Segagaga has Finally Been Translated into English — Here's How to Play It (and How it was Achieved!)

The headline you see above is not some form of freaky clickbait, nor is it a two-month-early April Fool’s prank. It is, however, signalling one of the biggest pieces of Sega Dreamcast news that we will probably ever report here on this website. Some thought it would never happen, but the day has finally arrived: Segagaga is now playable in English, thanks to the work of a team of dedicated fans led by Exxistance. If you just want to know how to play the translation, skip to the end of this article, where you will find a link to a download and instructions on how to apply the patch to your existing disc image of Segagaga. But we felt it was important to document the technical feats which made this holy-grail translation possible — and to ensure that those responsible receive the recognition they deserve. So read on if you want to learn more!

If you’ve spent more than ten minutes in Dreamcast fan circles, you’ll undoubtedly be aware of Segagaga, a 2001 Japan-exclusive RPG that tasks players with running Sega as it tries to regain market share against its main competitor, DOGMA (Sony, basically). Developed by Hitmaker and published by Sega, the game is well known for its wacky humour (much of it at Sega’s own expense) as well as its abundance of references to the company’s past IPs. Because of this, Segagaga has retained an almost mythical quality among Western Dreamcast fans, and from the moment it became clear the game wouldn’t be released outside of Japan, it has without a doubt been the most anticipated English translation of any game in the console’s library.

But as I'm sure you're aware, Segagaga's translation journey has been wrought with roadblocks. Many projects have started up over the years, only to inevitably fizzle out. But as we previously mentioned at the top of our interview with Segagaga’s creator, Tez Okano, the reason for the game’s multiple-decade stint in translation hell wasn’t due to a shortage of skilled translators capable of handling its distinctly Japanese humour, but rather a series of daunting technical hurdles.

The primary challenge stemmed from Segagaga's use of the Dreamcast’s BIOS font, as editing it was thought to be impossible for the longest time. What's more, the game only supported Shift-JIS encoding for text, a common two-byte format for Japanese language that was widely used in video games of the era (and still is today, though typically alongside ASCII or UTF support). Without changing the game to retrieve narrower Latin alphabet characters from the BIOS instead, the original Shift-JIS would leave the in-game text looking horrible, and too big to fit in numerous places.

Demonstration of Shift-JIS encoding, provided by Derek Pascarella.

By contrast, many other Japanese Dreamcast titles rely on their own internal font sheets, unique to each game, meaning that savvy hackers can go in and swap a Japanese font sheet for an English one, adjusting spacing between characters, along with other necessary tweaks. Because of this, these games were able to see successful translations much sooner, and form the majority of past fan translations we've seen for the console over the years. 

After two decades of unsuccessful attempts at translating Segagaga, it was time to bring in the big guns. Cracking a technical nut this tough required a meeting of some of the most talented minds the Dreamcast scene has to offer, including megavolt85, mr.nobody, VincentNL, Derek Pascarella, and madsheep. If it weren’t for them, I can only imagine how much longer it would have taken for us to see this translation become a reality… perhaps another decade?

In steps megavolt85, hacker extraordinaire, who was one of two previously responsible for making it possible for Atomiswave games to be ported to Dreamcast. On megavolt's input, Derek Pascarella explains:

"megavolt85 modified Segagaga to interpret ASCII, the single-byte encoding commonly used for the Latin alphabet. Not only that, but he modified the game to read from the ASCII section of the BIOS font, rather than the Shift-JIS section."

The next step was to make it so that ASCII from the BIOS could be edited. This was where Derek worked his magic, and shares how he made it happen:

"Segagaga speaks directly to the Dreamcast’s BIOS when it comes time to render text on screen. After megavolt85 did all of the assembly hacking to force the game to interpret ASCII-encoded text and then pull from the ASCII section of the BIOS font (rather than Shift-JIS), I started poking around a bit to see how it all worked. What I discovered is that the game actually copies the entirety of the BIOS font into RAM pretty near the location where the game executable ends! So, I disabled the assembly code that performed this copy, then also disabled the code that null’d out that portion of RAM before doing the copy. I then appended the BIOS font to the end of the game executable, and just like that, the font data was precisely where the game expected it to be, and it could be modified! This came in handy a number of times as font glyphs needed tweaking for optimal appearance."

See how much better ASCII looks in comparison:

Demonstration of ASCII encoding, provided by Derek Pascarella.

It appeared that the first-documented Segagaga translation patch project —which began in 2006— did manage to make progress in this regard, but unfortunately wouldn't see an update past 2013. While nothing technical from that previous project would make it into this one, project lead and texture artist Exxistance reveals that he was still able to utilise a wealth of other archived community resources.

"What was helpful [...] were the various artefacts people left on the internet, including the FAQs on GameFAQs that were created back in the mid-00s. Those were especially useful in helping me get my bearings as I initially worked through the game. Other helpful resources included The1Ross’ Open Source Translation Project, as well as various YouTube videos like Korone’s full playthrough of the game."

