These long-form compilations are some of my favorites on the channel. Appreciate all the years of great entertainment and hope the new year has been treating you well so far!
39:09 I'm in tears laughing at the "Going to crash into a wall? Please let me crash with you!" joke from the Wangan Dead Heat racing game. Joe sure knows how to be romantic!
Gosh what a gift for the Retro community your work is Joe. Loved every bit if this. I’ll never forget using the RAM cart on games like X-Mem VS Street Fighter and just loving my Saturn for it
It took a couple of weeks, but Santy Claus got me exactly what I wanted! An episode of Game Sack with a focus on Sega Saturn add-on cartridges! Christmas dreams really DO come true!
New Game Sack!! I’ll watch it before sleeping for sure! This is consistently among the best gaming content on UA-cam! Even if the newest episode’s topic isn’t one of your favorite parts of gaming you can’t help but watch it still due to the high quality Joe puts out. I really do enjoy it.
No doubt. It's honestly quite interesting how Joe always pays such close attention to the audio which most game channels never even mention. I appreciate the attention to detail.
Man, your videos always make me feel like going back to watching TV Shows about videogames in the 90s. Like that special moment in the afternoon or Saturday morning where you’d get some special news, reviews, etc.. just a bit of a unique moment that was just about videogames. Thanks!
Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter is pretty awesome but holy crap it has almost NO loading time outside of when you first start up the game, it impresses me to this day.
If your using a crappy ram expansion or an action replay without the serial port ontop… you will be met after the Sega lisence screen to tell you it cannot read into the game and that you need 4MB
@@preamstrikbiz0 I have heard some people claim that but I have an Action Replay Plus, ST-Key, and a Pseudo Saturn cart; the last two have selector switches and all of them work just fine. The only issue I have seen is if I have a game set for 4MB and it needs 1MB that sometimes it will freak out with the graphics as shown in the video. The big thing as Joe mentioned is make sure the edges of your cart are beveled as the port is SUPER fragile. I wish 1UpCard made a Saturn cleaner just to get into there and help get it super clean and keep it that way, every bit helps.
I used to have X-Men vs Street fighter and marvel super heroes vs Street fighter for my Saturn over 20 years ago. Both games were arcade perfect with no missing animation frames and the tag team modes missing from the PS1 versions.
T Hawks backwards animation is certainly a huge deal in Zero 3 compared to other home versions for its time . I mean , damn … I even had to reference it in one of my hip-hop songs a few years ago lol
It's worth mentioning (or not, if you don't care about this franchise) that Groove on Fight is part of the Power Instinct series. In fact the game cover shows the complete title: "Gouketsuji Ichizoku 3 - Groove on Fight", even though the title screen doesn't.
@@projectmayhem6898same here. Love fenrir. Turn it on and entire library at your finger tips plus much much more. Past 2 years I’ve went the everdrive and modded route, couldn’t be happier about it.
@@Rhiorrha that makes no sense. The Saturn did not solely rely on sprites. It had traditional background layers and 3D quadrilateral polygons (if that makes sense) and yes that is indeed pixel art that makes up the background and sprites when it’s using 2D. What an odd thing to say.
Not really. The Neo Geo and even the Playstation 1 were actually better at doing 2D games. The Saturn wasn't even capable of doing a 1:1 version of Symphony of the Night. The only thing the Saturn had over the PS1 was more RAM in some cases. The bottom line is that if you're better at 3D, you're basically better at 2D, too.
That's not true Bob.... Back then the Saturn was made to focus on 2d games while the PS excelled at 3d due to how the systems was made. And the castlevina port did not receive the same care the ps1 version got. The Saturn version could have been technically possible but konomi dropped the ball. Unlike xmen vs street fighter was technically impossible due to the ps1 limited RAM pool.
I don't even wait until I have watched your videos at this point, I just automatically press the like button! After all these years It's just habit! Thanks for all the great entertainment!
I like video game retro reviews. I have no idea why I just stumbled upon this channel a few days ago. So impressed by the workmanship and the detail. Have NO IDEA why they don’t have over a million subscribers yet!! Great job everytime!!
Dam it joe it's 3:43am and I was just about to fall asleep, now I have to watch your amazingly detailed beautiful video. Keep up the incredible work man, you just keep getting better and better, and I love your humor
Great episode! What I miss most about that era of Capcom are the amazingly creative stages, full of animations and different levels and so on. Very rarely have they revisited such zaniness in stage design after that. Also, I find it so funny that in the 90s everybody was fighting for a bit more RAM here and there and, nowadays, most smartphones can emulate those arcades perfectly. Time marches on indeed!
