I love my Sega Saturn

97i9y3941

i think its to do with collectors sake aswell,one game defo springs to mind is panzer dragoon saga,you can pick up the jap version fairly cheap but for the uk/usa version it goes for €100 plus because it was released in small quantitys,another game for collectors is
Akumajou Dracula X on the saturn,it has couple of nice extra features compare to the psone version(which was symphony of the night)

saturn review here

http://www.gamespot.com/saturn/rpg/dracula10/review.html

RichyX

Fred83 wrote: »

if anyone has a pal/uk copy of that game,hang on to it,it seems to command a fair amount on ebay,just because its rare

I considered selling that a few years back.
Assumed it wouldn't be worth much, it was top of the Saturn sales charts on release, although that doesn't count for much!

97i9y3941

have a nice saturn collection myself,i took advantage of the time when the dollar was weak against the euro so i got some games really cheap off ebay,i still have them

appleidog

Sonic jam is the best sonic compilation because they took time and care with it, very very good compilation with different difficulties and sonic 1 spindash, fantastic compilation.

And welcome to retro forum. The saturn is definatly a nice piece of hardware.

though symphony of the night is much better on ps1, the same goes for unfortunatly In the hunt aswell it was more arcade like but suffered because of it with some unfortunate slowdowns.


And house of the dead is uncommon not exactly rare. Discworld 2 now that is rare, Love that game excellent port for the saturn truly outstanding,

ANd another alltime saturn classic is Guardian hereos great game lots of fun like Streets of rage and guilty gear on crack great fun.

And the original Resident evil is very good on saturn, and Tomb raider is better on Saturn due to it was designed for the machine first very good games, those 2 with Resident evil getting its own Mini game.

97i9y3941

have guardian heroes too,excellent,intresting thing about in the hunt is,some versions of the game wont work on what model saturn you have,i have a pal version of the game but sometimes i have to reset and reset again to try get it going,metal slug is another worthy mention

appleidog

In the hunt won't work if it is japanese not on a japanese system, everything else would work fine. I have all copies of in the hunt bar the pcb which im aqquiring, In the hunt on ps1,pc offical wins 95,saturn.

Metal slug is a good game on saturn, especially since it is a music cd of the game aswell. oh speaking of which if you have kof 95 on saturn put it in as a music cd and play the last track and you hear the neo geo startup song, du du du du du du du du. pretty crazy stuff.

97i9y3941

the kof series on the saturn was excellent,the fatal fury series was the same too,and ohh megaman/street fighter series

Ostrom

appleidog wrote: »

though symphony of the night is much better on ps1, the same goes for unfortunatly In the hunt aswell it was more arcade like but suffered because of it with some unfortunate slowdowns

I remember in the glory days of CVG (terribly missed...) when they awarded the saturn version of Street fighter zero 3 a high five (one more than the playstation) because of the ram cart.

Then again Ed Lomas was always a sega fanboy (anyone remember this....??)

I did put on tomb raider again and they still havent come close to it, the level design, the well placed ambient sounds and music. Quake still plays great on it

97i9y3941

street fighter zero 3 was well deserved,i have it too and man it is fantastic,it has some little cool touches that was missing out of the ps2 anthology,one such feature is world tour mode,which has a little story line included,quake on the saturn is out standing port

CCCP^

Do you really need the RAM cart to get the most out of Saturn games? I remeber I had Alone in the Dark: Jack is Back on the Saturn and the framerate was woeful. Bit of a pisser, kind of like the deal with N64's and the expansion pak. What was that expansion slot on the end of the Saturn used for, apart from more RAMs.

97i9y3941

ram pack was useful,the idea of it aswell was,to load the some of the animation/data into the cart which allowed more arcade perfect games,also it cut down on loading times,one place where i defintantly noticed it was playing samurai shodown 3 on the psone,if anyone who was unlucky enough to play it on the psone would notice how bad the loading was,then i played the saturn version *japan only release* and it was quicker to load thanx to the ram cart,small few games took advantage of the ram cart option

Retr0gamer

Really did not like the Saturn port of Symphony of the Night. The slowdown was horrendous. Loads of the Playstations transparency and bloom effects were missing or replaced with terrible looking dithered ones.

AS for Panzer Dragoon Saga costing far more for as a western release than the japanese version well it's fairly understandable. The story of PDS is wonderful and you'll never experience it without a good knowledge of japanese. Also It's hard to come by because not only is it rare but it's probably the greatest game ever made so most people aren't willing to part with it.

Radiant Silvergun is indeed superb but I rarely hear much mention about Soukyugurentai which for me is just as good. Anyone that liked radiant silvergun needs to check that game out.

97i9y3941

agree with u retro about castlevania,it kinda embrassed the saturn too,showing it coundnt do some effects the psone could do,as for souky yes i have that game too

97i9y3941

and of course who could not forget thunderforce V,i played that game to death

Retr0gamer

Not a fan of Thunderforce V. Thought it was really quite boring and far too easy, I beat it on normal on my first go. Still better than the PS1 version.

It wasn't embarassing that the saturn couldn't handle the effects in SotN that the PS1 could. It could easily have done them. The saturn have problems with transparencies in 3D games and could easily do them in 2D. There should have been no slowdown either considering the saturn used it's ram better than the PS1 and was a 2D powerhouse. Whats really strange is that some really complicated transparency effects like the reflective polygonal lava are present in the saturn version and look great but the really simple effects aren't present. Just look at the amount of transparencies and sprites soukyugurentai pumps out compared to how SotN slowing down.

appleidog

Fred83 wrote: »

street fighter zero 3 was well deserved,i have it too and man it is fantastic,it has some little cool touches that was missing out of the ps2 anthology,one such feature is world tour mode,which has a little story line included,quake on the saturn is out standing port

alpha 3 on saturn is the best version there is better then,noami,dreamcast,ps2 ect....

