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Sega Saturn turned 29 today

StereoVsn

StereoVsn

Member
fart town usa said:


That's the thread, just showing the Saturn some love.

I still have mine hooked up. Who else is enjoying the Saturn in 2023?
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I have been appreciating Saturn a lot more over the last few years. I also gotten into game collecting for Saturn but mainly Japanese titles and versions since US/EU game version costs are plain dumb.

Got probably around 50 Saturn games so far.

That said I mainly play emulated. Been eyeing ODE for the Saturn and I do have Retrotink, but that ODE isn’t cheap, lol.
 
B

billthomas696969

Member
Blood Borne said:
Don’t care what the nostalgic rose-tinted fanboys say, but that console was garbage.

PS1 and N64 were better consoles in every aspect.
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I've spent the last year or so playing mostly Saturn and PS1, so I can say this from recent experience...

Saturn's library aged much better than either the N64 or PS1. The best 2D ever beats the worst 3D ever every time.

The only way N64 beats Saturn is if you're only considering the North American library. Even if you're only counting NA released games, I'd probably take Saturn over N64, but I think Rare's N64 output is incredibly overrated and the only reason people think those games are good is that they were 8 when they came out. Mario 64 and OOT are two of the best games ever made, but you can only play Mario 64 and OOT so many times.
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

Gold Member
Only two more years 'till you can get buzzed out of your mind, Saturn. I recommend only the finest wines!

billthomas696969 said:
I've spent the last year or so playing mostly Saturn and PS1, so I can say this from recent experience...

Saturn's library aged much better than either the N64 or PS1. The best 2D ever beats the worst 3D ever every time.

The only way N64 beats Saturn is if you're only considering the North American library. Even if you're only counting NA released games, I'd probably take Saturn over N64, but I think Rare's N64 output is incredibly overrated and the only reason people think those games are good is that they were 8 when they came out. Mario 64 and OOT are two of the best games ever made, but you can only play Mario 64 and OOT so many times.
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I agree Saturn's library holds up better than N64s, in large part because of the Japanese exclusives (some of which have now been translated into other languages), but would still say PS1's beats it out.

Most 2D games on PS1 weren't significantly below Saturn's and it got more of them by virtue of having like 7x the amount of games Saturn ever got. PS1 also has more hidden gems for the same reason, and neat obscure games as well.

But overall, I think both Saturn and PS1 are incredible systems and the best of the 5th gen. And I'd say Saturn is a lot closer to PS1 than N64 is to Saturn in terms of ranking. Like if we're playing six degrees of separation, I'd say it's 1.5-2 degrees between PS1 & Saturn, but 5 degrees between Saturn and N64 (and then like 4 degrees between N64 and 3DO, and 6 degrees between 3DO and the other systems that gen (Jaguar, PC-FX, CD-i etc.).
 
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cireza

cireza

Member
Blood Borne said:
Don’t care what the nostalgic rose-tinted fanboys say, but that console was garbage.

PS1 and N64 were better consoles in every aspect.
Click to expand...
stereo-thrown-at-face.gif
 
fart town usa

fart town usa

Gold Member
StereoVsn said:
I have been appreciating Saturn a lot more over the last few years. I also gotten into game collecting for Saturn but mainly Japanese titles and versions since US/EU game version costs are plain dumb.

Got probably around 50 Saturn games so far.

That said I mainly play emulated. Been eyeing ODE for the Saturn and I do have Retrotink, but that ODE isn’t cheap, lol.
Click to expand...

Japan titles are mostly affordable but PAL/NA are absurd. ODE or Satiator all day and ignore anyone who tells you otherwise.
 
