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Segagaga Encore: A Fan Recreation for PC - Alpha Footage Released!

Back in June, while scrolling the paragraphs of conversation that populate the Dreamcast-Talk Segagaga forum thread, I came upon a post from a developer known as Rengundo, who mentioned that he was working on recreating the first chapter of Segagaga in Unreal Engine 5. Sharing a short 27-second clip of some gameplay, it looked surprisingly faithful to the original. It was on PC, as opposed to the Sega Dreamcast, but —perhaps most importantly— it was in English!

After getting the chance to recently talk with Tez Okano about Segagaga, my appreciation for his game was at an all-time high. But I was soon hit with the sobering reminder that an English fan translation patch for the game continues to remain a non-starter, despite the community's best efforts. As detailed in the introduction to that interview with Okano-san, technical issues with in-game text hacking has been the main hurdle that has prevented any fan translation patch project of the game from reaching completion.

That was when I found myself wondering about Rengundo's project once again. Replying to a comment on his original video, it turned out he was still working on it. He had encountered some issues with Unreal Engine 5, but had since switched the project over to Godot, and confirmed that an update was due imminently.

A cutscene from Segagaga Encore, which uses Ross O'Reilly's open source translation of Segagaga.

On January 5th, alpha footage of what Rengundo was now calling "Segagaga Encore" appeared on YouTube, and well, it's looking really impressive! In the new engine, Rengundo had not only managed to effectively recreate the game's distinct graphical look and "Development Studio A" area, but also its opening cutscenes (complete with English dubbing), and its RPG battle system — all in widescreen. This remake will also feature modern quality-of-life improvements like free movement and cinematic camera angles. If you want to see it for yourself, I have embedded the video below.

While we all obviously want a fan translation patch of Segagaga to be released someday for the Dreamcast, this outside-the-box approach of delivering at least something playable in English —in this case the first chapter— is certainly not something to be sniffed at, especially when it looks this good. Intrigued to learn more, I got in touch with Rengundo to ask him all about the Segagaga Encore project.

DCJY: Hi Rengundo, thanks for agreeing to answer our pressing questions about your Segagaga Encore project. We're really loving what we've seen so far, and are excited to get into the ins and outs of the project with you. First though, we must ask: when was the first time you encountered Segagaga? What was it that drew you to the game?

Rengundo: Thanks for inviting me to answer these questions! I first heard about Segagaga in early 2023 while looking around forums for interesting games to potentially translate. The strange name immediately caught my attention, and the more I learned about it, the more intrigued I became. I’m not sure there’s anything quite like it. It’s this wonderfully self-deprecating, meta take on Sega’s own struggles at the time, where two high schoolers are tasked with saving the company from bankruptcy. 

What truly fascinates me is the way Segagaga blends humor and commentary on the gaming industry. For instance, its “battle system” revolves around arguing with Sega employees. After each battle, there’s a chance to negotiate salaries with the employees, trying to bring them onto your team at the lowest possible rate to maximize your budget. A lot of its jabs at industry practices, like rushing out unfinished titles to boost sales during high demand, still feel very relevant today. It’s such an interesting little game that it’s impossible for me to ignore.

Various technical hurdles with hacking Segagaga have been blamed for why we don't have an English fan translation patch for it already. Was your recreation of Segagaga on PC an attempt to take matters into your own hands and bypass the roadblocks that face the Dreamcast version?

Absolutely. By the time I learned about Segagaga, there was some decent progress on many of the hurdles, though there were notable issues that still remained. As someone new to the Dreamcast modding scene, and seeing the nearly two decades of failed attempts to make an English version, I didn’t feel confident in my ability to create a translation patch. I had the idea of making the game in Unreal Engine, as it didn’t seem too logically complicated if I only focused on the RPG parts. I decided to recreate the first chapter of the game, hoping that part of the game being playable in English could build interest and support for patch efforts. 

For the earliest version, I ripped the player’s sprites from VRAM to make a sprite sheet for him and put some basic movement code together. I shelved the project when new people announced they were working on a translation patch. But after more than a year with no updates from them, I decided to pick it back up and have been making progress since.

But what's a good idea to a console that can play DVDs?

For laymen (like me!) could you explain what the process is for recreating a game like Segagaga in one of these modern engines?

The first part was extracting any relevant assets from Segagaga, such as 3D models, character busts, HUD elements, sprites, backgrounds, videos, you name it. Fortunately, the Dreamcast community has created a lot of robust tools that made it relatively straightforward for a novice like me to learn the process and gather everything I needed. 

Since this is also a translation project, there’s a huge amount of text to manage, ranging from main story dialogue to battle text pools. There are a lot of great digital text translations that have been released with varying levels of completion. The Segagaga open-source translation project is notable here as I used a modified version of it for much of the dialogue, refining it to my needs and translating any missing pieces myself. Some text is also baked into textures, which I replace in Photoshop. 

I’m creating a partial HD version, so many assets need to be upscaled. This can be tricky because the originals are low-resolution, causing issues like text getting messed up and layered elements of the character busts not aligning properly when upscaled. Cleaning up these assets has become a significant part of the development process. 

