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NeoGAF Official SEGA SATURN Community

Alexios

Banned
Lmao, Retro-bit finally made amends after 4 years for my faulty Saturn USB gamepad's d-pad and have apparently sent me 2 whole new (presumably without the flaw) gamepads rather than bother with replacement parts (I think). I thought I'd check where they may be with the USPS tracking number they gave me and they're being held at customs in Athens since October 31st. Googling about it shows they may stay there for months or ask me to pay to get it. Greeaat.
Daniel Thomas MacInnes said:
Kudos to Retro-Bit for being so dedicated.
Taking 4 years to do what they should have done in 4 days isn't showing dedication on their part, more mine for nagging again when an opportunity arose. Of course I long since bought another gamepad (a Fighting Commander which has been great even without the Saturn d-pad). But it was nice.
 
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Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus
Lmao, Retro-bit finally made amends after 4 years for my faulty Saturn USB gamepad's d-pad and have apparently sent me 2 whole new (presumably without the flaw) gamepads rather than bother with replacement parts (I think). I thought I'd check where they may be with the USPS tracking number they gave me and they're being held at customs in Athens since October 31st. Googling about it shows they may stay there for months or ask me to pay to get it. Greeaat.


Kudos to Retro-Bit for being so dedicated. I have a wireless Saturn controller which I currently use for the OpenEmu emulator on my desktop Mac. It's perfect and my favorite joypad for classic 2D videogames. I am looking forward their upcoming 3D Saturn controller. Now if we can only get Nintendo to adopt analog triggers for their Switch 2 console, then we'd have everything perfected.*

(*Note: Yes, I am aware that there are only four Saturn games where analog triggers matter: the Lobotomy Trilogy and JP Magic Carpet. I'm just being super picky.)
 

cireza

Member
Having some fun with Dragon Force 25 years later... I started as Wein, here is the situation.

20231214-194654.jpg


I bet that people that know the game will understand what is going on here and how I have been pushing around the CPU quite a bit lol.

The castle directly North of Highlands has been left untouched (it is normally an early event for Wein) and it is invincible to any CPU assault, so it offers a good protection.
I have explored to the West and pushed Gongos to the green castle, which is hilarious. All other castles simply have their leader.

I made an assault on all castles at once yesterday and triggered all events one after another lol. My main characters are all level 20, I choose Wein, Hilga, Hayate, Zakk and Nina.
Zakk is a random beast man but he did the job well. Nina sucks so much though, I will never use here again.

Now all leaders have joined the force, so the end game will be the same as always, and I will not be using Hilga or Hayate anymore :messenger_pensive:

This playthrough has been a lot of fun (note : I didn't use the debug mode obviously, don't use it, it ruins the game unless you want to specifically trigger impossible things of course).

People who crave for more Dragon Force goodness absolutely need to play Brigandine on modern consoles.
 
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Having some fun with Dragon Force 25 years later... I started as Wein, here is the situation.

20231214-194654.jpg


I bet that people that know the game will understand what is going on here and how I have been pushing around the CPU quite a bit lol.

The castle directly North of Highlands has been left untouched (it is normally an early event for Wein) and it is invincible to any CPU assault, so it offers a good protection.
I have explored to the West and pushed Gongos to the green castle, which is hilarious. All other castles simply have their leader.

I made an assault on all castles at once yesterday and triggered all events one after another lol. My main characters are all level 20, I choose Wein, Hilga, Hayate, Zakk and Nina.
Zakk is a random beast man but he did the job well. Nina sucks so much though, I will never use here again.

Now all leaders have joined the force, so the end game will be the same as always, and I will not be using Hilga or Hayate anymore :messenger_pensive:

This playthrough has been a lot of fun (note : I didn't use the debug mode obviously, don't use it, it ruins the game unless you want to specifically trigger impossible things of course).

People who crave for more Dragon Force goodness absolutely need to play Brigandine on modern consoles.

This game has been on my 'to play' list for about 25 years. It looks great but I've never spent the time to sit down and learn how to play it.

Is it as complicated as it looks?
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
A compatibility patch just released for NiGHTS, specifically for those playing with that new RetroBit dual analog Saturn controller. I guess the triggers didn't work for air braking and things like that.

 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus



Here is our first look at the newest translation of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on Sega Saturn. This edition uses the 4MB RAM expansion to remove most of the slowdown that haunted the original, makes several graphical fixes, including proper VDP2 transparencies on text windows, and includes the English language dub from the PSP version of the game. This is being presented as the ultimate version and the translation team did a magnificent job.
 

Alexios

Banned
The Ultimate Saturn version, I'm sure.

I think it still lacks effects/transparencies like the fog in outer wall, it's debatable if the new areas are good, though playable Maria is indeed great (also on PSP but different, but then it could be definitive to play Alucard/Richter on PS and the others on Saturn, Idk), not all sprites are corrected, etc.

And the first look was Meduza Team's own footage, can't believe they aren't even mentioned there for all their grand work on Saturn and other systems too. And yeah, most of the patch's improvements were available for ages now, they finally combined it with a translation is the bigger deal here.

