What to do 4m official cart (and 1m maybe) vs Action Replay

[earthwormgrim]

For playing those 1m/4m Japanese games...

1) Also Metal Slug does or does not work with 4m official cart ? Reading conflicting things... same with whether or not it works with AR.

2) I heard only other games that may have issue with 4M cart, which may require 1M specifically  and aren't 'backwards compatible' with the 4M, are KOF95 but not 96 and one other samurai title ... is this true

*I should mention I’m mildly interested in cheats (though I haven't thoroughly researched which ones of the games of interest to me to cheat in for extra arcade credits, ammo, etc. already have some cheats built into the game itself, rendering AR not needed, fwiw), backup gamesave function seems cool with AR too but I have an official memory cart for that too and NVRAM saves not dependent on that internal battery working inside the Saturn.

3) is it true AR can’t directly save in game, it’s just a save manager to copy to and from internal storage ? If so that kinda stinks for the memory save portion, especially bc I’m not sure I trust AR with my gamesaves long term that would be delegated to my official memory cart which I also use for the vast amount of games that detect its plugged in and for in game saving 


**Also should mention not at all interested in region free or backup aspect of AR, as I have a Phoebe ODE.

Also, I can switch my rmenu build to the newer one that does in game reset back to the CD player dashboard, eliminating the AR booting every in game reset, if I get the action replay and keep it plugged in

...But if I go the 4M official (and maybe 1m route) or just give up on the few awesome games that require additional ram and keep my memory cart in my Saturn forever, either/or route, I can keep my current 'in game reset' config as it is to re-starting the Saturn boot logo and re-launching back into the title menu immediately to navigate between games with a button press combo vs. the config of in game reset sending me to the Saturn CD player dash and start the disc to get to the menu (with AR plugged in, its a workaround to bypassing AR booting up every time I do an in game reset if that makes sense). Another minor thing to factor in, though probably not a deal breaker one way or the other, is more elegant to just launch directly into Menu 

If this last distinction isn't clear, let me know and I can try to explain better. It may just be word spaghetti without context 

Thanks! What would you do if you were me? Lots of variables, more than I anticipated 

[zyrobs]

Metal Slug runs fine with the AR cart. It has the exact same performance as with official 1MB or 4MB carts; it only gets corrupted graphics if the contacts fail during gameplay (which can happen with every cart).

Three other SNK games require the 1mb cart due to coding errors. The games access the mirrored areas of the ram cart in the memory, but these areas access physical hardware on the 4mb cart - they end up reading the empty areas of the extra memory, instead of the expected mirrored 1mb data, which results in corrupted graphics. Satakore.com has a list, I forgot exactly which titles they were (one of the fatal fury and one of the samurai showdown games but I don't know which from the top of my head).

A cart cannot act as backup and RAM expansion at the same time. It has to be one or the other. The AR is a RAM expansion cart with a custom firmware running at bootup; in this firmware you can apply the cheats and copy your save games over to the cart. You cannot use it for game saves in-game, so you are limited to the Saturns internal memory for saving in-game.

If the cart has connection errors at an unlucky moment, it can possibly corrupt the contents of its own flash memory. This is true for both the AR and the backup memory carts, I experienced both. If this happens, you likely require formatting a save cart, or re-flashing the firmware of an AR cart. You lose all the data on the carts in this case.

Personally I use a backup memory cart. Only a few games require RAM expansion to work, and while they are great games, it's less hassle to play them on MAME. And while they were excellent ports for the 90s, they are not truly arcade perfect on the Saturn. The backup cart is more useful, ultimately. And you can still just switch it to a 4mb cart if you want.

Cheating with the AR can be cool, but it can skew your high scores!

[earthwormgrim]

So sounds like official 4m is the way to go then for my uses, barring Snk games which I’ll have to shell out for a 1m if I want those

If I swap 4m and my memory cart every once in a while , the cartridge slot on system should still hold up right ? I understand they’re finicky but I wanna be as careful as I can

[zyrobs]

The cartridge slot is extremely susceptible to dirt, changing carts means that more dirt gets scraped onto the connectors of the cartridge more often, increasing the likelihood of contact issues. You'll need to clean up your carts often.

You can hold up the L or R shift on the controller to boot directly to the memory manager, which is handy for checking if the save cart has connected right or not. Faster than booting the full game only to find that your saves are not present. Also if the memory manager shows weird stuff like the cart having two of each save game, then you know you don't have a right connection either.

The advice to not switch carts isn't to keep the slot in good health (other than getting dirty, it doesn't really get "broken"), it's more like to reduce the amount of time you need to spend dicking with the contacts every time you switch carts, because it can be really annoying.

[earthwormgrim]

Nov 27, 2019 0:03:53 GMT zyrobs said:

The cartridge slot is extremely susceptible to dirt, changing carts means that more dirt gets scraped onto the connectors of the cartridge more often, increasing the likelihood of contact issues. You'll need to clean up your carts often.

You can hold up the L or R shift on the controller to boot directly to the memory manager, which is handy for checking if the save cart has connected right or not. Faster than booting the full game only to find that your saves are not present. Also if the memory manager shows weird stuff like the cart having two of each save game, then you know you don't have a right connection either.

The advice to not switch carts isn't to keep the slot in good health (other than getting dirty, it doesn't really get "broken"), it's more like to reduce the amount of time you need to spend dicking with the contacts every time you switch carts, because it can be really annoying.

Thanks! And just to clarify one last time metal slug + 4m = fine ?

I know you said AR works with it but that’s a 1m-4m combo

I think 4m is the route to go

[zyrobs]

The AR is just a 4MB cart. Which is backwards compatible with the 1MB cart. Except for those three games which read from the wrong memory address and get junk instead of the expected mirrored data. Anyway, the AR is not a "1mb + 4mb" combo cart, it's a 4mb cart.
The real "combo" carts have physical switches to toggle from one option to the other. Now that I think of it, I recall seeing some combo carts on ebay that have a toggle between 1mb, 4mb, backup, and pseudo Saturn.

And for the millionth time, yes, Metal Slug works with the Action Replay. I have the original disc and an AR cart, a 4mb cart, and a 1mb cart. I tried it with all three and it plays exactly the same with all three: like shit (there's nonstop slowdown the second you have more than 2 sprites on screen).
I mean even the Neogeo original has slowdown, but the Saturn version has it so much worse. It's a fun game still, but the slowdown gets old really quick, especially when you can emulate it without the slowdown.

[earthwormgrim]

Nov 27, 2019 0:32:29 GMT zyrobs said:

The AR is just a 4MB cart. Which is backwards compatible with the 1MB cart. Except for those three games which read from the wrong memory address and get junk instead of the expected mirrored data. Anyway, the AR is not a "1mb + 4mb" combo cart, it's a 4mb cart.
The real "combo" carts have physical switches to toggle from one option to the other. Now that I think of it, I recall seeing some combo carts on ebay that have a toggle between 1mb, 4mb, backup, and pseudo Saturn.

TIL! Thanks a bunch

Do you have a favorite game (or two ) of those requiring the extra ram? 

[linkt101]

If you're cleaning the cartridge slot. You'll find the pins too tightly packed together to clean it out with a q-tip. I personally coat my AR connectors with a super stain remover and insert and remove the cartridge a few times to get the dirt out.