I'm flashing back to my early teen years!

I found a Sega Saturn during one of my goodwill trips. I don't usually buy game consoles; because most are XBox or Playstation. But I found an old Sega Saturn on the shelf about a month ago. It powered on and made the right sounds. I found a controller; but no cables and no other games than the Mortal Kombat 3 in the thing.

So, I bought it. For $12 total at the very least I could make my money back selling it. But I got to researching. I started looking for hacks or whatnot; Dreamcast was exploited so maybe, by now, someone had for Saturn. This was because I came to the conclusion a modchip wasn't being made or sold anymore.

I was wrong; by a long shot. I found a guy who had one; but it was for newer Saturns...but with some soldering. And board modification; it'd work. So..I tore my Saturn apart. This Model 1 looking unit was actually a "64-pin Model 2". The chip had issues with these. I started to recap the power supply thinking that was that.

Again, I was wrong. The right google search lead me to a page where this guy had posted he had a newly designed universal board. Connectors for 20 and 21 pin units (the 64-pin talks about the drive controller IC; not ribbon cable). In stock! So, the chip and a set of AV cables were ordered. It showed up in two days with everything I needed to install it...except mounting hardware. Just slight soldering to short a jumper and a power wire. Coated the back with liquid tape; mounted it with foam tape; and connected the thing (it hooks between the CD drive and motherboard).

Popped in a burned copy of Daytona USA and it played just like a real disc. Well, the first night was a bit of a headache. I got about 5 games to work. Most of my images were mdf/mds; which requires Alcohol 120% to burn...and it wouldn't install. I also didn't have any of the patching tools; and a number of my US games were patched for Europe. So last night; I managed to get A120% to work and obtained a region patcher. An action replay would have solved that; since it makes it boot any region. Patching works just as well.

So, last night I upped the count to 30 games. Back in 97..for the 11 months I had a Saturn; I had like...4 games.

Anyway, this has posed a new problem. My Onkyo does not like the double strike 240p signal the console outputs. Yeah, its not a 480I signal. In fact, my TV reports it as just "NTSC" and not "720x480I". The TV doesn't seem to have enough lag to be a problem; but it looks rough.

What a cool find and great post!

For the 240P signal you'll need an external scaler - DVDO made some that had modes that recognized video games 240p signals. I have a DVDO iScan Plus V2 that has a game mode in addition to its video and film deinterlacing modes. You should be able to get one cheap since it only scales to 480P and doesn't take any inputs but S-Video and Composite NTSC. It does have diagonal processing to get rid of jagged edges.

Is it low-latency?

I need another piece of video equipment like I need a hole in the head; so ill probably just play it on the TV....or find a cheap CRT and be one of those guys who keeps a CRT for gaming.

Ill throw an ebay watch on it though.

I've kept a 32 inch CRT for my Field-Sequential 3D VHD Video Discs and IMAX DVD's since the system doesn't work on progressive scan television's. In Japan the first progressive scan sets had a 3D mode that disabled field blending, but since, except for some of the Field-Sequential 3D IMAX DVD's issued by Slingshot and bootleg DVD's collectors like me own, 3D was never really done here, US sets never had a 3D mode. It sucks too because I have a Field-Sequential 3D adapter on my Hi-8 camcorder and have hundreds of hours of 3D home videos... Thier quality is amazing.

I don't know if the 3D BD and TV standard will work with field-sequential NTSC 3D - I'd love to be able to use my 3D VHD player on a large flat screen 3D set.

I have an IScan plus and used to use it with my Mitsu 37" Computer Monitor for movies and games. It worked decently for games, but it only had an issue with one console I had--the Neo Geo CD. When playing Saturn or PSX, the light for "Graphics" would come up denoting a video game being played. When I would play the Neo through it, all three lights, "Video, Graphics" and "Film" would light up! I guess the video from the Neo Geo was just a little to tough for it to process for some reason?

i love my Sega Saturn.

Yeah, but like he said . . . no more processors!

It'd be cheaper just to get a used Sony WEGA for old school gaming!