CCCP^ wrote: »

Do you really need the RAM cart to getthe most out of Saturn games? I remeber I had Alone in the Dark: Jack is Back on the Saturn and the framerate was woeful. Bit of a pisser, kind of like the deal with N64's and the expansion pak. What was that expansion slot on the end of the Saturn used for, apart from more RAMs.

Well it all depends on if you like arcade games or not because if you don't then there really isn't any use of getting one there are still fantastic Saturn pal games out there aswell as alot of non ramcart games.
To be honest ALone in the dark was woefull anyway compared to resident evil.


It was also used as a rom cart for Kof 95 and memory card and cart for the internet.

efla wrote: »

I remember in the glory days of CVG (terribly missed...) when they awarded the saturn version of Street fighter zero 3 a high five (one more than the playstation) because of the ram cart.

It wasn't because of the ram cart the saturn version would of still got 5 stars anyway, the saturn outclassed the ps1 in 2D ten fold. And the reason 4 stars on the ps1 was because they actually started porting the cps2 game to the ps1

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Not a fan of Thunderforce V. Thought it was really quite boring and far too easy, I beat it on normal on my first go. Still better than the PS1 version.

It wasn't embarassing that the saturn couldn't handle the effects in SotN that the PS1 could. It could easily have done them. The saturn have problems with transparencies in 3D games and could easily do them in 2D. There should have been no slowdown either considering the saturn used it's ram better than the PS1 and was a 2D powerhouse. Whats really strange is that some really complicated transparency effects like the reflective polygonal lava are present in the saturn version and look great but the really simple effects aren't present. Just look at the amount of transparencies and sprites soukyugurentai pumps out compared to how SotN slowing down.

it was just plain lazyness on konami's part really just like in the hunt was it could of easily handeld the slowdown.

97i9y3941

saturn was hard to program too,it had 2 cpus,also the 3d chip was added at the very last moment

Retr0gamer

Fred83 wrote: »

saturn was hard to program too,it had 2 cpus,also the 3d chip was added at the very last moment

The saturn was hard to program for 3D games but for 2D it was perfect. Also it didn't have a 3D chip which was it's main problem. The Saturn outclassed the PS1 when you look at the specs but the PS1 had a dedicated 3D chipset which acted like a 3D accelerator you would have in a PC. The hardware accelerated 3D of the PS1 was extraordinarily more efficient than the saturn that had to run everything in software mode. The saturn did everything with brute force CPU calculations while the playstation designated 3D specific processes to a chipset that was streamlined for 3D calculations.

Many people say that the 2nd cpu was added at the last minute but it's absolute bull**** especially considering getting a dual CPU machine even running would have taken months rather than the few weeks that sega supposedly did it in and have denied. Sega had been using dual CPU based systems in their arcade machines since Outrun. Unfortunately Sega were the only company with any experience programming for tricky multiple CPU systems.

It was built primarily as a 2D machine with 3D capability. It's biggest flaw was using Quads to build polygons instead of triangles. You needed more polygons on the saturn to make the same area on the PS1 and triangles were the industry standard with nobody having any experience with a quad based system.

In dual cpu systems both cpu's can't work on the same process. Processes have to be split between CPU's. This isn't so tough with 2D games but with 3D games it can be tricky designating processes, you usually end up with a lot of unused processing power. Sega said that their two most advanced games Virtua Fighter 2 and Panzer Dragoon Saga really only got 80% of the power out of the Saturn. It's actually a problem that is cropping up with the multiple core consoles and PCs that are around today.

appleidog

Look what could be done when skilled companies could get out of the saturn like treasure and capcom, so sure it was hard to program, but still no excuse.

The n64 was hard to program and they come out with games like golden eye,mario 64, wave race, zelda, sin and punishment.

97i9y3941

did you see the prototype for shenmue running on sega saturn,it was amazing,pity it didnt see a release on the saturn itself,virtua fighter 3 would had been intresting aswell

97i9y3941

Look what could be done when skilled companies could get out of the saturn like treasure and capcom, so sure it was hard to program, but still no excuse.

you can defo say that about radiant silvergun,that blew me away first time i saw it on the saturn

appleidog

not even radiant silvergun, even stuff like Nights wouldnt of been able to be done on the ps1. and stuff like even when you look at the shenmue beta saturn pics, no way sony would of pulled that off.

And treasure could blow any console apart with there knowledge they made the megadrive look like a snes, with dynamite headdy and gunstar.

97i9y3941

do you still have your saturn?

Retr0gamer

Still have mine and it still gets very regular play. With all the fantastic arcade conversions and shmups that japan got it's the best console for pick up and play 15-60 min blast.

What impressed me most in Nights was the morphing terrain in one of the levels.

I still think that 10 years after release nothing has replicated the dragoon morphing efect in PD Saga:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qgDpPju8JQ

o1s1n

appleidog wrote: »

they made the megadrive look like a snes

They made the Megadrive look BETTER THAN a snes :P

appleidog

I still have my saturn,

and to 01s1n to true to true. :rolleyes:

97i9y3941

i loved shinobi X on the saturn

appleidog

I remember that game well shinobi x really was good, had reallife characters in it. The saturn was just fantastic really was, has a special place in my heart, i remember getting my first saturn back in the day, Man fell in love with it got it with, Shinobi,Guardian heroes,in the hunt, and some others can't exactly remember oh i remember though my first game was kieo's flying squadron.

97i9y3941

anyone try emulateing it?,need a powerful p.c,but then the saturn emulation was never 100% perfect

appleidog

I wouldn't emulate the saturn it would be sacralage. The only way to play a saturn is on a saturn.