The Official Sega Saturn Thread!

[Steven Pendleton]

20 minutes ago, str0m said:

Neat idea. I just use my Fenrirs but it would be nice I guess to be able to use one of my real discs without having to get another Saturn out of it's box. Plus it would look normal if you opened the lid

Yeah, this sort of thing is interesting because the whole point of having an ODE is that you don't have to use the disc drive, so it's kind of like "why?" but at the same time, I do want to be able to use my real discs. That's why I have 2 Saturns, actually, as I am leaving my Skeleton Saturn stock for discs and putting an ODE of some type in the regular white Saturn.

[str0m]

The price is OK for me in the UK where he is, will put more on top for overseas orders. Both my Fenrirs are 21 pin versions so I will have to wait a bit then might get one.

[electricmastro]

Nice installment of Bust-A-Move on the system:

 

 

[SlidellMan]

I thought I would bring up Technosoft's oft-overlooked contributions to the system, starting with:

 

You guys would be surprised to hear how magazines were eviscerating this.

[DragonGrafx-16]

11 minutes ago, SlidellMan said:

I thought I would bring up Technosoft's oft-overlooked contributions to the system, starting with:

 

You guys would be surprised to hear how magazines were eviscerating this.

There's also Blast Wind: 

 

I didn't know that Technosoft made a vertical shmup until I found this... and the music uses many of the same sounds that the Thunder Force V soundtrack used.

[SlidellMan]

@DragonGrafx-16 That's because Hyakutaro Tsukumo worked on both TF5 and Blast Wind. His excellent soundtrack for the Thunder Force 6 that never was made Broken Thunder and the Thunder Force 6 we actually got even sadder.

[dudeguy]

It's too bad everyone and their mothers are obsessed with the Saturn, making prices for the non-sports games easily sell for $100+. I am glad I'm a racing game enthusiast because they tend to be the second cheapest retro game genre after sports  I played a bit of the Daytona game, the revised version. Id really like to get the Sega Rally game at some point. Saturn games are super hard to find where I live.

 

I do have Street Fighter (Alpha I think) and its one of the best and smoothest running 2D fighters ive ever played. now I just need someone to play it with

[Mikebloke]

If you like alpha then you should pick up alpha 2 for the saturn, the load times on the first game is painful, especially given not much is happening, a lot of the backgrounds aren't even animated. 

 

With alpha 2 you have a much more expanded roster including one of the few appearances of Gen, faster loading times, animated backgrounds and more. 

[Rhomaios]

On 5/2/2022 at 5:43 AM, dudeguy said:

It's too bad everyone and their mothers are obsessed with the Saturn, making prices for the non-sports games easily sell for $100+. I am glad I'm a racing game enthusiast because they tend to be the second cheapest retro game genre after sports  I played a bit of the Daytona game, the revised version. Id really like to get the Sega Rally game at some point. Saturn games are super hard to find where I live.

 

I do have Street Fighter (Alpha I think) and its one of the best and smoothest running 2D fighters ive ever played. now I just need someone to play it with

This is the reason I just went with Japanese games for the system. There are a handful of US games I wish I owned (chiefly Dragon Force, but also Shining Wisdom, Albert Odyssey, and Magic Knight Rayearth), but ultimately, they're just games and I'd rather spend my money on many other things.

[electricmastro]

I didn't know the Saturn had games like Magic Knight Rayearth talking about subject matter like condoms

 

[Steven Pendleton]

46 minutes ago, electricmastro said:

I didn't know the Saturn had games like Magic Knight Rayearth talking about subject matter like condoms

Wrecking Designs strikes again. This game (or at least, the original manga) is supposed to be for elementary school girls, but the localization team of course didn't care about that. The non-butchered Japanese version isn't nearly as stupid as the international version is.

Edited May 15, 2022 by Steven Pendleton

[Rhomaios]

31 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Wrecking Designs strikes again. This game (or at least, the original manga) is supposed to be for elementary school girls, but the localization team of course didn't care about that. The non-butchered Japanese version isn't nearly as stupid as the international version is.

Par for the course for Working Designs. So maybe this one isn't on the own-list anymore.

[Steven Pendleton]

54 minutes ago, Rhomaios said:

Par for the course for Working Designs. So maybe this one isn't on the own-list anymore.

Honestly, the game is just kind of okay at best anyway. It's basically just an extremely simplified 2D Zelda clone (which itself is a Hydlide clone, now that I think about it) with anime cutscenes and beautiful graphics and sprite animations. Seems that all or most of the budget went into the presentation to make it look nice and not the actual game design, which is quite bland. It's not a bad game, but there are many things I'd rather play instead, both on the Saturn and not. Definitely don't pay the $1000 USD for the US version.

Edited May 15, 2022 by Steven Pendleton

[Rhomaios]

7 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Honestly, the game is just kind of okay at best anyway. It's basically just an extremely simplified 2D Zelda clone (which itself is a Hydlide clone, now that I think about it) with anime cutscenes and beautiful graphics and sprite animations. Seems that all or most of the budget went into the presentation to make it look nice and not the actual game design, which is quite bland. It's not a bad game, but there are many things I'd rather play instead, both on the Saturn and not. Definitely don't pay the $1000 USD for the US version.

I had no idea it has risen so much in price. I was thinking it was a couple hundred still. Looks like it spiked during the pandemic. I think if I had bought it when it was at the $250 mark, I 100% would sell it for a grand. Easy peasy math on that one.

