General Category > General Discussion
Saturn games are getting $$. Does anyone here burn games or mod theirs?
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:
--- Quote from: Arseen on September 04, 2017, 10:50:37 AM ---I think I have heard of hdd or USB stick replacements for the disc drive.
--- End quote ---
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:
--- Quote from: Megatron on September 04, 2017, 10:59:29 AM ---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.
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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!