You should play yout 60Hz Sega Saturn games on a 60Hz console, right? Wrong. You can mod it, and we all know that. Even though this has ben out for ages I only just recently [this weekend] got around to it, and guess what. It worked! I own three PAL Sega Saturn consoles, two of them qualified for the mod [proper mainboard]. I chose the one I didn't use for ages, in case I screwed something up that couldn't be fixed. The mod is simple as hell. You solder three wires to the board, two of which go to the power supply +5V and ground. No problem there. Points are so large you could do it with a hot enough hammer. Third point is a bit tricky for those, who aren't used to this kind of work, since you have to solder to a track, that you first have to cut. This is some tiny stuff, so you have to be caretul not to screw it up. I used isolating tape to cover everything I wasn't going to solder to. You got your wires now, you get yourself a switch that connects two or two and there you go. No black borders and 60Hz refresh rate. Now your Radiant Silvergun won't go out of synch during the cutscenes / speeches. Since in Saturn's case it's the hardware that determines a refresh rate, you can run any PAL game at 60Hz. Of all the games I've checked, the only one that wouldn't run properly was Virtua Fighter 2. The game loads fine, menu appears, character selection screen loads, but no game. When you leave the game to itself after it boots, cinepak movies will play perfectly but the polygon demo won't load. It seems like the whole real time 3D part of the game is broken in 60Hz mode [while using a PAL copy of course]. There can be obvious side effects while running 50Hz games at 60Hz setting. Just like in case of Japanese games in 50Hz you can experience the speech / music synching out. NiGHTS Christmas has this karaoke song in it. If you run PAL version in 60Hz it won't be synched with the text [duh]. Other than that I'm pleased with the mod and with myself. Worked out just the way it was supposed to work. If you're concidering this kind of modification, go with it. You can find tutorials all over the net. Three wires, 30 minutes of your time. Done. I used this tutorial by the way. I've found some tutorials on how to mod Model 1 Saturn also, so modding both is possible. As well as adding a country switch. http://users.skynet.be/DuNe/Console/saturn/saturn-model2.html
Some PAL games won't run right at 60htz leaving a mess at the bottom of the screen. Games that do this are Virtual On, Sega Touring Cars and another 3D title. Basically all the polygons just leave a shadow in the bottom 2 inches of the screen. Oh yes, the screen is also stretched! Yakumo
The ones I quickly checked yesterday, and they all looked and played fine, include: Sega Rally Championship [Perfect] NiGHTS Into Dreams [Perfect] NiGHTS Christmas [Works fine, except the audio synch problem in karaoke] Fighters Megamix [Perfect] These were all PAL games of course. The only one that didn't want to cooperate was Virtua Fighter 2. Japanese version of course worked fine. Then I got to testing Japanese titles, since that was the point of installing the 60Hz switch in the first place, so of course no complaints there, because games run at their native 60Hz. As for the image stretching, while in 60Hz mode the game image fills the entire screen, unlike the 50Hz mode, where black borders at the bottom and the top appear. Slightly faster gameplay and whole screen filled is nothing you can complain about. Of course there are titles that don't like this forced switch to 60Hz, but still, with just three wires soldered, that's one hell of a result.
Games that are optimized for PAL like Sega Touring Cars will be stretched too much so you will be missing the bottom image plus that is what causes the glirtching. I had quite a few PAL games when I lived in the UK so I found many that wouldn't run right on my Japanese Saturn. I think Decathlete was another but don't quote me on that. Yakumo
Whatever you do, don't play Formula karts on 60h. It's waay too fast. Oh and Quake loses some it's hud. (like said above, the screen is stretched) Sonic Jam is glitchy as well (the Sonic World part)
Wipeout 2097 is a blast to play in 60Hz mode. Image is fine, but the increase in speed is like adding an additional difficultly level to the game. -hl718
All I would expect is for Wipeout [2097] run just a little bit smoother. The Saturn port sucks. I have no idea who got paid to screw it up the way they did, but I can't look at it, and certainly I can't play it. Saturn sure is capable of pulling graphics like that of Wipeout 2097. As for more glitchy PAL games in 60Hz mode, you can add Last Bronx. Tried it out yesterday, and there's some texture flickering. It's not much, but some people might be bothered by that. I know I am. The testing continues. I'm overall very pleased with the modification. Before, I could play PAL games at 50Hz and Japanese games at ... well 50Hz. Now I have a free choice and when game starts to glitch, I can always flip the switch. Whoa. That rhymes!
