Mr. Saturn from Earthbound on a baseball cap

Sega Saturn MiSTer Core Progress

 October 27, 2023  Posted in Friday Starter 295 Views

Checking in on the Saturn MiSTer core

Temporarily derailed by the war in Ukraine, the Sega Saturn MiSTer core has finally joined the platform’s update_all script as a blessed, holy, fully approved new system for the hardware emulation platform.

So how is it looking? This is a baseball site, so let’s test drive all the baseball games on the platform and see how they run.

First off, like the N64 core, despite joining the update_all script this is not yet as user-friendly to get up and going as your normal MiSTer core just yet. I had to dance around between forum threads to find a configuration that worked. I’m sure the following isn’t the only way to make things work, but these steps got things running for me:

  • I have three BIOS files in my games/Saturn/ folder on my MiSTer. I named them boot_u.bin, boot_e.bin, and boot_j.bin for the three regions US, Europe, and Japan.
  • I then launch the core, make sure to select the right region in the core settings UI, and then use “Load bios” to load the BIOS for that region, and then use Insert Disk to load the disc for the game I want to play. And then hit Reset (in the OSD menu for the core, don’t reboot the whole MiSTer).

Games released in North America:

  • 3D Baseball – I don’t know the original game well enough to say for sure, but graphics and audio seem to have some minor issues. Foul lines look a little weird, there’s some garbled colors in a thin line along the left side of the screen sometimes. Playable.
  • All-Star Baseball Featuring Frank Thomas ’97 – Runs well. Music sounds a bit off but it always has!
  • Bases Loaded ’96 – Double Header – Crowd audio feels a little goofed up and gloves float a little bit off the hands of fielders, but otherwise runs well.
  • Bottom of the 9th – Runs well.
  • Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball – Runs well.
  • Grand Slam – Runs well.
  • World Series Baseball – Runs well. Don’t change discs while playing unless you want your ears to fall off though.
  • World Series Baseball II – Some audio and visual glitches. The things I noticed were a weird stuck drumroll during the national anthem and a line of different color going to about 15% of the way up the screen. But very playable.
  • World Series Baseball 98 – Brief loading screen then nothing. And the old “mash start to get past the FMV that’s killing the boot” trick doesn’t seem to help.

Japan-only games:

  • Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu S – Runs well. This game rules.
  • Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu ’95 – Kaimakuban – Runs well.
  • Kanzen Chuukai Pro Yakyuu Greatest Nine – Same graphical issues as World Series Baseball II but very playable.
  • Pro Yakyuu Greatest Nine ’97 – Does not boot for me. Could require a specific BIOS?
  • Pro Yakyuu Greatest Nine ’97 – Make Miracle – Does not boot.
  • Pro Yakyuu Greatest Nine ’98 – Boots to a loading screen for half a second then nothing.
  • Pro Yakyuu Greatest Nine ’98 – Summer Action – Does not boot.
  • Pro Yakyuu Team mo Tsukurou! – Runs well.

(Yes, those Greatest Nine games have World Series Baseball equivalents, but they’re not clean enough matches for me to test one and not worry about the other)

So while I’m not ready to call this a canonical, reference-quality core and record Saturn gameplay videos off of the MiSTer from now on, almost everything runs with no noticeable issues. It’s really impressive work.

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