Also they removed black bars from top & bottom to expand the viewable area which for many areas works out fine but for others there's unintended weirdness, look at the doppelganger gate effects being visible at the top and bottom of the screen as it rotates around in the center of that room.

I think it would have been nice to get some of these changes as an option instead but I'm sure that would be too much work to bother. Also I dunno if they should have tried to fix the pixels or just ask people to play it in slightly different ratio squishing the image manually to the proper dimension (easily done in emulators at least, on CRT/real system I guess you'd have to eyeball it squishing the image from the menu)? Could that even work or it would then mess up the dimensions/ratio of other things like the backgrounds or lead to obvious visual glitching as you move around the game?

I dunno why even Capcom had issues with the different Saturn resolutions they used leading to wider sprites, why not leave the sprites in 1:1 resolution with the original slightly alter how much of the background/area is visible in proper ratio too, that seems like it would have been the way to go...

They even had this Saturn vs Arcade option changing something regarding that stage width stuff but it wasn't to fix the sprite width, I don't think so at least. I looked around for videos or even pages detailing these things exactly in the past but without much luck, it is just weird it was a thing at all.
 
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Alexios

Banned
Dungeon Master Nexus translation is up to v2 and with resources released for folks to translate to other languages too. Looks like a great version of the game to play (personally I prefer my dungeon crawlers to be turn based, but oh well).
Between this, several Wizardry games and even Shining the Holy Ark it seems like with a bit of marketing Saturn could have served the CRPG-but-on-console audience and gotten more games (maybe Ultima Underworld alongside PlayStation or catch From Software's interest for King's Field).

Alongside the (even) more Japanese stuff like Baroque, Dragon Master Silk and the Atlus Devil Summoner and Soul Hackers games it got quite a few in this vein (obviously mostly in Japan as usual).
 
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Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus
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Here are some new screenshots of Dungeon Master Nexus, which is receiving a new English and French language translation. Hooray! As Alexios notes, Saturn is home to many first-person adventure and dungeon-crawling RPGs. If you're a fan of the genre and loved Shining the Holy Ark, then you'll really love these new additions to our software library.

Edit: Whoops on the title! Fixed that. But Dragon Master Silk is also pretty good.
 
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Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus



Since I mentioned this title, I thought I should post a gameplay video from Dragon Master Silk. This first-person dungeon crawling RPG was released in 1997 to modestly positive reviews. If you’re a fan of the genre, then here is another solid entry to keep you happy. It’s not on the same level as Shining the Holy Ark, Dungeon Master Nexus or Baroque, but what’s here is very solid.
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus



New Sega Saturn homebrew videogame: Konami’s X-Men arcade. Wow! A playable demo is now available, but this project is still in its early stages. I am curious to know if this will be based on the “standard” 2-player arcade, or will also include the “deluxe” widescreen 6-player version as well. Stay tuned.
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus



I’ve been waiting for the official SLX word on this new Castlevania patch, as he is such a dedicated fan. I’m sold and agree this is just about as good as the Saturn translation is likely to be, until someone out there creates a new version from scratch and coded in Assembly. Thanks for the video!
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus
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Great news for all retro gamers: Linda Cubed on Sony PlayStation has now been translated fully into English. We can only assume that a Sega Saturn translation will be inevitable soon. This game is a cult classic RPG with Pokemon and horror elements and is highly regarded. Indeed, in the 2000 Sega Saturn Magazine JP readers poll, this game cracked the top ten.

I would love to see this videogame translated. Any chance to enjoy more Japanese Saturn classics is a welcome one.
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus



Classic arcade shoot-em-up Kingdom GrandPrix has been translated into English. Or, more accurately, it was discovered that the original software code contained a full English translation embedded into the software code, presumably in anticipation for a Western arcade release that never materialized. Sega Saturn Shiro broke the story and posted a couple videos, which you can watch and enjoy. Yay! More Saturn translations!
 

Alexios

Banned
There was a World version of that game with English already for mame/FBN, does Saturn's version have substantial extras like Game Tengoku and are those in English too or is the translation just for what was in the arcade?
 

MikeMyers

Member
So I've been looking through Digisiter UK charts, and found this:

SEGA Saturn games that topped the British charts:
- Panzer Dragoon
- Virtua Cop
- Bug!
- Virtua Fighter 2
- Sega Rally Championship
- Euros 96

Dreamcast games that topped the British charts:
- Sonic Adventure
- Virtua Tennis

Seems SEGA Rally was biggest Sega Saturn hit in UK.
 

Alexios

Banned
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Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus



Here is a great SegaSaturnShiro podcast featuring the new English translation for Treasure's masterful 2D platformer Silhouette Mirage. This newest patch features a new translation, where the previous patch used the PS1 translation by Working Designs.
 

Daniel Thomas MacInnes

GAF's Resident Saturn Omnibus



Shin Megami Tensei: Soul Hackers is the latest Sega Saturn translation, one of the best yet. SegaSaturnShiro shows off the goods and discusses all the inner details of the translation project.

I thought I had posted this here, but put it on a different Saturn thread. Whoops!
 
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