Like a complete idiot I accidentally deleted Mednafen while trying to clean up my HDD and had long since forgotten how I set everything up in the config file. I then remembered that I learn how to do all of the setup by watching your videos. I found this video again being in the top 3 for Saturn Mednafen tutorial. Got everything back up and running in no time! Thanks again Austin!
Thanks, amigo! I'd poked at Mednafen years ago but didn't have any luck and already had emulators that ran my Saturn games so I didn't persevere. I stayed with you on this video and got it booting a bunch of my own rips tonight. I appreciate the tips as far as dragging cue sheets onto Mednafen's exe and also the config file tweaks and controller setup.
This Tutorial is still valid as of February 2019. Nothing has changed in terms of basic set up. I highly suggest after doing this basic set up to go to Mednafens website and click Documentation then go to the Sega Saturn section. Give it a good read and set everything up as you would like. Try some Filters, go fullscreen etc.
Thank you soooo much, Austin! I had never heard of this emulator. I'm very impressed at how well it emulates the Saturn with such amazing performance! (getting a steady 60 fps even on my 3-year old lower to mid-range gaming pc). It's been almost 20 years since I've enjoyed Shinobi Legions, Die Hard Arcade, and even my guilty pleasure, Time Gal! I'm having a blast!!!! *Just a note for anyone that may need -- If anyone is having trouble getting a full picture in full screen mode, search this in the config file "ss.stretch aspect mult2" and change it to "ss.stretch aspect". There are many helpful things in the documentation page, as Austin already mentioned. Laterz!!
+Schizkid glad it's helping you mate... I love the emu. my fave do games on this system are, Burning Rangers, Sega Rally, fighting Vipers and Nights into Dreams :)
For anyone asking about making the game actually Fullscreen, you need to use Notepad++ and go back into the config file. Do a search for ss.stretch. By default, I believe it says aspect_mult2. Just delete that and type full. So it should look like "ss.stretch full" (minus the quotation marks) then click save. Alt+Enter will now put it in window mode and fullscreen the game, ignoring aspect ratio.
Great Upload. What a fantastic Emulator for the Saturn and the latest version now run PAL format too. Run about 50 various Saturn titles in all and all work well with no issue. Set it up as per your upload and I am so impressed with the results. Thanks man. :-)
You click the video,you are anxious about mednafen setup,you see the name simply fucking austin,after 5 minutes are all up and running great,you are the dude mate keep going.
Thank you so much for this video. Emulation in Yabause and SSF were never quite right. However, Mednafen knocks it out of the park. I've regretted selling off my original Saturn and games like Dragon Force and Iron Storm years ago. Until now, emulators just never brought back the same feeling that Mednafen does. Using a Street Fighter IV Xbox 360 gamepad is the closest thing I've used to an original Saturn controller too. It's like I'm nineteen years old again and playing Saturn in my old apartment (damn, now I feel old).
Great video, been trying to use this emulator for a while. A tip for everybody: Your cue files may show a path like this: "C:\SATURN roms\Darius Gaiden (U)(Saturn).BIN" mednafen won't load games that contain colons or backlashes, so you have to rename the cue files (notepad ++) to remove this part "C:\SATURN roms\". Don't forget to rename the bin file if you change the name of cue file itself. The saturn was such an underrated system it almost makes me cry, being able to play it again is so cool, don't miss the excellent games that were released in Japan only, some of them are really original and fun.
Congratulations friend for the great video, well explained, saved my day with the information that ALT + SHIFT + 1 configures the controls, I was panning behind that information and I found your video, like deserved
FINALLY!! The Saturn is by far my favorite console. Maybe becuase it was the very first one that I bought myself after saving up for months. Can't wait to try this one out.
I actually went to the store with my dad to buy a PS1. After comparing Tekken with Virtua Fighter though, I picked the Saturn. I only had a few games, but played them endlessly: Bug! Rayman Shinobi X Clockwork Knight Clockwork Knight 2 Daytona USA Virtua Fighter Virtua Fighter 2 Never played Nights into dreams though. Is it as good as they say?
Tekken back then basically was a virtua fighter rip off. Now it's something incredible! Getting a new PC soon, so I hope I'll be able to run tekken 7 on it :P
I hear you! Virtua Fighter was cutting edge at the time. re invented how we see Fighting Games. Now its neglected when it could be soo much! They could focus more on the characters, bring in some faves from other games like the other franchises have... anything! hehehehe
Kinda' late, but I just wanted to say thank you very much for this video! Now I can finally enjoy one of my favorite saturn games, been trying so many other emulators and it never worked!
Nice one Austin - I'd heard of mednafen but never tried it before. Great video, easy to follow and I was playing Sega Rally within a couple of mins after watching the video. Now to set it up in rlauncher! Cheers mate
Brilliant!!! I haven't played an emulator in years but been meaning to tackle the Sega Saturn. I will give this a go as i've always wanted to play Dragon Force II.
Austin, I was trying to run Sonic R. And it worked! Mednafen is a great emulator! Kudos to you! I'm using this now for Sega Saturn games! No LaunchBox or RetroArch, just this simple program. Can I please include your tutorial on my Sonic R video? (upcoming)
Thanks a lot for this, Austin! I was mucking around with Turbo Engine & having trouble with Garou Densetsu 2, followed this and I'm now golden! I was worried that since the time of this video the fix files may not work, they still appear to, though I'm noticing slow down issues with Sega Ages Vol 1 NTSC/U. Haven't looked into it yet, probably some configuration issue. Or perhaps it's just not fully compatible yet. Will check it out later. Thanks again, Austin.
Wow this stand alone emulator is AMAZING! I've been using the Mednafen core inside of Retro Arch which is way more demanding on my CPU than the stand alone. I don't have to run SSF in windowed mode anymore to get intensive games to run at full speed with little input lag. It doesn't have Retro Arch's UI, but all I care about is getting the game running at full speed.