It was actually on a Dreamcast-Talk forum thread initially created to share The1Ross' project, where Exxistance would post his English-translated edits of Segagaga's textures. From there, mr.nobody —who previously worked on the English fan translation of Dreamcast horror title Seven Mansions— would get in contact with Exxistance.

"mr.nobody was the first person to reach out and help with textures, and he really became the glue that brought all the project players together. When I started, I was mostly just posting texture updates into the void on Dreamcast-Talk. But once mr.nobody reached out to help with textures, the project began to snowball. At first, we coordinated texture work through Google Sheets, but then he created a Discord server that brought the whole team together. One thing I want to highlight is that mr.nobody handled all of the enemy textures, and he brought a wonderful attention to detail to everything he did. For example, the enemy “Influenza” has a “face” drawn on it that is the Japanese onomatopoeia for "coughing," mr.nobody cleverly updated the face to read “flu” in English while still looking like a face. Just brilliant! Additionally, mr.nobody helped with the editing of the videos, like masking off Japanese text and such."

Left: original art for "Influenza".
Right: mr.nobody's excellent "flu" face edit.

VincentNL, known around these parts for his stellar work on the Rent-A-Hero No.1 English fan translation, would provide some vital input to make Exxistance and mr.nobody's texture work... work.

"VincentNL was vital in building the texture container extractors and repackers. Without his work on those tools, all of the texture work would have just been sitting there, waiting for someone to come along and make it usable. His texture tool, “SGGGE,” made replacing a texture with a simple edited .png an absolute breeze."

VincentNL was also the reason you'll be able to play Segagaga's infamous shoot 'em up section with English subtitles. Duralumin, who worked on patches for Nakoruru and Capcom Vs SNK 2, was the one who provided the English translation for this section. This was an important addition to the patch, since the section features an exchange between two major characters that delivers some key backstory. Derek offered some technical insight into VincentNL’s contribution to Segagaga’s shmup section:

“This hack is incredibly clever. Segagaga, like a wealth of other Dreamcast games, leaves behind debug code, including a debug font. This means there are assembly functions at the ready that hackers can call on to render text on screen however and whenever they'd like. VincentNL wrote a tool that allowed the team to enter subtitle text and its timing, and then automatically inject code to display said subtitle text at the right time, all the while leveraging that in-game debugger text rendering routine.”

madsheep, who developed one of the earliest tools to make building SD cards for GDEMU a doddle, was heavily involved in the technical side of the project. Exxistance had the following to say about madsheep’s involvement: 

"madsheep built multiple tools, including the primary main binary translation tool with a nice GUI. This made updating text in the main binary as simple as finding the text, changing it, and clicking “Save,” while the tool automatically relocated the text to the appropriate new area in the main binary and updated pointers as needed. It was actually madsheep’s “MES Tool” that pushed me to jump in and work on the text, since I had already done a fair amount of texture work and wanted to tackle something different. On top of that, madsheep helped solve many smaller issues on the project, including a problem we had with the spacing of magic spell costs."

Once some of the toughest technical hurdles were stomped out, Exxistance and his team could finally focus on translating the game into English. A big name he wanted to shout out here was Sixfortyfive, who handled text editing and shared a lot of in-depth knowledge about the game.

"Sixfortyfive reached out to me on Twitter and mentioned that he had been part of one of the earlier translation efforts, and he volunteered to help with testing. It quickly became obvious, though, that his knowledge of SGGG is vast — he likely understands how the SIM elements of the game work better than any other English-language resource I’ve encountered. Because of that, he also contributed heavily to the text editing, providing a lot of excellent recommendations that helped us further polish the translation."

That’s not to say there weren’t still challenges to overcome on both the translation and technical side. For Exxistance, a few came to mind:

"For me, there were a few challenging areas. First was the Negotiation Q&A portion, where you’re supposed to choose the answer that you think the enemy that you’re negotiating with would say, and many of the questions and answers are humorous and/or esoteric. So translating these in a way that didn’t butcher their original intent but also fit within the physical character limits we had was a tight rope to walk. Plus, there’s over 1,000 combinations of these, so from a sheer time perspective, I think it took me a month and a half to work through them. 

The Random Name Generator was tough to translate because the original combines traditional Japanese surnames with places or things. Translating them into English was easy enough, but then there wasn’t enough physical space for the final combinations (which can only have 17 characters). So these had to be truncated in a way that made sense but also kept a bit of the ridiculousness of the combinations. 

Another challenging aspect was often researching 20-30 year old gaming references and coordinating with the translation reviewers to ensure we got them right. Especially in the archives, there’s a lot of commentary from what I presume is Okano, with many references that predate my jump-in point in gaming. So ensuring that we thoroughly researched a particular reference and translated it correctly was big."

