This week, we’ve gotten a few pieces of news that are notable to Saturn fans, from an infamous dating sim is getting a remake, to a patch enabling a hidden cheat menu, to a new reverse engineering project. Let’s take a look at what the community is talking about.
Sentimental Graffiti remake announced
A remake of infamous Saturn dating sim Sentimental Graffiti is in the works, its publisher announced Sunday.
Entegram revealed a piece of key art for “Sentimental Graffiti Re” drawn by the original game’s artist, Tomohisa Kai, during a livestream for Famitsu’s 40th anniversary. It didn’t give details on target platforms or release date.
The remake’s script will be “slightly adjusted in some parts to reflect current times,” Famitsu reported, and there will be an overhaul of the illustrations and backgrounds to support 16:9 screens.
One thing that isn’t changing, though, is how the 12 lead voice actresses are being chosen. Entegram said it’s following in the footsteps of Cybelle when that developer made the 1998 original: The first six actresses are professionals from the same agency, while there are open auditions for the other six that run until the end of this month.
No English localization was announced. The original game was never localized in any language, either.
Sentimental Graffiti had a massive hype train leading up to its Japanese-exclusive debut on Saturn in January 1998. Throughout 1997 there was a weekly radio show, an art book, trading cards, a summer concert and two series of audio drama CDs, not to mention constant coverage in gaming magazines, which boosted interest into the stratosphere. But that all came crashing down when the game actually released, thanks to a different art style than the one used in the art book that many fans thought was a downgrade. Even worse, Sentimental Graffiti’s game design that required the protagonist to lead on all 12 girls simultaneously before dumping 11 of them to get an ending, which upset many players.
Patch enables hidden Bust-a-Move 2 options
A new patch enables a hidden options menu in Bust-a-Move 2: Arcade Edition. It comes from prolific patch maker KoolFiller, who uploaded it Thursday to a SegaXtreme Resources page.
The patch adds a “next page” button to the normal options screen. On that next page are four togglable options: another world, explosions, aiming guide and free play. Those last two are pretty self-explanatory — they keep the aiming guide on screen in every level and grant unlimited lives, respectively. “Another world” refers to a new set of levels in Puzzle Mode. “Explosions” makes the game’s bubbles explode rather than pop.
There are cheat codes for the “another world” and “explosions” options listed on Sega Retro, GameFAQs and a Japanese fan directory of Saturn secrets. But none of those sources have codes for the aiming guide, free play or hidden options menu.
After downloading and unzipping, the patch requires users to place the original Bust-a-Move 2 disc image into the “redump_original” folder, then run the “apply_patch.bat” file, which is essentially an automated XDelta patcher. It writes the patched game to the “patched” folder.
Panzer Dragoon reverse engineering underway
A well-known homebrew developer is reverse engineering the Saturn version of Panzer Dragoon.
Frogbull first posted about the project June 21 on his Patreon. Since then, he’s been posting videos of model wireframes from the game on his YouTube channel. The latest one was posted Wednesday.
“In 1995, Panzer Dragoon was the first game I ever played on a Sega Saturn (and my first experience with a 32-bit console),” Frogbull wrote in the videos’ descriptions. “Thirty years later, I’m working on a Reverse Engineering project dedicated to this legendary game. Through this series of videos, I will share the progress, discoveries, and challenges behind the project.”
It’s still unclear what his ultimate goal is. The assets Frogbull has extracted so far are running on a PC. Sega did release a PC port of Panzer Dragoon in 1996, although it’s not legally available except though used copies or easily runnable on modern Windows anymore.
Frogbull is no stranger to reverse engineering. He’s done it with quite a few games to get them running on Saturn, like Minecraft, Shenmue, Metal Gear Solid and Crash Bandicoot.
At the risk of exposing myself as a dumb idiot: What’s he reverse engineering it to play on? Is he making a 16-bit version?
I believe he’s just extracting data and getting it to display on PC.