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Post by pocketpocket on Apr 8, 2017 23:22:58 GMT
As far as I know the issue isn't with the Action Replay itself but more with the cartridge slot on the Saturn just being poor quality. I've never used an Action Replay on my current Saturn and it was imported from Japan so it's far less likely that one was ever used on it, but it's still pretty temperamental with the cartridges as everyone's Saturns seem to be. It's actually probably better if you're just keeping one single cart in there as opposed to constantly swapping carts in and out, between saving to either the AR or official Power Memory cart, the 4MB cart and also the 1MB cart which some games require.
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Post by pocketpocket on Apr 7, 2017 8:11:24 GMT
Not as many now unfortunately, but there's still a few:
Puyo Puyo Tsuu: In my eyes the best vs puzzle game to date. Learning curve is steep but once you get the hang of setting up elaborate chains and countering your opponent the game quickly becomes an extremely intense battle of strategy that is incredibly addictive. Replay value is high, two campaigns to play through, a secret boss fight if you're somehow good enough to 1CC the arcade campaign, and of course multiplayer.
Magical Drop 3: Might be the better choice if you want something more accessible. Magical Drop 3 is still a very competitive game with a large focus on huge chain combos, but here it's less about strategically planning everything out in advance and more just moving fast enough to keep up. Less Puyo Puyo, more Panel de Pon/Tetris Attack. Tons of characters and a decent amount of content. Arcade mode is very English friendly, but you might have a little more trouble with the Adventure mode at first, but that's some extra content if you can brave the menus.
NiGHTS into dreams... (NTSC-J version): Still a wonderfully dreamy and surreal trip which there is nothing else like. Due to the game having no dialogue you will have no issues with the NTSC-J version at all. The game's short, but replaying levels for high scores is fun and I often find myself revisiting it just for how unique and fun it is. OST is wonderful too.
Virtua Fighter 2, Fighters Megamix, Fighting Vipers Putting these all together, they're all great high quality and smooth 3D fighters from SEGA which can be found for under $10 easily. Go for Virtua Fighter 2 if you want the most balanced gameplay with realistic movesets. Go for Fighting Vipers if you want something faster with crazier characters. Go for Fighters Megamix mainly for the humour, insane amount of characters and bizarre unlockables, but note that while it's still fun it's kind of an unbalanced mess.
Also, this might be considered a little too pricey for this list (generally around $20), but I'd also like to throw out a recommendation for the Detana Twinbee Yahho Deluxe Pack. As far as I've seen it's the most affordable Saturn shmup by far, comes with two games and they're both high quality Konami gems. Probably best for those who are into 1CC runs though, since with unlimited continues you can easily beat both games in one sitting if you're not concerned about playing elegantly.
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Post by pocketpocket on Apr 1, 2017 3:42:14 GMT
Haven't played much Saturn as I've been abroad for work but I can say I have finally completed Gungriffon and Bug Too! recently. Bug Too! was such an epic challenge so I'm relieved I now have the option of a FULL level select when I next play it as a reward for my troubles. Good job on Bug Too! Both of the Bug games are brutally difficult, but I'd say Bug Too was the harder game due to having longer worlds (stuff like Antennae Day is such a marathon to complete in one sitting) and being less forgiving with continues, as opposed to the first Bug that gave out continues pretty regularly and let you keep them after saves. Bug Too's finale was a bit underwhelming to me due to how laughable the final boss was and the fact that my copy of the game was scratched so it crashed on the ending cutscene and booted me back to the Saturn BIOS, but I'm still proud of actually beating that game. The first Bug had a much more satisfying final boss if you ask me. Myself I recently played After Burner II. I struggled with it on my first attempt on normal mode about a week ago, so I tried it again today on easy and managed to beat it relatively easily (but only because of the continue feature). I feel like I better understand how the game works now though so I'd like to give normal another shot. It's super overwhelming at first and you're dying every few seconds until you fully understand the purpose of the throttle button and how to properly dodge missiles. 3D multi controller works super well with this game, much better than it does in Space Harrier, but I'm always kinda worried that I'm gonna break the analogue stick with how wildly and quickly I'm jerking it around in After Burner. After all, the analogue stick on my multi controller arrived broken and I had to actually fix it myself, so that's left me with the impression that it could easily happen again. Also, on Last Bronx again, I would totally watch that live action direct to video movie they released in Japan. It looks so amazingly cheesy and low budget, bet it would be great fun.
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Post by pocketpocket on Mar 31, 2017 6:23:44 GMT
I haven't played it in years but I remember loving Last Bronx as well and feeling it was incredibly underrated. I don't currently own it so I can't revisit it and see how well it holds up immediately but it's on my list of games to pick up again in the future. The bonus disk and poster included with the Japanese version were a plus too.
