Essential Japanese Saturn games

[Tirian]

Yeah, no completed ones. But just the four current ones ... all between $35 and $45. So a little up from when I was looking for it, but not a great deal. And certainly nowhere near the ?50 VGI want for their spineless non-mint copy.

Anyway ... my main point is, it is not especially hard to get hold of at the moment. I think the number floating around on ebay right now is fairly good evidence of that.

Tirian

[Kubrick]

Let's see you find the PlayStation version for $30

[eastyy]

I bought asuka 120% burning fest final for the psone

Anyone know what the saturn versions are like?

[buster_broon]

Anyway ... my main point is, it is not especially hard to get hold of at the moment. I think the number floating around on ebay right now is fairly good evidence of that.

Tirian

i agree with you - they are readily available - same with radiant silvergun

but just not at $30 - which by the sounds of it would be a superb price

[saturn-gamer]

Its about friggin time D&D gets some bad press. The game is just a lazy and bad port but people were simply happy that there was at least a Saturn game being released in 1999. It suffers from alot of issues; bad ass load times, muffled sound effects, watered down graphics and the whole game feels sloppy.

Tower of doom aint all that, and the awesome SoM, which uses the 4mb ramcart, is weird enough just as much a crappy port. Shadow over mystara is one of my favorite capcom games, but not on the saturn. Sadly its much better on MAME.

[sj33]

I'm interested in the Saturn too but what's the deal with the cartridge slot?
Am I right in thinking that the Saturn was not backward compatible with the MD? So what was the point?
Is that slot purely and utterly for the extra RAM that some games require to run, like Waku Waku 7?
Let's just say that you wasn't interested in buying a RAM cartridge that enabled you to enter cheats and alter the regional boot code of any given Saturn, ( like the ones mentioned here before ) could you get by on having just the one cart for all the basic stuff like game saves and scores..for any game?
I say this because I know you can buy official Sega RAM cartidges for the Saturn for all the basic tasks like saving etc but let's say you wanted to play Waku Waku 7 or Samurai Shodown 4 etc etc that did require the extra memory... would you be able to get away with just the game ( WW7 or SS4 etc etc ) plus the official Saturn RAM or does it have to be the same flavour as the game in the CD tray?
I just cannot get over the thought of having the CD of the game on your shelf and having the accompanying RAM cart for each of the beefed up titles alongside it, seems like alot of messing about.
Isn't there a cart that does everything so that you could literally leave it in the cartridge slot regardless of whether you was playing an early Saturn title or one of the later SNK fighters?
Might have to re think the Saturn, sounds like a good machine but it's a very odd way of doing things, no wonder it died a death outside of Japan.

mickyboy

It can seem confusing, but it's really not.

There are memory carts for saving if the internal memory is full.
There are also carts to expand the RAM of the Saturn - 1MB RAM expansion and 4MB RAM expansion.
The RAM expansion games are not game-specific, they are like the N64 RAM expansion - will be utilized by any game programmed to do so.
It suddenly becomes complicated because some 1MB expansion games have 'glitches' when using the 4MB RAM expansion carts.

Enter the third party. Carts such as the Action Replay Plus 4M Auto have, along with region protection by-pass and cheats, the abilty to automatically switch between 1MB and 4MB expansion depending on the game. Problem solved.

The exception to this rule is when using ROM expansion games. These are different to RAM expansion games in that they need a specific cart per-game... luckily there are only around 2 ROM expansion games anyway (unfortunately, one of which happens to be KOF95).
These were replaced quickly with RAM expansion which reduced costs as you only needed the one cart for all your games.

Unfortunately, with all these solutions occupying the cart port, you can't use a memory cart to save on, so you have to use the internal memory.
The aformentioned Action Replay cart has sortage data of forms, which you can copy saves onto which you no longer use... but cannot be accessed within games. Think of it as archival space to throw saves onto to free up internal memory.

Bottom line, the closest thing to an all-in-one cart is the Action Replay Plus 4M Auto http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-1v-70-1b2.html
Best Saturn upgrade out there.

[mezzanine]

Its about friggin time D&D gets some bad press. The game is just a lazy and bad port but people were simply happy that there was at least a Saturn game being released in 1999. It suffers from alot of issues; bad ass load times, muffled sound effects, watered down graphics and the whole game feels sloppy.

Tower of doom aint all that, and the awesome SoM, which uses the 4mb ramcart, is weird enough just as much a crappy port. Shadow over mystara is one of my favorite capcom games, but not on the saturn. Sadly its much better on MAME.

It's not that bad. Even SFZ3 has bad sound compared to the arcade version.

[saturn-gamer]

In SFZ3 its really only the announcer who sounds somewhat worse and he sucked anyway. The game does not suffer from any other issues D&D suffers from really. But the sound isn't the main problem with D&D, its the stupid load times and sloppy feeling along with the high price that make it somewhat of a bad purchase.

[phillai]

I wanna vote for the 'kinda not heard of' vertical shooter called Batsugun...

It's soooo intense! Give it a try! You won't regret it!

[dj898]

Unfortunately, with all these solutions occupying the cart port, you can't use a memory cart to save on, so you have to use the internal memory.
The aformentioned Action Replay cart has sortage data of forms, which you can copy saves onto which you no longer use... but cannot be accessed within games. Think of it as archival space to throw saves onto to free up internal memory.

it's the difference between direct save compatible and non compatible...
in Japan Karat released direct-save compatible backup memory cart with the capacity x10 of official one...