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[Diablohead]

The video was amazing to watch, full of info and really enjoyable to listen too, well put together.

What I find the most interesting isn't being able to play backups but how the actual process was done, and that you can pretty much use the back port to run anything coded for the saturn directly, it's really cool and a great way to use a console port that was forgotten and ignored by sega.

I have a thing about old console extension ports being used, I think it's cool.

 

[Anony]

jesus christ, the amount of effort of reverse engineering this is crazy
this guy (one person) is a genius

 

[Kelsdesu]

Thanks OP for bringing that video into my life, very interesting. Time to dig out the Saturn for some Alpha 2 in celebration. Funny how Sega went from Fort Knox to what seemed like open door with the Dreamcast.

Well. Part of PS initial sucees in my opinion was that it was easier to mod.

 

[Trogdor1123]

It's funny that the Dreamcast was a complete joke to play backups on amd this took this long.

 

[Ruprit]

The Japanese games aren't too expensive (I bought a Japanese Saturn to save money on physical games) but it is still a bit much.

The more mainstream titles that usually show up on top 10 lists are. But good luck to the new gamer who wants to own a copy of Batsugun, Cotton Boomerang, X-Multiply, Blast Wind, Hyper Duel, etc. I remember buying a copy of Battle Garegga for $50, 14 years ago, and thinking it was expensive.

I honestly feel bad for anyone that wants to own these titles. What's worse is they're so cost-prohibitive it prevents a larger audience from finding out how wonderful these games are.

 

[IrishNinja]

The Japanese games aren't too expensive (I bought a Japanese Saturn to save money on physical games) but it is still a bit much.

yeah, depends on the genre though! RPG of course stays cheap, but less accessible...SHMUPS are through the roof, but that's true on a number of systems...i wonder of Souky is still a fair price

for real though, i wanted more Sega AGES/etc stuff but it feels like everything's on the rise!

 

[FLEABttn]

It...kinda does.

I ripped my US and PAL games to my PC, changed the region code,and burnt them to CDs. They play fine on my chipped JP Saturn.

You know what I meant.

It's funny that the Dreamcast was a complete joke to play backups on amd this took this long.

The mod chip for the Saturn was a thing in the 90s. It did not take this long.

 

[kollapse]

yeah, depends on the genre though! RPG of course stays cheap, but less accessible...SHMUPS are through the roof, but that's true on a number of systems...i wonder of Souky is still a fair price

for real though, i wanted more Sega AGES/etc stuff but it feels like everything's on the rise!

This is all true. Soukyugurentai is sadly getting expensive, and the Sega Ages stuff just seems to keep going up as well (Power Drift especially). Even common STGs like Layer Section are starting to creep up, and the Arcade Gears releases are still stupid expensive.

But, man, what a system - generally, worth every penny, in my view. Even if you only buy cheap stuff, you can have an incredible time with the Saturn (well, at least cheap Japanese releases - not sure what the American market is like), and they're generally games that aren't available anywhere else.

 

[Pixels]

How awesome would it be to have a HDD with every single game inside and actual Saturn. Want.

 

[Zeenbor]

This is actually similar to how PS1 was cracked for homebrew. i.e. using alternate boot vector via cartridge plugin (Caetla).

 

[gafneo]

They seemed to protect the Saturn to great lengths, but expose the Dreamcast to the extreme. Cheaper consoles must all have gimped security. Both Wii and Dreamcast cost 200ish and used discs to burn easy.

I think the Saturn was $500 at launch.

 

[sixteen-bit]

This is awesome. I have a very unique dev Saturn (with a prototype controller!) that was given to me a few years ago, and I was always afraid of the drive dying, so this could be a lifesaver.

It's similar to this -

Except the red pin is much longer on mine.

Reminds me of this, a Saturn 3D pad that terminates in a Dreamcast plug.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw7eH_YPKEg

 

[ElectricThunder]

Mod chips happened years ago, yes, but as stated in the vids---they just kind of stopped on that spot back then and nothing else came of it but scarcity, risk to system damage, and price inflation. This....this is the proper way forward on the future for posterity en route to a full on FPGA and emulation solution for the time when all the hardware WILL have failed.