Dacvak

Dacvak

No one shall be brought before our LORD David Bowie without the true and secret knowledge of the Photoshop. For in that time, so shall He appear.
Next year is the Year of the Saturn for me. This year, I was playing a lot of Genesis and GameBoy Color. But once the Saturn MiSTer core came out, I decided I was gonna finally get deep into Saturn. Saving it for next year, though. Super excited!
 
fart town usa

fart town usa

Gold Member
Krathoon said:
What is great is that you can emulate it on a laptop with perfect emulation.
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Nice. I don't mess with emulation myself but I certainly don't gatekeep. I'm happy with people simply playing the games however they can and keeping the memory of these games alive through footage and word of mouth. That's what is most important to me.
 
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Krathoon

Krathoon

Member
fart town usa said:
Nice. I don't mess with emulation myself but I certainly don't gatekeep. I'm happy with people simply playing the games however they can and keeping the memory of these games alive through footage and word of mouth. That's what is most important to me.
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I would recommend the Bizhawk emulator. It ported over the Saturn Mednafen emulator. I would recommend Retroarch, but it does not import playlists worth a crap for Saturn.

I may switch to Bizhawk because you can directly look up your stuff. Retroarch's playlist hide roms sometimes.
 
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thicc_girls_are_teh_best

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

Gold Member
fart town usa said:
4th boss in PD: Zwei. Component cables into 2x scaler.

Tell me this shit ain't baller. Saturn was an absolute juggernaut in capable hands.

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Well that was part of the problem: only Sega's own teams and very select 3P (Treasure, Laboratory, Tecmo etc.) could do anything significant with the hardware for 3D games, that compared favorably to or at times bested some of the best 3D on PS1 from a large array of developers.

They just could never create enough output to keep up with PS1's ease-of-use.
 
fart town usa

fart town usa

Gold Member
thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
Well that was part of the problem: only Sega's own teams and very select 3P (Treasure, Laboratory, Tecmo etc.) could do anything significant with the hardware for 3D games, that compared favorably to or at times bested some of the best 3D on PS1 from a large array of developers.

They just could never create enough output to keep up with PS1's ease-of-use.
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For sure. PSX is the better console all day, and my personal favorite console of all-time.

The Saturn shines once you have access to the whole library. That lack of access is a big part of the reason some people think the machine is a stinker. It's a shame.
 
G

Geometric-Crusher

Member
What I find interesting about Sega haters are their ''solutions'' two Sega fans talk to each other, whether flooding Sega's page is a way of putting pressure on them to make a Saturn Mini. What do the haters propose? buy a pc and emulate Saturn games. See if we go on console threads they're fans of to suggest that it's better to buy a PC. There are things that only a fan understands, there is nothing to debate. If we want new products from Sega, we don't want alternatives, we want it to be from Sega
 
fart town usa

fart town usa

Gold Member
Dacvak said:
Next year is the Year of the Saturn for me. This year, I was playing a lot of Genesis and GameBoy Color. But once the Saturn MiSTer core came out, I decided I was gonna finally get deep into Saturn. Saving it for next year, though. Super excited!
Click to expand...
Excited for you. It's a fantastic console.

If you enjoy RPGs, you absolutely must check out Shining the Holy Ark. It's the often overlooked RPG banger for the Saturn. Hopefully the mister allows for Pro Action Replay codes because StHA is a dungeon crawler and man, I can't imagine playing it without infinite money or without utilizing maps. Highly recommend this website, his guide allows you to streamline dungeons and appreciate the graphics, gameplay w/o getting bogged down by the grind.

 
Dacvak

Dacvak

No one shall be brought before our LORD David Bowie without the true and secret knowledge of the Photoshop. For in that time, so shall He appear.
fart town usa said:
Excited for you. It's a fantastic console.

If you enjoy RPGs, you absolutely must check out Shining the Holy Ark. It's the often overlooked RPG banger for the Saturn. Hopefully the mister allows for Pro Action Replay codes because StHA is a dungeon crawler and man, I can't imagine playing it without infinite money or without utilizing maps. Highly recommend this website, his guide allows you to streamline dungeons and appreciate the graphics, gameplay w/o getting bogged down by the grind.

Click to expand...
Ah that sounds awesome, I’ll have to give it a whirl! What sort of non-RPGs do you recommend? I’ll probably only play one or two RPGs.
 
