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Any reason why there hasn't been any Sega Saturn greatest hits type collection release for modern consoles?

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
We have NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1, Neo Geo "classic" systems, we have all kinda of "collection" games being released with bundles of classic games. How come there hasn't been any kind of a Saturn Collection released? With a lot of the rare and hard to find great Saturn games and other popular titles? I think it's something people would really be interested in. Playing Panzer Dragoon Saga, Burning Rangers, Dragon Force, etc for the first time.
 

stranno

Member
- Emulation is not an easy thing.
- Saturn is especially hard to emulate.
- Current consoles are ridiculously weak when it comes to IPC (the most important thing in emulation).
- SEGA is not known for his software engineers, unlike Sony and Microsoft.

They did things in the past, tho. Nvidia NV1, the first graphics card from Nvidia (and i'd say one of the worst graphics cards ever), had a few exclusive Saturn ports for Windows. And SEGA bought GiriGiri back in the day, an amateur emulator, to start a digital market for PC, but they dropped the idea.
 
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Quasicat

Member
In conclusion: like the Saturn, it wouldn’t make any money.

I think this is the issue over all else. It’s just not financially viable.
I have a Saturn emulator on the Shield TV that runs everything I throw at it in a high resolution at 60 fps. I would imagine that it would be possible on modern hardware, especially with what M2 has done in the past, it just won’t make enough money to make it worthwhile.
 
Based on what emulator? No quality emulator exists, and Sega doesn't have the original source code for any of their Saturn games.

They could reverse code the original games and try to port it over the long and hard way, but Sega would have to do that one game at a time and waste resources. There's a reason why almost all Sega's nostalgia releases focus on the Genesis, they have no interest in risking long hours of programming to release a product not likely to turn a profit.

we have all kinda of "collection" games being released with bundles of classic games. How come there hasn't been any kind of a Saturn Collection released?

The same reason why we don't have one for the Jaguar, the original Xbox, or the Dreamcast. They were too complex to create emulators out of compared to the PS1, N64, or Neogeo, and years later still nobody has been able to produce an emulator that can run all Jaguar, Xbox, and Dreamcast games at optimal performance.

Microsoft had to reverse code several of their original Xbox games to work on the Xbox One, and they had to do them one at a time. Sega doesn't have the money or the engineers to pull that off.

You can get a Saturn for a cheap price on Ebay.
 

Deft Beck

Member
With some exceptions, SEGA would prefer to pretend the Saturn did not happen.

What makes Saturn emulation so difficult compared to other consoles?

The Saturn is a homonculus of a console. It was a machine designed primarily for 2D arcade games, but since SEGA saw the threat of the PlayStation, they decided to shoehorn 3D into the console at huge cost.

The two main Saturn graphics processors, VDP1 and VDP2, work together to produce sprites and screen effects. This is fine for 2D games, of which there are plenty that emulate fine on the Saturn. But 3D is the main challenge for Saturn games.

Any 3D games are actually just the VDP1 distorting a series of sprites to produce the illusion of polygons, which in reality are quadrilaterals. It was difficult for multiplatform and Western developers to create 3D games of the style popular at the time. Even SEGA's first party studios struggled to produce impressive 3D games with this architecture. Otherwise conventional racing games like Daytona USA and action games like Burning Rangers have to do a lot of obvious field of view rendering and unrendering to handle the graphical load. This challenging architecture made it difficult for Saturn emulators to make progress for a long time, never mind emulation appropriate for a retail collection akin to the Genesis and Dreamcast ones.

There are select Saturn games that got PC ports, such as Panzer Dragoon, VF2, Enemy Zero, and Sonic R. But those are few and far between.

Saturn emulation has come a long way, but the fundamental design of the console prevents some of its most important games from being emulated properly.

Sources: Gamehut, Lowscoreboy YT channels
 
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HE1NZ

Banned
Sony doesn't particularly like 5th gen either. They prefer to remake games, rather than remaster them. I guess early 3D is as percieved worse than 8bit/16bit and unmarketable.
 
What makes Saturn emulation so difficult compared to other consoles?

Like the original Xbox or the Jaguar the system is a complicated combination of custom chips that are hard to emulate in unison. In the Saturns case, it was one of the most difficult systems to program for, so you would have to do even more work to make a quality emulator that would be capable of running all the Saturns software at optimal performance. Saturn emulation achieving something like the PS1 emulator Epsxe is currently impossible.