Can't believe how much progress is being made on the Sega Saturn the past few months from lots of emulators! Really great consider how rubbish Saturn emulation was for a long, long time :) Awesome news and great video as usual :)
thank you mate! But yeah... I would say emulation in general has stepped up all over. But this once neglected system is now back in the game with some great new emus and more work done on the existing ones... cant get no better than that :D
I've been waiting for something like this since my Saturn decided it wanted to make the display wavy and the system to make a squealing noise Thanks Austin :D I love this channel, really helped me organise my stuff with that Launchbox tutorial too.
Awesome mate and its a pleasure. Cant beat a bit of Sega Saturn! Yeah, LB take much of the actual playing of the games hassle out of the way once you get a system setup :D
I can't get it to work! :( I've followed the vid to the letter. Will this run .mdf files?I'm trying to run Night into Dreams (U) but no luck - is it compatible? Keeps coming up with Do you want to allow this app from an unknown publisher to make changes to your PC? then nothing happens after clicking yes. Tried on 2 PC's.Any advice will be much appreciated :)
Awesome video. Much appreciated. I used SSF a year or two back and was actually pretty surprised how well it worked on my ancient PC. One or two mild hiccups on one of the Virtua Fighter games, but considering that when I looked a couple of years before, the verdict was that there were no decent Saturn Emulators (or maybe I was just looking in the wrong places). To hear that Mednafen is even better is great news. I also tried Mednafen in Retroarch for PS1 a while back (before they added Saturn emulation) and it worked great, although I had a problem with the screen size. This was apparently due to the fact that the PS1 would change resolutions, so when the game switched to a lower resolution, it wasn't detected and scaled to fullscreen by the emulator. Not sure if they ever solved that issue. If anyone ever manages to make an N64 emulator that isn't a pain in the ass and has close to 100% game compatibility I'll hunt them down and plant a big sloppy kiss on them. I abandoned N64 emulators because it was such a headache using specific configurations/emulators and hunting down plugins/trying to find out which plugin and which version to use for specific games. I'd love to see an original XBOX emulator one day too. Basically, if one day we have working emulators up to PS2 (in my case, preferably with Driving Force Pro FFB emulation as I like racing games) and original XBOX, I'll be happy because PS3/XB360 is when the woes of NTSC/PAL went away (I won't go into that now because it will lead to a huge rant).
Project64 works really well and it has a very high compatibility. Everything works fine right of of the box. www.pj64-emu.com/downloads/project64/binaries/ Theirs a FAQ available that should answer your questions. www.pj64-emu.com/faqs/
I appreciate the suggestion but P64 is one of the ones (in fact it was the first one) I tried and it had issues. Perhaps it has become better in subsequent builds or it just so happens that the games I want to play are some of the more problematic ones but not everything worked fine right out of the box for me.
I can't remember every game I was trying to run at the time, but I remember Golden Eye had issues (graphics glitches etc) and when I tried using plugins it would fix one issue and introduce another or cause the emulator to crash. I remember having more than one build of P64 on my machine because some games ran OK in one version but not the other. For example, WWE No Mercy played fine in an older build but the newer build caused it to stutter and play in slow-mo. I remember Doom 64 displayed really dark for some reason. I didn't get around to testing too many games due to the amount of issues I encountered in the handful of games I did try. I remember reading a list of known issues and there were other games I wanted to play (various Mario games and other classics) that had known problems so I ended up calling it a day.
thank you mate, always happy to help where I can :) lemme know if you need any help or how you get on mate. nice to get feedback to see if these work hehe
Hi Austin. Thanks as ever. The Saturn was the last missing piece of my setup. As I'm using Windows 10 SSF has been a real pain to get working (in fact, I never could get it set up). This was a doddle. Then... With no rhyme and reason, games have started running at x2 speed. No sound, nothing. Has this happend to you? If so, how did you fix it? I've trawled through Google, but I can't seem to find a solution. Cheers.
For people having trouble, the default directory for roms appears to be c/SATURN so just put your roms in a folder named SATURN on your C drive and it should fix your issue
The Saturn is may favorite console. It has my favorite games of all time and makes such pretty colors and strange polygons. And it's so hard to emulate that it's surrounded in mystery. You wanna play the original games? Ya gotta buy the system.
No I mean i'm done with NullDC, obviously for Dreamcast emulation. It's the only other emu that's giving me any problems. I have never even used Yabause.
I know exactly what you mean. I switched to Demul thanks to the tip from this channel and have not looked back since. Works great in launchbox which is really really important to me.
ProDaKah ! SSF is ok, but it really doesn't play nice at all with launchers like launchbox or maximus arcade. You have to mount an iso for it to work which makes it problematic. Also it has some lag with controller input. Mednafen doesn't have these limitations, and from what I've tested has much higher compatibility.
Hey, Austin, how well would a PC with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and an ASUS STRIX RX460 graphics card work for Sega Saturn emulation? I'm quite new to the PC gaming scene and I'm trying to game on a budget. Any help would be much appreciated!
Dude, thank you SO much. I love Saturn, but Yabuse crashes and runs like garbage sometimes. I've read it's not actually a recommended emulator for PC, though it's easy to use. Retroarch is impressive and works great for NES emulation, basically nothing is required, but for more complex systems, particularly those with more than two buttons, it's not user-friendly at all and can become extremely frustrating. This was a little bit of work setting up, but your guide was super helpful and I can't thank you enough. Looking forward to playing some games now.
Holy shit this is a lot of work, Why isn't there a package for 32bit and 64bit where all of this has already been done and put together? Like all the rest of the emulators?
Hi there. Awesome tutorial. Easy walkthrough into the mednafen system. I'm in love with it, but I'm new to this whole emulating thing. I used to have a Sega Saturn myself. Simply loved it. Do you know how can we swap discs in mednafen? I have just finished Panzer Dragoon Saga disc 1, however, I haven't got none of my progress saved when I try to play disc 2. Thnx a million for your help. Best wishes from Brazil.
