Great news for Sailor Moon fans who also appreciate classic video games! The 1995 Sailor Moon S video game for the Sega Game Gear has been translated into English! This seems like a somewhat odd choice of a game to translate as it’s not an RPG or something with a bunch of text, but a fairly simple side scroller. Still the translation is a useful one as it adds English to the title screen, multiple menus and even subtitles to some spoken cut scenes. This is not an official translation of a 24 year old game but rather a fan translation.
Does this mean you’ll need to dust off your Sega Game Gear to play this? Not likely. The translation file supplied is in the form of a patch, an ips, which can be applied to a rom dump of the original game in order to make the English version. Fans would likely play this on some sort of video game emulator. Which you would want to use depends on what platform you like to play it on. Details and a download link are included on the Romhacking.net web site. This file alone will not allow you to play the game. You will need the original rom, the patch and software to patch it as well as an emulator. For legal purposes the original rom file, which is copyright, is not hosted on the site. The file name mentioned is “Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S (Japan).gg”. I had an old file named “Sailor Moon S(jp).gg” and was able to patch it. I’ve also seen it called “Sailor Moon S (J).gg” on a site which hosted the rom. You’ll need software to patch the file. It’s not terribly complicated, but depending on your operating system it might require a bit of work. Since I use a Mac I needed to dig a little to find platform independent software to patch the game. I ultimately used a Pearl application ips.pl which can run in a Unix terminal but there are probably easier ways to do this on Windows.
I personally enjoy video game emulation on my Raspberry Pi equipped with RetroPie as well as a hacked 3DS I use for portable classic gaming. I tried out this game on my Raspberry Pi. It seemed to play well although I had trouble with the Rei’s Fortune Teller mini game. It just booted back to the menu instead of giving me my fortune. Speaking of that mini game! The game suffers from the Y2K bug as it is unable to take a date beyond 1999 for today’s date. This game is so old that it doesn’t even work right if played almost 20 years ago!
I originally played this game years ago as I bought the Game Gear game and a second hand Game Gear for the express purpose of playing it. The Game Gear has no restriction on playing international games. Since there’s very little Japanese text outside of the menus it was easy enough to play. As Sailor Moon games go this isn’t really the best. It’s a side scrolling sort of platformer sort of beat ‘em up game but there are much better Sailor Moon games of this type on the Super Famicom (Super Nintendo in North America). Most fans would probably tell you that the Sailor Moon Another Story RPG is the most worthwhile of the many Sailor Moon video games released on a number of systems throughout the 1990s. I certainly have enjoyed many hours with the game, though I find it has a very inconsistent difficulty curve. That game is also available in English along with the Sailor Moon R Super Famicom game. The Sailor Moon S and SuperS fighting games are also pretty fun and easy games to pick up.
Have you played any classic Sailor Moon games? Which is your favourite?
Source: Silicon Era
Keep reading for more screenshots of the game.
This is great news! I’ll be getting my hands on a rom of this to play.
I absolutely loved Sailor Moon Another Story and played it several times growing up! It’s a wonderful RPG.
I remember reading some list about Sailor Moon antagonists in some digital article, and it ACTUALLY mentioned, with images, the Opposing Senshi. I was floored. I wasn’t expecting a shoutout to Another Story.
Hellllloooo!!!!! It’s been a while since I checked in on this site! Are there any new Sailormoon Crystal dubs or new translations of the original anime out yet? I come here for all my sailor moon news but I don’t see anything about new stuff as of maybe a year or so? Is that correct? Ahhhh I need my Moonie fix!
Oh sorry, I’m not sure which season/arc is which but the last Crystal dub that I saw was with Saturn saving/almost destroying the earth… if that helps?
That’s the last thing to be released.
Sailor Moon Crystal seasons I to III have all been dubbed and released on home video as well as some streaming/download services. For the original anime they’ve dubbed up to the end of Sailor Moon SuperS with Star coming this year.
Pretty much no news on Crystal for a very long time! We are all waiting impatiently.
Thank you so much! I’ll keep my eyes open for it! I’m so excited!
I love it.
