In a seedy basement laboratory...
July 11, 2016 3:07 PM   Subscribe

The Sega Saturn is a home video game console that was released in 1994, and in the subsequent 20+ years many of the Saturn CD drives have failed. But a tinkerer known as Dr Abrasive has finally cracked the console's DRM. This in-depth video of his process is technical, but probably/hopefully interesting even for non-programmers.
posted by Hot Pastrami! (23 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
I believe the name of the console is just "Sega Saturn". The Sega CD was a different console.
posted by LogicalDash at 3:15 PM on July 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


That was fascinating, I had just watched it before this post went up. It's completely accessible to interested non-technical people.
posted by StephenF at 3:19 PM on July 11, 2016


I believe the name of the console is just "Sega Saturn".

Sorry about that, I was going off the title of the video. Can a mod apply the appropriate jiggery-pokery?
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 3:27 PM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Mod note: Applied!
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 3:33 PM on July 11, 2016


I watched the video this morning and got a real kick out of it, even though I don't know much at all about hacking. It kind of made me want to get into it though. Where would someone looking to develop those kinds of skills even start?
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 3:33 PM on July 11, 2016


This is awesome! The Saturn is a technological wonder in many ways (beyond my ability to describe) and is rather different than its peers. I love that it's being kept alive by hackers and not just collectors.

Here's some in-depth analysis of how graphics work on the Saturn which IIRC focuses heavily on transparency and reveals a bit about how different and complex the Saturn was.
posted by griphus at 4:06 PM on July 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


Where would someone looking to develop those kinds of skills even start?

by getting a degree in electronic engineering.
posted by andrewcooke at 5:02 PM on July 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


The Saturn was a very weird console with a bunch of different, dedicated chips that each did specific things. Small wonder people have trouble emulating the thing, even now.

All I know is that I very much would like to play Dragon Force, Shining the Holy Ark, Guardian Heroes, and Saturn Bomberman again.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 5:06 PM on July 11, 2016


Where would someone looking to develop those kinds of skills even start?

Get thee to your local hacker space.
posted by overhauser at 5:39 PM on July 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit: "All I know is that I very much would like to play Dragon Force, Shining the Holy Ark, Guardian Heroes, and Saturn Bomberman again."

https://yabause.org/
posted by namewithoutwords at 6:40 PM on July 11, 2016 [3 favorites]


If you like this, check out "Hacking the Xbox" by bunnie.

It probably helps to know a bit about how a PC works, since the main subject is reverse-engineering how the original Xbox controlled what code it could execute. It's particularly interesting because the Xbox is an unusual system, but in the opposite way as the Saturn. While the Saturn was complicated and esoteric, the Xbox was essentially an off-the-shelf PC with systems added to try to block unauthorized code (pirated games, homebrew software, Linux, and cheats that would ruin Xbox Live).
posted by mccarty.tim at 6:58 PM on July 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


That was awesome on 17 different levels. Which I've arranged into quadrants-prime, or q-prime, elements that are interrelational, simultaneous, and logarhythmically bitchen. Plus it dumps to 5.25DS and speech-synthesis capable.

All of which is to say that Dr. Abrasive does not have a twitter or facebook account, which triggers the double-super happy bonus and jiggy wag.

Internets won. Replay? (y/n) _
posted by petebest at 7:01 PM on July 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


Makerspaces are popping up everywhere. Someone in yours might be able to show you the ropes.
posted by ostranenie at 7:05 PM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


I don't think you need a degree in EE for this. You do need a lot of curiosity, patience, inventiveness and intelligence - which may be configured in a way that you'll do well on an engineering course, but may not. Conversely, you're unlikely to get the mad leet skilz to make this happen if you're happy to do EE because you think (correctly) that it's a good career and you can cope with the course requirements. You need the fascination.

I hate to think how many hours Dr Abrasive put in on this project. Extracting that 64k blob when nobody had done it before is a lot of late nights. Then the sheer drudgework of deconstructing that into a workable mapped system... when he talked about the existing CD subsystem documentation being the Rosetta Stone of the process, he was absolutely right - and the Rosetta Stone was just the start of a helluva lot of serious work.

This is a combination of technology nous, digital archaeology, engineering, inspiration and cross-boundary synthesis. There's a great deal of detail that wasn't mentioned in the video which would be glorious to dig into, but you can glimpse between the lines, but as a forensic exercise in collaborative reconstruction it's up there with any amount of academic work on distant historical or archaeological material.
posted by Devonian at 7:58 PM on July 11, 2016 [7 favorites]


Somewhere in my mind I've always blamed this console for killing Sega.
posted by The Hamms Bear at 9:07 PM on July 11, 2016



Where would someone looking to develop those kinds of skills even start?


