Sakura Wars 1 & 2

"Sakura Wars 1 & 2 (サクラ大戦1＆2) were release on PSP on March 09, 2006 and is a compilation of Sakura Wars and Sakura Wars 2 ~Thou Shalt Not Die~ compacted onto a single UMD.

Differences from the original versions
[4 ] For Sakura Wars 1 is basically the Sega Saturn version with some small exceptions such as the control explanation screens for mini games.

Due to hardware performance restrictions, some scenes such as those with waving flame effects and falling of cherry blossom petals caused the game to slow down. Additionally, the character voices sound muffled compared to their original versions, due to the need to compress the games' data to fit into one UMD, these audio issues are especially noticeable in Sakura Wars 2. Other issues such as the long of loading times on the UMD were pointed out by many game review sites, but this drawback was not an issue in the downloadable version of the game that was subsequently released.

Failed English Localization Efforts
''At one point, there were plans to bring PSP ports of the first two games to the West. However, according to former NIS America president Haru Akenaga, those plans fell through thanks to Sony not understanding what the series exactly was. "Another publisher tried to get approval from Sony for Sakura Wars 1+2 for PSP, but it was rejected. Once a title is rejected by SCEA there is almost no chance to release the title [...] Sony said this is not a game. They said it’s a text novel. They judged it as that, so it’s really difficult to get the license again. It’s also tough to localize Sakura Wars because of the huge amount of text."'' [7 ]

Fan-Made Chinese Releases
There are two Chinese Fan translations made by two teams for Sakura 1&2. On June 25, 2011 a fan-made rom hack was released by the Chinese translation group called "PLAY汉化组". This rom hack patched in a Simplified Chinese translation into the Sakura Wats 1 portion of the complication. Original Release thread / Page on Translation group's website / Game Download (Chinese)

On May 29, 2011 a fan-made rom hack was released by "SW" on oursakura.com. This rom hack patched in a Simplified Chinese translation into the Sakura Wats 1 portion of the complication. Original Release thread / Game Download (Chinese)

Resources

 * Official website
 * Official website 2
 * Playstation website
 * Playstation website SEGA THE BEST [1 ][2 ]


 * Wikipedia jp
 * SegaRetro
 * Relevant thegamer.com article