An English translation patch for the Saturn home-exclusive action puzzler Monster Slider is now available! While this patch was created specifically for the October SHIRO! Community Challenge — more details on that here — it is available for all to enjoy.
For those interested in trying out the English translation for themselves, you can download the patch from the relevant SegaXtreme resource page or from the patch’s GitHub repo.
Quoting the Monster Slider English Translation Patch GitHub repo, “Every so often, a team of talented individuals band together to form a supergroup that transcends their individual parts,” referring to the team’s trio: wiredcrackpot (translation), Exxistance (hacking and sprite editing), and me (sprite editing). Perhaps too high of praise for this author, but for the other two-thirds of the team, who also happen to be responsible for the “Summer of Saturn” releases, and more than twenty translation projects between them, the hyperbole feels a bit more grounded.
The GitHub for the Monster Slider English Translation Patch includes sections about each game, patching instructions, along with some tips and tricks, patch credits, and more.
The proposal for a project like this was floated as early as October 2025 within the SHIRO! Community Challenge planning channel, but it did not officially kick off until early August of this year. The following approximately two months involved many, many, many hours of looking at hex code, pouring over Japanese text, sprite work, troubleshooting, playtesting, and iterating before it ultimately reached its current ver. 1.0 available for download today.
Monster Slider is now fully localized with all dialogue, menus, sub-menus, warning screens, miscellaneous sprites, and even the credits roll translated into English. The team even added subtitles for the finale dialogue where there was none present in the retail release. The patch also fixes a bug present in the retail release (when played on Satiator and some emulators): The unmodified version of Monster Slider would crash during the opening conversation of Stage 3, forcing the player to press an input to proceed to the gameplay, foregoing the rest of the scene. The exact moment of this glitch is shown below (here using an earlier build of English translation patch).
The patch has been extensively tested on real hardware as well as on various software emulators, including Ymir, Yaba Sanshiro, and Mednafen.
While not officially part of the team, Double Dime (aka Slow Coin) deserves recognition for his extensive help in testing the numerous pre-release iterations of the patch and finding more than his fair share of missed sprites. Thanks!
AI DISCLOSURE
While this patch was the product of untold hours of (volunteer) human labor, AI tooling — specifically Claude — was utilized for the compression and decompression of the game’s sprites. Monster Slider uses a Lempel–Ziv–Storer–Szymanski (LZSS) algorithm variant to store sprite data in its .RES files. Claude also was used to diagnose the source of the aforementioned Stage 3 crash found in the retail release.
While this author cannot speak to specific thought processes of individual team member’s decisions to use this tool — or any tool for that matter — I want to be very clear:
- AI was not used to translate any part of the script.
- AI did not edit any of the sprites.
- AI did not edit any dialogue boxes, menus, sub-menus, etc.
- AI was not used for any decision making.
This Monster Slider translation project was overwhelmingly a human effort, one which produced a patch that its team is immensely proud of. I hope that that is not lost to whoever might be reading this, or the inevitable repackaging of this story.
PATCHING THE GAME
The Monster Slider English Translation Patch GitHub repo includes the following patching instructions, which have been reproduced here for your convenience:
- Download an XDelta patcher (i.e. Delta Patcher)
- Unzip patch bundle
- Open ‘DeltaPatcher.exe’
- Using the retail release of Monster Slider, locate “Track 01” (for example: Monster Slider (Japan) (1M) (Track 01).bin)
- For the XDelta patch section, locate the “Monster_Slider_English_Translation_v1.0.xdelta” patch.
- Click ‘Apply Patch’
- If successful, Track 01 will be replaced with the patched track.
The Datt Japan Inc. developed and produced Monster Slider released as a Japanese Saturn exclusive in March 1997. Monster Slider plays somewhat like Puyo Puyo or numerous other action puzzlers of the mid-90’s, but carves out its own identity with its name-sake “slide” mechanic. The playfield is constantly sloped, seeing blocks slide from high to low points. The player controls this slope, able to switch between left or right-trending playfields at the press of a button. The game had a largely middling critical reception, with Weekly Famitsu issuing a 24/40 and Saturn Fan reviewers giving a 6/10 average score.
Monster Slider would receive an arcade conversion, handled by Visco Games, in August 1997. The arcade port stays mostly faithful to the gameplay and general direction of the story but wildly reimagines the game’s visuals and character designs.
Images: GameGear.net
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