I first had the crappy Pro Action Replay (when it worked) that gave me access to the huge Japanese Saturn library, but it occupied the ram slot. I later had to modify my Saturn with a switch that allowed you to play Japanese games and freed up the ram slot. First game I bought was Groove on Fight. A really really underrated fighter. Really fun, crazy, and awesome art from Range Murata. Really loved that Saturn and I still have it! I even enjoyed it more than my Dreamcast!
@@Gladson oh I didn't know that, in that case modding is the solution. But I still wouldn't do it to my Saturn, I don't like to change original hardware
@@ssfn1_ I would never cut, drill holes or remove components from any console but the region switching was a very simple and clean mod, I did it myself back then and it as simple as adding a switch that routes the signal to some different pins as that's what determine the console's region. Of course. It was useful when there were no carts that had both RAM expansion and region switching but quickly became obsolete with 4-in-carts around.
@@Gladson yup exactly. the PAR I had only provided the ability to play Japanese games and cheats, but had no RAM. It was crappy because it simply did not work often. it was worse than the days of the NES where you had to keep blowing into the back of the cartridge. The modifications work was probably the only way to resolve it back then, and it still works today.
That screen change thing in Vampire Savior is basically an install super which gives the character a timed passive buff which varies depending on the character. Like, some characters get a shadow trailing them for multiple hits, some small helper which acts on his own or just enhanced offense/defense.
In the "sequels" it's does WAY more useful things, like turning Gallon's Moment Slice super from a stab, then a slice into a grab, then hyper-combo attack like Sabretooth's Wild Fang super in XMVSF and MVC2.
@@ssfn1_ It doesn't provide video decoding, but as you can see from this video there are very few games that use it. And the great thing about the Satiator is that you keep your original CD drive so you can still just pop out the card and put in a video card and CD if you want to play a game that uses it.
And what I love about the Saturn / PS2 versions is they have their own unique extra modes of game play , like the Saturn version has many dramatic battle and survival modes exclusive to its version where as the PS2 version you can wind up unlocking the beloved ( and not well known ) Hyper Street Fighter Alpha
What a fantastic string of games in this video from King of Fighters '95 through Metal Slug. You can even add Groove On Fight which is pretty good and was my first proper RAM cart game(I had Marvel Super Heroes before the cart). One neat feature of Groove on Fight is the ability to use the downed fighters as weapons. Metal Slug on Saturn was also my introduction to the series. I didn't know what to think for a while since I hadn't played a 2D action game like that in a while due to the 3D craze. The one-hit deaths were harsh too, but I got into it because it was impressive. I loved King of Fighters '97 and it was my favorite fighting game on the Saturn. I instantly fell in love with it seeing it in a comic shop, even though it was right next to a Street Fighter 3 cabinet. KOF just appealed to me more. The limited amount of music in KOF'97 is an issue and I point that out. Still, the rest of the presentation, including the sound effects are so strong that it was less of an issue than I expected. That was definitely one of the main improvements for KOF'98, though much of the gameplay carries over from 97 so they were almost there with that edition and I suspect it was just limited development time more than anything. I've been playing a combination of Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, and X-Men vs. Street Fighter in recent weeks(just played some XMvsSF last night) and can appreciate them more now than I could in 1997 and 1998 for various reasons. I had never played MSHvsSF before. There were more changes to the game than I expected including many background updates. The game also feels a tad looser than XMvsSF, not in a bad way. It feels just a bit smoother in its control. XMvsSF feels slightly more intense as a result. I have issues with both rosters, but I think I prefer XMvsSF's roster. Great games though, both of them. Lastly, good observation regarding the flashing on KOF. I've noticed that it can bother me, at least some of the time. Capcom used flashing as well, though not red like SNK. Depending on other factors like sleep, it can be pretty bad for me. This reminded me to look up that infamous Pokemon episode to see when it aired(December 1997) because I noticed both Capcom and SNK added options to their fighting games to toggle the flashing and that started for their 1998 games(as I recall, KOF98, Last Blade 2, Marvel vs. Capcom are the ones I checked), so it does support my theory that it was due to the Pokemon episode.
Falcom Classics on the Saturn are to this day my favourite versions of Ys I and II. I adore the visuals and music for that version, and the FMV was just gravy. The 8-way movement feels a lot better in my opinion, too. I actually tracked down those versions back when I first watched your original Ys video, Joe, so thank you for that!!!
