Ok, I've been a little side tracked by social life, but I'm still playing with this quite a bit!
Here are a pile of pictures showing off what I have, comparing cables & boxes, and some paperwork. If anyone has any experience reading japanese, please do share!
Here are
the 3 box sets I've been able to find thus far, all including a cable each. The geobockers box set is possibly the first released box set including the cable (as its much larger in size).
Being patient you can find these at DAMN low costs! I purchased Gungriffon II ~new~ off ebay for $25 + shipping, and didn't even see that it was a box set (stock photo just showed a jewel case), and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a box set!
Here is the
official sega cable (stand alone) & the unofficial cable. The official sega cable is
the exact same one that is found in the box sets, while the unofficial cable has a different look to it.
What I mean by "look" is
literally how they look. In that photo, there is an official saturn controller plug in the middle, with the
unofficial plug to its left, and the official sega serial plug to its right. Oddly enough the unofficial one looks...better?
They all function exactly the same. I've been playing with two saturns back to back for a bit, and so far have not noticed any difference in either plug. I purposefully tested VO, as i recall reading that the dreamcast VOOT had
link problems with unofficial link cables, which is actually due to the length of the unofficial cable & how VOOT works.
Here is a side viewp of the official sega (stand alone) cable box, with
the back top, and
the back bottom for possible translation.
The official stand alone cable also included
this single paper inside the box.
Geobockers also included
this one single page of paper.
Here are the back of the boxes of
geobockers,
steeldom, and also
gun griffon II, which I would love to find a complete translation of...
Relating to;
This is an interesting picture, showing the back of the three disc cases. I found this same yellow box on the bottom of my Daytona USA circuit edition (japanese) box (the only version that works with the link cable).
I would suspect that sega would have incorporated some sort of logo (sort of like the Netlink saturn swirl, XBand logo) or some
peripheral notice sign, on the back of a game that supports the link cable. I'm sure that alot of games won't even show this, like most of these games released outside of japan, but maybe there are more in the japanese library that have this we haven't considered yet.