Fantastic Austin. Been wanting the Saturn for ages but couldnt get any of the previous emulators to work properly. Just a question about full screen though if i may please. When i switch to full screen, the display is in postage stamp sized mode (perhaps exaggerating a little. lol). Ive been in the .cfg and tried to reconfigure but havent had a success. Any ideas or pointers? ;-)
Thank you. Finally got full (full) screen. Damn, theres a lot of fiddling about but i got there in the end. Will be playing some Clockwork Knight, Loaded, Nights, Bug and Gex this evening. ;-)
Cheers for this! Have you set this up to work with HS 1.4/UptoDate RL by any chance as the last updated module files for RL say that Sega Saturn is not part of Mednafen mod file" Any idea? So far only ccd>img games seem to work via dragging file over exe but not through RL? :)
Followed the first few steps and after dragging my cue file in i get this message: Error opening CD: Referenced path “C:\SATURN\042 PANER DRAGOON SAGA DISC 1 OF 4 (U).BIN” is potentially unsafe.Contains colon. Contains backslash. Refer to documentation about the “filesys_untrusted_fip_check” setting.
I can TOTALLY recommend the Retroarch core of mednafen Saturn; it's absolutely fantastic combining an awesome CRT shader (preset) like Hyllian or Royale with it. Best Saturn experience I've ever had. Give it a go :-)
are you getting full speed? madnafen version ran fine for me with austins tweaks but retroarch isnt running great at all. im playing sega rally mostly. if i turn of vsync it runs perfect but sound.
awesopme man. what does it mean though if the games music isn't playing. Both Sonic R music doesn't play at all and when I launch alien trilogy it doesn't ever take me to the first level. SweetFx is also a great way to play with the emulator and scanlines. Is there a way to stretch the image and or make it run in 1920x1080 a tthis time? thanks mate
I can finally run PDS! Two questions, where do the saves go? WHat about multiple disc games? One extra one, do I have to configure the controls every time I turn on the console?
One question. Mostly windows related. I downloaded Notepad++ from the Microsoft store... Where Do I find it? How do I make it appear as a choice for the cfg files? I can always find it at the store and launch it to open the file, but it's such a hassle.
Fantastic guide. Definitely helped me get this thing up and running. I played through the first disc of Panzer Dragoon Saga, but when it asks me to insert disc 2, I change discs with F8 and F6 but it doesn't seem to work? I've been running the game using the m3u file since the very beginning, and the emulator recognizes that there are 4 files in the m3u since it says "Disc 2 of 4" when switching discs. However, the game just stays in the same screen permanently. The Disc 2 file opens just fine by itself when I drag it into the emulator, but obviously the save data doesn't carry over so I can't do that. Any ideas what the problem is/how to fix it?
Austin, I need advice! I am about to build an emulator PC and I really want to run a smooth mednafen for Saturn. Question is: will the G3258 at (around 4ghz or so) be able to do this for me? Thanks in advance!!
Thank you so much for the quick reply, sir! I asked because the mednafen website for saturn states quad core recommendation. It sounds like this 3258 will do the trick though. Love the channel, btw!
Everything works with me with this config but I kinda want better quality of picture not like playing with AV cable quality(blurred). Is there anyway I can get picture with S video quality in mednafen? Thank you very much.
Does not seem to work with windows 32 bit. I downladed the 32 bit version and also the fix files. But when I try to drag a file to the Mednafen app, nothing happens... I download the mednafen-0.9.44.1-win32.zip version. And Also run as an Administrator. How come nothing happens?
Hi, So I got Mednafen set up on my PC, and it runs the NTSC Sega Saturn games very nicely. I am trying to play the Japanese release of Vampire Saviour which has a smoother 60fps animation quality on Saturn than its U.S. port on PlayStation, but I can't seem to fix the region settings in Mednafen's configuration. From their website it gives value types for both an auto-detect setting and specific region settings if auto-detect fails, but altering each of these values did nothing to help. And I know it's got nothing to do with the 4MB RAM expansion cart setting (required for this game) because I tried it with and without it. And I do have the correct sega_101.bin file required for Japanese games in Mednafen's main folder. Can you pinpoint what else might break the region lock?
I'm having issues inputting the analog joystick for a switch pro controller on the 3d control pad. What could I do to potentially fix this? It's not detecting the stick on bit
Not sure if you're still having an issue, but open the .cue file in Notepad and delete the path before the game. (C:\SATURN) and just have it say the gamename.bin
okay i got it working but when trying to play pds (which is multi disc) i cant load my save when it comes time to switch to the next disc. someone told me to make an m3u file using notepad and ive attempted that with no success, any help would be greatly appreciated!!
I got it all working, how can I get the games to save? or "Save state" the default button is F5 but when I press it, it says module "ss" does not support save state
I'm dragging the Panzer Dragoon Saga .cue file over the mednafen.exe file, and nothing is happening. I tried using a Super Nintendo ROM, and that worked perfectly. What am I doing wrong?
my comp is really struggling to play these games. seems to be running at 15fps ish... any ideas why? it also changes my windows to windows basic colour scheme?
Mednafen Sega Saturn does not have a Dynarec for it's CPU emulation and also uses only software rendering. Unless you have a modern circa 2015 computer, you'll notice some or moderate slowdowns.
i am trying to play scud the disposable assassin but it is only playing music on the image flle like a sound test it is not playing the actual game WHAT IS HAPPENING AND HOW DO I GET THE GAME RUNNING TO PLAY IT! i am dragging the .cue file onto the exe file and all it does is open up music tracks
Oh, one of my favorite game system in the 90's. I even got a Japanese version, thinking that the game will run much better than the US version. I was wrong but had fun with it for a while and sold it later on.
Edit: Nevermind, I thought i try reshade with mednafen again for just a laugh, and now for some reason it works perfectly. wtf. Austin, do you know of anyway to use filters (like scanlines/crt ) with this emulator? Ive tried Yabause and its compatible with Reshade using the scanlines/crt effects and while Policenauts runs, it gets random flickering, thats with or without reshade. Reshade causes crashes in Mednafen unfortunately.
