It seems 31 is the Saturn’s lucky number this year — not only is the West celebrating the console’s release here 31 years ago, but the SegaXtreme Showcase features 31 Saturn projects, too.
The deadline for the SegaXtreme Sega Saturn 31st Anniversary Showacase was May 11, and after a delay caused by scheduling conflicts, showcase coordinator EmeraldNova provided all the entries to showcase reviewers earlier this week. (Full disclosure: I’m one of the reviewers.)
The 31 entries across four categories include 14 original games, three non-translation hacks and patches, eight translation patches and six utilities. SHIRO! has covered or will work on covering all of them — links to those stories below. The full list of entrants is as follows:
Original Games
- Fist of Ouchie Saturn — Nolan
- Coup — Team Coup (Farkus / Rudger (Julian))
- Interactive Particle Generator — Hassmaschine (Pixel Poppy Productions)
- Flashback 2sfp edition — VBT
- Heavy: Overdrive Drift — VBT
- FPS Tech Project — Ponut64
- Shadows of Peakwater — 500Zorkmids
- SIMple City V0.2 — PenguinEmporium
- Dragon Ball Saturn — Nai Adventure
- QuadWorld — ReyeMe, Shiroiii, Purist
- The World’s Hardest Game — Ervilsoft
- Noiz2sa-0.51a-saturn — willll
- [SECRET ENTRY]
- Pixel Poppy Pong 2026 — Hassmaschine (Pixel Poppy Productions)
Hacks and Patches (Not Translations)
- Disasteroids NetLink — Farkus and SupahFly
- Light-Gun QoL Improvements Pack — privateye
- Doom fix patch — fafling
Translation Patches
- Riglord Saga 2 English Translation Showcase — DragonsOfSaturn
- Sword & Sorcery — wiredcrackpot and Rasputin3000
- Dragon Ball Z – The Legend — wonder-inc
- Sakura Wars 2 — Sakura Wars Translation Team
- [SECRET ENTRY]
- Astra Superstars Menu Translation — Exxistance
- Iron Storm: Operation Files — Hemulen
- Iron Storm English Retranslation — Hemulen
Utilities
- Orbital Organizer — Derek Pascarella (ateam)
- Enceladus Worlds — Tails of Saturn
- AVR Audio/Video Rendering — Jollyroger
- Saturn TON Editor — Frogbull
- Culdcept Translation Tools — benclaff
- Save Game Copier — SupahFly
Many of the games can be found in the SegaXtreme Showcase thread or in the SegaXtreme Resources area.
The numbers generally are up from last year, when there were 25 entries in the SegaXtreme Saturn 30th anniversary event: nine original games; nine hacks, patches and translations; and seven utilities.
Prior to this year, all hacks and patches were grouped into one category regardless of whether they were translations. And prior to this year, the event’s focus was purely as a competition, but starting this year, it’s primarily a showcase with cash prizes available to the most-nominated entrants across several categories.
“I wanted our annual event to be more of a celebration,” Emerald Nova said last autumn. “I felt that the community had grown past the point of competition.”
Last year, JBeretta’s racer Micro Motor Mayhem won best original game; the English translation of Mobile Suit Gundam from a team led by Shadowmask won the hacks, patches and translations category; and new software development kit Saturn Ring Library won in the tools and utilities category — it was made by a team including ReyeMe, robertoduarte, 7shades, willll, nemesis-saturn and jae686.
Of those winners, the only ones publicly announced as returning with entries are ReyeMe with QuadWorld and willll with a Saturn port of PC shooter Noiz2sa. Many other entrants from previous years entered this year’s showcase, though, including SupahFly, Tails of Saturn, Frogbull, privateye, Hassmaschine, ateam, fafling, Ponut64, VBT, Ervilsoft, wiredcrackpot, Rasputin3000 and, of course, the Sakura Wars Translation Team.
The showcase features some new names, too: Nolan, Farkus, Rudger, 500Zorkmids, PenguinEmporium, Nai Adventure, Shiroiii, Purist, DragonsOfSaturn, wonder-inc, Exxistance, Hemulen and Jollyroger have never entered into a SegaXtreme homebrew event before.
This is the seventh year for the EmeraldNova-led competition, which began in 2019 with the 25th Anniversary Game Competition. But it was really a revival of an annual homebrew contest tradition on SegaXtreme that began in 2003 with the Sega Saturn Coding Contest. That line of contests fizzled out in 2009 amid a difficulty to find judges followed by a failed attempt to revive it in 2010-11.
Emerald Nova announced this year’s event in November. For more information about the showcase, visit his website.
How the showcase will work
On or after July 8 — the anniversary of the Saturn’s European launch — all entries will be featured in several ways:
- A wrapup thread on SegaXtreme
- A digital magazine produced by Emerald Nova and distributed for free
- A livestream from Emerald Nova on Twitch that will be reposted on YouTube
- A livestream from SHIRO! on YouTube and coverage on the SHIRO! website and live SHIRO! Show
- A video from Pandamonium on YouTube
A panel of volunteers will write reviews for the entries, with each entry receiving two to three reviews. The reviews will be organized into the digital magazine that will be released as a PDF on July 8. If there’s enough interest, it may be physically printed, too.
The reviewers include this author and fellow SHIRO! members TraynoCo, PandaMonium and Peter Malek, in addition to several others from outside SHIRO! including Cerbero, Christa Lee, David Gámiz and Meleniumshane90.
While the showcase emphasizes celebrating Saturn homebrew efforts, there are still prizes to be won. The digital magazine reviewers also will judge entries to award cash prizes for the following categories:
- Best Original Game
- Best Translation Patch
- Best Non-Translation Patch
- Best Utility
- Most Creative
- Most Likely Fan Favorite
The prize money totals about $955 and was entirely donated by fans and by Emerald Nova himself.
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