I know that some people keep holding out hope but it's been over 20 years. It's very unlikely we will ever see Saturn emulation until we have computers that have enough raw power that they can basically emulate any hardware which won't happen anytime soon. There have been multiple homebrew teams formed by dedicated fans that have all failed.
 

nkarafo

Member
What makes Saturn emulation so difficult compared to other consoles?
It had a more complex architecture with two CPUs. It also used quads instead of triangles. Those are the most known quirks of the system.

It's very unlikely we will ever see Saturn emulation until we have computers that have enough raw power that they can basically emulate any hardware which won't happen anytime soon.
Based on what emulator? No quality emulator exists
There are good Saturn emulators. SSF was good since a decade ago and could run decently on a Pentium 4. And Mednafen is even better, plus it's accuracy focused and open source, though it requires a stronger CPU but a 4th gen i5 is more than enough.

If anything, Saturn emulation is better than N64's.
 
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Deleted member 738976

Unconfirmed Member
Based on what emulator? No quality emulator exists, and Sega doesn't have the original source code for any of their Saturn games.

They could reverse code the original games and try to port it over the long and hard way, but Sega would have to do that one game at a time and waste resources. There's a reason why almost all Sega's nostalgia releases focus on the Genesis, they have no interest in risking long hours of programming to release a product not likely to turn a profit.
Well I'm not sure how they are remaking the Panzer Dragoon or the House of the Dead games but if they can just sell enough copies then I can only hope that one company can attempt to remake Panzer Dragoon Saga as well. They just need Sega's permission to do so since Sega themselves wouldn't want to give it a try after all these years.

I guess is a lot of things lost their codes.

But damn I wish someday I could play Shinning Force 3 on a modern plataform.
The best you can hope for is if Sega would finally allow Camelot to make 4 which is what they wanted to do even after Sega mistreated them.
 
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DunDunDunpachi

Patient MembeR
I'd rather just skip straight to the CAPCOM/Konami/Taito/CAVE/etc collections since the arcade ports are mostly what make Saturn such a good system.

There's even less of a chance of that so whatever.
 

Ceallach

Smells like fresh rosebuds
Esoteric Hardware, lack of documentation, lack of source, lack of interest.

The ROI for such a project just isn't favorable.
 
It had a more complex architecture with two CPUs. It also used quads instead of triangles. Those are the most known quirks of the system.

quads don't have anything to do with emulation as the emulator would only emulate the output polygons that are on screen, they are only an issue during software development. The second CPU definitely gets in the way though, a serious handicap to building an emulator.
 
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Deleted member 738976

Unconfirmed Member
All I want is for the last guy remaining at Treasure to port Radiant Silvergun and Guardian Heroes to modern systems.
 

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
A lot of you mentioned "project" and here I thought it was as simple as extracting the games from original discs, porting it over to a blu ray disc and boom, port collection done. I mean obviously I know there have to be some adjustments like getting it to display correctly on modern TVs and such but I figured that was all easily editable if you have an original copy of the game.

But I guess it's far more complicated than that.
 
A lot of you mentioned "project" and here I thought it was as simple as extracting the games from original discs, porting it over to a blu ray disc and boom, port collection done. I mean obviously I know there have to be some adjustments like getting it to display correctly on modern TVs and such but I figured that was all easily editable if you have an original copy of the game.

But I guess it's far more complicated than that.

You are basically saying that I can rip data from a PS3 game, slap it on a DVD, and it'll work on an Xbox 360. That doesn't work because you need to consider which parts of the game relied on custom parts (Cell and RSX) to run, that the 360 doesn't have. Once you determine that you have to try to program a workaround to make up for lacking those parts.

The Xbox One and the PS4 are the closest we have gotten to having two game systems you can easily port games between with virtually no effort.
 

Gargus

Banned
Lack of interest from the public is probably primary factory. If enough people showed interest they would do it. Its supposedly hard to emulate but fact still remains it has been emulated and can be done, so it is possible, just not easy.

I'd buy a compilation for it in a heart beat if it had some decent games. I'd pay even more for a Saturn mini. But i doubt it will happen. If the genesis mini makes them a nice chunk of change and they get enough interest from customers it could happen. I mean jesus there is evidently enough interest in the commodore 64 mini to warrant a second model of it, and the turbografx 16 mini will be out soon so it shows even lesser known systems can be worth while.
 