Followed step by step and when I drag over it loads to an audio track list. Also have a pal version of Nights into Dreams that doesnt load at all. Any suggestions?
Great emulator, but can you tell me how to change the aspect ratio at the moment all games are displayed in 14:9, i see options in the config but changeing them does nothing, there is a line thats says ssfplay,stretch aspect_mult2 if i change this value the emulator wont start.....edit nevermind sorted it out just needed change value to full.
0:00 Good day, guys! 0:17 Mednafen is new; Mednafen is boss. 0:53 Download Austin's 'Fix Files' mega.nz/#!MNVAxIZS!TWLEVFJJSsPKAeCjSEKj3bM0fteBI6bN5vqqm7q_YjU 1:39 Download Mednafen mednafen.github.io/releases/ 3:11 Make sure to create a clearly marked folder for each version of Mednafen that you download. 3:54 Move your Mednafen compressed folder into your Mednafen folder and decompress it. 4:57 Give Mednafen permission to run as Administrator. 5:40 Place your 3 'Fix Files' into the same folder as mednafen.exe 6:46 How to launch games. (I hope you have them in BIN/CUE or CCD format.) 8:42 Editing Mednafen's .cfg file - 8:47 Get yourself a good text editor. // Austin likes Notepad++. // I like VS Code. code.visualstudio.com/Download - 9:42 Let's edit the configuration file. mednafen.cfg -- 10:11 Cache your entire game data in RAM when you load it for the fastest/smoothest loading. -- 10:49 How to change controller types 12:30 Turn on your physical controller before opening the emulator. 13:06 How to set your controller buttons. 16:01 Those are the basics! 16:50 For keyboard shortcuts, scanlines, save state controls, and more options, see the Mednafen documentation. mednafen.github.io/documentation/ss.html 18:01 That's it, guys! 18:29 It's been a pleasure! Please Like and Subscribe. Most of all, have a good day, guys!
It's amazing how much more difficult Saturn is to emulate than Dreamcast even though it's the previous gen!
lukas akerlund All thanks to Dr. Abrasive! :)
@@Msf1011 and the abrasatrons!!
Lukas Haselmann Damn right mate😀
It has a horribly complex CPU and was notorious for developing games for.
@@donman256 It's not that the CPU is complex.
It's the fact that it has multiple CPUs.
Like a complete idiot I accidentally deleted Mednafen while trying to clean up my HDD and had long since forgotten how I set everything up in the config file. I then remembered that I learn how to do all of the setup by watching your videos. I found this video again being in the top 3 for Saturn Mednafen tutorial. Got everything back up and running in no time! Thanks again Austin!
Thanks, amigo!
I'd poked at Mednafen years ago but didn't have any luck and already had emulators that ran my Saturn games so I didn't persevere.
I stayed with you on this video and got it booting a bunch of my own rips tonight.
I appreciate the tips as far as dragging cue sheets onto Mednafen's exe and also the config file tweaks and controller setup.
This Tutorial is still valid as of February 2019. Nothing has changed in terms of basic set up.
I highly suggest after doing this basic set up to go to Mednafens website and click Documentation then go to the Sega Saturn section. Give it a good read and set everything up as you would like. Try some Filters, go fullscreen etc.
I'm having some trouble getting the save states to work. I hit F5, and it just starts recording. What gives?
Thank you soooo much, Austin! I had never heard of this emulator. I'm very impressed at how well it emulates the Saturn with such amazing performance! (getting a steady 60 fps even on my 3-year old lower to mid-range gaming pc). It's been almost 20 years since I've enjoyed Shinobi Legions, Die Hard Arcade, and even my guilty pleasure, Time Gal! I'm having a blast!!!!
*Just a note for anyone that may need -- If anyone is having trouble getting a full picture in full screen mode, search this in the config file "ss.stretch aspect mult2" and change it to "ss.stretch aspect". There are many helpful things in the documentation page, as Austin already mentioned. Laterz!!
Oh, and if anyone has any good Saturn game suggestions, I would love to know!
+Schizkid glad it's helping you mate... I love the emu. my fave do games on this system are, Burning Rangers, Sega Rally, fighting Vipers and Nights into Dreams :)
I forgot about Burning Rangers! I think I have a full weekend now! LOL. Thanks again Austin! You have a new patreon member!
Always exciting to get a new video from SA! and for a system I've always had trouble getting up and running. No more DAEMON TOOLS!! Excitnin!
hahaha yeah :D I am not a fan of mounting damn discs
I heard that woot woot
For anyone asking about making the game actually Fullscreen, you need to use Notepad++ and go back into the config file. Do a search for ss.stretch. By default, I believe it says aspect_mult2. Just delete that and type full. So it should look like "ss.stretch full" (minus the quotation marks) then click save. Alt+Enter will now put it in window mode and fullscreen the game, ignoring aspect ratio.
Great Upload. What a fantastic Emulator for the Saturn and the latest version now run PAL format too. Run about 50 various Saturn titles in all and all work well with no issue. Set it up as per your upload and I am so impressed with the results. Thanks man. :-)
Great tutorial! I've been fighting with multiple Saturn Emulators to get Shining Force III running, and your tutorial was spot on! Cheers!
You click the video,you are anxious about mednafen setup,you see the name simply fucking austin,after 5 minutes are all up and running great,you are the dude mate keep going.
Finally!, a tutorial that isn´t rubbish .Thank you so much, man. Awesome job, greetings from Mexico.
Thank you so much for this video. Emulation in Yabause and SSF were never quite right. However, Mednafen knocks it out of the park. I've regretted selling off my original Saturn and games like Dragon Force and Iron Storm years ago. Until now, emulators just never brought back the same feeling that Mednafen does. Using a Street Fighter IV Xbox 360 gamepad is the closest thing I've used to an original Saturn controller too. It's like I'm nineteen years old again and playing Saturn in my old apartment (damn, now I feel old).
