Thinking of buying a Saturn. Any advice?

[jdblick1002]

Hey there people, new to the forums but i've been loving the site for a while now

anyway

as the thread states i've recently been considering buying a Saturn off ebay, here in the UK you can get a system and bundled games for around £25. As this would be my first Saturn (DC all the way!) i just wondered if there was any advice anyone could offer, before i enter a bidding war with the many other bidders who plan to thwart my success! there is currently a bundle that includes the official steering wheel but its more expensive than the other auctions, is it worth the extra price? in terms of responsiveness, games that use it etc?

it would also be a PAL machine (obv.) and i've read somewhere in these very forums that the majority of good games are Japanese imports. i cant say im really that bothered by imports as, well, i'm not too hot on Japanese, but i would like to play US games as im sure theres a load of cool games that werent released over here. is there a way to enable this? can Saturn games be burned?

Thx in advance, i hope to have won one by the end of this week!

P.S is it worth paying a few quid for the official DC keyboard just for TOTD? is it any good?

[Ack]

First off, Typing of the Dead is one of the greatest games ever. Ok, maybe not that good, but it's oddly a pretty fun title.

Second, I just bought my own Saturn on eBay, and I had to ask some info on the same stuff. I don't know that much about the PAL version, but if you're handy with a soldering iron, there are modchips you can put into a Saturn to get it to play imports. Racket actually sells one. Also, at least for the American models, there's the Action Replay, which can allow Japanese imports to play(not sure about PAL), and then there's the swap trick, though that one's apparently pretty tricky...

Also, America got several different versions of the Saturn. Not sure about the UK, but I'm betting they got something similar. In the US, the Model 2 is supposed to be easier to install the modchip.

Well, that's about the extent of what I know. Sorry I can't be more help since I don't know much about PAL systems, but I'm sure somebody on here will.

[andymol21]

First off, Typing of the Dead is one of the greatest games ever. Ok, maybe not that good, but it's oddly a pretty fun title.

Second, I just bought my own Saturn on eBay, and I had to ask some info on the same stuff. I don't know that much about the PAL version, but if you're handy with a soldering iron, there are modchips you can put into a Saturn to get it to play imports. Racket actually sells one. Also, at least for the American models, there's the Action Replay, which can allow Japanese imports to play(not sure about PAL), and then there's the swap trick, though that one's apparently pretty tricky...

Also, America got several different versions of the Saturn. Not sure about the UK, but I'm betting they got something similar. In the US, the Model 2 is supposed to be easier to install the modchip.

Well, that's about the extent of what I know. Sorry I can't be more help since I don't know much about PAL systems, but I'm sure somebody on here will.

I've baisically gone through the same as above, except mine is a PAL console, so I can answer the questions. I bought my Saturn for £25 from Gamestation with Sega Rally and Sonic Jam thrown in. So the price sounds right...

Don't bank on the swap method, it's pretty hard to do and very time consuming. You really do need a mod chip to use it properly, Racketboy's ones are brilliant and work perfectly. Please do buy one from him if you do decide to get one, he really will give you the best deal and the shipping to me was 4 days, for only $4! As for soldering, I didn't even use any solder, there are guides on the web (I think even here on this site) on how to install the modchip without solder on a Model 2.

I actually got two Saturns as the first one I bought didn't work. The 1st was a Model 1 and has oval buttons, the second a model 2 with round buttons. If you can, find a Saturn with round buttons, these are much more likely to be model 2s, but you still can't be sure without opening it. I didn't get an Action Replay cart nor a memory card so I don't really know much about that... But if you want to play some of the games that require the Memory expansion, then a memory card/expansion cart is useful.

Hope any of that was useful. Just ask any other questions and someone on here will try to help

P.S Typing of the Dead is AWESOME... Had to get that off my chest. If you can find a keyboard cheap thn you should, but don't spend hundreds on it It's not that good!

[jdblick1002]

cheers for the response, i aint too far away from you located in glorious wolverhampton. this was the 1 auction i had my eye on.....
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sega-Saturn-St-Wh ... 8748208953

i know its a bit pricey, but theres a lot for the money

[Dreamstation]

I would buy a Japanese model due the games are lot cheaper then the games from the USA region.
The only thing that you might not like is the Japanese language and if this does not bother you will save yourself a lot of money on buying games from ebay and other online game stores.

[andymol21]

Meh... That auction has a lot of stuff, but if you are looking to burn backups, then the 19 games don't really make much difference. Still, if you are looking to buy original software than that looks ok. With all those controllers and the memory card, although I doubt it's a Ram expansion as well, so it won't be helpful for games that require that.

It really is a matter of how thick your wallet is. If your willing to pay £60 for that bundle, then you will be a happy Saturn owner and will be able to play some fantastic games straight out of the box. If your willing to wait a bit longer, do a bit of work inside the console, and play games that are burned onto CDRs, then you can probably save quit a bit of money and have access to a much larger library. The modchip will also allow imports to be played, and modding a Japanese Saturn's a bit of a pain...

It really is up to you!

Oh and from that picture you can't tell if it's a model 1 or a model 2 Saturn, again i mod chips arn't your thing then tht does not matter, but something to keep in mind...

[otaku]

screw the swap method just get an import cart (or better yet an import/ram cart) import carts are under 10 bucks shipped quite often and the combo carts are 30 or so. Highly recommended. I didn't have to mod and wouldn't bother. I didn't do CD-rs either because the games hold their value pretty well especially the expensive stuff (hell I made money owning/buying saturn stuff) its a great system you'll enjoy it.