Hey, everybody. Sorry to be barging in and doing the first-post-is-a-project-plug thing, but this is pretty much the place for Saturn translations, so I figured it'd be a lot nicer to let you all know about it personally instead of leaving it to someone else to repost it...
So, I've just completed and released a translation for Yumimi Mix Remix. Download it here! Yumimi Mix Remix - stargood
The source code is available on Github, for the curious: GitHub - suppertails66/yumimiremixtools: Translation tools for Yumimi Mix Remix
Here's a video of the start of the game, which probably explains it far better than any of my ravings:
For those not familiar with this game, which is probably just about everyone, it's the Saturn port of Yumimi Mix, an adventure game for the Mega-CD by Game Arts (developer of Lunar/Grandia) in collaboration with popular shoujo manga artist Izumi Takemoto. It's billed as an "interactive comic", though I think that's rather underselling it -- it's basically a multiple-choice anime, with everything fully voice-acted and no text outside of menus. The original Mega-CD game was quite a remarkable achievement technically and artistically, boasting some of the finest animation seen on the console (if you've ever played the MCD version of Lunar: Eternal Blue, Yumimi Mix's engine is what powers the cutscenes). Much of the game frankly defies explanation and has to be seen to be believed; Izumi Takemoto's sensibilities are very bizarre, and I'll just say that things get very strange very fast.
As you might imagine, the fact that the game is basically an interactive anime with tons of voice acting and almost no text made it slightly difficult from a hacking and translation perspective. I built an extensive subtitling system for it that aims to make the game look as much like a subtitled anime as possible. It even includes some extras like allowing Japanese honorifics to be disabled through an in-game menu (please make note of this before complaining it's a "weeb translation"!).
This project has technically been in the works for most of five years, though only active for a fraction of it. I intially started hacking work on the MCD version of the game back in 2017, but couldn't find a translator at the time and ultimately had to give up on it. In the end, I never could get anyone else to translate it, but after years of studying Japanese, I eventually reached the point where I felt I was capable of handling it myself. So I did! I also moved the project over to the Saturn version, since it removed almost all limiting technical factors from the equation. All in all, it was a whole lot of work, but I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out.
Now, this is basically a one-to-one port of a Mega-CD game, so if you go into this expecting anything jaw-dropping by Saturn standards, you'll be sorely disappointed. But the Saturn version was by far the best option for translating it, so that's what I used. Try to judge it by the standards of the previous generation...please? 🙁
As a final caveat: This hasn't been tested on real Saturn hardware because I don't have the ability to do so, so if you try...well, good luck, and let me know if it actually works. As noted in the readme, I also didn't region patch it, so you might have to do that yourself depending on your setup. In any case, this definitely runs fine on Mednafen and at least seems to work on Yabause, though I didn't test that thoroughly.
Well, that's all I've got. I know it's not much as a Saturn game, but I hope a few of you will give Yumimi a chance. It really is an excellently made game on every level, and an experience like no other.
So, I've just completed and released a translation for Yumimi Mix Remix. Download it here! Yumimi Mix Remix - stargood
The source code is available on Github, for the curious: GitHub - suppertails66/yumimiremixtools: Translation tools for Yumimi Mix Remix
Here's a video of the start of the game, which probably explains it far better than any of my ravings:
For those not familiar with this game, which is probably just about everyone, it's the Saturn port of Yumimi Mix, an adventure game for the Mega-CD by Game Arts (developer of Lunar/Grandia) in collaboration with popular shoujo manga artist Izumi Takemoto. It's billed as an "interactive comic", though I think that's rather underselling it -- it's basically a multiple-choice anime, with everything fully voice-acted and no text outside of menus. The original Mega-CD game was quite a remarkable achievement technically and artistically, boasting some of the finest animation seen on the console (if you've ever played the MCD version of Lunar: Eternal Blue, Yumimi Mix's engine is what powers the cutscenes). Much of the game frankly defies explanation and has to be seen to be believed; Izumi Takemoto's sensibilities are very bizarre, and I'll just say that things get very strange very fast.
As you might imagine, the fact that the game is basically an interactive anime with tons of voice acting and almost no text made it slightly difficult from a hacking and translation perspective. I built an extensive subtitling system for it that aims to make the game look as much like a subtitled anime as possible. It even includes some extras like allowing Japanese honorifics to be disabled through an in-game menu (please make note of this before complaining it's a "weeb translation"!).
This project has technically been in the works for most of five years, though only active for a fraction of it. I intially started hacking work on the MCD version of the game back in 2017, but couldn't find a translator at the time and ultimately had to give up on it. In the end, I never could get anyone else to translate it, but after years of studying Japanese, I eventually reached the point where I felt I was capable of handling it myself. So I did! I also moved the project over to the Saturn version, since it removed almost all limiting technical factors from the equation. All in all, it was a whole lot of work, but I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out.
Now, this is basically a one-to-one port of a Mega-CD game, so if you go into this expecting anything jaw-dropping by Saturn standards, you'll be sorely disappointed. But the Saturn version was by far the best option for translating it, so that's what I used. Try to judge it by the standards of the previous generation...please? 🙁
As a final caveat: This hasn't been tested on real Saturn hardware because I don't have the ability to do so, so if you try...well, good luck, and let me know if it actually works. As noted in the readme, I also didn't region patch it, so you might have to do that yourself depending on your setup. In any case, this definitely runs fine on Mednafen and at least seems to work on Yabause, though I didn't test that thoroughly.
Well, that's all I've got. I know it's not much as a Saturn game, but I hope a few of you will give Yumimi a chance. It really is an excellently made game on every level, and an experience like no other.
