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...

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!

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!

Dreamcast shooter Trizeal has been Translated into English!

Only days after reporting the news that an English fan translation patch has been released for one Dreamcast shoot 'em up (Under Defeat), we've already received another, and this time it's for Triangle Service's 2005 vertical-scrolling shmup Trizeal. The patch was created by the one and only Derek Pascarella, and I must say, I'm feeling a bit of deja vu...

Fact about this game: the head of its tiny development team begged fans to purchase it upon release because the arcade game it is a port of didn't do that well financially. Despite this, Trizeal is definitely not a title to sniff at. While it isn't often brought up in conversations about Dreamcast shmups, and lacks some of the gimmicks seen in other more acclaimed DC shooters, it is still a high-octane romp that can be enjoyed by any seasoned genre fan.

While the game doesn't have anything in the form of a storyline, Derek's patch translates all Japanese in-game text/graphics, and even improves some instances of English text. Something cool that Derek has also added to this patch is a new unlimited continues option that can be toggled on and off during gameplay by pressing the L and R Trigger buttons simultaneously. A small asterisk will appear next to "1P SCORE" during gameplay to indicate unlimited continues is on.

To download Derek's fan translation patch, 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.

Are you a fan of Trizeal, or are you going to give it a go now this patch has been released? Let us know in the comments below, or by hitting us up on one of various social media channels!

Dreamcast shooter Under Defeat has been Translated into English!

Thanks to TapamN, who previously brought us a whole slew of helpful VGA patches, comes an English translation of the shoot 'em up Under Defeat.

Under Defeat was what we in the West would call a "late release" for the Dreamcast. Considering the Dreamcast was cancelled in 2001, it's mindboggling to acknowledge that over in Japan, games like this one were still coming out for many years. This one even came late enough to be acknowledged on this very blog upon release! 

Developed by G.rev, Under Defeat has been praised for its smooth controls and challenging but fun gameplay. Most notably, however, are its excellent graphics: with attractive 3D throughout, the level of detail on display in this game is astonishing. It's not one for genre fans to overlook, and now with TapamN's translation patch, English Dreamcast fans can now have some insight into the game’s plot too.

Here's a list of everything translated in this patch:

• Opening text 
• Ending text 
• The tutorial 
• End of level results screen 
• VMU selection text 
• Menu descriptions 
• VMU Save file descriptions (seen in the console's BIOS)
• In-game VMU text translated 

To download the patch, head over to the Dreamcast Talk forum post, and if you have an account, be sure to thank TapamN for this translation! Also thanks to Derek Pascarella on Twitter for the heads up.

Have you played and enjoyed Under Defeat before? Are you excited to get a chance to experience its story in English? Let us know in the comments below, or by hitting us up on one of various social media channels!

Cool Cool Toon has been Translated into English!

For years, Cool Cool Toon, a Japanese-exclusive rhythm title from SNK, has been considered a must-have for import Dreamcast gamers everywhere due to its easily accessible gameplay (which many have compared to that of Space Channel 5) and zany cel-shaded comic visuals by illustrator Ippei Gyoubu (of Gundam fame). But despite its gameplay being so accessible, many who cannot read Japanese have had to miss out on the game's delightful storyline... until today, because community workaholic Derek Pascarella and his talented team have finally released their English fan translation patch for Cool Cool Toon!

Completed over the span of a year, this project's team was comprised of the following individuals:

• Derek Pascarella - programming, editing, playtesting
• rio de popomocco - translation, editing, playtesting 
• Cargodin - translation, editing
• James Tocchio (GGDreamcast) - editing, playtesting
• Yuvi - graphics

While I am not familiar with the translation work of rio de popomocco, Cargodin's work on Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream is stellar, with that project standing as one of the very best Dreamcast translations, so I have no doubt that this game's script will be of similar quality.

Everything in the main game has been translated - from menus to cutscenes to graphics - meaning that Cool Cool Toon is now fully accessible to English speakers. To get a taster before you play, check out this trailer for the project put together by GGDreamcast.

As seen before with Derek's other hacks, he's made sure to go above and beyond when it comes to bonus content. The option on the main menu titled "INTERNET GATE" is inaccessible to those who've never configured ISP settings on their Dreamcast, so Derek has removed this in favour of a Bonus Content page, powered by the Dream Passport browser, in a similar fashion to that seen in his previous translation project Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me.

This bonus content page contains all kinds of extra goodies. As per usual, Derek offers a downloadable save file that unlocks all in-game content. "On-Disc Extras Page" grants you access to artwork which was originally part of a webpage that could be accessed when putting the retail GD-ROM into your computer, including character portraits, artwork development pieces, title screens, wallpapers, and a lot more. As a cool bit of history, you can also access Cool Cool Toon's original Dricas website, preserved in its untranslated form. Finally, Derek has included some instructions on how to use the Dreamcast maracas with Cool Cool Toon. It turns out the game is actually compatible with this shakin' peripheral, so much so that the developers actually included instructions on the disc explaining how to use them with the game, which is what you see fully translated here!

