It is known as the #1 Sega Saturn emulator. However, that doesn't mean it's a good emulator. Emulation quality isn't quite perfect yet, but so far it's pretty good. You should appreciate this because Saturn emulation has had an unfortunate history.
It was only until the late 2. Saturn emulators (SSF specifically) was emulating at a playable quality. As opposed to PSX emulators that reached near perfect quality in the early 2. The Sega Saturn has 6 processors - it wasn't easy for emulator authors to emulate them.*If you would like to download SSF, I have it in my emulators page. Installation. SSF is a standalone program so it does not have an install wizard.
Sega Saturn is always loading the cd player Troubleshooting.
Installation is simple: just extract SSF from its zip file. Not sure how to extract zip files? Here's a video tutorial showing you how: how to unzip files on Windows. IMPORTANT! SSF must be placed in a common folder on your computer. I recommend Documents, Downloads, or create a folder on your desktop. If you place SSF somewhere else on your main C drive, then you may be restricting it to read- only access. Doing so prevents SSF from saving anything.
To open SSF, double- click on Q: I get a XAudio. Create error! When you attempt to open SSF, you may receive the following error: XAudio. Create() error. File : ./XAudio. Line : 2. 19. Function : XAudio.
Sega Saturn roms rom index 0 / 291 Total sega saturn roms: Quick Search: #.
You can download it here: Direct. X End- User Runtime Web Installer (2. KB). This installer promises to install all the legacy files that correct issues such as this.
Q: SSF opens so tiny! SSF initially opens up small (as shown toward the right). Just wait a few moments. SSF will eventually load into a full window. Saturn BIOSMost games require the Saturn BIOS in order to boot or emulate properly. SSF will fool you into thinking it doesn't need the BIOS, but really it does.
Setting up the BIOSIt's best to extract the contents of the BIOS zip files into SSF's folder. It's easier this way.
Click on Option(O) > Option(O), as shown below: You'll arrive at the Options window (shown below). In the “Saturn BIOS” box click the Browse button. The “Select Saturn BIOS file” window will pop up, which is this window . Click on “stv. 11. Open. Click OK. A window will pop up with “??????”.
SSF is just telling you to close and re- open it for the configured BIOS to take effect. Go ahead and do so. Setting up the keyboard or gamepad. Click on Option(O) > Option(O), as shown below: You'll arrive in the Option window. Click the Controller tab, as shown below: To redefine the keys for player 1, click on Redefine where circled above for “Player 1: A”. Follow the prompt and press the keyboard keys or gamepad buttons you want to be assigned.
Booting CD games. Insert your Sega Saturn game into your CD- ROM, then open SSF. SSF will automatically boot up your game. Booting ISOs (CD images)Unfortunately, SSF does not support booting ISO files. However, there are two things you can do to work around that: You can use a virtual CD- ROM program to trick SSF into thinking your ISO is a CD in your CD- ROM. I recommend Virtual Clone. Drive for that (it's free!).
But, yet virtual CD- ROM programs only support common CD image formats such as ISO and BIN. If your game is in an obscure format such as NRG, IMG, UIF, DAA, CDI, XBX, B5. BWI, etc. Go here for directions. Booting CD images with Virtual Clone.
So if someone else were to burn a.ISO of this disk. Sega Saturn Black System Disc.
- Saturn ISOs (1296) SNES ROMs. Community Uploaded Links & Downloads » Sega Dreamcast » Utopia v1.1 boot CD.
- Sega documentation: Saturn Programming Manual Vol.1. Boot ROM User's Manual. Saturn Software Library Release 3.01 Supplemental Disk. SEGA Saturn SMPC Sample.
Drive. Download and install Virtual Clone. Drive. Next, we need to configure Clone. Drive in SSF. Click on Option(O) > Option(O), as shown below: Look in the “CD Drive” box. Click the drop- down and choose ELBY CLONEDRIVE, as shown below: Click OK and close SSF.
You'll get a weird “SSF?????” message - ignore it. I'm assuming that message is lost Japanese telling you to restart SSF. Because you installed Clone. Drive, a CD icon should now be in the lower right (next to the time). You find it by clicking on the notch, as shown here .
Right- click this icon , click Drive then Mount, as shown below: The “Virtual Clone. Drive Drive” window will pop up.
Click on your ISO Saturn game, then click Open. If your Saturn ISO is a BIN file: Click Clone. CD/DVD Images in the lower right, then click Other Images - as shown here . Click on your BIN Saturn game, then click Open.
Now open SSF and your Saturn game should automatically be booting up. Q: I get a black screen when I boot games! This is tricky. Consider the following: First of all, give SSF a minute or two before you decide that nothing is happening; maybe the game takes a while to boot. Did you setup the BIOS? You should - most games require it. See if the game you're trying to play even works with SSF - check the compatibility list. If this is a Saturn ISO that you downloaded, perhaps it's bad.