Love these tutorial videos Austin... please keep them coming...
Saturn wasn't a bad console either :)
Great video, been trying to use this emulator for a while.
A tip for everybody: Your cue files may show a path like this:
"C:\SATURN roms\Darius Gaiden (U)(Saturn).BIN" mednafen won't load games that contain colons or backlashes, so you have to rename the cue files (notepad ++) to remove this part "C:\SATURN roms\". Don't forget to rename the bin file if you change the name of cue file itself.
The saturn was such an underrated system it almost makes me cry, being able to play it again is so cool, don't miss the excellent games that were released in Japan only, some of them are really original and fun.
Congratulations friend for the great video, well explained, saved my day with the information that ALT + SHIFT + 1 configures the controls, I was panning behind that information and I found your video, like deserved
FINALLY!! The Saturn is by far my favorite console. Maybe becuase it was the very first one that I bought myself after saving up for months. Can't wait to try this one out.
yeah... I loved the Saturn too :D I saved and had this before I got my PS1.. was one hell of a day :D
I actually went to the store with my dad to buy a PS1. After comparing Tekken with Virtua Fighter though, I picked the Saturn. I only had a few games, but played them endlessly:
Bug!
Rayman
Shinobi X
Clockwork Knight
Clockwork Knight 2
Daytona USA
Virtua Fighter
Virtua Fighter 2
Never played Nights into dreams though. Is it as good as they say?
yes mate... I got it first as a demo and would change the date on the saturn so that it would change the game ehehehehe.... the little things :D
Tekken back then basically was a virtua fighter rip off. Now it's something incredible! Getting a new PC soon, so I hope I'll be able to run tekken 7 on it :P
I hear you! Virtua Fighter was cutting edge at the time. re invented how we see Fighting Games. Now its neglected when it could be soo much! They could focus more on the characters, bring in some faves from other games like the other franchises have... anything! hehehehe
Kinda' late, but I just wanted to say thank you very much for this video! Now I can finally enjoy one of my favorite saturn games, been trying so many other emulators and it never worked!
Nice one Austin - I'd heard of mednafen but never tried it before. Great video, easy to follow and I was playing Sega Rally within a couple of mins after watching the video. Now to set it up in rlauncher! Cheers mate
I looooove Sega rally... it's an awesome version if the game
Brilliant!!! I haven't played an emulator in years but been meaning to tackle the Sega Saturn. I will give this a go as i've always wanted to play Dragon Force II.
Austin, I was trying to run Sonic R.
And it worked! Mednafen is a great emulator! Kudos to you! I'm using this now for Sega Saturn games!
No LaunchBox or RetroArch, just this simple program.
Can I please include your tutorial on my Sonic R video? (upcoming)
You are AWESOME! Keep up the great work! Love all your vids!!!
thank you matey :) I hope they help :)
Thanks a lot for this, Austin! I was mucking around with Turbo Engine & having trouble with Garou Densetsu 2, followed this and I'm now golden! I was worried that since the time of this video the fix files may not work, they still appear to, though I'm noticing slow down issues with Sega Ages Vol 1 NTSC/U. Haven't looked into it yet, probably some configuration issue. Or perhaps it's just not fully compatible yet. Will check it out later. Thanks again, Austin.
Hey Austin. Just wanted to say thank you. I got Radiant Silvergun working in 10 minuets flat.
Hehe glad it got you sorted mate. It's not a bad lil emu once you get your head around it :)
Wow this stand alone emulator is AMAZING! I've been using the Mednafen core inside of Retro Arch which is way more demanding on my CPU than the stand alone. I don't have to run SSF in windowed mode anymore to get intensive games to run at full speed with little input lag. It doesn't have Retro Arch's UI, but all I care about is getting the game running at full speed.
I enjoyed watching your video now I can play SS on my PC! Thank you I appreciate it
Arnold Bliss it's a pleasure kind sir
Can't believe how much progress is being made on the Sega Saturn the past few months from lots of emulators! Really great consider how rubbish Saturn emulation was for a long, long time :) Awesome news and great video as usual :)
thank you mate! But yeah... I would say emulation in general has stepped up all over. But this once neglected system is now back in the game with some great new emus and more work done on the existing ones... cant get no better than that :D
I've been trying to play saturn games forever and I finally can thank you so much !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've been waiting for something like this since my Saturn decided it wanted to make the display wavy and the system to make a squealing noise
Thanks Austin :D
I love this channel, really helped me organise my stuff with that Launchbox tutorial too.
Awesome mate and its a pleasure. Cant beat a bit of Sega Saturn!
Yeah, LB take much of the actual playing of the games hassle out of the way once you get a system setup :D
Ran into an issue immediately :D Got all the files in the correct place but it refuses to launch Radiant Silvergun (J).
try another dump or game to make sure its not just being fussy. I couldnt comment on that game as not tested :D
Yeah thats what Im gonna do. Gonna try Croc and see if it gets further than SSF ever did
I hope so as I loved that game hehehe :D
A fantastic video Austin, you make it so easy, love your videos !!! You should 100 times more subs :)
just trying to help out mate. its all about the good times and smiles around here :D
Absolutely loving your vids matey, proper nostalgia.
thank you mate :D I hope they help you out :D
I can't get it to work! :( I've followed the vid to the letter. Will this run .mdf files?I'm trying to run Night into Dreams (U) but no luck - is it compatible? Keeps coming up with Do you want to allow this app from an unknown publisher to make changes to your PC? then nothing happens after clicking yes. Tried on 2 PC's.Any advice will be much appreciated :)
The stdout file in the root directory is saying "ROM image is too large; maximum size allowed is 67108864 bytes" - any advice?
Thank you so much! I can finally play Dragon Force again, woohoo! Works great!
One of my favorites on the Saturn. I put a lot of hours into that one :)
Awesome video. Much appreciated.
