Here's a question. Which is considered the better version of Sokyugurentai, the original or Otokuyo? I've heard that if you have Oto, you can use an Action Replay to play it in full English, since it has the original translated Terra Diver code on the disc, where the original crashes if you try. There are probably other bug fixes in there as well.
Well, Souky is a quirky one. There was a discussion about some of its oddities earlier in the Sega Saturn appreciation thread.
The story goes:
Soukyugurentai for the Saturn was basically a direct port of the Titan board version. The game was released in the East as "Soukyugurentai" and in the West as "Terra Diver". As the Saturn and Titan/ST-V are basically the same hardware, the Saturn
port tries to follow region instructions from the system the game is played on.
Playing the game on a US Saturn (without a region modification) results in the game using some left-on-the-disc data from the Terra Diver rom. This causes all sorts of problems. Some screens will represent the game as Terra Diver while others will say Soukyugurentai. Some of intro and exit stage text is jumbled as the game tries to use assets from the Terra Diver that don't exist on the game disc. It also renders the score attack mode useless. The screen is filled with a dot pattern, laid over the play space.
Normally this wouldn't be an issue, as the game was intended for play on Japanese region Saturns.
With the Soukyugurentai Otokuyo, it appears that all references to Terra Diver assets are gone. So no, the game does not appear as Terra Diver when played on a Western region Saturn using an Action Replay. It is entirely in Japanese without any graphical glitching. A demo of Battle Garegga is also included on the disc. Otherwise, there are no changes to the gameplay and it's identical to the original Soukyugurentai release.
But here's where things get a little weird. It's unconfirmed, but Soukyugurentai appears to be easier when played on a US region Saturn. I have a theory that difficulty was partially determined by region and that Terra Diver was toned down for the Western audience. What is even more interesting is that Otokuyo is affected by this as well. Though the Western assets have been removed, region still seems to affect Otokuyo's difficulty.
To to answer your question: The Otokuyo release is more playable worldwide due to the removal of Terra Diver assets. If you want the real experience and true difficulty, play Souky on a JP region Saturn.
