The “Sega Saturn Slim” is becoming one of the most awaited retro gaming devices for 2024. This planned update to the classic Sega Saturn console aims to slim down its design by removing the CD-ROM drive.
The “Sega Saturn Slim” is becoming one of the most awaited retro gaming devices for 2024. This planned update to the classic Sega Saturn console aims to slim down its design by removing the CD-ROM drive.
What’s the point? If you’re gonna alter the OG equipment to such an extreme extent like removing the CD drive, then you’re not going to play original copies on it anyways. Might as well just run an emulator.
The point is to attempt it and do it with the original hardware without “trimming” the board.
It’s an exercise in space management, not emulation.
Emulation is what it sounds like. Emulating the original thing.
This is the original thing. Just smaller.
And missing the normal way to play games. You’d have to use ROMs on this, and at that point there really isnt much of a difference between this and just emulating, you are already more than half the way there.
Not exactly. Emulating the board and chipset is where a lot of emulation issues show up. ROMs are generally pretty easy to serialize/copy around. It’s the chipset/boards that are tricky and generally requires the boards being destroyed when reverse engineering them to figure out how to emulate the chipset features.
This would be a “perfect” emulation of any Saturn ROM/Game/whatever.
That can only be done with original hardware. Emulators get close, but all they can ever get is “close”. New versions of the emulator chipsets come out to address and fix bugs or API issues that are discovered later as additional games are played on the emulator.
It’s why not all games run on all emulators. There’s a lot of subsets based on chip compatibility and specifically, how close it is to the original thing that will only work on some subset of games; and you might need a different emulator to run the other games for a platform because of compatibility issues.
So, again, this is not an emulator.
This is the real deal. Just smaller.
Running a ROM on it is not emulating. It’s running a game file on the original hardware, and the compatibility will be 100%, instead of some smaller % that an emulated board/chipset would have.
Exactly. The ONLY point of these consoles is to play physical copies of games you still own. Otherwise just buy a mini PC and USB controllers that match the originals and call it a day. Going halfway like this makes it useless to both niches.
It takes one benefit of using an emulator (digital storage medium) and combines it with the worst aspects of original hardware (physical hardware prone to damage, video output that isn’t compatible with many modern displays) and also loses out on the other benefits an emulator has (shader support, save states, emulated hardware overclocking to guarantee max and stable framerates, etc).
To me, this is almost worse because it also permanently alters a console that is no longer manufactured.
Yeah, I was interested in the idea cause I have a saturn which is a bit beaten up, but if I can’t play the disc’s I have why would I bother.
You can do a perfect ROM compression of the games you own on disk (or find one someone else did), and then play them on this sega saturn console and achieve 100% compatibility with the original game. This is not something an emulator can do. It can get close, but it will not reach 100% without the original hardware/chipset (usually).
That’s a lot of fancy words to say “so you can emulate your games”. Which is our point: if you can’t play your OG games and are gonna be emulating those anyways, no one gives a shit if it has an OG chip anymore. We’re gonna have to emulate anyways, any might as well do it with better shaders, graphics, control, etc than on this custom built, one use only, emulator.
Look, I don’t know what to tell you here. You’re downvoting me (or someone is) because you’re not understanding the point of what they’re doing. That’s ok, but it’s not ok to claim victory here because you don’t understand the point of what they’re doing, or you’re not knowledgeable about the intricacies of the retro gaming/emulation world.
It’s not to make an emulator for the general public. It’s to take an original board, and put it into a SFF (Small Form Factor) and have a perfect, 1:1 system that can play any Saturn game. Any game. No chipset issues. And it looks like an original Saturn, just smaller.
This appeals to a very specific set of people who care about compatibility and functionality of the games they’re playing.
It’s not a general emulator or general device. If you want one of those, you can already build one.
It’s a thing that does exactly what it says it does. And it appeals to a very specific type of crowd. Which is, apparently, not you. That’s ok. But don’t trash it just because you don’t understand it.
Please see my reply explaining the differences
Oh my goodness, replacing the optical drive with a modern solution isn’t close to halfway to complete software emulation. It’s not even 20% of the way there.
But it’s not the original thing. It’s missing a core feature. So it is emulation.
Please see my reply next to yours explaining the differences and why this still matters
there’s the charm of playing in original hardware without having to deal with the original storage medium.
There are better alternatives to CDs, might as well use them. It is no different than using a flashcart.
But if you’re buying a retro console just to emulate half the games, why not emulate the whole thing and just buy a modern USB version of the controller?
Are you sure?
yes
given the popularity of everdrives, i don’t think most people play on original hardware for the sake of using original copies. using original hardware gets around potential inaccuracies and/or performance issues with emulation. the Saturn is particularly prone to these issues because of it’s complex architecture- despite being more powerful, Dreamcast emulators tend to run much better than Saturn emulators just because there are way less moving parts
Okay, but you can do that with a softmod or a flash cart on the Saturn, too. You don’t need to rip out its guts to transplant them to a different case. Even if you had a Saturn with a faulty drive you can add a ODE solution without having to sacrifice the original form factor.
Plus, yeah, Saturn emulation is harder and less accurate than other systems, but we’re pretty much there these days for most of the stuff you want to play. You can do all sorts of cool cases and consolized devices to play old games these days, why break apart an original Saturn for that?
i agree with a lot of what you’re saying- i kept the original shell and disc drive on my Saturn personally and just use a pseudosaturn for playing imports and backups. i was just answering fishos’ question of why bother with original hardware if you’re not using original discs
Funko pops were also very popular. Everdrives are overpriced junk.
Show us a better solution.
Yeah it’s a bit of a head scratcher