Saturn Sakura Wars Minigames Won't Load

[Gromoff]

So a few days ago, I burnt myself a copy of the English translation of Sakura Wars obtained from this very website. Things were progressing fine until I had to play cards with Kohran (who is best girl BTW), where the game got past the loading screen, only to greet me with a blank background.

After this same thing happened a few more times, I burnt a new disc only to have the exact same thing happen again without fail. I decided that I would just turn her request down (which killed me internally) and continued the game as normal. Later at Chapter 4, when Iris asks me to help her pick out some clothes for our "date", the game freezes after the loading screen *again*. This happens on both discs I burnt.

Once is a coincidence, but twice is suspicious. Is this a known issue with either the game or the English patch, or is my Saturn acting up?

For reference, I am using an unmodified US Model 2 Saturn & an Action Replay Plus 4M cart flashed with Pseudo Saturn Kai Lite V6.037. In addition, both burns were verified by ImgBurn as having no errors.

Did I just get unlucky with my burns in the exact same way twice in a row? Is the patch not cooperating with my setup somehow? Is the pre-patched version on the repo corrupted?

Please help, and thank you in advance.