32/64 bit era: PS, Saturn or N64?

[Barone]

I'm pretty sure the longer time required is just due to poor data transfer speeds. I have often wondered if there are certain types of saves that wouldn't be possible on the Playstation due to this, like perhaps the NiGHTS A-life file.

Saving on the Playstation is slow enough that some games felt the need to have a "quicksave" option that saves your progress to RAM.

Maybe it can be poor transfer + bigger files. If the memory card system was designed like shit everything can be the worst case possible.

I think the Gameshark and PAR are unlicensed reverse engineered hardware as well. That is, I think, why they got the reputation for ruining Saturn cart ports, though I have never seen that happen.

You're scaring me since I bought a Saturn these days (it will take months to arrive though) and I was almost getting a PAR cart...

[sheath]

I think it is the same thing as the Jaguar cart port, just don't do a whole lot of dry humping and you will be fine.

Seriously though, put it in straight and gently, and leave it in unless you have to remove it.

Hmnn. I don't think I can rephrase any better than that.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

The newer PAR carts aren't nearly as bad as the older ones. But the Saturn's cart port is notoriously bad. Even official carts can damage it, though it takes longer to happen. If you want to take the safest possible route to make it last the longest, but only official carts and have a region switch installed. Though this is the most expensive route as well.

I have heard some people have good luck with just putting the PAR cart in and just leaving it be. Though if you want to use an official memory cart for certain games or if you want to use ROM carts for games like King of Fighters 95, you will need to remove it.

[Barone]

I think it is the same thing as the Jaguar cart port, just don't do a whole lot of dry humping and you will be fine.

Seriously though, put it in straight and gently, and leave it in unless you have to remove it.

Hmnn. I don't think I can rephrase any better than that.

Thanks for the tip.

The newer PAR carts aren't nearly as bad as the older ones. But the Saturn's cart port is notoriously bad. Even official carts can damage it, though it takes longer to happen. If you want to take the safest possible route to make it last the longest, but only official carts and have a region switch installed. Though this is the most expensive route as well.

I have heard some people have good luck with just putting the PAR cart in and just leaving it be. Though if you want to use an official memory cart for certain games or if you want to use ROM carts for games like King of Fighters 95, you will need to remove it.

That route is almost impossible to me since I'm not a modder and I like in the jungle Brazil.

I bought a Victor Saturn and I think it's a model 1. Any chance of it having a better quality cart port or something?

I don't plan to use ROM carts 'cause AFAIK all games that use those are pretty lame (or bad ports). The PAR cart also work as RAM cart, right?
What else will I need? An extra memory cart for saves? I'm really new in this Saturn world and I think that you can help me better than my friends 'cause they have old TecToy's Saturns that were modded still during the 90's I think...

[sheath]

My Saturn is a 1995 manufactured Saturn and when my Gameshark failed people swore up and down it was the cart port. My replacement PAR has worked without flaw ever since, and I regularly have to remove it to play Panzer Dragoon Saga. Just don't use gorilla strength when you insert carts, and try to use some sanity about how the carts fit, and I am sure you will be fine.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

The PAR cart can work as a memory card for extra saves, but it can't be accessed in game. So you have to save to the Saturn's Internal Memory first then move it onto the cart. The official card can be directly accessed by a decent amount of games. This isn't a major issue aside from some games that need more space than the Saturn's internal memory, or games like Shining Force III that need saves from previous games to unlock things.

And yes the PAR cart does function as a RAM cart. But some older ones don't work with all games.

[StarMist]

I am pretty sure that PS1 sports games frequently required their own memory card.

You mean the way lepers required their own island?

Those were third-party only, and they weren't really bigger, they were basically multiple memory cards in a single card's form factor. And I always heard mixed things about their reliability.

3rd party card problems arose earlier on even when of normal size. Performance cards crashed all the time.

I remember reading somewhere that the third party cards save differently compared to Sega's own cards and Internal memory. If I remember correctly the third party cards use smaller block sizes.

I can confirm Da Shocker's post on this at a glance, half those numbers are slightly different from my official cart's.

