The Coolest Console You Never Played: Sega Saturn (1994) Review and Retrospective

The year was 1994. After Sega achieved success with the Mega Drive/Genesis in North America, even upstaging Nintendo’s monopoly on the market, they were now preparing to release their next major system - the Sega Saturn - in Japan. However, even despite a fairly successful launch in their home country, little did anyone at Sega know that this would mark the beginning of the end of the company’s role as a console manufacturer.

Development and History

With Sega still riding high off of the Mega Drive/Genesis’ success, development of Sega’s 32-bit console began in 1993 - the same year systems like the 3DO and Atari Jaguar were entering the market. They had formed an agreement with the electronics company Hitachi to develop the Saturn’s CPU, which the Saturn would support… two of, actually. The plan was to build up the Saturn as a 2D powerhouse, but in late 1993, word had spread about the Sony PlayStation providing fierce competition and with the onset of 3D games, Sega had chosen to begin targeting that. What came as a result was another visual display processor (VDP) that would enhance both 2D and 3D performance.

The Saturn was launched in Japan on November 22, 1994, and did turn out to be decently successful. The system’s first shipment sold out within a day, and reached 1 million units within the next half year, albeit with the Sony PlayStation soon overtaking the Saturn’s sales after it was launched just a couple weeks later.

And this is where things get kind of screwy.

With the Sega Saturn making its way into international markets, the original plan was for Sega of America to release the system in North America on Saturday, September 2, 1995 - “Saturnday”, as they called it. I could make a comment about that pun but apparently Saturday is indeed named after “Saturn” so it actually works.

But anyway, due to the competition of the PlayStation, Sega of Japan stepped in and said, “hey, uh, this is kind of short notice but could you actually release the Saturn a few months early. In fact, could you release it right after your E3 press conference.” Tom Kalinske, the CEO of Sega America, was like “what the fuck no that’s stupid”. Then Sega of Japan replied, “do it or die”, so Sega of America responded, “alright alright geez chill.”

So that’s what happened. May 11, 1995 - the very first E3 showcase - a show that would come annually for gaming news for about 26 years until being canceled multiple times and ultimately discontinued. But that’s besides the point - Sega had taken the stage and was introducing the Saturn to the United States. At the end of the press conference, Tom Kalinske went up on stage and said, “hey guys, this Saturn console looks pretty lit, huh? Well, guess what, you can buy for $399 RIGHT NOW.”

As you can probably guess, this decision blew up in their face. Not only did they get immediately owned by Sony at their press conference when Steve Race just said “299”, the system’s launch was limited to just 4 chains, and they kinda ended up pissing off retailers that weren’t a part of the surprise launch. This included KB Toys, who was like, “bro wtf, you launched the saturn without telling me? well eff you!” and refused to even carry the Saturn and its games. There were only 6 launch games for the Saturn in the US, which to be fair is still three times more than what the Nintendo 64 had at launch, but most third party games were aimed to be released around the Saturn’s planned US launch.

To say that this launch was a disaster would be putting it lightly. Despite the Saturn’s early launch, the Sony PlayStation managed to outsell the system within just a couple days of it’s US release, and even despite Sega stepping up their game towards the end of the year with new releases and a price drop to $299, ultimately it failed to catch up the Sony PlayStation. And unfortunately that’s kind of the uphill battle Sega had to face throughout the entirety of the Sega Saturn era, further compounded by the launch of Nintendo 64 in 1996. Sega’s market share was rapidly declining, and they had been suffering from major financial losses. Both the presidents of Sega of America and Sega of Japan stepped down, and this lead to the following president of Sega of America, Bernie Stolar, declaring in 1997, the “Saturn is not our future,” and talks of what would be Sega’s next system, codename Katana and later turning out to be the Sega Dreamcast, would begin, with the Saturn being discontinued in 1998 and the Dreamcast being released in Japan that year, and in North America in 1999. The Sega Saturn, would ultimately go down as a commercial failure…

….for most of the world. But there was one country where the Sega Saturn was actually pretty successful and popular in. Not quite reaching the success of the PlayStation, but being the runner-up for the generation over the Nintendo 64. And that country happened to be Sega’s home country of Japan.

I already stated that the Japanese launch of the Sega Saturn was relatively successful, but the console was relatively competitive in the market throughout its life. When the system was discontinued in the year 1998/99 internationally, the Saturn lived an extra couple years in Japan, where it was discontinued in the year 2000. A pretty significant amount of the Saturn’s library was only released in Japan - with some estimates I’ve seen being up to 1000 games -  and like I said, it even beat the Nintendo 64 sales-wise. That begs the question - what did Sega do well there, that they didn’t manage to capture over in the states?

Well, for one thing, some of the flagship games on the Saturn - most particularly the Virtua Fighter titles - were hugely more popular in Japan than they were in North America and Europe. And while I’m not necessarily sure how much of a factor this was, I also think it helped that Sega of Japan generally embraced JRPGs more which Sega of America kinda… failed to do. In fact, Bernie Stolar, who succeeded Tom Kalinske’s role as Sega of America president, had a history of being openly against RPGs and not believing they would take off, which as you can guess aged poorly as soon as Final Fantasy VII released on the Sony PlayStation. Yeah this guy could not cook whatsoever.

But another major factor in all of this was marketing… and most specifically, a guy named Segata Sanshiro. In 1997, Sega of Japan began rolling out an advertising campaign featuring a man in a karate uniform who served as the mascot of the system, and engage in a variety of activities, most notably - beating the absolute shit out of people for not playing Sega Saturn. Just going outside to play baseball with friends? Nope, you should be playing Sega Saturn! (thanks Sega for reaffirming that playing Sega Saturn is better than going outside). Partying at a club with a bunch of people? Nah, you should be playing Sega Saturn!

 
And that’s just really the tip of the iceberg. Other commercials consisted of him scaring a bunch of kids on Christmas before gifting them a Sega Saturn, breaking a stack of stone blocks with his head, winning an ice skating race barefoot, throwing a guy and making him explode, among other things. It’s so ridiculous and over the top… and I just can’t help but love it. I mean, the fact that I’ve been in the United States all my life (ergo, not in Japan) and was born after the Sega Saturn’s lifespan, and still talking about these ads should really tell you something. It’s like a crossroads where the general 90’s weirdness meets up with Japan’s advertising weirdness and makes for hands down one of if not the most memorable ad campaign for really any video game console I can think of. And it does so without just being confusing and cryptic like the PS3 baby ads!

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and when the Dreamcast launched, Sega released one more ad with Segata Sanshiro where he makes a great sacrifice in defending their headquarters from a giant missile. But as the world thought he was gone, in 2012 we saw him make a brief cameo in Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed, still riding the missile in the background of the Race of Ages track, and in 2020, he made his grand return in an ad campaign featuring his son, Sega Shiro, for Sega’s 60th anniversary. Segata Sanshiro, I salute you, and I shall honor you by playing Sega Saturn.