I brought my 24" WEGA to a friend's house for gaming. Lotsa fun on that with the Saturn and PS2.

Yeah, its a pretty exhaustive site. Its easy to afford all that stuff when you are selling pirate PC Engine games to pay for it, like he is.

Still, a Saturn with an RGB cable going to a $50 Craigslist Sony PVM still beats all that modern crap to pieces, IMO. The Saturn also puts out a VERY solid s-video signal.

Regarding the Saturn, I'm a pretty big Saturn fan. I even have dumb crap like both US and JP modems, keyboards, stuff that isn't even useful or even usable anymore. When the system was still new and I was poor and games were $50-60 each I played CD-Rs on it but these days I just don't see the point. All but very few SS games can be had for between $1-5 with case and manual giving you, IMO, a much more satisfying experience than download ISOs. Its not that I'm "anti-piracy" or anything, I just think having a collection of fake games so big you'll never play them is kind of pointless and not as fun as savoring a few good/real games slowly as they come in.

My systems are region hacked, but don't even have mod chips in them. Strictly speaking, you don't even need a mod chip since with the early models (maybe all models) there are ways of playing pirate stuff by just hacking the door switch. The region hack is a million times more important than being able to play boots, IMO, since sooooo many games were Japan-only. Mod chips won't let you play imports, you need a region hack.*

When the Lunar remake came out I played a CD-R of it all the way through over the course of a week and a half without every powering down the system since getting it to boot the CD-R was a pain. Saturns are probably the toughest disc-based game systems and can handle that sort of abuse easily.

Anyway, have fun!



* This may have changed in the 15 years since I played around with mod chips, but it was certainly true at the time. I'm pretty sure its possible to hack the ISO to be region free, so maybe people are doing that now. I don't think the mod chip has any say in the matter though.

Heres a really good article on the Saturn that might help you starting out with some great info:
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/sega-sat ... ners-guide

Well, I do in fact pay for games when it's still commercially viable. There are games I've paid for two or three times throughout the years; though that's mostly on the PC side...thanks to Steam.

Saturn is basically a collectors market. Real games are cheap; sure. Sometimes it's not worth paying the inflated market value. I don't often see games locally; mostly because I don't even look. When I bought my first Dreamcast ten years ago; the whole purpose was because it had very good emulation of the 8 and 16 bit eras I still hold a candle for. Games were an added bonus; but my internet connection was crap back then. 2 to 3 hours to get a game wasn't something I did often; though it was fun.

Plus; back when I had my Saturn, and later the first year of playstation ownership; I didn't have access to a CD-R drive; that didn't happen till Spring of 99. Even after I got one; I didn't have the ability to obtain a modchip. The Dreamcast never required one; my Xbox was a passing phase; and my Wii was soft-modded. I wanted the satisfaction of knowing I added an unauthorized piece of circuitry that performs a man-in-the-middle attack.

And; yeah; that swap trick sounds like a pain. I'm lazy; and like that seamless experience.

The modchip has nothing to do with the region coding at all. As you suspected; you can patch the ISO to change the region. Some games were multiple-regions; but there is no region-free setting. The ActionReplay carts make that a non issue; along with adding both memory expansions.

I remember shortly after the PS2 came out, I bought one online that was modded, it used a separate disc for it to work, I'd rent games and burn them. I got it to work 3 or 4 times and then I couldn't get it to work ever again. I sent it back. I'll never waste my time with modded junk again. I just collect PSone/2/3 stuff and some Xbox games. I've thought about getting an NES but I have all those roms downloaded and as little as I play them I'm not sure it's worth it. Especially when it's hit or miss on whether the cartridge will work or not and how much they ask for them.

I remember buying the Sega Dreamcast. What a joke. The games were lame and they canceled it after just 2 years, I sold it as fast as I could.

I remember buying the PS2. What a joke. The games were lame and in 480i, despite being sixth gen. The controller was silly too. Four buttons for a D-pad and shapes for face buttons. No triggers either.

