Saturn Action Replay Plus -- won't play Japanese imports

[pierrot]

Well, the latest news is that without the system battery in, Out Run now seems to be working (usually). I also got the basketball game From TV Animation Slam Dunk to work. However, Sega Touring Car Championship and Power Drift continue to give me the screens... here are some images:

Sega Touring Car Championship


Power Drift sometimes begins with this screen that offers a choice. The first choice can't be selected. When I select the second choice, it goes to the second screen and nothing else can be done. However, sometimes it doesn't offer the choice on the first screen, and skips straight to the second one.

Ok, Sega Touring Car Championship is saying that the backup hasn't been prepared properly, and that you should delete all data in the save data management screen. Then it says that you can get there from that screen by holding down the L and R buttons and hitting the reset button on the Saturn

Power Drift is saying that it couldn't properly save data, then it's asking if you want to try again: First option is, 'yes'; Second option is 'no.'
Second screen says to delete the save data in the save data screen; file name is, "POWER_DRIFT." Get there by holding L and R--yada yada.

Looks like a corrupted backup, or maybe you haven't initialized the memory manager? You said that you can play US releases without any trouble, though. Did you have the AR cart in the backup slot when you loaded them up? My best guess would be that there's something about your Action Replay tricking the system into thinking there's an issue with your Saturn's backup memory, but I really don't know.

[Centrale]

Thanks Pierrot for the translation! Well, I'm quite new to the Saturn (it was the only Sega console I missed back in the day) so there may be something obvious that I don't know about. But from what I can see, I've deleted everything from the Saturn's internal memory, and from the ARP. There's nothing appearing in the window when I go to the memory manager screen, however it also says 0 blocks available. Is there a way to initialize it, beyond just selecting items within it and deleting them? Without the battery in the Saturn, I thought it wouldn't be able to save anything at all -- it's asking for the language, date and time every time I power it on currently. Anyway, if there is a way to initialize it beyond what I've already done, I'm willing to do that because it's new to me and I don't have any vitally important game saves or anything.

As for the ARP, is there a way to initialize it? It looked unused when I got it, but who knows.

I did try one US release, In the Hunt, the other night with the ARP in the backup slot. It seemed to start up fine (aside from its usual quirk of having to have the controller unplugged at first). But I didn't try to play it beyond just making sure it got to the title screen. I have a few other US releases I could also try just to see if any of them are acting weirdly.

As it happens, I'm going to a big retro gaming event in Portland this weekend... maybe there will be some people there with Saturns and/or ARP carts that could help me troubleshoot by trying different consoles and carts.

[pierrot]

Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned initializing. I seem to recall having to do something like that with the internal memory when I got my Saturn, but that was about 15 years ago, so I may be misleading you. The Saturn internal memory should be able to save game data even without a battery, though. (Which will be cleared upon powering off the system.) Also, it's perfectly normal to get the language/data & time settings windows when you power on the system without a battery.

The ARP memory manager says "0 blocks available"? You should have a screen with two windows next to each other (internal memory on the left, ARP backup on the right) and without any saves, it should have "5XX/5XX" and "*8XXX/8XXX" (respectively) at the bottom.

Sounds like a slightly tricky issues. It's not that your AR cart isn't working, per se, since you're able to boot up Power Drift and Sega Touring Car Championship. You might want to try the earlier suggestion of flashing a newer bios to the cart to see if you get better results. I am a bit concerned about your internal memory if it's saying there isn't any available, though.

[jinn]

I would open the system up and check the MoBo for corrosion. I have gotten a few Saturn that had a flawless shell but I had to repair some traces.

[Centrale]

Hello again! So, the latest... my apologies if I'm giving inconsistent information sometimes, but I swear the situation keeps changing intermittently. So, the thing about the memory manager... I've looked in both the Saturn's own memory manager, and the ARP memory manager. Yesterday, I went to the Saturn's memory manager, and selected Clear. It said "Cleared!" and then gave me the message saying Memory Available: 0. I also went into the ARP memory manager at one point, and saw that it had a few things listed on the Saturn side -- about five entries that were gibberish. I cleared those there too.

Today I went back to the ARP memory manager and those gibberish items were back. (Pardon my dusty monitor!)



I cleared them, then tried starting Power Drift. Got the usual Japanese text screen. I went into the Saturn memory manager and took a look. It gives you the choice to select an item to remove, or to clear all. I chose select an item to remove, and there were at least 150 entries of gibberish text with various data size amounts listed.



I tried selecting one to Remove; it said that it didn't remove it. Then it bumped me back to the choice screen and the option to select an item was greyed out.



I chose to clear all, and it claimed to clear all, but again said 0 memory available.



Well, what do you all think of that? Seems like something is wrong with the Saturn's memory, huh? I'll try to open the console up and take a look soon but I'm not sure when I'll have time to... hopefully tomorrow. Is there anything particularly tricky/delicate about taking off the outer shell I should know in advance? By the way, thank you all for your help.

[pierrot]

I've never seen that, but someone else might have some better insight.

Nothing too tricky about popping off the top of the Saturn. Just use the regular care and delicacy, and try to keep from stripping the screws. I find the Saturn to be a pretty hardy disc system.

[Hobie-wan]

I'm no expert, but looks like the memory is toast since it keeps filling up with garbage like that every time.

[Breetai]

I would say something is corrupted in the memory on the PAR. It very well might be that your cart is toast.

[jinn]

I'm going to look into SRAM replacement for the Saturn and if it's possible I will see if we can also double the memory capacity.