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Post by pocketpocket on Mar 28, 2017 23:43:08 GMT
Hmm, strange. I'm playing the NTSC-J version on a Japanese console. The best way I can describe it is that as you move pieces from one space to another, it does a slight pause in between moving to the next space, so when you move a piece to the next space, it goes half way, does an awkward pause, then continues moving again, as opposed to immediately snapping to the next space like it does in Puyo Puyo. The pause throws me off because without a grid to show me that it hasn't moved to the next space yet I'm left thinking that it's moved the full space, and it makes moving pieces feel more sluggish as a result since there's extra frames in that animation too. I definitely really enjoy these kinds of vs puzzle games, especially Puyo Puyo Tsuu which I have managed to beat but found very challenging, but I don't know if I'd say I'm at a high skill level. If anything my issues with Baku Baku's controls probably more to do with my inability to judge blocks' position well! In all honesty it's probably something you can get used to with practice but I find it super jarring and off putting going from other puzzle games to Baku Baku.
Upon checking Magical Drop again I noticed that it actually also has a similar delay with an in-between movement frame, but I feel it's less intrusive there due to the dotted line instantly moving to the next space even before the jester avatar at the bottom has caught up, so you know exactly how far you're going to move instantly. I also looked up Puzzle Fighter on Youtube and noticed that it doesn't appear to have the in-between movement frames of Baku Baku, so I will look into getting that in the future when I can afford to place an order.
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Post by pocketpocket on Mar 28, 2017 7:12:44 GMT
Played through Baku Baku Animal today. It could of been great, but personally I felt like the controls killed it. They are way too unresponsive for a fast-paced puzzle game like this and the jerky animation of the blocks moving left and right constantly threw me off and resulted in me constantly overshooting where I wanted to place blocks. Maybe I'm just bad, but I never have these kind of control issues with Hanagumi Taisen Columns, Magical Drop III or the far more difficult Puyo Puyo Tsuu, where the controls were far snappier and precise. Still managed to beat it though. There is a good game under there and the crazy back and forward combos make for a very intense game. Is Puzzle Fighter any better with the controls? If they're better in that game I feel like I'd really enjoy it.
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Post by pocketpocket on Mar 14, 2017 4:04:15 GMT
I beat Saturn Bomberman today, both Normal and Master. Normal mode is pretty brutal near the end, the last few bosses can kill you fast if you're not prepared, so I was pretty surprised when Master mode ended up being far easier and I beat it on my first try without much trouble. Also got to do a bit of 5 player which was great fun as well.
Seireki 1999's starting to get more challenging with better enemy variety now so that's going good as well.
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Post by pocketpocket on Mar 12, 2017 10:21:09 GMT
Pocket, is that the Excelvan? It doesn't get great reviews on Amazon. I was looking at the Elephas or Neoteck. Atolm, there's no way I can spend that much I watched this Adam Koralik video where he says the cheap converter still made a big difference: m.youtube.com/watch?v=RS55pmLIEjASounds like that's not people's experience here. I would accept a modest improvement, as there's no way I can fit a large CRT in my room (I live in London...). Thanks for your help. It's the Elephas from what I can gather online. Same as what was used in the Youtube video you linked. I personally think it's worth it and haven't had issues with it. There will still be a pretty big quality increase going from composite to SCART, there's a reason I swore by SCART cables on my last TV and got the adapter so I could keep using them.
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Post by pocketpocket on Mar 12, 2017 2:34:40 GMT
I've used the SCART to HDMI adapter, this one in particular: I used SCART for nearly all of my retro consoles on my old TV, but when I got a new TV it didn't have SCART ports, so this seemed like a no-brainer. I haven't used it with my Saturn yet (ordered a SCART cable but it got lost in the mail so gonna have to try again) but it works wonderfully with the Master System. I haven't experienced any control input lag when using it which is what I was most concerned about, but that may be dependent on your TV. Just know that it's gonna be SCART quality as opposed to HD, it'll be crisp but it will make solid colors look a bit weird. Also you'll need another power outlet to power the converter with. Note that I have zero experience with Framemeisters so I can't compare how that will look by comparison, but I don't doubt that the Framemeister is miles ahead, the SCART converter is more or less just an adapter. I just wanted SCART ports on my TV as opposed to an upscaler so this is fine for me. Framemeisters are FAR out of my price range anyway, I can understand why people would swear by them for providing the best picture quality by miles but I can't really bring myself to validate spending $350+ USD on one.
