yakuza game. It would have precedence for the studio: A Master System is in the player character’s apartment in the Judgment and Lost Judgment spin-off games.
In a second part of the interview posted today, Horii said the real-life games are included with Yakuza titles to increase the realism and detail of the games’ world. Yakuza games have featured emulated Sega games dating back to 2015’s Yakuza 0 — everything from arcade games like Space Harrier and Virtua Fighter 2 to collections of home console games like those from the Master System and Game Gear.
French translation underway for Guardian Heroes
A fan is working on translating Saturn 2D beat ’em up RPG Guardian Heroes into French, according to a post on French gaming forum Delta Island.
“Hello I did a few small tests and they are positive…” Markus95 said today in a post, as machine translated from the original French. “I will continue to translate this game and I will make the translation available once finished or well advanced.”
He posted some screenshots that show his progress, including the title screen, main menu and some in-game dialogue.
Markus95 posted in a thread from 2023 in which the thread creator asked if there was any interest in translating the game into French. The short discussion didn’t go far over the next year, and the thread laid dormant until it was revived today.
While Guardian Heroes was released in France alongside other PAL countries in June 1996, publisher Sega Europe didn’t include a French script.
This isn’t Markus95′ first Saturn-related project. Last year, he released a tool that converts Saturn games to a format that’s playable on jailbroken PlayStation 4s and PlayStation 5s via emulator.
Fan makes Saturn cross stitch pattern
People express their Sega Saturn fandom in many ways, and for one person, that means cross stitching.
Giglamps posted Tuesday on Bluesky about a cross stitch pattern they designed featuring the Western logo for the Sega Saturn.
“Another pattern design by yours truly; a Sega Saturn one, based on the lovely striped variation,” Giglamps said in the post.
The pattern can be downloaded for free from their Ko-fi page — or for a donation, if you’re feeling generous.
“This design consists of 6 thread colours, using whole stitches, half stitch, Smyrna stars and French knots,” the Ko-fi page says. “Stitched on 14-count aida, this design fits a 4-inch embroidery hoop, but measurements for other fabric counts are included with the pattern.”
It’s the first Saturn-related pattern on Giglamps’ Ko-fi, although there is another video game design inspired by the security monitors in Control.
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