Personal Experiences

I’m just going to say that growing up, I always had a… fascination with the Sega Saturn. When I was 10 years old, I was beginning to get into retro games and consoles, and around the start of 2012, I decided it would be a good idea to sell a bunch of my old toys and books alongside saving up some birthday money to put towards a retro system. At the time though, those old toys and books were in storage, as a result of a bug infestation followed by moving around Colorado and my parents only being able to lease places to live for those first two years. I had a while to decide, so my first thought was to buy a Super NES or Sega Genesis. These were kind of the ‘safe’ options for me - both were systems with games I had enjoyed playing through ports on the more modern systems I had like the GBA, DS and Wii, but… that was also kind of the problem. A lot of the games on those systems were ones I had easy access to on consoles I already owned and I wanted something a little bit more unique.

During this time I found a Youtube channel called Classic Game Room, run by Mark Bussler, which as you can guess from the title, did a lot of reviews on classic games and consoles. And, modern ones too, but the focus was largely on the classic stuff. As you can guess, I came across his Sega Saturn review video. Prior to this, the Sega Saturn was a console that at best I had very minimal knowledge of. I might have known it existed based off of the retro gaming history and stuff I would research, but it was never really a system people talked about even compared to some of Sega’s other consoles, particularly the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and the Sega Dreamcast. As such, I didn’t really know much about it, and this was kind of my first major exposure to the console.

I thought it looked rather interesting from the CGR video, and it led me to look further into the system and the kinds of games it had. My fascination with the Sega Saturn only really grew from there - even to exploring some of the more obscure sides of the system’s library - and as you can guess, it was what I settled on as the game console I would buy.

That… didn’t happen though. Oddly enough, over the span of mid 2012 to 2014, I did manage to save up money for other retro systems - the Nintendo 64, the Sony PlayStation, the GameCube if you want to consider that retro, even the SNES and Genesis that I had originally decided against getting. Even as I went back to collecting systems in 2018-20, I never ended up getting the Sega Saturn. So, why?

It’s simple really. I guess around the time I found out the Sega Saturn was pretty cool actually was about the same time a bunch of other people did, and as what happens with a failed console that gains a cult following many years later, the Sega Saturn consoles and games skyrocketed over the 2010’s. In another Classic Game Room Sega Saturn video uploaded in 2008 - one where he goes to pick up the system - you can see that he buys an American system for only $40. As far back as 2013-14, I remember the system being sold at my local retro game store for $60. But especially around the start of the pandemic, the system started going for way more than that - with most listings for the Saturn that I’ve seen going for around $200 on average. It’s gone down a little bit since then but… still. And this isn’t even to mention some of the games as well. There are still some US Saturn games you can find for cheap pretty easily but others… the Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast goes for around $60 on eBay - the same price I would for a *new* game for a modern system. The US version of Sonic R goes for around $60-$80, Sonic Jam - a compilation of Sonic’s Genesis titles - goes for $200 and over, Panzer Dragoon goes for $40 *loose*... so on and so forth.

From that point on, the idea of buying a Sega Saturn came back and forth to me over the years, but as you can guess, I was consistently put off by the high prices on eBay and at my local retro game stores. At one point, in 2019, I became kind of set on buying the system again… but instead I ended up buying a PlayStation 3 because, ironically, the newer system and it’s games were generally cheaper. So, ultimately, I’ve just had to deal with a Sega Saturn shaped hole in my collection.

…that is, until recently.

In 2022, I started working my second job and have been there since. And with a disposable income, I’ve definitely been buying my share of games, and even an Xbox Series X among other things. And during these last couple years, I discovered some new… developments, regarding the Sega Saturn.

You know how I said the system was more successful in Japan then it was over here? Well, you can probably guess that means there’s more of the system and it’s games to go around in that country versus the United States, especially relative to the population. As a result, the Japanese versions of the system and its games have ended up being cheaper on the second hand market than over here. Like I said, the US console can go upwards of $200, but the Japanese Saturns go for around $80-$100. Yeah, that may still seem a little expensive, but given the state of the retro console market these days, it’s actually relatively pretty average. As for the games, the Japanese version of Sonic Jam goes for around $40 complete - which, again, still a bit on the steep side for an older title, but definitely a lot less than $200-$250 for an American copy. Same goes for Sonic R. The Japanese version of Panzer Dragoon goes for around $20-$30, $40 at the highest I’ve seen.

But on top of all that, the Sega Saturn community has developed ways to… let’s just say, not quite legally acquire games for the system. ODEs (Optical Drive Emulators) like Fenrir, the MODE, and the Satiator have become quite common, and even outside of that, there’s also been stuff like Pseudo Saturn Kai which allows you to play burned games, as well as stuff like Saroo which has similar functionality to the Everdrive.

So, with all that said, it made me consider, once again, looking into the Sega Saturn. But let’s just say that, compared to all the other times I considered buying the system, this time… ended a little bit differently.

After all these years, that Sega Saturn-shaped hole in my collection… has finally been filled.

I ended up finding a good deal on eBay from a seller based in Japan consisting of a bunch of retro games and systems from Japan that allows for international shipping to other countries. After looking around their storefront, I settled on a listing for the system, one controller, and six games. With tax, it came out to $140 - which, for all that, is still less than what I would’ve paid for an American system on its own.

“But Expi you stupid idiot!” you might think, “what if you find a good deal on a US game but now can’t play it on your Japanese system because of region coding?!”

Well, solutions for this have been available for… actually quite a while now. For one thing I could modchip the system, but the easier thing to do would be to buy one of the many third party cartridges for the console that bypass the system’s region lock - like the Action Replay and, again, Pseudo Saturn Kai 4-in-1.

The latter of which is what I settled on picking up after I got my Sega Saturn. The 4-in-1 variant comes with the Pseudo Saturn firmware and also doubles as a Memory Card, RAM Expansion for the games that use it, and as mentioned, bypasses the system’s region lock and even lets you play… *ahem* backups of Sega Saturn games. While I still do plan to collect games for the Saturn, the Pseudo Saturn Kai 4-in-1 cartridge is a good option not only for letting me play US and European games on my Japanese system but also for homebrew titles, fan translations, and games that are, let’s just say, a bit too out of my reach financially. In a nutshell, it kills four birds with one stone. Maybe now I can play those Japanese RPGs I got without using Google Lens to translate.

Hardware and Controllers

In terms of it’s internal specifications, the Sega Saturn is somewhat infamous for it’s use of two Hitachi SH-2 CPUs - both built off of RISC architecture and clocking in at 28.6 MHz. In addition to these, the system also sported two Visual Display Processers (VDPs), a custom sound CPU featuring an intergrated Yamaha FH1 with a Motorola 68000 acting as the sound driver, a ‘Saturn Control Unit’ coprocessor, a Hitachi SH-1 for it’s CD-ROM drive, and a microcontroller from Hitachi.