Something important that should be clarified before we move on is that machine translation (specifically a combination of DeepL and ChatGPT 4o/4.5) was used during the initial hacking phase for testing purposes. Once it was time to translate the game proper, multiple human translators then took over. They spent many months working on the translation you see in the final release. This included researching and pinning down the game’s many references. For more of an in-depth explanation on this from Exxistance, click here.

If you’ve made it this far, the wait is almost over — you’re just about ready to download the English translation patch for Segagaga. The game has built up a legendary reputation among English-speaking fans over the years. Exxistance shares his idea of what you can expect:

"I suspect that many people may think SGGG is like your traditional 20-30 hour JRPG with light simulation elements. It’s really a mish-mash of things, more akin to a visual novel/RPG/simulator, and I actually think that’s what makes it hold up very well today. The game isn’t overly long and it’s meant to be played multiple times. The game also sprinkles mini-games throughout so that you’re never just doing the same thing the whole time. And it included forward-thinking elements like skipping random battles, a feature I don’t think we really saw in many games until the past decade. 

I think people can expect a very humorous, light-hearted RPG that shines as a love letter to SEGA, otaku culture, and the game development profession."

So, the time has finally come to play the English translation of Segagaga! Here's what you need to do:

1. Go to the translation project’s GitHub page and download the patch.
2. Follow the relevant patching instructions in the ReadMe to patch your existing Segagaga disc image (.GDI or .CDI).
3. Once complete, you can load your patched .GDI onto a Dreamcast ODE (such as GDEMU, MODE, etc.) or play it on an emulator. If you patched a .CDI, you can burn it to a CD‑R and pop it into your Dreamcast. If you’re unsure how to burn Dreamcast games, there are plenty of step‑by‑step tutorials on YouTube that will walk you through the process.

We hope you enjoy finally getting to experience one of the Sega Dreamcast’s most legendary Japanese games in English! If this is your first time playing Segagaga, let us know in the comments what you think of it! 

Watch this awesome trailer from our pals at Sega Saturn, SHIRO! for +100 hype!

Project Justice's Japanese-Exclusive Board Game Mode Has Been Translated into English

Despite Capcom's Project Justice: Rival Schools 2 being one of the pricier Sega Dreamcast games, that hasn’t stopped fans from finding other ways to experience its 3D brawling action. These days, it can be enjoyed for a far more reasonable price by picking up Capcom Fighting Collection 2. For those who want to keep it strictly Dreamcast, the much cheaper Japanese version (known as Moero! Justice Gakuen) is an option.

Players who did pick up that Japanese release for their Dreamcasts will have encountered an exclusive “board game” mode that was stripped from Western versions, likely due to the extensive work it would have required to localise. This mode lets players create their own character and explore a giant game board, occasionally getting into bouts determined by their character's stats.

Recently, a fan translator known as Billy Monks announced he was working on translating this unique mode into English, and has released the first version of his patch today. Some text and textures are still to be worked on, but he says the mode has been translated to a state that is easy enough to play through for those who want to finally give it a try. Of course, this is the only part of the game Billy has translated into English, but if you want to play any of the other modes, you can simply switch to the US or PAL version.

To play this translation, simply head to the project's GitHub page, download the patch, and use Derek Pascarella's Universal Dreamcast Patcher to apply it to your existing Japanese disc image of Project Justice.

New Dreamcast Fan Translations: Macross M3 and Hello Kitty Games Now Playable in English

A few new English fan translations of Japanese Sega Dreamcast games slid across my desk over the Christmas/New Year period. I acknowledged them, nodded my head. “That’s cool,” I thought, then went back to tucking into leftover turkey sandwiches and tubs of Celebrations (I swear they've made those tubs smaller, the cheap bastards). Now I'm nicely rested up, let's take a look at them.

Macross M3

First up, we had a patch for Macross M3 drop on Christmas Eve from NetsuiAya. I know little about Macross, really, but I do know that the fans are very passionate. The beauty of fan communities like Macross's, is that in their efforts to consume every piece of media associated with it, they’ll work their arses off to bring translation projects like this one to life — even if they don’t necessarily have much interest in the Dreamcast to begin with.

Developed by Shoeisha, Macross M3 is a flight/mech combat game that has players assume the roles of various pilots from across the franchise's vast timeline, gunning down enemies across eight different episodes. All of this is interspersed with plenty of character dialogue, which is the main reason why you'll be wanting to get NetsuiAya's patch, as the flying sections are completely playable without having to know Japanese.

Anyway, if you want to give this translation a go, you can download the patch here. Use the Universal Dreamcast Patcher tool to apply it to an existing disc image of the game. There is also a "colour accuracy mod" available for the true Macross heads, which swaps the colours of two of the mechs that for some reason were incorrect in the original release.