Also, if you haven't gotten your RGB cables already, be careful, I've gotten some ones that were poorly shielded and made the audio buzz really loudly so I had to add RCA ports. The RGB cables seem more susceptible to audio interference, probably because the wires are all bundled up in one cable. Also, I use an iScan HD for my consoles that use SCART and the delay is a bit overstated I think. I don't play fighting games, but I've never had any problems with shmups. Just my two cents.

Was there another system out at the time above 480i? I don't remember one. PS2 is the best selling console of all time and still has the most titles for a console.

Just so you know, this is an extremely offensive statement to most hardcore gamers. I could write a book explaining why, but I'll spare us both the misery. Basically, you just kicked a million nerds in the junk for no reason and it hurts. Please don't do it again!



Well, the Dreamcast could do 640x480 VGA, so, yes, but I think what he was complaining about was the lack of lower res, 240p specifically, which gives many otherwise excellent PS2 versions of classic games a "fake low res" look that is nothing short of nauseating. The DC did 240p as well, and so does the Wii.

I never owned a PS2; so I have *no* clue what the modchips were. Since it sounds like you bought early; you may have had an early hack that just didn't work very well. It's like they had similar issues with other system's modchips...but a few years later they had them worked out. My Saturn chip works great; as long as the games are patched for the right region....the games work without a hitch. I was playing some Japanese fighting game last night....that console didn't hiccup once. My drive is burning games at a much faster speed than they should be burned...and still working perfectly.



I have to agree. Hardcore gamers loved the Dreamcast because Sega ported their excellent arcade games over to it. But really, the main draw...at least for me; was homebrew and the ability to play those classic 8 and 16-bit games in a native resolution mode on my TV. That's why I had one. But Dreamcast was just an unfortinuate casualty. Sega had really tried to innovate...but the market didn't want it. Everybody goes nuts over the consoles when they first come out...but within two years the dust settles. When the dust settled...everyone had bought Playstation 2. Sega exited the hardware market over that...ending what had been years of great innovation in the arcade. But, it really raises the issue of who decides if a console is popular...it's not the hardcore gamers...but the casual ones.

If you question Sega's innovation...look at games like Virtua Racing or Daytona USA. Virtua Racing was the first arcade game to use cell-shaded polygons....something NO ONE had done before. I remember seeing that in the mall's arcade in 1992 and pumping close to $15 in to it just becuase I'd never seen ANYTHING like that...aside from early CGI in movies. They created the chip that could generate all of that. Sure; I think Starfox came out for the SNES right after; and it's polygon graphics breathed some new life in to it; granted it ran at a slightly lower framerate and lower resolution. They even put the arcade chip in the Genesis cart for Virtura Racing...just to complete with SuperFX. The problem was...the rest of the system lagged behind and you had choppy low-framerate gameplay.

However, Sega never went anywhere with it...and by the time SuperFX came out...Genesis was about dead. I got my Genesis in 1995...all I ever had, aside from renting games; was the Sonic 2 packin. I played my SNES far more....mostly StarFox. More and more games started using that SuperFX chip; giving SNES a huge edge over Genesis. Sega was also working on Saturn at this time...so I'm sure the R&D budget for Genesis was cut.

But when Daytona USA hit the arcades....it raised the bar. Fewer polygons than V.R.; but texture mapping won fans. Hence why it was one of the launch titles. The port is damn near perfect; having worked on a number of Daytona games. The actual arcade hardware had a slightly sharper picture and better framerates....of course...the game board takes up the ENTIRE portion of the bottom of the cabinet. It's an insanely huge arcade system.





Both consoles had a 240p mode as a backwards compatibility mode. I know the Wii uses it for Virtual Console and Gamecube games *if* you're using Svideo or composite output. My emulators I had for it would jump in to "native" mode....which actually didn't look any worse than when I set the thing to 480p output. The Dreamcast used 480p on *some* games...but not all. The VGA cables were a bit noisy...for the exact reason someone else stated....



Too many cables in one small tube using refresh rates close to audible range without enough sheilding.

