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The Official Sega Saturn Thread!


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4 hours ago, zetastrike said:

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this in my local game store last week.  I ran back there today with 3 consoles to trade for it.  Once it stops thunder storming here, I'm going to see if Outrun works in it.

skelsat1.jpg

Does yours have a region switch already installed?  I remember back around 2000-2002 when these were being sold by NCS and they would either give you a region cartridge (ST-Key) or they would put an internal mod with a switch on the battery door.  They must have sold a ton of them - I think they were $60. 

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Satiator pricing revealed

 

https://www.retrorgb.com/satiator-price-availability-revealed.html

https://www.patreon.com/posts/here-are-answers-40548838

 

$260!!!  That's gonna be a hard sell at that price, at more than twice the price of a Fenrir ODE (which is still in stock) and higher than even the MODE (when in stock).

 

Patreon supporters get the first shot at the initial batch with a "generous" discount of $15.

Edited by newtmonkey
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Having the ability to still use the optical drive would be nice, but I don't know if it is that nice.

 

I have to look a little more into the Fenrir as I guess some features have been added since it was originally released. I can also just wait until SAG has the MODE. I am no real hurry.

Edited by cybercylon
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5 minutes ago, cybercylon said:

SAG

Did they ever get the MODE in stock? It looks to me like they didn't, but I haven't been to their website for a few months now. Now that I think about it, I've never bought anything from them despite having an account, but maybe I'll get the MODE from them instead of Terraonion just to avoid the slowness of the Andorra customs office.

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They never had it stock. I did ask on Discord if they got a batch before the current run sold out, but I didn't get a firm answer. Maybe they didn't want to paint themselves in a corner. Well, everything is nuts out there these days, so that is fine.

 

I'd decided to wait to avoid that whole mess with customs, but the other reason is that I've had great customer experiences with them. The physical store is about a 50 min drive (closed temporarily due to the pandemic).

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@cybercylon

The Fenrir is quite nice assuming you have (or can get) a compatible Saturn.  It plays everything I've thrown at it with the exception of Bubble Bobble/Rainbow Islands (USA), which was likely a bad dump.

 

The only problem is with multi-disc games that don't let you save in between disc swaps.  The only worthwhile game that comes to mind that this breaks is Tengai Makyo IV, though I'm sure there are a handful of others.

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1 hour ago, newtmonkey said:

The only problem is with multi-disc games that don't let you save in between disc swaps.  The only worthwhile game that comes to mind that this breaks is Tengai Makyo IV, though I'm sure there are a handful of others.

Does it work with Sakura Taisen? I should hope so, especially considering how important that game is. I still haven't gotten around to playing it beyond the first few minutes (mainly because the game only lets you save at extremely specific points), though.

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26 minutes ago, newtmonkey said:

@Steven Pendleton

Honestly, I don't know as it's not the kind of game that appeals to me.  If it allows you to save between disc swapping it should be fine... otherwise, not compatible (unless you downloaded a save after the swap or whatever).

Interesting. I suppose I'd have to actually get far enough to change discs to see how it works. I've never gotten far enough for it to let me save, which is honestly why I've not spent more time with it.

 

I'm also likely to not play the Saturn version anymore since I now have a Dreamcast. It's the earliest game that I know of where your save file transfers from one game to its sequel, and since Sakura Taisen 3 and 4 are on the Dreamcast and not the Saturn I don't feel especially compelled to play the Saturn versions knowing that I'd lose that progress when I get to 3 on the Dreamcast. Might as well play 1 and 2 on the Dreamcast as well so I can keep my progress.

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8 hours ago, cybercylon said:

They never had it stock. I did ask on Discord if they got a batch before the current run sold out, but I didn't get a firm answer. Maybe they didn't want to paint themselves in a corner. Well, everything is nuts out there these days, so that is fine.

 

I'd decided to wait to avoid that whole mess with customs, but the other reason is that I've had great customer experiences with them. The physical store is about a 50 min drive (closed temporarily due to the pandemic).

Sorry, it seems I missed you somehow...

 

Anyway, yeah, I think it took like 2~3 weeks for my MegaSD to get from Terraonion to the inside of my house. The majority of that time was spent in customs. Maybe I'm wrong and it was shorter than that, but it certainly felt like it took that long. I'm sure I have the tracking information in my email somewhere, though. The SSDS3 was much faster, though, and only took a few days. Maybe I got lucky.

 

Hopefully it doesn't take too long for either TO or SAG to get them in stock. I did end up getting a Dreamcast like 2~3 months before I'd been intending to (I still have not played it even though I've had it for over a month and a half by now, I think) and 2 MODEs at the same time is quite expensive after the exchange rate (definitely NOT in my favour right now), so I decided to wait for a while and save some cash.

