The main issue with this thing right now is there's a lot of shortcuts being taken with it. If you look in the source code you'll see it's actually patching the games to make them run on it. On top of that there's a config file applying game specific configurations to try and get those to work as well. So the compatibility of the thing isn't nearly as good as people are claiming.
The patching itself runs a lot of other risks because it's just being done blindly without really checking what it's patching. So it's already falsely identifying games, prototypes, demos, etc. as the wrong thing and applying a patch to them resulting in crashes and unstable behavior.
There's a ton of issues on the github page with more added daily it seems. Because of how they're trying to fix things each update seems to break games that were previously working since there's no real regression testing going on. Sure it's open source, but that doesn't always mean it's good. It's only as good as the developers contributing to it.
I get people are excited about this thing being cheap, but that's really all it has going for it. From a developer standpoint it's a compatibility nightmare. I'd honestly recommend a modchip and CD-Rs before I'd recommend a Saroo cart.
Comments 1
Re: Review: SAROO - A $60 Sega Saturn Flash Cart That's Worth Every Penny
The main issue with this thing right now is there's a lot of shortcuts being taken with it. If you look in the source code you'll see it's actually patching the games to make them run on it. On top of that there's a config file applying game specific configurations to try and get those to work as well. So the compatibility of the thing isn't nearly as good as people are claiming.
The patching itself runs a lot of other risks because it's just being done blindly without really checking what it's patching. So it's already falsely identifying games, prototypes, demos, etc. as the wrong thing and applying a patch to them resulting in crashes and unstable behavior.
There's a ton of issues on the github page with more added daily it seems. Because of how they're trying to fix things each update seems to break games that were previously working since there's no real regression testing going on. Sure it's open source, but that doesn't always mean it's good. It's only as good as the developers contributing to it.
I get people are excited about this thing being cheap, but that's really all it has going for it. From a developer standpoint it's a compatibility nightmare. I'd honestly recommend a modchip and CD-Rs before I'd recommend a Saroo cart.