SuperSakura

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!

Screenshot from Gloria: Pixel art image of a rich mansion corridor, with a character portrait and dialogue box below it. The portrait shows a smiling girl with tanned skin and blonde hair with a bit of stylish curl. In this scene, our protagonist is meeting the young girl Charme for the first time, and she likes his name, at least.

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!

Scene from the game's opening. Dante is journeying warily through a forest of unhealthy trees, cliffs, and brambles. He looks quite small, while the shadows loom large.Cutscene from further in the game: A couple christian demons are going bananas whipping tormented souls. The pitiful damned try to crawl away, but there's nowhere to run.Screenshot of the original game logo, running in an emulator. It says "Tamashii no Mon", which is "Gate of Souls" in Japanese.Screenshot of the hacked game running in an emulator: The logo has been changed to look like the Street Fighter logo. It now says: "Dante Fighter, Infernal Warrior"

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:

supersakura.net/blog/3_SuperSa

#retrocomputing #PC98 #vn #visualnovel

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.

Screenshot from Jewel BEM Hunter Lime episode 1: Our shapeshifting alien heroes Lime and Bass are looking at the viewer, struck dumb by surprise. Lime is disguised as a bunny girl, while Bass is in a powered-up demon form with wings and bare muscles.Screenshot from Jewel BEM Hunter Lime episode 1, English-patched: a busy nighttime street in a Japanese city, lined with bright lights and entertainment venues. One of our protagonists, Bass, observes the scene, musing, "I don't know, perhaps that's just the way humans have fun."

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: gitlab.com/bunnylin/supersakur

Meanwhile, I've written down the few remaining blockers for the next release in the big todo-file: gitlab.com/bunnylin/supersakur

Character portrait sprite sheet from Dragon Knight 4. There are some tough warriors, merchants, world-saving adolescent heroes, and a perky catgirl.

I will be at the Bristol Anime and Gaming con this Saturday. Say hi if you're passing by!

bristolanimecon.com/

SuperSakura developer Kirinn, looking intently at the camera, wearing black, and a badge with the SuperSakura logo. The photo has dramatic lighting: mostly dark, with a magenta light on the right side, and a cyan light on the left, creating an 80's retro synthwave feel.

Classic visual novel Nocturnal Illusion is now highly playable in SuperSakura dev-branch. Still needs a full playthrough to verify completability...

Screenshot from Nocturnal Illusion: Sepia-toned, mysterious mansion lobby, with a decorative suit of armor and chandelier, and a staircase to the upper floor. In a text box, the protagonist Shinichi thinks: "A bannister that a child would love sliding down..."

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).

Specs: gitlab.com/bunnylin/supersakur

Basement Brothers' #PC98 Paradise has a video about this game, if you're curious! inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=NTMMZq6

Screenshot from PC-98 game Slayers: the protagonist Lina Inverse, decked in adventuring gear, stands victorious and is hoping for a quest completion reward. In the background, the quest giver's castle is a smoldering ruin.Screenshot from PC-98 game Slayers: The young wizard Kim is facing off against a skeleton knight in a dungeon, badly outmatched.

New blog post!

supersakura.net/blog/2_The_Gam

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: gitlab.com/bunnylin/supersakur

Screenshot from Heart Heat Girls - a commander and officer are having a serious meeting at the Anti Criminal-cyborg Police office.Screenshot from Kurayami, showing the main antagonist - the elevator, in which our protagonists are stuck.

New SuperSakura site is now live! 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:
supersakura.net/blog/1_Researc

"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..."

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Server: https://mastodon.social
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