The SegaXtreme Sega Saturn 31st Anniversary Showcase reached its climax last night with the release of a digital magazine highlighting all 31 entries paired with announcing the contest winners.
Showcase organizer Emerald Nova debuted the magazine in a livestream on Twitch. He spent the last couple weeks putting it together using reviews written by the contest’s seven judges — of which this author is one — as well as several guest writers. You can download the 52-page ‘zine from SegaXtreme.
Anyone interested in buying a printed copy of the ‘zine is encouraged to let Emerald Nova in this thread on SegaXtreme. He said if he gets at least 30 or so interested buyers, it’ll be possible to do a print run.
When the showcase entries were announced May 22, there were two secret entries — one in the translation patches category and one in the original game category. Emerald Nova revealed them in his presentation yesterday: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers was the secret translation patch, and CubeCat Yarnia Demo was the original game. Both of them won in the showcase’s contest portion.
Neither Cubecat nor the Soul Hackers translation patch are available yet to the public. Soul Hackers’ homebrew developer, TrekkiesUnite118, told SHIRO! he plans to release a patch later once it’s more complete.
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 last November. For more information about the showcase, visit his website.
The competition portion
Emerald Nova announced which entries won in the contest portion’s six categories: Best Original Game, Best Translation Patch, Best Non-Translation Patch, Best Utility, Most Creative and Most Likely Fan Favorite. The judges nominated as many games as they wanted for each category. The results were:
- Best Original Game: Cubecat Yarnia Demo by 7shades
- Best Translation Patch: Sakura Wars 2 English translation by the Sakura Wars Translation Team
- Best Non-Translation Patch: Doom Fix Patch by Fafling
- Best Utility: AVR Audio/Video Rendering by Jollyroger and Save Game Copier by Slinga (tie)
- Most Creative: QuadWorld by ReyeMe, Shiroiii and Purist
- Most Likely Fan Favorite: QuadWorld by ReyeMe, Shiroiii and Purist, Riglord Saga 2 English translation showcase by DragonsOfSaturn, Sakura Wars 2 English translation by the Sakura Wars Translation Team and Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers translation by TrekkiesUnite118 (four-way tie)
The winners are awarded cash prizes totaling about $955 that was entirely donated by fans and by Emerald Nova himself.
This is the first time Cubecat has won a competition after versions of it came in second place in both the 29th anniversary and 27th anniversary competitions.
The Sakura Wars 2 team also won the 25th anniversary competition for their translation of the first Sakura Wars.
This is the first time Fafling has won with his Doom patch, whose earlier versions placed eighth in the 29th anniversary competition and second in the 30th anniversary competition — although the non-translation patches hadn’t been separated from the translations in the 30th anniversary competition; if they had, Doom would have won.
This is Jollyroger’s first time participating in the SegaXtreme homebrew competition and, of course, his first win. Slinga has been participating in SegaXtreme competitions since 2005’s Classic Console Coding Contest; he was part of a team that won the tools and utilities category in the 30th anniversary competition for SaturnRingLibrary.
ReyeMe also was part of the team that won for SaturnRingLibrary last year, but this year he’s won with QuadWorld for most creative and most likely fan favorite alongside Shiroiii and Purist, who both participated in a contest for the first time. ReyeMe participates every year. His original game Sky Blaster got fourth place in the 28th anniversary competition and Utenyaa got fifth place in the 29th anniversary contest.
The Riglord Saga 2 in-progress translation patch is the first time DragonsOfSaturn had participated in a homebrew contest. He lost his battle with cancer earlier this year.
TrekkiesUnite’s Sega Saturn Film Tools 3.0.1 got second place in last year’s tools and utilities category. The first time he entered his in-progress Soul Hackers translation into a competition was the 29th anniversary one, where he placed fifth in the hacks, patches and translations category. His Grandia translation patch won first place in the 26th anniversary competition.
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