Download Rhea/Phoebe Sorter:
https://github.com/DerekPascarella/Rhea-Phoebe-Sorter
Back in 2015, hardware engineer Deunan released his Rhea and Phoebe ODEs (optical drive emulators) for the Sega Saturn. These two represent the first of their kind on Sega’s fifth-generation home gaming console and, interestingly enough, they remain the most stable options to this very day, with the least number of compatibility issues — near zero, sans the Virtua Racing audio bug that affects all ODEs (see here and here).
All these years later, users can couple their Rhea/Phoebe ODE with cafe-alpha‘s Rhea Menu Kai running on a Gamer’s Cartridge to achieve virtual folders/subfolders — something mostly impossible with legacy RMENU — per-game virtual memory cards, built-in cheats, and more. This, in my humble opinion, delivers a best-in-class Sega Saturn ODE solution.
But… why? To me, it’s simple.
- 100% compatibility with game software (literally).
- Flexible use of custom menu software (i.e., RmenuKai).
- Virtual per-game memory cards when used in conjunction with a Gamer’s Cartridge, and all additional features therein (e..g, built-in cheats, floppy disk drive emulation).
- Support for CD+G, Video CD (with expansion card) and Audio CD.
- Support for retaining original CD-ROM drive with a Wuxi kit (still in development).
Can you achieve most of this with other ODEs on the market like Satiator, Fenrir, and MODE? Absolutely! In fact, in addition to device availability and supported disc image format quirks, one major drawback has long made Rhea and Phoebe ownership more frustrating than it should be: SD card management! This pain point has even pushed some users toward alternative devices, even if that meant sacrificing raw game compatibility for the sake of convenience.
Given that I’ve returned to my beloved Rhea and Phoebe units after years of experimentation with MODE, Fenrir, and Satiator, I buckled down and decided to solve the annoying SD card management issue once and for all. What I achieved isn’t the prettiest tool in the world — hell, it’s not even a GUI — but it delivers on its core promise.
And so, on May 12 this year, I released version 1.7 of Rhea/Phoebe Sorter, a.k.a. “The Orbital Organizer,” which I consider to be highly stable and feature-rich.
The premise behind my new SD card management utility is simple, really: let users add, remove, and modify disc images without keeping track of numbered folders or needing to use the archaic RMENU rebuild process.
With Rhea/Phoebe Sorter, users can easily create a new folder on their SD card, copy a disc image into it, drag their SD card onto the executable, and be done with it! In fact, I’ve even included a separate script for users to batch convert their disc images to CloneCD format (supported by Rhea/Phoebe).
My “Orbital Organizer” also fully supports RmenuKai and its virtual subfolders feature, including for multi-disc games. It even has a mechanism for allowing legacy RMENU to live alongside RmenuKai in the rare event users need to use it here and there.
Some of my tool’s unique features include the ability to easily modify metadata displayed in either RMENU or RmenuKai (e.g., Build Version, Game Region, etc.) as well as the ability to patch a game’s Product ID, either to fix homebrew titles that use a generic one, or even to remedy incorrect Product IDs, like GS-9079 being used for the Japanese version of “Virtua Fighter Kids” when the correct ID is GS-9098.
Of important note is that first-time users of Rhea/Phoebe Sorter that are coming in with a pre-existing SD card must undergo a one-time migration process. That entire process, as well as detailed instructions on the rest of my tool’s usage, are all found in the GitHub readme.
In the end, it fills my heart with joy to see so many wonderful Saturn ODE options on the market. My hope is that with the release of Rhea/Phoebe Sorter, those who want to revitalize and breath new life into their Rhea or Phoebe can now do so, happily enjoying its robustness while no longer lamenting at how difficult it is to perform basic SD card management tasks.
P.S.: I may one day venture to convert this tool to a full-blown GUI, similar to GDMENU Card Manager. Given limited free time and the fact that my console application is already meeting my needs and the needs of my users, I am not treating this with high priority. You never know what the future may hold, though!