2016-17 Sega Saturn Japan Explorers Club (schedule released)

[CD AGES]

Hmm. Color me intrigued and impressed. I'll check my library and see what I can find to aid the cause.

[JoeAwesome]

I'd like to talk about titles such as Groove on Fight, Taromaru, Guardian Force, Assault Suit Leynos 2, Astra Superstars and Bulk Slash.

But I'd love to talk about titles such as D-Xhird, Anarchy in the Nippon, Necronomicon, Vatlva, Hissastsu and Savaki.

[retrosportsgamer]

Great idea for a project.

[laurenhiya21]

Don't have very many Saturn games yet, but this sounds like it would be fun

Question though... How good is Saturn emulation right now? I thought it was very difficult to emulate, but I haven't really looked into it in years haha.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Even in Japan collecting ANYTHING Sega is hard. It seems like the only things ever floating around Book-OFFs are just mostly Famicom and SFC games. When I went a couple years ago, like one out of every 4 I visited had any Sega stuff at all, let alone Saturn stuff.

[mjmjr25]

I've listed about 40 games that i'm interested in looking into or otherwise further exploring. See OP for details and please feel free to comment.

You'll notice a couple things - there are some games that you might think are glaringly overlooked; those likley had a PSX-J port as well. There is a lot of cross-over between the two and I really want to ensure this focuses on SATURN only.

There are some exclusives like Batsugun and Battle Garegga that are also left off and that is because I feel like they are really well known already. I could be wrong on that - but again, really trying to keep the focus of this group narrow as there is enough still hidden that we can drill down on.

[samsonlonghair]

How about the machine I'm going to need to cobble together to emulate all these saturn games with ssf? Will an older Core2 Duo do the trick, or will I need a newer corei3,5,7 series? How much RAM will I need? Will 2GB suffice?

I know there's an official minimum requirements...

Minimum system requirements

Operating system Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows XP 64-bit Edition
CPU Any CPU supporting: FPU, MMX, SSE, SSE2, TSC (P4-class or higher)
RAM 256 MB or more
Graphics card DirectX 9.0c capable, graphics card supporting Vertex Shader 3.0 and Pixel Shader 3.0
Sound DirectX 9.0c compatible, able to play 44100 Hz stereo PCM
CD drive Drive supporting MMC3 read command

...but these specs seem outdated to me. A Pentium 4 with 256 MB of RAM? That can't be right. That sounds like a fifteen-year-old machine to me.

[noiseredux]

I've listed about 40 games that i'm interested in looking into or otherwise further exploring. See OP for details and please feel free to comment.

You'll notice a couple things - there are some games that you might think are glaringly overlooked; those likley had a PSX-J port as well. There is a lot of cross-over between the two and I really want to ensure this focuses on SATURN only.

There are some exclusives like Batsugun and Battle Garegga that are also left off and that is because I feel like they are really well known already. I could be wrong on that - but again, really trying to keep the focus of this group narrow as there is enough still hidden that we can drill down on.

I agree w/ this. And actually am sort of relieved.

Also just making sure you saw my previous post as you didn't comment nor include any of these:

Culdcept (board/card) - English voices
Dezaemon 2 (shmup maker) - icon driven interface
Linkle Liver Story (ARPG) - is this import friendly?
Shadows Of The Tusk (strategy) - English menus
The Unsolved (FMV mystery) - English video clips - looks to have Mature content


Also also, is the plan to have a calendar in place, or just 52 titles? Meaning, if I knew that GAME X was planned for January and GAME Y was planned for October, then I'd know that I needed to buy GAME X before I needed to secure a copy of GAME Y. Y'dig?

[fastbilly1]

Nice list, even a few that I dont know - Daitoride, Hansha de Spark!, Jewels of the Oracle.

Choro Q Park is a fantastic game, easily one of the best in the solid Choro Q series. Sadly it is only two player, had it been four player it would have settled in next to Mario Kart as a great party racer.

[mjmjr25]

I've listed about 40 games that i'm interested in looking into or otherwise further exploring. See OP for details and please feel free to comment.

You'll notice a couple things - there are some games that you might think are glaringly overlooked; those likley had a PSX-J port as well. There is a lot of cross-over between the two and I really want to ensure this focuses on SATURN only.

There are some exclusives like Batsugun and Battle Garegga that are also left off and that is because I feel like they are really well known already. I could be wrong on that - but again, really trying to keep the focus of this group narrow as there is enough still hidden that we can drill down on.

I agree w/ this. And actually am sort of relieved.

Also just making sure you saw my previous post as you didn't comment nor include any of these:

Culdcept (board/card) - English voices
Dezaemon 2 (shmup maker) - icon driven interface
Linkle Liver Story (ARPG) - is this import friendly?
Shadows Of The Tusk (strategy) - English menus
The Unsolved (FMV mystery) - English video clips - looks to have Mature content


Also also, is the plan to have a calendar in place, or just 52 titles? Meaning, if I knew that GAME X was planned for January and GAME Y was planned for October, then I'd know that I needed to buy GAME X before I needed to secure a copy of GAME Y. Y'dig?

I did see all these and Culdcept / The Unsolved were both on my original list (in my head), but as I started vettiing:

Culdcept (board/card) - English voices - On PS1 and PS2
Dezaemon 2 (shmup maker) - icon driven interface - I thought this was the same as Dezaemon Plus on PS1, but perhaps not. I'll include it.
Linkle Liver Story (ARPG) - is this import friendly? - Text is in Japanese, but playable. Most reviews i've read historically are not kind. It's cheap though, and a playable action RPG, i'm open to including it and we can be the judges.
Shadows Of The Tusk (strategy) - English menus - Hmm, most screen shots i've seen had all JP text. Here's a video - go to the 5 minute mark and watch a couple minutes. I can't tell. It could be playable / enjoyable - but i'm just not sure - there is a ton of JP text as well as english menus too. It's sorta confusing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O45BR-LxJh0
The Unsolved (FMV mystery) - English video clips - looks to have Mature content. On PS1

Also, I think we can probably move this up to start in July if we place a handful of the super pricey games toward the tail end of the schedule. Once we nail down the 52 i'll put out a list.