gonna give this a shot as soon as I get home
#saturn
Cyotheville, an electrical engineer who’s been closely following the SAROO project, said on social media last week that the Saturn flash cartridge’s latest firmware seems to be bricking some devices.
“There are multiple reports of SAROO users bricking their cartridges with the firmware update,” Cyo said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Some sellers are using different flash ICs, causing the FPGA to brick.”
That seems to be corroborated by people discussing the SAROO elsewhere on the Internet. In the comments section of a YouTube video about SAROO firmware problems, a person said that they bought from an AliExpress seller called KK DIY Retro Game Store and were unable to update its firmware, and a reply said that when they attempted to update, it bricked their cartridge.
Here's a screenshot machine translated into English from the original Portuguese:
In another post on X, Cyo said that certain sellers are using recycled memory in creating the cartridges they’re selling, preventing the firmware from being updated via SD card.
“‘KK DIY’ is not a recommended vendor for SAROO,” Cyo said. “@nonstopxiaowei has high quality SAROO cards on his AliExpress store. He is the recommended seller.”
Nonstopxiaowei’s store is called Retro Game Paradise Store and, as of this story’s publication, is selling a naked SAROO board for about US$84 and one with a shell for US$100.
Meanwhile, the KK DIY Retro Game Store that some users are complaining about sells a naked board for about US$179.
The two stores were compared in a thread made by YZB on the ChinaEmu message board earlier this week. In it, YZB warned against buying from KK DIY and speculated that the seller downloaded TPUnix's source code, modified it and recompiled it with their own modifications so its firmware cannot be upgraded using files from anyone else, including TPUnix.
YZB is best known in the West as the person who hacked various Saturn games to use the 4 MB RAM cartridge for improvements. They appear to be collaborating with TPUnix on developing SAROO firmware.
"It's OK for open source projects to fight price wars," YZB said, which SHIRO! has translated via machine from the original Chinese. "However, in order to lower the price, the use of problematic or hidden problems of the disassembled second-hand chips, resulting in random black screens of death in the game will not be worth it."
SHIRO!’s own Knight0fDragon bought a SAROO from both those sellers and plans on testing them soon. SHIRO! will publish the results of those tests once he’s done them, but for now, he hasn’t attempted to put the new firmware on either one until he can verify that he can backup and repair them in case they do get bricked.
SAROO: A work in progress
SAROO is a work-in-progress homebrew cartridge that aims to emulate the Saturn’s CD block, allowing game images to boot from an SD card. It’s also been planned to offer 1M/4M expanded RAM and backup save memory, two things that traditionally are offered by separate official cartridges.
The SAROO project was revived in February when TPUnix started updating the project’s Github after it was thought to be dead in the eight years since its inception.
Since that Github is open to anyone to see, the cartridge’s design can be built and sold by anyone, too. That’s just what Chinese sellers have done on AliExpress, despite the design and its firmware being an unfinished work in progress.
Impressions on the early wave of cartridges have been mixed, as SHIRO! community member Offy said in August, with graphical glitches and a lack of support for games that require the 4 MB expanded RAM cartridge frustrating those who have taken a chance on them.
TPUnix seems intent on providing support and firmware updates for the SAROO despite none of the AliExpress sellers explicitly getting their official seal of approval.
That much is clear after TPUnix made a thread last month on the ChinaEmu message board called “SAROO daily firmware update sticky.” There, TPUnix responds to other posters’ questions about their work.
Just today, they released new firmware update that can be downloaded from TPUnix's ChinaEmu thread that they say improves game compatibility and fixes bugs, including many games that were stuck in animation playback.
And only a couple weeks ago, they put out a firmware that added support for saving games to the SAROO as if it were an official memory card.
TZMWX, who appears to be working with TPUnix on SAROO firmware, said on X on Nov. 1 that in addition to the new save feature, the latest firmware added a number of features:
- Retain the optical drive function.
- Support saving to cartridge (each game has a separate archive stored in the SD card).
- The menu supports four languages, add lang_id = x in saroocfg.txt
(x=0 for Chinese; 1 for English; 2 for Portuguese; and 3 for Japanese). - Support LED light for disk reading.
- Support 1.00BIOS host.
Westerners likely know TZMWX best for the portable Saturns he's kitbashed.
As that firmware was being tested, TZMWX posted in mid-October that the SAROO can provide 1,000 times more save storage space than an official cartridge, and that the feature was developed by YZB.
This story originally appeared on Sega Saturn SHIRO!
A documentary on the life of legendary game designer Kenji Eno is set for a December release, the group producing it announced.
