A colorful Saturn 2D fighter is more accessible for English-speaking audiences thanks to a new patch from Saturn community regular Exxistance.
“My small entry is a partial English menu translation for Astra Superstars,” Exxistance posted in the SegaXtreme Sega Saturn 31st Anniversary Homebrew Showcase. You can see SHIRO!’s summary of the submissions to this year’s showcase here!
You can download the partial English menu patch for Astra Superstars here. This patch needs to be applied to the original Japanese game files using the XDelta utility.
Exxistance said that this partial English menu patch came together in fall 2025, a time in which he was rather busy releasing Willy Wombat and Delisoba Deluxe English patches, and in the home stretch of the SEGAGAGA translation. Needless to say, he was busy, and it is understandable that technical hurdles quickly diffused enthusiasm for the project.
Exxistance states in his submission post to SegaXtreme that:
“[I] got utterly depressed once I tested with the 1 MB and 4MB RAM carts, and realized that none of my edits came through. So I was looking at triple the amount of work…but I finally figured out a good way to just do a diff on the files and insert the changes from my first edit into the 1/4 MB files.”
Exxistance is transparent about the completeness and scope of this patch in their submission post to the Showcase. As the name of the patch implies, this effort focuses exclusively on the menus of Astra Superstars, and the effort is incomplete. He said that “everything but the little tooltips are translated” — demonstrated in the example images below.
Images: SegaXtreme
For those holding out for a version 1.0 of this Astra Superstars English patch, Exxistance said that he is “working on other games ATM so won’t revisit this for a bit,” which is unsurprising given the presumably late-stage Cyber Doll English translation effort on his plate that was reported to be around 60% complete in December 2025.
“Figured some people would enjoy knowing what the menus do.” — Exxistance
Astra Superstars is a 2D fighting game with an aerial twist developed by Santaclaus Co., also known for their Saturn port of the 1995’s Galaxy Fight, and published by Sunsoft. Astra Superstars hit arcades on ST-V hardware in 1998 and came home exclusively on the Saturn that same year.
The title is held in high esteem, often sneaking into fighting game recommendations for the Saturn alongside Capcom and SNK classics.
The game optionally supports the 1MB and 4MB Extended RAM Cartridges to enhance its animations and general visuals — friend of SHIRO! Sega Lord X shows the differences these carts make in this video.
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