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Deleted member 738976

Unconfirmed Member
I mean, is it really a greatest hits if it only has five games on it?
3lW0yXR.gif
 
-Saturn emulation is notoriously difficult

-It was not a popular console

-In many cases (like Panzer Dragoon Saga), there’s no source code available to do a port

In conclusion: like the Saturn, it wouldn’t make any money.

The director of the game recently hinted at the possibility source code may be present, when they were asked at a panel a while ago.

Also in terms of it not making any money...well, people said the same about the Neo Geo mini and SNK's got two follow-ups to that planned. They're probably saying the same about PC-Engine mini but likely don't even think about the Japanese market for that system (it did pretty well over there for its gen). In other words: I'm sure a SS collection would make some good money, SEGA just has to, 'ya know, actually advertise it.

I still don't recall EVER hearing about that DC collection for 360 until maybe a couple years ago.

There are good Saturn emulators. SSF was good since a decade ago and could run decently on a Pentium 4. And Mednafen is even better, plus it's accuracy focused and open source, though it requires a stronger CPU but a 4th gen i5 is more than enough.

This so much; I have an Intel Core 2 Duo with integrated graphics that can run SSF with no problems, provided the ISO isn't corrupted. I think at most it was drawing 45-50% CPU usage.

Granted, no special filters turned on, res upscaling, no resampling etc., but it was all very much playable at full speed at least for the small number of games I tried.

With some exceptions, SEGA would prefer to pretend the Saturn did not happen.

This doesn't seem true at all. It was still their best-performing console in Japan, the market they sacrificed the West for that very generation. Hell, they saw fit to release MegaCD and 32X add-on props for the MegaDrive Mini in Japan when that was the MegaDrive's smallest market out of the Big 3.

If they're willing to do that for Mega CD and 32X, there's not much reason for them to run from their Saturn legacy. Besides, it's seemingly gotten a lot more popular in internet circles and the retro gaming community the past decade; global sentiment towards it isn't the same was it was in the '90s.
 
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nush

Gold Member
Radient Silvergun, Nights and Gurdian Heroes didn't exactly set the world on fire in terms of sales when ported to modern systems, neither did the Dreamcast ports. Not enough people are interested.
 

Thaedolus

Member
The director of the game recently hinted at the possibility source code may be present, when they were asked at a panel a while ago.

Also in terms of it not making any money...well, people said the same about the Neo Geo mini and SNK's got two follow-ups to that planned. They're probably saying the same about PC-Engine mini but likely don't even think about the Japanese market for that system (it did pretty well over there for its gen). In other words: I'm sure a SS collection would make some good money, SEGA just has to, 'ya know, actually advertise it.

I think you need to consider what went into a Neo Geo Mini vs what would go into a quality "Saturn Mini" console before making the comparison. I'm far from an expert on this stuff, but the Neo Geo games have seemingly been ported/emulated extensively compared to Saturn games over the years. That could make the upfront cost of developing a little Neo Geo console significantly less than a Saturn console.

I could be totally wrong here, I'm somewhat apathetic about all of it because I still have a working Saturn hooked up to a CRT, but I just don't see a reason to put out a Saturn mini given the lack of interest in the mainstream audience. Most of the time when people see I have a Saturn, they think it's a weird thing vs. having my PS1 or N64.
 

Kazza

Member
-It was not a popular console

From the numbers I can find online, it sold roughly 10 times what the Neo Geo did, and Neo Geo collections seem popular enough to be re-released each gen. Of course, you could say that most people played Neo Geo games in the arcade, but the Saturn wasn't exactly short of arcade games itself.

Radient Silvergun, Nights and Gurdian Heroes didn't exactly set the world on fire in terms of sales when ported to modern systems, neither did the Dreamcast ports. Not enough people are interested.

That's a shame if true, they are all great games.


although impossible with the source code lost

They don't need the source code if they only plan to emulate it, the rom by itself would suffice. They would need the code if they wanted to do an improved "Sega Ages" style release, but at that point I think it would be better to just do a full remaster (most 32-bit 3D games could do with one). Regarding the code, it seems like it may have been found after all.

Based on what emulator? No quality emulator exists

That used to be the case, but isn't any more. There are now some very good emulators for the Saturn, Mednafen being one I've used in the past, but YabaSanshiro is looking pretty good nowadays too (the games tend to look great in 4K):

 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
SEGA's being shit about it, that's all. There are tons of great Saturn titles (even excluding games that have better versions in the arcades or elsewhere since) plus so much Japanese goodness they could bring over to the rest of the world for the first time as the system did a lot better in Japan.

