Meduza Team Showcases FPS Boosting Codes for Sega Saturn Heavy Hitters

Meduza Team has been busy in the last several months implementing and testing frames per second (FPS) unlock codes for Sega Saturn titles.

This effort was made public Dec. 29 of last year on SegaXtreme, an announcement that included a spiffy demo of the codes in action — shown below on the left — and a download link. A video titled “FPS unlock codes for Sega Saturn (part 2)” was posted Wednesday on YouTube — below right — making it clear that these efforts are ongoing. Note that both videos show the games running via emulation, with “part 1” running on via Kronos v2.6.2 and “part 2” on Yaba Sanshiro 2 v1.16.7.

“A short demonstration of cheat codes that remove the frame rate limit in Sega Saturn games, allowing you to play at 60 fps. Unfortunately, the frame rate is unstable — CPU overclocking via an emulator is absolutely necessary.” — caption accompanying both demonstration videos

Examples of Dark Savior, above left, and Bulk Slash, above right, without the FPS unlocked.

Paul Met explained his rationale for creating these codes when debuting them on SegaXtreme:

Not all games appear to benefit equally for these codes, however. Using Bulk Slash as an example, it would seem that the unlocked FPS speeds up the game rather than making it run more smoothly. Additionally, Paul Met mentions that some games refuse to work with these unlock methods. Sega Rally was specifically named as a game that was “fighting back” against having its FPS unlocked. That said, there are still plenty of the Saturn’s heaviest hitters confirmed to work so far, including:

When asked by user Levine91 on SegaXtreme how the codes function, Paul Met responded:

Following the second showcase video, user benclaff asked within the same SegaXtreme forum thread, “Is this FPS cap a parameter that can be actually changed by modifying the hex value? For instance, it makes Wipeout hard to control on real hardware, however setting 45 VDP1 FPS instead of 60 may be a playable option.”

Paul Met replied, “You can set the frame limiter to 30, which corresponds to the value 2. The next limit is 60 fps.”

KnightofDragon would add shortly after that: “Basically, it must be a factor of 60 as that is how the video processor works.”

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Meduza Team has produced numerous translation patches for the Sega Saturn such as the recently released Arcana Strikes English patch, and for the legendary Quest Corp classics Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen and Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. Team Meduza also was responsible for the impressive improvement patch Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight – Ultimate. Members of the team have contributed to other projects as well, with Paul Met recently assisting on Eadmaster’s Princess Crown English translation “EX” release, which SHIRO! covered here.