Well guys i’m not totally sure this hasn’t been posted already, but this is news to myself. A new version of giri giri has come out that is coded for WinXP. I tried it out last night and it was definitely the easiet emulator out there i’v ever used. Just popped in a copy of VF2, hit “run cd” on the emu and started playing away. Pretty cool, especially since i didn’t bother to get the previous version of Giri Giri to work. Check it out if you haven’t already:
Damn, I finally get Giri Giri to operate in Windows XP only for someone to release a Windows XP compatible version. What are the chances of that happening?
Does anyone know how many Saturn games are actually compatible with Giri Giri? Isn’t Giri Giri a hacked Saturn emulater developed by the developers at Sega themselves? Apparently, Sega had plans to release a number of Saturn games on the Dreamcast before it was forced to scrap the console. If only the Dreamcast had survived the Playstation 2 blitz; I would’ve given anything to play the complete Shining Force III in English…
Hehe, unlucky Geoff 
I somehow managed to get the original GiriGiri to work on my PC but it was a lot of hassle. Like Aitrus said, this new version is a lot easier to use and runs games significantly better. I know there’s still a long way to go yet, but I’m hoping that one day we’ll see Saturn games emulated perfectly 
You can view a compatibility list for all Saturn games here.
The author of this XP version of GiriGiri has also included a brief history of the emulator and listed the improvements he’s made to it which I’ve copied and pasted below:
[quote]Snail’s Sega Saturn emulator:
GiriGiri is one of the best Saturn emulators out there.
It shows quite impressive screens of commercial games,
even though speed isn’t always at 100%.
Originally created for the Japanese version of Windows 98,
this emu didn’t work on US systems.
It started out as a free developers tool,
but in its final release, went commercial.
The project is now discontinued, in a way.
Sega hired the GiriGiri team to further develop the emu for their saturn games service at cyberdisc.zaq.ne.jp/
a site now long gone.
Shortly after the commercial release,
Gavionne released a hack that made it so you no longer had to register GiriGiri. This hack spread very fast over the internet, and this enraged Sega.
Further development of the emulator has been very problemmatic.
- The documentation of the source has been destroyed.
- It has been coded for the Jap Win OS
- Sega encrypted the program
- Gavionne encrypted the program
- Almost no hardware schematics/docs exist on the Saturn
About a year after “Gav” cracked the emu, Cyberdisc released a patch to get the emu to run under WinXP US.
Roughly, one more year later, MiC, Chris, Den, Max, Dai and Fehmi
created a US frontend and loader that included several tools.
Later updates and testing by Lockshaw13 and Barnito would provide gamelist compatability and further distribution of the emulator.
That brings us to my dabbling with the emu.
While I’ve made several emus and have vastly improved on many,
for the reasons listed above, this emu has been a bear to get any improvements working.
What has changed?
Partial decryption and decompiling.
I have included what dissassembly code I could manage.
Further XP patching and optimisation.
Font patch.
Corrupt disk track 1 handling.
Loading time improved.
Overall resources improved.
Code updates.
Library updates.
Added tools.
Updated documentation.
Removed 4.28 Mb of old/useless files.
Updated the configuration tool.
Updated the Audio Conversion Library (It is not for sound output, but rather reading in the sounds… I do not know if this will actually help sound output quality but it will make loading an image faster.)
More Jap to US translation has been done to make the need of foreign fonts less of a must.
What has not changed…
Gamelist database compatablity.
Testing shows that this updated package still works under Win2K.
Performance under Win2K showed little to no improvement.
Performance under WinXP showed better rates and resource usage.[/quote]
BTW Geoff, which Saturn games were SEGA planning to release on the DC? If it was a fully translated SFIII I’d die.
Thanks for the link, Aitrus
Does it actually emulate the games any better? Can it play disc images?
I can’t test it myself as my discs are all at home, and I stupidly deleted all my images to save hard drive space. Ah well. Thanks.
[quote=“Bluefoot”]Does it actually emulate the games any better? Can it play disc images?
I can’t test it myself as my discs are all at home, and I stupidly deleted all my images to save hard drive space. Ah well. Thanks.[/quote]
I believe it will play images. With this new version you get all the necassary tools to make the disc images for the emulator to read.
I must say the history of this emulator is quite interesting, be sure to read as you install the program.
So far i’ve only played PD1 which appeared to be running full speed and VF2 which was running a bit slow. I still need to play around with my other games though.
I have no idea what Saturn games Sega was planning to release for the Dreamcast. I suppose we will never know now.
I believe one of them was PDS.A rumour I heard…
I heard was a rumour ages ago (before the DC came out) that Sega was developing an emulator called the Satcast for the Dreamcast.
It’s great that someone has gone to the trouble of making of version of GiriGiri for XP. I’ll definately be trying it out when I get the chance. Hopefully the emulator will continue to improve as time goes on.
[quote=“Solo Wing Dragon”]I heard was a rumour ages ago (before the DC came out) that Sega was developing an emulator called the Satcast for the Dreamcast.
[/quote]
I’ve heard this too, especially during the release of the PS2 when Sony was marketing the backwards compatibility of the PS2 with the PSX. For awhile it honestly seemed like Dreamcast owners would get the Satcast emulator. Too bad we didnt 
It’s near impossible to emulate Saturn completely. I think it has something to do with the two CPUs.
It wouldn’t make any sense for Sega to make an emulator.