Hey everyone. This is PDK, and today in
6 quick steps
we'll be setting up Mednafen, and the frontend GUI "Reborn", in order to accurately
emulate and play Sega Saturn games on PC.
step 1: of course we want to download
some links! Now there's two ways you can
go about this (you like this background
by the way? - got that just for this video)
you can either go to the Mednafen homepage
for the emulator - that's: mednafen dot github dot io - as well as the
frontend website: sourceforge dot net slash
projects slash meguireborn and get
them separately. now I have put together
an archive package - it's the first link
in the video description below. that will
have both of those already ready to go
so you can skip ahead even further and
make running things even easier... but if
you don't want to do that,
or if for whatever reason your computer
does not want to recognize the files in
that form, you can just get them fresh
here... anyway we got that; as you can see
there's only a few folders here... so what
you want to do before anything else, you
want to click Mednafen - the application
you probably don't need to do this but I have
a habit of always running as administrator
whatever I use... and, Windows 10 interface;
not a big fan but, that's what it does... so
you'll get this error message first.
that's normal, and that unlocks a bunch
of additional folders that have now been
created... which is good you're going to
need those - including "firmware". now that's
important, because we're going to go to.....
all right we're in the same folder 'scuse
me got turned around - this file that
includes all the BIOS - so we're gonna
open that, using whatever archive file
program that you have. I use bandizip - 
it's free and I recommend it but you can
also use things like 7-zip or winrar. so
I got three files in here.. I'm gonna
extract
actually, it'll be easier if I right
click, extract selected files, and... we want
them in firmware. ok, password has been
entered, files have been downloaded and
if you go into firmware you'll see the
three right there.
And now for step 4: in order to play
Saturn games immediately, you could just
grab your image file and drag it over to
Mednafen now that you have your bios
installed - and it should load up straight
away. and as you can see we have audio
and video, which is a good sign. if you
need to change your controller settings
you would just hit shift alt and 1 - I'll
just show you really fast just hold those
three buttons down and we'll get the
gamepad screen, to configure your keys
however you see fit. so it allows you to
use any type of controller for this - you
just want to make sure that your controller
has enough buttons for Saturn games
which most modern pads should.. can't
imagine that ever being an issue... so
there's the game running; now we did
want to do things easier though, right?
what about that front end we were
talking about? so we want to go back to
medGUI reborn, and we're gonna
extract that... to its own folder
and when its done we can open that up: GUI
reborn, go to the application; not the one
that says wizard we just want to go to
the one that says MedGUI R, and
probably don't need to do this but force of habit I'm gonna run it as
administrator..... and I really don't like
this Windows... I miss Windows 7
no side rant today though. so it should
be launching there we go. select a valid
mednafen path you should see that first
off. so that's going to ask you to link
your mednafen application... okay, so as you can see
here we're back in the main mednafen folder...
that's all you gotta do. and you can just
hit OK to that. so you're not finding the
application so much as just the folder
that it's in; and we're going to close it,
the first time - similar to how we
launched mednafen initially without
planning to actually use it - just to fully
activate it, so to speak. so now we're going
to launch the application again, and this
time it should in theory be ready to go
past experience is any indication ~ yes it is
so now we've got the full menu. I just
drop it down to SS for the Sega Saturn
emulation - you see the list of the
systems that it has at its disposal and
here
what you want to do is select a default
folder for it to go to - hopefully one
folder that will have all your library of
games. see I have a folder dedicated to
Sega Saturn games... aaaand from here we can
select any game we want... and 
we used Astal before we'll just go
ahead and stick with that example and
it'll drop down here. now there's a lot
of extra features and things that you
can do here, but I'm just trying to keep
this very simple and streamlined. but I
will add this one note: now you
right-click to start the game or you can
just tap it twice but there is a really
useful feature here you can click this
star "add to favorites", and that opens up
a favorites menu. game added to
favorites list so when you click this star it
will open up all the games that you have
as favored; so that's another thing
you can do to streamline your playing. so
we're just gonna tap that twice it
should open up instantly - and there you
go!
Sega Saturn on your desktop or laptop PC - 
in my case laptop. now I should note this
is my first time using the latest
version of mednafen. I've been using the
previous one for quite a while with no
major issues so if there are any bugs or
hiccups or regressions in this version I
will keep you posted. I have yet to
discover them because I don't have any
experience with it but I'm hoping that
it'll be even better than before, but
we'll see.... basically an animated painting
it looks like [Astal]
and... there's that! (heh) just to ensure that there
are no flukes we're going to load up a
very different game really quickly - something
else
Cotton Boomerang that's a good one.... and just click that...
if you look to the right of the screen, key
assignments: some useful things to note
full-screen mode,
save and load states are a feature with
this emulator - and speaking of which, why
don't we try that. Emulating Saturn on
Windows has never been smoother or
swifter: no virtual drives or extensive
configurations needed, provided your PC
is current enough to keep up. for more
info on mednafen and its features be
sure to visit the home page mentioned
earlier in this video, or listed down
below. was this video helpful or
informative? if so: be kind, and leave a
like. I have more guides and tutorials
planned down the road, so constructive
criticism and general feedback will not
be in vain.
like a phone, this process works both
ways. And, if you need more help, or have
questions about using advanced features... ask away.
because good games never really fade
away... they just wait for us to find and
emulate! (eheh) thanks for watching, be healthy,
stay up, and hopefully... see you soon.
