Restoring & Reviewing the SEGA PLUTO PROTOTYPE - 1 of 2 ON EARTH - Adam Koralik 

Fun speculation about whether the Japanese on the sticker meaning "what on earth is this" was a subtle planet-related nod! Actually the original language version doesn't contain the word "earth" - it could equally be read as "what the heck is this!".

Adam Koralik and Ben Heck doing a rare Sega rebuild while Ben's wearing an MST3K shirt??? Circa ~2011 me would've died and went to heaven. 2021 me thinks it's still pretty cool.

this channel is THE BEST because it keeps the vibe of the golden age of the internet, and also keeps it modern. PERFECT.

Awesome stuff. A pity the HDD doesn't do anything. Would've been neat if that had some RIPPED Saturn games or prototypes or something. The fact that it missing the spring on the CD door makes me think that this my have been intended as display unit at a Electronics show or something.

Its pretty cool to see a piece of gaming history being preserved like this. 🙂

I was trying so hard to find time to make it to Pinball Expo, but it just wasn't meant to be. Good video though, I love how enthusiastic Roger is about showing off the Pluto and keeping it well taken care of.

Such an exciting video gaming find and definitely a piece of gaming history that should be preserved. Can't quite understand how something like this ends up out in the wild, regardless it seems like it's in the hands of someone who appreciates it and understands the importance of it too

I love it! Thank you as always Adam!

Thank you for sharing this. Sega history right there.

Always cool to see what ''new'' accessories can do to old hardware, especially to rare pieces like this.

I wonder if the Pluto instead of being a Saturn slim was more a Saturn "pro" to fight the ps1 back, cause there were rumors of a saturn 2 back then, finally they cut that and went full on into the dreamcast

The Pluto is so damn cool, I wish I had one of those, the Saturn is one of my favorite systems, sega could have did some much more with it. Sooo many great Japanese games for it especially if you like shooters. Great video Adam

9:03 “most people in 2005 had computers with 80-100gb in it” Me, a poor boy: having flashbacks of buying CD-R’s in 100-disc spindles because my dual HDD setup only totaled up to 25gb

huh yeah the stuff that didn't work reminds me of the stuff that wasn't working on the Nintendo Playstation like how it couldn't read CDs? was probably just mostly a concept and not everything was working inside that prototype system. still super cool to see it, never knew the thing was planned to have an HDD inside it!

Super cool video mate, thanks to you and the lads for taking the time to make it..🍺👍

Very cool Video. Thanks a lot to everyone involved.

Fun fact: Sega already had a hard drive equipped Saturn on the market before this console! It was the Karaoke Commander (SKC-1000), and it had a Saturn, a modem, a Roland synthesizer, a hard drive & a full hard drive controller, an elaborate front panel similar to hi-fi system, and a Denon amplifier all built in. It was sold for Karaoke parlours, and you could connect it to the internet to download new songs to the built-in hard drive (there were also CDs released for the system with more songs as well as games). It was a massive thing that supported multiple audio/video inputs/outputs, played really nice quality MIDI versions of songs, and it could be switched over to play Saturn games with a button (it used the same board as the early Saturns, only the I/O slots were changed). It was released in either late 1994 or early 1995. I have the 1996 version which came with a 1 GByte hard drive, and only used like 7 PCBs instead of the originals 11 or so.

This is awesome, thanks for sharing.

Great video Adam !!

Nice to meet you at Found It Electronics yesterday and thank you for talking to me about this awesome console and letting me hold it and take some pictures. So cool!

Thanks for sharing this with us

That's really cool, so nice to have a piece of SEGA's history.

That's awesome that it's now up and running.

You really did it well done!

My Tectoy Saturns won’t read Action Replay either, even though officially licensed carts, like the ntsc-U memory card work. Kinda sucks, because I play a lot of Japanese games.

Can't wait to see this in person! Dec 11th KC Retro Gaming Swap and Collectibles Show

Holy heck, it's Ben Heck!

I watched and observed this video 😎 Great video !

Interesting bit of kit and history there.

I have a feeling the Hard disk isn’t recognized like with the modem hence why it doesn’t even try to spin it up, probably due to missing software/instructions.

Was neat to see this at the Pinball Expo last weekend. Bet it'll get a lot more attention at the other conventions.

The fact that a whole bunch of people had this unit in hands and did NOT dump the BIOS does boggle the mind...

So this was started in March 2020 B.C. (Before Covi... you get the point). Also seeing this glorious device again is a treat.

It will be nice to see you again (as well as see Roger and the Pluto) in December at Sac Gamers Expo. Maybe we can grab a beer afterwards with Riggs?

I touched it! I touched the Pluto!

Dude I can't wait to get to Guam. Visited Hawaii just before the pando , but I remember you saying Guam is more chill. My wife and I are in Taiwan, which is very close, but Taiwan still requires 14-day quarantine upon return, so we're waiting.

Great video

I really like seeing videos really rare stuff thanks

The Netlink modem was released on 10-31-1996, which was after this was created. For whatever reason I think they abandoned the idea of an all-in-one console and just released the modem on it's own.

Awesome video Adam makes me wish I still had a saturn lol that system looks amazing to bad sega never released one it would of been cool if that was released along side if virtual fighter rpg actually happened

Amazing video🎮👑

Now that Earth image on boot with Sega CD makes sense.

Epic vidya bruh!