The overall amount of processors in the Sega Saturn clocked in at 8 processors. The system was a pretty premium machine for it’s time, but it did come at a caveat. The two Hitachi SH-2 CPUs especially made the system difficult to develop for - dual CPUs were just not very common, and while the Sega Saturn was technically more powerful than the PlayStation, developers kinda had to understand how to take advantage of the system for it’s best results, which was easier said than done. As a result, a lot of earlier 3D games on the Saturn especially don’t look quite as good as their PS1 counterparts. Supposedly, 2D development on the system wasn’t too hard, but with the direction of 3D gaming that the industry was going towards in the mid to late 90’s, it’s safe to say why a lot of developers turned to the Sony PlayStation with it’s more straightforward architecture. It’s also why, while factoring in my own personal experience from this, Sega Saturn has also been historically a pain in the ass to emulate at least until the last few years or so.

But I think the hardware of the Sega Saturn in a way was kind of interesting because… in some ways, it was ahead of it’s time. This was long before things like dual-core, quad-core, and 8-core CPUs became a standard for modern gaming hardware, and the Saturn’s dual CPU setup was basically an early form of what that was going for. It was certainly an idea that needed some time in the oven, and definitely some understanding on how to best utilize it, but seeing as Intel and AMD would begin developing dual-core CPUs, with some early forms of ‘dual CPU’-based architecture being found in the Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading, shows that there was definitely potential in the Saturn’s approach to architecture.

And speaking of things that are ahead of their time…

Well, before I say anything else, I should mention that the Sega Saturn has a cartridge slot in addition to it’s disc drive as well as an expansion port in the back. On the former note, you may think, “Sega Mega Drive/Genesis backwards compatibility?” - to which the answer is, no, although I do wish that was the case. The Sega Saturn’s cartridge slot was mainly intended for RAM expansions and memory cartridges (not memory *cards*, cartridges), but of course as I mentioned third party and aftermarket cartridges were also released for bypassing the region lock and playing backups.
I bring this up because one of the things the Saturn’s cartridge slot was used for was the Sega Net Link that allowed for players to play certain versions of certain games to play together through dial-up. In layman’s terms… that means the Sega Saturn had a form of online play back in the mid 1990’s. Online gaming wasn’t necessarily new, after all Sega had experimented with the idea through the Sega Channel for Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (which, if you think about it, was basically an early form of Xbox Game Pass) and Nintendo also having the Satellaview for the Super Famicom albeit only in Japan - with the idea even reaching far back to the days of the Atari 2600 and ‘GameLine’, as well as Intellivision’s ‘PlayCable’, the Net Link was the first instance of a console being able to communicate over any ISP. On top of this, since there’s no centralized service or servers, and the connection simply ‘calls’ between two players, you can still use the Net Link even now, as long as both you and your friend both have a Sega Saturn with a Net Link cartridge and copies of a compatible game.

I also brought up the Saturn’s expansion port as there was also a peripheral for the system available in Japan and Europe that allowed the system to play Video CDs, called, fittingly, the “Video CD Card” or “Movie Card”. Now, most people in developed countries may not be familiar with the Video CD format, but to catch you up to speed, it was an optical drive format that supported MPEG-1 video with quality comparable to that of VHS and as suggested by it’s name, could be used to print movies and TV shows onto. The format was moreso popular in countries like China and Malaysia - largely in the region of South and Central Asia in general - and didn’t really take off much outside of there, but it did sort of pave the way for what would become DVDs. Basically, the Sega Saturn supported a disc-based video format even before the PlayStation 2 came out with it’s DVD playback. Kinda neat.

Interestingly there are two ‘main’ versions of the Sega Saturn that were released over the system’s lifespan, but with more subtle changes and not just the ‘original vs slim’ that’s pretty common nowadays and even back then (with Sega previously making two main versions of the Genesis - the Model 1 and Model 2, plus the Model 3 later on that was licensed by Sega but manufactured by Majesco in the late 90’s). Both of these main variations have the same shape and silhouette, but have slight changes in their actual design - particularly in the top-front of the system.

The first model of the Sega Saturn (which ofc was what the system launched with) contains ‘iris’ shaped power and reset buttons along with a glossy, piano finish along where the buttons are positioned. The second model (which I couldn’t get a definitive answer for when it came out but seemed to be around late 1995 to sometime in 1996) contains circle shaped power and reset buttons and ditches the piano finish. Plus, each of the models have slightly different ‘lining’ around their case. The Japanese versions of each model are easier to tell apart - as the first model came in gray with blue buttons, and the second model came in white with a red eject button and light gray power and reset buttons (with there also being a transparent black ’skeleton’ theme). The US and European versions on the other hand each come in an all-black color.

Truth be told I’m not entirely sure why Sega released two models of the Saturn that are basically identical with two minor cosmetic changes. I know the PS1 had something similar going on with it removing some ports on the back, but I guess I’m a little confused as to why Sega implemented these minor cosmetic changes between the models while keeping mostly the same shape. Maybe the piano finish was too expensive as a cosmetic choice and they wanted to remove that? Maybe the iris shaped buttons were hard to push for some people? Maybe the piano finish didn’t look as good with the white color of the Japanese Model 2? I’m not entirely sure what reason they had but, those were the two models that most Sega Saturn systems came in. There are some slight differences between the two - from what I saw online the Model 1 systems have a slightly sharper image over the Model 2 while the Model 2 is less prone to overheating but that was about it. Which honestly kind of makes it weirder that these were technically two different models.

Buuut… even outside of those, there were a few other models of the Sega Saturn that were, similarly to the Model 3 Genesis, licensed by Sega but manufactured by other companies - but with these being exclusive to Japan. The most common of these is the ‘V-Saturn’ by JVC/Victor - a company that had worked with Sega before and had even manufactured a Mega Drive/Genesis and Sega CD hybrid console called the Wondermega, released in North America as the ‘JVC X-Eye’. The V-Saturn in of itself has two variants that align with similar cosmetic choices to what the main Saturn models had, but with different color schemes - the first model of which, the RG-JX1, having a darker gray color with a blue power button, and black eject and reset buttons, and the second model, the RG-JX2, having a slightly lighter gray color, a more blue-purple-ish power button, a red eject button, a blue-ish green reset button. Other than those color choices, there really isn’t any major differences between the V-Saturn and the regular Saturn, aside for a different logo in the startup sequence.

In addition to that, there’s also the Hitachi HiSaturn, in case you wanted your console to greet you whenever you played it. These are a bit more interesting to talk about, as… well, for one thing, there’s three different models to talk about. Two of these share the design of two models of the standard Sega Saturn and V-Saturn but with different colors, but also came with the Video CD card pre-installed and had capabilities for karaoke.

But in addition to those, there was also the HiSaturn Navi, which in addition to all of that, had an entirely new shell that was smaller and more angular than the other models, and could also hook up to a screen attachment, and, above anything else… had GPS functionality. Yes, if you ever wanted your console to double as a GPS, Sega and Hitachi had you covered all the way back in late 1995. They sure thought of everything, did they? Plus, it’s also worth mentioning that the HiSaturn models had their own startup sequence separate from the main Saturn and V-Saturn models - with their own sound effects and animations - which is pretty neat.