Another awesome extra that has been preserved and translated for this patch release is the functionality that allows the game to connect to Cool Cool Jam for the Neo Geo Pocket Color using the Dreamcast's Neo Geo Pocket link cable. Points earned in Cool Cool Jam can be transferred to Cool Cool Toon on the Dreamcast, allowing players to unlock more costumes and characters, and vice versa. This is definitely niche as heck, but still appreciated nonetheless, as I love me some Neo Geo Pocket Color! Paying upwards of £100 for that cable, on the other hand...

Cool Cool Toon's Neo Geo Pocket Color link cable functionality in action, as shown by Derek.

So, without further ado, head over to the dedicated GitHub page to download the Cool Cool Toon translation patch. As always, 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.

Download Patch (v1.1)

A big thank you goes out to all involved with the creation of this translation. Your hard work is helping to keep the dream alive!

Have you played Cool Cool Toon before? Are you excited to give this English translation a go? Let us know in the comments below, or by dropping us a line on one of our social media channels!

Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me - Samurai Shodown Spin-Off for Dreamcast Translated into English!

After nearly two years of hard work, I am absolutely elated to inform you that a team consisting of Derek Pascarella, Duralumin, Marshal Wong and myself have completed our English translation of Nakoruru: Ano Hito kara no Okurimono for the Sega Dreamcast, and today you will be able to play it.

Being a fan favourite character of SNK’s beloved Samurai Shodown fighting franchise (known as Samurai Spirits in Japan), it’s only natural that Nakoruru would get her own spin-off game. SNK granted developer Inter-Let's the privilege of crafting a story that explored her character in finer detail, with the result being Nakoruru: The Gift She Gave Me (as we’ve decided to dub it), a Japan-exclusive visual novel game released for Windows in 2001, with an improved Dreamcast version releasing a year later in 2002. To take a source material known for its intense arcade fighting thrills and adapt it into a quiet, heartfelt text-based adventure was definitely intriguing, so much so that it made us want to produce an English translation almost two decades later! 

To translate the game into English was no small feat, however. With over 12,000 lines of text, our translation of Nakoruru was going to take us more than a year to produce. But it honestly feels like that time has flown by, because the more we worked on translating the scripts, the more we fell in love with the game's plot and characters.

Mikato meets Nakoruru for the first time.

The game’s story is told from the perspective of seven-year-old Mikato, an orphan who is taken in by the people of the snowy village Kamui Kotan. She is selected by the village's chief to serve as assistant to the shrine maiden Nakoruru, somebody the people of Kamui Kotan admire for her strength, dependability, and outward positivity. Mikato soon realises, however, that deep down, Nakoruru is harbouring an intense sorrow. 

While Nakoruru is based in the world of Samurai Shodown, it can be played without any prior knowledge of the franchise, but if you are a Shodown fan, there are quite a few playful references to other characters in the franchise sprinkled throughout the game's script.

Nakoruru's childhood friends Yantamu and Manari.

The gameplay of Nakoruru is simple, and familiar to those who have played a visual novel before. Advance the story with a button press, and occasionally make choices, some of which greatly affect the game’s narrative.

Also included throughout the story are several basic but charming mini-games. These include quizzes, fishing, dodging enemy attacks, playing music, and more. 

While Nakoruru may lack the 3D graphics and arcade action many associate with the Dreamcast, it still boasts gorgeous, crisp, hand-drawn 2D artwork, and its beautiful coming-of-age storyline will pull at your heart strings as it deals with topics of friendship, loss and insecurity. The Dreamcast received over 100 visual novel titles in Japan, and in terms of quality, Nakoruru is up there with the best the system has to offer. For those new to the visual novel genre, you can learn more about them in this fantastic video by Bowl of Lentils.

Combat training mini-game where you dodge left or right to escape attacks.

We adopted an assembly line process to translate the game’s script. First, dialogue for an individual scene would be translated by Marshal and Duralumin, then the editors - both myself and Derek, would check over the translations for any spelling or grammatical errors, but primarily to ensure they read as naturally as possible in English. Once the script edits were complete, Derek would insert them back into the game. Working together and seeing the story come to life, and by our own making, was incredibly rewarding. 

Making an important decision in the heat of combat.  

But our translation would have been for nothing if it wasn’t for Derek’s hacking wizardry. The Dreamcast is still in an immature state when it comes to debugging and hacking, unlike other systems, such as PlayStation, which is more streamlined. A project like this for the Dreamcast required a slew of different tools to achieve. Along the way, Derek had to make many tweaks to the game so it worked with our translation, such as modifying mini-games, ensuring the character’s voice audio persisted across multiple textboxes, reallocating where RAM data was written to make room for larger text data, and more. But the biggest challenge Derek faced was implementing a half-width font (as Japanese characters are wider than English ones), which took him months, but felt incredible when he finally pulled it off. The end result of Derek's hard work is fantastic-looking English text displayed in game.

