FBA's Higemaru on Saturn !

Download here : http://vberthelot.free.fr/fba/

It should run full speed on a PAL Saturn, the game is included inside the binary.

 

Next Marvel vs Capcom? ^^;

 

Considering their shared use of the same processor (albeit for different purposes), I always expected Sega to announce either full backwards compatibility or at least some kind of Megadrive emulator for the Saturn. However, this never came to be, even though a few 16-bit games were ported over using what I assume was this very ability. Has anyone ever looked into the possibility of making better use of this feature? Also, since both possess the same basic SH-2 setup could further CPS2 or even CPS3 games be ported to the Saturn with relative ease? I'm not the most technically-minded person here, but surely the classic titles in the Sonic Jam compilation and at least some of the Sega Ages range were produced this way?

 

For me, Sonic Jam is the worst ever made convertion on Saturn. Blurry graphics, and awful BGM converted from Gneesis to PCM audio on Saturn. Lazy programmers....

 

And awful slowdowns in Sonic 2.

 

Sonic Jam was recoded presumably from the original source. Graphics wise it should be pixel-identical, only the sound is different because its prerecorded. I really doubt you could redo the original FM sound in any other way though - even if it's possible to recreate all the songs on the Saturn hardware, it would sound very different AND it would take gigantic effort, probably more than they put in all of Sonic Jam.
I'm sure that even the slowdowns were identical. It's been a while since I played Sonic 2, but I recall it having slowdown in quite a few places. Mostly in 2 player mode, but you could grind down the framerate in single player too, whenever you lost many rings in a corner with a lot of moving objects.

CPS3 could have been converted with "relative" ease, similar to all the CPS2 games, maybe easier due to the SH2 used in the CPS3. There would be memory limitations (SF3 wouldn't fit in the Saturn even with the ramcarts). But, the ST-V could handle everything the CPS3 could do, and memory would be less of an issue.

Hardware-emulating the Megadrive on the Saturn would be impossible. Nothing is compatible between the two. Not even the 68k.

The Sega Ages titles were all recoded as well. The sprite scaling games like Afterburner/Power Drift actually have more in common with the Saturn hardware than the Megadrive ever did (The Saturn VDP1 is a descendant of Sega's sprite scaling arcade hardware - System 24/32, I think).

 

Sorry, what exactly does this FBA thing emulate?

 

Emulate some FM hardware would be possible. Even on the Saturn. If it's done on a PC (Genesis emulation isn't new), it may be done on Saturn.

 

I doubt they could emulate the ym2612 in 1997, on the Saturn, ontop of running a game. Even if it was possible, it would sound worse than Genecyst did.

I was thinking more in the lines of using the SCSP FM functions whenever possible.

 

This really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Sharing the same CPU isn't that big of an advantage to porting necessarily. I don't believe the 68000 in the Saturn would help much if at all with such ports of CPS2 games. There is no reason not to use the SH-2s. Porting is still going to require reworking sound and video parts of the game's code and most importantly dealing with the limited RAM and CD-ROM access. Same with CPS3 despite using a SH-2, that is a relatively minor bonus compared to the vastly different graphics and sound setups combined with CPS3 (and 2) having access to all game data in an instant compared to Saturn which has limited RAM that must be loaded from the very slow CD-ROM. Slow in the sense that you can't access all your data in an instant.

 

Actuallyt some other drivers are in progress.

 

current drivers :

d_bankp
d_gberet
d_higemaru
d_mitchell
d_news
d_pkunwar
d_sys1

just for test :

d_gng
d_vigilant

 

Some great games in that list!

 

Amazing!

 

Work in progress I assume?

 

yep, more pics :

 

Only if it can run Super Hang-on perfectly, though.