I bought a Victor Saturn and I think it's a model 1. Any chance of it having a better quality cart port or something?

Congratulations. I'm sure it was all on my account. (insert smilie of your choice)
Yes there's a chance, JP Saturns seem to be more reliable--mine is anyway, not to rub it in on others.

I don't plan to use ROM carts 'cause AFAIK all games that use those are pretty lame (or bad ports). The PAR cart also work as RAM cart, right?
What else will I need? An extra memory cart for saves? I'm really new in this Saturn world and I think that you can help me better than my friends 'cause they have old TecToy's Saturns that were modded still during the 90's I think...

A PAR 4 in 1 is the simplest way to go. Some are dead out of the box but if you buy from a reputable seller there oughtn't be trouble. Power Memory are smaller official cards if you don't mind less space and generally cheap; some can even be won along with fairly undesirable games (Tokimeki Memorial being the most common, there's another that refuses to be recalled).

[Barone]

Congratulations. I'm sure it was all on my account. (insert smilie of your choice)

It was, really... I'll try to fully mod it and I'm trying to get all the good peripherals. After sometime evaluating it, if I get bored with that ugly box I will crush it badly and send the burned pieces to your address.

Yes there's a chance, JP Saturns seem to be more reliable--mine is anyway, not to rub it in on others.

Thanks. For what I've read, the Victor's model 1 uses different components from the Sega model 1; so I'm hoping for something good from the same makers of Wonder Mega.

A PAR 4 in 1 is the simplest way to go. Some are dead out of the box but if you buy from a reputable seller there oughtn't be trouble. Power Memory are smaller official cards if you don't mind less space and generally cheap; some can even be won along with fairly undesirable games (Tokimeki Memorial being the most common, there's another that refuses to be recalled).

Thanks again.

http://www.shinforce.com/saturn/VSRAMCompatibility.htm
http://www.shinforce.com/saturn/info...4MBRAM-mod.htm
http://www.shinforce.com/saturn/info...Cartridges.htm

[kool kitty89]

Saturn is a lot like the Atari 7800 really, when Nintendo was bringing out Super Mario Bros and Zelda Atari were going "Look! we have a great port of Asteroids! we have Donkey Kong!" and while Sony were shouting "3D!!!" and "Next Gen!!" Saturn were bringing out a bunch of SNES and Mega Drive style games with better graphics

I agree with most of the rest of your post, but the 7800 is really not a good example since it was a very low-budget system (in 1986 onward) and was delayed from its initial release, had very limited 1st and 3rd party software support, and was further limited by Nintendo's licensing lock-out.

Had the 7800 been pushing aesthetically advanced versions of early 80s genres with high-end presentations (but relatively dated gameplay), that would be somewhat more comparable (along with having a decent amount of "modern" games mixed in -as with 3D in the Saturn), but that's not the case at all with the 7800. (if anything, the 32x might be a better comparison with the 7800 in terms of limited software, lower budgets, weaker hardware, and backwards compatibility with the previous generation)

The 7800 in 1984 is also a very different context than the Saturn since the launch lineup would have generally been competitive with what Nintendo had in Japan that year (if not better), and what would have materialized by '85 or '86 is totally speculative too. (leaving out the whole argument that it could have made more sense to stick with the 5200 or drop to the A8 computers as their mainstream game platform -with VCS as the budget line in any case)

Also, reply all you want, I'm not coming back to this thread anyway, I've learnt from my mistakes, there's no point in arguing against Sega on a Sega forum, its just time wasting.

Hey, don't be like that . . . just learn to pick you battles and discuss things with people willing to actually willing to change their opinions or listen to new/different information.

Yeah, the only way I can slightly see internal save memory as inconvenient is if I had Starmist's problem of too many games that A) Won't save directly to a RAM cart, and B) need most of the internal save memory. My experience with the Saturn and Sega CD was mostly the opposite though, only a handful of games needed me to swap out all of my saves to be able to use it, otherwise I could keep 10+ saves in there at all times and just back up the saves for games I wasn't playing.

