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Sega Saturn Appreciation and Emulation Thread

I've been playing the Falcom Classics version of Ys 2 since this weekend. The Saturn is a pretty great system for people who want to play games with one hand.
 
giphy.gif
 

alf717

Member
i know ive asked this but i forgot again; was the difference just cutscene stuff, or did it genuinely run smoother?

Same. Saturn is supposed to be the best version.

Both versions suffer slow down but the SS version does have its differences. Took these pics earlier:


The dining room scene is lit differently in the SS version and the camera is a little more zoomed in as well. Would love to progress more through the SS version but havning to play the PS version side by side to know whats going on is a bit tedious. I wanted to grab some battle pictures but didn't get far enough in yet.
 

meppi

Member
Been scanning a bunch of Sega magazines as I have a couple of weeks off work and came across a nice preview of little before seen very early footage of Panzer Dragoon in 1994 when it was simply called "3D Shooting Game".

There is some early Virtua Racing, Virtual Fighter, Clockwork Knight and Daytona pictures in there as well, not all of them from Saturn footage obviously, but I kept them in as it might be of interest to some.

This is taken from the Official Sega Magazine 7 released in july of 1994 in the UK.



Hey Amy, how do you scan these magazines? They look perfect.

If you're talking about those Sega Saturn Magazine issue scans, I'm pretty sure those are mine. ;)
Using a CanonLide 210 scanner.
Scanning every page twice at least, once from the left, once from the right. Then putting them back together.
Meticulously going over every single detail of every page which takes ages to do.
Then when all is finished, run them through a specialised batch processing to make jpgs from the tif files and correct the colours so they look as close as possible to the actual print issues.
For more details on the actual process you can take a look at this page I put up a couple of years ago.

If you want to complete magazines in their full resolution and without any artifacting of compression besides the jpg conversion, take a look on my site.
There are a ton of features and reviews up, but when you go to the catalogue section, you can download the full issues in various sizes.
Some links might be down though as I'm in the middle of redoing a lot of my old scans from 8 years ago so they look as good as my new ones. ;)

BTW, those pages above are scans without any editing done to them besides stitching the pages back together. So those don't really do the finished ones justice.
 

AmyS

Member
Hey Meppi, fantastic work, those are gorgeous scans. Much cleaner than what retromags does.

There is an issue of Diehard GameFan that I'm very much wanting to see, in its entirety.

It's this one (Dec 1994).

JtsluLM.jpg


Nobody seems to have it scanned.
 

meppi

Member
Hey Meppi, fantastic work, those are gorgeous scans. Much cleaner than what retromags does.

There is an issue of Diehard GameFan that I'm very much wanting to see, in its entirety.

It's this one (Dec 1994).

JtsluLM.jpg


Nobody seems to have it scanned.

Thank you. :)

The downside to that is that it takes a huge amount of time to finish up a single magazine.
On average it takes a good 40 hours or more to finish up a 100 page magazine. Took quite a few years to learn the best ways to all this as well with lots of trouble (and rescans) along the way.
I've been criticised a lot in those years for not putting out issues a lot faster, some even saying that at this rate I won't be able to finish up releasing my collection before I die. So I should just hurry up and push them out asap instead. That sure was nice. ;)
It sure would be a lot less work for me and I'd have ton more time to spend on other things, but I've been obsessed with doing these magazines the justice I feel they deserve so it's a little late to stop now, I think.

I wish I could help with that GameFan issue.
We actually had a deal with Dave Halverson a couple of years back to scan the whole set so that he could release them and sell them digitally, but sadly due to a combination of issues (and middlemen) that felt through.
You can still find the previews up on the site, but the buy links don't seem to point anywhere anymore...
He made it clear before that he isn't fond of people scanning GameFan to put out on their own and we always respect the wishes of publishers wether they are supportive of the site or not. Luckily we've had nothing but positive feedback from everyone else on the subject of scanning and restoring their classic magazines.

So I really wish I could help you there, but I can't. Not at this time at least.
I don't have many issues myself actually. Maybe 3 or 4 I think.
My collection is mostly all UK based since I'm in Belgium and we got most of our magazines from either there or from France (looooooved Joypad! :) ).

I've got mostly complete sets of magazines with only a couple issues missing here or there.
Would love to be able to complete the UK's Club Nintendo set actually as I'm only missing 5 of them.
If someone is able to help out with those, I could even get them sent to me, scan them and send them back within a week or two at most.
The missing issues are:

Club Nintendo Volume 1 Issue 1 - 1989 (UK)
Club Nintendo Volume 1 Issue 2 - 1989 (UK)
Club Nintendo Volume 2 Issue 1 - 1990 (UK)
Club Nintendo Volume 2 Issue 2 - 1990 (UK)
Club Nintendo Volume 2 Issue 3 - 1990 (UK)
 
Been scanning a bunch of Sega magazines as I have a couple of weeks off work and came across a nice preview of little before seen very early footage of Panzer Dragoon in 1994 when it was simply called "3D Shooting Game".