Idk if its 100% legit but i saw this article of a leak that happened which emphasizes some of the names of the franchises toei has been working on and one of them is Sailor Moon Crystal
Article: https://worldscreen.com/tvkids/natpe-spotlight-toei-animation-3/
At this point I’ve lost all the hype and the anticipation, im sure that when they release the first trailer ill be as excited as a 5 year old when they get some candy from their parents, but for now, im just like …meh…whatever
Interesting. Could mean they are working on new stuff or just that they have worked on it recently. Hard to draw any real conclusions from it.
played through this game a while ago, finished up both sega and snes sailor moon games, the rpg one I get so far into it and get bored, the gb ones are too strange to figure out and the s, superS puzzle games are annoying and very difficuilt to figure out, the fighter games are ok and I think one of them have been translated using the official and dic names, love trying to play the very rare stars snes game so I can play as the starlights but man is that game annoying to play too, still looking forward to getting my copy of superS the movie and hope a release date for part one of stars in English for the first time ever so I can have my complete set on blu ray and be very happy to have the original series in full for the first time, think im going to go back and read my mangas while watching crystal arcs 1 through 3
Sounds like you put more time into these than me!
Have you played Panic in Nakayoshi Land?
i have a RetroPie But It won’t turn on the screen
Thanks a lot! I’m gonna have to check this out, ’cause I really like those screenshots. One of my best friends loves Sailor Mars (both manga and classic anime depictions), so I sent her that “fortune teller” screenshot.
I love Sailor Moon: Another Story… warts and all. I agree with the absurd difficulty curve. lol The game is either a total cakewalk OR ludicrously cheap, depending on how you position the Sailors and what levels they’re all at. I haven’t done a proper playthrough of the game in years, but I still have my save file. As a matter of fact, I remember the first time I actually beat the game (both good and bad endings): Halloween night, 2003. But I first played the game in fall 2001. Yeah, I remember. I only got around to seriously playing it, from start to finish, in 2003. Those were while I was in high school. In fact, in my freshman year of high school, some of my friends and I in the computer lab created superhero versions of ourselves. A guy was Spider-Kid, another parodied the Hulk, another Batman, but I… was Sailor Joe. I gave myself big, sparkly eyes, too. Yep.
*Ahem* I ramble. But speaking of that computer lab (and being an out-of-closet fanboy of Sailor Moon), I played a lot of that one puzzle game! What was it? “Sailor Moon S: Fuwa Fuwa Panic!” or so. Your Luna or Artemis chibi head hops from heart to heart and each one you pass by turns into a solid color. You can eliminate colored hearts when there’s more than one heart of the same color, directly touching each other (diagonally isn’t valid). Your goal is to eliminate hearts to clear the field, to bring down the talismans from the top (when they do appear) all the way to the bottom. There were also special moves or attacks that could be performed by activating them, when they show up. The mobile game, Sailor Moon Drops, which is going to be shut down by the end of March, reminded me somewhat of these traits.
Gosh, there’s nothing like talking about Sailor Moon video game nostalgia! Know what’s one of my favorite piece of Sailor Moon music? “Fantasy Attraction.” It was in one of the Super Famicom beat-‘em-ups (in that gnome forest level, if I recall correctly), but it was later used as the theme for Sailor Venus’s ark, in Another Story. There’s also a great Christmas-themed tune from that same beat-‘em-up.
WHEW! Thanks for the flood of memories! I loved this article and I loved reading all the comments. Now, even though it’s NOT Sailor Moon related, I am picking up my copy of Kingdom Hearts III… *Glances at the clock* Soon. If you don’t hear from me for about a half-week, you know why.
I’m serious! I spent a STUPID amount of time with that Fuwa Fuwa Panic! game! My best friend even played it with me (through tinkering with the emulator settings). Gosh, that was so long ago. Getting close to 20 years, in fact.
Those puzzle games are a ton of fun! I can see them being real addictive. Currently enjoying Kingdom Hearts III but I don’t have a lot of time to play what with my million kids!
Awww! Li’l tykes.
There’s a lot more Sailor Moon video game translations on that site: https://www.romhacking.net/?page=translations&genre=&platform=&status=&languageid=12&perpage=20&title=Sailor+Moon&author=&transsearch=Go