STEAM-HEART'S Saturn Tribute Review - Screenshot 1 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

Steam-Heart’s is a most curious Saturn Tribute release, for two significant reasons: Firstly, it was conceived many moons ago as hardcore hentai erotica; and secondly, it was never particularly great.

It first appeared in all its grammatically incorrect glory on the NEC PC-98 home computer in 1994. Compared to the console market, there were almost no content restrictions for PC software, giving rise to a vast catalogue of pornographic titles. Most were sold on the promise of a few titillating stills wedged between rough coding, while a few notable exceptions, like the visual novel Yu-No, soared beyond their eroge roots.

Steam-Heart’s PC-98 incarnation is pretty lacklustre. Programmed on MS-DOS, it, like many scrolling shoot 'em ups on the platform, suffered a poor frame rate and laggy inputs. The backgrounds were bland and enemy attacks and bosses lacked structure, rhyme or reason. It was elevated by one key factor: the incredible artwork of Takahiro Kimura, who sadly ed in 2023. Kimura’s designs were rich enough to world-build at a glance, and, were they not conceived for an erotic adventure, would have been right at home as a Saturday morning cartoon fare.

STEAM-HEART'S Saturn Tribute Review - Screenshot 2 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

Set in the far future on an alien planet, the game follows two siblings, Blondia Varady (nicknamed "Blow") and Falla (a hermaphrodite character), who are immune to a virus that is threatening global destruction. After defeating a boss, Blow and Falla go about inducing a climax to pacify them, as is the tried and tested method for vanquishing evil.

Steam-Heart’s character designs connected well enough to produce PC Engine and Sega Saturn ports. The PC-Engine version features different pacing, weaponry, patterns, and bosses, but can feel slow and uninspired, and gets brutal with checkpoints that strip you of your weaponry. Both ports remove all explicit nudity from the cutscenes, but the 1998 Sega Saturn release is the most censored. It’s by far the most visually impressive version, however, stepping things up with totally redrawn backgrounds, resized sprites that make hit-boxes less cumbersome, and a frame rate that’s finally smooth. It’s also the most chaotic of all versions, updated for a time when shoot 'em ups were getting busier. There isn’t much in the way of memorable patterns or dodging structure, however, and the bullets often float mindlessly around the screen.

STEAM-HEART'S Saturn Tribute Review - Screenshot 3 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

Although the difficulty curve is less a curve and more an uneven wobble, it's still fairly easy overall. The laser is generally overpowered, and while some bosses put up more of a fight, others may as well come out waving a white flag. As with the original, a boost button allows your ship to dodge around the screen in bursts, avoiding incoming fire. It's mostly helpful, although it’s not uncommon to accidentally boost into the flak when trying to navigate it.

Your main shot also has a ground trace crosshair that lets you destroy enemies on a lower plane, like tanks, but it's a bit pointless in its implementation and you won't get much tactical use from it. Considering the game's erotic censorship, its animal cruelty remains surprisingly intact, said crosshair bloodily eviscerating miniature cows on stage 5 with a rather disturbing death moo.

Steam-Heart's has a ton of power-ups constantly littering the screen, and half the early game is spent figuring out which to grab. Your sub-weapons are applied across three different slots in order of collection, creating different attack arrangements. You can grab Vulcan or Laser primaries, but then attach a whole host of sub-weapons that behave in different ways. Unfortunately, the icons are confusingly indistinct, sometimes making them hard to pick out and even harder to avoid. This release includes an optional sidebar menu displaying all the power-up properties, and it's advised you use it.

STEAM-HEART'S Saturn Tribute Review - Screenshot 4 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

There is also a 'Weapon Crush' button that cannibalises your sub-weapon for a short-burst performance boost, and dedicated 'napalm' bombs to be collected and spent. With power-ups so plentiful, you're encouraged to detonate them fairly regularly, and this is one of Steam-Heart's more enjoyable aspects. There are shields and health icons regularly thrown out in addition to power-ups, too, which are crucial to survival.

You only get one life (infinite continues aside) and your ship has a life bar that can take several blows before bowing out. Should you die in a stage and continue, you're restarted from the beginning rather than where you left off, which, considering the game's overall ease, is a smarter way to handle things.

While the graphics are much improved in the Saturn version and the music is pretty good, the locations remain fairly uninteresting and bosses tend to lack any distinct personality outside of their cutscene appearances. The one thing about Steam-Heart’s that jars most is that it’s almost impossible to know when your ship has been hit unless you check the life gauge. There’s no clear audio or visual , which just means you kind of glide through things not realising you’ve taken damage until it’s too late. This, if we correctly, was an issue in the PC-98 original, too, and by 2025 should really have been rectified.

STEAM-HEART'S Saturn Tribute Review - Screenshot 5 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

City Connection's bonus extras remain welcome, and there are plenty of them, including screen filters, in-game hacks and tweaks, rewind features, and saving options. There’s also a new toggle to carry over weaponry between stages instead of having it wiped clean, as was the case in the original, and Score Attack and Boss Rush modes.

What’s disappointing are all the things that could have been added, but were ignored. Firstly, outside of menus, the game remains entirely in Japanese. This wouldn’t be a problem, but there are no subtitles for the voice-recorded speech. This renders the lengthy exchanges that begin each stage pointless, and the cutscenes arduous to sit through, should you wish to wait for one still to tick to the next. We would have thought that officially subtitling the game for Western audiences was a no-brainer, yet City Connection haven’t deemed it necessary. The press release states, “the original’s sensual scenes have been thoughtfully adapted for a modern revival, respecting the heroines' privacy,” possibly alluding to the hermaphrodite nature of Falla being removed. Without a translator, we’re unsure if there’s any difference from the original Saturn edit, but regardless, no translation is a painful net-negative.

Conclusion

It must be said, in removing its pornographic elements, Steam-Heart’s is largely robbed of its intrigue. Visually improved though the Saturn version is, its amateur doujin elements can still be felt beneath the surface. And, while reasonably fun to work through and see the sights, it doesn't demand repeat visits.

It still has absolutely stellar Kimura art, some more interesting moments in later stages, and some nice boss designs. The boost-dodging and sub-weapon cannibalisations, too, make up in some way for the unstructured nature of its bullets and grossly uneven difficulty. There’s perhaps enough steam in it for a completion or two, but the lack of translation is a real bummer, and it offers little else remarkable beyond the mystique of its PC-98 roots.