Rent-A-Hero No. 1 has been Translated into English for Dreamcast!

The beauty of the Dreamcast is that when you think you've played everything the console has to offer, something new lands in your lap. These days, that often comes in the form of a brand new indie game, or in the case of what we have here today: a Japanese game from back in the day being playable for the first time in English on the Dreamcast thanks to the hard work of fans.

Many of us had a good feeling about Rent-A-Hero No. 1, some possibly even since the early 2000s, when muddling through the game with a translation guide was the way for non-Japanese speakers. Those wanting to truly experience the game were thrown a bone in 2008 when an unreleased officially-translated Xbox prototype leaked onto the internet, but those wanting to experience the game on its original platform, the Dreamcast, were still stuck with guides and translation apps... until today.

Thanks to the hard work and perseverance of VincentNL and his talented team of "Rent-A-Modders", Rent-A-Hero No. 1 is now fully playable in English on the Dreamcast! But this is no ordinary fan project, because the lengths this team had to go to in order to bring us this high-quality translation is an entire topic of conversation in and of itself. Before we go into all that, though, a bit of background on the game first...

The first Rent-A-Hero was developed by Sega-AM2 and released exclusively in Japan for the Mega Drive in 1991. The Rent-A-Hero character next saw an appearance as an unlockable character in 1996’s Fighters Megamix for the Sega Saturn. The game we’re talking about today, Rent-A-Hero No.1, released for the Dreamcast in Japan in May 2000. A remake of the Mega Drive original, it shares the same quirky and humorous tone of the game it is based on, but brings the gameplay into the world of 3D. The game is effectively an action-RPG that has you assuming the role of 16-year-old Taro, a budding hero for hire. As Taro, you run around town doing odd jobs and missions assigned by SECA to build his way up the ranks of herodom. The game also has beat 'em up style combat that uses the same fighting engine as that used in Sega's arcade game Spikeout.

Rent-A-Hero No. 1 looks and plays great on the Dreamcast, and if it wasn't for the incredibly eccentric Japanese humour that it wears like a bejewelled bangle on its sleeve, questions about the game's lack of a Western Dreamcast release would definitely be flying around. Oddball humour is this game's strongest suit, and with an abundance of Sega references throughout, Rent-A-Hero No. 1 is a game every fan of the house of hedgehog should spend some time with. Whether it be the inclusion of Segata Sanshiro or the "Creamcast" console you access in the game, the tributes to our favourite ex-console manufacturer throughout are hardly subtle.

So, back to the translation. This translation patch required many heavy lifts to get to what you’re seeing in this final release. A deep analysis and understanding of numerous original Katana SDK libraries was needed in order to reverse-engineer and interact with a slew of the game's already-compiled assembly code.

Samba de Amigo Ver. 2000 has been Converted into English

Samba de Amigo is that monkey game with the maracas. 

What that rather inelegant opening serves to say, is that Samba de Amigo needs no introduction. Not only is it beloved by Dreamcast fans for its colour-soaked rhythm hijinks that made use of the delightful maraca peripheral (which required a significant amount of space to store on your gaming shelves), but it is also well known for a port it received on the Nintendo Wii; one which appeared at the right time to slot neatly into the motion control hype of the seventh console generation.

This Wii port is actually important to our topic today, because it incorporated many of the additions that were introduced as part of the Samba de Amigo Ver. 2000 package, a Japanese-exclusive upgrade for the Dreamcast. While this DC release was never brought to the West, it was still an easy import for many gamers (including DCJY's very own Andrew Dickinson) due to it lacking any significant language barrier to its gameplay.

Photo nicked from Mike's @DreamcastPics account. Sorry, Mike.

This didn't stop hacker dukeblooders from converting Samba de Amigo Ver. 2000 into English, though. The reason I refer to this as a "conversion" is because what has been done here is effectively a similar process to what we've seen previously with community projects that made Space Channel 5: Part 2 or Resident Evil Code: Veronica Kanzenban (Resident Evil Code: Veronica X) accessible to English speakers, by taking content seen in later Western ports (in this case, the Wii port) and inserting it into the Dreamcast version with some kind of wizardry that I will never be able to comprehend.

On dukeblooders' project page on GitHub, they explain that there isn't technically any text in this game, only images. The majority of images and audio were replaced with those from the English Wii versions, although some images had to be reproduced by dukeblooders.

If you want to give this English conversion a go on Dreamcast hardware, you will have to play it on an ODE like a GDEMU or a MODE, as currently it is not able to be burnt onto a CD-R. Otherwise you can still play it via emulator using the Type A controller mode, sans maracas. Just head over to the GitHub page to download the patch, which can easily be applied to an image of the game using Derek Pascarella's Universal Dreamcast Patcher.