I know that many people are more interested in this particular Saturn emulator, over Yabause. The reason for this is that, traditionally, SSF has had (apparently) superior compatibility. Please note that, as a relative newcomer to Saturn emulation, I’m nowhere near as acquainted with the history of Saturn emulation’s foibles. I will say that, for the games I have tried (that I know will work, according to their compatibility chart), this emulator worked perfectly fine. It’s the setting up that’s a tremendous pain in the dick.
At this point, it bares mentioning a common stumbling block. You see, back in the day, there were very few tried-and-true methods to make backups of games. IIRC, there were 3 methods that were regularly employed: CDRWin, Alcohol 120%, and CloneCD. Now, most of this is historical – the rips these programs made will mostly work for modern emulators. Except…
Except for Alcohol 120% burns. Those burns were often performed with that software’s proprietary format – .mds (think .cue) and .mdf (think .bin). Now, combine this with the fact that SSF will only play games from a disk drive, and you have a few issues. Note that SSF is a “venerable” (read: old) emulator – it retains quirks from the era it was created in. Now sure, you might think “Oh, it’s simply a matter of using emulated drive software” – not so fast.
SSF is only compatible with a few of these sorts of programs. Combine that with the fact that many Saturn rips are in the .mdf/.mds format, and you have yourself a little issue. So, in order to get SSF to run smoothly, you have to make a choice. Do I find conversion software that will change both .mdf/.mds to .cue/.bin? You could, but I was not able to find any (I found 1 that converted the .mdf, but you need the .mds file, so it’s largely useless imo).
You could install Alcohol 120% (or it’s “free” Alcohol 52%) software, but both are full of crapware that will be installed onto your computer. No thanks. So, you’re left with basically a single option – Daemon Tools Lite (the only compatible solution that will handle .mdf/mds files). Now, if you aren’t aware already, the current iterations of DTL is packed full of crapware you will want to avoid.
Setting up SSF – Part 1
I ended up doing a 2-step install – First, I located & installed an old version of the DTL software (4.46.1.328), without installing the STPD driver (because it’s outdated). I then downloaded & installed the newest STPD driver after installing DTL. It all functions properly. You will get nag screens from DTL on occasion, but I can put up with that. Opt-out of some of the options found within DTL’s options, and you’re all set.
Setting up SSF – Part 2
01. Download the latest build of SSF for your system from their website here.
02. Find & download the various BIOS files you need. Note that it’s apparently not necessary, as it comes with an “all-purpose” BIOS file, but the emulation will be more accurate for NTSC-U games if you have the NTSC-U BIOS file (for example).
03. Install SSF to your preferred directory. Some people dgaf & install it anywhere – other people (like me) have partitions dedicated to just emulators. Your choice.
04. Make a “bios” folder within the root directory of SSF, and copy/paste the extracted BIOS files to it.
05. Configure the emulator – I simply went through this page here & kind of winged it. I haven’t had a problem yet, but if I did, this place seems to be a good reference point.
06. Configure your controller. Thankfully for me, the author (Shima) used a wired Xbox 360 controller when he made this emulator, and it is the default controller for this emulator. Thank god. I have used my controller for years and IMO it’s the most universal, esp. when you’re emulating PS2 games. That said, if you have a different pad, just go through the steps logically & you should be fine. If your pad has 30 buttons, this might be an issue, otherwise, you should be fine.
07. Have a game ready to run on the emulator – you must either (a) have an actual Sega Saturn CD in your computer’s CD/DVD disc tray – ready to go, or (b) have a Saturn game disc image mounted on an emulated drive. If (b), you will have mounted a Saturn game image using Daemon Tools Lite.
08. Enjoy?
If your particular game is not working, or there’s something messing things up, remember that your issue has likely come up before. First of all, double check that your game is good (disc or image). Next, check that your install is good (corrupted/interrupted installs happen all the time). Next, check the SSF compatibility charts here – perhaps your game just won’t work well (or at all) on SSF currently. It happens. Not those things? Check here and here – search for keywords that have to do with your issue (e.g. “<game name> glitch can’t exit”). See if threads exist. Also, check Google.
Next time, we’ll take a look at PSX emulation. Until then, peace!
