For sure. I’m mostly just having fun with words is all. I do think there are some objective markers for judging the technical quality of a game, but holistically speaking, yes it’s ultimately a subjective matter.
As I was downloading more Saturn games last night, I noticed an increased prevalence of Frank Thomas associated baseball games compared to my memories of Griffey Jr. being all over SNES/N64 baseball games and I thought that was pretty cool. This makes no sense in a way that I can explain, but The Big Hurt being a Sega guy and Griffey Jr. being a Nintendo guy just feels right.
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Some cutting edge tech used in this one
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I finally got one of those Saroo carts. I haven’t messed with it much yet, but so far, so good. And the price can’t be beat!
Now to re-read all the Saturn recommendation threads!
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Check this out
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The music is the real game in this game (series, really).
It’s John petrucci on the intro, and then this fella for the rest.
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I’ve heard good things about it for a while, but just played a bit of it for the first time today. Some solid video pinball.
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Bonjour! I hope everyone is well or on their way to doing better. My deepest apologies for some pending discussions on IC and lack of promised updates & old messages reformatting in the Sharp Denshi System Techō thread but I got a severe case of 「very important real life work to be done and lotsa more people than expected having their livelihoods kinda relying on it」going on.
That being said, on the 22nd of this month, we’ll celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the SegaSaturn and, while I unfortunately don’t have the free time to prepare something special on this occasion, it is a little known fact that the month of November is made of precisely 30 days, so I thought I should at least try to honor the (nearly) greatest video game console’s 30th anniversary with one post a day on the Insert Credit forums for the entire month before I disappear again. For if I doesn’t, who wontsn’t?
I may have to cheat with double daily posts covering for some planned yet pesky intercontinental flights in the coming days, but I should already have enough video and information backlog to cover the whole month. Let’s start instead with something fresh of the presses, just released a few hours ago!
01/30 A comparison of the different NiGHTS ~into dreams…~ ports
The author mentions above an Anamorphic 16:9 i.e. “wide screen” mode added for the PS2 version, but this feature actually comes from the original Saturn version! NiGHTS is one of the rare Anamorphic 16:9 games of that generation, but this compatibility is better understood when you know Sega’s partner Hitachi had recently released the Hitachi Wide View C24-WX50 television set, which was natively compatible with the Saturn’s video output.
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Looking forward to all the posts!! As a (relatively) new owner of a 16:9 CRT I have to try this eventually - it’s gonna take my NiGHTS-ing to the next level, I just know it.
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this is mind-blowing, had no idea there was a widescreen CRT - goddamn, these folks were so ahead of the curve. we were spoiled by arcade chicanery, but seeing this in the day would’ve been incredible
oooo what model did you find??
There were a lot of them! 16:9 came around before LCD panels were widespread. Mine’s a Philips! it has component inputs so I am hoping to play some PSP on there.
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ahh that’s so cool! do you have a PSTV? i got one on the cheap while back, it’s great for stuff like the yakuza fan translations & stuff stuck in that dope library
and it’s such a weird era, right? like, i missed these entirely, but years back, a good friend donated a barely used trinotron kv27 w/component out - and i was puzzled, i’d put in a GC component cable and just get scrambled images like when you’d try to see porn in the day, haha. turns out, it clearly predates 480p! but like, the image quality is so sharp, i legit do not care. PS2 over SCART RGB converted to component is sharp enough to cut hard cheese on, i quickly sold my XRGB mini and never looked back
i hope this set somehow outlasts me. death to input lag in an interactive medium!
Welcome back ! Glad to hear you’re well and have an amazing Saturn birthday party planned. Can’t wait to see the next 29 whenever they appear and looking forward to the many more posts too!!
No pstv - the psp just has straight up component out if you have the cable for it. It’s very awkward to use, but it’s neat anyway.
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Hopefully not mentioned elsewhere already…
02/30 Sega Rally Championship’s 30th Anniversary Soundtrack
WaveMaster has released a physical album two weeks ago (Oct 17) to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Sega Rally Championship’s original release in the arcades. I don’t believe the album is available on any digital platform as of today. The album is spread on two discs, respectively for ❶ the original soundtrack from the arcade version and ❷ more relevant to this thread, the wonderful arranged soundtrack originally produced for the Saturn version a year later.
