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Sega Saturn Appreciation and Emulation Thread
- Thread starter Seik
- Start date
IrishNinja
Member
day won
Well thats that then. I guess it'll be like grabbing the PS3 version of D&D.
Is it true Sonic 2's port was a bit off?
I heard great things about this collection. The way I hear it, this is an actual port to the Saturn hardware and is thus not emulation. It's just too cool for school that these are 2D sonic games runing on stronger than MD hardware. Cant wait to see what the JDM Sonic 1 is like!
I'm just happy not to be a no cover, incomplete copy owning scrub. I'm coming up in the world!
alf717
Member
Played through Resident Evil as Chris this weekend. Vanilla RE sure is fun and it is definitely the hardest version of the original to play. Getting caught in a room with two hunters is a nightmare. One swipes at your legs and when trying to aim the other is swiping at your legs. After dealing with that junk I luckily had enough magnum rounds for Tyrant #2. Sadly learned that one of my Saturn's has what I suspect is a bad AV port. I have to wiggle the cable just to get Stereo audio. Sometimes I lose left audio other times I lose the right audio. Suspected the cable first but they works fine in the other Saturn.
As for Sonic Jam:
Some of the videos I watched show that the audio effects are off.
As for Sonic Jam:
Some of the videos I watched show that the audio effects are off.
Shadow Hog
Member
I also have Resident Evil on Saturn (picked up a disc-only copy at MAGfest earlier this year), but I've been making my way through the DS version instead. Obviously that's an easier version, since it inherits later PS1 version additions like autoaiming and picking up three ink ribbons per drop instead of just two, and has its own little perk of a dedicated knife button like RE4 (meaning the knife doesn't take up an inventory slot at all times). It's still pretty hard at points, though, and I have no idea which ending I'm on track for at the moment (but have resolved to not look up what the best ending criteria are until I beat the game, because I'll probably have more fun not being anxious about meeting said criteria my first go around). Presently in the laboratory, getting codes from those M-0 disks - those guys who attack from the ceiling are rather annoying, but I don't think I have the ammo to deal with them.
Yup - breaking things in Sonic 3 perhaps most glaringly.
ResidentDante
Member
Yeah, there's issues. The slowdown when you get hit and loose all the rings on the MD is fixed, but there are framedrops other places. This was fixed for the PAl version of Jam, but the PAL version runs the game at the slow PAL speed anyhow (though interestingly enough the music is played back via CD and retains the NTSC speed).
Yeah, they're converted to run on the Saturn hardware not emulation ports. Though there seems to be some issues for the good and bad it seems.
Seems strange when they had these engines up and running on Saturn they couldn't even make a Sonic 4 at the very least in good old 2D.
Yeah, unfortunateley, the audio got the silent hill on xbox treatment. They prerecorded everything from the Genesis version and just played it back as PCM on Saturn. Seems like such a wasted oportunity there since the Saturn is runing a beefier and more modern Yamaha chip.
PAL is unoptimised, so you can mod the console for 60Hz and will play fine, or play it on an NTSC console with the region unlocked. I don't know if the framedrops you're talking about reappears then though.
[edit] the main selection menu is PAL-optimised, the games themselves aren't. It's just the lower part of the menu that is cut offscreen, but nothing is missed.
AdamisFox
Member
sixteen-bit
Member
are the thunderforce gold packs the same as sonic jam with prerecorded bgm?
sixteen-bit
Member
I posted that in the "awesome" fanart thread a while back, lol
IrishNinja
Member
i dont know what's going on there with segata, but it makes me sad
IrishNinja
Member
Sega AGES: Power Drift, Galaxy Force
Shining Force Premium Disc
Battle Garegga
Radiant Silvergun
Batsugunn
Shinrei Jusatsushi Taromaru
Hissatsu
Three Dirty Dwarves
Thunder Force Gold Pack 1 & 2
Super Tempo
Tryrush Deppy i guess
you know, this & that, nothing crazy
Shining Force Premium Disc
Battle Garegga
Radiant Silvergun
Batsugunn
Shinrei Jusatsushi Taromaru
Hissatsu
Three Dirty Dwarves
Thunder Force Gold Pack 1 & 2
Super Tempo
Tryrush Deppy i guess
you know, this & that, nothing crazy
sixteen-bit
Member
taromaru imo
A Black Falcon
Member
My best guess is that the character he's holding is Sega Saturn, the Sega Hard Girls (anime) character. So yeah, sad.
MikeHattsu
Member
Yes it is
Wow, some heavy hitter titles mentioned. A lot of those are on my someday list. Hmm, I'll narrow down my top five out of reach (for the moment) titles:
1.Mizubaku Daibouken - Yes I know this was on the Taito comp but I feel like there's input lag on that port ... I'm not even sure it's there but I feel it.
