The Sega Saturn just got a new first-person shooter, and it’s one of the more ambitious homebrew releases the console has seen. Vigilant Paradise is a Miami Vice-inspired FPS that took solo developer Riccardo Campione five years of self-funded late nights to complete. Working under the Playnautic label, Campione built the game as a personal quest to create an exclusive shooter for the Saturn and capture some of that mid-90s gaming magic.
The game follows renegade cops Vince Dimare and Paolo Diterra through six levels of low-poly gunfights and palm tree-lined streets. You can choose between the two protagonists at the start, each with different weapons and story branches that play out across the campaign. Campione went all-in on period authenticity, stuffing the game with over 15 minutes of in-engine cutscenes complete with cheesy voice acting and what he describes as “a shameless overuse of CD synth music”. Under the hood, Vigilant Paradise pushes the Saturn hard, utilizing both CPUs, both VDPs, all standard memory chips, and CD audio to render everything at 320×240 with an unlocked framerate.
Vigilant Paradise is available in both BIN/CUE and ISO formats for compatibility with various ODEs and emulators. Campione strongly recommends using an optical drive emulator on real hardware since CD load times are egregious, and it’ll save wear on aging disc drives. If you’re emulating, and you probably are, expect quirks: Mednafen has very long load times, Kronos has frame timing issues, and Yabause doesn’t support CD audio, so you’ll lose the music entirely.
This appears to be Campione’s first Saturn project, though he previously released a Mega Drive action side-scroller called Super Heavy Duty back in 2020. The developer has hinted at a proper physical release if there’s enough demand, but for now, it’s available on itch.io for $10.
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