DISC-1 SEGA RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP (Arcade : MODEL2A)
SOUND! SHOCK Special Bonus Track
- MY DEAR FRIEND, RALLY -Vo Arr Ver. 2024- / Takenobu Mitsuyoshi
- GETTING MUDDY -2024- feat. Shoji Meguro
Original Sound Track
- PUT UP A SIGN -AC Ver.-
- POWER GAMES -AC Ver.-
- WELCOME TO SEGA RALLY -AC Ver.-
- JUDGEMENT -AC Ver.-
- CONDITIONED REFLEX -AC Ver.-
- DESERT LAND -AC Ver.-
- GETTING MUDDY -AC Ver.-
- MY DEAR FRIEND, RALLY -AC Ver.-
- RECKLESS RUNNING -AC Ver.-
- IGNITION -AC Ver.-
- END OF ROAD MONACO -AC Ver.-
- FANFARE -AC Ver.-
- AROUND A LETTER -AC Ver.-
- GAME OVER YEAH! -AC Ver.-
SOUND! SHOCK Bonus Track
- MY DEAR FRIEND, RALLY -Vo Arr Ver. 2024- [Karaoke]
《Composition》
Takenobu Mitsuyoshi [01~04,06~17]
Tomoyuki Kawamura [05]《Arrangement》
Kenichi Tokoi [01,17]
Mitsuharu Fukuyama [01,17]
Takenobu Mitsuyoshi [02~04,06~16]
Tomoyuki Kawamura [05]《Lyrics》
Tetsuya Mizuguchi & Kenneth Ibrahim [01,17]DISC-2 SEGA RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP (SEGASATURN/PC)
SOUND! SHOCK Special Bonus Track
- DESERT REPLAY -2024-
Original Sound Track
- PUT UP A SIGN -SS Ver.-
- POWER GAMES -SS Ver.-
- MODE SELECT 1 -SS Ver.-
- MODE SELECT 2 -SS Ver.-
- ARCADE SELECT -SS Ver.-
- CONDITIONED REFLEX -Arr Ver.-
- DESERT LAND -Arr Ver.-
- GETTING MUDDY -Arr Ver.-
- IGNITION -Arr Ver.-
- RECKLESS RUNNING -Arr Ver.-
- END OF ROAD MONACO -SS Ver.-
- ENDING DEMO -SS Ver.-
- MY DEAR FRIEND, RALLY -Vo Arr Ver.- / Naoki Takao
- AROUND A LETTER -SS Ver.-
- DESERT REPLAY -SS Ver.-
- EVALUATION 01 -SS Ver.-
- FOREST REPLAY -SS Ver.-
- EVALUATION 02 -SS Ver.-
- MOUNTAIN REPLAY -SS Ver.-
- EVALUATION 03 -SS Ver.-
- LAKE SIDE REPLAY -SS Ver.-
- FANFARE -SS Ver.-
- MY DEAR FRIEND, RALLY -SS Ver.-
- RESULT -SS Ver.-
- GAME OVER YEAH! -SS Ver.-
《Composition》
Naofumi Hataya [01,04,05,13,16,20,22,25]
Takenobu Mitsuyoshi [02,03,06~12,14,15,18,23,24,26]
Tatsuya Kozaki [17,19,21]《Arrangement》
Kenichi Tokoi [01]
Takenobu Mitsuyoshi [02,03,12,15,23,26]
Naofumi Hataya [04~06,13,16,18,20,22,24,25]
Takayuki Hijikata [07~11,14]
Tatsuya Kozaki [17,19,21]《Lyrics》
Tetsuya Mizuguchi & Kenneth Ibrahim [14]
In case, for whatever reason, you roam this thread without any previous musical experience of Sega Rally Championship, well! Lucky you for discovering its mighty power bass in 2024, and here is an already excellent amateur remastering of the Saturn version’s soundtrack uploaded on Youtube earlier in the year.
