Saturn Emulation on Pandora


Duddyroar

Duddyroar

Member
Joined
May 8, 2003
Messages
419
Location
Leicester, UK
Website
www.vc-reviews.com
I know this has probably been asked before on numerous occasions - with the response presumably being in the negative - but will the Pandora someday be capable of emulating the Sega Saturn to a playable degree?


I know the console's awkward CPU arrangement creates headaches for emulation, but surely if the Pandora can manage the N64 (and give the Dreamcast a go, albeit quite slowly) then the Saturn is within reach?


I believe the Pandora can also emulate the Sega 32X, which has a similar hardware setup to the Saturn.


I'm sure I will get shot down in flames but I'd personally love to be able to play Radiant Silvergun, Shining the Holy Ark, Virtua Fighter 2, Burning Rangers and Panzer Dragoon Saga on my beloved handheld.


Don't kill my dream, I beg you!
 
duddyroar said:
I know this has probably been asked before on numerous occasions - with the response presumably being in the negative - but will the Pandora someday be capable of emulating the Sega Saturn to a playable degree?


I know the console's awkward CPU arrangement creates headaches for emulation, but surely if the Pandora can manage the N64 (and give the Dreamcast a go, albeit quite slowly) then the Saturn is within reach?


I believe the Pandora can also emulate the Sega 32X, which has a similar hardware setup to the Saturn.


I'm sure I will get shot down in flames but I'd personally love to be able to play Radiant Silvergun, Shining the Holy Ark, Virtua Fighter 2, Burning Rangers and Panzer Dragoon Saga on my beloved handheld.


Don't kill my dream, I beg you!
Click to expand...

I'm not too knowledgeable on the system but the main problem with emulating the Saturn is that the CPU and internal memory are very complex, much like the Jaguar, and the graphics are processed differently to most consoles. It's also one of the reasons why fewer games where released for it. Honestly, if you want to play Sega Saturn download Satourne for your PC, it's a really good emulator... and I believe it's open source, so perhaps it could be made to work on the Pandora, but honestly I wouldn't hold out hopes. Sega Saturn would be harder to get working than Dreamcast. N64 however, from what I've read, is remarkably easy to emulate.


Still... everything I say is merely hearsay, there are otheres who know more than I here.
 
TornadoCreator said:
I'm not too knowledgeable on the system but the main problem with emulating the Saturn is that the CPU and internal memory are very complex, much like the Jaguar, and the graphics are processed differently to most consoles.
Click to expand...

Not quite sure how much relevance this has, but there was at some stage a video of Tempest 2K (Jaguar) seemingly running at full speed (not sure about sound) floating around, haven't seen or heard much of this recently though.


If the Jag/Saturn share similar convoluted architecture perhaps the author of the T2K port could be asked very nicely - just a thought.


I concur regarding Radiant Silvergun, i bought a Saturn just for this game and still play at least once a week - a portable version would make the Pandora indispensable.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
^ I think it's that they're similarly convoluted, rather than having a similar convoluted architecture. :lol:
 
quick question, anyone here ever play deathtank? deathtank online would be pretty sweet, that is, if it can be ported to pandora
 
It takes quite a powerful pc to run Saturn games at a satisfactory speed. We may see Saturn emulation in spirit, but I sincerely doubt it would ever be playable on our humble machine
 
joce said:
quick question, anyone here ever play deathtank? deathtank online would be pretty sweet, that is, if it can be ported to pandora
Click to expand...
I played Deathtank many many times :) Such a classic game did not go unnoticed though, since many clones have been made :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The pandora is completely capable of emulating the Saturn. Easily, it falls somewhere bellow 100mhz. But the problem is we dont have source, so it cant be ported.
 
linc186 said:
The pandora is completely capable of emulating the Saturn. Easily, it falls somewhere bellow 100mhz. But the problem is we dont have source, so it cant be ported.
Click to expand...

I had to read the username to realize this wasn't a troll.


Hell, I dunno, could be.
 
My PC with 4GB of RAM and 2.2GHz manages Saturn emulation fine although it still has issues with some of the live action video, but my previous computer couldn't manage it and it wasn't much behind my current computer... it tended to suffer with major slowdown and crashing during video sequences, which would likely be the result on the Pandora, although I'm hoping this could be overcome.
 
Sadly... Unless Exo bends his crystalline will towards it, but I fear that the hyper-dimensional code involved would simply melt our human eyes.
 
can we just have deathtank instead? make a good clone. xbox360 tried one, but it sucks balls
 
Currently, the only open source saturn emulator that is able to run on non-x86 platforms is Yabause, which is actually a likely candidate for a Pandora port. It has been ported to the Wii, the PSP, even the Dreamcast. Now, that aside, Yabause is not really a very good emulator at this point.


I am actually a big fan of the Sega Saturn (Saturn Bomberman is among the greatest games to play with friends of all time), so I do like to emulate it. On my PC, I use an emulator called SSF, which is, I believe, based on a Japanese emulator, about which not much is known.


Now, SSF runs great even on more complicated games on my Core2Duo, but it's not open source, the author is unknown, and I'm sure it relies on x86-specific code somewhere, because it requires all kinds of fancy instruction sets (that might be a bad assumption, but in this case it's probably not wrong, so...)... anyway, it's definitely not coming to the Pandora. Unless someone writes a Saturn emulator from scratch, specifically for the Pandora, Yabause is the only thing we are getting.


I said Yabause isn't a very good emulator, but it does run SOME games fairly well, and it has the nice feature of rendering at arbitrary resolutions with OpenGL, so the graphics are always super-crisp. There is a compatibility list here. I'm not sure if I trust it completely, because I feel like I have some games that are listed as "playable", that don't actually work on my system.


Still... the Saturn on the Pandora... that would really be something. I'm just imagining playing Nights, the Pandora in my hand, the nubs smoothly gliding under my thumbs... Ok, I'll save the rest of that thought for my "private time".
 
The sad thing about Saturn emulation being difficult to do and unlikely on Pandora is that it is a system I basically have missed completely. I guess I'll have to try it on PC sometime, but hold out hope that someday it will be where the controls can do it justice. it's the last real Mystery system since emulation of most other platforms has been widely available. For some reason I want to think of the Saturn like I do the TG/PCE and the Neo-Geo as one of those odd systems that will have a charm about it unlike the usual fare.
 
@Poem58 - If you can get one for a good price, it's worth buying the console itself. Don't wait for emulation to catch up - I suspect that it won't be able to do it justice for a little while yet.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
hey any on know japanese cause that would be cool to actually know what that guy is singing in the music video
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Hồng Thất Công
SSF - A Near Perfect Sega Saturn Emulator
Replies
10
Views
9K
Hồng Thất Công
Hồng Thất Công
Rivroner
What About Saturn Emulation?
3 4 5
Replies
86
Views
13K
darkstorm classic
darkstorm classic
andyhamer
Collectors - Cherished Games?
Replies
11
Views
2K
trix
trix
miseryguts1969
Biggest Bargain/expenditure
2 3
Replies
51
Views
7K
Wrath Of Khan
Wrath Of Khan
E
Looking For Some Saturn Games
Replies
11
Views
1K
tomjack264
T
Back
Top