The only other remotely comparable peer to this work right about now is the different(FPGA sorcery for one), but in a more advanced state, Vampire accelerator project for the Amiga.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S3B8a8N83k Towards the end especially as future plans get outlined for the sorts of things to bring to the latter era machine builds, but the whole thing is a nice summary even if nowhere near the slick piece of work from ctrix and company~

I doubt any FPGA-mixed stuff is in the cards for the Saturn given the apparent OS monstrosity they've got to contend with---but time'll tell as they have to finish clearing these hurdles already.

 

[MrCunningham]

They seemed to protect the Saturn to great lengths, but expose the Dreamcast to the extreme. Cheaper consoles must all have gimped security. Both Wii and Dreamcast cost 200ish and used discs to burn easy.

I think the Saturn was $500 at launch.

It was $449.99 with Virtua Fighter 1 and a preview disc and $399.99 with just the console. The Saturn had a surprise early launch in North America after Sony announced at E3 1995 that the Playstation was going to be priced at $299.99. But Sega's surprise early launch backfired as there was supply constraint and only angered retailers. Then Sega slashed the price of the Saturn down to $299.99 one month after release to compete with the Playstation 1. By Christmas of 1995, Sega was including Virtua Fighter 2, Daytona USA and Virtua Cop with the Saturn to try and stay competitive. By 1996, the Saturn dropped to $199.99.

Dreamcast Launched at $199.99, which was a really good price for the hardware. The reason why it was so quickly pirated was because Sega left an exploit in the system by mistake that developers quickly discovered that lead the information to be leaked out to the internet which allowed piraters to develop a utopian boot disc that could be swapped with a CDR. Later on piraters found a way to include the utopian boot disc on the same CD as the game, so no disc swapping was necessary.

Though the Dreamcast GD-ROM discs themselves were never easy to rip onto a PC for the average person. It would take a very specific type of CD ROM drive/ DVD drive with custom firmware, or a modded Dreamcast that could be used to rip the game from the console to an ISO on a PC. So the only way to obtain a Dreamcast ISO is through pirating. Which was still a bit of a problem for many, due to 56K connections still being a thing in early 2000. Though higher speed internet was becoming more popular with every passing day back them. It is still not possible to run a GD-ROM on a modern DVD/ Blu-Ray drive.

The Dreamcast itself could've been a pretty hard system to pirate if it weren't for an open exploit.

This is awesome. I have a very unique dev Saturn (with a prototype controller!) that was given to me a few years ago, and I was always afraid of the drive dying, so this could be a lifesaver.

It's similar to this -

Except the red pin is much longer on mine.

That's basically just a Sega Genesis six button pad with a Saturn connector:

 

[IrishNinja]

This is all true. Soukyugurentai is sadly getting expensive, and the Sega Ages stuff just seems to keep going up as well (Power Drift especially). Even common STGs like Layer Section are starting to creep up, and the Arcade Gears releases are still stupid expensive.

But, man, what a system - generally, worth every penny, in my view. Even if you only buy cheap stuff, you can have an incredible time with the Saturn (well, at least cheap Japanese releases - not sure what the American market is like), and they're generally games that aren't available anywhere else.

damn, Layer Section was like the last good cheap SHMUP holdout! that or Darius Gaiden...and agreed on the quality of the library, and tragedy of so much of it staying there.

and yeah, i was also hoping that M2 3DS collection this year (which is amazing) would drive down Power Drift's price, but alas

 

[Dingens]

I still need to get back to my Saturn and replace a bunch of capacitors to get it working again... But those little things put up one hell of a fight

 

[Corran Horn]

Oh wow this is a nice video. I modded my saturn a few years ago but this would make things so much easier.

That mention of a HDD in the saturn with every game...that would be a dream lol.

 

[Conezays]

damn, Layer Section was like the last good cheap SHMUP holdout! that or Darius Gaiden...and agreed on the quality of the library, and tragedy of so much of it staying there.

and yeah, i was also hoping that M2 3DS collection this year (which is amazing) would drive down Power Drift's price, but alas

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/LAYER-SECTIO...544986?hash=item464d0f15da:g:NzAAAOSwg3FUhVvN

Layer Section is still pretty reasonable

 

[MegamanPoweredUP]

Well, the swap trick can be a pain in the ass sometimes. You never know if you burned the disc correctly and sometimes it was too hard to figure out what went wrong.

 

[Elfforkusu]

Great work, great presentation. I love this kind of stuff.

Wonder what this dude's graduate work looks like!

 

[Deleted member 74300]

Man it would be a dream to get clone systems of stuff beyond nes, genesis, snes.

