Puyo Puyo Fever (Windows, Mac OS X)

Sega's first next-gen Puyo Puyo game, released on as many platforms as they could so they could release a port a month for a solid year. The Mac and Windows ports, notably, are much closer to the arcade and Dreamcast versions than the other console ports.

Unused English Language Option#

While the Japan-only Dreamcast version features a full English localization, selectable in the options menu, the Mac and Windows versions were exclusively available in Japanese. ...or so it would seem, but in fact both games are hiding a full English localization which just isn't exposed via the options menu.

Both ports use an identical save game format to the Dreamcast version; hex editing the save game to set the region byte (0x288) to 0x01 switches the full game to English, including all text, graphics and story scenes. While editing the Mac save is straightforward, the Windows save is compressed and so it's easier to use the fan community's save editor to enable English.

While both ports retain an internal setting for the voice language too, neither shipped with English voices on the disc. Setting the voice language byte (0x289) to 0x01 simply turns off voices while the game looks for English files that don't exist. The Puyo fan community has an unofficial English voice pack which can be used with this option, but the game is missing timing data for English voices and cutscenes will advance before the English lines finish playing.