The History of Sega Saturn Emulators - Part 2

Project Titan (2000)

Project Titan

In October 2000, Project Titan emerged, with the aim of emulating the Sega Saturn, but also the ST-V board. Created by UCantWin, the project did not go beyond the pre-alpha stage, with 5% of the CD-ROM, JoyPad, sound and VDP (video), 10% of the SCU (math processor), 35% of the SMPC (microcontroller), 90% of the SH-2 (central processor) and 92% of the RAM. The project never ran any games and stalled in the development of the VDP.

Project Titan (About/Plugins)

The project had its own GUI, with the possibility of video, microcontroller and CD-ROM plug-ins in the future, inspired by the PSX emulators, which UCantWin knew well, as he had worked on a PSX emulation project before Project Titan. I believe it was the first SS project to support plug-ins, followed by Satoune in 2001. The emulator was released in December 2000 for Windows, after seven versions of it had been created before its release. Its second and last version was released in April 2001 without a binary file and with the release of its source code to help in future projects for Sega hardware.

Saturn (2001)

Saturn

The Satourne emulator (saturno, French pronunciation of Satourne) was created by the Frenchman Fabien Autrel in early 2001, with its first release in February 2001 for Windows, with a debug version. Initially it only ran games from the Sega Titan Video arcade board, being the first emulator for that arcade board. Since the April 2002 version, it has also started to make available for download versions in other languages, such as German, Italian, British English, Portuguese (Portuguese) and South Korean. From the August 2002 version onwards, it began to support CDs. 

Satourne (Interfaces/Menus)

Starting in September 2002, it began to perform dynamic recompilation in its emulator, known as Dynarec, which is nothing more than the conversion of the console hardware code to the native language of the PC that runs it, without having to go through the emulation process, making the emulator development process faster. Starting with version 1.0P in May 2003, it left the debugging versions and released its first definitive version. Also starting with this version, it began to support plugins for the central processor (SH2), video (VDP) and sound (SCSP), coprocessor (SCU), microcontroller (SMPC) and CD-ROM. In November 2003, it released its last version for a long time. 

Satourne v2.0 beta 3 (Interface/Menus)

Satourne v1.0p (Interface/Menu)

Two years later, it released only a version for testers in December 2005 with improvements, where it also released its source code. Almost three years after the last public version, it released its last version in August 2006. The emulator ran a total of 117 games, of which 57 were executable, 34 were reasonable and 56 were bad. The compatibility of the games was posted on the website emu-compatibility.com, which had partnerships with four Sega Saturn emulators, Satoune, Saturnin, SSF and Yabause, in addition to the Dreamcast emulators, Chankast and NullDC, all from French creators. Among the emulator's functions, we had keyboard and joystick configuration, support for OpenGL, DirectSound and loading in .ISO images.

Satourne (Virtua Fighter Remix)

Satourne (Plugins/Controls)

Despite all this, it had problems with image acceleration, sound inactivity and control configuration. It emulated the main processors and chips, supported bios, Action Replay, acceleration of SH2 central processors, 1 and 4GB RAM memory cartridges, support for English, Italian, German and French languages, save states through the RAM battery and save states with a file that could be recorded on the PC. Regarding its front-end, it has undergone some changes over time. Like in November 2001, when it added some logos to the interface and made it bigger. In April 2002, when it increased the size of the interface, it added Saturn and ST-V mode changes to the interface and a separate menu for each processor executed by plugins, among others.

Satourne (Akumajo Dracula X: Gekka no Yasokyoku)

In May 2003, when he created a new front-end, with run, pause, reset, machine mode and options in the main bar, with machine mode being where the Sega Saturn and ST-V loading is located, options where the plugins and emulation options are located, such as bios and RAM memory cartridges. And in December 2005, when he created another front-end again, with plugin options, emulation settings, play, pause and stop in the main part, represented by logos (the same ones also being in the emulation and settings options in the top bar of the front), game name, author and year, in the center of the interface, among others.