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At the game store where I was, I had a choice between the U.S. Saturn and the Japanese Saturn. I took the U.S. one because it was cheaper and I can't read Japanese. But it doesn't matter anyway since most of the Saturn games on eBay have gone stupid crazy. I literally dusted off my Saturn and took Shanghai for a spin. Just so I remember, the password for level 3 is G66. That's it. No stupid long-ass passwords. Dare I say kudos to Activision.

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Well, The Mode is on pre-order at SAG. I ordered one today, and it looks like a wait until October (though more of a delay would not surprise me). Not a big deal as I have enough stuff as it is.

 

Apparently, SAG did not get any from Terra Onion's first run. I don't know a thing about the reasons. 

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On 8/25/2020 at 11:33 PM, atari2600land said:

At the game store where I was, I had a choice between the U.S. Saturn and the Japanese Saturn. I took the U.S. one because it was cheaper and I can't read Japanese. But it doesn't matter anyway since most of the Saturn games on eBay have gone stupid crazy. I literally dusted off my Saturn and took Shanghai for a spin. Just so I remember, the password for level 3 is G66. That's it. No stupid long-ass passwords. Dare I say kudos to Activision.

If you want to collect physical games and play them getting a Psuedo Saturn cart makes a US vs Japanese system choice irrelevant with the added benefit of being able to play burned games. This is the easiest solution for people getting into the Saturn since you don't have to physically mod the console. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I absolutely love what the MODE can do but I am having a hard time getting into the Sega Saturn library. It's like Sony Playstation's graphics chips had a meltdown. Can someone point me to a few recommendations? This may end up in a Dreamcast(even though I have a knockoff GDEMU system) if I can't find a couple of good reasons to keep the Saturn.

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5 hours ago, ClassicGMR said:

I absolutely love what the MODE can do but I am having a hard time getting into the Sega Saturn library. It's like Sony Playstation's graphics chips had a meltdown. Can someone point me to a few recommendations? This may end up in a Dreamcast(even though I have a knockoff GDEMU system) if I can't find a couple of good reasons to keep the Saturn.

I have played some of these, have not played some of these, and there are more than this that I want to try that I think I might have forgotten about, but here is a list:

 

Thunder Force Gold Pack 1

Thunder Force Gold Pack 2

Thunder Force V

Sakura Taisen

Sakura Taisen 2

Guardian Heroes

Panzer Dragoon

Panzer Dragoon Zwei

Dragon Force

Radiant Silvergun

Princess Crown

Cotton 2

Cotton Boomerang

Soukyuugurentai

Layer Section

Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus

Stellar Assault SS

Saturn Bomberman (supports up to 10 players at once!)

Super Tempo

Edited by Steven Pendleton
forgot Super Tempo
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Recommendations are nice and all, but you need to put in some leg work to discover what's out there. You know your own tastes better than any of us do. Go look up a full game list and start YouTubing stuff that you think sounds interesting. There are a lot of great reasons to own a Saturn.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Okay, so after about a day of having no right side audio with my HD Retrovision cable, somehow I seem to have fixed it. Rather than play Princess Crown, though, I've been playing the other Saturn game I got yesterday, Dracula X. I must say that yes, this version of the game is extremely disappointing in pretty much all ways except the unique version of Maria, who is different than how she is on PS4 and I guess she's not in the PS1 version at all. She's mildly interesting at best, but she doesn't have a story or anything and I don't think she alone is worth it for the price. Really bad slowdown almost everywhere, altered art to fit the Saturn's minimum resolution, and more altered art to avoid putting in the work to do proper transparencies cause it to look pretty miserable at times and make it play very slowly.

 

This is still a good game, but there are better versions of it available and I only bought it because I found it for about half of the price that I normally see it for. So yeah, unless you can find a cheap copy of this game or you REALLY REALLY REALLY MUST HAVE IT, I'd suggest getting a different version.

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8 hours ago, imstarryeyed said:

Its really a shame they were forced to put the unfinished Castlevania out, as if it was just left in the cooker for the time they wanted I am sure it would have been an amazing release.  Its sad how Saturn was just not appreciated in its day.

Yeah, the slowdown is pretty bad. Maybe it would have turned out better if they'd gotten more time with it, but I still do wonder about some of the design decisions they made. The Saturn is perfectly capable of doing transparencies, but instead everything is a dithered mess in the Saturn version. Well, there isn't much that I can do about it, but eventually I do want to try that hack that lets you use the RAM cart. Supposedly the extra Blast ProcessingTM of the RAM cart helps it run a bit better, which will definitely help make it a better experience.

 

I do think that it could have been properly optimized if they'd had some more time with it, though. It only came out a few months before the Dreamcast, and I imagine that Konami decided to have them just push the thing out as a cheap and quick port just to get it out of the way so they could move to the Dreamcast instead.

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