Sega Saturn |OT| - Playin' Saturn each day keeps Segata away!

I tried on our Discord, but I’d shoot the question here too:

I bought the PAL version of Mass Destruction. I tried running it on a Japanese Saturn with the Action Replay Cart. Game boots, intro plays then I’m asked to enter a name. I just get som invalid text entry and then the game reboots. Anybody that can enlighten me on this? If I let the game play itself it loads up levels and runs fine. I just can’t get past that text entry.

I have a PAL Saturn too, but I’d like to play it in 60Hz.

I haven’t used mine in awhile, but are there multiple entries for Mass Destruction in the game list? Can you try running it as a generic unspecified game? I might be conflating my Dreamcast AR with the Saturn one…

I’m not using any game specific cheats or anything, just booting the game straight up via the “start game without cheats enabled” and it is just a generic boot, not specific to that game. I’ll have to check a bit more, I wonder if the text I’m entering as a username is somehow misunderstood for Japanese or something and the game freaks out? Weird bug.

Finally got around to installing the Phantom Universal in my skeleton Saturn. Amazed at how easy the install was. Some light soldering and eally just hooking up a single wire and a ribbon cable. Works flawlessly. I guess I can flash something else onto my pseudo saturn now.

New post on Professor Abrasives Satiator Patreon:

Thinking long and hard about buying a Saturn. My only experience I had with the Saturn was borrowing it for a weekend, playing mostly Fighters Megamix.

So many questions on how to approach this. How often does the Rhea/Phoebe come up for sale anyways? Also, how many memory cards do you guys need for the save games in your library? I find myself running out of space on my DC VMUs since I like keeping high scores for all the arcade ports.

Ah looks like Battle Garegga is coming down in price, likely because of the PS4 release.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

It really depends on the memory card. Most of them have more space than you’ll know what to do with.

the official save cartridges are yuge. you won’t run out of space

Yeah, and you don’t really even HAVE to get a save cart. I never did and I’ve owned a Saturn since May 11, 1995.

That Battle Garegga news is very interesting @D.Lo

sweet, good to know. Trying to decide how best to build the the Saturn setup. Would definitely want the AR for the ram + memory card, but I also want to run Pseudo Saturn. Wonder if there’s a cheaper cart out there I can buy specifically to flash Pseudo. Surprised, but not that surprised that the Saturn is going for around $100 locally on Offer Up. Hope I get lucky with an auction.

How many CR2032 batteries have you gone through?

I’ve bought a few of them. There are many games on Saturn that I’m really not too concerned about saves, though. It’s an era that has a large number of arcade-style games and not a lot of need for saving.

Fair point. I made sure to buy a save cart after I lost my Panzer Dragon Azel save. I just don’t trust the internal batteries.

RPGs are really the only things that require it. I’m not sure I cared much about any other kind of game and whether it was all saved? Maybe Nights? There are a handful.

So I recently bought/installed a modchip ($30), which effectively removes the need for a Pseudo Saturn. If you can solder, a modchip and an AR is a pretty convenient solution, particularly if you’ve got a finicky cartridge slot

I don’t have solder experience, but I’ll have to learn cause this sounds like the best overall set up. Pseudo Saturn have few too many caveats (need additional AR cart to save or use RAM, can’t boot PDS without patching, wear and tear on cart slot, etc). Where’d you get the mod chip btw? The only sources I found were a sketchy R43DS site and a forum seller.

So there’s a group on Facebook called “Sega Saturn Trade, Sell, and Collect” if you go there, the first pinned post is a dude selling Phantoms for $30. He was a reliable seller in my experience. If you google “Phantom Universal Modchip” you’ll find other sellers pretty quick.

It really is a SUPER easy soldering job… basically running one wire from the chip to the board to draw power. Rest is just plugging in ribbon cables. Here are some guides:

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Not trying to derail discussion, but has anyone else here modded their Saturn themselves without a mod chip? Back when I was in High School, I found instructions online (just a .txt file without photos, cuz 90s, lol) and cut some traces and soldered some others together. The outcome was basically changing my North American Saturn into booting JP-region titles. This freed up the cartridge slot for the 4MB RAM cart, and when I wanted to play US-region titles, I used a region converter cart (but not the PAR – I didn’t get one of those until a few years ago!)

I still haven’t encountered another individual who had also been so reckless, lol.

It’s a launch model and still kicking, though! (It was even a rental-unit from a video store, so I’m sure it’s seen some shit…)

That’s super cool. I would love to learn how to do that. Can it play backups?