AREYOUOKAY?

AREYOUOKAY?

Member
Had I known about the basically arcade perfect X-Men / Marvel fighting games I would have gotten one in the 90’s. Nintendo won me over with Mario 64 because of the lack of a real Sonic game. Sonic 3D Blast caused me to abandon Sega and by the time I returned it was too late.
 
Phobos Base

Phobos Base

Member
Still got mine hooked up, the likes of Sega Rally, Fighting Vipers and Sega Wordlwide Soccer are still great and has one of the best controllers ever. Shame so few of its games have ever been re-released.
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

Gold Member
fart town usa said:
For sure. PSX is the better console all day, and my personal favorite console of all-time.

The Saturn shines once you have access to the whole library. That lack of access is a big part of the reason some people think the machine is a stinker. It's a shame.
Click to expand...

It's definitely getting better in terms of software access tho. More and more of the deep cuts have been getting translated, and now there are things like text hooker programs (I'm looking to set one up for PC-98 games because I've seen some streamers using them for untranslated games and that'd open up a lot of games to actually play) which weren't a thing even 10 years ago.

But I'm still holding out for an ideal solution being either an FPGA setup that can add QoL features like sideloaded translation programs/text hookers, or at least allow hook-up to external devices that can passthrough text hooker output back to the FPGA.

Or even more ideally, original hardware you can mod with SD card drives, USB ports and hook up with external devices that can do the text hooking and overlay the output back on the display. But that one would probably be too cumbersome.
 
fart town usa

fart town usa

Gold Member
Dacvak said:
Ah that sounds awesome, I’ll have to give it a whirl! What sort of non-RPGs do you recommend? I’ll probably only play one or two RPGs.
Click to expand...
Explore the shmups for sure and arcade fighters, the Saturn was hands down the best console, at the time, for those types of games. Panzer Dragoon Trilogy is amazing, first is balls hard, 2nd (Zwei) is the pinnacle of on-rail shooters for the Saturn and PD Saga is an amazing experience.

Willy Wombat is a gem of a action/platformer and is pretty much lost to time. It's from Hudson and was never released outside Japan but the vast majority of it is in English so it's really easy to play.

Deep Fear is a cool 1st party survival/action horror game.

Best advice is to just explore the library. There's a lot of good YT videos that have like 10 seconds of gameplay footage for lots of games. I've used those to find games to play cause when titles are in Japanese, hard to know which ones to seek out.

Archive . org has full rom sets, just download one and get to exploring. :messenger_beermugs:

There's also a cool homebrew scene so make sure to check YT for those videos. Lots of fan translations or new games. Some people are really going above and beyond.
 
cinnamonandgravy

cinnamonandgravy

Member
Blood Borne said:
Don’t care what the nostalgic rose-tinted fanboys say, but that console was garbage.

PS1 and N64 were better consoles in every aspect.
Click to expand...
sympathetic to this comment. for me, it was a big letdown coming from the genesis.

ps1 got all the 3rd party support and had better 3d.
n64 had a small library, but had a z buffer and got the nintendo magic.
saturn... looked sexy and got sega arcade ports, but the console/controller also felt flimsy/cheap and the library was boring compared to n64/ps1.
night sucks, dont care about bomberman, panzer dragoon is a total snooze to play, not a huge fan of JRPGs, no sonic, etc.

nowhere good enough for me to choose it in the mid 90s, where i basically had to wait every ~3rd christmas to get a new console.

i have a couple saturns now, and i appreciate them, but it's wild how they massively failed to attract the genesis crowd.
 
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StereoVsn

StereoVsn

Member
Krathoon said:
I would recommend the Bizhawk emulator. It ported over the Saturn Mednafen emulator. I would recommend Retroarch, but it does not import playlists worth a crap for Saturn.

I may switch to Bizhawk because you can directly look up your stuff. Retroarch's playlist hide roms sometimes.
Click to expand...
Does Bizhawk allow for upscaling?
 
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