I used SSF a year or two back and was actually pretty surprised how well it worked on my ancient PC. One or two mild hiccups on one of the Virtua Fighter games, but considering that when I looked a couple of years before, the verdict was that there were no decent Saturn Emulators (or maybe I was just looking in the wrong places). To hear that Mednafen is even better is great news.
I also tried Mednafen in Retroarch for PS1 a while back (before they added Saturn emulation) and it worked great, although I had a problem with the screen size. This was apparently due to the fact that the PS1 would change resolutions, so when the game switched to a lower resolution, it wasn't detected and scaled to fullscreen by the emulator. Not sure if they ever solved that issue.
If anyone ever manages to make an N64 emulator that isn't a pain in the ass and has close to 100% game compatibility I'll hunt them down and plant a big sloppy kiss on them. I abandoned N64 emulators because it was such a headache using specific configurations/emulators and hunting down plugins/trying to find out which plugin and which version to use for specific games. I'd love to see an original XBOX emulator one day too.
Basically, if one day we have working emulators up to PS2 (in my case, preferably with Driving Force Pro FFB emulation as I like racing games) and original XBOX, I'll be happy because PS3/XB360 is when the woes of NTSC/PAL went away (I won't go into that now because it will lead to a huge rant).
Project64 works really well and it has a very high compatibility. Everything works fine right of of the box.
www.pj64-emu.com/downloads/project64/binaries/
Theirs a FAQ available that should answer your questions.
www.pj64-emu.com/faqs/
I appreciate the suggestion but P64 is one of the ones (in fact it was the first one) I tried and it had issues. Perhaps it has become better in subsequent builds or it just so happens that the games I want to play are some of the more problematic ones but not everything worked fine right out of the box for me.
What games are you trying to play.
I can't remember every game I was trying to run at the time, but I remember Golden Eye had issues (graphics glitches etc) and when I tried using plugins it would fix one issue and introduce another or cause the emulator to crash.
I remember having more than one build of P64 on my machine because some games ran OK in one version but not the other. For example, WWE No Mercy played fine in an older build but the newer build caused it to stutter and play in slow-mo.
I remember Doom 64 displayed really dark for some reason.
I didn't get around to testing too many games due to the amount of issues I encountered in the handful of games I did try. I remember reading a list of known issues and there were other games I wanted to play (various Mario games and other classics) that had known problems so I ended up calling it a day.
Respect, respect and only respect. You simply rock.
excellent walkthrough bud learnt alot and pushed my cab forward a tad
cheers bud :D
Thanks Bro excellent I wanted to play some Saturn for time. Nice video
Bro i simply love your Channel man, thank you very much, you are a Help for all of us
thank you mate, always happy to help where I can :) lemme know if you need any help or how you get on mate. nice to get feedback to see if these work hehe
It's about damn time a new one is out. Sega Saturn emulator was the only one out of all emulators not to work right.
Yeah, thus one was a good emu especially for how old it is. new builds all the time too so keep an eyes out :)
Another awesome vid Austin, thanks again :)
Thank you. Very helpful tutorial. Now I can try some Saturn games if I ever decide to buy one.
Awesome mate i never heard of this emulator.I normaly use SSF (as you did lol) for all my saturn need's so i will be giving this ago later tonight :D
A bit long-winded, but I got everything working. Very clutch! Much appreciated!
Ahh the Saturn, I've done battle with you in the past but now with my comrades Simply Austin and Mednafen I will beat you once a and for all.
Hi Austin. Thanks as ever. The Saturn was the last missing piece of my setup. As I'm using Windows 10 SSF has been a real pain to get working (in fact, I never could get it set up). This was a doddle. Then... With no rhyme and reason, games have started running at x2 speed. No sound, nothing. Has this happend to you? If so, how did you fix it? I've trawled through Google, but I can't seem to find a solution. Cheers.
another great vid - cheers again austin!!
thank you mate... cheers for the like :D
Thanks man; would've never gotten this thing working if not for this video : )
What other platforms that Mednafen supports that you recommend to use with mednafen (in Retroarch, Mednafen core)?
Great video austin. What is the best psx emulator you know of?
I did everything according to the guide. It doesn't work for me on Sonic R.
This guide is great, Austin. Thanks.
thank you mate
Amazing vid, please keep up the great work.
For people having trouble, the default directory for roms appears to be c/SATURN so just put your roms in a folder named SATURN on your C drive and it should fix your issue
The Saturn is may favorite console. It has my favorite games of all time and makes such pretty colors and strange polygons.
And it's so hard to emulate that it's surrounded in mystery. You wanna play the original games? Ya gotta buy the system.
I'm finally free from SSF and NullDC! Mednafen really is the best.
You mean SSF and Yabause.
No I mean i'm done with NullDC, obviously for Dreamcast emulation. It's the only other emu that's giving me any problems. I have never even used Yabause.
I know exactly what you mean. I switched to Demul thanks to the tip from this channel and have not looked back since. Works great in launchbox which is really really important to me.
What's wrong with SSF? I ask that with zero hostility - just genuinely curious.
ProDaKah ! SSF is ok, but it really doesn't play nice at all with launchers like launchbox or maximus arcade. You have to mount an iso for it to work which makes it problematic. Also it has some lag with controller input. Mednafen doesn't have these limitations, and from what I've tested has much higher compatibility.
Hey, Austin, how well would a PC with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and an ASUS STRIX RX460 graphics card work for Sega Saturn emulation? I'm quite new to the PC gaming scene and I'm trying to game on a budget. Any help would be much appreciated!
Hey I've been having a hard time running the game and everytime I put the bin or cue file in I get and error or a soundtrack screen.
Any ideas?
Dude, thank you SO much. I love Saturn, but Yabuse crashes and runs like garbage sometimes. I've read it's not actually a recommended emulator for PC, though it's easy to use. Retroarch is impressive and works great for NES emulation, basically nothing is required, but for more complex systems, particularly those with more than two buttons, it's not user-friendly at all and can become extremely frustrating. This was a little bit of work setting up, but your guide was super helpful and I can't thank you enough. Looking forward to playing some games now.
