Sakura Wars for the Sega Saturn is now available for the first time ever to be played in English! Link to patch provided below.
History
Originally released in 1996, Sakura Wars has remained one of Sega's most popular and beloved games that never made it over to Western shores. It was a hit in Japan when it was released and went on to garner five more sequels, the most recent of which came out on December 12th 2019.
Story Summary
"Set in a fictionalized version of the Taishō period, the game follows the exploits of the Imperial Combat Revue, a military unit dedicated to fighting supernatural threats against Tokyo while maintaining their cover as a theater troupe. Imperial Japanese Navy Ensign Ichiro Ogami is assigned as leader of its all-female Flower Division, a group of women with magical abilities which defends Tokyo against demon attacks using steam-powered armor called Koubu. He becomes embroiled in both the group's latest conflict with the Hive of Darkness and the personal lives of its members. " ~ From Wikipedia
Trailers
English Patch Launch Trailer:
Sega Saturn Shiro!'s video covering the game and the patch:
Screenshots:
Patch
The patch can be downloaded at here.
As with any patch, you will need an original copy of the game which you can then rip and patch. The game has been tested using both the Mednafen emulator as well as on actual Saturn hardware. Patching instructions are provided in the patch zip file within the readme.
This is list of everything has been translated&patched in the game. It's basically the entire game save the end credits.
Patch History
Sakura Wars has had a long history of attempted patches. There were at least two previous attempts based on the Russian PC version of the game.
The Saturn version started off as a new attempt to patch this game, this time on the Sega Saturn itself. I announced this on Twitter on May 10[SUP]th[/SUP] 2018. About eight months in, the main story text was almost half way done. Other technical hurdles such as image patching, battle dialog, battle menus, and some system menus were also partly done.
Although there was still a ton of text still remaining to be translated, it was coming along really well mostly due to the work of MatatabiMitsu and CrouchingMouse. Then about eight months into the project, it got another another boost of energy when cj_iwakura reached out to me. As it happened, he along with his team had been working on translating the PC version for some time. At this point we decided to share each others work which gave us access to his translators Nezumi and Schlomo. Those two, combined with translators from the Saturn team blazed through the rest of the untranslated text over the next several months.
Later, the team grew larger as trekkiesunite118, BowlOfLentils, and Joqu joined in. TrekkiesUnite118 was able to pull of an amazing feat of actually adding subtitles to all of the movies and taking on other hacking tasks which to this point had seemed out of reach. This included two of the minigames which were originally going to be left in Japanese (Maria's and Kanna's minigames), and helped me figure out how to patch the load screens and the intro logos. The final version of the minigames and the intro-logo are mostly the work of trekkiesunite118. BowlOfLentils, cj_iwakura, and several others on the team went through the whole game during the testing phase with a fine-tooth comb editing lines of text and point out bugs. Joqu created translated versions of the load screens, title screens, and other images that none of us other had the artistic skill or talent to do. At the end of it all, I believe this is almost a professional level product when it comes to the polish and the sheer amount of data that was modified. Thank you to everyone involved and I hope you all enjoy the game!
Project Website:
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