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Strange saturn ability

Fabrizo - Oct 28, 2001

		Fabrizo		Oct 28, 2001
			Ok, recently I have been using the swap trick a LOT, and almost every game I have been buring is a japanese one. The swap trick alows me to play burned games, but not imports right? well, up until recently that was the case and I was using my 64 meg mem cart/ import player, to get them to work. Recently however, my saturn just sdtarted to play impors without needing the cart. Should the swap trick be able to do this, or has my saturn all of a sudden gained a second ability out of nowhere?

		ExCyber		Oct 28, 2001
			The most likely explanation is that you happen to have foreign games that have already been patched for your system. I don't see any reason why your Saturn would suddenly start acting differently WRT the territory check.

		MasterAkumaMatata		Oct 28, 2001
			Fabrizo: ExCyber is right. Have you every use the Saturn Country Code Changer (i.e., SatConv) to patch your downloaded ISO or BIN files? You can not only use it to change country codes, but also to check the country code as well.

		Despa		Oct 28, 2001
			Hmm.. yes.. Satconv is a very convenient tool if you haven't already used it. Almost a necessity, since a lot of our favorite games are japanese, and our poor us systems can't play them.. So.. anything else I could say would merely restate what everyone else said, what fun is that?

		Fabrizo		Oct 31, 2001
			I have used the country code convertor before, but not on my burned copy of radiant silvergun, and it runs fine without any code changer or cart that alows for playing japanese games. Also, I have another question related to burning disks. I think I heard burned disks need higher power disk lasers to run at full speed, is this true? Some games that I have burned have more slow down then I think they should have.

		MasterAkumaMatata		Oct 31, 2001
			I think what you heard may be referring to the CD-RW modification, so that your Saturn can read CD-RW's, by increasing the strength of your Saturn's laser. However, if it is a problem with burned discs, then doing deeper burns (i.e., burn at 1x or 2x) on quality blanks should alleviate that problem.

		ExCyber		Oct 31, 2001
			AFAIK, there is no reason that the Saturn would slow down to read a burn, even if it's a crappy one - if the quality of the burn sucks it would read incorrect data, detect a read error and retry. This would cause slower overall disc access, but would likely be marked by skipping audio and FMV or abnormal pauses during gameplay. Slowdown is usually caused by a game pushing the Saturn. This can be because the game is genuinely doing a whole lot of stuff, but IMHO it's more likely to be crappy/rushed coding - Saturn wasn't exactly the first priority of most developers, and it got more than a few crap ports...

		Fabrizo		Oct 31, 2001
			Well, the thing is I had heard before that Radiant Silvergun and Dracula X (a.k.a. CastleVania: Symphony of the Night) didn't have much if any slowdown in them. I burned copies of both games and each slows down at points: Radiant Silvergun - Almost always when the bosses are dying and exploding, And Dracula X - Every time one of those huge wolves with multiple heads explodes at the begining. This is not a big problem but it does make me think that burned games are not quite up to par with the real thing, I rarely encounter slowdown on the real disks of games I own.

		SkankinMonkey		Oct 31, 2001
			That's common among those two games.

		ExCyber		Nov 1, 2001
			Yes, and Akumajou Dracula X is one of the rushed ports that has, IMO, crappy coding (I doubt it's the fault of the programmers; they were probably on a tight schedule considering the magnitude of the game and had to just make sure the #### thing worked). Not only is there slowdown, but the Saturn's kickass CD subsystem is seriously underutilized - they retain the CD load rooms (which were used in the PSX version to provide a smooth transition from area to area), but then pop up a "Now Loading" screen when you exit one; with Saturn's 512KB of dedicated RAM connected to the CD-ROM controller, they probably could have eliminated the load rooms altogether if they had the time and inclination to do so.

		Fabrizo		Nov 2, 2001
			Thats to bad, I washoping that it would be better then the PSX version, seeing as how the game world in it is bigger, and it has the girl as a selectable character, unlike the PSX version. Slowdown and load times are things I can deal with, but it doesn't make the saturn look good when compared to the Playstation, seeing ax how the saturn was a 2d powerhouse, and yet, sonys systems versions ran better. If only these games (Radiant Silvergun and Dracula X) were brought over tyo the sturn in the USA, I would by them the second I got the chance to, of corse, thats only if the games didn't go for $140 a peice like they do these days.