Amazing Video!! Nice to learn some new things about my Saturn collection too - I had no idea a couple of my Japanese games were using the Video card OR that the Stereo on Metal Slug actually worked (by switching to mono and back). Cheers Joe! btw. The Rom cart for Kof'95 isn't region locked, so the Japanese cart works with the European version of the game and Vice Versa.
The Saturn is awesome! I screwed up my first Saturn's cartridge slot by not beveling the edges on the Saroo I was using. Definitely learned from that mistake.
It appears that Capcom were the only third party company that knew how to work wonders on thd Saturn. And SNK, to a small extent. Thanks for a great video, Joe! 👍👍👍
A lot of games getting high praise from Joe here, so you know they're worth playing. Also, I want to thank you, Joe, for years of clean entertainment. So many channels curse incessantly; it's a major turnoff and an indication of a lack of creativity by my estimation. And wouldn't you know it, UA-cam's latest rules are causing many gaming channels to get their videos demonetized for that very reason. So you retroactively dodged that bullet. Good on you, Joe. We all love you, brother.
Fun fact for everyone: the Saturn modding community has been modding games like Dracula X and others to wotk with the 4MB expansion pack, and it's really cool to see what that extra ram can do for 2d games. I'd love to see many of the Saturn's best games modded to work with the 4MB Expansion cart
Ole saturn was a tank and when the devs actually got down with it. Things got amazing. Love the unique look of the Saturn's graphics the same way I love the unique graphics of the dreamcast. Something just hits different.
Back in 1996-7, when my older brother brought the Saturn home, we were coming from a SNES then, one of the first series we were eager to try was KOF 95, 96 and 97, some of them wouldn't boot as we didn't know about the cart thing at first, but when we got to finally play these in arcade perfect form, it's a moment printed in my mind. We were into arcades since the late 80's and it was the first time uncompromised versions were available at home. It was also the console which introduced us to new genres, Mystaria, Shining Force III, Duke 3D, Hexen, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider and many, many more, when we migrated to the PS1 as the Saturn wasn't going to get new games then, the transition wasn't as impressive, it has amazing exclusives and very decent arcade ports too, I still find SFA3 a miracle on Sony's console, while it has tons of loading and we played the Saturn before that, at least the playability is perfect for me, but we were already spoiled by the better versions, the Saturn was the right choice for us. To this day it's a shame it didn't receive many of what was planned, magazines were already giving many signs about a year before and the games I played on the Saturn were only getting sequels on Sony's machine.
I agree Fighters History on the Saturn is a solid title! I would say Final Fight Revenge is bad, but dips into that so bad it's good territory. Back in the day I had alot of these games with an action replay/ram cart and had a blast!!
I'm amazed that after well over a decade of using the ST Key-swap-to-RAM-cart trick to play these imports never messed up my cartridge slot! I've finally got an Action Replay Plus now lol, but it's amazing how many countless times I've yanked the ST Key cart out and slammed in the 4MB RAM cart during that 2 second window, and the slot still works perfectly fine haha
There is a mistake in the video. Samurai Shodown 3 was released before SS4 on Saturn. I know because I bought all the SNK games when they released and I had it before number 4. A simple wiki search confirmed it. SS3 released on November 8th 1996 and SS4 on October 2nd 1997…
I'm actually playing Shining the Holy Ark tonight on the Sega Saturn for the 2nd time. It's the first time I've played my Saturn in a long time. That's the one thing I wish I would have got for my Saturn was the RAM cartridge. I know those fighting games especially had fantastic animation when the Ram cartridge was used. The only thing I have for my Saturn that uses the cartridge slot is the Netlink modem, and the Saturn gameshark. And I've only used the gameshark for it once, back in the 1990's or whenever it was when I first got it. I don't even know if there still coming out with new codes for it, I'll have to check sometime. I have a gameshark for my Dreamcast to but I have it stored away and haven't used it in forever too. I think the Dreamcast one was on a disk if I remember right.
Just a small suggestion : I think it would be better to present the game in chronological order instead of alphabetical order. Great content anyway, well informed and enjoyable to watch.
Amazing video Joe. Super helpful thank you. Watching this reminds me how awesome my Saturn is. Street Fighter Zero 3 and Xmen vs Streetfighter on Saturn are my favourite one on one fighters of all time on any system. They’re incredible. Wish Konami had used the RAM cards for Symphony of the Night - might have improved it?
