Saturn games are getting $$. Does anyone here burn games or mod theirs?

[cojack16]

I'm sure I might be frowned upon considering where I'm posting but I'm a long time member (couple years at least) and I have about 5 saturn games. The trouble is, I want to play awesome titles like Burning Rangers or Radiant Silvergun without shelling out hundreds of dollars (not to mention my pipe dream of playing PDS).

Does anyone know firsthand of a method that works well?  Wouldn't burned games wear out the laser or something on the saturn? Anyway, just putting it out there. If people are upset I'll delete the post

[Arseen]

I think I have heard of hdd or USB stick replacements for the disc drive.

[tylerbgood]

I have a number of games burned to disc for the 3DO, Playstation, Saturn, Dreamcast, and Xbox. That doesn't stop me from seeking out and buying a retail version of the game when the opportunity arises. I do the same thing with ROMs and flash carts on my old cartridge based systems. To my knowledge, the only system that struggles with burned discs is the Dreamcast. It was designed to play GD-ROMs, and many of the ISO images found online have been downsampled and rearranged on the disc to make them fit on CDs. This causes the laser to work harder than it normally would with a legitimate game. Or so I've been told anyway.

To play games on a Saturn without a mod chip you have to switch discs during boot, which will negatively effect the motor running the disc drive and scratch the disc you're using to make the swap. It is a much better option to invest in a chip if you plan on playing a lot of burned games. racketboy.com used to sell excellent Saturn mods, but the store appears to be gone. Anyone know of another good source?

Here is a guide to the disc swap method for both Saturn models: http://www.racketboy.com/retro/sega-saturn-swap-trick

[Megatron]

The Saturn Unlocker is something I bought a while back.  It goes in the back of the system (like the ram cart or action replay) and immediately allows playing backup discs, no modding needed.  Been doing this for a while now, works great.

Photo from my original pickup last year

[Megatron]

No disc swapping needed with the unlocker   

[Tech13]

Yea the unlocker is a really great tool. I have the same one from the same store on etsy. Can't beat it.

[marioxb]

This Youtube video I saw a few weeks ago looked promising for playing games off of SD cards.

https://youtu.be/jOyfZex7B3E

[wiggy]

I think I have heard of hdd or USB stick replacements for the disc drive.

Yeah, he ain't gonna be able to get one of those. The waiting list is a mile long and the dude makes like 5 a year


Mod chips for the Saturn are sort of hard to come by, at least last I checked.

If you do track one down, they're really easy to install and there's a incredibly simple program that will switch the disc image to whatever region you want (mod chip allows backups to be played, NOT other regions like most mod chips). I have a number of backups of games that I'm just not comfortable handling anymore, given their current price and the delicate nature of optical disc games (ESPECIALLY old sega stuff). 

[redsox2012]

You can mod an Action Replay cartridge to allow your Saturn to play burned discs.  It's called Pseudo Saturn.  There are a lot of articles and videos about this method.  It requires you to open up your Saturn and do the disc swap trick once to load the software that needs to be copied to the Action Replay.  The data that needs to be copied to the AR is called "Atlas Installer".  

I had a modchip in my Saturn, but the system stopped working and I couldn't get the chip properly installed in my replacement console.  I've been using Pseudo Saturn since then and it works perfectly.  The swap trick took me around 30 times to work successfully, but once you do it you'll never have to do it again.  The "Saturn Backup Unlocker" pictured above looks like it's just a modded AR with a custom label.

The only drawback is that the Action Replay will lose the game save & cheat functionality.  It will still function an a region unlocker (so you can play original Japan or PAL discs) and it will still work as a 1 & 4 MB RAM cart.  I keep a second action replay for game saves and use the Pseudo Saturn AR only when I want to boot a CD-R.

You're right - Saturn is very expensive to collect for.  However, the Japanese versions of many games are much cheaper than the U.S. releases.  Japanese games like Burning Rangers, Sonic Jam, Panzer Dragoon 1 & 2 (and many others) can be found for a fraction of their U.S. prices.  You can simply use a standard Action Replay to play these discs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SegaSaturn/comments/32rerh/easy_guide_to_play_backupsimports_on_saturn/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjMMhYUo_Do

I've seen Ebay sellers selling AR's already modded with Pseudo Saturn, so that's an option if you're not comfortable doing it yourself.  Also, I've never heard of any issues with burned discs damaging Saturn consoles.

[tylerbgood]

The Saturn Unlocker is something I bought a while back.  It goes in the back of the system (like the ram cart or action replay) and immediately allows playing backup discs, no modding needed.  Been doing this for a while now, works great.

That's very cool. I have a model 1 Saturn with a racketboy mod chip, but I picked up a model 2 last year, and have been looking for a good way to play burned games on it. I'll definitely be looking around for one of these. Thanks Megatron!

[enigmaxtreme]

Modding a Saturn sadly doesn't do away with the real issue, dying lenses, mine has sadly stopped reading backups a while back, especially new burned ones, I'm waiting for that plug n play device to come out now

[Tech13]

replacing the lense is super easy, Just don't forget to desolder the antistatic point.

[Hesch]

This Youtube video I saw a few weeks ago looked promising for playing games off of SD cards.

https://youtu.be/jOyfZex7B3E

That project is actually on pause. He is getting close though

https://www.patreon.com/posts/pause-14086660

[TDIRunner]

Unless I missed it, I don't think anyone mentioned the Rhea or Phoebe SD card loaders that are currently available through the same guy that made the GDemu for the Dreamcast.  By "available," I mean that they exist and work, but ordering one is pretty tricky because they sell out as soon as he opens orders.  I have the Dreamcast unit which works well, especially if you use the GEmenu that allows you to have a menu similar to what an Everdrive uses.

https://gdemu.wordpress.com/

[Hesch]

Unless I missed it, I don't think anyone mentioned the Rhea or Phoebe SD card loaders that are currently available through the same guy that made the GDemu for the Dreamcast.  By "available," I mean that they exist and work, but ordering one is pretty tricky because they sell out as soon as he opens orders.  I have the Dreamcast unit which works well, especially if you use the GEmenu that allows you to have a menu similar to what an Everdrive uses.

https://gdemu.wordpress.com/

I've seen those and have been curious about getting one. But I kind of just want to find a broken DC and do the HDD mod. That really intrigues me