But, basically; the Saturn had so much potential for being fifth-gen's killer system...it just never got off the ground. It was supposedly difficult to program for; third parties were locked out of some features; and parallelizing code wasn't something people often did. We take it for granted that we have 2 CPU cores in one chip these days...back then....dual-CPU systems were very rare..and a home console to come out with 2 actual processors in addition to a number of graphics and co-processors...wow.

I also want to add the Saturn was one of the few systems that didn't have major hardware problems. Early Playstations loved to fail; the early PS2's had issues...and we all remember the XBox 360 RROD fiasco. But I don't even remember hearing, or reading, about massive failures with production runs of the Saturn. It was reliable as hell.

I seriously doubt there's a million Dreamcast owners still out there. They only ever sold 10 million units. Sega was basically killed by Playstation, the only system they had that sold well was the Genesis and they also had their best game sales with it. The PSone killed the Saturn, The PS2 killed the Dreamcast and ultimately Sega as a console maker because they could never recover in the eyes of consumers after a 2 year fold and after abandoning the Saturn after 3. In contrast Sony continued making the PSone and titles until about 2005 if I remember correctly and PS2 consoles and titles up until January this year.

I had about half a dozen games for the Dreamcast and they were all really bad. Rush, I remember, I don't even remember the others. I know I had a football game NFL2K I think, when we played it we could run the same play over and over and you could get a pass right up the middle and score a touchdown every time. We just took the game out and never played it again. The Rush game looked good but the gameplay was just bad and I could never get used to those controllers. To this day I still prefer the PS controllers to any other system. Looking back I don't see many exclusive titles that were big hits. I think lack of exclusives and the fact that PS2 had many was the deciding factor why I switched to the PS2 and after they announced the Dreamcast was dead, that finally did it for me.

I know one thing for sure, if Sega ever decided to make a console again, they'll have a really hard time now. They were good at games/arcades but just couldn't compete with Sony or Nintendo when it came to the home market. Basically they failed an important rule with consoles and that was don't p**s off your current customers which they did with the Saturn and again with the Dreamcast. You can't keep that kind of reputation up and expect to sell consoles.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who bought the Dreamcast and feels the way I do.

Some responses to reaction of Sega Dreamcast discontinuation:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=485367

Some loved it some hated it, some just upset with Sega. I'd say I fall into the category of selling it all for the PS2 because with news of no new games and limited catalog, I'd rather just sell what I had and put that money toward a winning system.

Well actually Sega had serious debt problems beforehand.


Actually that depends on what region you're talking about. The Master System was more popular than the NES in Europe and if I remember correctly the Saturn had about a third of the Japanese market.


I've played PS2 games as well and there are a bunch of s****y ones too. What are you talking about no exclusives? They did port a bunch of there games over to other consoles after they cancelled the Dreamcast, but then you're getting your chronology all mixed up because they clearly didn't port the games until after they decided to cancel the Dreamcast.


Also I was talking about 480p. If I want to play a 480p game on the PS2, I look up a list of 480p games on the PS2. However if I want to play a 480p game on the Dreamcast, I look up a small list of VGA incompatible games and use process of elimination. The PS2 was pretty much the worst of the four when it game to video resolution.

Since I'm in the US I'm just talking US. Yes some of Sega's early incarnations faired better elsewhere.

With 480p if I remember right I only had a CRT at the time and I sold the Dreamcast just before I bought a 1080i/480p set. When I bought the PS2 I don't remember it looking any less incredible, and most gamers at the time could probably care less on the difference between 480i/480p.

I didn't have a large collection of games, but at the time they canceled the Dreamcast it just made since to sell it all and not look back. I don't regret the decision. At that time many gamers only invested in one system, now of course that's different. I have a nice collection of PSone/PS2/PS3 games. I bought the Xbox 360 to hold me over until I could get a PS3 and for a few exclusive titles on the box. Next time I'm just going with one console, which will be the PS4.

Most people are perfectly happy with DVD and couldn't care less to move to Blu-ray. I hope you wouldn't try to argue that DVD is thus better.


Well yeah that's great for you, but the rest of us that like the Dreamcast don't want to listen to someone complaining about it (especially in a thread about the Sega Saturn).