2. Crows - The recently announced PS4 version has me interested in this one. I love beat em ups.
3. Pulirula - I thought about getting the (cheaper) PS1 version but yeah no.
4. Cotton boomerang - Damn this game's expensive ...
5. Lunacy - Expensive for what will essentially be one play through. But I NEED IT
1.Mizubaku Daibouken - Yes I know this was on the Taito comp but I feel like there's input lag on that port ... I'm not even sure it's there but I feel it.
2. Crows - The recently announced PS4 version has me interested in this one. I love beat em ups.
3. Pulirula - I thought about getting the (cheaper) PS1 version but yeah no.
4. Cotton boomerang - Damn this game's expensive ...
5. Lunacy - Expensive for what will essentially be one play through. But I NEED IT
Man I totally forgot about this one. Would love to own this
IrishNinja
Member
My best guess is that the character he's holding is Sega Saturn, the Sega Hard Girls (anime) character. So yeah, sad.
aw mannnn
i really should get around to that series soon
don't feel bad, i forgot about US saturn bomberman + 2 bomberman multitaps + 7 more controllers!
US House of the Dead.
That game's the rarest of the last three (Saga, Burning Rangers, And HOTD).
7DollarHagane
Banned
I'm getting my foot in the door of saturn collecting. In the last few weeks:
Decathalete - The graphics on this game are ridiculous - through SCART on a CRT it looks so damn sharp. pretty fun arcade type game.
haven't played yet - cheap titles that were good condition complete
NBA Jam Extreme
MYST
World Series Baseball 2
SimCity 2000
Fighters Megamix
Bug
Tomb Raider
And my biggest purchase - Guardian Heroes. It was $120 with a missing back art. I did a trade for some other stuff so not cash at least. Really love this game and glad to have the original version now.
My goal is to tuck away $10/20 a week and hope to buy a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga at the midwest gaming classic next year in april. I'm avoiding the work cafeteria both for my health and every few dollars i don't spend there is going towards PDS!
I also set up a Pseudo Saturn Kai cart and made a copy of burning rangers. Really fun game I should ahve bought at the time.
Decathalete - The graphics on this game are ridiculous - through SCART on a CRT it looks so damn sharp. pretty fun arcade type game.
haven't played yet - cheap titles that were good condition complete
NBA Jam Extreme
MYST
World Series Baseball 2
SimCity 2000
Fighters Megamix
Bug
Tomb Raider
And my biggest purchase - Guardian Heroes. It was $120 with a missing back art. I did a trade for some other stuff so not cash at least. Really love this game and glad to have the original version now.
My goal is to tuck away $10/20 a week and hope to buy a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga at the midwest gaming classic next year in april. I'm avoiding the work cafeteria both for my health and every few dollars i don't spend there is going towards PDS!
I also set up a Pseudo Saturn Kai cart and made a copy of burning rangers. Really fun game I should ahve bought at the time.
Good for you man! Great way to set goals for both health and gaming.
Saoshyant
Member
Well, I reached a big landmark in my collection and feel like sharing with strangers on the Internet -- it's not like anyone else would appreciate it like other fellow Saturn enthusiasts anyway. I've been collecting games for my PAL Saturn since the late 90's and finally got the last two I needed for a complete set.
While a complete set for any console is honestly a dumb idea -- any enthusiast should only get the games they like -- I had a personal reason to do so, so without further ado, here's the first of the two I was missing: Maximum Impact, a very, very mediocre (if not outright bad) light gun shooter.
It's not remarkable in any way, other than being 90's as hell with its pre-rendered actors and backgrounds and blood explosions (and it's also very cheesy).
Video
No, the thing why it's one of the last ones I got was that I wasn't even aware it existed until two years ago as I had never seen or heard anything about it. The Saturn version is in fact very, very rare, so much that I actually found a working arcade cabinet of Maximum Impact last year on some random bar in a small city whereas the Saturn port eluded me for all these years when I was actively looking for its games. This year I finally found a post-retro bubble price that wasn't 200, hurray!
The Playstation port, on the other hand, can be found for peanuts -- there's plenty of it on eBay and elsewhere if you are interested in trying this title for cheap.
The second game is the hilariously broken Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game.
It's fairly uncommon, so I only saw it in the wild once and assumed it wasn't in the original packaging, because that's an American Saturn case you see there in the picture.
We have three types of PAL Saturn cases and none of them were this fragile jewel case sort, so I assumed incorrectly that I would eventually find a copy in the original packaging. And then I completely forgot all about it and only remembered when I was going over the whole release list last year, trying to figure out which ones I was still missing.
Video
This game is dreadful, but it's interesting for two reasons: one, the console version on both the Saturn and PSX is entirely different from an arcade version released at about the same time and, two, the infinite juggles.
