Rumor: Sega Saturn games to appear on Wii Virtual Console

"Also; how was Panzer dragoon on the xbox run? port? (the unlockable extra in orta)."

That was actually based on the PC version which was obviously easy to port to the Xbox which is a PC like format

dark,
yes there is. Radiant Silvergun, all of the Panzer Dragoon games, Virtua Fighter 2, Virtual On, Daytona USA, Sega Rally Championship, Dragon Force, all of the Working Designs games, Fighting Vipers, Dark Savior, Virtua Cop 1&2 (would be great w/ wiimote), NiGHTS, etc.
There were a lot of really good games on the saturn. It's a shame it didn't get more recognition.

And really, the sonic games (I really only remember 3d blast) wasn't very good (imo).

Think of the future Wii 2 that will have a larger storage and beefier specs. You think VC will only stay with Wii and not move up to their next system?

Ah yes, GJM I remember now :)

Also; didnt Sega buy out the saturn emulator or something years back?

"I'm pretty sure the data is written backwards on the disk so you have to spin it backwards to read it (well, backwards compared to DVD's anyway)"

no. no it isn't and no you don't.

they are CAV discs though. like an LP or a DC games vs. CLV discs like a movie DVD or an audio CD. that's not remotely similar to the tired "spin backwards" rumor.

Saturn emulation is bad because hackers are behind it? Bull crap. Do yourself some history research. Sega attempted to make their own PC emulator for the Saturn, and it turned out to suck, and they abandoned it, and I'm certainly not optimistic for Lazy Nintendo to do a better job than them.

@010111

Oh. My bad. I did read that something like 6 years ago.

We'd see Sega Saturn and Dreamcast games on XBLA before the VC. The games took up 300MB+ and the Wii just doesn't have the storage capactiy. It would be nice to revisist Nights, Burning Rangers, Astal, Cloc kwork Knight, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Radiant Silvergun in HD. Luckily I still have my Saturn and Dreamcast and they work very well.

#42 ChristB:

We'd need Atari 7800, ColecoVision and Intellivision for that.

Did the Saturn have enough quality titles to make creating an emulator for it worth the effort? And I'll second many other people's comments that some games may be too big to fit well on the Wii's 512MB of internal memory.

Now where is that Master System emulator?

I see this happening just because of the amount of money to be made for Sega. Compressing the files and making a Saturn emulator for Wii would cost nothing compared to the profit Sega would make from offering Nights, Panzer Dragoon 1-3, and House of the Dead 1&2.

If they sold just 500,000 of each world wide for 1000 Wii points, that's 5 mil per game gain right there.

Storage problems can be easily worked around. Once you DL a game to your Wii, you own it for good. You can erase it and download it again for free any time. And that's just the worst case scenerio. Best case, they compress each game down to 50MB and you can easily fit all 10 quality Saturn game son one SD card.

"Think of the future Wii 2 that will have a larger storage and beefier specs. You think VC will only stay with Wii and not move up to their next system?"

If had fucking better not. Nintendo is one of the handful of large corporations that I actually like. That would very easily sour me on them, though. I've spent a ton of money on the VC (it's mostly why I wanted a Wii, actually).

...but yeah. I've been worried about that scenario for a while, to be honest.

Oh, wait...I think I read that wrong. D'OH!
I meant they had better let us transfer VC games to a new console in the future.

What would be worth paying for is an emulator that can be downloaded or purchased through the VC that allows you to put your original Saturn, Dreamcast, or Sega CD disk into the Wii and play it through an emulator. That really seems like the easiest way to do classic CD-based games. The hardest one would be Dreamcast because of the VMS and saves being made through the controller ports. But Saturn and SegaCD games should be no problem.

As far as good Saturn games, I'll list the best ones I have:
X-men vs Street Fighter (Japan)
Castlevania SOTN (Japan)
Fighters Megamix
Last Bronx (Like Soul Calibur but as deep as VF2)
Nights into Dreams
Virtua Cop 2 (tell me that doesn't belong on Wii!)
Daytona USA
Virtua Fighter 2
Virtua On (hold both the Wiimote and Nunchuk like the twin-sticks! I don't know where the buttons go, though?)

It's true that compressing the CD audio would turn most of these great games into 50-100MB files, so it's not entirely out of the question to get these games working on the Wii via download. The hard part would be getting the controls to match up. Maybe Sega could make their own Wiimote attachment that looks like the Nights controller (which was basically the Dreamcast controller with 6 face buttons instead of 4). Or just add 2 face buttons to the Nintendo Classic controller.

@ knightspawn

No, it could be done with the classic controller

use the four face buttons on the VC controller, then the two Z-shoulder buttons to substitute for Saturn's C and Z buttons (R and L buttons serve same purpose)

I have given this some thought...

31. dark: "Is there anything good on that system besides sonic?"

There is no good Sonic game for Saturn.

I say bullcrap. As a student at Digipen, I don't think any of the faculty knows or cares about any of this stuff. Most of the faculty seems to be non-gamers and it is impossible to get into NST.

Maybe if it was from Claude or Abbott it would make sense. But not from a standard faculty member.

Though I think Saturn games on the Virtual Console are possible.

The classic controller really should have been more Genesis/Saturn and less SNES...

...they should also include on WITH the Wii, but I digress.

