Assault Suit Leynos 2 Saturn Tribute released worldwide Wednesday on digital storefronts as well as in physical form in Japan. It’s the latest in a line of emulated Saturn games that publisher City Connection has brought to modern platforms in the last few years.
In the U.S., Leynos 2 can be bought for US$24.99 from the Xbox store or for a launch-discounted price of $22.49 from Steam.
It’s also available on the Japanese eShop, PlayStation Store and Xbox store for ¥2,970, although the eShop is selling it for a launch discount at ¥2,682.
City Connection announced last month that the game is being delayed on the Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 in the West so that another publisher, Clear River Games, could handle physical versions there. Clear River is a Swedish video game publisher established in 2020 and owned by Embracer Group.
When asked whether there was any news about Leynos 2 in their Discord server, a Clear River representative said Thursday, “No news yet but hopefully soon.”
Meanwhile, City Connection’s official site links to their online store where physical copies of Leynos 2 can be bought for the Switch and PlayStation 5, although it denotes that those will be only in Japanese.
Assault Suit Leynos 2 is a 2D mecha run-n-gun was originally developed by NCS and published by Masaya on the Saturn in February 1997 exclusively in Japan. It’s a sequel to Genesis game Assault Suit Leynos, aka Target Earth in North America, and Super Nintendo game Assault Suit Valken, aka Cybernator in North America and Europe.
While some of the menus are in English, the original game’s story and dialogue are in Japanese. With the Saturn Tribute release, City Connection has translated those parts into English and hacked them into the original game — the first time they’ve done that for a title in the line. In its previous Saturn Tribute efforts, City Connection either released a game that already was in English, like Elevator Action Returns, or a North American release existed for them to release, like Galactic Attack, or they simply released a game with its Japanese intact when it wasn’t required to understand the game, like Cleopatra Fortune.
The use of artificial intelligence to machine translate media from Japanese is a hot topic in recent days, but that doesn’t appear to be the case here. The in-game credits list Chilloc as the company responsible for English translation — it’s handled mostly German localizations up to now, including for Pokémon Scarlet/Violet, Octopath Traveler 2 and Persona 5. Its owner Manuel Chillagano is listed as Leynos 2’s localization manager and Timothy Horst is the translator.
Leynos 2 also lists Kris Knigge, aka Kris Taquka’angcuk Knigge, as the editor — it’s worth nothing that he got a special thanks in the 2021 Bulk Slash fan localization patch for advising the team early on about casting.
The human touch shows, with character dialogue displaying personality and sentence structure feeling natural and not stilted.
Saturn 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. City Connection appears to use the “S-Tribute” label for the Saturn games that are only released digitally, while games like Cotton 2 and Suchie-Pie have gotten physical printings — at least in Japan — so they sport the “Saturn Tribute” label. The publisher used a “Saturn Tribute Boosted” label for Batsugun last year, denoting extra features that aren’t in their other Saturn efforts.
That emulator gives players features like rewind, quick save and quick load. Assault Suit Leynos 2 also provides cheat-like options for boosting armor, shields and energy.
So far, 15 games have been released under the three labels: Cotton 2, Cotton Boomerang and Guardian Force, which came out in 2021; Layer Section & Galactic Attack, Cleopatra Fortune, Elevator Action Returns and the four games in the Suchie-Pai collection, which came out 2022; Metal Black, Bust-a-Move 2: Arcade Edition & Bust-a-Move 3 and Batsugun, which came out in 2023; and now Assault Suit Leynos 2.
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