Maybe start with Make: Electronics? It's very informative, although it won't get you there by itself.
posted by JHarris at 10:01 PM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


I just saw this video about an hour ago and debated posting it, but didn't, because I thought it was a bit esoteric. I must recalibrate my filter.
posted by JHarris at 10:03 PM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


And it's worth noting that the Sega Saturn doesn't really have DRM. It's discs are completely unprotected. Any computer with a CD drive can read them. What the Saturn has might be called execution protection, in that it's tricky to get it to run a copied disc on an unmodified Saturn because of that wavy track at the edge.

I have one of those Saturns whose motors hasn't failed yet, and I'm looking forward to the day when I don't have to worry about it dying.
posted by JHarris at 10:10 PM on July 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


Mine still works. Unfortunately, some games are scratched in the bit it validates as a legit game, and others have rot. The CDs Sega were terrible - they even feel lighter than the ultra-cheap no brand CDs I used to transfer stuff to my pentium computer.

Somewhere in my mind I've always blamed this console for killing Sega
Sega wasn't killed as much as it had a number of diseases at the same time that was slowly killing them without noticing. The string of poor hardware choices (32x, Saturn complexity, Dreamcast not having DVDs), realising too late the market was shifting away from arcade ports, losing EAs support, putting all eggs in a Shenmue-shaped basket, and so on.
posted by lmfsilva at 3:48 AM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Somewhere in my mind I've always blamed this console for killing Sega.

The way they rushed the system to market with virtually no software in an effort to beat Sony to market is what killed the Saturn and ultimately undid all the hard work they did with the Genesis/Mega Drive. I still recall being in my local Electronics Boutique when one of the associates announced that they were getting the system in the very next day. A surprise launch might have worked five years later when the internet was all over E3, but in 1995 not quite so much. And if you're interested in the behind the scenes decisions, I really can't recommend the book Console Wars quite enough.

The CDs Sega were terrible - they even feel lighter than the ultra-cheap no brand CDs I used to transfer stuff to my pentium computer.
I still think that the worst thing about the system were the tall CD cases they used (for the Saturn, Sega CD, and original PS1) which aren't manufactured today anywhere on the planet. The instruction books were all designed to double as the front cover so they just don't fit in traditional DVD cases.
posted by dances with hamsters at 5:17 AM on July 12, 2016


Oh man, those cases. In Europe we lucked out with the Mega CD (with a few exceptions, all games were released on quad jewel cases), but the Saturn didn't have much better than those. The first model was like a DVD case, but with two pieces of plastic glued to a piece of cardboard, and no way of securely closing them. Later games had a better case, just like a non standard DVD case. The problem with both was with the manuals - you couldn't fit the regular 4-language manual and the Portuguese version on most cases. Most of mine are lacking instruction because of that - people just threw them away.
posted by lmfsilva at 5:44 AM on July 12, 2016


I'm not sure if you had to deal with this in Europe, Imfsilva, but in the US the original Playstation games came first in the tall clear jewel cases, then in tall solid black plastic cases with a ridge pattern on the spine, then a smooth plastic case where the ridge design was illustrated, then to those useless cardboard sleeves that you describe with the plastic "clasps" and finally to standard CD cases. So one's shelf could contain up to five different types of cases of varying heights.
posted by dances with hamsters at 5:37 AM on July 13, 2016


I used to know someone who started to collect NTSC-U titles, but quit because of those size differences. But in here I think there were a few release games with US-style boxes. At least I have the impression of selling (IIRC) ESPN Extreme Games based on the novelty of the box, although they are incredibly rare.

The regular PlayStation games had at least four different cases, but mostly similar in size. The most common were roughly the same width as a cd case, only 1½ as thick and a fifth of an inch taller. The outside was all made with the same plastic, which had the tendency to break over time (I sold a lot of cheap games by Phoenix or Gremlin/Infogrames yellow label for people looking to replace them). Then, there was one identical in size, but the outside of the cover was made in the same plastic as the inside with the holder, and one more with the same plastic, but other than thickness, exactly the same size as a jewel case (judging from my collection, most of these with the dark plastic were probably released around 96 - they should have kept them, because not only they look better, but they also age better and don't break). Finally, for multi-game CDs, while some had a holder that could be stuck to the front (Rival Schools and IIRC Gran Turismo 2), most of them used a standard quad case (although for some reason, both MGS: Special Missions and Destruction Derby 2 are single-disc games shipped in quad). I've seen a game with an Amaray-style case with the size of a regular box , but couldn't tell if it was an original or a custom job (very high quality work on the artwork, and as it was the same size, the manual fit perfectly).
posted by lmfsilva at 7:21 AM on July 13, 2016


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