A Trio of Hello Kitty games

If you’re a raging fan of Japan’s favourite mouthless feline, then you’re in luck: not one, not two, but three Hello Kitty Dreamcast games are now playable in English. All three were developed by Sega themselves, and while they may be basic puzzlers, they're bloody charming. They are Lovely Fruit Park, Magical Block, and Waku Waku Cookies. Thanks to blashy101 for the translations.

Lovely Fruit Park is an adaptation of Colony, a puzzle game created by Midnight Synergy, that was later reskinned for older audiences into Get!! Colonies. Magical Block draws inspiration from the arcade classic Pengo, and sees Hello Kitty flinging blocks at ghosts. Finally, Waku Waku Cookies doesn't seem to be based on any specific puzzle game, but focuses on Hello Kitty stacking up and matching cookies.

She ain't afraid of no ghost.

To grab these translations, just head to their respective repositories (Lovely Fruit Park, Magical Block, Waku Waku Cookies) and follow the instructions to patch each one. There is an issue with playing Magical Block on real hardware using the current main download, so look for Derek Pascarella's fix in the issues section.

***

What a lovely way to shake off those January blues. Thanks go out to our pal Derek for making us aware of all of these translations. Credit to CDRomance for all the screenshots.

Sega Dreamcast Visual Novel "Di Gi Charat Fantasy" has been Translated into English!

Hey kids! Do you like visual novels? …What’s a visual novel, you ask? Honestly, I don’t blame you for not knowing. When it comes to video game genres, these things are nicher than even the Sega Dreamcast itself. Well, Di Gi Charat Fantasy is a visual novel, and it's the latest English fan translation project to come our way from hacker extraordinaire —and good friend of the Junkyard— Derek Pascarella, along with a team of other talented individuals. 

Di Gi Charat Fantasy will be the the second officially released Dreamcast visual novel to receive an English fan translation patch, the first being Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me (also released by Derek et al) which received its updated 1.3 patch back in June.

Originally released exclusively in Japan on PC in early 2001, with a Dreamcast port following later that year, Di Gi Charat Fantasy presents an alternate storyline to Di Gi Charat, an anime and manga series I remember being fairly prevalent in the late-90s to early 2000s. The game was then ported to PlayStation 2 with some additional content as Di Gi Charat Fantasy Excellent. This PS2 port received an English fan translation back in October from Gopicolo, and serves as the basis for Derek's patch for Dreamcast.

Here's a little background provided by Derek on Di Gi Charat, and what you can expect from the plot of the game...

"The early anime [of Di Gi Charat] is set inside Gamers, a real retail chain in Japan that sells character goods and pop-culture media, with the main store in Akihabara. Dejiko, Puchiko, and their floating companion Gema work at Gamers, trade barbs with rival idol La Vie en Rose, and lean into running gags like Dejiko’s signature eye beam attack.

"In 'Di Gi Charat Fantasy' on Dreamcast, players will find themselves pulled from the familiar Gamers setting into Etatia, a separate fantasy world. During a spat at Gamers, Dejiko fires her eye beam, a portal opens, and the whole group is swept away. The player character wakes in a forest with Dejiko, who now has amnesia and a gentler demeanor. From there the story follows a visual novel structure with voiced scenes, character banter, and route-shaping choices as the cast explores Etatia, meets new allies and foes, and works toward restoring Dejiko’s memories and returning home."

Di Gi Charat Fantasy is a pretty standard visual novel. Lots of cutesy anime characters and text to read, with a wide variety of choices to be made that effect the direction of the narrative — with eight different character routes in total. There are also plenty of anime cutscenes in this one, so it's definitely good for existing fans of the series. Despite this, it is still accessible enough for those who haven't engaged with the franchise before.

If you fancy giving Di Gi Charat Fantasy a try, you can head over to its GitHub repository to download the patch. Instructions can be found in there on how to patch an existing GDI of the game. Another handy download that can be found in the repository is a fully completed VMU save. The game locks its "Extras" section until the player has completed all eight story routes, so this downloadable save file will give players immediate access to a cutscene gallery, a video gallery, and a music jukebox. Again, instructions can be found in the GitHub on how to transfer the save to a VMU.

Download Patch (1.0)

I always love to see Japanese Dreamcast games get translated for English-speakers, making them accessible to a whole new audience. Let us know if you'll be giving this one a go in the comments...

Sovietborgs on IndieGoGo, El Dorado Gate Translation, Outtrigger Back Online - Summer DC News Round-Up

 Credit to Dreamcast Enjoyer for the Virtua Fighter 3TB background.

The scorching summer heatwave has finally dissipated, providing me with the opportunity to sit here and type up a Dreamcast news round-up without melting into my creaky computer chair. Fortunately though, while I've been lounging around outside, Mr Freeze in hand and with the neighbours clingy cat at my feet (Trevor, generally chill, occasionally bitey), others in the scene have been busy cooking up all sorts of goodness. And, really, given the variety on display, there should be something here to suit everyone's tastes...