Holy shit this is a lot of work, Why isn't there a package for 32bit and 64bit where all of this has already been done and put together? Like all the rest of the emulators?
Hi there. Awesome tutorial. Easy walkthrough into the mednafen system. I'm in love with it, but I'm new to this whole emulating thing. I used to have a Sega Saturn myself. Simply loved it. Do you know how can we swap discs in mednafen? I have just finished Panzer Dragoon Saga disc 1, however, I haven't got none of my progress saved when I try to play disc 2. Thnx a million for your help. Best wishes from Brazil.
Fantastic Austin. Been wanting the Saturn for ages but couldnt get any of the previous emulators to work properly. Just a question about full screen though if i may please. When i switch to full screen, the display is in postage stamp sized mode (perhaps exaggerating a little. lol). Ive been in the .cfg and tried to reconfigure but havent had a success. Any ideas or pointers? ;-)
look a the scaler and video settings. it will x2, x3 etc etc to the nearest your screen supports. More notes in the documentation page linked
Thank you. Finally got full (full) screen. Damn, theres a lot of fiddling about but i got there in the end. Will be playing some Clockwork Knight, Loaded, Nights, Bug and Gex this evening. ;-)
Cheers for this! Have you set this up to work with HS 1.4/UptoDate RL by any chance as the last updated module files for RL say that Sega Saturn is not part of Mednafen mod file" Any idea? So far only ccd>img games seem to work via dragging file over exe but not through RL? :)
Followed the first few steps and after dragging my cue file in i get this message:
Error opening CD: Referenced path “C:\SATURN\042 PANER DRAGOON SAGA DISC 1 OF 4 (U).BIN” is potentially unsafe.Contains colon. Contains backslash. Refer to documentation about the “filesys_untrusted_fip_check” setting.
I got that too but for Shinobi Legions... it might just be the cue file because I played Nights into Dreams from Coolrom no problem
I can TOTALLY recommend the Retroarch core of mednafen Saturn; it's absolutely fantastic combining an awesome CRT shader (preset) like Hyllian or Royale with it. Best Saturn experience I've ever had. Give it a go :-)
are you getting full speed? madnafen version ran fine for me with austins tweaks but retroarch isnt running great at all. im playing sega rally mostly. if i turn of vsync it runs perfect but sound.
awesopme man. what does it mean though if the games music isn't playing. Both Sonic R music doesn't play at all and when I launch alien trilogy it doesn't ever take me to the first level. SweetFx is also a great way to play with the emulator and scanlines. Is there a way to stretch the image and or make it run in 1920x1080 a tthis time? thanks mate
I can finally run PDS! Two questions, where do the saves go? WHat about multiple disc games?
One extra one, do I have to configure the controls every time I turn on the console?
ur channel is simply awesome
Keep getting error when I drag and drop game, rom is too large; maximum size allowed is 67108864. Have you run into this error?
Awesome Video man! Much appreciated!!!
One question. Mostly windows related.
I downloaded Notepad++ from the Microsoft store... Where Do I find it? How do I make it appear as a choice for the cfg files?
I can always find it at the store and launch it to open the file, but it's such a hassle.
mine goes fullscreen but it doesnt fit to screen, theres black bands all around the picture. Is there any way i can fix this?
Thanks again for these helpful videos!! Any plans to do tutorials on really hard to set up consoles like Konix or Super A'Can?
lots more to come mate :D
Fantastic guide. Definitely helped me get this thing up and running.
I played through the first disc of Panzer Dragoon Saga, but when it asks me to insert disc 2, I change discs with F8 and F6 but it doesn't seem to work? I've been running the game using the m3u file since the very beginning, and the emulator recognizes that there are 4 files in the m3u since it says "Disc 2 of 4" when switching discs. However, the game just stays in the same screen permanently. The Disc 2 file opens just fine by itself when I drag it into the emulator, but obviously the save data doesn't carry over so I can't do that. Any ideas what the problem is/how to fix it?
Austin, I need advice! I am about to build an emulator PC and I really want to run a smooth mednafen for Saturn. Question is: will the G3258 at (around 4ghz or so) be able to do this for me? Thanks in advance!!
Very good cpu mate yes. It's awesome for emulation, although now drowning some age with emus such as Cemu etc .... but awesome chip
Thank you so much for the quick reply, sir! I asked because the mednafen website for saturn states quad core recommendation. It sounds like this 3258 will do the trick though. Love the channel, btw!
Everything works with me with this config but I kinda want better quality of picture not like playing with AV cable quality(blurred). Is there anyway I can get picture with S video quality in mednafen? Thank you very much.
Does not seem to work with windows 32 bit. I downladed the 32 bit version and also the fix files. But when I try to drag a file to the Mednafen app, nothing happens...
I download the mednafen-0.9.44.1-win32.zip version. And Also run as an Administrator. How come nothing happens?
I get no signs of life from my install. I place the cue file over mednafen and it doesnt even try loading. any suggestions?
same oddly enough.. SSF used to work until it decided to start doing the same???
Hi,
So I got Mednafen set up on my PC, and it runs the NTSC Sega Saturn games very nicely. I am trying to play the Japanese release of Vampire Saviour which has a smoother 60fps animation quality on Saturn than its U.S. port on PlayStation, but I can't seem to fix the region settings in Mednafen's configuration. From their website it gives value types for both an auto-detect setting and specific region settings if auto-detect fails, but altering each of these values did nothing to help. And I know it's got nothing to do with the 4MB RAM expansion cart setting (required for this game) because I tried it with and without it. And I do have the correct sega_101.bin file required for Japanese games in Mednafen's main folder. Can you pinpoint what else might break the region lock?
I'm having issues inputting the analog joystick for a switch pro controller on the 3d control pad. What could I do to potentially fix this? It's not detecting the stick on bit
Cannot wait for the updated Video on RetroArch..
