Occasional Saturn Graphical Glitches

[goemonsama]

I got a US Model 2 Saturn and an action replay not to long ago and everything has been working pretty great. However, I just acquired a copy of the Detanna!! Twinbee Yahho! Deluxe pack and it plays fine except for some graphical glitches that seem to show up now and then. While Playing Detanna!! Twinbee, the screen gets covered with junk tiles, the game still plays, just parts of the screen are covered, making it next to impossible to survive. If I let myself die and get a game over, and let the game go back to the title screen, everything will play fine. The glitches usually happen halfway through stage 3 and sometimes on stage 6. Very rarely, I'll get some screen flickering on stage 1 or 2. Sometimes I fire up the game and it plays flawlessly, other times I get glitches on stage 3, start over, and then get no glitches. I haven't encountered anything on the Twinbee Yahho! half of the disc, but I haven't played that game as much yet (I'm planning on 1cc'ing DT and them moving on to 1cc TY). I have only encountered these glitches on this particular game disc.

So what I'm wondering is... who is the culprit? Is it the action replay? The Saturn's disk drive or laser? The game disc itself? Something else? Any experts out there have any clues?

PS it's been ages since I've been on a forum so sorry if this thread is in the wrong place!

[avrame]

Heya!

I'm unfamiliar with the titles you mentioned, but it could very well be the Action Replay. I recall on a Game Sacks episode, they mentioned some games are only compatible with a paired memory expansion kit, like Metal Slug works with a 4MB Ram cart, but has issues with a 8MB, and vice versa for Marvel vs Capcom.

Any chance you can run the game without an Action Replay to see if that is the culprit?

[goemonsama]

Thanks for replying!

Unfortunately, it's an import, so I would need a Japanese Saturn. The game isn't one of the ones that requires a ram cart. I have had some minor glitches with sprites occurring with games that require ram (Vampire Savior and KoF '97) but never with ones that don't. Still, I might have to save up and get another Action Replay, which I was afraid of...

[Anayo]

I'm just chiming in to agree with the action replay theory. I had the Saturn version of Metal Slug glitch up on me once and re-seating the AR seemed to clear it up.

[goemonsama]

Hmm... So I tried all the re-seating cartridge tricks (pushing it all the way down, not all the way down, left side up, right side up, etc.) but nothing's changed. Should I bother getting another Action Replay and trying my luck with that or have my Saturn's pins just gone bad?

It's too bad the Saturn's cartridge slot is so flimsy and finicky, otherwise it would be a 10/10 console in my book.

[Anayo]

I don't know your exact situation, but I'd try replacing as many things as possible to narrow down what's causing it. A different AR cart, a different Saturn... I hesitate to say a different game disc, but I once had a CD-R copy of Soukyugurentai where all the text looked like Missingno. Reburning it on another disc seemed to fix it.