SSE (2002)

SSE (Daytona USA/Radiant Silvergun)

SSE was created by Italian Stefano Teso, also known as Sthief, in 2001, with a single release in September 2002 for MS-DOS. The emulator also ran games from Sega Titan Video, the Sega board that inspired the Sega Saturn. Since it was in DOS mode, it only worked via the command line, and no front-end was created to run it in a Windows environment. The emulator managed to run 90 games in total, but none at full speed. The emulator had some shortcomings, such as rotation and other types of screen due to problems in VDP2, shadows due to problems in VDP1, and disabled save state, EEPROM emulation and sound emulation. Like other emulators, it encouraged the use of a powerful PC to run it, with a Duron processor with more than 2 GhZ, a video card with support for DirectX and OpenGL, etc.

SSE (Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits)

The emulator ran the VDP1, VDP2 processors, the two Hitachi SH2, SCU, SMPC and the 68k, as well as 1 and 4 MB RAM memories. Despite having only one version, his effort was great, and he had the help of many well-known people in the field, such as Bart Trzynadlowski, with his 68k emulator, the Turbo68k, Shawn Hargreaves, Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler for the Allegro and zLib libraries, Fabien Autrel for the Sega Saturn emulator, Satourne for the source code, Stephane Dallongeville and Tim Meekins, respectively creators of the Mega Drive Gens and 32X RetroDrive emulators for releasing the code for the SH-2 processor corresponding to the 32X, used in the Sega Saturn, Richter Belmont for the Modeler emulator for Sega System 32 and Sega Model 1 for indirect help for the Sega Titan Video emulation, as well as help from Farfetch'd and Haze also for the Modeler emulator, and LDChen for the PS1 emulator, FPSE. On Sega Titan Video, the ST-V, the emulator ran a total of 40 arcade games. A curiosity. Unlike other Sega Saturn emulators, it did not run games directly from the CD-ROM. It needed an ISO file to do so. So it was recommended to transform your CD games into this file using the Extrlow program, and place the image in the headers folder and run the emulator with a specific command line. In October 2002, a front-end for the emulator called Zydio's SSE Frontend was created by Zydio.

Saturnin (2003)

Saturnin

Saturnin was a project created by Frenchman Renaud, known as Runik, in late 2002, with its first version released in April 2003 for Windows. Its name came from an animated character of the same name created in the 1960s in France. Fabien Autrel from the Satourne project was fundamental in the creation of Saturnin, showing Runik the emulation process and helping the project in various ways, including with problems that arose. During its development, Saturnin managed to emulate 100% of the two central processors and almost 100% of all the other processors and chips in the console.

Saturnin (Interface/Menus/About)

The emulator ran 148 games in total, 27 of which ran perfectly, 34 averagely and 57 very poorly. It also supported several languages, such as English, French, Polish, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch, Chinese, Indonesian and Portuguese. This support was interesting. Any user could change the .STR file to their language and it would work on the emulator. Runik also asked people to send him this file so he could post it online to help other people. Around September 2004, it began supporting ST-V games.

Saturnin (Bug Too!)

At this time, he was approached by Haze from the MAME project to help make the Saturn more compatible with ST-V games. Runik had the help of several Sega Saturn emulators, such as Tyranid from Sat'On'Em, Stefano Teso from SSE and Charles MacDonald, creator of the MD Genesis Plus emulator, as well as Stephane Dallongeville for the SCSP processor core and Bart Trzynadlowski, for the 68K processor emulator, Turbo68K (replaced in December 2005 by Karl Stenerud's Musashi), among others.

Saturnin (Bust a Move 2/Deroon Dero Dero)

Saturnin (Samurai Shodown IV/Pocket Fighter)

The latest version of the emulator was released in December 2005 and provided sound for the first time, except for the sound of the BIOS logo, since it did not yet emulate the sound DSP. It also brought greater compatibility in this version. In total, the emulator was able to emulate 100% of the SH2 processors, 90% and 75% of the VDP1 and 2 video processors, 80% of the math processor, 80% of the sound and 70% of the CD-ROM. The project website was updated until November 2008. Outside the website, it maintained what it called a worklog until December 2009, showing the development that it continued to do with the Sega Saturn hardware. After that, no more talk of Runik was heard.