Samurai Shodown 3 doesn't have the best reputation but it gave us one of my all-time favorite game characters (Shizumaru) so for that i am always grateful
The Gungriffon games were great! If they had at least double the resolution and draw-distances, they'd be awesome. In any case, they could really use an official re-release on modern platforms. 🙏
These long-form compilations are some of my favorites on the channel. Appreciate all the years of great entertainment and hope the new year has been treating you well so far!
me too. when my daughter was first born i would sit up and watch them all night over and over while feeding her and stuff
@@truevudderhutz3482hey that's what I'm doing right now with my daughter! Haha
Same with my daughter!
39:09 I'm in tears laughing at the "Going to crash into a wall? Please let me crash with you!" joke from the Wangan Dead Heat racing game. Joe sure knows how to be romantic!
Gosh what a gift for the Retro community your work is Joe. Loved every bit if this. I’ll never forget using the RAM cart on games like X-Mem VS Street Fighter and just loving my Saturn for it
It took a couple of weeks, but Santy Claus got me exactly what I wanted! An episode of Game Sack with a focus on Sega Saturn add-on cartridges! Christmas dreams really DO come true!
New Game Sack!! I’ll watch it before sleeping for sure! This is consistently among the best gaming content on UA-cam! Even if the newest episode’s topic isn’t one of your favorite parts of gaming you can’t help but watch it still due to the high quality Joe puts out. I really do enjoy it.
| Joe puts out. I really do enjoy it.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Best content to watch before going to sleep
Dope content
Best content to watch before getting your sack tickled.
I've watched a lot of videos on the Saturn expansion cart, and yours is eleventy million times better than the rest.
No doubt. It's honestly quite interesting how Joe always pays such close attention to the audio which most game channels never even mention. I appreciate the attention to detail.
Man, your videos always make me feel like going back to watching TV Shows about videogames in the 90s. Like that special moment in the afternoon or Saturday morning where you’d get some special news, reviews, etc.. just a bit of a unique moment that was just about videogames. Thanks!
Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter is pretty awesome but holy crap it has almost NO loading time outside of when you first start up the game, it impresses me to this day.
If your using a crappy ram expansion or an action replay without the serial port ontop… you will be met after the Sega lisence screen to tell you it cannot read into the game and that you need 4MB
@@preamstrikbiz0 I have heard some people claim that but I have an Action Replay Plus, ST-Key, and a Pseudo Saturn cart; the last two have selector switches and all of them work just fine. The only issue I have seen is if I have a game set for 4MB and it needs 1MB that sometimes it will freak out with the graphics as shown in the video.
The big thing as Joe mentioned is make sure the edges of your cart are beveled as the port is SUPER fragile. I wish 1UpCard made a Saturn cleaner just to get into there and help get it super clean and keep it that way, every bit helps.
Its too bad they botched MSH
That game has some of CAPCOMs best graphics
I used to have X-Men vs Street fighter and marvel super heroes vs Street fighter for my Saturn over 20 years ago.
Both games were arcade perfect with no missing animation frames and the tag team modes missing from the PS1 versions.
@@jaymorrison8419 I think I played my American / japenese copy once of MSH and never played it again due to what you are saying , it’s cruddy 🤦♂️
I'm impressed by the thoroughness, i didn't expect the mpeg card would be covered
I thought I was the only one who cared about T. Hawk's back walk animation. I feel blessed.
T Hawks backwards animation is certainly a huge deal in Zero 3 compared to other home versions for its time . I mean , damn … I even had to reference it in one of my hip-hop songs a few years ago lol
@@preamstrikbiz0 Sounds like a story?
@@osurpless indeed about the native Americans that were on Long Island where I live even though t hawks in Mexico
Yet he never mentioned the 2 vs 1 battles.
It's worth mentioning (or not, if you don't care about this franchise) that Groove on Fight is part of the Power Instinct series. In fact the game cover shows the complete title: "Gouketsuji Ichizoku 3 - Groove on Fight", even though the title screen doesn't.
I want a Saturn SO bad because of you Joe.
Same!
I bought a Sega Saturn last year and finally got the Fenrir ODE installed and working a few days ago. It sure is nifty.
@@projectmayhem6898same here. Love fenrir. Turn it on and entire library at your finger tips plus much much more. Past 2 years I’ve went the everdrive and modded route, couldn’t be happier about it.