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03/30 GHOST in the SHELL Kōkakukidōtai Premium Photo•CD
The Saturn is often misunderstood by the laymen as « the poor man’s PlayStation » and that’s in part because such people misunderstand the ambitious multimedia aspirations of the device, and how it reflected the Early 90s’ anticipation of how consumer entertainment would evolve with the help of LASER technology (i.e. the Compact Disc).
Rather than the original PlayStation, if you really want to bring SCE’s own legacy into the conversation, it makes much more sense to compare the Saturn with the PSP and the PS3 ; two other ambitious multimedia devices with a slightly complex architecture, which conceptually aimed to go beyond simple game machines, and similarly got into trouble for these aspirations against more focused direct competitors (the iPod and 360 respectively).
In the case of the Saturn, this ambition is reflected into its OS and home menu, possibly the most complex and rich one made for a home console until the Xbox360 / Wii / PS3 generation. But even with the best of intentions and a demanding price point at launch, not everything could be ready day one and included within the OS, and there were no easily accessible firmware updates at the time, so Sega had to add features through additional peripherals and software.
On June 23, 1995 in Japan, Sega released three important items to further enhance the multimedia capabilities of the Saturn against its competitors: the Video Movie Card (enhancing video decoding and allowing the playback of Video CD), the Photo CD Operator (allowing the access to Kodak’s Photo CD) and the Denshi Book Operator (allowing access to EB, EB-G and EB-XA discs – the prehistory of e-books).
From the angle of promising a fully featured multimedia experience in the living room, it is easy to argue that the relatively modest Sega Group outshone many of its more prestigious and wealthy competitors: Philips’ CD-I, the Panasonic-endorsed 3DO, NEC’s PC-FX, Pioneer’s LaserActive, Apple & Bandai’s Pippin, Olivetti’s Envision etc.
Obviously, in hindsight, Sega’s problem is the multimedia revolution did not happen exactly as anticipated by these wonderful people circa 1992〜1993. The multimedia turn happened on IBM-compatible personal computers instead, with the help of Intel’s x86 technology, the world wide web quickly replacing the CD-ROM as the essential pivot to a digital life, and most importantly Windows 95 convincing casual audiences not to be afraid of computers anymore. The Photo CD, the Video CD (bar some outliers markets for specific local reasons) and the EB-CD never really took off in a mainstream way.
But let’s imagine that you had believed in this alternative vision of a TV-centered multimedia future, and had bought a 
Photo CD Operator or its equivalent 
Photo CD Operating System with the Sega Saturn around the Fall of 1995. What kind of privileged multimedia experience could you and only you have tasted?
Well! For instance, the feature film adaptation of Ghost in the Shell, or rather Kōkakukidōtai in its home country, came out in Japanese theaters on November 18, 1995 – I almost waited for the 18th post to sync the dates but let’s not tempt fate with unnecessary hubris – and the first promotional pamphlets released for the movie aped its futuristic tone by foregoing the traditional high quality glossy paper print. Instead, most of the contents were stored digitally on an accompanying Photo CD.
I happen to own this disc, because ❶ c’mon, it’s GiTS ❷ the thing cost me peanuts and ❸ to be frank, I cannot say I have encountered many other cool Photo CDs advocating for this dumb cursed console’s valiant compatibility efforts towards Kodak’s complete flop of a format. Oh, Sega…
That being said, the Photo CD in question is impossibly cool, especially in the context of its release, being about the hottest new animated movie that had reset the expectations of the genre, and before high speed Internet had democratized visual media access. It is a pretty hefty digital archive of Ghost in the Shell, divided in two sections: Shirow’s manga and Production I.G.’s movie. There are about a hundred pictures overall, spanning over quality scans of prep works, layouts, storyboards, animation layers, ideas for album covers, finished manga pages, comparisons with the English translation… It’s pretty eclectic.
To access these images (and convert them from their original .PCD format to .JPG like above) in 2024, you can simply go through a dedicated IrfanView plugin on Windows, for instance. However, please understand that viewing these images this way does not properly reflect the intended experience of seeing these pictures on a CRT screen contemporaneous with Kodak’s Photo CD.
