Is the Saturn action replay supposed to work only when it wants?

[Urzu402]

Or is that a sign of my Saturn's cartridge port failing?
See first time I got it to work it had extremely glitchy graphics in X-Men vs Street Fighter. So I reset it, the. I reset the system and tried again it was working for a little bit but then halfway through a fight it froze a black screen came up and said some CPU error occurred and was white text on a black background. Then it didnt work for a few tries but then I got it to work and it worked perfectly. But now it just works when it feels like it.

[Parodius Duh!]

Pro Action Replay are made cheaply in some third world Asian factory....most likely got a dud. Ive had 3, all bought new, one of them did the same thing yours is doing, other two were fine. I suggest you never save games to the cartridge, they will erase whenever the hell it feels like it, even if you got one thats working perfect. Should really just get a Japanese Saturn as thats your best bet and the port will be free if you ever want to play a game that requires one of the higher MB carts....

[Urzu402]

Yeah it's obvious they were made cheaply in an Asian country somewhere. Yeah it would be better to get a Japanese Saturn. But the fact that the action replay acts as a RAM expansion cart makes it really convient

[G-Boobie]

It's probably both. The Saturn cartridge port is garbage, and the Action Replay isn't much better. Shut off your Saturn, wiggle the cart, when you get it working try to avoid ever touching it again.

[theclaw]

At some point they became overhyped by the fan community. You don't get much more feature-rich, but still has its own limitations.

[SpaceFlea]

Interesting, I've been using the same one for 10 years, and it's never "failed" in any regard. For all intents and purposes, it works perfectly. This is the first time I've seen the majority of folks in one place crap all over it.

[Urzu402]

Well I tried it a few more times and it worked perfectly. I have no idea what was causing it to crap out originally.

[wiggyx]

Interesting, I've been using the same one for 10 years, and it's never "failed" in any regard. For all intents and purposes, it works perfectly. This is the first time I've seen the majority of folks in one place crap all over it.

Same here, but like many China-made products of yesteryear, I'm sure it's super luck of the draw in terms of lifespan.

Like others have said, the Saturn cart port is total weaksauce. There are things you can do in order to extend its life, but the biggest issue that you'll run into is that the PAR has a connector which is significantly thicker than any 1st party accessory that uses the port. So of course it wears the port out even faster, ESPECIALLY if you swap it out often. If you want to keep playing your imports, especially the 4meg games, then there's a simple and cheap option if you don't want to bother with having a 2nd Saturn around.

- Mod a US Saturn with a good cart port (the chips are like $40). The chip doesn't let you play games from different regions, but does allow you to play backups.
- Stick your 4meg cart in and just leave it there.
- There's a really awesome patch program out there that will patch ANY Saturn game to NTSC US. So, just make copied of all your JP games and play em on the US Saturn. If you can't find it, then let me know and I can email it or host it for ya. It's a tiny file.

Of course you could do a region mod, but it's not the easiest mod on the planet. Either way, touching that cart port should just be something to forget about. Just too damned touchy and failure with them is a matter of when, not if. Trust me, I've got about 5-6 Saturns at the moment and I only acquired so many in order to find a JP and US unit with a solid cart port. JP unit has the 4meg in it and the US has an official memory cart. Neither ever leaves their respective cart ports and both are modded so I can take advantage of both accessories without having to swap a damned thing !

[Urzu402]

Well I'm not really good with soldering skills. I would be afraid of ruining the Saturn. And then for the chip I don't have the money to purchase one.

[Voliko]

I use a gameshark but I was convinced it was a broken until It finally decided to work after many attempts; definitely a combination of the cartridge slot being shoddy and the fact that the PCB's on these carts are so dang thick. I haven't dared touch the cart since and its been working great.

[Urzu402]

Yeah, I really don't plan on taking this action replay out of my saturn it's gonna stay in there till the cart slot dies I guess, but you should really get an action replay over the gameshark. Because I don't think the gameshark can be used as a ram cart too.

[Az]

Early 4-in-1 PAR's had glitchy graphics on XvsSF and wouldn't work at all with newer 4mb titles, so that could possibly be another thing to factor in when troubleshooting.

[Urzu402]

Early 4-in-1 PAR's had glitchy graphics on XvsSF and wouldn't work at all with newer 4mb titles, so that could possibly be another thing to factor in when troubleshooting.

Well the one I have I think is a newer one because I just bought it like a week ago. And it only had the glitchy graphics once and every time after that they looked ok.

[theclaw]

Get traditional style region switches installed. Once in place it'll be like Genesis.

[Edmond Dantes]

Aren't there some games that require a unique, packed-in RAM cart to run (because they actually have game data on said cart)? I think XMvsSF and KOF '95 are two such games.

[theclaw]

Yes. Saturn has one cart slot. Any cart inserted by default renders all others entirely completely unusable. You can't do things like have action replay together with backup RAM (for save memory hog imports), or games that require their own cart.

[Urzu402]

Aren't there some games that require a unique, packed-in RAM cart to run (because they actually have game data on said cart)? I think XMvsSF and KOF '95 are two such games.

Well Xmen vs street fighter does require a ram cart but I don't think it needs to be a specific one because the action replay works with it