[electricmastro]

Cool sprite scaling from Albert Odyssey:

 

[Steven Pendleton]

4 minutes ago, Rhomaios said:

I had no idea it has risen so much in price. I was thinking it was a couple hundred still. Looks like it spiked during the pandemic. I think if I had bought it when it was at the $250 mark, I 100% would sell it for a grand. Easy peasy math on that one.

Yeah, it's been at the $1000 point for several years now. I think it was $800 or so in like 2015~2018. Japanese limited edition version can be had for only 1000 yen CIB, though. That's the one that I have. I actually started a playthrough about 6 months ago and dropped it again. Got further than last time, though... barely. Still need to finish it eventually.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Yeah my wife thought I was nuts when I bought a CIB Hikaru printed disc version of the game + unused stickers from a local Saturn FB group for $250 about 5 years ago. It also came with the JPN Saturn version of the game and a NIB Gamegear version of MKR. So I felt for the time even then, it was a good deal and wasn't likely to get any cheaper. My wife doesn't think I'm quite so crazy for making that purchase anymore...

 

And I've seen quite a few collectors over the past few months now offloading their Saturn collections both NTSC and JPN games and they are all fetching or I should say... asking quite the large amount of coin for them. While I have an ODE (Rhea) in my main daily driver and a Phantom chip in my second Saturn, I'm not planning to part with any of my games anytime soon. But it is certainly tempting no doubt with the current market.

 

Edited May 18, 2022 by -^CrossBow^-
spelling corrections

[electricmastro]

If only the Saturn could be used like a phone.

 

[Steven Pendleton]

Last Sunday I was in Akiba wasting money at the arcade and I discovered something interesting in a nearby store: Langrisser Dramatic Edition. I didn't know this existed until then, but I didn't buy it for some reason. I think I will probably go pick it up tomorrow if I actually remember what store it was in. Pretty sure it was Trader. I've been meaning to get Langrisser and Langrisser II on the Mega Drive, but I might as well get them on Saturn instead because it's way cheaper than buying both games separately.

 

Yes, I do have that soulless-cheap-mobile-game-looking remake compilation monstrosity on Switch, but they really messed with the mechanics a lot in the remakes and I greatly prefer the way it was in the original versions from what little I have played of the original versions. I'm probably the only person here who has actually played Langrisser II, I imagine... the original version is really good. Not sure about Der Langrisser, though, as I haven't played that version.

[+Cafeman]

On 2/26/2022 at 11:29 PM, Cafeman said:

Well, I picked up a Hyperkin Saturn HDMI cable and finally tried it out tonight.  I read some negative reviews of it, but I did not notice anything wrong - the picture was much more crisp, I didn't notice any lag playing 1-player or 2-Player Virtua Fighter Remix or VF2.   At first I wasn't sure if it really improved things , but hooked up composite again to compare and woah ....  COMPOSITE BLURRY.   

Today I was playing the Working Designs Outrun port and noticed that the left right stereo sounds are REVERSED.  After some digging, I learned that incorrect pin-out schematics were posted years ago, and the stereo reversal problem is very common with 3rd party cables for Saturn.  Its an easy fix if you have a cable with RCA red and white cable output as you can just reverse how you plug them into your sound system, but with an HDMI cable, no fix. So that is an annoying problem with this cable, fyi. 

[Hydro Thunder]

57 minutes ago, Cafeman said:

Today I was playing the Working Designs Outrun port and noticed that the left right stereo sounds are REVERSED.  After some digging, I learned that incorrect pin-out schematics were posted years ago, and the stereo reversal problem is very common with 3rd party cables for Saturn.  Its an easy fix if you have a cable with RCA red and white cable output as you can just reverse how you plug them into your sound system, but with an HDMI cable, no fix. So that is an annoying problem with this cable, fyi. 

To which I will again recommend the LevelHike cable.  By far better than the other cheapies, if you're not wanting to spend what the Behar Bros items run.  It depends on your budget of course, but I find it worth the $27 or whatever I paid for it and much much better than Hyperkin or the other company that makes cheapies.

[+Cafeman]

Level hike is also reported to have reversed L and R audio.  Why choose it over Hyperkin? Oh, if you can reverse the audio cables then that is an advantage. 

[Steven Pendleton]

Anyone tried Langrisser Dramatic Edition? I'm getting heavily distorted audio in battles and I'm not sure what the cause is. It's bad enough for me to consider returning the game to the store and playing the Mega Drive versions of Langrisser 1 and 2 instead.

 

I'm running this on my Skeleton Saturn, so maybe running it on one of the older Saturns might make it sound better in case it has compatibility issues with the later motherboards, but I don't know and I've never heard of anything outside of Out Run and Space Harrier having compatibility problems. The disc looks really good, and I cleaned it several times to be sure, but it doesn't seem to have changed anything. No other games are doing this, either, so I'm not really sure what to think of this.

[Austin]

On 6/13/2022 at 11:57 AM, Steven Pendleton said:

Anyone tried Langrisser Dramatic Edition? I'm getting heavily distorted audio in battles and I'm not sure what the cause is. It's bad enough for me to consider returning the game to the store and playing the Mega Drive versions of Langrisser 1 and 2 instead.

Not I.

 

Honestly, I think you're one of the only ones on this forum that plays those Japan-exclusive RPGs and strategy games on the Saturn. Probably not too likely to get many responses.

[Steven Pendleton]

7 minutes ago, Austin said:

Not I.

 

Honestly, I think you're one of the only ones on this forum that plays those Japan-exclusive RPGs and strategy games on the Saturn. Probably not too likely to get many responses.

Yeah, but I figure asking and having an extremely tiny chance of getting something is better than not asking and definitely getting nothing.