General Questions and Information Thread

Awesome, thanks for your help, successfully dumped with 4.0H. The resulting dump boots in Yabause, will upload shortly.

As I don't collect for Saturn (I only bought this to dump) I'm open to selling it, however I wouldn't like to split it from the magazine it came with and I'm in the UK so shipping would also add to the cost.

 

Before uploading, please dump it 2-3 more times and see if the dumps crc matches. As CDRWin does not do secure ripping, this is the one way to make sure that it did not do "guesswork" on unreadable or partially readable sectors.

I'm okay with buying it along the mag (I'll just resell it anyway), and I live in mainland Europe so shipping is not as bad as to usa or elsewhere.

 

That's very cool.
Any chance someone could ask the guy for cart pcb pics, or was it dumped with a retrode (whatever is that cart dumper called) and never disassembled?

 

Got the disc. There are C2 errors on it, it cannot be dumped accurately. Tried cleaning it properly, it didn't help. The only good news is that the unrecoverable errors are on audio track 8, so the data tracks are safe.
There's a Keio Flying Squadron 2 video on it (it's like 15 seconds long...) that does show an early title screen and some different sprites in the flying stages, that's about all the stuff I can see on it.

Do you want the disc back?

 

It's ok, you can keep it if you want. Will you release one of your bad dumps (noting it's bad)? If not I'll post the link for my upload.

 

The dump I made will be submitted to Trurip, but as it has C2 errors I doubt it'll get published.

I dislike sharing bad dumps but I can't exactly do anything to prevent you from releasing the ones you have.

I do plan on eventually finding and dumping all undumped Saturn titles, with jp demos being one of my biggest priority, but do note that that may take years due to my lack of money (if you find any other dumps of techsaturn demos, they probably come from either me or Madroms who I bought them from).

 

So everyone likes minor cartridge variations!

http://segaretro.org/File:Jeopardy_MD_US_Cart.jpg
http://segaretro.org/File:Jeopardy_MD_US_Cart_Alt.jpg

Like that classic time when GameTek moved offices between the production runs of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune...

http://segaretro.org/File:Greendog_md_us_cart.jpg
http://segaretro.org/File:Greendog_MD_US_Cart_Alt.jpg

and when Sega started adding product codes to the bottom of cartridges because the consumer totally needs this information!


There's bound to be more we must have collectors on this board - anyone willing to plug up the gaps? I know this is incomplete and wrong and there's always tons to scan

 

One for you nutty collectors


spot the difference

http://segaretro.org/images/thumb/c/c2/Spaceharrier_sms_us_cart.jpg/800px-Spaceharrier_sms_us_cart.jpg
http://segaretro.org/images/8/89/GhostHouse_SMS_EU_Cart.jpg

apart from the really obvious one.

Turns out Australia used white grid lines for Master System game cartridges, while the US/EU used black. I thought it was a printing error or inconsistencies between publishers - I didn't stop to think about it at all. Australian releases have different manuals but... I didn't expect this.


So if you're silly and are trying to get a full set of Master System games for all regions... yeah here's another couple of hundred to track down.

 

Ozisoft manufactured their own carts, the plastic is different too. There's a list here.

 

Yeah there's a lot of subtle differences - I know Mega Drive cartridges actually credit OziSoft on the back, but I (wrongly) assumed the labels would be identical since it seems pointless to design new prints (the covers seem to be the same for most of these earlier releases).

I'm not sure differences in plastic really matter from a scanning perspective, since I'm not sure how well it'll be picked up. And fronts and backs will always be scanned separately unless we get 3D scanners, so there's (in theory) the opportunity to cut corners there.



The tedious part is tracking all the minor variants down. Cartridges with extra ™ and ® symbols. Should have been more careful in my earlier runs.