Protip:

Audio/video compression is cruise control for cool.

Redbook audio (CD wav) takes up an AMAZINGLY huge amount of space. Turn those into OGG music files = win.

ive always thought this would happen, cos the VC controllers has 2 z buttons, making it perfect for saturn emu.

maybe wishful thinking tho, saturn was my fav console of all time before i got my wii

@51

Actually, they licensed someone else to do it. My point was that if Sega truly wanted they could make a decent one. They have all the tech specs for the Saturn whereas freelance coders (if you prefer that to hackers) do not. This is simple logic and IS the reason why emulators take a while to develop... people don't usually have all the technical details. A lot of it is trial and error. Anyway, if Sega is just to lazy to do it they can hand over the technical details to Nintendo and let them do it. The bottom line is that if some is given all the technical specification they can produce a better emulator than if they don't have them. Some you idiots acted like this was nonsense... get a clue.

I might have helped start this rumor. I posted the article on my blog, linked below, back on December, 8th of '06 wishing Nintendo would do this and explaining how they maybe could.

http://divertissementz.blogspot.com/2006/12/wiish-list-entry-001.html

I doubt this to be true, considering it would mean that Nintendo would have to get off their asses and make some type of support for an external harddrive.

But, assuming it shells through, I'd love to play NiGHTS and see what everyone else is talking about...I missed out on Sega, save the Genesis.

Why is it so improbable that they might have a USB harddrive down the line for VC games? USB to PC would be even better but that isn't going to happen
But a hard drive add on isn't impossible.

Without this though they will never fit those kinds of games on there.

Dragon Force was the best game ever. It was definitely one of my favorites.

This is a bunk rumor. Any of the very few DigiPen faculty who could possibly know such a thing wouldn't leak it, not by a long shot. Students here don't get this kind of information. The Computer Engineering students who got to work on virtual console games didn't get to know what games they were coding on, and that was last summer. Any student who's working at Nintendo would have the info because of Nintendo, not DigiPen. Besides, Nintendo doesn't keep this kind of news secret. As soon as they'd make an agreement with Sega they'd announce it, long before the games started getting worked on. They announced support for the current VC systems as soon as the deal was made, like a year before the Wii even came out. It's sweet sharing a building and parking lot with Nintendo, eating in Cafe Mario, and buying brand new Wii and DS games for $31 and $18, and getting free oscilloscopes, but that's where the sweetness stops. We don't have any secret info from Nintendo.

The Wii, with its last gen hardware, would be incapable of emulation of Saturn games.

Sega, where is the love for the xbox live arcade? Please bring the Hydro Thunder with online play, please....

*Syco: "I'm pretty sure the data is written backwards on the disk so you have to spin it backwards to read it"

It amazes me how many people still think GC discs spin backwards.

*majortom1981: "Second, do you forget that nintendo has experience programming for dual processors?"

Big whoop. Coding dual CPUs isn't that hard, especially when the chips are identical. Nintendo fans try to make people think that coding for the XBox 360 is impossible because it has *gasp* THREE CPU cores (coding multiple cores is easier than multiple CPUs).

Anyway, what's hard about programming the Saturn is the fact that it has three graphics cores, and each one is radically different. The Saturn isn't just complicated -- it's messy.

*Burger: "This is a bunk rumor."

All rumors are bunk.

*Sly: "The Wii, with its last gen hardware, would be incapable of emulation of Saturn games."

I agree. Fast emulation is NOT easy. You're not just decoding instructions -- you have to mimick the entire machine architecture, clock for clock.

However, nobody has yet considered the possibility that these games will actually run natively, at least to a point. The games have to drive the hardware to read audio track and other kinds of data. Emulating all of that and trying to compress the tracks would be a real pain. The games would have to be properly refactored to work properly.

Frankly, I don't think it's worth the effort to make a full-blown Saturn emulator, anyway. It's easier to port the few good titles available.

USB Harddrive support? that would hold a lot of saturn games.

DigiPen isn't connected to NOA. It shares the second floor of the Redmond Warehouse with NST. NST would not be working on anything but games. The actual Virtual Console work is in NOA.

To further compound it, there are employees friendly with students. Sadly some of them can't seem to keep their mouth shut, despite the NDAs we're forced to sign upon admittance. Of course, others have been known to be horrible liars.

If they bring NiGHTS, SCUD, Mr. Bones, and Fighters Megamix to the Wii...

it will be the very same day I purchase their system.

Sorry fellas, but this is pretty damn old.We posted this back in December.

http://www.seganerds.com/2006/12/12/is-the-saturn-coming-to-the-virtual-console

Still cool, though.

SEGA Master System, Game Gear, Game Boy...still a lot out there, why Saturn? They're just trying to get more traffic.

I can't imagine the Wii, with their limited storage spaces, emulating any disc based system.

There is a fuckton of misinformation here. Saturn emulation on the PC is actually near perfect.

http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~phantasy/ssf/index.html

This emulator runs every major Saturn game with no glitches at full speed on 3ghz P4s+.

Get with the times assholes.

Well, let´s hope this will come sooner rather than later!

How can we play Saturn games on the Wii when Wii VC control pad doesn't have enough button? Saturn control pad got ABC, XYZ and two L R trigger while Wii only got AB, XY and LR