Shinrei Jusatsushi Taroumaru, the Saturn run-n-gun infamous for being one of the most expensive on the aftermarket, now has an English translation patch thanks to a fan who’s new to the hacking scene.
Exxistance uploaded the patch in SSP format to his GitHub on Thursday. The patch changes the title to “Psychic Killer Taromaru” because that name “seems to have gained traction as the colloquial Western name, so I’m rolling with that,” Exxistance said on GitHub.
It’s also available in SegaXtreme’s Resources section.
The patch makes the following changes:
- Opening/Ending credits translated to English
- Fully translated Options menu
- English title added to Title screen
- Spelling mistake “Time Warner Intearctive” on Title screen fixed
- In-game UI translated
- Opening and ending narration dubbed in English
Exxistance did the dubbing himself, although he included a second version of the patch that retains the original Japanese voice acting.
Exxistance also did all the graphics editing as well as some of the translation. Duralumin and TeDNeo contributed to the translation, and zeed64 helped test the patch.
Along with the dubbed and non-dubbed patches, the downloadable ZIP file includes the Sega Saturn Patcher utility needed to apply the patches to the original game files as well as a localized box art cover.
The patch only took a month to make, Exxistance told SHIRO!. He decided to look into Taromaru after watching a video about it.
“I ended up watching the Dungeon Chill video on it, and just decided to look at the game’s files in Yaba Sanshiro,” Exxistance said. “Saw some textures in VDP1 and just went from there. I just like redrawing textures.”
The project was a learning experience for him. “It helped teach me some things about editing things that are rendered by VDP2, plus editing binary sound files,” Exxistance said. “Just a nice small project to dip my toes into Saturn.”
This is Exxistance’s first translation patch for any console, let alone the Saturn. “I picked [a Saturn game] because it’s still my favorite system (with DC close behind),” he said.
Shinrei Jusatsushi Taroumaru was published by Time Warner Interactive in January 1997 exclusively in Japan. It’s a sidescroller in which players control ninjas — it has two-player cooperative play — who fire psychic energy at demons to save a kidnapped girl in feudal Japan.
Supposedly, Time Warner Interactive was shuttering its operations when it published Taromaru, so only 7,500 copies were pressed. That makes it one of the rarest Saturn games — the cheapest disc-only copy on eBay today costs US$1,000.
This story originally appeared on Sega Saturn SHIRO!