Best alternative to emulation, im not sure where FGPA is but it gives me a peace of mind to just mod the console to support SD cards filled with every single game released for that console, picking up the original game from ebay if I really like the title and show support
Its such a hassle to take out the CD from its plastic casing with rubber gloves to preserve value and put it back in each time but you don't want to trade original game experience with emulation
You are talking about an Optical Disk Emulator, and a few have created for the Saturn. It takes files from an SD card and supplies the data to the console as if an optical drive was reading the data. I personally own one. Just dropping the correct keyword in case anyone else is curious.
that's correct. I really think ODEs are right balance but soldering was quite off putting at first. I was concerned about fumes.
End result is you have every single game released on that console playing on the physical hardware.
The next crazy step here would be mods you can do to connect online and play your retro games online somehow (maybe some crazy real time 2d/3d video game segmentation and AI enhancement to generate multiplayer hacked ROMs).
So many games yet so little friends to play with...
Its such a hassle to take out the CD from its plastic casing with rubber gloves to preserve value and put it back in each time but you don't want to trade original game experience with emulation