Update []: Since this story was originally published, the developer behind the Panzer Dragoon Saga PC project, yaz0r, has gotten in touch with us to clarify a few things.
"The decomp/recomp started a long time ago, around 2015 or so," he says. "I've been trying to make progress on and off. It was started under the impression that the code was lost. Over time, it became clear that the way the game is programmed (not at all like a traditional RPG) was making the task a bit impractical. Every location, battle and interaction is more or less custom and requires manual implementation."
He explains that he "toyed with the idea of completing CD1 and seeing from there, but I lost interest before that," with the last code change being Oct 5th, 2020. The reason it's currently gaining traction online is that yaz0r decided to open-source the project.
"At some point, feeling this effort had all been gone to waste, I decided to put it up on GitHub and see interest there," he says. "It's been dormant since, with just some slight tweaks to make it easier to compile."
However, the renewed interest in the project could see him pick things up again. "This might help me to get motivated to work on this again. I've been itching to try to make some progress."
Original Story []: When you ask RPG fans what game they'd love to see come to modern-day platforms, many of them are going to give Panzer Dragoon Saga as their reply.
Released exclusively on the Sega Saturn back in 1998, this sprawling epic is considered one of the best examples of the genre – but, because Sega no longer has access to the original source code, it has never been remastered or republished.
Video Game Esoterica has unearthed what is perhaps the next best thing, however, in the form of a recompilation project which, if finished, could see the game ported natively to PC alongside a host of visual improvements.
A developer by the name of yaz0r has created a recompilation project that is currently semi-playable up until the Arachnoth battle.
The last update was six months ago, so it's not known if the project is still in active development – but its open-source nature means that others can chip in and contribute if they wish.