Japanese Saturn (white) - Backup Disc Problems

[daniel thomas]

Hi, everyone, long time reader, first post. I have a problem I hope you can help me with. I just received a Japanese Saturn (model 2 white), which replaces a US Saturn (model 1) that died some months ago. I have a number of discs, and a large stack of CD-R backup discs. The backup discs worked fine on the US Saturn, but on the Japanese model, I'm having lots of glitches and malfunctions.

Mostly, the problems are missing music tracks, but there are also some issues on other discs. Metal Slug has graphical glitches and has problems loading new levels. Dodonpachi crashes out after the character select screen. Batsugun has music, but it plays at Chipmunk speed (really fast).

I should also add that I have the Pro Action Replay 4-in-1, and my only Japanese retail disc is X-Men vs Street Fighter (all the rest are US discs). All the retail discs play perfectly, no issues.

Has anyone dealt with these issues? I don't have the Saturn mod chip yet, and I'm planning to buy one. For now, I'm using the swap trick, and as I've said before, these backup discs all played perfectly fine on the older US Saturn.

Here's one possible theory: on the Japanese backup discs, I hacked the region code from 'J' to 'U' so it would play on my US Saturn. Do you think that may be a cause? It shouldn't be, as the Pro Action Replay overrides the region coding.

Do you have any ideas? Do you expect everything to fix itself once I have a mod chip installed? Or is the fact I'm playing backup discs (set to US) on a Japanese Saturn the problem? I guess if worse came to worse, I could rip and burn the discs again, maybe. What do you think? Thanks in advance for helping.

[daniel thomas]

Follow-up question: Can you use a Pro Action Replay 4M Plus on a Japanese Saturn?

This evening, I burned another copy of Dodonpachi, but kept the "J" region coding (instead of patching to "U"). Tried running the disc, but again, no luck. The game played the Atlus menu clip, but stopped running at the Cave "loading" screen.

I next removed the PAR cart from the cartridge slot, and ran the game that way. This time, everything worked perfectly! No hiccups, crashes, or problems with sound. Very interesting.

I'll have to experiment with a few more discs and see if the same thing happens again. If so, then there is definitely an issue regarding the PAR with backup discs on a Japanese Saturn. Very strange. What's your experience on this issue?