One of the few consumer goods to have avoided the savage inflation of recent years. I'm still waiting for a response to my enquiry about a DCJY edition though - call me back Mr Freeze!

News from the Indie Front

The stream of commercial indie releases on Sega's swansong console has definitely slowed over the last year or two. During the frenetic period that roughly coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, dozens of titles were being published each year, and the pipeline of forthcoming games was packed. In hindsight, maybe that was never sustainable in the long-run, and it is feasible that the market became a little oversaturated. Who knows, maybe I'll scribble a deeper dive into the phenomenon soon, but regardless, the indie market is certainly far from finished and there is still plenty to look forward to.

Undoubtedly deserving of top billing here is the launch of the Sovietborgs crowdfunder by Dreamcast scene heavyweights Retro Sumus. After blessing us with the sublime Xenocider in 2021, this European development outfit took a well deserved break, but thankfully, last year we began to hear them stirring again. This time around they are pitching a top-down run 'n' gun game set in a parody world where the Soviet Union won the Cold War (and Gorbachev didn't end up starring in Pizza Hut adverts). Ample detail is available on the IndieGoGo page, so I won't regurgitate it all here. The campaign has around three weeks left to run, and the crew are 57% of the way towards their £41k funding goal. Here at the Junkyard we're hoping Retro Sumus are successful - if anyone is deserving of backing, then it is scene-stalwarts like them!

In other recent news, Gladmort, the 2D action-platformer that pays homage to titles like Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Metal Slug and Magician Lord, has been landing on the doormats of nerds all around the globe. Lewis was enamoured with the game's visual panache when he covered its KickStarter launch last year, and now we'll get to see if it lives up to his (and others) expectations. Those who missed the pre-orders but are now interested can pick up a copy from Pixelheart should they wish. I didn't take the plunge on this one, but a couple of our other writers-at-large did - hopefully one will turn out a review (yeah, Mike, that means you, buddy).

The PAL edition of Gladmort. Photo courtesy of MikeRox.

Elsewhere, occasional updates continue to arrive about the handful of other indie titles that are in the oven. A few days ago, the good folks at JKMCorp let us know that Shadow Gangs Zero is making steady progress and that the Dreamcast version is expected to be ready in early 2026. Orc Face Games, who published The Storied Sword earlier this year, are juggling several projects. In late April they announced that Chew Chew Mimic was available to pre-order (for a mere £15 a piece), but their latest news is that the Dream Disc '24 build is tested and "good to go", which hopefully means that discs will be printed soon. Ross of Orc Face has admitted that development of their key title HarleQuest! has slowed as a result of these other initiatives, but nevertheless, transparent KickStarter updates continue to arrive on a steady basis, and the latest post (May 2025) notes that the aim is to get the game to a content-complete state by the end of Q3 2025. Personally, as long as the game gets there in the end, I wouldn't begrudge a few delays - Orc Face are doing a lot of good for the scene and are worthy of some patience...

A work-in-progress version of the Dream Disc '24 demo disc cover.

Patience? Patience?! But Lozz, I here you cry, where is the news on Izzy's Arcade and Terminator 2D No Fate? Well, since Senile Team playfully hinted that Izzy could make a return to the Dreamcast, Roel and his posse have been tight lipped. We really must see that semi-sequel on our beloved console, though. Ditto for Terminator 2D NO FATE, which Bitmap Bureau have declared will be coming to retro consoles (without specifying which).

Whopping Big Translations

Anyone with even a passing interest in the Dreamcast will know that the Japanese market received swathes of titles that never saw the light of day over here in Europe or across the pond in the States. However, thanks to some plucky and selfless people who dedicate hours to producing translations, this disparity has been gradually chipped away at over the years.

Most recently, bigbanana23 (look, that it a perfectly good username alright?) announced that they have begun translating Capcom's multi-volume RPG El Dorado Gate. Spanning seven(!) entries on the Dreamcast, which, if you are lucky enough, you can pull together in a neat slipcase, this title has undoubtedly been high on the wishlists of many for a long time now. Clearly it is still early doors on this project, but the initial signs are looking positive. 

A complete set of El Dorado Gate, including the snazzy green slipcase.

It also fills my heart with joy to see that Exxistance is inching ever closer to being able to release their translation of the iconclastic Segagaga. This month they released a new video which demonstrates how far the project is progressing. Word has it that the aim is to drop this muther as a 25th anniversary patch, which would suggest that 29 March 2026 should be booked off work (and maybe a few days after that actually). Of course, we don't want to apply any undue pressure - when it's ready, it's ready. For now, if you've got Segagaga on the mind, be sure to check out our interview with its creator Tez Okano.

