Saturn/Guides

The best I will really be able to do for you in this mini-guide is describe how the game works. As far as getting through it, if you know a better method then mostly random button pushing through all Japanese menus, that'd be great. If you can READ Japanese, that'd be even better... I'd love to support a mass translation project. Hell, I'd even reprogram the game frame-by-frame onto a PC compatible system and make it universally available! But anyway...

I will note there is an actual all-English walkthrough available from GameFAQs.com here. The author could actually read Japanese incidently, and seems to make too many assumptions that you can too. It sort of guides you in the game, but he also throws in comments like "Talk to everyone... this one person makes this really funny [colloquial] joke!" I can't really tell when I've "talked to everyone", and I don't get much from the dialogs themselves, an ignorant American like me who can't read Japanese and is only vaguely familiar with the culture. ;)

The game itself relies on projecting a predrawn scene related to the plot.


After that, a character may or may not be layered on top of that, if that character is a main focus at the moment.


If a dialog is in progress, a dialog box will be displayed along the bottom of the screen, and dialog pictures of all those involved and their current emotions will be depicted in a small rectangular image.



Note the small Ura head in the lower-right corner of the dialog box. That's just a cursor, which will be "talking" if someone is speaking in the current scene, bobbing if awaiting you to press a button, shaking back-and-forth with an X'ed (muted) mouth if the current text is only informational, not spoken.

If you are in a menu, the Ura head will be to the left of the choices, or alternatively a "crystal" shape on the destination selection map. (Where incidently Ura becomes the whole screen...) Menu's are the primary plot-control devices to the game. Your selections will alter the outcome of the story, for one of many possible endings, some of which are even fully animated! (For about two minutes at the most, but hey, it's all original...)


Periodically, you will get to a point in the game that is the end of the current "chapter", and allows you to save your progress to the Saturn.



At any non-menu dialog in the game, you can press START to view exactly who's with you at the current point in time, and what you're carrying. (Also adjust BGM/PCM volumes and optionally disable the dialog expression faces.)


Well, that's about all you really need to know about this game to play it.