Sega Saturn

Greetings, fellow Doomers! I've been reading reviews for the best games ever and quite a few seem to be Saturn games. There's an RPG called Mesume (?) which has had more loving praise than nearly any game I've ever seen, plus a Zelda (never played any of them!) and a number of other interesting ones.

Saturns are quite cheap to pick up now. Has anyone ever had one and would they recommend it?

Speaking as a Saturn fan: Saturns are cheap. Saturn games, on the other hand... Well, Japanese games tend to be cheaper (because language barrier), but a select few of even those command a silly amount of money (particularly ones with both high popularity and low language barrier issues - fighters and shooters, really, which make up the Saturn's bread-and-butter).

Still, if you have the dough, Panzer Dragoon Saga and Radiant Silvergun are ace titles, it has the superior versions of various Street Fighter and Mega Man games, and there are plenty of less-silly-expensive titles worth checking out, too, like NiGHTS, Virtua Fighter 2 or (personally; this one's YMMV) Clockwork Knight 2. Even a decent port of Quake, although it's much clunkier to play than just firing up a source port.

It cost me about $30 each for a Saturn + modchip + PAR cartridge about 2 years ago and the modchip is really easy to install yourself (it sits between the motherboard and the CD drive connection), can't hurt to go for it and then go to town burning the games you want

There's also a Steam port of NiGHTS now if you want to try it without committing to getting a console yet

Alright you've called me out. I have owned a Saturn since summer of 95 or so. It's a model MK-80000, and still in great condition. As I was buying games during it's heyday I own pretty much everything awesome since domestic release.
Many games I worked my ass off doing odd jobs to pay for them. Then later I still will occasionally acquire something nice on ebay, or friends will spot something and grab it for me, which rules. A recent addition was an arcade stick, still in box and having never been used. I've been tearing through all my fighting games on that thing lately.
It's my favorite console altogether, and I've easily played it more than any of my other systems, though I'm sure the Dreamcast is catching up. :)

The Saturn was an interesting competitor for the PSX: nearly equivalent hardware (though in reality it had the same CPUs as the 32X, essentially making it a 32X + CD + 3D engine!). It had a better selection of arcade games (being by Sega and all...) and also support from big names like TAITO and Capcom (that 8 MB extra RAM cartridge was a boon for fighting games ;-).

Too bad that it was quickly overtaken by Sony...

Actually, it was definitely more 2D-oriented than the PS1 was. Absolute beast when it comes to 2D, really (hence why there's such a strong library of fighters and shmups for it). PS1 generally couldn't keep up, even when developers tried. Capcom, in particular, illustrated this quite effectively; the few Mega Man games shared between both consoles feature some effects on the Saturn not present in the PS1 release, like warping backgrounds for underwater/volcanic stages. Also, their Capcom Vs. Whatever series could run with practically no load times and allowed for four distinct fighters in team play - the series' bread-and-butter - while the PS1 versions only allowed team play if both teams were identical. Having an expansion slot for RAM really worked in the Saturn's favor.

For 3D, though, its focus on quads instead of polygons, as well as its lack of proper hardware transparencies and lighting for 3D objects (2D had great transparencies, sure, but 3D usually had to settle for mesh) made it noticeably worse than the PS1. Still had some fun 3D games, but I don't think anyone'll say it even compares to what the PS1 did, even at its best (like Panzer Dragoon Saga, Burning Rangers or that Shenmue beta that's only ever been seen in video form).

I modded my Saturn simply because I can't afford to get games for it. It was a great system for its time, but the PSX had far better third-party support.

Now, the Dreamcast on the other hand, is one of the greatest consoles of all time and definitely should have stay around longer. Lots of equivalent PS2 games (Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 are the strongest examples) look like absolute shit on the PS2 because the Dreamcast had far superior texture compression.

I'm about to release an independent game built on the 3DGE engine for the [DC] system myself, so fingers crossed. And it's not a Euro-Shooter or Puzzle game! My team actually went to show it off at the MGC2014 and Eugene Jarvis of all people loved it!

Indie Developers make 1-2 games for it a year since SEGA went under as a hardware manufacturer and the demand only grows. So many cool things you can do to it.

I dont gave saturn yet but I want to experience doom on it besides praised panzer dragoon saga, deep fear survival horror game and castlevania sotn. Those 4 games are main reason why I'm getting it in few months

Infinite Ammunition said:

It cost me about $30 each for a Saturn + modchip + PAR cartridge about 2 years ago and the modchip is really easy to install yourself (it sits between the motherboard and the CD drive connection), can't hurt to go for it and then go to town burning the games you want

There's also a Steam port of NiGHTS now if you want to try it without committing to getting a console yet

Ohhh yeah. I was playing this the other week at my friend's house. He even had arcade-style controllers. That was legit.

I have a PAL Saturn with PAR4+ cart (no modchip, though :/) and most of the games I have are imports, mainly because, in those days, Europe got everything stone-dead-last and Bernie Stolar put paid to any decent games coming our way.

Most of the games I have are what the Saturn was best at - pixel-perfect old-school arcade ports, stuff like Chase HQ, Galaxy Force, Power Drift and Darius Gaiden, and the Sega Ages collection with Outrun, Space Harrier and Afterburner on one disc. That said, I do own a few rarer gems like Radiant Silvergun and Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius. And, of course, the entire Thunder Force collection for the system, cos it's ace.

As an aside, guess who was unlucky enough to end up with a patched DC console ...

