Hey knight0fdragon, I didn't realize you also posted here. Thanks so much for giving this game an English translation! Hopefully I didn't come across as unappreciative in my post, because I think it's really awesome that you're doing this and I very much appreciate it. And I didn't realize you were working on anything outside the scope of the translation.
To me, the ability to skip cut scenes makes sense because if you're playing the Saturn version you very likely already beat another version of the game. But I don't mind watching them (and I would WANT to watch them if they were in English). I know the YZB hack did a few things, but for me there are 2 improvements that I think are huge.
The map, I guess KCEN did it the way they did because they wanted that "third hand" option and ran out of buttons. But one tends to call up the map WAY more often than one would use an item, so to me it just makes more sense to have a dedicated map button than the third hand. But the button combo that YZB did is perfectly fine. Having a way to go directly in and out of the map (and not into the menu first) is my most favorite part of the YZB hack. What were you planning regarding the map?
The slightly longer load times I don't actually mind. I use to joke that they added the ability to run because of the slow down and longer load times. But it's the delay when entering and exiting the menu that really bothers me. Loading a new area is usually only every once in a while, but going into the menu could be often. Having the slight delay going into the map, over the course of a playthrough, starts to get tiring. If you made the menu the same resolution as the game, that would be HUGE for anyone using a scaler (or anything with long sync times). Does that resolution change have anything to do with the delay going in and out of the menu? I assumed the 4MB hack helped with the menu delay because some thing(s) were loaded into RAM that normally weren't. But I have no idea.
IIRC, with the 4MB hack there was no loading going into transport rooms, where as the vanilla game had to load that room first (then load again when you transport). I assumed this was also due to the extra RAM, which wouldn't be possible otherwise (or I'm wrong). But either way, better file arrangement would help with loads game-wide so it might be 6 of one and half a dozen of the other.