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The Saturn Appreciation Thread

strider

By strider,
in Retro & Arcade Gaming

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mash

mash

Posted
Posted

what emulators do people recommend? ive used yaba Sanshiro and medafen and im not impressed. Sega Rally seems janky on both. seems weird i can play model 2 sega rally flawlessly upscaled to 1440p

 

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bplus

bplus

Posted
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11 hours ago, mash said:

what emulators do people recommend? ive used yaba Sanshiro and medafen and im not impressed. Sega Rally seems janky on both. seems weird i can play model 2 sega rally flawlessly upscaled to 1440p

 

What emu are you playing model 2 sega rally on? Does it work well with a pad? I don't have a steering wheel!

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SeanR

SeanR

Posted
Posted (edited)
16 hours ago, Colonel Panic said:

Anyone ordered a Retrobit Saturn controller from here -> www.segashop.eu/products/retro-bit-sega-saturn-wireless-2-4g-grey-controller


no, but... the wired Saturn version is £16 on Amazon.


I look at them every month. 
 

You see, when it was just my PAL model 1 I thought it an extravagance that I didn’t need. Nice to have, but unnecessary.
 

but now I have a white NSTC-J model I’ll order one on payday.

Edited by SeanR
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mash

mash

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4 hours ago, bplus said:

What emu are you playing model 2 sega rally on? Does it work well with a pad? I don't have a steering wheel!

I'm using m2emu1.1a. I don't have a steering wheel either. I'm using a Xbox one pad. And I'm playing it on Surface 3 laptop so it's integrated graphics as well.  Runs pretty sweetly.

 

 

 

 

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ianinthefuture

ianinthefuture

Posted
Posted
56 minutes ago, phillv85 said:

I've just gone a bit nuts on Yahoo Auctions Japan and put bids on a whole bunch of stuff. It's mainly @strider's fault for that fucking beautiful collection picture.

 

I had a similar wave of mania earlier this year. The big box of stuff arriving was such a good day, and it seems most Yahoo Japan auctions saying something is in 'bad' condition means it has one tiny scuff, somewhere, eight miles away, hidden under a rock. Oh no I'm tempted to go back...

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Sketch

Sketch

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16 hours ago, mash said:

what emulators do people recommend?

 

From my experience this past week I would say they are all absolute shit still.

 

The ones that load and run well on my four different computers all refuse to load disc images of any kind, they demand physical discs (because the emu authors were clearly bastards).

 

Those that load disc images either won't run on my Windows XP rig, or crash on my Win7 and Win10 rigs. MESS and Mednafen both load, but it's a command line emulator and for some reason refused to accept the BAT commands I'd programmed.

 

I did eventually get one of the image loaders to run on my one Win7 rig, but that's when I discovered it only likes traditional ISOs and not MDF/MDS files, so that one can GTF.

 

They are all trash.

 

I want just one emulator, to run on any Windows with zero fuss, with a proper GUI, and I can just click File, Open, and then click on literally any fucking CD image imaginable. ISO, BIN, MDF, CDI, CCD, VHS, Betamax, IVF, and CJD, and it will just run it flawlessly from the get go. None of this "I can't recognise that image" nonsense, and no random crashing because I haven't updated some obscure driver of DLL file.

 

In the end I had to burn the game to CDRW and run it via SSF.

 

(And before someone says use Daemon Tools to create a virtual drive, three times in the past I've tried to use virtual drives and in every instance the entire computer died within a couple of days of installing - I do not touch them, they all seem to be malware.)

 

 

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phillv85

phillv85

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Yea the difference between bad condition here or the US and Japan is huge. My problem is that once I've started buying stuff over YAJ I can't bloody stop and it just escalates and then next think I'm shipping a 15-30kg. Then I have to pay VAT, and even worse, find somewhere to put all the stuff that's turned up. I'm trying to be disciplined this time and just buy 8-12 Saturn games 🥺

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Dudley

Dudley

Posted
Posted
23 minutes ago, Sketch said:

 

 

(And before someone says use Daemon Tools to create a virtual drive, three times in the past I've tried to use virtual drives and in every instance the entire computer died within a couple of days of installing - I do not touch them, they all seem to be malware.)

 

 

 

Is this a bad time to point out Windows 10 has native support for virtual drives?

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Sketch

Sketch

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33 minutes ago, Dudley said:

 

Is this a bad time to point out Windows 10 has native support for virtual drives?

 

:blink2:  It does?! I only have it because my one desktop auto-upgraded from Win7 to Win10 for free. I personally hate it, so have never bothered digging deeper into what it could do. Since basically almost every program I had on there stopped working. So I just assumed it was Microsoft's attempt to remove all useful functionality from the OS.

 

I think I'll look into this. Cheers for letting me know - and yes this is a bad time, the right time to tell me was last week when I needed it. :D

 

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bplus

bplus

Posted
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1 hour ago, mash said:

I'm using m2emu1.1a. I don't have a steering wheel either. I'm using a Xbox one pad. And I'm playing it on Surface 3 laptop so it's integrated graphics as well.  Runs pretty sweetly.

 

 

 

 

Interesting wonder if the emu is doing something to help with pad Vs wheel?

