The Saturn - The Ram cart - The options!

[Nando]

or the low-tech solution

Jamming paper, pen caps etc only works for so long.

Not to mention it looks like butt; and not those nice tanned college girl butts either.

Ark. I almost thought ya was giving up on da saturn love. 

[Joe Redifer]

The boards in the official Sega carts are slightly thinner than the 3rd party stuff from what I have heard.  In fact if you use a 3rd party cart you pretty much immediately damage your cartridge port.  The more you use them, the worse it gets.  Soon your cartridge port is stretched wide like a $5 hooker so that when you stick your little penis in (official Sega cart) it's like trying to f*ck a cave.  It can even make things tougher for the 3rd party carts as well.

As for getting a cart in there and leaving it there forever... no way, not an option at all!  There are at least a few SNK games that will have garbled sprites when run with a 4MB cart.  They need the 1MB cart.  I'd also like to play King of Fighters '95 every once in awhile which stores the BGs on its very own cart.  And I also have two official Sega carts full of game saves that I would like to use. I never use the Saturn's internal memory to save games unless I have to (mainly games that use expansion RAM carts).  Screw transferring memory back and forth to the Saturn when you can save and load in game directly from the cart which, to my knowledge, no 3rd party memory cart can do.

PS - Never really understood why they called them "cards".  It seemed to be only the idiot 3rd partys who did that, though.

[SignOfZeta]

I don't buy the line about PARs being thicker and ruining then slot/vagina. My white Saturn has never had anything but official carts in it and the vagina on this thing didn't even last as long as the one in my US prostitute and that that thing had a constantly alternating flow of Netlink, PAR, 4MB, and power memory.

As far as I can tell the people who have the least amount of trouble with this issue are the PAR people who only own one cart, the PAR, which they just leave in there all the time.

[Joe Redifer]

Hey I never said the Saturn's vagina was a good one!  But yeah, of course the PARs will work the best since they're thicker.  The black PARs might work better than the white PARs.  

As for me, most carts work fine except the official 1MB one.  That one is a BITCH to get working.  The 4MB is kind of a bitch but usually works after an adjustment or two.  The official memory carts work fine.

[DragonmasterDan]

I think the official Sega cards have a tapered edge as well, so it slides in easier and without bending the pins. In looking through the bunch of Saturn carts I have, none of the third party carts have a tapered edge to them.

[Joe Redifer]

That might be what I'm thinking about.  Either way the 3rd party carts are tougher on the already gimped cart slot.

[Mathius]

it's like trying to f*ck a cave.

...or a doorway.

...a mayonnaise jar?

[Chuplayer]

My Saturn was bought new at K-Mart in August 1999, and the cart port always gave me issues.

Wow, I didn't know you could still get them new in 1999.   I picked up a used one in '97 and don't remember seeing them new back then.  But my memory is probably fuzzy.

Yeah. I really lucked out. $50. That and a few games cleaned out all of my birthday money, but it was so worth it. I didn't even care that the Dreamcast was a few weeks away. I wanted Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter 2 at home so bad, and I was extremely happy to finally play them at home. Many games were dirt cheap at the time, too. Sealed Daytona USA CCE was about 10 bucks. VF2 was about 1 buck used. No joke. Toys R Us was clearancing out the games like mad. Worldwide Soccer (the first one) was cheap enough for me to buy in my first round of games the day I bought the system, too. I was even able to score a disc-only Guardian Heroes for about 10 bucks a few months after I got the system. That kicked butt.

[DragonmasterDan]

[
Yeah. I really lucked out. $50. That and a few games cleaned out all of my birthday money, but it was so worth it. I didn't even care that the Dreamcast was a few weeks away. I wanted Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter 2 at home so bad, and I was extremely happy to finally play them at home. Many games were dirt cheap at the time, too. Sealed Daytona USA CCE was about 10 bucks. VF2 was about 1 buck used. No joke. Toys R Us was clearancing out the games like mad. Worldwide Soccer (the first one) was cheap enough for me to buy in my first round of games the day I bought the system, too. I was even able to score a disc-only Guardian Heroes for about 10 bucks a few months after I got the system. That kicked butt.

Due to the cartridge slot suckage I went through a few Saturns even when it was still on the market, the original one I received as a Christmas Gift in 1995. By 1997 I had purchased a second used Saturn after having cart slot problems. I then purchased another Brand new Saturn in Spring 1998 (before House of the Dead, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Burning Rangers, Shining Force 3 and Magic Knight Rayearth came out) but when the system was already being cleared out. I think it was around 70.00 at the time.

[kazekirifx]

I had a Saturn RAM cart die on me once. Lost lots of data I was planning to still use. Now I'll never finish Langrisser IV...

[TheClash603]

I got my Saturn brand new once the model 2 came out.  Shortly after I got a Game Genie, which I was using as my primary source of save storage.  I never had a reason to take the thing out, and it worked perfect for me for a few years.  Then in about 2005, I turned my Saturn on, and no more Game Genie screen.  I was so pissed, I went to the flea market and bought another one, and still no Game Genie.  I have soooo many saves on my original Game Genie, that it kills me I can't access them

Anyway, a few years ago I broke down and bought an official Sega Saturn memory backup.  The cartridge worked like a charm the first time I put it in my original system.  It has stayed in there ever since.  My original Saturn is still going strong!

I also bought a second Saturn recently with a PAR, and that is what I use to play Japanese games.  So far so good with that unit, and I'll never take that out either.  Now if only I could extract my Robo Pit save from my original Game Genie

[Joe Redifer]

My RAM carts still have game saves on them from rentals back when the console was current.  Nowadays when I pick up a cheap used game I can continue where I left off when I rented it.

[SignOfZeta]

I used to get really hung up about archiving game saves. I no longer do.

Recently I started playing Pokemon Pinball (GBC) for the first time in over ten years. I played THE SHIT out of this game when it came out. I had a very dull job, basically, and it allowed me to play Pokemon Pinball for nearly 8 hours a day. My scores were insane. My max on the Blue board was something like 6.2 billion.

Now that I'm playing it again my high scores are about 60 million. That's right, I'm litterally %1 as good at this game as I used to be.

If I still had my save for Azel or Shining Force III or Lunar...WTF good would it do me? I wouldn't hardly remember anything about the game. If I can take a ten year break I can take the extra few hours to start from the begining. If the begining is no fun, why would I play the game anyway?

[storino03]

I never had a problem with getting my US sega saturn to recognize the cartridges. Maybe I just leave the cart plugged in?

[Joe Redifer]

Save files are great for me when I need to show off different parts of a game for that dumb internet show.