Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators is bouncing from the Saturn onto modern platforms, its publisher announced Wednesday.
BeXide — pronounced “B-Side” — said it’s porting the 1995 Saturn pinball game to the Nintendo Switch, Switch 2 and PC via Steam for release sometime later this year. And it won’t be emulation like many other Saturn games that appear on modern platforms: BeXide’s press release says they’ll be native ports from source code. Even the game’s original hard rock soundtrack will return, according to the release.
No price has been announced yet.
The new Steam page for Digital Pinball says the ports will be based on the “Ver.9.7” edition, which released exclusively in Japan in September 1997. The original game hit Japanese shelves in June 1995 before coming to Europe that September and North America that December.
The Steam page says the port will feature “polished, stunning graphics” and “controls optimized for PC — play comfortably with intuitive controls.”
The original games featured shuttle mouse compatibility, as SHIRO! investigated earlier this year.
There also will be newly added online leaderboards, according to the press release. The original game did not have online functionality.
The new ports will be available for hands-on play this weekend at BitSummit PUNCH, one of Japan’s largest indie game festivals, hosted by the Kyoto Municipal Industrial Promotion Hall.
Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators features four pinball tables, each inspired by the story of four warriors reincarnated across 2,000 years of time and space, beginning in ancient Rome:
- “Gladiators” — ancient Roman gladiators fighting for their freedom.
- “Knight of the Roses” — a legendary knight’s battle to save the world.
- “Dragon Showdown” — a feudal lord of the East fighting for supreme dominance.
- “Warlock” — the final holy war to seal away humanity’s endless history of conflict.
Each pinball table has nine rounds plus a Final Round.
The SHIRO! community played Digital Pinball series: Last Gladiators Ver. 9.7 and Necronomicon for a community challenge in 2024. They were discussed on the SHIRO! Podcast in 2021.
Why BeXide?
BeXide isn’t well known in the West, but its relationship with Digital Pinball’s original developer runs deep.
Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators originally was developed and published by KaZe on the Saturn in Japan. While KaZe still seems to exist in some form, many of its key staff left around the turn of the millennium and the company hasn’t made a new game since 2006.
One of those key staff members is the president of Digital Pinball’s new handlers, BeXide: Nanji Kazunori. A former programmer at KaZe, Kazunori is listed in the “special thanks” section of the credits for both the original version of Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators and its Ver.9.7 update, as well as its 1996 Japan-only sequel Digital Pinball: Necronomicon.
On X, he reposted his company’s Digital Pinball announcement and encouraged people to try it out at BitSummit PUNCH.
This won’t be the first time BeXide has ported Digital Pinball, either — it published the game on iPhone and iPad in 2010. That version was delisted eventually.
The rights to the game seem to be shared between the two companies at this point. BeXide is listed as both the developer and publisher on Steam, where there’s no mention of KaZe anywhere. But the press release attributes the copyright to KaZe and BeXide, and both companies’ copyright marks are on a promotional image for the game.
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