Well, I just got a Saturn off ebay.

[Austin]

Austin, you bring up a good point, I'll ask it here but will start a new thread anyway.

 

Why can't we upgrade the CD mech inside a disk based console, so load times are better? AFAIK they are 1x and 2x drives. Interesting.

 

Well, it's not that most Saturn games load times were bad. On the contrary, most were pretty good, actually. A handful, like Sonic 3D Blast, had horrendous load times.. With most games (far more taxing on the system) loading quickly, I doubt Sonic 3D was optimized properly in the loading department, heh.

[Animan]

Austin, you bring up a good point, I'll ask it here but will start a new thread anyway.

 

Why can't we upgrade the CD mech inside a disk based console, so load times are better? AFAIK they are 1x and 2x drives. Interesting.

 

Well, it's not that most Saturn games load times were bad. On the contrary, most were pretty good, actually. A handful, like Sonic 3D Blast, had horrendous load times.. With most games (far more taxing on the system) loading quickly, I doubt Sonic 3D was optimized properly in the loading department, heh.

 

It was rushed to the market after Sonic X-Treme was canceled, so I guess the load times have a reason (sort of).

 

However, you are right that Saturn load times are pretty good. Much better than the PS1's load times (In fact, some cross platform games had LESS load times on the Saturn version than the PS1 version. See Tunnel B1).

Edited October 14, 2010 by Animan

[MagitekAngel]

Sonic 3D Blast is terrible on the Saturn. Unless you thoroughly enjoy minute-long load times between stages.

 

Sonic 3D Blast is terrible to begin with.

[Reaperman]

One of my saturns will play backups (it least imported backups)--it's an oval button model.

I'm not sure if all the oval button saturns will do it, or if it's previous owner modded it. the only reason I suspect the modding possibility is because it came with the 'movie card,' so whoever owned it before wasn't afraid to dump money into it. It still needs the 4-in-1 to play any imports--legit or not.

 

The wife found a cd case full of high-quality HK Saturn bootlegs at a thrift shop, and neither of my round-button units (newer model?) will play those, even with the 4-in-1, so they must not be legit imports. They look fairly professionally made and mass produced. There are even some 'adult' titles in the mix.

 

here's a shot of some of some, pic blows up quite large:

anybody else seen anything like these before?

I don't think they're protos, loaners or anything nearly that official.

many have single-sided jewel case inserts too.

Edited October 14, 2010 by Reaperman

[jeremysart]

Great to see a Saturn thread pop up out of the void!

It is certainly a great and often over-looked console.

 

So far my library consists of Nights, Command & Conquer, Astal, Doom, Hexen, Alien Trilogoy, and Darklight.

 

I have been hoping to build on my collection, so I will be looking into some of the suggestions posted in this thread

[Reaperman]

Games I really like on saturn:

 

Manx TT superbike

Sega Touring Car Championship (I'm one of the few who likes this title, analog controller really helps)

Castlevania (import)

Xmen Vs Streetfighter (import)

Fighters Megamix

Last Bronx

Darius Gaiden

Virtual Cop 2

Nights

Panzer Dragoon

 

and Saturn Tempest 2000 is way better than plugging in a jag.

 

 

I haven't tried Panzer Dragoon Saga or Radiant Silvergun yet--maybe I'll fix that later on today.

Edited October 14, 2010 by Reaperman

[CGQuarterly]

The mod chip available here is supposed to be of superior quality and compatibility to the RacketBoy chip:

 

http://consolegoods.co.uk/

 

Chris

[the.golden.ax]

Wow a Saturn love thread, and I just noticed it. Yes, welcome friend to the dark side. If you have the round button unit get a racketboy mod, if not to try out stuff that is unattainable, then for the ability to keep your expensive titles safe. They only run $28 and they are simple as heck to install. I've got one in my kiosk. Plus you can region patch import images to bypass having to play with the cart slot and a action replay. While I have over 100 CIB titles in my Saturn collection now, I'd never let my kids touch the discs. It's one of their favorite systems, and CDRs are 10 cents

 

AX

[jeremysart]

Wow a Saturn love thread, and I just noticed it. Yes, welcome friend to the dark side. If you have the round button unit get a racketboy mod, if not to try out stuff that is unattainable, then for the ability to keep your expensive titles safe. They only run $28 and they are simple as heck to install. I've got one in my kiosk. Plus you can region patch import images to bypass having to play with the cart slot and a action replay. While I have over 100 CIB titles in my Saturn collection now, I'd never let my kids touch the discs. It's one of their favorite systems, and CDRs are 10 cents

 

AX

 

I would like to hear it from YOU.

