Sega Saturn

[termis]

Ah... Short circuit.  That was good fun.  What was that line - "Nice software!"

But I'm wondering if it's my nostalgia getting to me.  I recently started to watch Goonies, and fun as it was when I was child, it wasn't that good now...  I couldn't finish it.  Hmm...

Oh, and sorry for constantly throwing in the Saturn in the conversation topic, but if anyone needs one, hit me up.  I got tons of working ones now.  Out of the batch of 12 defective ones I initially had, I got -
- 8 working (though 1 was really jerry-rigged - but I left in on for an hour, and it seemed to chug on fine...),
- 1 just needs a good power supply,
- and 2 extra spare working laser assemblies for future. 

Not a bad score, I say...

And a moment of silence to the 3 Saturns that I chucked in the dumpster.     (2 with faulty video chips, 1 with a just bad motherboard which I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working)

Yeah, and the gray one is a mixture of a Japanese and a US shell... I had to mix those things up (a bad lid on the Jp one)!  I gotta say the black buttons look sharper than the blue ones, though...

[Keranu]

Well done! And I like the case mixes you did.

[Michael Helgeson]

since this has degenerated into a thread about cartoons, here's some intros from my very early childhood (try to date me!)

(pole position... i remember the theme music being better)

(dungeons and dragons cartoon)

(kidd video - more than enough cheese there for keranu!)

Pole Position always reminded me of Mask. I watched all those cartoons,used to have the D&D action figures too.

[Medic_wheat]

With recent talk about Saturn games I resurect this tread.

This is in effort to keep from making more duplicate threads.

[vexcollects]

With recent talk about Saturn games I resurect this tread.

This is in effort to keep from making more duplicate threads.

BOOSH! Damn straight you are. Now, who has Nascar 97 for the Saturn? It is the s%^t. Or, wait....it is s^%t.

Seriously though... here's a question, which version of Symphony of the Night (PS1/Saturn) is better (if we can measure such a thing)?

[Medic_wheat]

With recent talk about Saturn games I resurect this tread.

This is in effort to keep from making more duplicate threads.

BOOSH! Damn straight you are. Now, who has Nascar 97 for the Saturn? It is the s%^t. Or, wait....it is s^%t.

Seriously though... here's a question, which version of Symphony of the Night (PS1/Saturn) is better (if we can measure such a thing)?

Well the saturn verson has a stage not found in any other port not even the recent xbox360 release.

[DragonmasterDan]

BOOSH! Damn straight you are. Now, who has Nascar 97 for the Saturn? It is the s%^t. Or, wait....it is s^%t.

Seriously though... here's a question, which version of Symphony of the Night (PS1/Saturn) is better (if we can measure such a thing)?

The Saturn version has slowdown in spots, is missing transparency effects, has actual spots where it sits and loads in addition to the rooms connecting the different wings of the castle. It has Maria and Richter playable from the start and two areas added on both the regular and reverse version of the castle. Overall the Saturn version is quite a bit worse IMO.

[Digi.k]

BOOSH! Damn straight you are. Now, who has Nascar 97 for the Saturn? It is the s%^t. Or, wait....it is s^%t.

Seriously though... here's a question, which version of Symphony of the Night (PS1/Saturn) is better (if we can measure such a thing)?

The Saturn version has slowdown in spots, is missing transparency effects, has actual spots where it sits and loads in addition to the rooms connecting the different wings of the castle. It has Maria and Richter playable from the start and two areas added on both the regular and reverse version of the castle. Overall the Saturn version is quite a bit worse IMO.

yup also there are music remixes, few extra rooms and weapons, There are 18 new enemies and 2 new bosses.
You also get a 3rd equip and Alucard can dash. plus a 6th familiar.

Some enemies have new death animations which are taking advantage of the Saturn's sprite rotation, scaling capabilities.


The cd if you pop it into a pc you can view some Symphony of the Night artwork scans.

Yes it is inferior to the PSX version but I would advise you to pick it up if you just want to complete your castlevania collection.  It is a good game in it's own right but inferior.



It is also programed by KCE Nagoya .. I mean who are they


EDIT:

Oh I just noticed the other replies a few pages back...

[Digi.k]

Ah... Short circuit.  That was good fun.  What was that line - "Nice software!"

But I'm wondering if it's my nostalgia getting to me.  I recently started to watch Goonies, and fun as it was when I was child, it wasn't that good now...  I couldn't finish it.  Hmm...

Oh, and sorry for constantly throwing in the Saturn in the conversation topic, but if anyone needs one, hit me up.  I got tons of working ones now.  Out of the batch of 12 defective ones I initially had, I got -
- 8 working (though 1 was really jerry-rigged - but I left in on for an hour, and it seemed to chug on fine...),
- 1 just needs a good power supply,
- and 2 extra spare working laser assemblies for future. 

Not a bad score, I say...