There is some early Virtua Racing, Virtual Fighter, Clockwork Knight and Daytona pictures in there as well, not all of them from Saturn footage obviously, but I kept them in as it might be of interest to some.

This is taken from the Official Sega Magazine 7 released in july of 1994 in the UK.






If you're talking about those Sega Saturn Magazine issue scans, I'm pretty sure those are mine. ;)
Using a CanonLide 210 scanner.
Scanning every page twice at least, once from the left, once from the right. Then putting them back together.
Meticulously going over every single detail of every page which takes ages to do.
Then when all is finished, run them through a specialised batch processing to make jpgs from the tif files and correct the colours so they look as close as possible to the actual print issues.
For more details on the actual process you can take a look at this page I put up a couple of years ago.

If you want to complete magazines in their full resolution and without any artifacting of compression besides the jpg conversion, take a look on my site.
There are a ton of features and reviews up, but when you go to the catalogue section, you can download the full issues in various sizes.
Some links might be down though as I'm in the middle of redoing a lot of my old scans from 8 years ago so they look as good as my new ones. ;)

BTW, those pages above are scans without any editing done to them besides stitching the pages back together. So those don't really do the finished ones justice.

This is great. I have a bunch of Japanese art/guide books and was thinking about archiving them at some point.
 

meppi

Member
This is great. I have a bunch of Japanese art/guide books and was thinking about archiving them at some point.

Oh that would be great!

I still have a bunch of Neo Geo Freak magazines as well as a dozen of Japanese Sega Magazine from the Saturn days.
Haven't gotten round to scanning these as I've got my hands full with all the others.
 

AmyS

Member
Thank you. :)

The downside to that is that it takes a huge amount of time to finish up a single magazine.
On average it takes a good 40 hours or more to finish up a 100 page magazine. Took quite a few years to learn the best ways to all this as well with lots of trouble (and rescans) along the way.
I've been criticised a lot in those years for not putting out issues a lot faster, some even saying that at this rate I won't be able to finish up releasing my collection before I die. So I should just hurry up and push them out asap instead. That sure was nice. ;)
It sure would be a lot less work for me and I'd have ton more time to spend on other things, but I've been obsessed with doing these magazines the justice I feel they deserve so it's a little late to stop now, I think.

I wish I could help with that GameFan issue.
We actually had a deal with Dave Halverson a couple of years back to scan the whole set so that he could release them and sell them digitally, but sadly due to a combination of issues (and middlemen) that felt through.
You can still find the previews up on the site, but the buy links don't seem to point anywhere anymore...
He made it clear before that he isn't fond of people scanning GameFan to put out on their own and we always respect the wishes of publishers wether they are supportive of the site or not. Luckily we've had nothing but positive feedback from everyone else on the subject of scanning and restoring their classic magazines.

So I really wish I could help you there, but I can't. Not at this time at least.
I don't have many issues myself actually. Maybe 3 or 4 I think.
My collection is mostly all UK based since I'm in Belgium and we got most of our magazines from either there or from France (looooooved Joypad! :) ).

I've got mostly complete sets of magazines with only a couple issues missing here or there.
Would love to be able to complete the UK's Club Nintendo set actually as I'm only missing 5 of them.
If someone is able to help out with those, I could even get them sent to me, scan them and send them back within a week or two at most.
The missing issues are:

Club Nintendo Volume 1 Issue 1 - 1989 (UK)
Club Nintendo Volume 1 Issue 2 - 1989 (UK)
Club Nintendo Volume 2 Issue 1 - 1990 (UK)
Club Nintendo Volume 2 Issue 2 - 1990 (UK)
Club Nintendo Volume 2 Issue 3 - 1990 (UK)

Yeah it's gotta be incredibly frustrating that Dave Halverson won't allow GameFan to be scanned & uploaded by any of the communities that preserve game magazines. I mean sure, there are a lot of issues scanned which are really easy to find online, but of course there are large gaps with any year after 1993. I guess it's understandable though, however frustrating
 

Laws00

Member
Why the hell is Blastwinds sound effects so loud that it drowns out the background music?

Geez, unless im trying to concentrate on it I can barely hear it
boxcover.jpg
 

BTails

Member
Watched the MLiG video on the Saturn today while running the treadmill, now I just want to spend some time with my Saturn! Fund little system that I need to dig into a bit more, as it hasn't gotten enough love from me. And it really does look amazing through RGB.
 

piggychan

Member
I've been playing the Falcom Classics version of Ys 2 since this weekend. The Saturn is a pretty great system for people who want to play games with one hand.