What are the top 25 Saturn gams, in your opinion?

[The_Laird]

I did a list sometime ago where I rated well over 100 Saturn games out of 10 I will have to see if I can find it.

[the.golden.ax]

Hmn... My favorite 25. It would be very very hard to make a list in order of best to worst of best . I'll just state them as they come to mind and without any specific order. NOTE: after putting the list in excel to see how many (and sort by name alphabetically) I find that my list is in fact:

 

BEST 40 Titles (that I could think of at the minute)

 

Albert Odyssey

Area 51

Astal

Baku Baku

Blazing Dragons

Bomberman

Bug 1

Bug 2

Burning Rangers

Bust a Move 3

Cotton

Darius Gaiden

Daytona CCE

Earthworm Jim 2

Galactic Attack

Herc's Adventure

House of the Dead

Keio 2

Kyuukyoku Tiger II Plus

Legend of Oasis

Magic Knights Rayearth

Maximum Force

Mega Man 8

Mortal Kombat Trilogy

Panzer Dragoon 2

Panzer Dragoon Saga

Parodius

Radiant Silvergun

Rayman

Road Rash

Scud

Shining Force 3

Sonic 3d Blast (I like it... so what!)

Strikers 1945 II

Super Puzzle Fighter II

Super Tempo

Tempest 2000

Virtua Cop 2

Wipeout

Xmen COA

 

 

I'm sure I forgot something.

 

AX

[Austin]

Hm, I guess I will chime in with twenty Saturn games as well, although I can think of many, many more that are enjoyable:

 

Radiant Silvergun (Import)

Strikers 1945 II (Import)

Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight (Import)

Galactic Attack

Darius Gaiden

Powerslave

Scorcher

Virtual On

Fighting Vipers or Fighter's Megamix

Hell, just about any arcade port by Sega

Astal

Last Gladiators Pinball

Dragon Force

Guardian Heroes

Amok

Solar Eclipse (for your cheap fix)

Sonic Jam (They added the spin-dash to Sonic 1!!)

Duke Nukem 3D

Resident Evil

Clockwork Knight 2

 

My head is drawing a blank right now (Damn my memory sucks these days), but there are pleeeenty more that I enjoyed. Such a great system, one of my favorites, hands-down.

 

Sonic 3D Blast is terrible on the Saturn. Unless you thoroughly enjoy minute-long load times between stages.

 

Sonic 3D Blast is terrible to begin with.

 

Haha, to each their own, of course. I personally enjoyed 3D Blast (Nowhere near to the extent of the *real* Sonic games, of course), but admittedly I had to finish it on the Genesis. The Saturn version's load times were unbearable after a certain point, which is a shame. The game looks beautiful compared to the Genny version, and the throwback to Sonic 2's bonus stages were awesome in it.

[OldAtarian]

I was a big booster of the Saturn back in the day, though oddly, I never owned one. I bought the Jaguar shortly before the Saturn and Playstation were released and couldn't afford to support two consoles then. People used to ask me which one to get and I would point them to the Saturn. Jaguars were never really mainstream in my area and you had to go to an Atari retailer to get one. I remember I got mine from a little computer store in one tiny room down in the basement of a small office building. I also remember that the games aisle in the local Toys R Us was heavily biased towards the Saturn. They would have like 6 racks of Saturn games for every one of Playstation. I still don't understand how Playstation won when Saturn had such a huge advantage in games for quite a while.

[+wood_jl]

I still don't understand how Playstation won when Saturn had such a huge advantage in games for quite a while.

 

Other than Sony marketing muscle, Playstation just did 3D games better than Saturn, for the most part. Most of the 3D games on the Playstation just plain looked better. When there was a fantastic version on the Saturn, you really felt like you had something. I like "Powerslave" on Saturn - it was a great example of 3D done right with lighting effects, etc. I think they used the Powerslave "game engine" to do Quake - or maybe it was some other FPS. "Need For Speed" was excellent on the Saturn, and showed it could match the Playstation for some games. For whatever reason - Saturn difficult to develop for, not as powerful for 3D, both, or whatever else....games like DOOM were comparatively worse on the Saturn than PS. The fact that Sony bought up exclusive titles (Namco, etc) and development houses (Psygnosis, etc) was a big factor.