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Post by pocketpocket on Mar 9, 2017 19:14:19 GMT
Saturn has the advantage of a lot of it's best games being 2D (despite SEGA of America pushing for 3D) in an era where no one had fully mastered 3D yet resulting in some janky games that have dated themselves a bit. Generally the shmups and puzzle games hold up very well. Saturn Bomberman has aged particularly well, still considered by many to be the best in the series. A lot of fighting games on the system now have more modern and more polished sequels, but Vampire Savior is still the most recent game in that series and it still holds up as a great fighter. If you want a solid platformer, Mega Man X4 still holds up as one of the best games in the Mega Man series, fantastic controls, incredibly fast-paced and two very different characters to play as. You might want to get the Japanese version though to dodge the atrocious English dub though, which has NOT aged gracefully. Also, I've only just started playing it, but I'll also vouch for Exhumed. The console version is actually very different to the PC version and it's actually considered a superior game on consoles from what I've heard (PC version has less of the Metroidvania elements). The Saturn version is also considered a little better than the PS1 port.
Also, this one might be a bit more debatable, but I've always felt that NiGHTS into dreams still holds up very well primarily just for how unique it is. You could argue that it's aged poorly, but there isn't really any modern games even remotely similar to it to compare it to, so there isn't really a game that's done NiGHTS better since (most people favor NiGHTS into dreams over it's Wii sequel, Journey of Dreams, but some may still debate that).
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Post by pocketpocket on Mar 9, 2017 5:47:21 GMT
Started playing Seireki 1999/Powerslave/Exhumed today. First time playing it, only got it recently. Really enjoying it so far. I'm not really a FPS fan at all but I can easily see why this is so loved by the Saturn community and is such a cult classic. The Metroid style item upgrades are really cool and make the game feel far more explorative and adventurous. Level design is good, controls are great, framerate isn't too bad, definitely feels like one of the best FPSs of the 5th generation so far.
My only big issue so far is enemy variety. I finished my first play session with going through Amun Mines, and so far the only enemies there have been are the crabs, birds, wasps, those Anubis looking guys, and if you're in water the piranhas, and out of those the Anubis are the only ones that actually have an attack, while the rest are just small targets that have no attack beyond ramming you and don't really put up much of a fight as much as they just annoy you. Even the Anubis are pretty weak, especially once you get the Anhks that upgrade your health. I hope there's some more threatening enemies to fight against later on.
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Post by pocketpocket on Mar 7, 2017 5:52:15 GMT
Same thing happened with my Japanese copy of Shining Wisdom I had years ago as well. Interesting to hear that you had that issue on a Japanese Saturn since back then I assumed it was an issue with Action Replay compatibility. Guess there was a bad print?
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Post by pocketpocket on Jan 10, 2017 3:32:54 GMT
Don't think I'll be buying much this year since I've got plenty to keep me entertained for the year from my haul in 2016, but I'd like to track down a copy of Rockman 8, and potentially see if I can get all of the Konami shmups (missing Gradius Deluxe, Salamander Deluxe, Sexy Parodius and (if you count it) the MSX Collection), as well as some more vertical shmups like DoDonPachi, Twinkle Star Sprites and Game Paradise.
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Post by pocketpocket on Dec 24, 2016 6:48:53 GMT
My copy of Rayman arrived a few days ago now, and I can confirm that the NTSC-J version isn't compatible with the 3D controller either. Very strange that it was included on the list, but ah well.
I've played Rayman before, and I adore it, lots of nostalgia for this one. Damn hard though, never beat it as a kid without cheats, so I'm aiming to remedy that now. Currently at Picture City. Got all the cages in The Dream Forest and Blue Mountains, and got all the cages from the first two level sets in Band Land before the branching path. Hopefully I can pull it off this time!
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Post by pocketpocket on Dec 13, 2016 23:13:28 GMT
If you formatted the cart then it should be cleared of any filesystem errors and safe to use again. However I'd clean the pins on it, just in case. That crash in Sonic Jam may have been due to the game failing to save. Nowadays I always check whether the memory cart is read fine before starting to play games. Hold l+r during bootup and check the memory manager, if you get junk entries or huge amounts of duplicate entries, the card is not being read fine. I've already cleaned the pins (weren't too dirty but wanted to be safe) but checking the memory manager before playing should reduce my paranoia of this happening again (don't want this happening when I get deeper into Shining games, Grandia or Sakura Wars). Thanks for the advice everyone! I recall the looping Saturn boot-up screen being an issue with my old Saturn as well. I'm pretty sure that was a laser issue and that it happened when the Saturn wasn't quite able to read the disc and boot it up.
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