Try this. I've been told that sometimes bad ISOs can be repaired. Try using CDmage's “Scan for Corruption” feature. Then use “Fix Corruption” to see if it finds anything. Try downloading the game from another site. There's a possibility that your game will run with an older version of SSF.
Go to my emulators page and download the zip containing all SSF releases. Try running your game with them to see if it works.
If nothing works, then your computer is not compatible with SSF. Sorry, SSF was not designed to run on every machine. SSF requires the following processors: “SSF requires the processor to have the SSE2 instruction set, so a Pentium 4, Pentium M, Opteron, Athlon 6. Sempron (6. 4bit), Turion 6. Q: I get a initialize. Direct. 3D9 error!
Upon booting a game, you might receive this error: IDirect. DDevice. 9: :Create.
Pixel. Shader() error. File : ./Direct. 3D9. Line : 1. 18. 0Function : Direct.
D9: :! You need to make a small edit to “ssf. So go into SSF's folder and look for . Double- click on it, and it should open up in Notepad. Scroll to the bottom and look for “Window. X” & “Window. Y”: As shown above, enter '5. Open SSF and the error should be gone.
Full screen mode. Simply press Alt+Enter to bring SSF into full screen. Press Alt+Enter again to exit full screen. Screen filters. SSF offers two filters for rendering the screen: Scanline and Bilinear Filtering. To enable them: Click on Option(O) > Option(O), as shown below: Click on the Screen tab, and you'll arrive here: Put a check in either “Scanline” or “Bilinear Filtering”, or both! Look below for samples of these filters.
Click OK when you're done. Save states. Save states is a feature that saves the exact spot you are in any game. Here's how it works: Capturing screen shots. Go to File(F) > Snapshot(C).
SSF will dump the screen shot as a bitmap (BMP) into the “Snapshot” folder. Improving performance.
It can't be helped that SSF is a buggy emulator. But, yet there are a few things we can do to improve game performance and maybe even prevent/workaround crashes. Click on Option(O) > Option(O), as shown below: Click on the Screen tab. Remove the check from Auto Field Skip, and add checks to VSynch Wait (Window) and VSynch Wait (Fullscreen), as shown below: Click on the Program 4 tab.
Add a check to Deinterlace (Very Slow), as shown below: Click on the EZ Setting tab. As shown here I circled two settings. Highest Compatibility - Some games such as “Spiritual Assassin Taromaru” and “Daytona: CE” run best with this setting.
Full Compatibility - Set this option for the broadest game compatibility possible with SSF. Finding Saturn games (ISOs)In my links page, I have some good links to sites where you can download Saturn ISOs. If you want to try to find more sites than what's in my collection of links, just Google around. For example, if you want to download Shining Force III just Google “download shining force iii saturn”. Q: SSF crashes on start! This can be tricky because this could be caused by many things.
In most cases, this happens simply because you don't have the latest version of Direct. X installed. You can download it here: Direct.
X End- User Runtime Web Installer (2. KB). See if the game you're trying to play even works with SSF - check the compatibility list. Q: SSF crashes mid game and gives CPK error! At certain points in a game, SSF may suddenly crash and give you this error: “CPK error 0x. Particularly, this happens in Dragon Force 2 when you select a kingdom.
Unfortunately there is no fix for this problem. The game you're playing is not compatible with SSF. Q: I keep getting disc read errors! SSF might repeatedly prompt you with disc read errors - even if you're using an ISO with virtual CD- ROM software. There are a few things you can try: Attempt #1 - Play with the compatibility settings.
You find it by going to Option > Option > EZ Setting tab. Maybe try the lowest compatibility setting just to get past the point of the game giving you disc read errors. Then set it back to Full Compatibility until you get disc read errors again.
Does this not resolve it? Try the next attempt..
Attempt #2 - Try different versions of SSF. The last time I updated this tutorial, the latest version of SSF was 0. R4. Avid users of SSF have told me that 0. R3 is actually more stable than R4.
Using R3 seems to be the least prone to give you disc read errors. Does this not resolve it? Try the next attempt.. Attempt #3 - Lastly, I would question your ISO.
Maybe it's partially corrupt or in a format that isn't so friendly. So try a different ISO; download the game from somewhere else.
Q: Audio is out of sync! In some games, you'll encounter out of sync audio, which is very annoying. Games such as “Keio 2”, “Twinkle Star Sprites”, and “Spiritual Assassin Taromaru” are affected by this bug.
To resolve this use SSF version 0. Go to my emulators page to download older releases of SSF. Q: SSF isn't saving anything! If you're using SSF for the first time and you're finding that you have all these problems: Save states aren't working. You save a state, then when you try to reload it nothing happens. In an RPG when you save your game at a save point and close/re- open SSF, you find that the save is lost.
Emulator configurations that you changed aren't saved. When you close/re- open SSF, you have to make those configuration changes again.