[Austin]

I think they used the Powerslave "game engine" to do Quake - or maybe it was some other FPS.

 

Yep.. Duke Nukem 3D used the same engine, and it was also heavily modified for the Saturn version of Quake. Lobotomy.. That's a studio that never should have bit the dust. They were too good at what they did, clearly by looking at their Saturn efforts (Oh, and Death Tank, anyone?).

[the.golden.ax]

I'm going to need to pick up powerslave at some point.

 

AX

[CGQuarterly]

Elevator Action Returns is one of the best Saturn games ever. That and Daytona USA (the original, not CCE).

 

Chris

[the.golden.ax]

Wow, a Taito title I've never tried! Yeah, I need all the Taito games for Saturn... those are some of the best!

 

AX

[Jess Ragan]

Now this is a topic I can sink my teeth into!

 

I think you couldn't put a faster CD-ROM in the Saturn for two reasons. The first is that the drive is proprietary, and the second is that the rest of the system might not be able to catch up with it. There would likely be a bottleneck somewhere in the system architecture... the drive controller, the chipset, etc. I wouldn't worry about it, since just added the 4 in 1 cart will make load times a lot faster for compatible games. For instance, matches in Marvel vs. Street Fighter load in just a couple of seconds. It's so fast you're barely notice it's loading at all!

 

Japanese games are a must for this system... all the best stuff was released in that territory. Everyone else will tell you to buy the Capcom fighters, and you should, but I'd recommend Vatlva if you can find it. It's the prequel to Car Battler Joe on the GameBoy Advance, and it plays like Star Control, except with ground-based vehicles. Each car has six different weapons at its disposal, with each assigned to a different button on the face of the controller, and battles can get pretty intense with all those bullets and bombs flying around. Keio Yugekitai is worth considering too... it won't take you long to finish but the game is gorgeous and chock full of crazy Japanese slapstick.

 

As far as American games are concerned, I haven't seen anyone recommend Midway Arcade's Greatest Hits, so let me suggest that. The games are so accurately emulated you can adjust settings in the test menu and create your own custom message in the attract mode! The only time I ever saw this done was at a Chuck E. Cheese when I was a kid, and I was thrilled beyond belief to actually be able to do that at home. The second volume, full of Atari games, is also worth picking up, but not quite as exciting for me personally. I think they took out some of the customization features and the games themselves aren't as fun.

[CRV]

As far as American games are concerned, I haven't seen anyone recommend Midway Arcade's Greatest Hits, so let me suggest that. The games are so accurately emulated you can adjust settings in the test menu and create your own custom message in the attract mode!

 

How do you get into the test menu?

[4Ks]

The second volume, full of Atari games, is also worth picking up, but not quite as exciting for me personally. I think they took out some of the customization features and the games themselves aren't as fun.

 

What a coincidence, I got that game yesterday. But I can't play it yet, since the Saturn hasn't come.

[Reaperman]

Hmm, I was wrong about my saturn, it must be a full mod. It only needs the 4-in-1 for the games that need its extra ram.

 

I've got to say, Radiant Silvergun does kind of live up to the hype. I still like Raystorm better for being less flat and less 'boss-y,' but silvergun gets nuts pretty quickly.

 

Oh well, time to go back to one of the many dirty mahjong games out there and have my ass handed to me by girls in sailor outfits...

Edited October 15, 2010 by Reaperman

[the.golden.ax]

I sold a total of three Saturns in the past 10 days. IF you bought one from me, you would have had it by now

 

AX

[Jess Ragan]

As far as American games are concerned, I haven't seen anyone recommend Midway Arcade's Greatest Hits, so let me suggest that. The games are so accurately emulated you can adjust settings in the test menu and create your own custom message in the attract mode!

 

How do you get into the test menu?

 

I haven't played the game in a long, long time, so I don't remember for sure. I do know that you enter the debug menu in the Playstation version by holding down all the shoulder buttons and pressing select.

[zylon]

Hmm, I was wrong about my saturn, it must be a full mod. It only needs the 4-in-1 for the games that need its extra ram.

 

I've got to say, Radiant Silvergun does kind of live up to the hype. I still like Raystorm better for being less flat and less 'boss-y,' but silvergun gets nuts pretty quickly.

 

Oh well, time to go back to one of the many dirty mahjong games out there and have my ass handed to me by girls in sailor outfits...

I'd also recommend Shienryu if playing imports or you could play dirty rock, paper, scissors on the Yakyuyen Special.