I didn't think WipEout 2097 was that bad, which isn't something I'm prepared to say in defence of its predecessor's Saturn conversion. Yes, the programmers at Tantalus could easily have recreated the various transparency effects PS owners loved to rave about so much, yet in terms of its frame rate and resolution 2097 was definitely more accurate. Considering how much assistance they received from Sega during the production of Manx TT, it's clear Tantalus learned and subsequently applied their new-found coding skills for the Saturn when it came to this game. As for Virtua Fighter 2, this was optimised for PAL systems and therefore doesn't really benefit from the 60Hz switch modification.
I meant the Saturn version of Wipeout 2097. I have nothing against the PlayStation one. That was my point. Same title on two platforms. It could be virtually identical, but they screwed it up. As for 50Hz games, they're all optimised to work at a lower refre than the Japanese versions, just like the Japanese versions aren't optimised for 50Hz. Still, it's nice to see that you can get a noticable boost in performance in many titles just by simply flipping this tiny little switch. They should include these kind of features from the start. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was the DreamCast that first implemented the 50Hz / 60Hz software switch in its games. I don't count the cracked / trained PlayStation games that often contain a system selector.
Some games (like VF2) were optimised for 50Hz PAL systems (which wasn't generally the case back then) so that's probably why they flake out when switched to 60Hz. Any game running without borders is probably optimised and that's the best way to estimate compatibility I'd say.
Last Bronx and Daytona USA Championship Circuit Edition were also coded specifically to run in full screen/speed on 50Hz systems (if I remember correctly, that is), but to my knowledge nobody has ever compiled a list of titles with region optimisation - this would surely be more welcome than yet another reminder of what games run in the Saturn's high resolution mode!
Perhaps we can start one here and see how many we come up with. I think the majority of Sega releases were optimised, except for the very last ones (House of the Dead, Touring Car Championship and er.. Panzer Dragoon Saga I think). Correct me if I am wrong!
Many of the earlier Saturn titles in Europe (arcade conversions, at least) were optimised for 50Hz display, and you can even tell when Sega began to stop bothering - around late 1997 when the likes of Sonic R and Touring Car were allowed to be released with borders. Of course, they still weren't as bad or notorious as the original Daytona USA (AKA Special Widescreen Edition). By the time of Panzer Dragoon Saga and Deep Fear, they were only just bothered enough to translate their games. Even what should have been such a simple port like Winter Heat was rushed, which is surprising when you consider how similar the Saturn and STV board were!
Daytona USA had borders on the NTSC versions I think, hence the uber widescreen PAL mode Despite this, I still think it's probably the best game on the system. They got the steering just right.
Daytona USA looked absolutely terrible (in terms of its frame rate, glitching and those PAL borders), but ironically still managed to outperform the supposed "remix" that was Championship Circuit Edition because it felt like the arcade original and not just a generic racing engine with the Hornet car and familiar tracks thrown in as an afterthought! If only AM2 had found the time to handle its own reworking of Daytona, perhaps just giving their first effort a higher resolution, better frame rate and split-screen mode. According to my Saturn timeline, developers already had SGL OS 2.1 by the release of Daytona CCE - can you imagine how good a "real" update would have been if AM2 had been using those tools, especially when their first attempt was programmed without such libraries? Sega Rally would surely have been relogated to second place in the hearts of many Saturn racing fans!
I guess the real issue is the number of cars featured in Daytona USA. Some tracks had too many for the kind of polygons you'd see in Sega Rally. I also don't understand why they changed the steering in Ridge Racer Revolution. You could get used to it, but it was terrible when compared to the first game.
I'd say; try the Japanese version. (Of Daytona CCE) As for Saturn Wipeout 2097; I love it. It's very very playable, with some great audio tracks and sweet loading times.
I've been meaning to play the Japanese version of Daytona USA Circuit Edition for quite some time, as it supposedly has improved texturing, differing times of day, the original music (a massive bonus to me as a fan - whether I'd like to admit that or not) and superior handling that is more faithful to the AM2 treatment. Also, it's great to see another person here that likes the Saturn port of WipEout 2097 - does anybody else prefer the in-house tracks from CoLD SToRAGE as opposed to the PS edition's licensed music?
Here are some photos I took. I wasn't going to make any kind of a tutorial on my own, so it's just some random snapshots, not a step by step. I used EyeToy camera to take a look at the soldering points and the track I had to cut. http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/6679/01gn3.jpg http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/9080/02tl2.jpg http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/6875/dsc02053vj7.jpg http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/4224/dsc02054vg8.jpg http://img71.imageshack.us/img71/170/dsc02184rz9.jpg And here's the finished thing. Looks fine I guess. And works as it should. http://img71.imageshack.us/img71/3492/dsc02186yh9.jpg
