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Game BASIC for Sega Saturn: in-depth guide
Mobius - Oct 12, 2020
  Mobius Oct 12, 2020
Hi, folks... Been poking around these forums and really enjoying them. I thought people here might be interested in an article I recently posted on how to get started with Game BASIC for Sega Saturn:

https://flybacklabs.com/sega-saturn-homebrew-with-...

This goes through how to get started, including how to properly run the PC-based tools and connect to the Saturn from a modern PC. I also found that it runs great with Mednafen and its keyboard emulation, so you don't even need the special hardware if you want to experiment.

I'm actively working on fleshing out more in-depth tutorials, like 3D graphics and sound, as well as translating some of the Japanese documentation to English. I've also found a couple programs that I don't think anyone else has archived (or at least, they're not in the awesome Satakore game database) and will be documenting those soon.

I think this is a really fun but overlooked tool. I'd love to see a few more people using it!

 rorirub Oct 13, 2020
What is that key combination in Game Basic that brings up the file loader? I keep forgetting it.

 Mobius Oct 13, 2020

rorirub said:

Shift+F1

 rorirub Oct 13, 2020
I mean on the controller...

 Mobius Oct 13, 2020

rorirub said:

Ah, hold L while choosing F1 from the virtual keyboard. (Open the virtual keyboard with L+R+Start.)

 nando Oct 13, 2020
man, I imported this back in the day. But with the manual completely in Japanese, and my lack of programming skills at the time.. I never did anything with it. I probably sold it for way too little money too.

thanks for posting that!

 mrkotfw Oct 21, 2020
This is great to see! Thanks for writing the articles.

 lostgame Oct 27, 2020
[Mega long-time lurker, first time poster? Active on Sonic Retro and Hacker News.]

This is, seriously, one of the *coolest* things I've ever read! I absolutely cannot thank you enough for this awesome contribution to the Saturn Homebrew dev community!

I would, myself, be seriously; super interested in continuing to follow along with the 2D and 3D graphics examples if you would care to finish them! <3

 Mobius Oct 30, 2020

lostgame said:

Glad you enjoyed! I absolutely will keep the tutorial going. I have lots of projects I like to tinker with, so I tend to jump between them. But I'll be getting back to this one soon.

 vbt Nov 7, 2020
some japanese game basic help

and the english online help :



  Mobius Nov 10, 2020
I mentioned in the first post that I was working on documenting some old Japanese Game BASIC programs that I haven't seen elsewhere. That update is now live, covering three games/demos:

1. Naruto
2. Operation Apollo 1
3. Do Don Baku (Rage Bomb)

Article here: https://flybacklabs.com/game-basic-update-more-hom...
Source code and documentation translations are downloadable here: https://flybacklabs.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t...

 fafling Nov 15, 2020
Did you check that article ? And do you know if the program is in Satakore database ?

  Mobius Nov 18, 2020

fafling said:


Yes, actually! I came across that a month or so ago. I was able to determine that it's "Zone.zip" originally developed by Bits Laboratory, available here:


Satakore uploaded it here as "3D Shooting Game":


  Mobius Jul 30, 2022
Has anyone here played around with the Game Basic Compiler from here? SegaXtreme - Saturn Game Basic Tools...

It works well, in the sense that you can build a disc image and it will autoboot to a menu of all .B files you include. You can even replace the AUTORUN.B with your own file and boot straight into your own program.

The problem is, the version of Game BASIC it includes seems to be older than the retail version (copyright 1997 instead of copyright 1998). From what I can tell, it only supports a more limited command set, and I also can't get keyboards (physical or virtual) working with it when I exit out to the BASIC prompt.

Because it doesn't support the full command set of the retail version, most of the more advanced homebrew programs (i.e., old ones from the Japanese community) just throw syntax errors and have to be edited to run (or don't run at all because they depend on those functions).

Has anyone else ever run into this? Has anyone gotten autobooting to work with the retail version of Game BASIC? I tried dropping the 0.BIN from the retail version into the image compiler, but discs built with that version just hang at the Licensed by Sega screen and never boot.

 DarkProgrammer Jul 15, 2024

Mobius said:

Hi Mobius, I just recently got a copy of Game Basic off of ebay. I have the serial to usb cable & I created a VM with a copy of windows xp but I can not get the Saturn & xp to talk to each other over the cable. I'm wondering if the cable I got on Amazon is faulty, I'm going to place an order for another cable. Then I tried running the Mednafen emulator with a rom image of GB, I'm also having trouble with that setup. I can't seem to get the emulator to capture the keyboard & mouse. when I press the Cntrl+Shift+Menu key combo, It says input grabbing is active, but, nothing shows up when I type. Please given me tips or suggestion on how to get things working. Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide.