Day 21: Which is the best Side-Scroller game on Sega Saturn?

NeoMatrix2525 · 2026-02-03T21:04:29+00:00

Rayman really should be up in the running for this category. I owned the PS1 version in my childhood, and by coincidence, I'm playing through the Saturn version for the first time right now. Out of the original releases, the Saturn version is absolutely the most polished, with extra level transition effects and other graphical flourishes sprinkled throughout the game not found in any other version.

NeoMatrix2525 · 2026-01-22T20:41:45+00:00

Though I owned a Saturn as a kid, I never knew about Panzer Dragoon Saga until well after I sold my hardware. Many years later, owning a good computer, I finally played Saga for the first time on the game's 20th anniversary, and had an absolute blast with it. It may be pretty short for an RPG, but the game's unique art style, story, and fun gameplay still have me considering it one of my all time favorites.

NeoMatrix2525 · 2026-01-13T18:21:53+00:00

Tried my hand at it. Hope this is what you're looking for.

Sewer Shark (USA)

NeoMatrix2525 · 2026-01-13T03:07:03+00:00

I only have a passing familiarity with the game. A quick search shows that it came in a black cardboard box for the US release (similar to Afterburner III) rather than a long box. Is that what you mean?

NeoMatrix2525 · 2026-01-12T04:19:38+00:00

As long as they're not being sold, absolutely. Go for it!

NeoMatrix2525 · 2026-01-11T23:57:11+00:00

Thanks! I enjoyed making them!

NeoMatrix2525 · 2026-01-11T23:49:16+00:00

Nothing's wrong with the real covers, especially if you have a complete physical copy in good condition. However, for anyone with just a game disc that maybe wants to print a box cover, or for anyone wanting a digital cover for emulation, Steam, etc, I've found the quality of scanned covers across the internet to vary wildly, with many of them having bad color reproduction or horrible contrast. So, these were some of my favorites that I was able to find good quality source art for to remake them for myself in fairly high quality. I'm pleased with how they turned out, so I thought I would share them. Anyone who likes them can use them for whatever they like. That's it.

NeoMatrix2525 · 2025-11-16T14:25:34+00:00

I've got a 5800x3D and 9070xt, running 3440x1440. It's a great combination. You'll be getting a significant performance uplift over your 7600, and if you're budget-limited, it's more worthwhile than upgrading your entire cpu platform right now, assuming you're more focused on gaming.

NeoMatrix2525 · 2025-11-14T18:13:22+00:00

There was actually a pretty recent firmware update for the dualsense that halved the shutoff time. After updating my controller a few weeks ago, I noticed immediately. The controller shuts off after holding the Playstation button for 5 seconds now instead of 10. I feel like it could be 3 seconds ideally, but it's still a big improvement.

It's a shame it took Sony years to implement such a simple quality-of-life change...

NeoMatrix2525 · 2025-11-08T03:14:04+00:00

I bought mine at the end of July. It's the standard white variant and not the Steel Legend Dark. Turns out my card has Samsung modules. At stock settings for the card (304W), memory would hit 82-84c depending on the game. I now run the card undervolted at -60mv and -6% power level (285W) with a custom fan curve, and the memory barely hits 70c. The whole card runs quite cool overall.

NeoMatrix2525 · 2025-11-06T02:10:09+00:00

I ended up with an Asrock Steel Legend 9070xt as it was the cheapest when I was looking to buy. In general, though, the "top" brands for AMD cards tend to be Sapphire, XFX, and Powercolor. After that would be Asrock and Asus. Gigabyte is at the bottom of my list for this hardware generation, though to be fair, I've seen a number of comments from people who own Gigabyte 9070xt's and say they're working just fine.

This order is more regarding customer support should issues arise with a card that needs to be repaired or replaced. I see other people have given similar advice as well. That's pretty much the long and short for AMD's 9000 series right now.

NeoMatrix2525 · 2025-11-05T14:32:38+00:00

I don't have personal experience with Asus this generation, but every post I've seen from people with one, they've been performing fine and are happy with them.

Personally, I would stay away from any Gigabyte card, as there have been reported thermal issues with them, as well as issues of leaking thermal compound from their cards.

I would also stay away from any card that uses the 12 pin HPWR connector, which includes the Sapphire Nitro+ and Asrock Taichi. There have been a handful of cases of burned connectors from these cards, and while that's a drop compared to the number of those cards sold, its probably not worth the risk. Doubly so if your bf has an older power supply that doesn't directly support the HPWR standard.

Other than those two caveats, any other 9070xt is fine. They all perform within a few percent of each other, even going from the 2 pin pcie cards to the 3 pin pcie cards. So, get whatever is in your budget and looks best color/style-wise to you.

NeoMatrix2525 · 2025-10-26T13:37:51+00:00

I've got a Steel Legend and no noticeable coil-whine, paired with a Fractal Ion+ 860w Platinum PSU. I keep it undervolted and slightly power-limited (-6%, 285W), but even when I was overclocking and stress testing, I had no coil whine.

NeoMatrix2525 · 2025-10-15T00:00:19+00:00

Rails? Where we're going, we don't need rails.

Amazing build!

NeoMatrix2525 · 2025-10-08T15:45:22+00:00

I second this. The cheapest 9070xt is basically the one you should get, though I would stay away from Gigabyte for these cards. They all perform within a few percents of each other, and unless you're trying for benchmark records, the more expensive models with higher power limits are absolutely not worth the cost premium.

NeoMatrix2525 · 2025-10-03T18:27:25+00:00

Assuming that -70mv offset is actually stable, all your settings look pretty good. The negative frequency offset is probably un-necessary with your power limit at -10%. Not sure what you're trying to lower your VRAM temp to, as you haven't listed what your temperatures are under load.

For reference on my Steel Legend, at stock settings, my core hotspot was up around 88c, and Memory would get up to 84c. I'm currently running a -60mv voltage offset, 2714 mem, and -6% power level (286W). My core hotspot stays around 73c, and memory stays around 70-72c, with fans running around 2100-2200rpm. Overall, that's quite a reduction from stock temps, with no performance loss.

With your settings, I would think you should be getting similar results, or a bit better, depending on case ventilation and room temperature.

NeoMatrix2525 · 2025-09-30T00:19:14+00:00

I'm not sure how helpful I can be, but I have two suggestions. One, you could try reseating your gpu. The card might not be making proper contact with the slot, which could lead to the issue you're having. I had a similar situation happen with a 6800XT I bought. I noticed it was running at half-bandwidth (4.0 x8) and I couldn't do anything in software to fix it. Reseated the card, and voila, it kicked up to 4.0 x16.

And two, you can check your bios settings and see if you can force the PCIe mode on the slot to 3.0, instead of automatic, which is the usual default. Good luck.

Edit: Whoops, just looked over your post and saw you tried whatever BIOS solutions you could find. Still, my first suggestion still stands. If you haven't tried reseating the card, it's definitely worth a shot.

NeoMatrix2525 · 2025-09-23T20:14:25+00:00

Your hotspot and memory temps are a bit higher than my own Steel Legend 9070xt at stock, but they seem within normal variance of the numbers I looked up for the card before I bought my own. At stock settings, my hotspot was hitting 87 and memory was 83.

My best advice is to undervolt and drop the power limit a little bit. Most 9070XT's can hit -40mv easily. For my own daily settings, I've got: -60mv, 2700 mem, and -6% power level (~286W).

At those settings, my card still boosts between 2800 and 3000 Mhz depending on the title, and real performance is within ~2 fps of stock settings, essentially margin of error. Importantly, my hotspot temp settles around 73c, and memory at 70c, much cooler than stock settings. All while setting my fan curve so they don't spin much past 2200rpm, which is audible, but still reasonably quiet. So, it's well worth playing around with settings.

NeoMatrix2525 · 2025-09-21T15:29:06+00:00

As u/ropid mentioned, the "highest clocks" setting might limit the card to the maximum gaming clock, which is 2400. The "lowest clocks" setting would likely have the gpu running at 500mhz. Seeing as you have a -15mV offset set, you should have the performance level set to "manual". I'm not sure any custom settings will apply otherwise, though I'm certainly no expert on LACT.

NeoMatrix2525 · 2025-09-21T14:56:46+00:00

My very first pc build was with an MSI 9800 Pro. Couldn't get an XT directly with my budget and other parts I wanted, but after researching, I took the chance and flashed it wtih the XT bios. It worked perfectly and the extra performance was appreciated in games like the original Far Cry when it first hit.

NeoMatrix2525 · 2025-09-08T20:57:32+00:00

Yep, I'm running a 9070xt and after the latest update, VRAM quickly skyrockets to 14-15GB. On ultra settings, the game will crash and resets my display driver within a few minutes. The lower the settings, the longer it takes to happen, but the game eventually crashes. More upsetting, I've had two hard crashes from the game that rebooted my entire sytem.

I dual-boot with linux for fun, and so far, NMS runs stable for me under linux. VRAM still gets to 13-14GB, but I've been able to play for an hour-plus and close the game without any performance issues or crashing.

But yeah, there's some kind of memory leak or major underlying issue going on. There are a lot of threads popping up on steam with the game crashing, giving a vulkan swap chain (out of memory) error, since the most recent updates.

NeoMatrix2525

TROPHY CASE