Oh, and how could I make a blog post without mentioning the Italian Stallion himself, Derek Pascarella?! Those with an interest in the technical side of translations should check out his recent social media posts exploring some problem-solving in action on the Love Hina: Suprise Engagement translation (W.I.P).

Definitive English Translation of Capcom Vs SNK 2 releases for Dreamcast!

The Sega Dreamcast just went from being the only sixth-generation console to not have an English localisation of the excellent fighter Capcom Vs SNK 2, to having the best English translation the game has ever seen. This brand new patch comes courtesy of scene stalwart Derek Pascarella, as well as translators Duralumin, Jesuszilla, Tortita, Justin Gibbins, hasnopants, with graphics by rob2d.

This brand new translation patch goes above and beyond simply lifting existing translations from the English PlayStation 2 version. Many of those translations have been fixed and cleaned up, with some replaced entirely for the sake of accuracy. Some character names have also been changed to a combination of Japanese and Western variants, for example, the well-known "Vega", "Balrog" and "M. Bison" mixup has been reflected here to conform with the Western naming conventions we're familiar with. Later-established Western naming conventions for mechanics have also been implemented too, so "blocking" and "original combo finish" have been changed to the much better "parrying" and "custom combo finish" respectively.

But this patch also includes translations for something that never made it outside of the Japanese version: post-battle dialogue. All 48 characters had unique interactions with their team-mates or opponents upon winning a battle. There are around 5,100 instances of this dialogue which were left out of the official English translations in favour of several generic quotes for each character instead.

Of course, because this is a Derek patch, it has to include a "bonus" section. Replacing the now-defunct "Network Mode" on the menu, it will launch a modified version of the Dream Passport web browser where you can find some extra goodies, including a 100% unlocked save file that can be downloaded directly to your VMU to unlock all special characters, modes, etc. There's also an original Japanese TV commercial to watch, which is fully subtitled in English. Then finally, you can read some interviews with the development team that worked on the game, which have been translated into English by Benjamin Roodberg. Neat!

If you've downloaded any of Derek's patches before, you know the drill by now, but if you don't, it's as simple as going to the GitHub repository to download the patch and using his Universal Dreamcast Patcher tool to apply the patch to an existing GDI file of the game. Instructions are there for CDI too. It's all there in the ReadMe. Once patched, you can put it on your Dreamcast's ODE or burn it onto a CD-R.

While I appreciate Capcom Vs SNK 2 is a game that is easily playable without knowledge of Japanese, 2025 is truly a year of turning "what ifs?" into reality for the Dreamcast scene, and we should've got an English localisation of this game for the Dreamcast back in 2001, dammit! Well, better late than never, as they say, and this patch is so good that I've even heard rumours that it may become the de facto version of the game used in tournament circuits... Maybe Capcom should push the May release of their Capcom Fighting Collection 2 back to ensure this version is included!

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.

An Interview with Tetsu "Tez" Okano - the Mastermind behind Cult Dreamcast RPG Segagaga

There isn't a day that goes by in the Sega Dreamcast community where someone doesn't ask when an English fan translation of Hitmaker's 2001 Japan-exclusive Segagaga —the RPG simulation title where you run Sega— is releasing. Since the mid-2000s, a handful of translation projects have been announced, only to inevitably fizzle out, leading some to go as far as to brand the game as "cursed" (see also: “the final boss” and “the Half-Life 3” of Dreamcast translations). But what many may not realise is that rounding up the perfect group of persevering translators to see a translation through to fruition is the least of Segagaga's problems. The biggest hurdle facing any translation patching attempt is actually the way the game was originally programmed to draw text from the Dreamcast's BIOS, as opposed to using a font sheet, like many (successfully translated!) Dreamcast games do. While the core of this issue has been solved by some exceptionally talented hackers in the Dreamcast fan community, there is still much to be worked on.

Photo of the regular Segagaga release. Photo: doceggfan.

But it's only natural that out of all the games, an English translation of Segagaga would be the most sought after by fans of Sega and the Dreamcast alike. Segagaga satirises Sega itself, providing an entertaining tribute to its diverse and beloved back catalogue of franchises and characters, while also not pulling any punches in its portrayal of the then-struggling corporation's various business missteps. Some great tributes have followed since, such as the animated series Sega Hard Girls, and ensemble games like All-Stars Racing Transformed. However, through its brutal honesty and self-awareness, it is Segagaga which stands out the most, not only as a fitting love letter to Sega, but also as a prime example of the rebellious nature the corporation was known for during its time as a console manufacturer.

When it came to masterminding Segagaga, there was truly only one man for the job. Step up Tetsu Okano, aka Tez Okano, aka "Zolger Tetsu", aka "Ichizou Zoruge", aka the director of the best Astro Boy game. Known for his unconventional approach to everything from video games to manga, Okano-san truly took a risk when he set out to create a game that poked fun at the very company he worked for, and we are elated to reveal that we recently got the chance to talk to him all about his career, and of course, Segagaga.