@@projectmayhem6898 ode is so awesome. Have a satiator, but I blew out my ossc by plugging in the wrong ac adaptor... doh
Buy a Japanese one as it is less than half the price
The Sega Saturn and that era is just peak 2D pixel art. The resolution, the colours, it's all just spot on.
It really is incredible how some of these games looked and sounded. Never fails to impress me
It's sprite graphics, not "pixel art".
@@Rhiorrha that makes no sense. The Saturn did not solely rely on sprites. It had traditional background layers and 3D quadrilateral polygons (if that makes sense) and yes that is indeed pixel art that makes up the background and sprites when it’s using 2D. What an odd thing to say.
Not really. The Neo Geo and even the Playstation 1 were actually better at doing 2D games. The Saturn wasn't even capable of doing a 1:1 version of Symphony of the Night. The only thing the Saturn had over the PS1 was more RAM in some cases. The bottom line is that if you're better at 3D, you're basically better at 2D, too.
That's not true Bob.... Back then the Saturn was made to focus on 2d games while the PS excelled at 3d due to how the systems was made. And the castlevina port did not receive the same care the ps1 version got. The Saturn version could have been technically possible but konomi dropped the ball.
Unlike xmen vs street fighter was technically impossible due to the ps1 limited RAM pool.
I don't even wait until I have watched your videos at this point, I just automatically press the like button! After all these years It's just habit! Thanks for all the great entertainment!
'Here's what you get if you don't have one. Yeah, that'll teach ya'
Never change, Joe. You always make me chuckle.
First episode of the year! And it's a Saturn one! Thanks, Joe!
I like video game retro reviews. I have no idea why I just stumbled upon this channel a few days ago. So impressed by the workmanship and the detail. Have NO IDEA why they don’t have over a million subscribers yet!! Great job everytime!!
Dam it joe it's 3:43am and I was just about to fall asleep, now I have to watch your amazingly detailed beautiful video. Keep up the incredible work man, you just keep getting better and better, and I love your humor
Bro same 😂
I think he's doing it on purpose!!
Your Saturn capture quality is phenomenal
Uh anyone could load up the games in an emulator and get better quality. Stop being a rube.
@@bobsaget9182 shut up
Great episode! What I miss most about that era of Capcom are the amazingly creative stages, full of animations and different levels and so on. Very rarely have they revisited such zaniness in stage design after that. Also, I find it so funny that in the 90s everybody was fighting for a bit more RAM here and there and, nowadays, most smartphones can emulate those arcades perfectly. Time marches on indeed!
I will never stop playing my Saturn. Love this episode.
Game Sack is one of the best channels on UA-cam. Thank you for not giving up and and making "Toy Sack" videos.
This is the best retro channel!! Thank you for all you do! I look forward to your every other Saturday videos! Really entertaining and well done!
This video really highlights a lot of reasons to want a Saturn as well.
Hands down! The greatest video game channel on UA-cam! You remind me of myself back in the day!
Seeing the expansion pack put in the slot on the Saturn is hilarious 😂
Yes! More Game Sack! Can't get enough of it.
Thanks for another great episode! These complete lists are great!!
So much good stuff in that sack of yours.
Provocative
Man, the Saturn kicked ass left and right. Those arcade conversions are unbelievable.
PSX had Darkstalkers 3 and Capcom vs. SNK Pro without any expansion and they dwarf the Saturn.
And now that everyone can play the best versions of them (the original arcades) in emulators for free, every Saturn port is worthless. Yay!
The 1s Game Sack video of 2023! Let's get it on!
Only the raw RAM expansion power offered by the Sega Saturn RAM cartridges can deliver anime boobies at such a blistering pace!
There seemed to be a lot of those in this episode, not complaining ofc 😎
Ara Ara!
Yup
As always I love your videos. They're very comprehensive and clear. perfect to as a background or to watch normally.
I first had the crappy Pro Action Replay (when it worked) that gave me access to the huge Japanese Saturn library, but it occupied the ram slot. I later had to modify my Saturn with a switch that allowed you to play Japanese games and freed up the ram slot. First game I bought was Groove on Fight. A really really underrated fighter. Really fun, crazy, and awesome art from Range Murata. Really loved that Saturn and I still have it! I even enjoyed it more than my Dreamcast!
