Action Replay 4M Plus - Ultimate enhancement for your Saturn console

Chances are if you've bought a Sega Saturn, you're a hardcore gamer; and, chances are, you bought it to enjoy the vast weath of hidden gems that can't be had elsewhere, nameley the fighters and imports. Problem is, not only are you a little short on memory theres a reigonal lockout that keeps you from playing some of the games. Looking at the top of the back of the system you will notice an expansion slot, that's where is card comes into play. Let's break down what this card will do. 1 Memory expansion. The Saturn comes with a paltry amount of internal memory, I believe somewhere in the realm of 400 blocks. Bear in mind this can be filled up with only a few games, Virtua Fighter 2 alone takes up 185 blocks just for the settings; and sports games are notorious memory eaters. Think of it as the internal memory on the arcade unit of the 360 or the Wii. It will get you by for a short while, but intevitably you will need more memory. This card comes with 8000 blocks, more than enough to handle whatever is thrown at you. 2 Region code bypass. While the Saturn was considered a commercial failure here in the states, it was much more successful in its home country of Japan. It was supported from 1994-2000; in the states it was only supported from 1995-1998. Furthermore, because it's difficulty finding a market here, many of the great games never made it here. Games like the original Sakura Wars, Samurai Showdown IV, and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter never were released outside of Japan. While some of the great titles never made it stateside, many of them were released in limited print runs and fetch a pretty high price even without a box or manual. Many of the greats such a Burning Rangers, Vampire Hunter, and House of the dead can be found in great shape for a fraction of the price if you're willing to buy the import. Supringly a good portion of the text in many of the titles will be in english. Unless you understand Japanese, I would hesitate to import any text heavy game such as an RPG, but otherwise the selection is great. 3 1MB and 4MB RAM Expansion. Remember the expansion pack for the N64? Same concept. Although no localized game ever utilized this device there are a handful of Japanese games that did. Games like Metal Slug, Samurai Showdown IV, and Xmen vs. Street Fighter require this card to run. While there is a 1 MB expansion card, it doesn't make much sense to purchase it when the 4MB card will function for both. It more or less just expands the techincal capabilities of the system. It works just like the N64 expansion pack, it will automatically detect it and boot the game, otherwise you'll get an error screen. 4 Action replay cheat device. This is admittedly the least neccessary function of the cart, but in all honesty, it's icing on the cake, and I'd rather have the function than not. When you boot your Saturn with the cart installed it will take you to the AR screen, nearly identical to the PSX and N64 counterparts. You select your cheats and apply them, they are broken down by reigon. It is possible to manually add codes as the pre installed codes selection is paltry, the information can be found online. The cart comes with a port on top to connect to a PC and add more codes from the internet, but I can't imagine the website is still running; plus a modern PC would probably be able to use it. And some versions of the cart don't have the port at all. Complaints While the AR is an amazing cartridge, it does have a few issues, none of which are enough to knock it from it's 5 star rating. First of all, it's kind of cheap feeling, the plastic feels lightweight, the color doesn't match the system at all, the front sticker has neon colors and looks hideous in my humble opinion. Long story short, it's flimsy and gawdy. The offical cart is much more solidly built and looks much better as it matches the color of the system. Secondly, the memory funtion of the card is limited to the AR menu; meaning all your memory has to be managed from that boot screen. Games will not recognize the card like an official one, even the Saturn BIOS will not read it. You must move files from the card to the interal memory and vice versa in order to use it, I reccomend just putting your most played games on the interal memory, backep up the card. This isn't the greatest solution but cosidering that a watch battery powering interal RAM is the only thing keeping your settings alive in your Saturn, and the cart is actual flash memory, it doesn't seem so bad. Also, consider the official card runs for $50 yet only performs the memory function, and this card can be bought for as cheap as $30, it's makes that pill a bit easier to swallow. Finally, it doesn't always read. Now this is not the fault of the cart itself. Sega appartently used cheap parts for the cartridge slot on the back of the Saturn. Unlike the Genesis cartridge slot, this one is NOT built to withstand the wear and tear of swapping cartidges. Sometimes you have to reinstert the cart a few times before it will read. It's a pass/fail kind of deal, when you boot the system you will get the regular boot sequence and the Sega logo shortly thereater, if it boots the disc or goes to the BIOS then it failed to recognize the card. If it goes the the AR menu, then it worked. Once the cart is in a readable postion it's fine and will read without fail. Give it a few tries before you dismiss the cart as "broken". Even though this kind of sucks, it only emphasizes the card's usefullness. Without this card you would have to hot swap the memory and AR, or an expansion cart if necessary. Not only is this a pain, it will wear out your cartidge slot very quickly. This cartrige does everyting you need. The only games that will not boot are games that require a ROM cartridge (not be confused with RAM). The only game I know that does this is King of Fighters 95, it basically has a preinstalled section of the game on the cartridge and uses it to run the game with less loading time. Since it needs the cart to break the reigon coding, and the ROM cart the only way to play this game on an American system is to mod your sytem. Conisdering how many other places this game can be found (and how medeiocre it is), I find it an acceptable loss. At the end of the day, just buy this cart, much like the N64 expansion pack, and the Xbox 360 Hard drive, it's a one time purchase that will add functionaly across the board. Highly reccomended.

