Sega Saturn Slim: The Classic Console, Reimagined for Today’s Gamers
Sega Saturn Slim: The Ultimate Retro Console for 2024
The “Sega Saturn Slim” is becoming one of the most awaited retro gaming devices for 2024. This planned update to the classic Sega Saturn console aims to slim down its design by removing the CD-ROM drive.
The way I see it, there are two separate issues for discussion here.
The first is permanently altering a classic console. That's an issue of historical preservation, and I'm not going to get into that.
The second issue is whether or not, being prepared to go as far as having removed the original optical drive, one might not just as well drop the console entirely and go the emulation route. To me, suggesting this shows a lack of understanding about how emulation works.
A real console consists of IC semiconductors and discrete components that propagate electrical fields and shuffle the occasional electron around. A software emulator is a bag of rules and tricks that tries to replicate the overall output of a console. Even FPGA-based emulators aren't 100% perfect, because their gates and connections aren't configured identically to the original hardware.
Game consoles are very complex systems that operate via the interplay of dozens of intricate subsystems. That's why emulators start off supporting only a handful of games, and rarely reach 100% compatibility. Emulator developers are forever picking the next emulation inconsistency from the bug report list, tracking down what their emulator is doing differently to the original hardware, and then adding a new rule for dealing with that particular case. If they're lucky, a couple of other games will also start working better. If they're unlucky, a couple of other games will start working worse.
(For the interested, the author of BSNES wrote a detailed article about these issues for Ars Technica)
Take the Atari 2600. It's a very old console that was very popular. The community has full schematics not just for the mainboard, but even the CPU and custom video chip. More patient people than me have sat for hours with oscilloscopes and test ROMs to probe the console inside and out. There are emulators that can play every game that was released back in the day without fault. Heck, the emulator I use is so advanced that you can set it to emulate specific revisions of the console with specific CRT TV parameters, and it will glitch in the same way that the game would glitch on that combination of hardware in real life. But it's still not a "perfect" emulation! Homebrew developers are still finding quirks in the real 2600 hardware that the emulators don't replicate, at least until the next update.
I have a PS2 which plays my games from an internal hard drive, and which has its output fed through an HDMI converter. Why don't I just emulate it? Well, if you want to play FFX, or MGS2, or Ratchet & Clank, that'll work great. Those are popular games, and emulator developers have put a lot of effort into making sure that the rules of their emulation work for those games. But I have dozens of more obscure games that have game-breaking glitches or don't launch at all under emulation. And I also still have hundreds of discs that I don't want to paw through, and are slowly degrading until one day they'll no longer work, as well as an optical drive that gets a little closer to wearing out for good every time I use it, and a big, modern TV that hates analog inputs (not to mention no room for a bulky CRT). Getting the data into the console, and getting the final video and audio out, are both fairly well-understood and usually can be reimplemented reliably. But the heart of the console, where the data is turned into executing code, mixed with player input, and transformed into the output? That's where the actual magic happens.
In my opinion, saying that if you're going to replace an optical drive then you may as well just emulate the whole thing is a bit like saying that if you're going to talk to Angela over the phone instead of in person, then you may as well just replace her with a well-trained AI chatbot.
Okay, people will likely bash me for this hot take, and if this is for you feel free to enjoy it, but...
...why do this instead of using a FPGA or emulation-based solution?
If you don't want to run original media or don't want to output original video out signals, why bother to use original hardware at all? I can see it as a way to upcycle heavily damaged Saturn units, but there aren't that many of these in the wild in the first place, why dismantle an existing piece to make what is effectively a completely different product? I don't see the point.
Why bother? Because feeding data into the console and getting audio-visual signals out of it are both very well understood and can actually be replicated with essentially total accuracy. But the complex operations and subtle interactions of CPU, VDUs, RAM, and other support chips can't. That's the important part of the console, not the optical drive or the analog video output.
Software emulators and FPGA-based systems give it a good try, and can often run the majority of software for a console at an acceptable fidelity for most users, but they're a long, long way from being 1:1 perfect, and the more recent the console, the more games either don't run properly or don't run at all.
Right, but now you're giving me arguments for using original hardware, not for modifying it.
See, that's the part that loses me. I use original hardware all the time, I have tons of original hardware and software for a whole bunch of platforms, including ones that are trivial to run in cycle-accurate emulators and FPGA reproductions. All good there. I even have some flashcarts and softmods to allow cross-region usage or to consolidate libraries. No problem with that.
But that is based on using the original hardware, unmodified. Once you start gutting it for mods then you're working against your argument that complexities and sublteties of original hardware are important. I mean, yeah, I do care to at least have a way to go back to sanity check the sublte ways in which original hardware parses the code in a rom. But for that same reason I want to see how the default composite or RF signal subtly interacts with that output and with a period-accurate CRT display. I want to hear the CD spinning when it's supposed to spin and the original loading times.
To be clear, I think this is just a case mod, but I'm talking about the modding scene more generally. I don't see why you would think "total accuracy" is important in the interaction between the CPU, VDUs and RAM but not on the I/O. Wouldn't the CD drive and the video signal be part of "total accuracy"? Wouldn't the form factor of the shell and the controllers be a part of that accurate experience as well? If you push me I'd even say I consider a MiSTer FPGA solution with a correct analogue out signal and an original controller feeding into a CRT is far more accurate to the original NES than the original Analogue NT that was made from gutted NES parts, or even than an original console pushed through an HDMI scaler or mod.
I guess there is no accounting for taste, but I do struggle to follow the logic where running the original CPU and video chips on completely different I/O is justified by trying to maximize for accuracy.
You can't improve on perfection.
What's the point? If you're gonna alter the OG equipment to such an extreme extent like removing the CD drive, then you're not going to play original copies on it anyways. Might as well just run an emulator.
And missing the normal way to play games. You'd have to use ROMs on this, and at that point there really isnt much of a difference between this and just emulating, you are already more than half the way there.
But it's not the original thing. It's missing a core feature. So it is emulation.
there's the charm of playing in original hardware without having to deal with the original storage medium.
There are better alternatives to CDs, might as well use them. It is no different than using a flashcart.
Are you sure?
But if you're buying a retro console just to emulate half the games, why not emulate the whole thing and just buy a modern USB version of the controller?
given the popularity of everdrives, i don't think most people play on original hardware for the sake of using original copies. using original hardware gets around potential inaccuracies and/or performance issues with emulation. the Saturn is particularly prone to these issues because of it's complex architecture- despite being more powerful, Dreamcast emulators tend to run much better than Saturn emulators just because there are way less moving parts
Okay, but you can do that with a softmod or a flash cart on the Saturn, too. You don't need to rip out its guts to transplant them to a different case. Even if you had a Saturn with a faulty drive you can add a ODE solution without having to sacrifice the original form factor.
Plus, yeah, Saturn emulation is harder and less accurate than other systems, but we're pretty much there these days for most of the stuff you want to play. You can do all sorts of cool cases and consolized devices to play old games these days, why break apart an original Saturn for that?
Funko pops were also very popular. Everdrives are overpriced junk.
Yeah it's a bit of a head scratcher