Opinions of the Sega Saturn (and its library) (1 Viewer)

[JamesHl]

There's nothing more frustrating than digging out your roommate's copy of rampage and the saturn and discovering after several hours of play the battery for saving has gone out... d'oh.

 

[JamesH]

Oh yeah, Jeff mentioned this briefly, but I'll elaborate as it will become important if you're going to get one: Track down the ORIGINAL SEGA RAM CARTS! There's a lot of knockoff RAM carts, but these have a tendancy to shoot your cartridge slot to hell and gone. It's not a particularly hardy piece of equipment as it is, and 3rd party RAM packs tend to bend the connection pins out so that the Saturn can't communicate with them after a while.

I prefer the 5 in 1 Action Replay. Never had any problems with it, and it's the only way to play Radiant Silvergun and any other jap games that need RAM without modding your system. Plus, it has more memory than you'll ever need.

I got my Saturn when it came out(I was around 13 and saved up lawn mowing money). Stepping up from SNES, it was the biggest wow factor ever(although DC came close). My jaw pretty much dropped when I saw the opening video in Panzer Dragoon.

I'd say if you count the imports, it's every bit the equal of the PS1 and miles ahead of the N64. It's the undisputed king of fighters and shooters and has loads of other innovative games. It also just happens to have the two best games Treasure has made.

 

[Graeme Clark]

There's nothing more frustrating than digging out your roommate's copy of rampage and the saturn and discovering after several hours of play the battery for saving has gone out... d'oh.

You can easily replace the battery it uses. There's a covering for it on the back, and the battery slides right out.

 

[Ray Warner]

James,

Yeah, I'd heard some rumblings to that effect, too, but it was after I had the Sega carts. The upside to the Action Replay is it lets you play imports, plus you don't have to swap the carts out, as you do with the Sega carts. The downside is, yeah, it DOES bend the pins out. Thing is, as long as you just leave it in the cart slot, this doesn't matter in the slightest. If you try to switch from the ProAct to, say, the normal carts, then your Saturn will start to get read errors.

Doesn't work well for me, since I like to play KoF '95, which necessitates cart swapping. :frowning:

And Josh, I ain't selling Sonic Jam for nothin'! Every good Genesis Sonic Game, Super Chaos Emerals, Hyper Sonic, a 3D sonic world to run around it, animated clips from the show and Sega CD games, Music Theatre, it has it ALL. And a good 7 years before that GameCube compilation came out, to boot.

I only paid $20 for it, though. Can't be that hard to track down, ne?

 

[BrianB]

I only paid $20 for it, though. Can't be that hard to track down, ne?

The US one sometimes goes for dumb amounts on eBay, but the Japanese one is plentiful & cheaper.

 

[Jason_H]

I wound up with 3 Saturn sticks over the years, so if you're in dire need of one, I'll ship it to you for free. I'm not using it, may as well give it to someone who will.

I might just take you up on that. I'm still trying to win an auction on Ebay, the two I bid on went up to ridiculous levels and I gave up. Bah!

 

[Ray Warner]

Brian - Yeah, I've got the JPN version. The only difference I could tell was the manual gallery obviously has the Japanese manuals (which are a lot cooler anyway) and, on the game select screen, the pictures of the cartridges are also of the Japanese carts. Beyond that, the game is exactly the same, right down to the english level names and credits. It's really not worth the money for the US version; you're not getting anything extra whatsoever.

Jason - Yeah, let me know if you want it. The thing is quite literally sitting on a bottom shelf gathering dust, so just say the word and I'll ship it out. If I can dig up the original box, I'll send it in that, but otherwise I'm just going to cover it in styrofoam popcorn and box it up that way. It's a hardy little bugger, it should be fine.

It's the US version of the Sega Virtua Stick, so it has the trigger buttons mounted in an odd location, and the stick has a huge ball on the end of it. It works like a champ, though, and it's surprisingly thin.

Again, once I can con my roommate into letting me use his digital camera, I'll post some photos of all this crap so you can see what I'm talking about instead of reading my half-assed explanations.

 

[Jason_H]

Okay Ray, I'm going to PM you and I we can work out the details privately. Now to just find a system and some games!

 

[Ray Warner]

Sounds good.

 

[Josh_SR]

Ray .... :frowning:

 

[Ray Warner]

What? Hey, I'm giving him the stick because I never use it - I've got 3! Sonic Jam, on the other hand, is a personal favorite of mine, and I've only got one.

C'mon, man, you can buy your own games!

Speaking of which, here's those pictures:

The aforementioned Arcade Stick

The RAM carts

and finally,
some games

And if you look real close at that memory cart, you can see my "real" first name, which only my family and fiancee ever calls me by. Whoops...

 

[Josh_SR]

i know man... im not realy sad ....