And yes Saturn emulation has been fine for like a decade, Mednafen (Beetle core in RA) and SSF are as accurate/playable/good as any PlayStation emulator.

Granted that's for faithful emulation and not huge visual enhancements (though SSF has allowed one to fix interlacing and convert mesh transparencies into real transparencies and such) but that's changing too as in the video above.

Though personally I prefer the native look anyway, only improved with things like SSF's options and CRT/scanline type filters and shaders. Especially for that era's systems (and Saturn even more so) that also use a lot of 2D elements in 3D games which to me clash with high resolution polygons.

Like the ground in that Virtual On clip/thumbnail, even though it's a 3D game that part is rendered with Saturn's 2D processor to save the actual polygons for other things. Such tricks are used in many Saturn games, not to mention the use of sprites in many othe 3D games just as on PlayStation.
 
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daninthemix

Member
Literally any release would be a niche product these days. The number of Saturn afficionados today is small, and the games do not have much mindshare.

So it would both require a decent amount of work, and with little reward.
 
In the long run re-releasing the Saturn games would garner a profit eventually, but SEGA seem to like to focus on short term profits, which is a shame.

People forget that antiques are the same way where they are ignored for the longest time and then suddenly...boom, the market is there (it happened with Chinese Pottery because of the whole Cultural Revolution crap that went on there). Saturn games will have a market at some point, but the prices they go for physically is ridiculous.

If they could Translate Sakura Wars 1 and 2 in English (Since they have a PC version to use), then I would be happy with that, but I think M2 would be able to get them to run efficiently on modern hardware and make a profit, as people are dying for some "new" retro re-releases for some time, and Mega Drive/Genesis isn't cutting it anymore.

It is like if McDonalds decided to offer Lamb Burgers instead of the same ol' Beef Burger. People would flock to it!
 
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Any 3D games are actually just the VDP1 distorting a series of sprites to produce the illusion of polygons, which in reality are quadrilaterals. It was difficult for multiplatform and Western developers to create 3D games of the style popular at the time. Even SEGA's first party studios struggled to produce impressive 3D games with this architecture. Otherwise conventional racing games like Daytona USA and action games like Burning Rangers have to do a lot of obvious field of view rendering and unrendering to handle the graphical load. This challenging architecture made it difficult for Saturn emulators to make progress for a long time, never mind emulation appropriate for a retail collection akin to the Genesis and Dreamcast ones.

Too much of made of the so-called lack of Saturn 3D, It was more case of it wasn't worth a developer time putting the effort into a Saturn game or how the PS was the lead platform. Daytona USA was early and AM#2 trying to handle the silly task of having 40 cars on track at the same time, that's to overlook how its Fram rate was hardly worse than Pilotwings 64 or Wave Racer 64, never mind the gfx in the latter Daytona USA CE. Burning Ranger was just trying to push much alpha and lighting effects and that cause trouble for systems today.

There are various reasons, the OG XBox was more or less a PC in a box and so far that's been a hard system to emu.
 

Romulus

Member
Id like to see it happen, but the Saturn was probably one of,the worst selling consoles for sega. And most of the labeled gems don't appeal to anyone these days except the ultra diehard. Most of the 3D greats look like total shit today even with resolution bumps.

6th generation is when games started holding up.
 
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cireza

Banned
AFAIK there has never been an attempt, by anyone Sega or not, to make a commercial Saturn emulator.
There are a few Saturn games that run on emulator, this is the case of Princess Crown on PSP. Pretty sure there are a couple others, I need to check.

Edit : a quick search would suggest that this is actually wrong, and that Princess Crown was ported.
 
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All I want is for the last guy remaining at Treasure to port Radiant Silvergun and Guardian Heroes to modern systems.
Both are playable on Xbox One through Backwards Compatibility.

Xbox is a pretty good platform for Sega love in general.

Saturn:
Guardian Heroes
Nights
Virtua Fighter 2
Fighting Vipers
Sonic the Fighters
Radiant Silvergun
Daytona USA
Panzer Dragoon (Via Panzer Dragoon Orta)

Dreamcast:
Sonic Adventure
Sonic Adventure 2
Sega Bass Fishing
Crazy Taxi
Virtual On
Jet Set Radio
Ikaruga
Shenmue
Shenmue 2 Both available on Playstation 4 as well.
Soul Calibur
Space Channel 5 (No BC)


Lots of Genesis compilations as well.