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Down by Law

Down by Law

Posted
Posted

Exhumed was my favourite game on the Saturn back in the day and you know I think it still is. Incredibly overlooked, way ahead of it's time. Still unique in it's Egyptian setting. I really hope the proposed remaster by Night Dive is based on the Saturn version

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SeanR

SeanR

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Down by Law said:

Exhumed was my favourite game on the Saturn back in the day and you know I think it still is. Incredibly overlooked, way ahead of it's time. Still unique in it's Egyptian setting. I really hope the proposed remaster by Night Dive is based on the Saturn version


there was a pc version, PowerSlave

 

and one of the... Hexen II hubworlds was “Egyptian” enough to be mostly blue yellow and gold.

 

(the add-on was Tibetan)

Edited by SeanR
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chipsgravy

chipsgravy

Posted
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Oh yes, Lobotomy Software performed wonders with Exhumed (Powerslave in the USA) So much so that Sega handed them the ports of Quake and Duke Nuke Em 3d to produce. All 3 are amazing showcases of what the Saturn could do in the right hands. Its a shame that the Playstation owning majority never took notice,  and its a bigger shame they closed not long after. 

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strider

strider

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2 hours ago, chipsgravy said:

Oh yes, Lobotomy Software performed wonders with Exhumed (Powerslave in the USA) So much so that Sega handed them the ports of Quake and Duke Nuke Em 3d to produce. All 3 are amazing showcases of what the Saturn could do in the right hands. Its a shame that the Playstation owning majority never took notice,  and its a bigger shame they closed not long after. 

Yup they're amazing. I have Exhumed and am now looking for the other two.

In other news the Satiator is amazing. Easy to use although I think it has a few graphical issues on some games.

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ianinthefuture

ianinthefuture

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13 minutes ago, strider said:

Yup they're amazing. I have Exhumed and am now looking for the other two.

In other news the Satiator is amazing. Easy to use although I think it has a few graphical issues on some games.

Which games? Are you on the latest firmware? I think I've seen an issue with Croc, but that's apparently common in non-disc versions of the game or something, but other than that nothing's jumped out.


The Satiator Discord group is great/helpful, so they can help if needs be.

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strider

strider

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56 minutes ago, ianinthefuture said:

Which games? Are you on the latest firmware? I think I've seen an issue with Croc, but that's apparently common in non-disc versions of the game or something, but other than that nothing's jumped out.


The Satiator Discord group is great/helpful, so they can help if needs be.

Latest firmeware. Rabbit which seemed to have a lot of slowdown and one of the FMV games seemed quite glitchy.

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chipsgravy

chipsgravy

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1 hour ago, strider said:

Yup they're amazing. I have Exhumed and am now looking for the other two.

In other news the Satiator is amazing. Easy to use although I think it has a few graphical issues on some games.

While you are looking why not pop them on your Satiator and give them a whirl. I was lucky to be a Saturn fan when it was the latest cutting edge tech and still have all the games I bought back then. 

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Riven

Riven

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58 minutes ago, strider said:

Latest firmeware. Rabbit which seemed to have a lot of slowdown and one of the FMV games seemed quite glitchy.

 

Rabbit has a lot of slowdown by default on a real Saturn and long loading times, the slowdown is caused by the scaling effect. Once you beat the game once you get the option to turn off the zoom scaling and it hugely improves the frame rate, at the cost of the screen size locking in place.

 

This video has the scaling on and as you can see it's slowdown central, need to vid the game myself at some point it's a solid fighter, but a somewhat flawed Saturn port, but it is much improved with the zoom off.

 

Zoom on video:

 

Zoom off video, much smoother:

 

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Treble

Treble

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3 hours ago, strider said:

In other news the Satiator is amazing. 

 

Did I ever post up my Terraonion MODE? A similar game-changer. As it's also a game changer. But I digress!

 

Seems to have one drawback compared to the Satiator: it's not plug and play. Fitting the TM is easy enough if you fiddle with electronics a lot, slightly harder if it's not something you're used to.

 

Basically because, if your Saturn is one of a certain set of model revisions (mine's a rev 2) then you need to connect up to a 5v rail, for dedicated 'onion juice. For which they give you a set of two wires with a JST connector for the TM side, and... two bare wires at the Saturn side. Which they expect you to squish and balance in and around a proper connector o_0

 

Most people won't be arsed as long as they can make the connection secure (it's a puny amount of volts and amps after all) but totally unacceptable to me as a solder-slinger, so I soldered the wires onto the underside of the board and made them electrically safe.

 

If your model doesn't need this power, it's far more straightforward. Logical connections to power and the old CD drive connector, basically. After that, there are two big benefits over the Satiator: it's cheaper (although only by a little, and will depend on whether you get stung for import duty) and it works on Dreamcast and PlayStation too. Moving the unit from one machine to the other is a minor hassle, but then you've got three optical disc emulators for the price of one.

 

It even takes 2.5" drives. I've got a spare 120GB one in mine. It also does SD if you prefer that. I'll try and find the pics I took later on.

 

Not mine, but here's one so you can see what it's like:

Polish_20200421_150213865-1024x581.jpg

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