Regardless, I’ve always really liked the look of the Sega Saturn. I don’t know what it is specifically, but something about just the boxy-look with the disc tray that kind of curves outwards towards the top, and the lining of everything always just really stood out to me, making the system look like a beast of machinery. Or, from the front, a loafing cat with its paws tucked underneath. I think Sega in general always did a good job of having a certain ‘style’ in their consoles that made them appear somewhat futuristic while still being grounded in their time period (especially with the previous Mega Drive/Genesis Model 1) and the Sega Saturn is really no exception to that.

When I was first getting into the console, I definitely gravitated most towards the sleek, all-black color scheme of the US and European consoles, but I gotta say that the Japanese Model 1 color scheme has really grown on me. The white Japanese Model 2 looks good as well, but there’s something about the gray color with blue buttons about the Model 1 that both just looks really nice and rather unique. Most of my other consoles have an all-black color scheme with a few that are more of a light gray (only other exception being maybe my GameCube which even then is just a black system with a Pokemon XD sticker skin applied by the previous owner), so the more mid gray and blue scheme with the piano finish definitely makes the console stand out among my others. Mine has shown some slight discoloration/yellowing which is common with more "brightly" colored electronics from this time period (the Japanese Model 2 has it much worse from what I saw on eBay) but at the same time it doesn't really detract from the overall look of the Japanese Model 1.

Onto the controllers, and right off the bat, I do gotta say the standard Japanese and ‘Model 2’ US/European controller is really damn good. It’s similar to the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis controller but with some changes to it’s ergonomics (being a bit lighter and smaller), double the face buttons (going from 3->6… and yes I know there was a 6-button Mega Drive/Genesis controller but I’m comparing it to the main one) and the addition of left and right shoulder buttons. It’s a controller that just took the Mega Drive/Genesis controller as a base and improved upon it further, and the result is frankly one of if not the best controllers for 2D games. While the diamond button layout of the SNES controllers (that later became the standard for most controllers from this point on) is definitely more versatile, the horizontal button layout of the Mega Drive/Genesis and Saturn controllers generally comes off to me as being more ‘natural’ for arcade games (fighting games especially), and as such the Saturn controller works rather well for the kinds of games on the system as well as games like the classic Sonic titles and other 2D Sega games in general. In fact, it’s so good, that before I even got the system itself, I actually picked up a USB Saturn controller that I’ve used for RetroArch and some indie games (including Deltarune on the Switch). It also works really well for Sonic Mania, making it feel even closer to a long last 2D Sonic Saturn game!

“But wait Expi!” you might ask, “what did you mean by ‘Model 2’ US/European controller?” Well, when the Sega Saturn was first launched in the US, it came with a slightly different controller. I guess Sega thought that Americans with our big fat hands wouldn’t like the Japanese design due to it’s size, so they made a slightly different, chunkier controller with shoulder buttons you could probably land a plane on. Also a D-pad with indents where each direction should be for… some reason. I haven’t used it myself, but I have seen very mixed reactions to this controller alone - with a lot of people particularly disliking it due to it’s weird D-pad and clunky shoulder buttons. And the negativity must have been pretty prevalent back then because once the Model 2 Saturn released, the controller was basically replaced with the Japanese design with the black color palette to fit in with the US/European Saturn. Now, if that story sounds familiar to you, that’s basically what happened with the original Xbox and it’s ‘Duke’ controller replaced with the Japanese ‘Controller S’. Guess Sega’s DNA truly does live on within the Xbox brand.

In addition to those, though, there was also the Saturn 3D controller, that launched alongside Nights into Dreams in Japan on July 5, 1996, and in the United States on August 20, 1996. This controller featured an analog stick which, interestingly, while they were beaten to the punch by Nintendo just a couple weeks prior with the release of the Nintendo 64 in Japan, that system wouldn’t release until September 29, 1996, which means that technically the Sega Saturn 3D controller was the first ‘analog’ controller of this sort released in the United States. Doesn’t really mean anything but… it’s kinda neat.

Anyway, I don’t currently own this controller, but I did use it a little bit when a local retro game store near me had a sort of ‘grand opening’ with a bunch of consoles, including the Sega Saturn, up for display, and had the controller connected to it. I remember thinking it was pretty good when I used it, but since that was a few years ago, I can’t really remember how the controller felt to explain it, although it does seem to be generally well received at least within the Sega Saturn community. While the controller still has a D-pad and six face buttons, it does differ quite a bit from the main Sega Saturn controller designs - having a more ‘circular’ shape with handles on each side, with the analog stick towards upper left side of the controller and the D-pad below it, with a circular start button and toggle between the D-pad and analog stick at the bottom. It also has analog ‘triggers’ in the place of regular shoulder buttons, and you can also take the controller wire out for… some reason. My only guess is that they had some sort of peripheral planned for the controller that would’ve taken the wire’s place in the slot - perhaps enabling wireless functionality or something - but these plans didn’t work out.

But interestingly, the Saturn 3D controller actually resembles what would become the Sega Dreamcast controller - sharing a lot of similarities in the button placement and circular design, even with the slot at the top of the controller - which would ultimately also influence the original Xbox controller. So, if you’ve used any Xbox controller, in a way you’ve basically used a descendant of the Saturn 3D controller. Let that sink in.

I was thinking of picking up this controller prior to this review, but both the US and Japanese versions seem a bit on the expensive side for what is an older controller, and I had an Amazon gift card which I used to purchase Retro-bit’s Sega Saturn ‘Pro’ controller. This controller is similar to the standard, but adds two additional shoulder buttons (ZL and ZR) and dual analog sticks at the bottom. The analog sticks aren’t the same as what’s used on the Saturn 3D controller, but I do think they work well enough for games that take advantage of analog control like Nights into Dreams. On top of that it’s also wireless with a rechargeable battery which… to be honest I would’ve probably preferred a wired version of this control but, whatever. And to top that off, not only does it work with the Saturn, being packaged with a specialized receiver, but it also works on more modern gaming platforms like PC and the Nintendo Switch. I do still somewhat prefer using the standard controller for games that don’t support analog control but for those games that take advantage of it, Retro-bit’s Saturn Pro controller is definitely a nice alternative to the actual 3D Saturn controller. Kinda wish they made a repro with that design though.

Other than those, there are other peripherals that were released for the Saturn including fight sticks, a racing wheel, and a light gun, but I haven’t used those and even if I had, I did want to just focus on the Saturn’s main controllers.

But with all that out of the way, let’s finally talk about the Sega Saturn’s…

Game Library

As with the Sega Saturn itself, the library for the system has largely gone under the radar, so to speak. And there’s some people who outright consider the system’s library to be rather… weak, especially compared to it’s competition of the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64. And, yeah, it definitely doesn’t have ‘heavy hitters’ in the same light as games like Super Mario 64, Final Fantasy VII, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time or Metal Gear Solid (by that I mean, games that have achieved a level of ‘mainstream’ popularity), but I would actually argue that the Saturn library does have a decent amount of good gems in it that do get overlooked.