How good would it be to own both Nintendo playstation and Sega Pluto

Roger's DGD Shirt is so awesome.

the Japanese label inside that reads なんじゃこりゃ "what on earth is this?" doesn't actually refer to earth or planets, it's more literally means "what is this?", an emphatic "what the hell is this?", often used in times of exasperated confusion, almost a WTF!

This is an awesome video

luv the vid cool little piece of gaming history been thinking about getting into collecting for the 3ds now that it's life is over games are beginning to get real cheap

you can swap out that PSU with a SaturnPSU or a USB C option Marvel Super Heroes (US) also uses the expansion RAM

Cool piece of history to have my friend! I don't have anything turtle related to talk about.

Roger with the sweet DGD Afterburner shirt. Nice.

I'm already waiting for the first video of the traveling channel

Props to Roger for good taste in music!

Always love these weird console prototypes🤗

Ben Heck’s a cool dude, met him at MGC 2019

Adam Koralik + Ben Heck. It's like chocolate meeting peanut butter.

Awesome collab. The video was still fine even with a bit of recording problems. I bet it was Ben's evil twin brother Benjamin Hell. Ben restores rare console while Benjamin breaks them. Jk like I said Awesome video and collab.

Definitely prototype, but cool to see and share with the Saturn fans such as myself

2 in the whole world huh? Neat

man the pluto looks cool

"We did our best" **Rayman shrugs as he points at the TV** 100/10

Nice!

I could've sworn that i've seen this particular prototype already being fixed once before.....

I watched the video that Ben Hack repairing the Sega Pluto and I think it was a great that video made me want to watch Ben's video and I subscribe to his channel and resently subscribed to your channel.

Here's a fun fact before sega's HDD "KILLER INSTINCT" arcade cabinet was the FIRST EVER arcade cabinet to have a HDD in 1994

@5:29「なんじゃこりゃN3」lol

Wow!!! That jacket and bum bag, Roger looks like he has come straight from 1992. LOL!!!

If you swap the Hard Drive PCB, consider that you may need to switch the chip that contains the firmware. I've done hard drive PCB swaps before to recover data, and without the correct firmware that belongs to the magnetic disks inside, it won't run. I don't know if this is also true for a 1996 drive but keep this in mind.

My best guess about not being able to access the hard drive and modem might be because it needs a boot disc. Possibly some sort of thing to do with a dev unit?

epic adam

Too nice 🙋👍

I like the svideo out

You could test the RAM with a US marvel superheroes, pretty sure that still has the option for added ram.

And not including DVD support hurt a lot. Yes Sony had that Locked up. Totally understand that.

You guys need someone (Ben) to take another look at the cartridge slot / extra ram issue. This defo needs a follow up so you can get it to boot non us games or at least answer some of the unanswered questions.

someone needs to go to Xbox's wiki and edit out the first hard drive thing, that honor is now officially belong to Pluto

American version of Marvel Super Heroes is compatible with the 1MB RAM cartridge, allowing a new "3MB RAM mode" on the options menu. You can try that. If the Pluto has extra RAM (1MB or 4MB), you should have this "3MB RAM mode" on options screen of Marvel Super Heroes.

3:43 we’re gonna spread a little 🐢 wax *and sacrifice Franklin the 🐐 to give it life*

Cool :]

That HD has to do with online gaming, probably downloading to it part of the game(s). I speculate there should be a menu, dial-up menu, some kind of configuration, maybe its hidden.

an HDD in 96, SEGA deserves more respect than they get.

Have you tried running any of the games that required more memory (Like Dungeons & Dragons, etc.) on the unit without a 4MB memory card?

any chance you can dump the pluto bios

DIsclaimer: Adam is 100% not drunk at the start of the video. :-P

Big papa style Pluto

[adjusts tie, stands up and coughs into hand] Aaaakshully... if you literally crapped money it was possible to put a hard drive in your CD32 earlier than this. [realises nobody cares, sits back down, sobs quietly to himself]

If your friend would like to borrow my Satiator to test please let me know.

Have you tried testing swap trick rom burned imports?

Hey Adam, don't forget to put your travel channel on this channels featured channels.

here i was with fingers crosed that the harddrive might be home to some rare protoype of saturn shenmue, but alas no joy :(

1996 hd sega console 😲

I love Ben heck.

Action Replay block makes sense to combat software piracy back in the day. I would bet those cheat carts wouldn't work on it either. You could try disc swapping into a Japanese game to test the ram expansion. Try both a 1mb game and a 4mb. I would imagine if the system came with extra memory and a hard drive that it would have some kind of upgraded Netlink support for downloading files through the internet and would have been sold at a higher price point. Neat missing link between the Saturn and the Dreamcast.

The solution for playing Japanese (or other region) games on the Pluto prototype is to get hold of some system discs. These were official tools released in at least two varieties and used by Saturn developers back in the day on either red or black discs. One type will let you boot copies of 1st party games and the other 3rd party ones (on either original discs or CD-R copies). They are getting pricy out there these days though - there are supposedly blue ones out there too (that let you load any disc), but I have never seen one myself.

Ben 's the man

nice :)

Was the Pluto the model with two SH-2 processors on one chip?

We don't talk about the no nos in the not so distant time ago where people did a lot of nothing.

There has to be other engineers who can look into this system and offer other solutions (ie harddrive implementation, etc) How about getting with a company that can offer a part listing along with a 3D print for the shell/case and offer it all as a conversion kit for original Saturn owners?

Is this system pre Sega Saturn or Dreamcast prototypes?