Okay, the Sega Saturn, nearly a blacker sheep than the Sega 32X in many gamers minds, is finally getting some love from hardware hackers.  We have seen the Sega Dreamcast receive the bulk of the interest from hardware hackers in recent times while the Saturn just sits all lonely in its own corner of shame.  The Saturn never really received the love it deserved from publishers or gamers alike.  When Sega released their 32-Bit answer to the looming Sony Playstation, a full six months ahead of schedule, fans at first were interested and frankly surprised.  See, Sega forgot to tell anyone that the Saturn would be shipping six months ahead of schedule, including the game developers and publishers so for that first six months, leading up to the launch of the Playstation mind you, we only saw the initial six or so launch titles on Sega’s new hardware. 

This was not a good sign of support when reading about TONS of games being announced for the soon to launch Playstation.  Add in the unruly nature of the beast that Sega cobbled together and the lack of working with 3^rd parties correctly (oh how quickly they forget hard learned lessons) and you will quickly realize the Saturn was kind of screwed up front.  It was a programming nightmare for developers and the resulting early games showed it which didn’t help when releasing ports.  The Playstation used a traditional, read industry standard, three point system for their 3D engine while the Saturn (and the 3DO) used a four point 3D system (this really messed up developers and even cut some from bothering with a Saturn port of their own.

Anyhow, back on subject and not running wild in another topic- thanks to the team behind GDEMU for the Sega Dreamcast, we can now wait patiently for a similar device for the Sega Saturn.  The idea behind what is being referred to as “Rhea” is to be able to play certain types of game backups (such as the ones you legally make yourself) on your actual Saturn hardware (since the emulation community is still having hell getting a decent emulator working).

Certain file formats won’t work on this hardware mod (list available at the GDEMU site, link below).  This is mostly due to how various formats store the information, not something the hacking team can really change/add to the Saturn (remember, no one has released a modified BIOS like is available for the Dreamcast).

Rhea will require connection through the CD-ROM connectors already available.  Also, there will be some slight soldering work involved to get power to the SD card reader (apparently nothing TOO hard to do).

Saroo is another option in this field which uses the cartridge slot without touching the CD-ROM drive.  Retrocollect.com covered it awhile back.

Official site: GDEMU.com
Sources: Retrocollect and Retro Game Network

Carl Williams

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