 

[Jason_H]

Hey Ray,

Did you happen to get my PM? For some reason, I'm not sure my PMs are working properly, it didn't show up in my PM tracking!

 

[Jason_H]

One more question, when is it worth it to get the US version of a game over the import version? Does it just depend on the game? Take for instance Guardian Heroes. This looks like a very cool game and one I want to pick up, but am I just going to be baffled and unable to follow the story if I buy the Japanese version (and save a considerable amount of cash)?

 

[Ray Warner]

Well, importing's a bit tricky in that regard because some games benefit greatly from being translated into english, and some games are actually much better in their original japanese.

Honestly, I haven't played Guardian Heroes. It's a Treasure game, though, and having seen several US versions of Treasure games, I assure you the plot will make no sense whatsoever, regardless of language. Import away.

As a general rule, fighting games, shooters, or brawlers are all safe import fare. Half the time the game is in english anyway, and the other half of the time, you're not missing much. Strategy games, RPGs, Simlations, or Adventure games (think Zelda) are usually best left to the domestic versions. RPGs and Strategy Games are better in an understandable language for obvious reasons, but many times Adventure games, even simple-sounding ones, will have specific things you need to do in order to advance. If you miss these, you'll wind up getting "stuck" on what's supposed to be a very simple task, and this gets really frustrating real fast.

The other two things to think about is how you're going to play them, and censorship.

The Saturn is incredibly easy to modify with a toggle switch to flip back and forth between USA and JPN territories. If you look in the RAM cart picture above, you can actually see the swtich on the back of my saturn. You don't need a mod chip, just a screwdriver, a soldering iron, and a steady hand. You can also get a RAM cart that lets you do it, but it's actually more expensive than just doing it yourself, and they don't always work. Note that this in no way lets you play pirated games (which I'm very much against). SEGA's always been pretty mod-friendly, though, and especially since the Saturn is a "dead" system, I don't think you need to worry about voiding your warranty.

The other issue is to what extent games get censored, and a lot of people will prefer to buy the "raw" Japanese version over the "cut" Western version. This isn't really the case nowadays, and with the Saturn it wasn't so much an issue of censorship as availability. A lot of games are much more plentiful in their Japanese versions, and in several cases, that's the ONLY version. What you did get, though, was a lot of Saturn games getting a PS1 release in the US, and it's these versions that got censored to remove blood or sexual content.

As far as the Saturn in concerned, though, here's the gist of importing: Get the US version if you NEED to be able to read the game, but otherwise, go with the JP version.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot.

No, I didn't get your PM! I thought maybe you'd changed your mind or something. Anyway, just e-mail me at [email protected] with a shipping address and I'll send the stick out.

 

[millercv]

Ray -

You wouldn't happen to know a site that details how to do the "switch mod" I picked up a Saturn on ebay not too long ago that had several Japanese games with it and a Action Replay which doesn't work (well It came up once when I wasn't expecting it but haven't been able to do it again).

Thanks!

 

[Jeff Kleist]

It's pretty easy. You need to drill a hole in the side for the switch, and you need a 2 position (4 wires total) switch, a soldering iron, solder and an x-acto knife

Should take about 10min for anyone who's decent with an iron

http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/satur...a_saturn_b.txt

Section 9.6

 

[Jason_H]

Well, I picked up an Action Replay cart (new) online, so I sure hope it works since I already laid down a major chunk of change to buy the import D&D Collection. I can't help it, I loved the arcade version so much and was really bummed when it was announced for Playstation long ago and then cancelled.

Sounds like pretty good advice on which genres to import...but dammit some of the Adventure/RPG imports look DAMN cool. I need to learn Japanese. I hope my system gets here this week, I finally won an auction over the weekend.

Man, when the bug bites, the bug bites HARD...this hobby is expensive! I also picked up a Genesis/Sega CD combo cheap and am eyeing a Turbo Duo. Once I started learning what cool, definitive versions of old games were out for it, it really got me interested too. Somebody stop me!!!

 

[Ray Warner]

Miller, looks like Jeff beat me to it. It IS pretty easy, and chances are that you can even do it "blind" if you have a decent understanding of electronics. I mean, it says right on the board: JPN, EUR, USA. Cut the original connection, solder a wire each onto the two USA points and the two JPN points, attach the other end to the swtich, mount it on the back, and voila! Bilinguial Saturn. Just don't flip the switch while the Saturn's on, or it'll get confused.

Jason, if the cart doesn't work, just mod it and the D&D collection will run fine. And yeah, I know about the old games bug. DON'T do what I did, though. I wound up with a Neo Geo, which goes for about $400 in new condition. The killer is the games, though. They're still making new ones, but the price tag is typically around $325. Needless to say, I don't buy many new Neo Geo games. I'm a collector, but I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination.

Make sure you get Sonic CD for that Sega system!

 

[millercv]

wow - thanks all! I'll do that as soon as I get back from vacation!