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Segagaga Fan Translation Is Available Now![Editor’s note:] The GitHub page for this translation patch has an AI disclosure that, in part, says, “What I call the ‘playtesting translation’ — a base translation that allowed the artists and playtesters to get started early and understand what they were working on — was developed using a combination of DeepL and ChatGPT 4o/4.5. That translation then went through a substantial, months-long human translator review. I don’t think that the end product feels ‘machine-translated,’ but that’s ultimately for you, the player, to judge. ” SHIRO! was not aware of the use of AI before the patch and our story went live. Segagaga , one of the most intriguing of the Dreamcast’s Japanese exclusives, now has an English fan translation patch! Within the GitHub page for the project — link here — you can find, in addition to the patch itself, guides to multiple methods for applying the patch, an overview of the project, background information on Segagaga , screenshots of the translation in action, as well as extras like tips and messages from key team members. Segagaga has often topped fan polls for desired translation patches, and there have been numerous attempts over the past decade to make that a reality. The scope of the project saw many of these efforts stall out, despite the passion and enthusiasm surrounding the game. But one project wasn’t doomed to fail. Today’s newly released patch was multiple years in the making, with the combined efforts of numerous fans contributing to the effort since 2020. The work has been eagerly tracked and shared on this Dreamcast Talk forum .  Segagaga
asks the player to tame Sega’s wild R&D divisions contained inside vaults and save the company from financial ruin.
Progress was intermittent over the past several years, but in January 2025, the team got a renewed drive when it was joined by Exxistance — the same person behind the recent Shinrei Jusatsushi Taroumaru , Willy Wombat , and Delisoba Deluxe translation patches. A full team breakdown is shown below. Project Lead
Texture Artists
Segagaga’s story begins in 2025, so the translation team had hoped to release their patch last year to coincide with the game’s timeline. Anticipation among Sega fans grew with each screenshot and gameplay clip shared. 
But the year ended with no release. The team decided not to rush the patch out, choosing instead to thoroughly test it before making it public. While the team missed their initially envisioned — and rather poetic — deadline, they did manage to get their translation out just in time for the 25th anniversary of Segagaga ’s release, which is proudly displayed on the VMU screen while playing the patched game — shown below. An interview with ExxistanceSHIRO! spoke with Exxistance about the Segagaga patch, and here is what he had to say. SHIRO!: What was your past experience with this game? Exxistance: As a fan! IIRC, I first read about it in the Official Sega Dreamcast Magazine waaaay back when I actually subscribed to it. I’ve always loved JRPGs, and Sega, so the game always seemed like this incredible combination to me. It was just so inaccessible, though, with nary any English anywhere. SHIRO!: How did you come to work on the Segagaga patch? Exxistance: By happenstance really. I did my “every-several-years-of-Googling” for the latest on an SGGG patch and found the ongoing thread on Dreamcast-Talk . I read through all the posts and, if I remember correctly, ateam had posted a texture extractor tool, so I just started looking through the various texture containers. That’s when I thought to start redrawing them, so that at least one roadblock in the translation would be out of the way for whoever wanted to do the rest.  The VMU image celebrating
Segagaga
‘s 25th anniversary.
SHIRO!: What was a highlight of this specific project? Exxistance:
Perhaps strange to say, but seeing results of the translation slowly appear on screen. One of the first things I did was redraw the UI textures, and one by one, the game started opening up and becoming much more accessible. Even the playtesting translation started to help peel back the story and characters, so that I could start to piece story elements together mentally. This became a massive help during the editing process as well, because by the time reviewers came aboard, I knew all the key text elements.
Examples of gameplay. SHIRO!: What was the hardest part of this project? Exxistance:
For me, there were a few challenging areas. First was the Negotiation Q&A portion, where you’re supposed to choose the answer that you think the enemy that you’re negotiating with would say, and many of the questions and answers are humorous and/or esoteric. So translating these in a way that didn’t butcher the original intent but also fit within the physical character limits we had was a tight rope to walk. Plus, there’s over 1,000 combinations of these, so from a sheer time perspective, it took about a month and a half to work through them.
…debugging all the freaking SIM environment stuff!   Slide the arrows to see the difference between the original Japanese title screen and the English translation patch’s title screen.
SHIRO!: How did this patch compare to your previous/active projects? Exxistance:
It’s a LOT better, haha. It has a lot more smart contributors. My other projects are what I call “graphics translations,” in that I’m mostly just redrawing sprites and textures, not dealing with a lot of heavy custom text encoding which requires more custom tooling.
SHIRO!: Anything people should be looking out for while playing Segagaga with your patch? Exxistance:
Hmm, good question … just savor your first playthrough. On the 2nd playthrough (which you’ll need to get the true ending), I think players will notice more breadcrumbs in the story that lead to later events.
 Dotcomko-chan from
Segagaga
.
SHIRO!: Could moe have saved Sega? Exxistance: LOL. Well, if the game tells us anything, Sega’s arcade division had a ton of moe, but apparently that skill didn’t translate to the home market. So I think that yes, they needed moe, but they also needed better business acumen. SHIRO!: Any shoutouts? Exxistance: Just to the team — thank you all! I know I keep saying it over and over, but this truly was a group effort. From the testers who volunteered their time to the translation reviewers who reached out — it was only possible because people reached out to help. SHIRO!: Are you taking a break after this or keeping the pedal to the metal on your other projects? Exxistance:
I’ve got a very small surprise coming after the SGGG hype dies down a bit.
About Segagaga
Segagaga is a satirical, often tongue-in-cheek take on Sega and wider videogame market of the early sixth console generation. Sega intellectual properties, consoles, and even staff feature prominently throughout the game. The game began as a side project of Tetsu Okano , a developer at Sega-owned development studio Hitmaker , but would eventually be greenlit under the direction of Hiroaki Suzuki with the approval of Hitmaker president Hisao Oguchi . While the game was famously produced with a relatively small budget, Segagaga managed to leverage this in its favor, frequently making jokes out of its cost-cutting measures in character dialogue and combat — examples below. Those who play through Segagaga will be pleasantly surprised by the unexpectedly coherent visual language achieved from decidedly chaotic flashes of compressed .jpgs, low-poly environments, and home video-like interludes — not to mention the excellently animated sequences by Toei Animation that appear throughout the game. Segagaga , despite its budget, crafts a rather charming tale bolstered by its — arguably janky — aesthetic that remains unique to this day. 
Segagaga released exclusively in Japan on March 29, 2001, just two days before the discontinuation of the Dreamcast. Despite being a last-minute release on a “terminal” console, Segagaga was the 130th bestselling Dreamcast title of all time, placing it in the top 30% of games on the console by units sold, according to research by TheBigO2 . Wanna see more SHIRO! coverage of Segagaga ? Read this Under the Microscope piece on how Bo Bayles unlocked Segagaga ’s debug menu, which the translation team used extensively during playtesting.
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