The only way the PS1 can be this convenient is with an actual PS1 and two multi-page memory cards. On a PS2 you're screwed unless you labeled all of your cards. Same goes for the Dreamcast. But at least I can swap out VMUs with my butt firmly planted in the couch while I'm looking for where I saved that game.

Umm, there's the massive disadvantage of 32k on the Saturn limiting the number of saves and/or the complexity of save data used by games. (especially games that would need more than 32k for their saves alone -and several PSX and Dreamcast games needed the entire 128k of those cards . . . or actually beyond that for some DC sports games -not to mention later GC and PS2 games using lots of space even on much larger cards, inlcuding the very nice 8 MB PS2 cards -going very big from day 1 with that, at a capacity that Nintendo failed to release until later and ended up being quite unreliable -3rd party cards are better though)

The flexibility and convenience of being able to easily expand save capacity with new memory cards (not to mention the raw capacity of the base cards) and having 2 card slots on top of that is all great. (and the ability to bring things to friends' houses)

It is unfortunate that Sony didn't think ahead to allow addressing more than 128k in a single PS1 card bank, though they weren't alone in that regard. (N64 and DC had similar issues, GC had a nice selection -especially with 3rd parties- and PS2 was locked at 8 MB for 1st party stuff, but that was quite large for the time at least -the worst case here is the DC with its piddly 128k VMUs as the base standard -really should have been 512k minimum for the time, or at least offering both 128k and 512k from day 1 -the GC went down to 512k at the lower end a good bit later, but also offered much higher capacities fromday 1)

Were there? I bought a PS1 Memory card around 2001 and it was still only 15 blocks if I remember correctly. But then again I only bought the Sony ones because I found the third party ones to be horribly unreliable.

And doing a quick google search I do see some 4MB and 1MB ones that look to hold 60 and 15 blocks respectively. If that's the case and the PS1 memory cards are 1MB instead of 128KB that makes the PS1 memory card even more inefficient. That means 1 PS1 block = 68KB = 1088 Saturn blocks. I think it might be interesting to do some comparisons of save files on Saturn and PS1 for multiplatform games.

PS1 cards are 128 kB or 1 Mb (mega bit), so that may be the confusion there. (thus 512kB cards -4 banks- would also be 4 MBit -ir 4 mega power )

As for the block-size issue, yes, having chunkier blocks does limit efficient use of memory to some extent (having to round up or down within the block size), but this is also almost certainly tied to the practical block-wise addressing of flash memory or at very least the memory controllers used on PSX flash cards. (and the practical cost savings on that would be more significant thanthe flexibility of using SRAM+battery as the N64 does -the latter also allows faster saves over flash, but again at a considerable cost disadvantage)

And OTOH, the overall capacity of PSX cards is still much larger than the Saturn's onboard RAM, and that includes the possibility of games using comparably large/complex save files beyond the capacity of the entire onboard RAM of the Saturn or even filling an entire PSX card. (with the simple flexibility of having more cards for other games -and the possibility of simply including a bundled card for such games)

Oh and don't forget some PS1 games like Metal Gear Solid can require up to 15 blocks to save depending on choices you made throughout the game. And games like Gran Turismo 2 can require up to 15 blocks to save all your cars.

Which means that they wouldn't be possible at all on the Saturn without an external cart . . . like a few MCD games. (and even then they'd fill up the cart relatively quickly)

Several GC games also did this (used a full 512 kB -or the full smallest capacity cards), and many of those came pack-in with cards, plus the cases were nicely designed to clip the cards into them. (that would have been a nice design feature for PS1 games . . . nice clamshell cases with slots for memory cards to keep things nicely organized)

You make no sense. It's an inefficient use of memory to divide into large blocks. That's why your hard drive measures in bytes, instead of rounding every file to the nearest GB.

I never felt I needed more than one Saturn memory card, whereas I and every Playstation owner I knew had a bunch of Playstation ones. The Saturn memory card is four times the size of the Playstation's, but it seems to go a lot farther than four PSX cards.

