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English Improvement Patch Makes Willy Wombat More Accessible Than EverAn English Improvement patch for the Sega Saturn exclusive 3D platformer Willy Wombat released today! Download the patch here .  While Willy Wombat has long been considered playable with little to no Japanese language knowledge required, Exxistance , the romhacker behind this effort, has produced a patch that makes the game more accessible to English-speaking audiences than ever before. This English improvement patch translates all of the menus, interstitials, and dialogue options into English.     Do note that the game’s subtitles remain in Japanese. The code for the Japanese character sprites that compose the subtitles are compressed in a way that remains currently unsolved — despite a concerted effort by numerous Saturn community members. However, Exxistance was able to edit the sprites corresponding to the interactive dialogue choices that occur from time to time — see below. Luckily for English-speaking fans, all of Willy Wombat ’s dialogue is accompanied by full English voice acting, so the game’s story can be enjoyed start to finish. 
Exxistance has expressed openness to outside help with cracking the dialogue sprite compression algorithm but does worry that fitting and syncing the English text could be a challenge.  It does seem that the door is not closed on a potential version 2.0 featuring edited subtitles sometime in the future. That said, there has never been a better time to jump into one of the Saturn’s best 3D action platformers. 
You might recognize Exxistance from their recent Shinrei Jusatsushi Taroumaru English translation patch , or perhaps from forum posts surrounding the highly anticipated forthcoming release of a SEGAGAGA English translation patch roughly aligning with the game’s 25th anniversary. Maybe you have seen their Cyber Doll English translation progress posts (currently 60% complete) or those of Goiken Muyou: Anarchy in the Nippon . You get the point — Exxistance has had a busy 2025. SHIRO! reached out to Exxistance with questions for this story. When asked what drives him to work on these patches, he responded: “To be honest, it’s really just a time replacement. Before I got into ROM hacking, I spent most of my evenings gaming; it’s my primary hobby. I’d finish a game, look at my library and sigh to myself, ‘Alright, what to play next?’ After 35+ years of gaming, it was starting to feel more like a chore than an enjoyment. I’ve always been interested in games and game development, and so I’ve found a new motivation in experiencing games from the inside out. I’m playing way less new games these days, but I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.” Why Willy Wombat in particular: “It was a chance to solve a mystery, which I love. I think Rasputin3000 posted a comment on the Shiro Discord along the lines of ‘games that are mostly English but just need a little graphics work,’ and Willy Wombat was one of them. I was eager to see if I could use any of my newfound skills to help solve it. That led me to figuring out which files held the Options menu, and from that point on it was the CrystalTile2 Photoshop CrystalTile2 pipeline.”  The project began shortly after the exchange above, and a mere six weeks later, Exxistance was done.  Exxistance praised Willy Wombat ’s use of 3D and its stable framerates. He added that “this one holds up really well. It also has a distinct vibe to it; it’s strangely dark despite all the cute characters.” Exxistance closed our short Q&A with some love for Sega’s fifth-generation console: “I love seeing the Saturn get so much newfound love and attention these days — it was my primary system back in the day, and I always felt it offered far more than it was given credit for.” 
Developed by Westone — with design credits given to Ryuichi Nishizawa of Wonder Boy and Monster World fame — and published by Hudson Soft, Willy Wombat released exclusively in Japan in the summer of 1997. Despite being fully English voice acted, Hudson Soft chose to not release Willy Wombat in any other market. Internet speculation often points to the game’s underwhelming sales and middling reviews as the reasonings behind the software’s region-locked status ( cf. SegaRetro ), but without confirmation from Hudson Soft or Westone we cannot be entirely certain. Want to read more Willy Wombat coverage while you wait for the English Improvement Patch to download? Check out Peter Malek’s thoughts on the title in this SHIRO! #BestOfSaturn .
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