I finally managed to get a refund from my ebay seller so looking to get another copy of it for a decent price. Has to be the 2 disc version though.

Both versions suffer slow down but the SS version does have its differences. Took these pics earlier:



The dining room scene is lit differently in the SS version and the camera is a little more zoomed in as well. Would love to progress more through the SS version but havning to play the PS version side by side to know whats going on is a bit tedious. I wanted to grab some battle pictures but didn't get far enough in yet.

*sigh* makes me want to replay Grandia again from start to scratch but got a backlog of both saturn and pce JRPGs to go through. Currently going through Lunar Silver Star Story Complete MPEG version.
 

meppi

Member
Segata Sanshiro shows the Saturn so much love in Project X Zone 2, lol. The Saturn will one day unite all souls, indeed.

Ah man, I got the first one but never got around to playing it.
Now I'm about to put the second one in my basket and order it...

edit. Allright. Ordered!
Along with a couple more 3DS games I was missing in my collection.
Sonic Lost World, Angry Birds Star Wars and Cut the Rope Trilogy.....
/hangs head in shame


Also working on Sega Saturn Magazine 22 and came across this beauty.

 

piggychan

Member
awesome scan of DragonForce

I just came back from a retro games computer fair in the center of london today. I was like 50/50 on going as I hate getting into central london on weekends as travelling can be a nightmare what with road closures along with underground stations being renovated during the weekends.

Anyway I decided to get my ass out and pop down there and picked these up. Prices are similar to UK ebay's so you might or might not grab a deal.

Anyway spent a little under 150 GBP which most of it went to Batsu.. I was also tempted on picking up a boxed model 2 Victor Saturn boxed but couldn't carry everything in the end..

A9SMAJa.jpg


some more images of the gaming fair


 

piggychan

Member
Wow, I wish I'd realised this was happening!

apologies! I knew about back in March as there was going to be a show around April but due to work commitments I was unable to attend. They did say they were going to hold another around July but it wasn't on my mind till this morning and I just managed to pull my ass out the house and head down there. There will be another fair in November.

Anyway you can find out more here

http://londongamingmarket.com/
 

meppi

Member
Oh man, seeing those pictures really does something funny to my brain.
I find it hard to put it into words actually.
Some kinds of childlike excitement/longing for days gone by. Really incredible stuff.
Especially all those Mega Drive boxes!

Even though I own most of the games I really want, I feel a very hard to control urge to pick up a ton more.
Which is why I shy away from events like that. My brain just shuts off and my heart tells me to grab them all. :)

Great pickup with Batsugun btw. One of my all-time favourite shooters and one of the fist ones where I remember feeling having an exact arcade game in my home.
 

meppi

Member
I'm at a retro store and see capcom generations vol. 1 and 2,

For 35 and 60 usd.

Are these good collections

I loved those compilations back in the day. The only negative was that they were quite limited when you look at the selection of games per disc.
The PSone Pal release came with Vol.1-4 together.
But if you don't mind them being separate and costing quite a bit of money, I'd say go for it.

My favourite was Vol.4 with Gun.Smoke, Commando and MERCS. :)

What's in them? I only see ghouls n ghost on the back of one cover and 1943 on the other.

(Can't read Japanese)

Quick copy & paste:

Capcom Generations 1: Wings of Destiny
Capcom Generations: Wings of Destiny (カプコン ジェネレーション -第1集 撃墜王の時代- Capcom Generation Dai-ichi-shū Gekitsui Ō no Jidai) features the first three games in Capcom's "1940s" series of Shoot 'em up.

1942
1943: The Battle of Midway
1943 Kai: Midway Kaisen
Capcom Generations 2: Chronicles of Arthur
Capcom Generations: Chronicles of Arthur (カプコン ジェネレーション -第2集 魔界と騎士- Capcom Generation Dai-ni-shū Makai to Kishi) features the first three titles of the Ghosts'n Goblins (Makaimura) series.

Ghosts'n Goblins (Makaimura)
Ghouls'n Ghosts (Dai Makaimura)
Super Ghouls'n Ghosts (Chō Makaimura)


Capcom Generations 3: The First Generation
Capcom Generations: First Generation (カプコン ジェネレーション -第3集 ここに歴史はじまる- Capcom Generation Dai-san-shū Koko ni Rekishi Hajimaru) features four of Capcom's first five titles (with 1942 already featured in the first compilation).

Vulgus
SonSon
Pirate Ship Higemaru
Exed Exes


Capcom Generations 4: Blazing Guns
Capcom Generations: Blazing Guns (カプコン ジェネレーション -第4集 弧高の英雄- Capcom Generation Dai-yon-shū Kokō no Eiyū) features three run and gun-style Shoot 'em up games. In the German version, this disc was removed completely.