Will you be also be doing one, on setting up RocketLauncher correctly?
defo mate!
+Simply Austin Hi austin,how do I configure the controller in RA for the mednafe saturn core cannot suss it out at all 😣
how come when i download games..it downloads as a vlc file? the fix files you linked also downloaded as a vlc file. how can i change fix this?
Mednafen vs RetroArch vs Snowflake which one is the best?
Thanks, Austin! However, I tried to run Guardian Heroes on this, but it won't run an MDF/MDS. Any idea how to work this out?
Anytime I try to run a game i get the error message. Error opening CD: Refer to the documentation about the "filesys.untrusted_fip_check" settings.
Not sure if you're still having an issue, but open the .cue file in Notepad and delete the path before the game. (C:\SATURN) and just have it say the gamename.bin
Please help, whenever I drag and drop a file it says there's no file or directory.
Youre the best Austin.
okay i got it working but when trying to play pds (which is multi disc) i cant load my save when it comes time to switch to the next disc. someone told me to make an m3u file using notepad and ive attempted that with no success, any help would be greatly appreciated!!
how do you save controller profiles so you don't have to keep setting them up each time you use the emulator?
I got it all working, how can I get the games to save? or "Save state" the default button is F5 but when I press it, it says module "ss" does not support save state
I'm dragging the Panzer Dragoon Saga .cue file over the mednafen.exe file, and nothing is happening. I tried using a Super Nintendo ROM, and that worked perfectly. What am I doing wrong?
my comp is really struggling to play these games. seems to be running at 15fps ish... any ideas why? it also changes my windows to windows basic colour scheme?
Have you tried closing any programs running or deleted any unneeded processes?
Mednafen Sega Saturn does not have a Dynarec for it's CPU emulation and also uses only software rendering. Unless you have a modern circa 2015 computer, you'll notice some or moderate slowdowns.
i am trying to play scud the disposable assassin but it is only playing music on the image flle like a sound test it is not playing the actual game
WHAT IS HAPPENING AND HOW DO I GET THE GAME RUNNING TO PLAY IT!
i am dragging the .cue file
onto the exe file
and all it does is open up music tracks
(update) retroarch works
instead of the emulator you where talking about
Oh, one of my favorite game system in the 90's. I even got a Japanese version, thinking that the game will run much better than the US version. I was wrong but had fun with it for a while and sold it later on.
+Simply Austin absolutely!
+Simply Austin fuck Sega of America, they did everything wrong
Tomás Delizia
I think one of the competing company paid someone in SEGA of America to fail=Sabotage Sega!
they do make me facepalm almost on a daily basis... hehehe but I still love em :)
+Tomás Delizia actually sega of Japan was by far the incompetent guys in the failure of sega. Sega of America is practically what made sega, sega.
Edit: Nevermind, I thought i try reshade with mednafen again for just a laugh, and now for some reason it works perfectly. wtf.
Austin, do you know of anyway to use filters (like scanlines/crt ) with this emulator?
Ive tried Yabause and its compatible with Reshade using the scanlines/crt effects and while Policenauts runs, it gets random flickering, thats with or without reshade.
Reshade causes crashes in Mednafen unfortunately.
Will this setup work for Japanese games, or am I going to have to find Japanese Bios?
Do you know how to run mds or mdf files on messages? Because that's like half the games for the Saturn
Followed step by step and when I drag over it loads to an audio track list. Also have a pal version of Nights into Dreams that doesnt load at all. Any suggestions?
Great emulator, but can you tell me how to change the aspect ratio at the moment all games are displayed in 14:9, i see options in the config but changeing them does nothing, there is a line thats says ssfplay,stretch aspect_mult2 if i change this value the emulator wont start.....edit nevermind sorted it out just needed change value to full.
Thanks man, you're a legend.
0:00 Good day, guys!
0:17 Mednafen is new; Mednafen is boss.
0:53 Download Austin's 'Fix Files' mega.nz/#!MNVAxIZS!TWLEVFJJSsPKAeCjSEKj3bM0fteBI6bN5vqqm7q_YjU
1:39 Download Mednafen mednafen.github.io/releases/
3:11 Make sure to create a clearly marked folder for each version of Mednafen that you download.
3:54 Move your Mednafen compressed folder into your Mednafen folder and decompress it.
4:57 Give Mednafen permission to run as Administrator.
5:40 Place your 3 'Fix Files' into the same folder as mednafen.exe
6:46 How to launch games. (I hope you have them in BIN/CUE or CCD format.)
8:42 Editing Mednafen's .cfg file
- 8:47 Get yourself a good text editor. // Austin likes Notepad++. // I like VS Code. code.visualstudio.com/Download
- 9:42 Let's edit the configuration file. mednafen.cfg
-- 10:11 Cache your entire game data in RAM when you load it for the fastest/smoothest loading.
-- 10:49 How to change controller types
12:30 Turn on your physical controller before opening the emulator.
13:06 How to set your controller buttons.
16:01 Those are the basics!
16:50 For keyboard shortcuts, scanlines, save state controls, and more options, see the Mednafen documentation. mednafen.github.io/documentation/ss.html
18:01 That's it, guys!
18:29 It's been a pleasure! Please Like and Subscribe. Most of all, have a good day, guys!
SO I was using Mednaffe GUI for mednafen, but it doesn't work with this new version of Mednafen. Any suggestions on a GUI?
sometimes you can find the latest on EmuCR but to be honest it's much more reliable without :)
+Simply Austin i dont particularly mind working with ini and cfg files...I'm just spoiled with everything having some sort of gui these days
I hear you mate, especially when there's plenty of options :)
+Simply Austin weirdly i got Mednafen working with rocketlauncher for PCFX and Saturn...but not PS1...works outside Rlauncher though. ill fiddle more
hey so how do i use a ps4 controller with this since i set gamepad to 3dpad and my inputs on my ps4 controller do nothing