 

[TeaJay]

Because of the prices, I've moved to CD-R when it comes to Saturn pretty much exclusively. But a flashcart of sorts would of course make things a lot easier, since I'm constantly worried about the drive crapping out. My PS1 is already at the state where sometimes it says it can't read the disc when starting, but a re-start usually helps and then it runs just fine.

 

[HotHamBoy]

Oh wow, megaton. I have a Saturn I picked up last year that I was ready to sell. Got a flashed AR and a shitload of burnt CDs, but this is much more appealing.

 

[Yoshi]

My Saturn is having serious trouble reading Discs, I would be glad to buy such a thing. Buying new Saturns every time the CD drive breaks is a waste.

 

[Quote]

That is a well made video. I love how in depth it goes and keeps it kind of layman.

What are the chances this thing is actually built and sold? I know i'd be interested in purchasing one.

 

[MrCunningham]

That is a well made video. I love how in depth it goes and keeps it kind of layman.

What are the chances this thing is actually built and sold? I know i'd be interested in purchasing one.

I think if this guy can team up with the right people, I could see it happening sooner than later. But the copy protection in the video is really fascinating, I am really interested in the comments that he made about the instruction sets in the OS ROM. He said that you cans see the development history of the system by looking at it.

The wobbly line copy protection is incredibly stupid but really effective. The CD block being like a walled fortress is also interesting as well. Yeah, these kinds of things were still bypassed through hardware modding, but even if the Saturn became a massively popular system worldwide, hardware modding would have still been a niche thing. The Saturn is an interestingly complex system. Probably the most complex console of generation five.

 

[DiscoJer]

They seemed to protect the Saturn to great lengths, but expose the Dreamcast to the extreme. Cheaper consoles must all have gimped security. Both Wii and Dreamcast cost 200ish and used discs to burn easy.

I think Sega just had too much faith their their proprietary discs. They didn't think anyone could dump the games

Sort of like Sony with the PSP - they figured, no one could pirate UMDs and how could you possibly fit a game on a memory card? They were only 32 megabytes...

 

[Cat in the Hat]

Why would it hurt Sega? The damn console is more than 20 years old.

Hahahaha

 

[SinCityAssassin]

So when the board gets made eventually and is sold to people like me, would I just have to upload ISO to the expansion and just connect it to the Saturn? How does this work exactly?

 

[FyreWulff]

A good stroke of luck aswell that no popular game required something in that port or that Sega never revisioned it out.

 

[SKINNER!]

Just found out about this. Impressive stuff!

 

[Dambrosi]

Great news. My Saturn works flawlessly (for now), but I'm always subconciously scared that it'll fail eventually and I won't be able to buy a working replacement. This development came around at just the right time, I think.

I wonder if you could eventually hook up an SSD to the card to burn ISOs to, forgoing the need for USB connections at all? Or better still...a Wi-Fi or Ethernet card for remote ISO streaming/online play?

 

[thepenguin55]

The more mainstream titles that usually show up on top 10 lists are. But good luck to the new gamer who wants to own a copy of Batsugun, Cotton Boomerang, X-Multiply, Blast Wind, Hyper Duel, etc. I remember buying a copy of Battle Garegga for $50, 14 years ago, and thinking it was expensive.

I honestly feel bad for anyone that wants to own these titles. What's worse is they're so cost-prohibitive it prevents a larger audience from finding out how wonderful these games are.

You've just listed 6 Saturn games I never heard of. I would've guessed that they're all shooters (which are fine) but then I picked up Wachenroder years ago on a whim and it was a rad strategy RPG. I look forward to looking these up when I get home from work. Anyways, I'm just happy that I got a complete copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga for under $300.

 

[RAIDEN1]

The developers who looked at the saturn 22 years back probably thought it'd take them that amount of time just to get the most out of its chaotic hardware! As its well documented that was hugely off-putting for anyone outside of Sega's AM teams to get the most of the system....

 

[Blueingreen]

Let's cut to the chase, will I be able to finally play Panzer Dragoon Saga via emulation because of this?

 

[KAP151]

Why would it hurt Sega? The damn console is more than 20 years old.

 

[RobRSG]

Let's cut to the chase, will I be able to finally play Panzer Dragoon Saga via emulation because of this?

Maybe... In my first (and last) try, I was able to get to the second disk. Unfortunately, the game locked up in some sort of tunnel. Tried different SSF builds and no luck.