The biggest piece of the puzzle is recreating the underlying systems of Segagaga from scratch. I take a purely observational approach, and I’ll use the battle system as an example. I’ll play through battles in the original game extensively, noting all aspects of it, such as damage dealt, crit rates, escape chances, etc. I look for patterns, then try to replicate those behaviors in the modern engine until I’m getting results that match closely. This is an ongoing cycle of testing, tweaking, and retesting to ensure the new version feels faithful to the Dreamcast original. Ultimately the core idea is to reconstruct Segagaga piece by piece.

Well, I'm writing this article, aren't I?

You started development in Unreal Engine 5 but eventually moved to Godot. What technical hurdles did you run into that required you to switch up game engines?

My decision to switch from Unreal Engine to Godot came down to two major headaches. First, I struggled with corruption issues, which I think were caused by improper version control early in development. The project would crash frequently and take multiple tries to open. Even so, I decided to stick with it for a while since it compiled fine, and I didn’t want to start over. 

The second (and bigger) hurdle was the plugin I used as the basis of my dialogue system. Longer dialogue sequences kept ending prematurely, so I updated to the latest version, but that introduced a bug where entire dialogue sequences would disappear. A hotfix was pushed, though that made things even worse, preventing my project from opening at all. Not long after, the developer stopped supporting the plugin, meaning I would have to rebuild the dialogue system from the ground up. 

With a corrupted project and a broken dialogue system, starting fresh seemed like the best call. I was also pretty burned out on Unreal after what happened, so I looked for alternatives and settled on Godot. It’s more streamlined for what I need, and it let me surpass my old progress faster than I expected. Performance is technically a bit worse than the Unreal version (which has some compression black magic going on), but Segagaga doesn’t need blisteringly high frame rates, so I’m fine with it. Overall, moving to Godot has proven to be a great decision for my workflow and the project’s future.

Segagaga Encore: now in Godot and lookin' good!

Which part of developing this project has proved to be the most fun?

I’ve definitely had a lot of fun working on this project. At one point I put my friend as an NPC into the development studio, which was a highlight. I’ve also run into some amusing glitches and things I overlooked. Still, my favorite moments are those breakthroughs when a system finally clicks, like finishing a new battle mechanic and realizing it feels like Segagaga. Those small victories keep things exciting and motivate me to tackle the next challenge.

Which part of Segagaga was the hardest to recreate?

I’d say the hardest part has been recreating the battle system. There are a lot of interwoven elements involved, and it’s by far the most time-consuming area in terms of setting up assets. The player character, for instance, is a 2D skeletal mesh. The process of setting this up involves extracting each individual part, cleaning it up, rigging it, and then animating it. That alone includes a variety of different poses, and each one needs the same painstaking process. 

On top of that, the battle system demands more new translation work than any other portion, and it also breaks some of the conventions used by the rest of the SGGG dialogue system. Add the variability each action has, and this all culminates into the most complex and labor-intensive section to rebuild.

The cost of living crisis really is a bastard.

For your latest update, you worked with voice actors. What was that process like?

I put out a casting call for the eight roles needed, complete with test lines and references of the original characters. To be honest, I was expecting maybe a handful of submissions at most, given how niche this game is, but to my surprise, I got around 40 submissions. Some of the pronunciations of "Segagaga" were pretty inventive!

With help from a few friends, I narrowed it down to the voice actors who’d ultimately take on the roles. Everyone was great to work with, having quick responses, minimal rerecords, and really embodying their characters. I ended up mastering their lines with a touch of early 2000s-style vocal compression to keep the audio consistent and give it that Dreamcast-era feel. Hearing these characters speak in English for the first time made the game feel far more like a true localized version, which was exciting to finally experience.

So what’s the current progress of the first chapter you’re working on? When can people expect to be able to play it?

Chapter one is coming along nicely, but I don’t have a firm release date yet. Game development isn’t a linear process, and I’d rather avoid the trend of Segagaga projects overpromising and under-delivering. I also plan to handle beta testing privately, so I’ll only release it publicly once it’s fully polished. If I had to guess, I’d say sometime between late Q1 and mid Q2 this year, but I’ll have a more concrete date closer to the finish line.

Can we expect more from the Segagaga Encore project in the future?

I fully intend on finishing the original goal of recreating the first chapter. Beyond that, I’m honestly not sure where Segagaga Encore will go. The way I see it, a proper Segagaga translation patch is going to happen whether we see it in the next five months or the next five years. When that happens, this project will have served its purpose of being a bridge between not being able to experience the game and having it fully playable in English. Still, even outside the realm of translation, I think there's merit in having the basis of a standalone, PC-based version of the game. Maybe in the future, I could go the full remake route and overhaul the game, or it could be made into a fan spiritual successor. As a solo developer, I don’t currently have the resources to explore those larger ambitions, though. So for now, look forward to chapter one, and we’ll see where Segagaga Encore can, or should, go next.

***

Thanks again to Rengundo for answering our questions. I personally believe Segagaga Encore definitely has amazing potential as a project, but I totally respect Rengundo's angle of prioritising it as more of a proof of concept to attract interest and support for a proper Dreamcast translation project. You can view the alpha footage here, but be sure to follow Rengundo too. What do you think of what Rengundo has recreated so far? Would you play an english Segagaga translation even if it was on PC? Let us know in the comments below or on social media.

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