Commando (Senjō no Ookami)
Gun.Smoke
Mercs (Senjō no Ookami II)


Capcom Generations 5: Street Fighter Collection 2
Capcom Generations: Street Fighter Collection 2 (カプコン ジェネレーション -第5集 格闘家たち- Capcom Generation Dai-go-shū Kakutōka-tachi), although it was not marketed as part of the Capcom Generations outside Japan, instead being a "sequel" to Street Fighter Collection, which packaged Super Street Fighter II, Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold. It contains the first three versions of the original Street Fighter II.

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (the original Street Fighter II)
Street Fighter II: Champion Edition (Street Fighter II Dash in Japan)
Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting (Street Fighter II Dash Turbo in Japan)
 
I loved those compilations back in the day. The only negative was that they were quite limited when you look at the selection of games per disc.
The PSone Pal release came with Vol.1-4 together.
But if you don't mind them being separate and costing quite a bit of money, I'd say go for it.

My favourite was Vol.4 with Gun.Smoke, Commando and MERCS. :)
Gotcha thanks!
 

Saoshyant

Member

The only game I kind of regret buying? The Sailor Moon fighting game. It's kusoge as hell. Very basic 3D graphics, slow, unresponsive, unfun.

Other fighting games include Dragon Ball Z Shin Butouden, an improved version of DBZ Ultimate Battle 22 from the PS1, Samurai Shodown 4, the third best SS game (the two better being SS2 and SS5:Special), and Sokko Seitokai Sonic Council, which has some interesting ideas as far as a 90's 2D fighting game goes.

Aside that, there's Puyo Puyo 2 and 3 (fun and cheap imports), TwinBee which is sort of mediocre as shmups go but very colorful, Zoku Gussun Oyoyo, a puzzle game I heard good things about but honestly have no idea how to play (does anyone know?), Tenchi o Kurau II, a Capcom port of an arcade brawler (think Final Fight but in ancient China and on horse), and BackGuiner act 2, which is the second part of a VN crossed with mecha SRPG probably following the success of Sakura Taisen which had the same basic premise.

PAL-wise, Panzer Dragoon (which needs no presentation) and NHL All Star Hockey 98, which is the best NHL game on the system in my opinion.
 

Morfeo

The Chuck Norris of Peace
I own the Capcom Generations 4, and that is an awesome collection at least. Definitely recommended for that Mercs!
 

Theonik

Member
apologies! I knew about back in March as there was going to be a show around April but due to work commitments I was unable to attend. They did say they were going to hold another around July but it wasn't on my mind till this morning and I just managed to pull my ass out the house and head down there. There will be another fair in November.

Anyway you can find out more here

http://londongamingmarket.com/
November huh? I'll see if I can attend. Will be in Japan just weeks before that so it'll be interesting to compare what I can get!
 

meppi

Member
The only game I kind of regret buying? The Sailor Moon fighting game. It's kusoge as hell. Very basic 3D graphics, slow, unresponsive, unfun.

Other fighting games include Dragon Ball Z Shin Butouden, an improved version of DBZ Ultimate Battle 22 from the PS1, Samurai Shodown 4, the third best SS game (the two better being SS2 and SS5:Special), and Sokko Seitokai Sonic Council, which has some interesting ideas as far as a 90's 2D fighting game goes.

Aside that, there's Puyo Puyo 2 and 3 (fun and cheap imports), TwinBee which is sort of mediocre as shmups go but very colorful, Zoku Gussun Oyoyo, a puzzle game I heard good things about but honestly have no idea how to play (does anyone know?), Tenchi o Kurau II, a Capcom port of an arcade brawler (think Final Fight but in ancient China and on horse), and BackGuiner act 2, which is the second part of a VN crossed with mecha SRPG probably following the success of Sakura Taisen which had the same basic premise.

PAL-wise, Panzer Dragoon (which needs no presentation) and NHL All Star Hockey 98, which is the best NHL game on the system in my opinion.

Some nice pickups there.
For some reason I never got into the Twinbee games till I played this entry in the series.
I was surprised how much I actually enjoyed it.

As for Gussun Oyoyo, I've got it on the PSone but it's been many years since I played it.
It plays a bit like a cross between Lemmings and Tetris.
You don't control the little guy directly as he just walks around automatically.
Instead blocks in various shapes drop down that you can control to build his path to the exit of each level as well as protect him from enemies.
He can climb obstacles that are as high as he is, but not higher than that.
You can use bombs to create paths for him or to defeat enemies as well. Or you can squash them with the blocks.
 
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