Western fans looking to play Assault Suit Leynos 2 Saturn Tribute on their PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 or Switch finally have a date to look forward to, as publisher Clear River Games announced today it’ll be sold digitally on those platforms March 21.
A representative on Clear River’s Discord server said physical copies will go on sale May 22. There’s no word yet whether there will be a collector’s edition offered.
Clear River uploaded a trailer alongside the announcement.
Leynos 2 Saturn Tribute has been available worldwide on PC via Steam and Xbox’s digital storefront, as well as on PS4, PS5 and Switch in Japan, since April last year for US$24.99. City Connection published those, but it announced a month before their launch that the PS4 and Switch versions would be delayed in the West for an indeterminate amount of time in favor of Clear River handling them.
Clear River Games is a Swedish video game publisher established in 2020 and owned by Embracer Group. The distributor it lists on its website is Game Outlet Europe but it’s worked with City Connection and Limited Run Games as well.
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 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.
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, 17 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 Assault Suit Leynos 2, Wolf Fang and Skull Fang last year.
City Connection announced four new titles last month set for release later this year: Steam Heart’s (sic), Advanced V.G., and Farland Saga 1 and 2.
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