Being a company with a lot of history in the arcade, it was pretty expected for Sega to port their arcade games to their consoles. The Sega Mega Drive/Genesis got ports of games like Altered Beast (which was the system’s pack-in prior to Sonic the Hedgehog), Golden Axe, Space Harrier II, to name a few examples. Around this time Sega actually had begun experimenting with polygonal 3D in their arcade games - with games like Virtua Racing releasing in 1992 (even getting a Genesis/Mega Drive port with the first and only use of the ‘SVP’ chip for rendering polygons) and Virtua Fighter in 1993. And especially with the Saturn’s architecture having the ability for 3D, you’d probably expect games like these to have ports of the system.

…and you’d be right! In fact, two of the Saturn’s US launch titles were actually ports of the aforementioned Virtua Fighter and Daytona USA.

Daytona USA is the one I have more experience with so… let’s start with that. The game originally released in the arcades in 1994, a racing game based off of Nascar’s ‘Daytona 500’. The Saturn version was one game that stood out to me early on when I was first looking into the system because it looked like a fun racing game and, well, because of its banger soundtrack. I mean, I can’t help but love a game that starts off with “DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO DOOOOOOO!!! DAYTONAAAAAAA!!!!!” followed up with “ROLLING STAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRTT” when you start the beginner’s race. Although my first experience with it was through the HD 2011 PS3 port, but since it’s one of the more common and cheaper games on the Saturn, I of course had to play it.

Now, the Saturn port of Daytona USA is one that’s been scrutinized quite a bit due to its poor optimization, and yeah, on a visual level it’s definitely very rough around the edges. The draw distance is completely lacking, having some pretty blatant pop-in all through the game, low resolution textures and the game’s framerate of 20FPS that occasionally drops from there. Similarly to the Saturn and Daytona USA, the Sony PlayStation launched with a port of Namco’s Ridge Racer, and in comparison, Ridge Racer just looks more polished and refined visually, runs at 30FPS, and while it does still have pop-in, it’s not as jarring as what can be seen on the Saturn’s Daytona USA.

That being said… the core of Daytona USA is still there, and for me, it’s still a fun game even on the Saturn. I mean, there’s not really much of a reason to go back to the Saturn version if you have access to the PS3 or 360 versions of the game unless you’re just a Saturn nerd like I am, and the 20FPS framerate especially is a sin, but I think the Saturn version still really captures the overall bombastic, fast-paced gameplay and style that really helped the game stand out in the first place, and stuff like the handling and physics still feel quite good to me - even moreso than the aforementioned Ridge Racer. There’s still a decent amount of replayability even with just the three main tracks as you try to master racing through them and beat your best times. There’s different difficulty options here and also the addition of a ‘Saturn’ mode which lets you play with the ‘time’ system and gives the player a few different cars to choose from. Also you can unlock a horse to race as which is… just amazing.

And to the Saturn’s credit, this was a pretty ambitious port all things considered. I mean, the game’s ‘Beginner’ track had you racing against 39 other cars (meaning 40 in total), something that hadn’t really been seen on a home console up to that point. The ‘Advanced’ and ‘Expert’ tracks do dial back the car count, but even then the console was rendering 20 and 30 cars on the track respectively. Going back to Ridge Racer on PS1, that game only had 12 cars on the track, so there was bound to be issues rendering everything at once. So, yeah, Daytona USA on Saturn is far from a perfect port, but I think the fact that it was kind of a technical marvel of it’s time has gone under the radar when talking about it nowadays. It’s definitely dated, but it still has a lot of charm.

But I suppose with the criticism towards the ‘main’ Saturn version in mind, Sega had released a couple other versions of Daytona USA on the Sega Saturn. In November 1996, Sega released ‘Daytona USA: Championship Circuit Edition’ in North America and Europe. Visually it offered a few improvements over the base version - reducing the pop-in (...somewhat), increasing the framerate to 30FPS, and making the game overall more ‘refined’ visually in general, in addition to adding support for the Saturn’s 3D Control Pad.

While this may sound like a better version of Daytona USA on the Saturn on paper, the problem is… it deviates quite a bit from the arcade and base Saturn versions. The original three tracks are still there (plus two additional ones), and it still keeps to the amount of cars on each track, but this version makes some changes to the gameplay and overall style that, while still making it a solid racing game on it’s own right, doesn’t truly feel like a ‘port’ of Daytona USA. The bright, vibrant colors and environments of the original game have been toned down and kind of "dulled out" so to speak, and the handling of the cars feel heavier and somewhat slower than in the arcade and Saturn versions. This version also designates the iconic blue and red hornet as an unlocked and in its place is a more generic looking car, and on top of this, it doesn't even have the classic "DAYTONAAAAAAA" theme, which alone makes it inferior.

I get the impression that, with the CCE version of Daytona USA, they geared it more towards the Ridge Racer crowd. As a racing game of it's own, Daytona USA Championship Circuit Edition is still solid, but it feels like it deviates away from the source material in a way that it ends up losing it's identity and the original appeal in the process.

Also Daytona USA CCE was also one of those games to have a separate "NetLink" edition that was, from the sources I gathered, only sold via Sega’s website. Obviously nowadays buying stuff online is something that basically everyone with an internet connection does, but keep in mind, this was in 1998 - when the internet was still developing and ordering stuff online wasn’t really commonplace. As far as I know there aren’t really any major differences between the Netlink version and the regular version outside of the obvious NetLink support, but the relatively obscure purchasing method on top of the game being released rather late into the Saturn’s US lifespan (just about a month before the system was discontinued) makes this one of if not the rarest Sega Saturn release out there. According to PriceCharting, a loose/disc-only copy of the game can go for over almost $3000. And to further emphasize that I’m not making any mistakes in typing - I said it, almost three thousand dollars. So the choice is yours: a brand new, high-end, top-of-the line gaming PC, with a Ryzen 7800X3D, NVidia GeForce 3090 Ti, 64GB of RAM… or a version of Daytona USA Championship Circuit Edition that only adds support for an obscure Saturn Network adapter.

What kind of idiot would choose the gaming PC amirite

Interestingly though, Daytona USA: Championship Circuit Edition didn’t release in Japan… well, sort of. Sega’s AM3 development team kept working on the project after it’s North America and Europe release, and on January 24, 1997, Daytona USA: Circuit Edition (not Daytona USA *Championship* Circuit Edition, just Daytona USA: Circuit Edition) was released in Japan. You may think at first glance that this was just the Japanese release of Championship Circuit Edition, and on paper you’re kind of right - the art style is pretty much carried straight over from CCE and many of the additions made - including the new tracks and remixes - are present in Circuit Edition.