On top of their native resolution (768*512), which is obviously meager for a modern monitor or mobile screen but very fitting of Saturn’s high resolution display mode, these images have a sharpness and a chroma anticipating the output of a S-video or RGB21 cable. In its natural habitat, the rendering of a Photo CD picture on a high quality Trinitron screen is indeed quite stunning and you get why Kodak, Philips, Sega and others believed in it.
From a software point of view, Sega’s Photo CD Operator is also one of the best Photo CD players (among the admittedly few) I have experienced. It displays images faster than many competing multimedia machines, and its navigation menu is fully featured and responsive. It feels like exploring a DVD’s bonus image gallery or a late 90s〜early 00s web shrine, a few years ahead of time.
I wanted to conclude with an example of my favorite contents from the disc; something that would have truly blown my mind had I actually experienced it during the apex of the movie’s hype among anime nerds, around 1995〜1997.
This CD details, through a dozen of stills each time, the making of three specific shots from the movie. A proper exhibition couldn’t do it better, and seeing it again as I upload these pictures, it actually reminds me of that amazing AKIRA exhibition that toured in Japan post-COVID19, right as the country relaxed its tourism restrictions. Breathtaking stuff.
People love machines in 2024 A.D.
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Great post!! Chaz is probably going to talk about vcd/the mpeg 2 player later so I won’t steal his thunder but I will point out that you only need it look as far as the original Saturn controller to see sega’s commitment and vision to multimedia.
It’s tough to photograph, but notice the skip and rewind indicators printed on the controller below the shoulder buttons. Notice the repeat, stop and play/pause buttons above x y and z. These were for controlling cds, but also photo cds and vcds as well, and they printed it right on the plastic. They really thought this was going to be something, at first.
You can then of course also see how the US team did not believe in it, with their initial controller stripping out all mention of non-game functionality. The 3D controller doesn’t have it either (in any region that I’m aware of).
Here are a couple photo cds I have, which specifically call out being Saturn compatible. I haven’t opened them for reasons even I am unclear of. You may have seen previously on this forum that I got about 500 of these Ayrton Senna ones (actually more like 8 or 9)
Meanwhile games like Touge king the spirits 2 had a photo contest section on the disc but didn’t use the high res photo mode, you can check that if you want to see the difference.
One thing I’m not certain of is what the virtua fighter CG discs were doing - it’s high res mode, but not using the photo cd expansion I don’t believe? Kinda made me wonder whether it was even necessary? I guess it was for external third parties to use… Or something??
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@exodus Thanks! I don’t have things planned that clearly and far ahead but I am probably not going to talk in details about the MPEG card this time. You did give me an idea about something else I can show off.
Regarding your question on Virtua Fighter CG Portrait series, it’s not making use of the Photo CD Operator. It would not be practical either. The Photo CD technology and format are useful in the case of Ghost in the Shell because the original materials come from an era where all these manga and animation assets where initially handmade – in other words, these are high quality scans and digitized film photos of paper sheets and animation cells. The CG assets of Virtua Fighter 2 were created on a CG workstation, so they can be converted directly from binary to binary.
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04/30 A video guide for F.I.S.T., possibly Saturn’s worst fighting game
On its concept alone, here is one of my favorite Youtube videos of the past few months: a minuscule channel dedicated to providing guides for relatively obscure games on various Sega consoles (ever fancied a guide for Tazmania’s Game Gear port? Gotcha covered!), 800 subscribers, a dozen views per video at most, somehow decides to spend their precious time and conspicuous talents on a video guide for the very unfortunately named F.I.S.T., by their own admission one of the worst designed and least debugged fighting games of that decade. The kind of inexplicable human endeavor that will certainly puzzle and fascinate our super A.I overlords in a few decades.
But that’s not all! There’s even a combo video accompanying the guide.
I do not wish to overplay the significance of this random lousy game in the legacy of the Saturn, but all signs point to F.I.S.T. being hastily ordered by Imagineer right after the huge success of Virtua Fighter 2 during the 1995 Christmas season (1.3 million units sold) and – quite symbolically in my view – it was released on November 22, 1996 i.e. exactly on the Saturn’s second anniversary, as if to definitively shut down the short window of its local domination over the PlayStation, right before the release of FF7.
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