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 “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.
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.