Screenshot of Segagaga. Credit: CDRomance.

Translator extraordinaire Duralumin —who previously assisted with our Kenji Tosaki interview— returns once more to translate Okano-san's answers from Japanese. Laurence Goodchild also deserves a shout out for assisting with the questions and supplying the lovely photos of the Segagaga launch event, scanned from issue 16 of Italian Dreamcast magazine Dreamcast Arena.

But this wouldn't be an interview with Tez Okano if it didn't diverge from the traditional format in some way! When asking Okano-san about his earliest memories of video games, his reply was... a comic? Well, in case you didn't know, in Japan, Okano-san published an autobiographical manga called "8-Bit Chronicles" which covers his formative years as a child discovering the burgeoning world of video games. He supplied us with the first two chapters in Japanese, and Duralumin —who translates manga professionally— proceeded to translate them into English. We have uploaded them to a Google Drive folder so you can read them, which is something I implore you do. The comic is not only an awesome homage to the golden age of video games, but also very amusing.

A small preview of the first page of 8-Bit Chronicles, as translated by Duralumin.

Finally, Okano-san wanted us to stress to you, our audience, that the answers you see below from him are his recollections of events that happened over two decades ago. He wanted to make sure that we clarify that he is not speaking officially on Sega's behalf, just recounting his own memories of the time. With that disclaimer out of the way — the interview!

Photo of Tez Okano. Credit: Sega Retro.

DCJY: Thank you for talking with us, Okano-san! We thought it was only right to start at the beginning, so what are your earliest memories of video games?

Tez Okano: When this is published, I hope you'll share the first chapter of my manga, 8-Bit Chronicles. It covers Space Invaders, Galaxian... I could talk about those games all day! But this is probably the easiest way to understand the story of why I, as well as many other Japanese kids in the late '70s, fell in love with video games.

What led you into a career in the games industry, and how did you eventually join Sega?

When I was still in my college years, I made my debut as a manga artist through Kodansha. However, working as a manga artist, you don't really have any security once your series is over, so I found myself enticed by the gleam of the rising star that was the gaming industry. And of course, Sega at the time was still young, and seeking unconventional talent.

"Morning" magazine, where Tez Okano's early manga work was published. His name can be seen at the top of the woman's right shoulder.

So let's get into Segagaga. It has been documented that you developed the game in secret for two years before presenting it to Sega. What was your reasoning for keeping it a secret?

Many places have a particular culture around satire, parody, and irony, Japan included. However —I understand you’re from England— irony is much less familiar to us in Japan than it is in the UK. And while Sega was a pretty big umbrella, it had no shortage of people who would take issue with self-deprecating parody. You'll also notice there's never been any effort to make, say, a Namcococo or Nintendododo, for example, and that should tell you something. That being said, Sega has always prided itself on doing the crazy stuff that no one else could pull off, and the Segagaga project explored that philosophy to the limit. But, it just wasn't the kind of thing that you wanted to make a show of around the company, and invite all that scrutiny and risk the project's survival.

PlayStation Emulation, Silent Hill 3, Metal Slug, New Indies and more on Dreamcast! - Dreamcast News Round-Up July 2024

It's 2024, we’re now into July, and the SEGA Dreamcast is still not dead. Critics are baffled. "It was supposed to have been declared dead in 2001, dammit!" - some PlayStation 2 owner, probably. In fact, there's been so much Dreamcast news recently that I've found it hard to keep up with it all, so in an effort to convince you all that I'm still in the loop (perhaps not sanity-wise), I've rounded up all the best items of recent news into one post. So, here's everything that has happened in the world of Dreamcast recently...

Indie and Homebrew

Or "bedroom coders" as people used to apparently say back in the '80s. I wouldn't know, as I literally didn't exist. Anyway, this supremely talented bunch are doing some cool stuff with software on the Dreamcast. Let's take a gander.

A huge breakthrough in Dreamcast development...

Credit: Orc Face Games

A few weekends ago, Ross Kilgariff, the Dundee-based maestro behind the highly anticipated Dreamcast indie HarleQuest and head of Orc Face Games, dropped the Junkyard a DM about a big breakthrough in Dreamcast development which will result in a significant performance upgrade for new games being developed for our beloved platform. Take it away, Ross... 

"We (Orc Face Games) recently hired TapamN to get the HarleQuest! engine running as fast as possible. For those who don't know, he's one of the best programmers in the unofficial Dreamcast scene, with over 20 years of experience and he's helping elevate everyone's understanding of the platform. 

While optimising the code, he found a critical bug in the operating system that's used as a basis for many unofficial projects including HarleQuest!, Simulant Engine, Spiral 3D and more. This operating system, KallistiOS, is a community-driven effort to provide re-usable code that makes Dreamcast development easier for everyone.