I don't think it was crappy, it also had the ram you needed to play that game, so to me it makes no sense to mod my Saturn just to free the cart slot
@@ssfn1_ the very first pro Action Replay models didn't include the RAM cart functionality so that's probably the one he used to own
@@Gladson oh I didn't know that, in that case modding is the solution. But I still wouldn't do it to my Saturn, I don't like to change original hardware
@@ssfn1_ I would never cut, drill holes or remove components from any console but the region switching was a very simple and clean mod, I did it myself back then and it as simple as adding a switch that routes the signal to some different pins as that's what determine the console's region. Of course. It was useful when there were no carts that had both RAM expansion and region switching but quickly became obsolete with 4-in-carts around.
@@Gladson yup exactly. the PAR I had only provided the ability to play Japanese games and cheats, but had no RAM. It was crappy because it simply did not work often. it was worse than the days of the NES where you had to keep blowing into the back of the cartridge. The modifications work was probably the only way to resolve it back then, and it still works today.
That screen change thing in Vampire Savior is basically an install super which gives the character a timed passive buff which varies depending on the character. Like, some characters get a shadow trailing them for multiple hits, some small helper which acts on his own or just enhanced offense/defense.
In the "sequels" it's does WAY more useful things, like turning Gallon's Moment Slice super from a stab, then a slice into a grab, then hyper-combo attack like Sabretooth's Wild Fang super in XMVSF and MVC2.
I love that you covered this topic. This is fantastic!
On facts, your drops have pushed me through for the past 3 years bros. Your videos have let me know life is beautiful
I love Game Sack! I look forward to your video every Sunday morning
Hey what a great idea for a video! I always enjoy these library looks. Hope you had an enjoyable end of year break, Joe.
I recently got a Satiator, and having a new video on Saturn games show up is always nice to see.
Does the Satiator provide the video features of a mpeg card? I never bought a Satiator because it occupies the video slot...
@@ssfn1_ I haven't tried any games that ask for the mpeg card, but my guess would be no.
@@ssfn1_ It doesn't provide video decoding, but as you can see from this video there are very few games that use it. And the great thing about the Satiator is that you keep your original CD drive so you can still just pop out the card and put in a video card and CD if you want to play a game that uses it.
Great Video, thanks for that. I´m a Saturn User from the first day on and i still love it.
Thanks!
R u b e .
Thanks! :)
Just bought a Japanese Saturn with an ST-Key cartridge, and you come out with this video.
Big thanks to whoever did the rom to ram cart patches.
The PS2 Alpha Anthology is the only other version of Alpha 3 (Upper) to have all of T-Hawk's backwards walking animations.
And what I love about the Saturn / PS2 versions is they have their own unique extra modes of game play , like the Saturn version has many dramatic battle and survival modes exclusive to its version where as the PS2 version you can wind up unlocking the beloved ( and not well known ) Hyper Street Fighter Alpha
Was about to say this, myself
Great idea for an episode. There’s a lot of confusion in the community about this subject.
27:41 those crucified Ultramen on the background really stood out to me in this episode lol wtf 🤣
What a fantastic string of games in this video from King of Fighters '95 through Metal Slug. You can even add Groove On Fight which is pretty good and was my first proper RAM cart game(I had Marvel Super Heroes before the cart). One neat feature of Groove on Fight is the ability to use the downed fighters as weapons. Metal Slug on Saturn was also my introduction to the series. I didn't know what to think for a while since I hadn't played a 2D action game like that in a while due to the 3D craze. The one-hit deaths were harsh too, but I got into it because it was impressive. I loved King of Fighters '97 and it was my favorite fighting game on the Saturn. I instantly fell in love with it seeing it in a comic shop, even though it was right next to a Street Fighter 3 cabinet. KOF just appealed to me more. The limited amount of music in KOF'97 is an issue and I point that out. Still, the rest of the presentation, including the sound effects are so strong that it was less of an issue than I expected. That was definitely one of the main improvements for KOF'98, though much of the gameplay carries over from 97 so they were almost there with that edition and I suspect it was just limited development time more than anything.
I've been playing a combination of Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, and X-Men vs. Street Fighter in recent weeks(just played some XMvsSF last night) and can appreciate them more now than I could in 1997 and 1998 for various reasons. I had never played MSHvsSF before. There were more changes to the game than I expected including many background updates. The game also feels a tad looser than XMvsSF, not in a bad way. It feels just a bit smoother in its control. XMvsSF feels slightly more intense as a result. I have issues with both rosters, but I think I prefer XMvsSF's roster. Great games though, both of them.