Again, there's the trade-off of much more cost effective flash memory in the PSX cards and the low-cost form factor on top of that.

And games could (and did) use much larger save file sizes than practical on the Saturn (with corresponding advantages in complexity and flexibility of those saves). And that's much more likely the main reason for many people having multiple PS1 cards than the Saturn RAM being more efficient. (there's simply more games with big save files on the PSX regardless of the large 8kB block granularity -games needing 2 blocks or more would fill Saturn RAM very fast too, even if they only needed something like 9 kB rather than the full 16k of 2 blocks)

The most wasteful cases would be simplistic arcade style score/save data (simply saving scores, unlocked content, etc), but those types of games take up a relatively tiny chunk of the overall games of the period, so "wasting" 8 kB blocks on those is still less of an issue.


Again, I also agree that limiting the bank size to just 128 kB was also poor foresight, but that's on top of the many strong points. (and others did worse with memory cards too -including the DC)

Its a nice little bonus having the built in memory, and its not quite as paltry as that available in the MegaCD, but still Sega could have cut costs with external memory cards

Again, that "bonus" is generally mitigated if memory cards are included pack-in with the system anyway. (while the cost effectiveness and flexibility of memory cards being retained -flexibility including ease/commonality of obtaining added memory cards as well as the advantage of having removable media you can take to friends' houses and such -one disadvantage of modern internal drives too, aside from shuffling data to external flash cards)

made a much more elegant system for upgrading the ram, perhaps having a wider 32-Bit bus for both external ram and the vcd expansion card. Ram would have been much more effective.

Even more than that, it would have been nice if the internal low-RAM had been 32-bits wide too (it's only 16-bits as it is, and no faster than cart RAM) . . . or omit that entirely (saving 1 MB) and reserving that for expansion later on. (and providing a 32-bit wide RAM port for such)

I still don't get why they didn't cost consolidate some aspects for the Saturn for the western audiences, whilst still keeping the same basic architecture, the whole secondary bus interface for the MPEG/VCD card for example could have been completely cut out for later revisions. They already started skimping on packaging size and material for some of the later models why not cut out some other parts? Or at least just have one bloody expansion.

Cost cutting the architecture like that while keeping compatibility and not causing considerable delays would have been very difficult. (you cant just cut part of it out like that, there's too much inter-dependence of components in the system, so if you did cut out some features, you'd either need a lot of redesign work, or need to leave a lot of redundant unused hardware -and even then there could be compatibility problems)

That said, doing something like the Jupiter (cutting out the CD-ROM interface entirely along with some of the RAM) would be another story as you'd be directly removing some of those subsystems, but providing support for external expansion/upgrade too. (but also not supporting CD-ROM out of the box -so hardware prices could be much lower, but games would have poorer profit margins and/or pricing and more limited content -and the whole issue of dual formats like that with the hopes of transitioning to full Saturn spec later on -albeit it certainly would have been much, much more realistic than the 32x+Saturn and arguably more marketable than going with the Saturn alone -due to the high cost of that platform)

Short of a generally different design (and cost) approach earlier on, there's probably not a lot of changes that could be made to the Saturn as you describe. (relatively few "last minute" changes, especially if you're going to still have the "full" Saturn in Japan) -if you changed the JP Saturn too, prior to release, then there should be some more options for trimming things down a bit. (like cutting back on the CD subsystem -at least using much less RAM if not displacing the SH1, cutting out low RAM -reserving support for expansion later on- or going to the extreme of removing VDP2 entirely -in favor of a simple VDC that could later be integrated with VDP1 -which would, of course, thus make the Saturn genuinely weaker than the PSX even in 2D, but in a practical sense, the mainstream performance cut wouldn't be nearly as big -3D performance would effectively be the same aside from VDP2 floor effects, and any 2D games that didn't make massive use of VDP2 BGs also wouldn't be terribly worse off either -much more so if they boosted VDP1 texture RAM, which would greatly benefit 2D and 3D games and avoid the conflict of dedicated separate texture and tile RAM -and that's not getting to things like the sound subsystem either . . . let alone the expansion buses)