But there are a few differences to the game that technically make the Japan-only Circuit Edition separate from Championship Circuit Edition. The handling and physics, while still not 1:1 with the arcade game, are closer to the base Daytona USA than CCE was - particularly with it’s implementation of the Drift mechanic. Plus, if you’re not a fan of the remixed soundtrack, this version actually gives you the option to toggle the original versions. This version also added online/linking support with the Sega Saturn modem and ‘Taisen’ cable, a time of day feature, and even some improvements to the draw distance. Fixing a game’s issues after it’s been released, Sega was truly ahead of their time.

Circuit Edition still might not be quite a complete replacement for the arcade game or even the base Saturn port, since at its core it’s still just a better version of Championship Circuit Edition with many of the changes to the original’s overall style and game feel, but I would say that at the very least, it makes for a really good ‘sidegrade’ to the main Saturn version of Daytona USA. It also means there’s technically four different separate versions of Daytona USA on the Saturn so make of that what you will.

But since we’re on the topic of racing games, the Sega Saturn also got a port of Sega Rally Championship - another arcade racer by Sega released in 1994 that I’d probably describe as more of an ‘off road’ racer versus Daytona USA being more of a ‘stock car’ racer if that makes any sense. While I do still somewhat prefer the core gameplay of Daytona USA, Sega Rally Championship is still a really good arcade racer and… honestly probably the best arcade racing port on the Saturn. Especially given the hardware it looks about as close to the arcade they could get, and while I can’t really compare how they ‘feel’, the handling and physics of Sega Rally are really good. Also it has the best game over screen of any video game I have played.

Compared to the arcade version, the Saturn version does have a lower resolution, more dithering in places of transparency and does have some slight pop-in (although the draw distance is definitely better than in Daytona USA), and I believe the framerate is knocked down to 30FPS versus 60 on the arcade (although the backgrounds move at 60 on the Saturn version, making use of the different processors), but considering the hardware it is safe to say that there were inevitably going to be drawbacks. As such, Sega Rally Championship feels about as close to the original arcade version as they could really get, and the Saturn version is a really solid port that does a good job of bringing the experience home.

There’s also a ‘Plus’ version of the game released semi-exclusively in Japan that adds 3D control support and support for the online XBAND service. Other than maybe some bug fixes, those were really all the changes I could find. And the only reason I used the term ‘semi-exclusively’ is because the Plus version did have a US release albeit as “Sega Rally Championship Plus: NetLink Edition” which, as you can guess, adds support for NetLink… and as far as I know doesn’t really have any other major differences from the Japanese release. Thankfully this one doesn’t seem to cost an arm and a leg, although it is still a bit more expensive than what a regular US or Japanese copy of Sega Rally Championship would cost.

The Sega Saturn also got a port of Virtua Racing - which I brought up earlier, being a polygonal 3D arcade racing game and from what I can gather, Sega’s first attempt at 3D in the arcades. The game got ports on the Mega Drive/Genesis and 32X, but of course it also got a port on the Saturn. Hence why I’m bringing it up.

But something interesting to note is that, out of all the ports of Virtua Racing - including the later released PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Switch ‘Sega Ages’ ports - the Sega Saturn version has the most content. In addition to the original three arcade tracks, it contains seven additional courses of varying difficulties based on different parts of the world and a few new types of vehicles that can be driven, all of which is wrapped up in the game’s new ‘Grand Prix’ mode.

Being the most content-filled, you would probably be inclined to believe that this is the best version of Virtua Racing, but in a twist of fate, it’s actually the most divisive among Virtua Racing enjoyers. While some people like this version for the added content, others criticize it largely for how this version has differences in it’s handling and physics from the arcade and other home console ports that ultimately sort of change how the game feels to play.

So, what exactly happened on that note? Well, a lot of the Saturn’s versions detractors point to this port being outsourced to Time Warner Interactive rather than being developed in-house. And while it’s certainly easy to point fingers, it isn’t exactly entirely the fault of Time Warner Interactive themselves, but rather that the developers were not given the original source code, only an arcade cabinet of the game that they pretty much had to completely eyeball in order to recreate. They also didn’t even have a proper Saturn dev kit until a bit later in development, and even then didn’t really have a proper way of debugging the game without… well, taking out the CPU every so often and replacing the socket with a debugging computer. That’s kind of a basic rundown, but if you’re interested enough I would definitely check out Pandemonium’s video on Virtua Racing which even contains an interview with one of the developers.

Now, I personally found out about Virtua Racing in general through videos I saw on YouTube, a few of which from the previously mentioned Classic Game Room, and it really stuck out to me as someone who really likes the ‘flat polygon’ aesthetic of early 3D games. Up to this point, I’ve mostly just played the Mega Drive/Genesis and Switch ‘Sega Ages’ ports. Playing the Saturn version… I kind of see where both sides are coming from.

When playing the Saturn version back to back with the Mega Drive/Genesis and especially Switch versions (the latter of which is pretty much the closest you can get to the original arcade at home without emulation), there are definitely slight differences in the handling and physics that do add up to at least be noticeable. The ‘main’ cars are slightly slower and feel lighter, and the turning and movement don’t feel as snappy as in the arcade and other console versions. Plus there’s a bit of weirdness with the collision detection at times, being pretty sensitive with the hit box when it comes to other cars and driving off-road, and the Saturn version’s frame rate is also fairly inconsistent.

On that same note however, I still think the Saturn version of Virtua Racing is still a solid racer, and the additions it does make are generally pretty damn good ones. The different vehicles give the player more freedom and choice in what they want to use to play through each track, and new tracks add a lot of variety in track design and aesthetics, while fitting the Virtua Racing style quite well.

I found myself enjoying Saturn Virtua Racing most when looking at it in the same guise as something like Donkey Kong on Game Boy or perhaps even Super Mario 64 DS. It’s certainly not a 1:1 translation of its source material, but I think what it adds does a good job of expanding upon the core gameplay and style while offering more variety. I look at it as more of a different take on Virtua Racing rather than a direct arcade port. For that, the Switch version is probably your best bet and the most accessible, but if you’re interested enough, the Saturn version is a neat alternative with some interesting additions.

There is one more racing game I have to talk about, but that’ll be a bit later. I have to take some time to Feel the Sunshine while I’m Living in the City.

Anyway, one genre that was very prevalent on the Saturn was definitely fighting games. Like I said, along with Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter was one arcade port that the Saturn launched with - not only in the US but actually in general with said game releasing alongside the system in Japan. Admittedly, I’m not too into fighting games so I probably won’t go too in-depth (or even have the most informed takes) when talking about them here, but I think it’s gotten kind of downplayed that Virtua Fighter was a pretty influential game in the space of 3D. It basically popularized the concept of 3D polygonal games in general - even inspiring Sony to take the PlayStation in the direction of 3D polygonal titles over 2D sprite-based games. It sort of makes everything go full circle with how Sega inspired Sony to target 3D games with their console, which in turn inspired Sega to target 3D games with the Saturn.