Lastly, good observation regarding the flashing on KOF. I've noticed that it can bother me, at least some of the time. Capcom used flashing as well, though not red like SNK. Depending on other factors like sleep, it can be pretty bad for me. This reminded me to look up that infamous Pokemon episode to see when it aired(December 1997) because I noticed both Capcom and SNK added options to their fighting games to toggle the flashing and that started for their 1998 games(as I recall, KOF98, Last Blade 2, Marvel vs. Capcom are the ones I checked), so it does support my theory that it was due to the Pokemon episode.
Falcom Classics on the Saturn are to this day my favourite versions of Ys I and II. I adore the visuals and music for that version, and the FMV was just gravy. The 8-way movement feels a lot better in my opinion, too.
I actually tracked down those versions back when I first watched your original Ys video, Joe, so thank you for that!!!
Amazing Video!! Nice to learn some new things about my Saturn collection too - I had no idea a couple of my Japanese games were using the Video card OR that the Stereo on Metal Slug actually worked (by switching to mono and back). Cheers Joe!
btw. The Rom cart for Kof'95 isn't region locked, so the Japanese cart works with the European version of the game and Vice Versa.
New Year....fresh new Sack!
The Saturn is awesome! I screwed up my first Saturn's cartridge slot by not beveling the edges on the Saroo I was using. Definitely learned from that mistake.
My 9th grade mind was lusting over groove on fight cover art for the cd back in the 90s
It appears that Capcom were the only third party company that knew how to work wonders on thd Saturn. And SNK, to a small extent.
Thanks for a great video, Joe! 👍👍👍
A lot of games getting high praise from Joe here, so you know they're worth playing. Also, I want to thank you, Joe, for years of clean entertainment. So many channels curse incessantly; it's a major turnoff and an indication of a lack of creativity by my estimation. And wouldn't you know it, UA-cam's latest rules are causing many gaming channels to get their videos demonetized for that very reason. So you retroactively dodged that bullet. Good on you, Joe. We all love you, brother.
Thanks for 4K60FPS 👍😄
I would say that since the Saturn has games that are still playable today and the N64 doesn’t, the 1 & 4MB RAM carts win by default.
All of the n64 ram paks are all 3D games
@@maroon9273 That suck. “All of the n64 Ram paks are all 3D games that suck.” Finished it for you.
Fun fact for everyone: the Saturn modding community has been modding games like Dracula X and others to wotk with the 4MB expansion pack, and it's really cool to see what that extra ram can do for 2d games. I'd love to see many of the Saturn's best games modded to work with the 4MB Expansion cart
Or, you know, you could just play the best version of SOTN (the PS1 version).
Geezus
@@bobsaget9182 The Saturn version has some additions, so having a better playing version of it is definetly worth while.
Vampire Savior?? I thought that was Dark Stalkers...
Anyway, I LOVE this channel!
Darkstalkers 3 is called Vampire Savior in Japan
Ole saturn was a tank and when the devs actually got down with it. Things got amazing. Love the unique look of the Saturn's graphics the same way I love the unique graphics of the dreamcast. Something just hits different.
There was nothing unique about the graphics. The CPS2 and original Neo Geo versions of virtually every one of those games is better.
(the CPS2 games in particular are all squatty because the aspect ratio is wrong)
Understandable, have a nice day.
sega machine broke
Sundays are the best day of the week. Sack in the morning and then My Life in Gaming at night.
And now my week is complete. Thanks for the video!
Best Sega Saturn capture I've ever seen, great job!
Back in 1996-7, when my older brother brought the Saturn home, we were coming from a SNES then, one of the first series we were eager to try was KOF 95, 96 and 97, some of them wouldn't boot as we didn't know about the cart thing at first, but when we got to finally play these in arcade perfect form, it's a moment printed in my mind. We were into arcades since the late 80's and it was the first time uncompromised versions were available at home. It was also the console which introduced us to new genres, Mystaria, Shining Force III, Duke 3D, Hexen, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider and many, many more, when we migrated to the PS1 as the Saturn wasn't going to get new games then, the transition wasn't as impressive, it has amazing exclusives and very decent arcade ports too, I still find SFA3 a miracle on Sony's console, while it has tons of loading and we played the Saturn before that, at least the playability is perfect for me, but we were already spoiled by the better versions, the Saturn was the right choice for us. To this day it's a shame it didn't receive many of what was planned, magazines were already giving many signs about a year before and the games I played on the Saturn were only getting sequels on Sony's machine.