To this day I have no idea why this version of the game alone came in a different case than all other PAL releases, but it's a thing. It's also costed me double the price from what I had seen it at in 2009 (30), yay.
But it's a big landmark for me and I'm not ever doing it for any console that's for sure.
While a complete set for any console is honestly a dumb idea -- any enthusiast should only get the games they like -- I had a personal reason to do so, so without further ado, here's the first of the two I was missing: Maximum Impact, a very, very mediocre (if not outright bad) light gun shooter.
It's not remarkable in any way, other than being 90's as hell with its pre-rendered actors and backgrounds and blood explosions (and it's also very cheesy).
Video
No, the thing why it's one of the last ones I got was that I wasn't even aware it existed until two years ago as I had never seen or heard anything about it. The Saturn version is in fact very, very rare, so much that I actually found a working arcade cabinet of Maximum Impact last year on some random bar in a small city whereas the Saturn port eluded me for all these years when I was actively looking for its games. This year I finally found a post-retro bubble price that wasn't 200, hurray!
The Playstation port, on the other hand, can be found for peanuts -- there's plenty of it on eBay and elsewhere if you are interested in trying this title for cheap.
The second game is the hilariously broken Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game.
It's fairly uncommon, so I only saw it in the wild once and assumed it wasn't in the original packaging, because that's an American Saturn case you see there in the picture.
We have three types of PAL Saturn cases and none of them were this fragile jewel case sort, so I assumed incorrectly that I would eventually find a copy in the original packaging. And then I completely forgot all about it and only remembered when I was going over the whole release list last year, trying to figure out which ones I was still missing.
Video
This game is dreadful, but it's interesting for two reasons: one, the console version on both the Saturn and PSX is entirely different from an arcade version released at about the same time and, two, the infinite juggles.
To this day I have no idea why this version of the game alone came in a different case than all other PAL releases, but it's a thing. It's also costed me double the price from what I had seen it at in 2009 (30), yay.
But it's a big landmark for me and I'm not ever doing it for any console that's for sure.
Congrats on your purchases!
Also, I've recently got SF: Real Battle on Film for the Saturn too (the Japanese version, though... Aside from a couple of NTSC-U exceptions, I pretty much collect Japanese-only, for the system), and I was surprised to find out it was way more playable and enjoyable - not deep, complex, or great, as in the same league of the other SF games... - than I thought it would've been. It surely seems to play better than the arcade game, even though the graphics aren't nearly as crisp and smooth.
cj_iwakura
Member
Broken link, should rehost it probably.
Saoshyant
Member
The console version seems pretty much one of the Street Fighter 2 versions (probably Super, but not Super Turbo) with the original sprites replaced and no check for infinites. So it's certainly playable, but dear god, are there so many better ways to play SF2 elsewhere. It's good for a laugh, though. All the actors' animations are hilarious.
Street Fighter the movie is pretty much Street Fighter 2 turbo with digitized sprites so yeah, it's very playable.
Stolar even killed the image.
That's for sure, but I won't lie - even though RBoF will never make me want to play it, instead of Super Turbo or Zero 2/3 - I had a much better time than I expected, with the game.
And, the arcade version had way smoother animations, right? Shame they ended up to be so cut down, in the home ports, because it's all visually very less impressive.
Indeed it is!
sixteen-bit
Member
For sure. DC controller felt like such a downgrade.
cj_iwakura
Member
I like the DC controller. One of a kind, and it works for the games.
A Black Falcon
Member
I actually thought the show was pretty good, surprisingly enough.
It's Maximum Force, not Maximum Impact.
... 200 Euros for Maximum Force? Woah. Checking on US Ebay, the one PAL copy I see went for over $120. That's still a lot: the US Saturn version can be easily had complete for under $30, or less than that if you're lucky. It's not a great game, but it is kind of amusing, more so if you have the Saturn light gun. The port is better than the Saturn version of Area 51, too. (If you forget, Maximum Force runs in the same engine as Area 51. The two have basically the same gameplay, just with different visuals. At least here in the US Area 51 was pretty successful, but Maximum Force was sort of forgotten in comparison.) For the prices the US version goes for it might be worth it for the amusement factor if you like this kind of game, but for those EU version prices... yeah, for collectors only.
I know it's been said, but bah, SFII The Movie isn't dreadful. The visual overhaul isn't great, but the core gameplay is pretty decent SSFIIT stuff. It may have a few issues, but it's mostly just SFII. The original arcade version apparently is more MK-like, though I don't remember ever playing it, but the console game is basically reskinned SSFIIT. The Story mode is amusing to play through at least once or twice, too.The second game is the hilariously broken Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game.
It's fairly uncommon, so I only saw it in the wild once and assumed it wasn't in the original packaging, because that's an American Saturn case you see there in the picture.