I really like what Virtua Fighter was going for at the time, and like I said I do find a lot of charm in those sort of early 3D polygonal games. Also love how the character select screen gives you important, detailed information about the characters like their… blood type. Where would I be in this world without knowing that Pai Chan is blood type O?

Though I do have to say that the Saturn version at least does fall a bit on the dated side. It’s still very playable - the controls feel good and it’s fun and easy to just pick up and play with a great amount of variety in each character’s combos - the Saturn version at least does come off as being pretty unpolished and barebones. The visuals especially have pretty significant issues in how… blocky everything appears compared to the original arcade game and even the 32X port.

Like others, I definitely find myself favoring (the Saturn’s port of) the game’s sequel, Virtua Fighter 2. I mean, partially because I actually own it as of writing this versus just playing on an emulator (it was actually one of the six games I got with the system!), but I feel like this port translated better to the Saturn from the arcade than its predecessor did.

The graphics are a lot more refined - the environments look more fleshed out with added texture work and backgrounds with more depth to them, and the character models have more detail with texture mapping, including some shading, and in general just look a lot ‘cleaner’. Plus the game even runs at a nice, buttery smooth 60FPS, which you always gotta appreciate. I won’t lie, when I hooked up my Saturn to my CRT for the first time and played this game… I was actually quite surprised with just how good it looked for being a game of this time period. Obviously there are downgrades from the arcade version - particularly the backgrounds being made of 2D elements with parallax scrolling without the 3D elements of the arcade port - but considering the limitations, Virtua Fighter 2 does look really good on the Saturn and potentially even one of the best looking games of the 5th generation in general.

The gameplay, too, just feels a lot snappier than in Virtua Fighter 1, and it makes the game just feel more fast-paced and intense. The AI feels more challenging in Virtua Fighter 2 which gives it a nicer skill curve, plus there’s Expert and Ranking modes if that’s your cup of tea. My only complaint is that I keep getting my ass kicked in Pai’s stage. I’m fully aware that’s just a skill issue but… screw you, that’s what.

If you are looking for a more polished Saturn port of Virtua Fighter 1 specifically though, Sega did have you covered with Virtua Fighter Remix - releasing after the original port but before Virtua Fighter 2 in July 1995. Not only that, but if you were a ‘registered’ Sega Saturn owner in the US, you could actually get this version of Virtua Fighter for free. The core gameplay is very much the same, but the visuals are definitely very cleaned up, with a style that’s sort of in between the original arcade and Saturn ports, and that of Virtua Fighter 2. It does bring a similar issue that CCE does where it does deviate from the original art style which helped make Virtua Fighter stand out, but if you are looking for a more polished port of Virtua Fighter 1 on the Saturn, this is probably the best way to go.

There’s also… Virtua Fighter Kids. It’s certainly a video game that exists. Gotta love how some of the ‘children’ characters in this game still have beards (Shun even having gray hair as well). It honestly kind of reminds me of that time Adult Swim did that ‘Adult Swim Junior’ thing for April Fools and it’s definitely very unique in that respect. A testament to Sega’s weird experimental nature of the mid 90’s.

Fighters Megamix is one fighting game I admittedly haven’t really played or really know too much about, but I figured I’d bring it up for one reason and one reason alone. It serves as a sort of crossover between the Virtua Fighter games and Fighting Vipers (another flagship Sega fighter that also had a port of the Saturn… need to look into that one as well), but in addition to having the cast from said games, there’s a lot of unlockable characters that are rather… interesting. The ‘Kid’ versions of Akira and Sarah from Virtua Fighter Kids make an appearance, as do Bark the Polar Bear and Bean the Dynamite from Sonic the Fighters (making this basically the closest thing to a Saturn port of said game that you can get).

Those alone, among others, are kind of neat choices… but then you can unlock the Daytona USA Hornet as an unlockable character. Not just a driver that’s dressed in attire with a similar color scheme and logo on it, but literally… the god damn *car itself* is a fighter. And if you think that’s weird, another unlockable character is literally the Sega AM2 Palm Tree logo. Yes, you can literally fight as a *palm tree* in this game. There’s also a character called ‘Mr. Meat’ that’s unlockable that’s… basically a giant slab of meat with floating hands and feet. It’s so weird, and for that reason I just can’t help but be fascinated with it. Definitely makes me want to advocate for the Daytona USA Hornet to be in the next Super Smash Bros game. Nintendo, Sega, make it happen.

Actually now thinking about it, the mix of Virtua Fighter, Fighting Vipers, and all the other characters from different Sega franchises actually kind of makes Fighters Megamix like Sega’s own take on Super Smash Bros except… well, done 3 years prior. It’s very often for crossover platform fighters to be considered ‘Smash clones’ but… would Super Smash Bros be a Fighters Megamix clone?

Eh, probably not, but it’s fun to think about. Certainly shows another example of Sega’s experimental nature and being ahead of their time though.

But what’s probably my personal favorite fighting game on the Saturn, at least out of what I’ve played up to this point, is Cyber Troopers Virtual On. Granted, this isn’t really what I would consider a traditional fighting game in the same sense as the previous titles I talked about - the structure is similar to that of those kinds of fighting games in which a number of rounds are played that the player must win two out of three battles each round in order to progress - but the core gameplay is more of what I would consider a third person shooter action game than a fighting per se.

Regardless though, this was one of the games that came with my Saturn in the mail and I was really surprised just how unique it was. The game offers a roster of different robots that you can use to play through the arcade mode, each with their own weapons and abilities with varying stats. I won’t lie, it kinda reminded me of the Battling Seizure Robots (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Eox1ogr3SE) from the Simpsons, but regardless, it’s definitely a fun, unique game with a good amount of variety. It also has support for 2-player and also a ranking mode.

It’s also just a really nice looking game graphically in my opinion, especially when played on a CRT. I love the designs of the robots, and the environments do look pretty neat with the rotating base along a background. Each field itself gives each player/AI room to really experiment with the controls while throwing in bits of architecture like buildings that can be used to defend against attacks.

Cyber Troopers Virtual On wasn’t too popular outside of Japan, at least as far as it’s original arcade version went, and interestingly it wasn’t even really one that often came up in all of the time I spent researching and looking into the Saturn and its library - at best being brought up casually in most cases if it was brought up at all. Which is a shame because despite that, it was one title I was pleasantly surprised by.

Worth noting that the Retro-Bit Saturn controller actually has a mode dedicated for Virtual On, using the dual analog sticks to better reflect the ‘twin stick’ setup of the arcade version, although apparently the button mapping is inaccurate to what is listed in the manual. Definitely benefits from the analog control at the very least though.

But, okay, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at arcade ports. There are others I haven’t played too much of and therefore didn’t talk about - such as Virtua Cop, any of the Street Fighter and honestly any of Capcom’s 2D fighting game ports (which apparently really benefit from the Saturn’s 2D capabilities compared to the PS1), Grandia and various 2D shoot-em-ups as well - but what about the more major titles and ‘bigger’ games?

