C's Ware's Gloria, #PC98 quasi-sequel to Kindan no Ketsuzoku, is now playable and more or less completable in SuperSakura's dev-branch!
SuperSakura visual novel engine developer account. Posting website updates and infrequent dev fluff.
C's Ware's Gloria, #PC98 quasi-sequel to Kindan no Ketsuzoku, is now playable and more or less completable in SuperSakura's dev-branch!
Here's something different: Gate of Souls, based on Dante's Divine Comedy. It's a 1992 #PC98 action adventure by #Koei that plays a bit like Castlevania. You might describe it as "Dante goes looking for love among the circles of Hell"...
SuperSakura dev-branch can now extract many graphics from this game. In fact, with the right encoder script, you might even edit the graphics and re-insert them in the game, if there happened to be some reason for it!
A good thing in 2024: SuperSakura development kept on going. How many commits were there?
$ git log --pretty=format:%cd --date=format:%Y | uniq -c | awk '{print "Year: "$2", commits: "$1}'
- Year: 2024, commits: 209
- Year: 2023, commits: 240
- Year: 2022, commits: 359
- Year: 2021, commits: 370
- Year: 2020, commits: 260
- Year: 2019, commits: 134
- Year: 2018, commits: 40
- Year: 2017, commits: 320
An average of 241.5 commits/year, so momentum flagged a bit in 2024, but remains respectable.
SuperSakura 0.96.1 is now out! It's an engine for running old Japanese adventure games natively on modern systems, now supporting more games than ever.
Here's a blog post talking about all the new features built over 2.5 years of effort:
https://supersakura.net/blog/3_SuperSakura_0.96.1_Released.htm
Jewel BEM Hunter #Lime, episode 1, is now playable and completable in SuperSakura dev-branch! This is the first episode in this fun shounen #PC98 adventure game series by Silence, and is pretty family friendly if you don't mind some gentle fan service.
The SuperSakura implementation has some graphic bugs and can't convert the FMX music files yet, but it can run both the original Japanese and Baba Jeanmel's English patched version.
SuperSakura dev-branch now supports converting Elf's GP4 graphics, thanks to research help by Reyaziel! The GP4 format was used in Elf's last few #PC98 games, such as Words Worth, Metal Eye, Dragon Knight 4, etc.
Specs: https://gitlab.com/bunnylin/supersakura/-/blob/dev/doc/gfx/gp4-ada.md
Meanwhile, I've written down the few remaining blockers for the next release in the big todo-file: https://gitlab.com/bunnylin/supersakura/-/blob/dev/doc/todo.md
I will be at the Bristol Anime and Gaming con this Saturday. Say hi if you're passing by!
Classic visual novel Nocturnal Illusion is now highly playable in SuperSakura dev-branch. Still needs a full playthrough to verify completability...
SuperSakura dev-branch now supports converting AIC's AIC graphics! These were used in the Slayers PC-98 game, a spinoff of the original Slayers light novels (and later manga and anime etc).
Basement Brothers' #PC98 Paradise has a video about this game, if you're curious! https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=NTMMZq63AIw
New blog post!
https://supersakura.net/blog/2_The_Gameranking_Metagame.htm
It's really satisfying to put things in the right boxes, in the right order, isn't it? Let's put some visual novels and related old games where they belong – on a ranking list! Maybe it's possible to find the quantifiably best visual novel ever. Of course, that'll require meaningful evaluation criteria...
The next SuperSakura release is shaping up well, but before that - a look back at how many commits have been made!
$ git log --pretty=format:%cd --date=format:%Y | uniq -c | awk '{print "Year: "$2", commits: "$1}'
- Year: 2023, commits: 240
- Year: 2022, commits: 359
- Year: 2021, commits: 370
- Year: 2020, commits: 260
- Year: 2019, commits: 134
- Year: 2018, commits: 40
- Year: 2017, commits: 320
That's an average of 246/year, so momentum stayed up fairly well through 2023.
SuperSakura dev-branch now supports converting Panda House's VDF graphics! These were used by the Cat's Pro and Melody development teams, and are notable for a dickish palette encryption method.
Read the specs: https://gitlab.com/bunnylin/supersakura/-/blob/dev/doc/gfx/vdf.md
New SuperSakura site is now live! https://supersakura.net/
It's a modern #visualnovel engine that re-implements various old Japanese games, mainly #PC98. Kind of a #ScummVM for visual novels!
Starting off with a blog post:
https://supersakura.net/blog/1_Researching_Fairy_Dust_SGV_Images.htm
"To get a game running on SuperSakura, I need to understand and convert an original game's resources into a modern format. This can range from trivially easy to distressingly difficult, depending on how clever the original programmers were..."