So I gave up and bought a modded NTSC-U Skeleton Saturn.

 

[ss_lemonade]

Let's cut to the chase, will I be able to finally play Panzer Dragoon Saga via emulation because of this?

I always thought it was close to perfect on ssf?

 

[RadarScope1]

LOL perfect

 

[Shaneus]

How is this "cracked" in comparison to the SD card replacement board like the Rhea? Isn't this the same concept of "cracking" as that?

Edit: Guess I need to watch the video. Running from the expansion port etc. is a pretty sweet idea!

Edit #2: And I think cTrix (who posted the video) is an Aussie chiptune creator. Which explains the accent of the narrator. Didn't realise the guy who generated the "crack" was Australian too.

 

[gelf]

Let's cut to the chase, will I be able to finally play Panzer Dragoon Saga via emulation because of this?

I beat the entire game on an emulator early this year. I played it on Yabause-Devmiyax mainly just to see how good the Open-GL mode was now and was able to reach the end. I recorded all the boss fights. A couple of small stages did suffer from graphical glitches where the background didn't display fully(for example the emulator struggled with some effect used for a whirlwind) and sometimes FMV cutscene audio went out of sync but I was able to play through it.

Game is likely even more accurate when played through SSF but I can't speak for that.

This news does sound like another step toward better emulation accuracy which is pleasing.

 

[Blueingreen]

I beat the entire game on an emulator early this year. I played it on Yabause-Devmiyax mainly just to see how good the Open-GL mode was now and was able to reach the end. I recorded all the boss fights. A couple of small stages did suffer from graphical glitches where the background didn't display fully(for example the emulator struggled with some effect used for a whirlwind) and sometimes FMV cutscene audio went out of sync but I was able to play through it.

Game is likely even more accurate when played through SSF but I can't speak for that.

This news does sound like another step toward better emulation accuracy which is pleasing.

Well that's great to hear I suppose, I never owned a Saturn and it's the one game on my bucket list, it's such a shame considering I remember reading how Sega convientely lost the source code, guess we'll have to wait and see.

 

[Ruprit]

You've just listed 6 Saturn games I never heard of. I would've guessed that they're all shooters (which are fine) but then I picked up Wachenroder years ago on a whim and it was a rad strategy RPG. I look forward to looking these up when I get home from work. Anyways, I'm just happy that I got a complete copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga for under $300.

They are and I hope you check them out.

Panzer Gragoon Saga is another I was happy to get a long time ago. Last year I thought I would start collecting for SNES and realized very quickly that it was unattainable at the current prices. I dread the thought of popular Youtubers focusing on rare Saturn games and jacking the prices up further.

 

[BubbaMc]

Why would it hurt Sega? The damn console is more than 20 years old.

Sarcasm.

 

[MrCunningham]

How is this "cracked" in comparison to the SD card replacement board like the Rhea? Isn't this the same concept of "cracking" as that?

The SD card replacement isn't really cracking the security, it is bypassing it through hardware modification. The method in the video makes it possible to use devices through the video codec slot in the back the Saturn that can circumvent the copy protection directly without the need for hardware modification through soldering and modding. This method makes it much easier for anyone to get into Sega Saturn homebrew without the need for tearing apart a Saturn console and modding the hardware.

 

[CertifiedFP]

So let me get this straight...

Sega Saturn took 22 years to crack, yet its successor was cracked from Day 0?

What Happened, Sega?

Spoiler

Already knew the latter part, btw. But really, What Happened? How'd they go from something uncrackable to what might as well be the direct predecessor to the PirateStationPortable? Hell, even the PirateStationPortable held its own for 7 years despite shitty copy-protection.

 

[dragonlife]

Why would it hurt Sega? The damn console is more than 20 years old.

Holy shit.

 

[Jinroh]

It might have been sarcasm but you can't imagine how many times I've read that crap about mods and other kind of emulators. The most recent example that comes to my mind is resident evil 1.5.

There are even people who blame these things saying it hurt their dear company's interests.

 

[FLEABttn]

So let me get this straight...

Sega Saturn took 22 years to crack, yet its successor was cracked from Day 0?

No, mod chips existed in the 90s. This gets around the copy protection without having to physically modify the console.

Also no, it was ~19 months from Japanese release to Utopia boot disc for the Dreamcast.

 

[Lee Chaolan]

May Burning Rangers live forever!