I agree Fighters History on the Saturn is a solid title! I would say Final Fight Revenge is bad, but dips into that so bad it's good territory. Back in the day I had alot of these games with an action replay/ram cart and had a blast!!
Putting my Offspring cd in the Saturn and watching the space ship fly around to the tracks
36:24 even LGR would be proud of your puns in there, nice job
Real Bout Special ❤ The most entertaining fighting game I‘ve ever played ^^
I'm amazed that after well over a decade of using the ST Key-swap-to-RAM-cart trick to play these imports never messed up my cartridge slot! I've finally got an Action Replay Plus now lol, but it's amazing how many countless times I've yanked the ST Key cart out and slammed in the 4MB RAM cart during that 2 second window, and the slot still works perfectly fine haha
Thanks Joe. Great video 😍
There is a mistake in the video. Samurai Shodown 3 was released before SS4 on Saturn. I know because I bought all the SNK games when they released and I had it before number 4. A simple wiki search confirmed it. SS3 released on November 8th 1996 and SS4 on October 2nd 1997…
Playing as Mai...it's almost a running gag now. Kudos.
Best UA-cam retro gaming chanel : Period !
I'm actually playing Shining the Holy Ark tonight on the Sega Saturn for the 2nd time. It's the first time I've played my Saturn in a long time. That's the one thing I wish I would have got for my Saturn was the RAM cartridge. I know those fighting games especially had fantastic animation when the Ram cartridge was used. The only thing I have for my Saturn that uses the cartridge slot is the Netlink modem, and the Saturn gameshark.
And I've only used the gameshark for it once, back in the 1990's or whenever it was when I first got it. I don't even know if there still coming out with new codes for it, I'll have to check sometime.
I have a gameshark for my Dreamcast to but I have it stored away and haven't used it in forever too. I think the Dreamcast one was on a disk if I remember right.
What the hell kinda world do we live in where u can get a Sega Saturn Tshirt in 2023. You couldn't get a Sega Saturn Tshirt 1995
Just a small suggestion : I think it would be better to present the game in chronological order instead of alphabetical order. Great content anyway, well informed and enjoyable to watch.
Another great episode! Thanks.
No wonder fighting games no longer hold my attention. There were so many back in the 90's.
Fighting games were a dime a dozen back then and not all of them were good. Looking at you street combat.
@17:28 I'm actually more curious if the MPEG card helps with video playback.
Amazing video Joe. Super helpful thank you. Watching this reminds me how awesome my Saturn is. Street Fighter Zero 3 and Xmen vs Streetfighter on Saturn are my favourite one on one fighters of all time on any system. They’re incredible. Wish Konami had used the RAM cards for Symphony of the Night - might have improved it?
You have no idea how many shifts at work these videos get me through
This is one of the most useful videos for Saturn fans.
Great video! Glad someone made a video on this topic!
Happy Everytime I see a new video from ya, there always great!!!
Would be cool if you made an episode with all games that use the link cable for PS1 and Saturn!
Real Bout Fatal Fury Special is my fav on the sega saturn, the sprite work is amazing (at least for me) and is fun to play.
Better on a real Neo Geo.
Outstanding video as usual! Is that a paradox? I mean it's excellent, great work.
Finally! Welcome back bro 😎
I can already guess that the next episodes would be every Dreamcast game that uses the VMU and every PC-Engine/TG-16 Super CD-ROM game.
Every dreamcast game that uses the Broadband Adapter or Modem
Samurai Shodown 3 doesn't have the best reputation but it gave us one of my all-time favorite game characters (Shizumaru) so for that i am always grateful
I ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT RAY SAYS ''BAKED POTATO....DYNOMITE'' when he shot his fireball.
Sentimental Graffiti's one of my favorite Saturn games. I didn't know it had anything to do with the movie card.
Very informative. I specially loved the added subtitles on some Japanese sentences 😉
Spot on (on comedy at least)
Positive sentiment comment for the algo. Great video as always.
Thanks for the timestamps 👍
I enjoyed your foray into creating the opening sequence of Crash 2 at the end.
"Pack-In Video packed in some great looking video" LOOOOL
I LOVE THIS THANK YOU JOE
The Gungriffon games were great! If they had at least double the resolution and draw-distances, they'd be awesome. In any case, they could really use an official re-release on modern platforms. 🙏
there is good freeware fanmade inspired by them, it is called "High-Macs Simulator". Check it out!
@@kurisuchiinathecrocodile333 Very cool, thanks!