Using 32-bit wide texture RAM also would have been interesting (and going along with the context of using 1 MB -2x 256kx16-bit SDRAMs, or 512k with 2 128kx16-bit SDRAMs -like used for the framebuffers) if 32-bit DMA was supported (even without any enhancement to VDP1 itself), it would mean double the bandwidth for texture updates from main RAM. (granted, that would have impacted cost too -albeit relatively minor compared to the number of expansion buses, CD-ROM subsystem, VDP2+RAM+buses, etc)

[sheath]

Umm, there's the massive disadvantage of 32k on the Saturn limiting the number of saves and/or the complexity of save data used by games. (especially games that would need more than 32k for their saves alone -and several PSX and Dreamcast games needed the entire 128k of those cards . . . or actually beyond that for some DC sports games -not to mention later GC and PS2 games using lots of space even on much larger cards, inlcuding the very nice 8 MB PS2 cards -going very big from day 1 with that, at a capacity that Nintendo failed to release until later and ended up being quite unreliable -3rd party cards are better though)

I'm not sure what games would need more than that with the massive amount of data stored in NiGHTs A-Life save or VF2's Learning AI routine. Since we are apparently arguing the merits of peripherals, there should be no reason why games couldn't have a basic save file and then require the RAM cart for hugely detailed things like replays or season data. That is what they did with Virtual On I believe.

The flexibility and convenience of being able to easily expand save capacity with new memory cards (not to mention the raw capacity of the base cards) and having 2 card slots on top of that is all great. (and the ability to bring things to friends' houses)

All of which can be done with the Backup RAM cart (or GS/PAR) as well, only most users would only ever need to buy one, rather than three to five Memory Cards.

It is unfortunate that Sony didn't think ahead to allow addressing more than 128k in a single PS1 card bank, though they weren't alone in that regard. (N64 and DC had similar issues, GC had a nice selection -especially with 3rd parties- and PS2 was locked at 8 MB for 1st party stuff, but that was quite large for the time at least -the worst case here is the DC with its piddly 128k VMUs as the base standard -really should have been 512k minimum for the time, or at least offering both 128k and 512k from day 1 -the GC went down to 512k at the lower end a good bit later, but also offered much higher capacities fromday 1)

I consider all of these systems inconvenient to manage in comparison to the internal save memory of the Sega CD and Saturn. Even if these systems only allowed you to save two games in internal memory it would be better than nothing at all. The Sega CD and Saturn can save at least a dozen normal games and have cartridges to back up to for the games that take up more space. I'm not sure why so many Saturn games won't save directly to the RAM cart, that just seems like developer stupidity to me, or maybe they were trying to minimize save file corruption.

[StarMist]

@ agostinho = I'm unsure why you linked those Shin Force pages. In any event I'll be interested to learn your findings on the Saturn's peripherals. If you want the mouse go for a Sakura Taisen ketteiban, they're usually not much more than the game and certainly less than buying both separately, plus their mouse is far handsomer--and the tactical parts at least can be played w/o knowledge of Japanese.

@ kool kitty 89 = Thenewguy never has new information, he just has the same drivel sucked off some magazine editor's desk. Then he goes calling everybody a fanboy who disagrees with him.

@ kool kitty 89, TrekkiesUnite118, & sheath = here are my Saturn saves from one cartridge and internal memory. The # is of course how many blocks they use.

EDIT: The Saturn's Internal Memory Capacity = 448 blocks.

