While there are plenty of homebrew releases for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, its successor, the Saturn, is less fortunate when it comes to modern-day software support.
For this reason, any new homebrew title released on Saturn is likely to garner significant attention, so it's surprising that a new game by Playnautic's Riccardo Campione, Vigilant Paradise, went largely unnoticed by the community (us included) when it launched at the start of November last year.
As reported by Sega Saturn Shiro, Reddit user dmar3000 discovered the game's Itch.io page, bringing it to the attention of more people – ourselves included.
Described as an FPS starring a pair of smartly-dressed police officers who aim to tackle a terrorist group in a sun-kissed seaside location, it's clear to see where Vigilant Paradise got its inspiration – if this had a bigger budget behind it, we might even have seen Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas on the title screen.
"After accumulating a little too much overtime fighting crime in unconventional ways, renegade plain-clothed policemen Vince Dimare and Paolo Diterra have been put on forced vacation," reads the synopsis. "Only a few days in, Vince laments the boredom of having so little to do. But, in the City of Paradise, he may not be so bored for very long..."
It offers a single-player campaign with two playable characters (each with unique weapons and paths through the game), 15 minutes of fully-voiced cutscenes and an '80s-style synth-based soundtrack. Campione says it's "a symphony of Japanese silicon — utilising both Saturn CPUs, both VDPs, all standard memory chips, CD audio and PCM playback."
Vigilant Paradise is playable on original hardware – either via CD-R, ODE or suitable cartridge – and emulation. "Use of an optical drive emulator (ODE) is recommended to play on real hardware," says Campione.
"The game has a lot of assets and takes a while to load from a CD. Besides the convenience, ODE's reduce load times and save wear on the aging mechanical components of the Saturn. You may try burning the game to CD-R at your own risk - but I can't be held responsible for any new coaster collections, failed disc drives, or any other disco tomfoolery. If there is enough demand, I can look into doing a proper physical release on CD-ROM."
It costs $10. Be sure to support the developer by purchasing a copy if you're interested in checking this out.