Big news for Saturn fans was shared this week in the SHIRO! Discord: Two Japanese-exclusive, online-only Saturn titles thought lost to time have been cracked open by one of the legendary hackers of the Dreamcast scene, Shuouma.
That’s right, Saturn fans, the first console MMORPG, Dragon’s Dream, and the virtual life simulation, Habitat II, soon will be not only revived but accessible to a global audience for the first time ever.
As of this writing, nothing has been publicly shared by Shuouma himself — with info around the project relayed to Joe (aka Sega RPG FAN aka eaudunord) via direct message. SHIRO! naturally had some questions for Joe.
When asked if Shuouma was working on the PC or Saturn version of Dragon’s Dream and Habitat II — or if there was any difference between the versions at all — Joe replied:
“Saturn. PC is different but I don’t know how different”
Shuouma did use machine translation for the Culdcept Second server restoration and English translation patch released this past September, covered here by Dreamcast Live, so we were naturally curious what role AI had/was potentially playing in this current project.
“He asked if he should AI slop translate it and I said there would probably be people willing to work on it properly” — Joe
Shuouma needs help, dear readers. Calling all translators.
Further details on the project emerged the following day:
This news elicited some mixed reactions, as it would seem that the original scenarios of Dragon’s Dream will remain a mystery to Western Saturn fans. But this does open the doors for other, new experiences:
One could dream of an actively supported Saturn fan MMO built from the bones of Dragon’s Dream, but that is simply a hypothetical at this moment.
It remains unclear if the content of Habitat II remains server-locked in a similar manner to Dragon’s Dream. We need to wait and see.
SHIRO! will follow the development of this project closely, so look forward to more coverage in the future!
Shuouma has made a name for himself in the Dreamcast scene with a hefty portfolio of server restoration projects, more than a dozen of them to be precise. This would appear to be his first foray into Saturn hacking, but Joe has assured us that Shuouma is, in fact, “actually a big Saturn fan” and expressed that “it was a nice break from DC.” Welcome to the fifth generation, Shuouma, happy to have you.
If you would like to learn more about Dragon’s Dream, SHIRO! has you covered.
Dragon’s Dream was actually not the first collaboration between Sega and Fujitsu on the Saturn, that honor goes to the comparatively humble virtual life game, Habitat II. Released as Japanese-exclusive, non-retail pack-in with the Saturn Keyboard in July 1997, Habitat II placed players in a simulated, persistent universe. Here players, for a monthly fee, would explore the world of Elysium with their custom avatars, all the while shopping, playing simple mini-games, and talking with other users in local area chatrooms.
The servers for both Dragon’s Dream and Habitat II were shut down in the latter half of 1999.
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