We have three types of PAL Saturn cases and none of them were this fragile jewel case sort, so I assumed incorrectly that I would eventually find a copy in the original packaging. And then I completely forgot all about it and only remembered when I was going over the whole release list last year, trying to figure out which ones I was still missing.
Video
This game is dreadful, but it's interesting for two reasons: one, the console version on both the Saturn and PSX is entirely different from an arcade version released at about the same time and, two, the infinite juggles.
To this day I have no idea why this version of the game alone came in a different case than all other PAL releases, but it's a thing. It's also costed me double the price from what I had seen it at in 2009 (30€
But it's a big landmark for me and I'm not ever doing it for any console that's for sure.
But yeah, it's weird that that one game comes in a US case in Europe too...
Speaking of Stolar, someone in another thread posted a 1999 thread of people talking about Sega of America management.
Interesting read.
Interesting read.
Saoshyant
Member
Doh! I keep making that mistake over and over. I think it may also been one of the reasons it took so long to track down one copy, because I couldn't keep the name straight.
Yeah, it usually goes for nearly that much, hoovering around 170-180€ the few times I've seen it pop up on eBay.
The copy you mentioned, I can't find it so I assume it's gone, but if it was an UK one that was there last month and selling for 120€, it was missing the manual. And someone apparently still bought it for that much, Jesus.
I had no idea they were the same engine. Area 51 was also kind of bad last I played, but that would have been around a decade ago.
EDIT: Found a UK seller that wasn't showing up on other EU countries' version of eBay because s/he isn't shipping outside the UK. A complete copy in good condition, but still, £130, which translates to over 170 USD.
I'm actually now dying to try this game properly, but I haven't had a CRT in my house for over five years. Our modern era, the bane of the light gun genre.
What made it interesting is all the hate for Kalinske pre Console Wars and the thought Stolar was merciful in ending Saturn support, which is kinda true. And people saying SOTN didn't sell well.
And there's Vic Ireland, consistent as usual.
Don't know much about that, sorry.
Maybe next decade we'll all be praising Michael Katz.
Maybe next decade we'll all be praising Michael Katz.
IrishNinja
Member
some narratives die hard - over at sega-16, you'll get a pile-on for any praise given to Kalinske. i know dude hasn't always been consistent in his interviews, but it's crazy the reaction he's given, since so much of their success was under his regime.
the only real Stolar apologism ive seen in recent years was at Eidolon's Inn, which is gone now except in book form, i believe.
A Black Falcon
Member
There are certain members there who really hate Kalinske and pretty much everything Sega of America ever did. It's pretty hard stuff to understand, considering how Kalinske led Sega to its only period of significant success!
Heh... yeah, it is harder to find a game when you can't remember its name.
Searching US Ebay for 'pal maximum force saturn' in completed listings I only see one result, this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/MAXIMUM-FOR...071360?hash=item236e2989c0:g:m04AAOSwtnpXjONM which is only the "low" price it was because it's a buy it now. There are cases like this of games much rarer in one region than others (Acclaim's late Japanese Genesis/Megadrive releases come to mind...), and this sure is one of those. It's weird how these random titles sometimes are expensive, I've never thought of Maximum Force as anything at all sought after!
Here in the US at least, Area 51 was a reasonably successful game, you saw it all over the place for a while in the mid '90s. Maximum Force is its spiritual sequel. Arcade Maximum Force basically is a conversion kit for Area 51 cabinets, with a cheesy terrorist theme instead of a cheesy alien theme. (Seriously, those character descriptions in the [Saturn] Maximum Force manual... heh...) It gave Midway a new game to sell without arcade operators having to pay full price for a new cabinet.
As for the home versions though, while both PS1 versions run well and in full screen perhaps because of the PS1's superior video playback capabilities, on Saturn Area 51 has a very large border around the screen. Maximum Force for Saturn still has a border, but it's much thinner, and the game runs better too. Still, it doe still have a border, so the PS1 version is still better. I own both games for Saturn anyway, and don't regret it... they are amusing, and I'd rather have games not for the PS1 if I can. Plus the Saturn has a great light gun and I do have it, while I don't have a PS1 GunCon, just the (PS2-only) GunCon 2 and a no-good third-party GunCon 1 & 2 gun.
That's too bad, they are definitely games which are more fun with the gun. I can have fun with a light gun game controlled with a gamepad (or mouse, for compatible titles), but a gun is the best... thought yes, you do need a compatible CRT.
Ban Puncher
Member
Missed out on a Virtua Stick Pro today.
Judging by the link, they hated how Kalinske handled the Saturn launch considering that in 1999 no one knew that the launch plans were Sega of Japan's doing and Tom really didn't want to go forward with the launch. The Console Wars book better explained that period.
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