And a moment of silence to the 3 Saturns that I chucked in the dumpster.     (2 with faulty video chips, 1 with a just bad motherboard which I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working)

Yeah, and the gray one is a mixture of a Japanese and a US shell... I had to mix those things up (a bad lid on the Jp one)!  I gotta say the black buttons look sharper than the blue ones, though...

I am really fussy,  I did at some point have 4 sega saturns now just 2.

japanese white one with box and UK model modded to multi regional

[vexcollects]

Here's a good one. I was playing my Saturn this evening (Action Replay cart inserted to allow me to play import Layer Section). Then I turned it off to switch to Detana Twinbee. I walked away for 10 minutes, came back and popped the game in. Turned on the console and it would no longer read the disk. Tried more disks, but would not read any. Removed the Action Replay cart and tried a US game (Bug)....still nothing. The message on the screen was something like, detecting format of disk.

As I walked away dejected I was searching for a solution on Google. Some dude on some forum advised to unscrew the top of the case off of the Saturn and then it will work again. Absolutely not believing that this could make any difference since I am a tech for a living and it just made no sense, I tried it anyway. Guess what? Worked. The console works fine again. I put the screws back in place and played for the next hour with no issues.

WTF? I sat and pondered this ridiculousness for a while and I still can't figure it out. How in the hell does removing the top of the case reset or fix anything? Maybe turning it upside down did something.

I'm just happy it is working again. Maybe it is a temporary fix for something worse, but I'll take it for now.   

[MrBroadway]

Not exactly sure, but it could be a problem with the laser mechanics? Something gets jammed, unscrewing it loosens it? I haven't taken apart my Saturn in a few years, so it's a dumb guess.

[xelement5x]

It could also have been a problem with the lid sensor.  If the dashboard was just saying 'please close door' it might have gotten futzed in some way.  I've also had times where it would read the disc, then I realized I hadn't pushed it all the way down onto the spindle, derp...

[ctophil]

I had to buy the Sega Saturn due to being stuck in the 16-bit era for 4 years. I was ready for the next-gen. Boy was I ready. So I jumped out and bought the system in May 1995 (it was only available at Babbages/EB Games and Toys R' Us)--2 months before the mainstream launch date in September. So I bought one of the first 30,000 units that came out. Hehe. I had my system. So I didn't care about the Playstation after it launched the same year. Everybody was talking about Playstation and later the N64. The Saturn was the "loser" to most people, but not to me. :-)

It cost $400, very expensive at the time. But who cares, I was making money by working at the grocery store, and it was all mine! Haha. The launch lineup was Shinobi Legions, Bug!, and Daytona USA. It was a terrible lineup. But I bought it anyways. This shows that a system launch hype can make people buy things.

But anyways, I really enjoyed the Saturn.  To me as far as "underdog" consoles go, the Sega Saturn is my second favorite system next to the Turbografx-16.  The Sega Saturn was very similar to the Turbografx-16. It had some really cool titles, and could do nice 2d graphics. Coming out of the SNES time period, I preferred 2d over 3d (I still do). I love the RPGs on that thing, such as Albert Odyssey, Grandia, Dragon Force, Panzer Dragoon Saga, and Shining Force 3. In Japan, there were a huge amount of fighting games that came out utilizing the RAM expansion cartridge. The Saturn was really good at 2d, but really hard to program for due to its twin 32-bit CPUs.

[vexcollects]

The Saturn was really good at 2d, but really hard to program for due to its twin 32-bit CPUs.

I had read in the book, "Service Games", that the Saturn was hard to program for because Sega didn't deliver developer tools to the developers until the console had already been released and that by the time the developers received any tools, things were already starting to look grim. I believe there was also a comment in this book from Sega rep who mocked the developers that were having a hard time programming because they were not as talented as the Sega developers. This is not word for word of course, just the story points I can recall. I enjoyed the book. Maybe give it a read if you are interested.

http://www.amazon.ca/Service-Games-Rise-Enhanced-Edition/dp/1494288354

[DragonmasterDan]

I had read in the book, "Service Games", that the Saturn was hard to program for because Sega didn't deliver developer tools to the developers until the console had already been released and that by the time the developers received any tools, things were already starting to look grim. I believe there was also a comment in this book from Sega rep who mocked the developers that were having a hard time programming because they were not as talented as the Sega developers. This is not word for word of course, just the story points I can recall. I enjoyed the book. Maybe give it a read if you are interested.

http://www.amazon.ca/Service-Games-Rise-Enhanced-Edition/dp/1494288354

The problem had a lot more to do with the fact that the only way to get good performance out of the Saturn was to write everything in assembler which is far more tedious and time consuming than is writing it in a more modern language. The Playstation had very functional development kits that allowed you to write in C language and potentially get 90+% of the resources out of the hardware. Because of the convoluted hardware design of the Saturn, writing something in a C based development kit led to a huge amount of overhead and code that didn't run as efficiently leading to a significant performance drop.

The problem wasn't necessarily the developer tools so much as it was the Saturn was a complicated design that made it more difficult to properly optimize than it needed to be.