 

Saturn Bios (Hi-Saturn v1.02) (J).rar 3.9 MB

https://mega.co.nz/#!3A90QQrb!t0LtkPbjNX8SdMXyOvcmnjHKm2HHx4nv8f0qHaIYGkw

 

I've never heard of this until now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpyW0-Oi50g

Usually you would defeat the boss fast and be done with it, but if you can last for 100 in game minutes you get a special message from its programmer. Oh and the attacks change up, like minutes between.

 

So hey I'm reaching dead-ends on Sega Retro because I lack the knowledge on certain franchises, and their history is a bit too complex to just "guess". This is on the off-chance that there are experts on this board that are willing to help tackle some of these Sega franchises. Some are pretty huge, yet we have virtually no coverage outside "xxx exists".

Sakura Taisen (Sakura Wars)

Women in robots fighting demons in 1920s Japan (and France... and New York), except Japan sidelines most of this for their hobbies as stage performers, so there's a lot of pink and dancing. Sakura Taisen is huge in Japan - there are stage shows and half a dozen anime things and plastic models to make and weird tat on the PC and elusive Chinese translations. Very little has ever crossed the pacific - there's an excellent Hardcore Gaming 101 article but I fear it only scratches the surface. There are tons of albums and tons of books... and dubs and redubs and a huge amount of content that has never been brought to the English side of the internet.


Cyber Troopers Virtual-On (Dennou Senki Virtual-On)

Turns out Virtual-On is a bit insane. I thought we were dealing with four fighting games with robots - turns out not only are we doing that, but the robots have ridiculously deep backstories and technical specifications. Sega put an immense amount of work in making sure everything lines up - that all the Virtual-On Force Virtuaroids derive from Oratorio Tangram models, with details as to which parts were changed. It's lovely, but it leaves me clueless as to how a "Dennou Senki Virtual-On Marz Perfect Book" differs from a "Dennou Senki Virtual-On Marz: The Complete Guide". One is perfect but another complete? Wacky

oh and tons of plastic models

Border Break

as far as I'm aware Border Break hasn't really left the arcades... yet there are half a dozen versions of the game, all making subtle changes, all being Japanese exclusives and all getting their own range of merchandise. Seeing as I can't physically play this one, I'm very confused.

Shining

in the 90s this might have been manageable but this is now a mound of JRPGs which may or may not be connected. How does Shining Ark differ from Shining Blade, Shining Tears and Shining Wind?

Phantasy Star

likewise, lots of extensions to Phantasy Star Online which I don't fully understand. They keep making things and it's really difficult to keep track.

Yakuza (Ryu ga Gotoku)

lots of talk about Yakuza but not a lot documented, particularly when it comes to the Japanese exclusives (of which there are many).


here's some lists

http://segaretro.org/User:Black_Squirrel/Toys
http://segaretro.org/User:Black_Squirrel/Publications
http://segaretro.org/User:Black_Squirrel/VHS

as you can see, lots to do (and if you're in the mood to trawl through old magazines for review scores we're doing that too). I get that ot's difficult to drum up support because obviously much of this is diving in the deep end, but yeah.. uh.. help pls

 

Pardon my ignorance, but take a look at the second page of this advertisement (the one saying "NOW YOU DON'T.").

That thing next to the Power Base Converter. What is that? While it kind of looks like a Genesis Model 2 seen from the side, I don't recognize the logo (and there's a Genesis Model 1 on the rightmost page, so I kinda doubt that's another Genesis there).

 

TeleGenesis Modem. (US version of the Meganet Modem)

 

Got a (probably incomplete and poorly translated) list of demo discs:

http://segaretro.org/User:Black_Squirrel/Demos

They all need pages, but I can't really guess what's on these things. Any takers? Lots of weird and rare tat here too - someone must care.

 

Does anyone have or know of a clean, good-quality recording of the Night Trap theme song? It's on YouTube, but the quality is far from decent.

 

Did Alien Front end up having online play between the arcade and home versions, as described in this flyer? If so, was this the first time this was ever achieved?

http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=flyer&db=videodb&id=1539&image=1