STEINS;GATE EXPERIMENTS

STEINS;GATE needs no introduction, it achieved legendary status in both the anime and gaming communities for a good reason. It's the second of the Science Adventure games, coming right after CHAOS;HEAD, but you don't need to know anything about that to dive in. It drops you right in the middle of Akihabara during the summer of 2010, where you follow Rintarō Okabe, a college student who's fully committed to his «mad scientist» persona, calling himself Hōōin Kyōma. He and his friends accidentally create a microwave device that can send text messages to the past, and what starts as a fun discovery quickly spirals into a gripping and devastating story about the consequences of messing with time. The game is described by its creators as a speculative science ADV, which is a fancy way of saying it dives deep into theoretical physics and the very real implications of time travel, but it never forgets to have a huge heart at its core.

STEINS;GATE EXPERIMENTS

Arright, I'm gonna have to put the brakes on the overview right here. Why? 'Cuz as much as I'd love to keep talking about this masterpiece, you can't play the full version of STEINS;GATE on 3DS. There's no port, demake, nothing. I'm kinda surprised there ain't even a VNDS port for it, I mean, people have managed to get all sorts of VNs running on it and our boy Okarin is just left out in the cold here. But hey, that doesn't mean the community hasn't tried so, welcome to what I guess is an Unofficial Port Jam, not really a collection, it's more like… some small experiments.

STEINS;GATE

The first thing I found is gonna blow your mind, some absolute madlad actually got STEINS;GATE running on a Commodore 64. Yeah, you read that right, the '80s breadbox computer with like 64KB of RAM is out here displaying Mayushii☆ sprite and everything. It's just a proof of concept and the video shows the beginning of Chapter 11, so spoiler warning if you haven't gotten that far yet, but watching the pixelated character portraits and that chiptune rendition of the soundtrack is honestly surreal. The load times between dialogue lines take a few seconds for each text box to pop up, which is painful when you're used to instant responses, but still, it's genuinely impressive that someone managed to port the some part of the game's scripting engine over to this thing at all.

CHAOS;CHILD

Also, the same creator also messed around with a CHAOS;CHILD proof of concept for the 3DS. This is an old video from 2018 and if my research is correct, the project never saw a public demo or release, probably got cancelled or put on indefinite hold, which is a bummer. Still, it's fascinating to see these experiments pop up, even if they never become full playable things.

STEINS;GATE 8-BIT: VARIANT SPACE OCTET

The one that did get a fan port is STEINS;GATE 8-BIT: VARIANT SPACE OCTET, a sequel that takes place after the True Ending, so it drops major spoilers for the original story. It covers the first four scenarios out of seven total, it's got that Game Boy homebrew feel and the chiptune soundtrack is surprisingly catchy. It's a shame it never got finished but what's there is a solid little novelty for anyone curious about seeing Okabe's adventure squeezed onto a retro cartridge.

8-BIT ADV STEINS;GATE

Now, the only official game we can play from start to finish is 8-BIT ADV STEINS;GATE. This one's an official bonus game bundled exclusively with the Nintendo Switch version of STEINS;GATE ELITE and it's literally a fully functional NES ROM running through an emulator on the Switch. It's got that authentic '80s NES feel with chiptune demixes of the original soundtrack that are catchy and the story is a condensed alternate take on the original plot that follows the same general beats but moves way faster and it's packed with spoilers so definitely don't touch it until you've finished the main game. Gameplay-wise, it's a pretty straightforward adventure where you walk around a pixelated Akihabara, talk to characters, investigate stuff, occasionally let out Hōōin Kyōma's signature laugh and there's no save system whatsoever, but that's not a problem 'cuz we got save states. It's short and hella repetitive since it's basically one big fetch quest with a lot of backtracking, but as a bonus piece of content for die hard fans, it's a charming little novelty that shows some real love for the retro aesthetic.