Head for Saturn

Ice Cube, somewhere between his
"Straight Outta Compton" days and his
family friendly movie days. I
dunno, I was more of a Native
Tongues guy myself.
(image from SegaXtrewe)

I've been hoping to get my Sega Saturn back from Michigan... but it's become depressingly obvious after four years that it's just never going to happen, so I had to take matters into my own hands and buy a replacement. Could I have gotten by with emulation? Sure, but the Saturn's messy hardware architecture and its lack of mainstream popularity means that no emulator does it full justice. Besides, it would just be nice having it sit proudly with the rest of my game consoles, yanno? The Saturn was home gaming for me in the latter half of the 1990s, until I eventually defected to a Playstation in 1999 and then a Dreamcast one year later.

It's a late model Saturn with the bigger, more ergonomic buttons, and it should arrive in about a week with the power cable and two controllers (again, the good ones, not those eight hundred pound gorillas the Saturn launched with in the United States). I've got an S-video cable coming from another dealer, which means the only piece of the puzzle missing is an Action Replay running Pseudo Saturn. That's the software hack that opens up the machine to a world of imports and backups. There are chip hacks for the Saturn too, but I prefer the grab 'n go convenience of a cartridge that both cracks the system's security measures and offers extra RAM for those more ambitious fighting games. You know, like Final Fight Revenge!

What, that literally required the four meg RAM cartridge! Stop hitting me!

Anyway... more news as it happens. And the swelling stops, you big meanie.