City Connection announced that classic Saturn shoot-em-up Galactic Attack will launch in Japan on the Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on April 28, with the Steam version coming “later.”
They made the announcement via Twitter on Wednesday:
The game is officially called “Layer Section & Galactic Attack S-Tribute,” as it contains both the Japanese version, called Layer Section, as well as the North American version, Galactic Attack.
A Western release has not been announced, but the game has a release date of April 28 on a North American eShop listing here.
Even if the release doesn’t come West right away, the Japanese versions will have an English option for the menus — and Galactic Attack is in English to begin with, of course.
Layer Section & Galactic Attack S-Tribute do not yet have listings on PlayStation Network or the Xbox marketplace. There is a Steam page without a release date here.
The game’s existence was leaked in February via the Taiwan Digital Game Rating Committee. You can check out Shiro’s previous coverage here.
But it wasn’t officially announced by City Connection until April 2, during a livestream that focused on shmups from various publishers.
At the time, a demo went up on the Japanese eShop and PlayStation Network, and while the eShop listing showed an April 28 release date for the main game, City Connection said during the livestream that they hadn’t decided on a release date yet.
Galactic Attack is a vertically scrolling shmup known by many names. It was developed in 1994 by Taito for arcades where in Japan and North America it was called Rayforce, and in Europe it was called Gunlock. It was ported to the Saturn by Ving in 1995 and was one of just three shmups released in North America for the console — the others being Darius Gaiden and In the Hunt.
City Connection’s release includes modern features like rewind, slow mode, save states, rapid fire settings, tate mode, scanlines and online leaderboards.
During the April 2 livestream, City Connection announced their intention to bring several other Saturn games from Taito to modern consoles: Puzzle Bobble 2X & 3, Elevator Action Returns, Metal Black and Cleopatra Fortune.
City Connection released Cotton 2, Cotton Boomerang and Guardian Force on the Switch and PlayStation 4 last year under the “Saturn Tribute” banner.
Saturn Tribute — or now “S-Tribute” — games are the Saturn originals running on what City Connection calls the Zebra Engine, which dataminers have found appears to be a modified version of the SSF emulator.
The Cotton titles and Guardian Force have not yet released on Xbox, although they’re slated to do so in the first half of this year. Unless City Connection makes good on that announcement in the next few days, Layer Force & Galactic Attack S-Tribute will be the first of the company’s Saturn games to come to Microsoft’s platform.
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