It was Shenmue that I meant in my first post, but I realise now it was officially Dreamcast only. With the Saturn mod chip, does that work like a hard drive on an Amiga where you can download ROMS? (Apologies if that breaks forum rules, I was only asking.)

What's Saturn Doom like to play?

scalliano said:
As an aside, guess who was unlucky enough to end up with a patched DC console ... [/B]

Oh that sucks, I've heard of those. I own three Dreamcasts and all of them play burned discs.

Generally any Dreamcast manufactured before October 2000 should play burns. I heard the unpatched ones are rare, but they can't be THAT rare if I own three of the pre-Oct2K versions. I've heard of homebrew discs playing on ones produced after (so try burning Beats of Rage or something). Is your Dreamcast PAL or NTSC? NTSC has a better chance of being able to play backups.

MajorRawne said:

What's Saturn Doom like to play?

Painful. I've done a couple giant posts about it in several threads from days of yore. Essentially the framerate is shit, the doomguy goes 'UMF' passing over any lower change in floor height, and it doesn't include any of the special effects the PSX version has. Also the stereo sound effects are broken. In my opinion it's one of the worst ports of all time, which is such a giant fucking disappointment seeing how sweet Hexen and Quake turned out.

MajorRawne said:

It was Shenmue that I meant in my first post, but I realise now it was officially Dreamcast only.

Heh, oddly enough I just started a new Shenmue playthrough last week after a decade or so. Great game. A little slow in the beginning, but very fun. Shenmue 2 is also excellent. There are some screenshots floating around of a Shenmue demo running on a Saturn, from what I've seen it looked pretty damn good, but Yu Suzuki was a genius on that thing.

Use3D said:

Painful ... the doomguy goes 'UMF' passing over any lower change in floor height...

...and we all know what that means, amirite?

Maes said:

...and we all know what that means, amirite?

It's even worse than that. It actually plays the pain sound. EDIT: Wait, no. I remembered incorrectly. I need to get my posts right the first time!

Also, its version of the statusbar is kind of ugly. Very lame shading.

Maes said:

...and we all know what that means, amirite?

:D

It's not THAT bad, the only things that really bug me are the DOOM II monsters roaming around and the faster-than-normal shotgun blasts. I feel like this is what the 32X version should have been like at least, seeing how both had the same processors. But on that note as well, maybe the 32X version was a more "truer" adaptation than this one. ^_^

I've heard rumors that the Japanese version of Doom is better than the US one.

I own the Japanese version. It's... okay, I guess. Competent enough. But, I just can't be bothered to play it when the PC version is so much better. Framerate's still kinda crap, assuming it is, in fact, any better than the US version's. Still no colored lighting, although since the original didn't have that either, I can't say as I miss it.

I still probably wouldn't recommend it.

as has been said, NiGHTS is really good imo but at this point yeah may as well probably just get the updated steam version. a few years ago though the Saturn version still wasn't terribly expensive iirc so maybe it'd be worth it.

the other one I could recommend would be Guardian Heroes, which is quite a bit more expensive, but a lot of fun especially with a friend. actually I think that game recently was re-released on XBL so ummm I guess both my suggestions are void

If you can read Japanese (Hiragana Katakana) I highly recommend it. There's still some great games for English only readers but the PlayStation might be better in this case (IMO).

If you program as a hobby it's the best machine bar none! Seriously, dual sh2's, Motorola 6800e, DSP, and possibly a fifth CPU you can exploit. That's more than you can shake a stick at with the gpus its got (GPUs don't force stuff down your throat either; it's the most basic gpu's ever). Only problem is there's no SD card adapter or convenient way to do it directly on the machine; you have to get a third party cartridge with serial adapter but it's not even supported. You can install Linux with Yabause on a PC and use a cross compiler however, and there's quite a few libraries and documents available (segaxtreme has some great stuff). It's really fun to work on and doesn't stop you from being creative and learning sh2 (there's so many cpus only thing holding you back is software and yourself). It's got enough cache to let you figure out how to use two sh2s and how not to haha.

As far as Doom 32x vs Saturn Doom, Saturn should've used the 32x base and not the other way around (IMO). Saturn port is odd also when you compare the PlayStation version. The resources have more resolution on the hud, font, and possibly other stuff; the sprites are big in comparison during gameplay. I still wonder why nobody has ripped the Saturn WAD. Most make a bigger deal it's a bad port, and don't bother with the juicy meat.

Another thing, if you open the CD lid and sniff inside, it smells like pumpkin.

I still wish we got Segata Senshiro here in the States. Those commercials were fucking brilliant.

Jaxxoon R said:

I still wish we got Segata Senshiro here in the States. Those commercials were fucking brilliant.

Best was that where he threw that other guy in a pit and he exploded from the impact or segata sanshiro commercial for deep fear game

Uh hello



Powerslave anyone

If you program as a hobby it's the best machine bar none!

I dunno about that, the 2MB of RAM split between the two SH2s with different access latencies combined with the fact that you have to hold the SH2s' hands quite a lot for proper paralellization makes it pretty hard-as-cock to program for IMO. As far as getting your code onto the console it's really not that difficult to just burn a CD, but therein is the problem: you're gonna waste a lot of CDs

It really annoys me that the PC version of Powerslave is a different game entirely. The Saturn version is very, very good, but it'd be that much better with WASD & mouselook.

Shadow Hog said:

It really annoys me that the PC version of Powerslave is a different game entirely. The Saturn version is very, very good, but it'd be that much better with WASD & mouselook.

If I remember right ps1 and saturn versions also had variations between them like diffrent items/power ups and level design. I played ps1 version two years ago