Strange issue with 3D on a 1995 Saturn

[sheath]

I recently procured a confirmed working Croc disk for Saturn that doesn't work on my Saturn without severe graphical glitching.  In the demo alone Croc is missing over half of his body and other 3D characters leave all of their animations trailing behind them as they move across the screen.  I have already cleaned the lens, and other 3D titles on Saturn play fine on my launch model, as I have tested them since I discovered this problem. 

My main question is whether this is a common issue, my second question would be whether this is a simple fix or whether it would require  major replacement of hardware.

[l_oliveira]

Try Daytona USA on your console. A few units came with a *faulty* chip which cause Daytona USA to glitch... (on the second track you will see a square hole on the tunnel ceiling if this is the case.)

[sheath]

Daytona USA works fine on my system, just like it always has.  What's weird is that Tomb Raider and Burning Rangers work without a hitch, but this one disk of Croc has massive clipping issues.  I've played Croc on this system before, using another disk, and saw no such trouble.  I've also confirmed that this Croc disk works on other Saturns, so now I'm totally baffled. 

I have heard that Croc on Saturn will mess up the graphics is the save file is corrupted, but as my battery recently died, there weren't *any* save files when I first tried it, and it has accepted my save files from my PAR 4in1 without trouble.  I guess I'll just have to track down another Croc disk to see if it's just a random fluke.

[l_oliveira]

Daytona will play fine. But you will see the hole I mentioned on the second track, at the ceiling of the tunnel.

[sheath]

Right, that is what I meant, Daytona USA (first release in US) has no holes in the ceiling of the tunnel in the second track.

[l_oliveira]

Then you could have RAM issues on the VDP1 (the Hitachi VDP)

[sheath]

I guess I can just wait for my trusty Saturn to die then.  I might look for a CD-ROM drive for my model 2 Saturn in the meantime.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

There is nothing wrong with your Saturn. Croc is notorious for this glitch. What you need to do is launch the game from the bios menu. Start up the Saturn without a disc, insert Croc, then select "Start Application".

[sheath]

It works!  Wow, what a glitch.  I wonder why the first game disk I tested didn't do this.  At any rate, I think I can play the game this way, even though it is inconvenient. 

Thank you Trekkies!
Scott

[l_oliveira]

We learn something new every day... Thanks for letting me know about that...

(I don't own Croc btw)

[TrekkiesUnite118]

It works!  Wow, what a glitch.  I wonder why the first game disk I tested didn't do this.  At any rate, I think I can play the game this way, even though it is inconvenient. 

Thank you Trekkies!
Scott

Basically the glitch derives from the developers only testing on a Saturn using a boot disc, they didn't actually test it with a self boot. So there are some chips that don't get initialized properly or something like that if you try and start up the game right away. Booting from the bios or a boot disc initializes that chip and allows the game to run properly. I think it may have been fixed in some later copies.

[sheath]

I can confirm that Croc also doesn't work on my first gen Saturn if I use the PAR 3-in-1 to boot the game, which is the normal way I boot games on Saturn.  I can also confirm that the first disk I tried worked without trouble.  I am not aware of a Saturn boot disk, has one been distributed yet or is it something that has been kept under lock and key?

[l_oliveira]

There is a official disc from SEGA which is used to unlock the CD-DRIVE so development discs can be booted.
The said disc checks the header of the disc and install some protection program on the system ram to prevent it from
being used for piracy purposes (I.E.: CD-R backup of a non DEV game)

The disc had a special and different barcode on it's edge which allowed the drive to read any discs after itself.

[sheath]

After all of the dead Dreamcast's I've seen due to CDRs, and my own fiasco with PC-Engine DUO CDRs burning out *two* drives the instant I tried to load them, I have no interest whatsoever in using CDRs on actual consoles.  The original games and consoles are going to be fried all on their lonesome without me messing around with piracy. 

All the same, when I hear about something for the Saturn that I haven't heard of before I tend to ask about it.  Thanks for the info.

[l_oliveira]

Using CDRs won't roin a drive (At least not instantly) from the recent kind (from 1996 to today) with adaptive laser power control. At the time, drives with the "Multiread" symbol were optimized for CDR and CDRW. But those discs require more laser power to be read (CDRW needs  more than CDR) which may cause the laser emitter to wear out.

But then on systems like Saturn, PC-Engine, SEGA/MEGA-CD there's no adaptive laser power control. On these units the laser power is controlled just by a pot on the laser pickup body. An photo-diode on the laser do exist but that is for thermal compensation so the laser power is constant.

Since old game systems won't enhance the laser power to make it easier to read CDR, the CDR won't cause more damage than you would have from playing an original disc (just wear and tear from normal use)