Hello!
Has it really been two weeks (and a day, oops) since last issue? I've been on vacation, time both seeming to slip away in a blink and stretch out indefinitely since I last sat down to put together a newsletter. I've barely touched a game or a proper computer in that time, so I'm just getting back up to speed with activities other than eating my weight in Thai food, saying "wow" at the majesty of nature, etc.
I did mange to snap a few photos that feel on brand for the newsletter, though:
After taking some much-needed time away I considered punting this issue a week, but my vacation just so happens to be feeding directly into a weekend of working at Tokyo Game Show, which will be busy as heck. So instead I've put together a sort of micro ROM: The usual patch notes and fan translation details, but without the main stories. Snackable! Hope you enjoy some light grazing โ and if you want something a bit more substantial, I've also got a few reads I recommend on other sites.
Give those a look and I'll see you back here in a couple weeks.
Read these
Ogre Run
From '80s tabletop RPGs to former Vanillaware artist Yoshio Nishimura's new Witch of the Dark Castle.
Baxter
Baxter writing about a game that I once bought a Famicom cart of for 100 yen because I was like "hey that looks like Clint Eastwood"
Satellaview fans continue to discover, archive, and restore access to versions of games that have been unplayable for decades!
Frank Gasking
A rare Rare project resurfaces!
zolaware
Blue Dragon's recompiled port hits v1.10, fixing framerate interpolation issues and more.
Retro-Remake
Tons of features added to Console Mode, and there are even some new ones since this post targeting the Neo Geo Pocket!
Verity Townsend
The backstory for one of the newly translated games featured below!
Patching In
BlastEm hits 1.0 with "100% artisanal AI-free code" โ After 13 years of development, Sega-focused emulator BlastEm hits a big milestone, now supporting Sega CD and 32X and CD+32X, the Sega Pico and Yamaha Copera, Game Gear, SG-1000 and SC-3000. There's an improved debugger that may prove quite helpful for hackers. The emulator's also no longer limited to x86, with ARM support a key part of the 1.0 release.
"BlastEm today is made up of 100% artisanal AI-free code and I intend to keep it that way," writes developer Michael Pavone. "When it comes to commercial development for modern platforms, I get that ROI concerns make AI hard to ignore... Retro software developmpent is a different though. Much of this software is not particularly useful for any real work. People develop it for the challenge and the sense of personal achievement. If a computer does all the hard work, what's the point?"
While Sony ditches discs, RPCS3 says hey, we can play from those โ I have to say it's pretty funny, and perhaps a bit embarrassing, for a PS3 emulator to do more to support the survival of disc-based console games than the company that literally makes the game console... and the discs. "Recent changes to RPCS3 have extended direct disc drive play support from being Windows-only to also supporting Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD, and have optimised install times for package installations from the disc drive," the RPCS3 team writes. You can find a list of supported Blu-ray drives on the wiki.
Azahar squashes bugs, now warns you about mismatched save states โ A QOL improvement for the 3DS emulator: it'll now let you know when your save states from an older build are incompatible with a newer one; until now, trying to use them would just crash the thing. You can now scale up to 18x original res (8K :O), and a range of rendering issues and game-specific problems have been cleaned up.
Core Report
The MiSTer has a Sega Model 1 core now, partially โ No audio and one working game makes this one clearly a work in progress, and its implementation of the v60 CPU is from another dev's vibe coded project, so I'm a wee bit stand-offish about this one at the moment. But it definitely stands apart from the many AI-ported-from-MAME efforts in recent months, since the Sega Model 1 is in fact not fully implemented in MAME either. This has the potential to be a major MiSTer core if the arcade system ends up fully reverse-engineered. For now, it's a way to play Virtua Racing on mute.
The future of update_all is shiny โ Developer theypsilon continues improving the hell out of update_all, and recently showed off an upcoming UI overhaul that looks quite snazzy, with design language inspired by the Zaparoo Frontend. If you're a MiSTer purist, though, no need to fear: there will still be a classic UI option and update_all will remain command line-friendly, too. Check it out at the link!
NeXT! โ What do the MiSTer and Apple have in common? An appreciation for Steve Jobs' other computer company, apparently. There's now a NeXT core for the MiSTer, built on top of the emulator Previous. So yes, the next NeXT is based on the Previous NeXT. Hope that clears everything up.
Translation Station
Madou Monogatari, Saturn style โ We've seen the Sorcery Saga series 'round these parts before, and this Saturn RPG goes top-down for exploration and side-on for combat, instead of sticking to the old first-person dungeon crawler style. I don't think it belongs to the pantheon of sprite art Saturn games that make your jaw detach and clatter to the floor, but it's nonetheless a beloved series from Compile that now has one more entry filled in. Translator Maud is also a ROM regular and ain't laying a finger on AI; see her work on Waku Waku Puyo Puyo Dungeon and legendary shitty game Stargazers. Congrats to Maud on the hashbrown bowl.
Kazetrigger's back with a bang: it's Sukuzki Bakuhatsu โ What a couple weeks for recurring hacker/translators featured in this here newsletter! Hot off the release of Pixygarden, Kazetrigger (who also goes by Dothacktranslate) has put out a human-and-not-machine-translated patch for a quirky PS1 puzzle game. It's FMV heavy and there's not much in the way of in-game text, making it a fast project. It's also the epitome of an experimental PS1 game. Just scope this description: "Suzuki Bakuhatsu is an action puzzle game in which the player controls Suzuki (the daughter of a bomb demolitions expert), a woman whose has been tasked with disarming bombs that are disguised as normal everyday items."
Umineko can now Cry on the PSP โ I know nothing about this visual novel series except its connection to writer Ryukishi07, acclaimed for his work on it as well as the more recent Silent Hill f. I think people are pretty obsessed with them? Obsessed enough to create a project to translate Umineko's various releases, anyway, which is the script used in this PSP release. Speaking of ROM regulars, SnowyAria โ who coincidentally worked on other Madou Monogotari games, but not the Saturn translation โ was involved in helping hacker Kotcrab release this version of When They Cry.
Good pixels
ghost in the shell / psx exact, 1997
— dvlsblsh (@devilsblush.bsky.social) September 13, 2026 at 3:34 PM
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The Master System was my first system so enjoying brand new SMS games on 2026 is well worth celebrating on this #ScanlineSunday ๐ซ Razing Core 2026 - Bad Computer Master System Sony BVM A20 CRT ๐ฅ๐ฉ๐ฆ
— Turom (@turom.me) September 13, 2026 at 4:12 PM
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For #ScanlineSunday this week, I'll squeeze in a polycule roster of selectable characters from Hired Guns on Amiga. (RGB SCART, 13" flatscreen LG crt vhs combi)
— Sasha's Retrobytes ๐ณ๏ธโโง๏ธ (@sharkabytes.bsky.social) September 14, 2026 at 2:54 AM
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Participating on #ScanlineSunday for once Changeable Guardian Estique (Cat Hui Trading) NES (MiSTer via RGB)
— nicoleโจ (@renaryuugu.bsky.social) September 7, 2026 at 3:59 AM
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Aqua GT (PS1) (2001) 4/4
— ๐๐๐ค๐ฌ-๐๐ค๐ก๐ฎ ๐๐๐๐๐-๐๐๐จ (@lowpolyhighres.bsky.social) September 11, 2026 at 11:31 PM
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