The issue is quite technical but I'll try to keep it simple. There's a special kind of memory inside the CPU called the cache. It's way faster than RAM, but also way smaller (only 16KB in the Dreamcast's case). Normally the cache works automatically and doesn't need any special programming - it just stores things you've accessed recently so it's faster to get them next time. However, the Dreamcast's CPU has a special feature called OCRAM that lets you take control of half the cache manually. This can let you get great performance, but you need to actually program it. It's not on auto-pilot anymore. 

The bug is that since November last year, OCRAM mode was being enabled by default in KallistiOS. This meant every game was saying "give me manual control over half of the cache" on startup, then simply not using it - in effect being left with only 8KB of automatic cache instead of the full 16KB. 

As soon as we made the KallistiOS community aware of this they got straight to it and fixed the bug within a few hours. Falco Girgis identified the cause and worked with darc and BBHoodsta to coordinate the fix. The developer responsible for the Doom 64 port (jnmartin84) verified the fix and reported that with this change along with another optimisation, the busiest areas of the game don't chug any more and play much more smoothly. 

On one hand, it's unfortunate that the bug occurred in the first place, but the benefit is that all those cool 3D demos and games we've been seeing recently will be able to pull the latest version of KallistiOS and might get an automatic speed boost. 

Hopefully this is one step closer to seeing more high-quality games on the platform. I have a good feeling about 2025."

Thanks to Ross for letting us in on this big development and for supplying us with an explanation. The future sure is bright for Dreamcast game development! Speaking of Ross, last month he put out the first part of a video series showcasing the results of his "What Dreamcast Gamers Want" survey, which is well worth a watch.

Dreamcast Light Gun title Death Crimson 2 has been Translated into English!

For a console that famously championed peripheral use, the Sega Dreamcast sure had slim pickings when it came to games that utilised the light gun. Most notably, the console received arcade-perfect ports of both The House of the Dead 2 and the severely underrated James Bond 'em up Confidential Mission; but what else was there? Those who dared to discover were met with Silent Scope without light gun support, a port of Virtua Cop 2 that was stuck on a disc with a load of poorly emulated Genesis games (unless you imported the standalone Japanese release), a hidden light gun mode in Demolition Racer: No Exit (yes, really), and the Death Crimson series.

Developed by Ecole and released exclusively in Japan in 1999, Death Crimson 2: Meranito no Saidan has the very distinct privilege of being the sequel to a game so notoriously bad that it had a particularly masochistic set of Japanese fans gluing the game's disc into their Sega Saturn so as to make sure the console could never play any other game. Luckily, Ecole did improve, and Death Crimson 2 was received better than its predecessor. Perhaps the most intriguing part about this sequel was the inclusion of a full story mode with almost Resident Evil-esque free-roaming sections where you explore in a third-person perspective outside of the light gun gameplay. While an "improved" version of Death Crimson 2 called Death Crimson OX did receive a Western release (in the USA, at least), it completely dropped the story sections, meaning non-Japanese speakers never got a chance to experience this weird mishmash of gameplay in the English language. 

Well, fret no more, as a fan translation of Death Crimson 2 has just released today! And who translated this Dreamcast light gun oddity, you ask? Well, it's the same guy who did the last English Dreamcast fan translation, too, and many before that! That man being - of course - the ever-busy Derek Pascarella.

With Derek's patch, everything in the game is now translated into English. This includes everything from the story sections, to cutscenes, to textures and graphics; with misspelled English place names (such as street signs) also being corrected to match the official Western release of Death Crimson OX. 

As always with Derek's releases, he's gone above and beyond with extras and enhancements. First up, Derek has added a VMU icon for the game, because Ecole were too lazy to implement one themselves. Next, he added a cheat function, which can up your lives and reset any countdown clock with a simultaneous press of the Dreamcast controller's left and right triggers. The reasoning for this is to allow players to experience the game's story without having to endure going through numerous difficult stages repeatedly.

Then you have the bonus content section, which is accessible from the game's main menu. Utilising a modified version of the Dream Passport browser, players can access a variety of extras from the series, including a video of composer Kunitaka Watanabe tearing it up on the keyboard as he plays the original Death Crimson theme, along with an archive of fan support messages from Ecole's now-offline official Death Crimson 2 website, which have been machine-translated into English.

So, to download Derek's fan translation patch for Death Crimson 2, just head to its dedicated GitHub page to download it. For detailed steps on how to apply the patch for your desired method of play (i.e. burning to a CD-R, playing on an ODE), see the patching instructions section of the README. While the game does support the standard controller, if you're going to be using a light gun I recommend consulting the section on light gun compatibility. Make sure you report back to Derek if you experience any issues with a particular light gun setup, as he will aim to try and resolve such compatibility bugs in the future.

Are you going to crack out the light gun and give this English fan translation a go? Let us know in the comments below, or by hitting us up on one of various social media channels!