Mystaria = 115
Bluebreaker = 33
Battle Garegga = 84
Batsugun = 12
Cube Battler = 1
Drywall (Scud) = 1
Falcom Classics (with Ys &c) = 2 edit: that's the base data, each game takes a large amount; I haven't got to my other files at hand but Xanadu takes 321.
Guardian Force = 8
Cotton 2 = 49
Dark Legend = 32
DoDonPachi = 8
Blast Wind = 5
Etude Prologue = 20 x 2 (system + data)
Grandia = 48
Gunbird = 7
Jewels of the Oracle = 21
Leynos 2 = 35
Linkle Liver = 9
Quake = 23
Jurassic Park Lost World = 4
Lunar = 129
Metal Slug = 21
Nights = 30 + 197
Azel (PDS) = 21 x 3, ie for each save slot)
Pulirula = 2
MKR = 68 x 2
Rayman = 20
Sakura Taisen 2 = 70 with one save, 100 with 2 saves
Sakura 1 = 90 (with all clear data, don't know whether that adds anything)
Salamander Deluxe = 9
Sega Rally = 80
Street Fighter Zero = 32
SteamGear Mash = 71
Sokku Seitokai = 6
Sonic Jam = 23
Sonic R = 6
Lucienne's Quest = 129
Steam Heart = 87
Tetris S = 9
Thunder Force Gold Pack 2 = 2
Umi He = 11 + 12
Shoujo Kakumei Utena = 42
Valora Valley Golf = 206
Winning Post = 440 internal or 515 cart
Wipeout = 29
Willy Wombat = 9
Kin Jajamaru kun = 2
Keio 2 = 1
Layer Section = 2
Panzer Dragoon Zwei = 8
Samurai Spirits 3 = 2
Scorcher = 28
Shienryu = 15
Slayers Royal = 2
3 Dirty Dwarves = 1
Suiko Enbu = 17
Wolffang = 9
Mr Bones = 2
Paneltia Story = 63
Night Striker S = 5

EDIT #2: if there's interest I can note which games support direct access of external memory

[j_factor]

Again, there's the trade-off of much more cost effective flash memory in the PSX cards and the low-cost form factor on top of that.

How is that a trade-off? PSX cards were cheaper, yes, but they were also much smaller. Saturn memory cartridges weren't that expensive.

And games could (and did) use much larger save file sizes than practical on the Saturn

Uh, no they didn't. Saturn can do larger save file sizes than PSX can. One silly example of this is Hexen; the Saturn version's save file is larger than an entire PSX memory card. (It's a silly example because the game's on PSX too and they managed to squeeze down the save file to 15 blocks.) MTV Music Generator is one example of the PSX memory card size being limiting; it would've been interesting to see that on the Saturn.

[Bones Justice]

My favorite thing about videogames is multiplayer. I've played far more multiplayer than single player. That's why I voted for Saturn, it has all of the great fighting games and arcade games like Virtual On and Virtua Cop that we liked playing together. It's kind of like the 16-bit era, SNES had it's share of good games but generally, the Genesis games were the better multiplayer ones, if the SNES version even had multiplayer at all.

I always liked the Playstation for linked games but that was mainly limited to racing games. Playstation has some racing games that you could link combined with split-screen, a really good time for four players!

I liked the N64 for the split-screen first-person shooters. We played a ton of Goldeneye, Quake II, and Perfect Dark on N64 with four players. But we didn't play much else.

My favorite genre is football games, though, and there really isn't a great 32-bit football game, especially for multiplayer. I have a PSOne with LCD but I rarely take it with me instead of my Nomad, mainly for this reason.

Saturn was the only one with modem games and a web browser, too. Virtual On with two Saturns remains one of the best games ever!

[sheath]

Starmist, that is a lot of great work as it is. I wouldn't mind knowing which games won't save to a RAM cart. But then I would try to figure out where that post is the next time I need it and wouldn't be able to find it.

[sketch]

The N64 retained those 16 bit failings in 3D which accounts for quite a bit of its 24% here; it had some very good games, surprisingly in the racing category, but as others have stated is a console one doesn't miss once sold.

Initially, this was true for me. Over the years, though, I have begun to miss the N64. Not only do I miss the AAA titles like Goldeneye, Star Fox, Wave Race and Mario 64, but some of the funky ones like Extreme G and Doom 64. I've slowly pared down all my retro consoles to just the Genesis in recent years, but I do ponder reentering N64 collecting. There wouldn't be a bunch of games to get for it, granted, but there are some classics there.

Now all that's left is to find some way to wipe those ridiculous N64 votes from the board.

Heaven forbid people should have differing opinions...