Archipel said on social media last week that the documentary it's been working on all year will debut at its first physical show, Archipel Caravan, at the Institut Franco-Japonais Tokyo in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Dec. 15 through 17.
For those who won't be in Japan at the time, the group said that the Eno documentary will be available online sometime this year.
Archipel has been making documentaries about the people who work on video games for eight years. All of them are available to watch for free on their YouTube channel.
In February, they released a teaser trailer for a documentary on Eno to mark the 10th anniversary since his death.
Archipel's video description says they've gathered testimonials from Eno's friends, colleagues and family to "commemorate this brilliant mind of Japan's game industry."
Eno wrote and directed memorable horror adventure games D and Enemy Zero on the Sega Saturn, not to mention D2 on the Dreamcast. His vision for the games pushed them to new heights in realistic graphics and shocking content.
SHIRO!'s own Peter Malek wrote extensively about Eno and D in 2019.
Eno also designed the unique audio-only adventure game Real Sound: Kaze no Regret on the Saturn.
Archipel Caravan won't just be about the documentary — it's a "celebration of Japan’s pop culture centered around its creators" that will feature talks about video game luminaries like Shinji Mikami and Hideki Kamiya, masterclasses with manga and animation artists, and live performances from musicians like Saori Kobayashi — one of the composers of Panzer Dragoon Saga and Orta — and Takenobu Mitsuyoshi — the singer heard on soundtracks like Daytona USA and the Japanese version of Burning Rangers, among many other titles.
For those who will be in Tokyo next month, tickets can be purchased now.
This story originally appeared on Sega Saturn SHIRO!
A classic Sega Saturn action game by legendary developer Treasure now can be played to completion in English thanks to fan translators who uploaded a finished patch for Silhouette Mirage on Wednesday.
It's essentially finished, that is — labeled "version 0.999," the patch's readme file acknowledges two known issues:
- Centering of "Insufficient RAM" text
- "Continue" screen sprites are untranslated
Those issues likely weren't seen as important enough to block release now that the team — led by Rasputin3000 and including soniccd123 and Malenko — has finished hacking in a translation of the story and the shop text in the seventh area of the game.
“This is going to be treated the ‘release’ version as we currently do not have the skill set to decompress then continue screen sprites or center the ‘insufficient RAM’ text,” Rasputin3000 said in Shiro’s Discord server. “Neither of these lingering issues impact one’s ability to play the game to completion though (they are effectively polish).”
The patch, which can be downloaded from its Resources page on SegaXtreme, uses Knight0fDragon's Sega Saturn Patcher utility. It needs a special 2.0 version of the patcher utility, which is bundled in the zip file with the patch.
The Silhouette Mirage patch has been confirmed to work on real hardware using Fenrir/Fenrir Duo, Phoebe and Satiator, as well as via emulation using Bizhawk, Mednafen and Yaba Sanshiro.
The patch's readme file includes three important notes:
- Patch will work with all Saturn versions of the game. This includes: v1.001 (Demo), v1.003 (Release), V1.100 (Rev. A)
- "+ Region Free Patch" must be UNSELECTED when patching in SSP otherwise the game will crash on boot.
- If the game is having difficulty loading on Fenrir ODE, then try patching with "Separate Track Files (if applicable)" SELECTED in SSP.
While the patch's Nov. 1 release date missed the team's initial completion estimate of late October by a single day, it's still remarkable speed considering they began the project just about four months ago in July.
An extra day or two's wait was nothing for Saturn fans who have waited 26 years to play Silhouette Mirage in English after it released on the console exclusively in Japan on Sept. 11, 1997. It was ported to the PlayStation the following July, and North American PlayStation owners got an English localization of it in January 2000.
But the better version was the Saturn original, arguably, which featured additional graphical effects that the PlayStation didn't. Not only that, but the English localization from Working Designs also inflated the cost of everything in the game's shop, which succeeded less in increasing the challenge and more in increasing the frustration and tedium players experienced.
Rasputin3000's team used Working Designs' script for their patch but didn't bring over the shop cost changes, leaving the original design intact and more accessible than ever.
They've said that they plan on creating a retranslation in a new patch, too, once they'd finished the patch that uses Working Designs' translation.
"I have already had the script retranslated and will be releasing a relocalization patch probably a few months after this patch drops," Rasputin3000 said in a post on SegaXtreme last month.
He said on Discord that he tapped a translator named Wiredcrackpot, who was behind the Radirgy fan translation on Dreamcast. “Inserting the new text should be a breeze as I won’t need to make any significant changes to the current textbox layouts (just need to find the will to do it haha),” Rasputin3000 said.