Recently bought myself an old Sega Saturn to relive my childhood. I never had an opportunity to get any of the memory card upgrades when I was younger, so I thought I'd take the plunge and get this. This particular product has been around for a long time (the copyright on the software is 1996). It has cheat codes for most games up to about 1997, but it lets you enter your own if you want (and you can even delete the built-in codes if you need more space). It bypasses the region locking on the console so you can play import games. It has 4M of backup ROM to complement the system's built-in stoarge, though the console can't read from it directly; you have to move your game saves to/from system memory in the card's menu which the console automatically boots to if you have it inserted. It also provides either 1M or 4M of additional RAM for those games that require it; the cartridge software is smart enough to automatically detect the needed amount when the game starts up (unlike other RAM carts that had a physical switch you had to set before starting). The stock cartridge won't let you play backup copies of games (that is, games burned to CD-R). However, there is a firmware called "Psuedo Saturn Kai" that you can flash to this cart, which adds that ability. There are some ready-made (and more expensive) variants of this cart that come with that pre-flashed, but you also have the option of doing it yourself with this "official" version, assuming you can get the Saturn to load the flashing software CD the first time. A word of caution about the hardware in general; the Sega Saturn cartridge slot and after-market cartridges like this can be very finicky. The hardware is 20+ years old, and the cartridge slot itself was known for being delicate even back in its hey-day. When I first plugged mine in, the console got stuck in a boot loop. After trying various techniques to seating the cartridge, I was able to get it to load once and launch a game, but it then failed while the game was going through the intro/title screen. This told me that the cartridge itself was fine, and it was probably an issue of a bad connection when the cartridge was inserted. What eventually fixed it for me (at least for now) was a suggestion of disassembling the cartridge and plugging the naked board into the system. I did this, and to my surprise it completely fixed the issue; the cartridge loaded correctly every time I started the console, and I was able to launch games successfully without any hiccups. Apparently the plastic casing can cause the cartridge contacts to not line up properly with the pins in the slot. There are some suggestions about putting a piece of paper behind the cartridge when inserting it, or putting a piece of paper in the cartridge (on the back) to make sure it sits properly when inserted. For kicks, I just reassembled the cartridge since I double-confirmed the cartridge was fine, and so far it's continued to work properly. I'm guessing that by fully inserting the cartridge board into the cartridge slot without the casing in the way, the cartridge slot pins that weren't contacting correctly were re-bent in a way that it correctly makes contact now even with the cartridge casing on. So if you have problems, as a first step try disassembling the cartridge and plugging the cartridge board into the system. Remove the two screws on the cartridge, split apart the plastic shell, and pull out the circuit board (reverse to reassemble). If you still have trouble, there are other guides available with instructions on how to clean the cartridge slot and re-bend the pins. Make sure you are careful though! Overall the best upgrade you can get, and it's amazing it's still widely available for relatively cheap. There are some newer software options available to get even more out of it if you want, but you just need to be cognizant that old electronics like this might have problems. Thankfully, in most cases, there are solutions.

Works perfectly and allow imports to be played on NTSC hardware

Let me play a Japanese game on a UK console, seems to work fine.

I have 2 Saturn's, model 1 and 2. This action replay works perfectly in both.

La cartuccia combina l'espansione di memoria ram, in realtà mai sfruttata nei giochi usciti qui in europa ma necessaria per eseguire alcuni titoli pubblicati solo in Giappone, e in più funziona anche come backup per i salvataggi. Chiunque possieda un Saturn sa che nel caso in cui la batteria a bottone sul retro venisse rimossa, anche solo per pochi secondi quando si scarica e viene sostituita con una nuova, tutti i salvataggi di gioco andrebbero perduti. Con la cartuccia le partite verranno comunque salvate nella memoria del sistema, ma sarà possibile trasferire i dati appunto sulla cartuccia, mettendoli al sicuro.

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Funciona perfectamente para mi sega saturn tanto japonesa como europea. Ha funcionado para la 1 y para la 2.