The romhacker KoolFiller continues to pack the SegaXtreme resource section with quality projects. His latest contribution is a quartet of English activation patches, with additional improvements to liven the package — English-speaking Saturn fans now have fewer barriers between them and the EMIT trilogy as well as Mizubaku Daibouken (localized as Liquid Kids) thanks to this recent effort.
These patches are the latest in a series of English activation patches that KoolFiller has made — you can read SHIRO! coverage on his other recent English activation patches here.
In mid-May KoolFiller dropped a trio of “Force English” patches for the “edutainment” meets sci-fi visual novel series EMIT. All three volumes have full translations present in the game files as a necessity, given that they are games specifically designed to allow Japanese-speakers to practice their English.
KoolFiller’s EMIT patches, as detailed on their respective SegaXtreme pages, “[force] the game to use the English mode from the start by default, so no one ever has to navigate the Japanese language menus to turn it on.”
EMIT Vol.1 menus with and without English turned on. Image left: Launchbox; Images top and right: SegaXtreme
You can find the EMIT “Force English” patches below:
- Emit Vol. 1 – Force English – patch the Redump compatible “Emit Vol. 1 – Toki no Maigo (Japan)” image
- Emit Vol. 2 – Force English – patch the Redump compatible “Emit Vol. 2 – Inochigake no Tabi (Japan) (Rev A)” image
- Emit Vol. 3 – Force English – patch the Redump compatible “Emit Vol. 3 – Watashi ni Sayonara o (Japan) (Rev A)” image
Liquid Kids patch is full of features
Not one to rest on his laurels, KoolFiller released an even more ambitious patch earlier this week, this time for the Taito classic Mizubaku Daibouken. You can find the Mizubaku Daibouken English Localization and Improvement patch here. You must apply this patch to the “Mizubaku Daibouken (Japan)” Redump compatible game image.
In addition to functioning as an English activation patch for the “English Mode” that was always accessible via a cheat code — a patch that accomplished this has been around since May 2024 thanks to the romhacker Cabbage, an individual known primarily for their PC Engine translation projects — KoolFiller’s improvement patch also sets the “WATER MODE” to on by default.
“With WATER MODE unlocked you can have [semitransparency] enabled for water in the game, which looks pretty nice. Maybe TAITO or somebody didn’t want the home console version of the game to look better than the arcade game, or maybe there wasn’t time to test the feature before release… who knows?”
— KoolFiller on SegaXtreme
KoolFiller does clarify on the patch’s resource page that should “you prefer your water [opaque]” you can adjust this setting, but “make sure RECORD is set to ON, and the setting will persist to backup.”
Images left: Launchbox; Images right: SegaXtreme
The Mizubaku Daibouken improvement patch also adds a “Debug Mode” and “Round Select” to the game menu (as seen below), the latter of which is rather self-explanatory, but does include the “SECRET 12” rounds. When using this feature, all you need to do to begin your selected round is start the game as usual.
With “DEBUG MODE” set to “ON” the user can do the following:
- Press X to freeze gameplay
- Hold Y for slow motion
- Press Z to advance 1 frame
Wait, there is more. The patch features aesthetic adjustments as well, described below by KoolFiller:
“And finally… people familiar with the games English mode likely noticed that the intro includes an English version ‘Liquid Kids’ title logo, but the start screen still had the Japanese version title logo.
I thought to truly complete this project I would need to use the English intro logo to replace the Japanese start screen logo. After I managed to do that, I finally noticed that the English title logo was broken. It turned out that a layer of the logo wasn’t displaying properly (the darker red layer), making the layer appear invisible and exposing the background behind the logo yet showing right through the tree fort behind it. I had to fix that.
So finally the English title logo appears as I believe the original developers had intended it to look, and the English logo replaces the Japanese one on the Start screen.”
Each patch’s resource page contains instructions for applying the patches to their respective game files — defined above — but the process is identical regardless of the title. To apply any of the patches above you simply need to:
- Place the disc image into the “redump_original” folder.
- Run “apply_patch.bat”
- Your patched game will be in the “patched” folder
While the patches were made by KoolFiller, Derek Pascarella (ateam) is thanked for writing the original patching script that made these projects possible within each patch’s SegaXtreme resource page.
Koei first developed and published the three EMIT volumes in 1994 for release on primarily Japanese home computers. The following year Koei ported the visual novel trilogy to a multitude of fifth- and sixth-generation consoles, including the Sega Saturn. You can see Peter Malek’s thoughts on the EMIT series over the years in these #BestOfSaturn pieces from 2022 and 2026.
The Taito-developed 2D platformer Mizubaku Daibouken first released on Taito F2 System arcade hardware in 1990 and was then ported to the PC Engine in 1992. It was not until late in the lifespan of the Saturn, October 1998 to be precise, that a Sega console would see its own port courtesy of Ving.
The game would remain a Japanese exclusive for more than 15 years, with the first releases of the localized Liquid Kids only hitting Western markets in the sixth generation via the multiplatform Taito Legends 2 compilation. Obviously, studious Saturn owners had access to an English version of the game sooner — with the application of the aforementioned cheat code, that is.
Check out Peter Malek’s thoughts on Mizubaku Daibouken in this #BestOfSaturn.
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