Here’s a quick-hit roundup of recent stories around the Sega Saturn scene.

Video demonstrates Saturn sound chip calculating graphics

A SegaXtreme homebrew developer named Jollyroger demonstrated that the Saturn’s audio chip can produce 3D graphics.

In a video uploaded to YouTube, Jollyroger shows off a rotating spherical wireframe polygon that they said is being calculated by the SCSP’s DSP.

www.youtube.com

“I wanted to see if the audio DSP can in fact be coerced into transforming vertices, and after finagling for a long with the tricky code, the answer is yes!” Jollyroger said in the video’s description. “The tiny demo shows an icosphere rotating, where the matrix/vertex multiplication required to transform its vertices to screen coordinates is performed by the audio DSP. With the initial messy code, the theoretical performance limit is about 170k vertices per second, which isn’t too bad!”

Jollyroger’s method uses all 128 DSP slots as well as the sound chip’s 68k CPU to keep track of a timer.

They said it was an experiment they wanted to attempt because of rumors that Sega used the Saturn’s sound DSP — there’s also a DSP in its SCU that’s intended to be used for 3D graphics — to eke out enough power to run a port of Virtua Fighter 3 that was never released.

RetroConnection Fest has Saturn presence

A group of fans made sure the Saturn was well represented over the weekend at RetroConnection Fest, a retro gaming convention in Hürth, Germany.

The Saturn area featured two system-linked Virtual On setups, complete with twin stick controllers, as well as two Saturns playing cooperative Doom, thanks to Fafling’s patch to enable system link in that game.

Led by Mampfus, the Saturn area was organized by some of the fans who brought set up a “Segaddiction” area at Gamescom in Germany last year. Mampfus said it was the second RetroConnection Fest, hosted by a public youth center, they’d brought Saturns to.

“They provided us a part of their building, tables and electricity, and promotion (including flyer printing),” he said. “And we, two friends and me, organized it last and this year. We provided a basic stock of consoles, within a light gun bar (and last year some system linked consoles), and beyond that we gathered other collectors of retrogaming systems to set up their systems. So this time we were about 22 people exhibiting our systems.”

Sega selling new official Saturn merchandise

Sega added new merchandise to its made-to-order Amazon store last week as part of a “console collection,” including several pieces featuring the Saturn.

It announced the collection on social media:

Icons never power down. From the legendary Sega Genesis to the unforgettable Dreamcast, the SEGA Console Collection brings retro hardware energy to your everyday fit.Tap the link in bio to shop the full collection. Link – https://amzn.to/4s23Glk

There’s a T-shirt, water bottle, pillow, tote bag and a selection of iPhone cases adorned with a graphic of a model 2 shell Saturn with Japan-style controller and the words “Sega Saturn” written in the Western logo’s font.

Aside from a variety of products featuring the Genesis and Dreamcast, there are also T-shirts and hoodies showing off all three consoles.

This isn’t the first time Sega’s sold Saturn merchandise on its Amazon shop — it sold a design with the Saturn’s motherboard about a year ago that’s since been taken down. Before the same happens to the new console collection, fans may want to grab what they want sooner rather than later.

Vigilant Paradise releases version 1.003

Saturn homebrew FPS Vigilant Paradise released another update in late February. Version 1.003 was added to the game’s Itch.io page Feb. 20.

The development log is light on details, saying the new version has “stability improvements” and “other fixes.”

Since SHIRO! last reported in mid-January on a Vigilant Paradise update, version 1.001, a version 1.002 also came out. It fixed an issue with a long delay on boot-up for some players as well as improved load times and made unspecified other fixes.

Vigilant Paradise initially released in early November but wasn’t discovered by the wider Saturn community until the beginning of this year . SHIRO! interviewed its creator, Ricardo Campione, which you can read here .

Patch adds arcade soundtrack to In the Hunt

A patch uploaded to SegaXtreme swaps Saturn horizontal shooter In the Hunt’s arranged Saturn-exclusive soundtrack for the arcade soundtrack. It also can change the Japanese version’s title screen to the North American one.

The downloadable ZIP file includes XDelta patches for both the North American and Japanese versions of In the Hunt. Those who want to change the European edition are apparently out in the cold.

KoolFiller first uploaded the patch on Feb. 23 and used the PlayStation port’s rendition of the arcade soundtrack. But KoolFiller updated it Monday to use the PC port’s version of the arcade soundtrack instead.

“I have decided to use CD audio from the IBM PC Compatible version of the game for somewhat better quality sound,” KoolFiller said in the update. “It turns out that the U.S. PlayStation version of the game has worse sound compared to other regions even. If you listened closely you could hear sort of clipping, popping sounds even, and it just sounded muddier, more distorted.”

So why swap the Japanese version’s title screen for the North American one?

The SegaXtreme resource page for the patch explains that KoolFiller recommends playing the Japanese version because it’s set to “free play” while the North American version only gives players five credits with which to beat the game.

This isn’t the first audio-related patch KoolFiller has worked on — last year, they made one for Keio Flying Squadron 2 that adds the PAL version’s English localization to the Japanese version, and they made one for Albert Odyssey that changes the North American version’s sound effects to those of the Japanese version.

XL2 shows off improved Saturn raytracing

Homebrew developer XL2 continues to improve the raytraced lighting effects he showed off in January with a new video Friday that demonstrates his work so far.

www.youtube.com

“Here unlike the last video I posted every single dynamic light can cast shadows, including on world geometry,” XL2 said in the video description. “For each dynamic light I add a list of entities and walls that I somewhat preprocess for faster performances. Then for each vertex (depending on the update rate) I test every dynamic light in range with every entities/geometry in the lights’ entity/geometry array.”

He admits it’s resource-intensive to do it that way, as “each vertex require[s] way more computation than you would normally have just to calculate its position.”

XL2 also said he’s considering whether to switch from raytracing to shadow volumes. Both of them are techniques for rendering real-time lighting and shadows in a 3D environment.

Shadow volumes would be calculated using the Saturn’s SCU DSP to find to the dot products — “pretty much the only thing the SCU DSP is excellent in!” he said. But he questioned whether the work required to set up shadow volumes would be worth it compared to just sticking with raytracing, which he said was “much easier” to implement.

“In other words: Raytracing is simple but expensive for each vertex, while shadow volumes would be complicated but cheaper per vertex,” XL2 said.

	Danthrax
		Danthrax is a member of the SHIRO! Media Group, writing stories for the website when Saturn news breaks and helping to manage the group's social media accounts. While he was a Sega Genesis kid in the '90s, he didn't get a Saturn until 2018. It didn't take him long to fall in love with the console's library as well as the fan translation and homebrew scene. He contributed heavily to the Bulk Slash and Stellar Assault SS fan localizations, and he's helped as an editor on several other Saturn and Dreamcast fan projects such as Cotton 2, Rainbow Cotton and Sakura Wars Columns 2.