If I got something wrong don't @ me.
 
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lock2k

Banned
I think this is the issue over all else. It’s just not financially viable.
I have a Saturn emulator on the Shield TV that runs everything I throw at it in a high resolution at 60 fps. I would imagine that it would be possible on modern hardware, especially with what M2 has done in the past, it just won’t make enough money to make it worthwhile.

Which emulator is this? I'm curious.

I love the Saturn.
 

Hudo

Member
I'd be interested in a Panzer Dragoon Saga remake but Sega lost the source code to that. But at least we're getting remakes of Panzer Dragoon 1 and 2.
I'd also love a remaster or remake of Burning Rangers.
 

Thaedolus

Member
If you really like the Saturn, just buy one and bypass the easy copy protection. I think I paid $50 for the Saturn I game on, which is less than the mini emulation boxes they’re selling these days.
 

lock2k

Banned
If you really like the Saturn, just buy one and bypass the easy copy protection. I think I paid $50 for the Saturn I game on, which is less than the mini emulation boxes they’re selling these days.

I have a japanese one but I don't know how to bypass it.
 

Deft Beck

Member
I'd be interested in a Panzer Dragoon Saga remake but Sega lost the source code to that. But at least we're getting remakes of Panzer Dragoon 1 and 2.
I'd also love a remaster or remake of Burning Rangers.

I have a theory that the studio remastering PD1+2 is doing so as a trojan horse to work their way up to Saga.
 
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With some exceptions, SEGA would prefer to pretend the Saturn did not happen.

This doesn't seem true at all. It was still their best-performing console in Japan, the market they sacrificed the West for that very generation. Hell, they saw fit to release MegaCD and 32X add-on props for the MegaDrive Mini in Japan when that was the MegaDrive's smallest market out of the Big 3.

If they're willing to do that for Mega CD and 32X, there's not much reason for them to run from their Saturn legacy. Besides, it's seemingly gotten a lot more popular in internet circles and the retro gaming community the past decade; global sentiment towards it isn't the same was it was in the '90s.
I think you need to consider what went into a Neo Geo Mini vs what would go into a quality "Saturn Mini" console before making the comparison. I'm far from an expert on this stuff, but the Neo Geo games have seemingly been ported/emulated extensively compared to Saturn games over the years. That could make the upfront cost of developing a little Neo Geo console significantly less than a Saturn console.

I could be totally wrong here, I'm somewhat apathetic about all of it because I still have a working Saturn hooked up to a CRT, but I just don't see a reason to put out a Saturn mini given the lack of interest in the mainstream audience. Most of the time when people see I have a Saturn, they think it's a weird thing vs. having my PS1 or N64.

That's the thing about anecdotal evidence; you can't fully use that as a widespread case. Like Saturn, Neo Geo also had a niche appeal (actually, a much narrower niche appeal), but again, that hasn't stopped SNK from releasing the Neo Geo Mini. Even if those Neo Geo ports are relatively easy to do, things from the costs of IC securement, motherboard design/prototyping/testing/manufacture, casing design, marketing, distribution etc....that stuff adds up. It's "cheap" compared to what Sony and Microsoft are going to be doing next year with their new systems, but it's not cheap.

They wouldn't need to aim the Saturn mini at the mainstream market. IMHO I don't see why they can't aim a bit upwards price-wise but make sure there's features present to make it worth it. Like the online connectivity that new Capcom plug 'n play seems to have (at least for firmware updates). Also I think a Saturn mini would actually generate more interest than a MegaDrive one, simply because unlike MegaDrive, SEGA hasn't exhausted Saturn through minis going back over a decade. Never mind that Japan in particular would be a pretty strong market for it.

That's the way I see it, anyway.
 

Quasicat

Member
Which emulator is this? I'm curious.

I love the Saturn.

It’s called Yaba Sanshiro. It’s based on, and used to be called, Yabause and is free for the most part. At the end of a play session it asks for a donation. I gave them $10 since I used it so much and it stopped asking. From what I remember, it did not take too much to set up.
 

Hudo

Member
I have a theory that the studio remastering PD1+2 is doing so as a trojan horse to work their way up to Saga.
Well, if that also means that we might see a new Panzer Dragoon game (or maybe even a Panzer Dragoon Saga remake?), I'm all for it!
 
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