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Return Fire?

Sickliquid86 - May 6, 2003

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		Sickliquid86	May 6, 2003
		Yo how is it coming?

		Mr. Saturn	May 7, 2003
		We are in the last steps of clearing the last errors in licensing, packaging, etc... Maybe Prolific will take on the distribution in U.S. so you donÂ´t have to pay the high postage IÂ´m sorry for the delay, but i just couldnÂ´t imagine how long this will take...

		Mr. Saturn	May 9, 2003
		...and one more reason, Prolific is on its way to release a GBA version of Return Fire and the guy wants to wait until this release to re-release the Saturn version... So i think weÂ´ll have to wait one or two months more...but we are waiting since 1996, so 2 months are nothing

		Sickliquid86	May 13, 2003
		thanx man I am still excited it is inly 2 player though right It would be great if you could work in 4 but you guys are hard at work so 2 players or not, we really appreciate the fact that you are breating life in to one of the greatest games ever IMO, it is funny I didnt buy it forever because I waited for the Saturn version (I had a saturn at the time and then my friend had it on 3do) and then it never came out so I forgot about it then you came along arty thanks for everything man . -Cheers To Your Hardwork- :cheers

		Taelon	May 14, 2003
		I never played Return Fire but hear good things about it. It's taking me this much, though, to not just throw the Bleem beta into my Dreamcast and try the PSX version of Return Fire.

Daniel Eriksson

May 17, 2003

Maybe Prolific will take on the distribution in U.S. so you don´t have to pay the high postage

Wow! If they do, will the cds be playable on a normal saturn? I mean, they might got an old Saturn Dev Unit left...

gameboy900

May 17, 2003

Originally posted by Daniel Eriksson@May 17, 2003 @ 03:36 PM

Maybe Prolific will take on the distribution in U.S. so you don´t have to pay the high postage

Wow! If they do, will the cds be playable on a normal saturn[question_mark] I mean, they might got an old Saturn Dev Unit left...

Somehow I seriously doubt it. And a Saturn dev unit wouldn't help at all. You still need to go through the expensive mastering process to get a proper saturn playable disc. Unless they find a large stash of Saturn CDR's don't bet on it.

		AntiPasta	May 18, 2003
		well, the Battlesphere guys managed to get Jaguar carts manufactured 5 years after the system's death... and carts are more expensive to produce...

gameboy900

May 18, 2003

Originally posted by AntiPasta@May 18, 2003 @ 09:48 AM

well, the Battlesphere guys managed to get Jaguar carts manufactured 5 years after the system's death... and carts are more expensive to produce...

Actually no. Carts are alot cheaper to make. Especially if you're only going to be doing low quantities of them. A typical cart would cost maybe $5 these days. With CD's you need to get a master done which can run into several thousands to make. And thats even before getting a license from sega to use the security ring and actually stamping the minimum (usually several thousand) disc you need to do to make this even worth the effort.

ExCyber

May 18, 2003

A typical cart would cost maybe $5 these days. With CD's you need to get a master done which can run into several thousands to make.

A typical cart isn't going to cost $5 unless you use mask ROM, which also requires having a "master" made.

edit: actually, you might be able to pull it off with EPROM right now, but probably only because AMD's end-of-lifed theirs.

mal

May 18, 2003

Originally posted by gameboy900@May 18, 2003 @ 11:24 AM

Unless they find a large stash of Saturn CDR's don't bet on it.

Saturn CDRs don't have the security ring on them.

My Virtual Open Tennis beta doesn't anyway...

gameboy900

May 18, 2003

Originally posted by mal+May 18, 2003 @ 06:58 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(mal @ May 18, 2003 @ 06:58 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'> <!--QuoteBegin-gameboy900@May 18, 2003 @ 11:24 AM

Unless they find a large stash of Saturn CDR's don't bet on it.

Saturn CDRs don't have the security ring on them.

My Virtual Open Tennis beta doesn't anyway... [/b][/quote]

I meant saturn cdr's that have the security ring on them. They do exist. Just not particularly common. They were mostly used to send review copies of games to magazines and such. The in house testing was done with special dev saturns and plain cdrs.

		mal	May 19, 2003
		Fair enough, but the beta I have is on a "Sega Saturn" CDR (not a brand name or generic CDR) and it has no security ring.

Mr. Saturn

May 19, 2003

Originally posted by mal@May 19, 2003 @ 05:46 AM

Fair enough, but the beta I have is on a "Sega Saturn" CDR (not a brand name or generic CDR) and it has no security ring.

So if there is no security ring, maybe they did another way of telling the Saturn that this disc is original (i.e. by a file on CD?) - and maybe someone now has a chance to do some coding that a standard CDÂ´R would be playable on Saturn!?!?

		mal	May 19, 2003
		Sorry to burst your bubble, but the beta CDR came with the System (boot) disc that I recently bought. BTW gameboy900, I'm not arguing with you, I'd just never heard of a CDR with the security ring - other than in rumours and hearsay of course.

Mr. Saturn

May 19, 2003

Originally posted by mal@May 19, 2003 @ 11:55 AM

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the beta CDR came with the System (boot) disc that I recently bought.

BTW gameboy900, I'm not arguing with you, I'd just never heard of a CDR with the security ring - other than in rumours and hearsay of course.

And is it possible to copy this "boot" disc?

		mal	May 19, 2003
		Yes, but unless you have a CDR with the security ring on it, you're back at square one. You can use it to boot most (all?) 3rd party discs, but you'd need to swap the boot disc to get it to run.

Mr. Saturn

May 19, 2003

Originally posted by mal@May 19, 2003 @ 12:43 PM

Yes, but unless you have a CDR with the security ring on it, you're back at square one.

You can use it to boot most (all?) 3rd party discs, but you'd need to swap the boot disc to get it to run.

So no chance of get Return Fire running without swap or modboard/-chip...

		mal	May 19, 2003
		Probably not. That's going to make a commercial release really unappealing to a publisher. But surely, you and Prolific had already thought of this... (or am I making assumptions about your communications with Prolific?)

antime

May 20, 2003

Originally posted by mal@May 19, 2003 @ 01:55 PM

I'd just never heard of a CDR with the security ring - other than in rumours and hearsay of course.

I've seen pictures, but can't find any just now (was probably in an eBay auction). When the Saturn was new, CD recorders were very uncommon and development took place on custom devboxes so it made sense to provide plain CD-Rs to developers. Later, when development had moved away from custom hardware towards cartdev and similar methods, testing could be performed better and more cheaply on standard Saturns so bootable CD-Rs made more sense then.

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