Like I said, the Sega Saturn didn’t really have any exclusives that I’d say hit ‘mainstream popularity’ compared to the PS1 and N64, but there are definitely ‘big’ games and more major titles on the Saturn that I think are worth checking out.

First of all, something interesting to note is that some games that were primarily associated with the PS1 early on actually had versions on the Sega Saturn. Games like Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, and Croc: Legend of the Gobbos had versions on the Saturn in addition to the PS1, with the Saturn versions of Tomb Raider and Croc releasing around the same time they were released on PS1 (with Tomb Raider actually being released on the Saturn six weeks before on the PS1 albeit only in Europe). Resident Evil… well, Saturn fans had to wait until 1997, but it’s still interesting to note.

The original Rayman is also a game that’s often associated with the PS1 that had a port on the Saturn, although it was originally intended and marketed as an Atari Jaguar exclusive so that one is a little bit weird to begin with.

Not only that, but some popular PC games from around this time period also got ports on the Saturn as well, including a surprisingly good port of Duke Nukem 3D and a… not so good port of Doom.

But what about Sega’s first party titles, or just exclusive games in general? I mean, the Sega Saturn was released a few years after Sonic the Hedgehog who had become a pop culture icon of that time period. So, it’d only make sense that Sonic would receive a new mainline title, perhaps his first truly 3D game, on the Saturn, right?

Well… no. Sonic infamously didn’t have a ‘mainline’ title on the Sega Saturn. There was one in development - Sonic X-treme - which was intended to be the blue blur’s first 3D outing. The game predominantly used a fish-eye lens that did have a sort of 2D perspective, but gave Sonic the ability to freely roam throughout each level in all directions. However, this game was not developed by Sonic Team, instead being worked on by Sega Technical Institute (STI).

Supposedly, the game’s development actually started around 1993-94, as a game titled ‘Sonic-16’, based off of the Sonic the Hedgehog Saturday morning (or SatAM). The development team then moved on to the 32X under the name ‘Sonic Mars’, before of course starting development on the Sega Saturn. Throughout its development, it did seem like Sega did intend for the game to be the Saturn’s biggest flagship title of 1996. There was a promo at E3 showing off the game, flexing on Mario and Nintendo that… didn’t age well, and a Christmas special for the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog originally was set to air with the title “An X-tremely Sonic Christmas”, of course referencing the game but then being renamed to “Sonic Christmas Blast” (after Sonic 3D Blast) after Sonic X-treme was canceled.

So, what happened? Long story short - development hell. The game’s development was sort of split into a few different parts - the ‘main’ platforming aspects being developed under one team and engine, and the boss stages being developed under another (inspired by Nights into Dreams). However, in March 1996, representatives of Sega of Japan who were checking in on the progress were greatly more impressed with the progress made on the ‘boss’ stages and engine, and less so with the game’s ‘main’ gameplay (partially as a result of the game having issues being ported from PC to Saturn).

As such, they demanded the game be recreated entirely within the boss engine, and especially with Yuji Naka refusing to share the Nights into Dreams engine (even threatening to quit Sega), that left the dwindling development team only 9 months to recreate, finish and release the game - aiming for a Christmas deadline. The game entered a period of massive crunch - the main developers, Chris Senn and Christina Coffin, both were hospitalized as a result of all the work they were doing, and with them out, the development team was stretched incredibly thin and ultimately this led to the game being indefinitely delayed, before ultimately being canceled.

It’s worth mentioning that there have been fan-made demo recreations of Sonic X-treme - one titled Sonic Z-treme by XL2 and another homebrew version created by Voxel. What’s interesting is that these are both playable on the Saturn through Pseudo Saturn Kai, Saroo or an ODE. Both of these are moreso tech demos rather than fully fleshed recreations (Sonic Z-treme definitely feeling more ‘finished’ between the two), and neither have appeared to have updates in years, but they do provide a glimpse of what could have been for 3D Sonic on the Sega Saturn. Of course, we eventually did get a first 3D outing for Sonic on the Sega Dreamcast with Sonic Adventure, but man, I’ve always kind of wanted to see an alternate timeline in which Sonic X-treme was completed and released, and perhaps even play a ‘completed’ version of the game.

But with Sonic X-treme’s development hell and ultimate cancellation, Sega chose to soften the blow with a port of Sonic 3D Blast, which was originally intended just as the Mega Drive/Genesis’ big Sonic title of 1996. I reviewed Sonic 3D Blast a few years ago as part of my Sonic retrospective, but to give a run-down of my opinions - Sonic 3D Blast is a game that, in my opinion, gets too much hate. The game certainly has its issues, particularly with the controls and depth perception at times, but I personally enjoy the gameplay and exploring the isometric Sonic world with a decent amount of open space, obstacles and challenges.

I mainly played the Mega Drive/Genesis version of the game growing up, since it was what I had on the system, but I definitely consider the Saturn version to just be better overall. The Mega Drive/Genesis version is more ‘technically’ impressive, but the Saturn version definitely takes advantage of the more powerful hardware. The game just looks a lot cleaner on the Saturn in general - the models look smoother and the environments have more color to them plus added texture, weather effects, and even some creatures hanging out in the backgrounds of various stages. Plus there are even some slight improvements to the gameplay. This version can be played with analog control if you have the Saturn 3D Controller or Retro-Bit Saturn Pro, which alone makes the game feel better to control, and the Special Stages… well, they’re vastly superior to what was in the Mega Drive/Genesis version particularly in terms of visuals and challenge. I would even go as far as to say that the Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast has my favorite variant of the ‘half-pipe’ special stages introduced by Sonic 2 that have become common in various later Sonic games.

The soundtrack is also different in the Saturn version than it is in the Mega Drive/Genesis game - being composed by Richard Jacques and having a more cinematic and orchestral vibe to it versus the more chiptune-y themes in the Mega Drive/Genesis version that were closer to previous Sonic titles on the system. Which soundtrack is better is really up to you - personally there are tracks I prefer on the Mega Drive/Genesis version (particularly Panic Puppet, Volcano Valley and the final boss themes), and there are others I prefer on the Saturn (the Special stage, Diamond Dust and Rusty Ruin themes), but ultimately I kind of find myself leaning more towards the Saturn soundtrack even if I still think the Mega Drive/Genesis soundtrack is still really good.

But even as someone who likes Sonic 3D Blast more than most people, I do have to admit… this was not exactly a great game to be Sonic’s first flagship game on the Saturn. Even if it was more well-received, that doesn’t entirely change the fact that this was just a port of Mega Drive/Genesis game that was released around the same time, on top of not even being a fully ‘3D’ title and instead an 2.5D isometric game. And especially when releasing around the same time as other 3D platformers like Super Mario 64 on the Nintendo 64 and Crash Bandicoot on the PlayStation, it definitely comes off looking ‘weaker’ in comparison. While the Saturn version does have improvements, they certainly weren’t enough to help push system sales.

That wasn’t the only Sonic game on the Sega Saturn. Earlier I mentioned there being one more Saturn racing game that I had to talk about, and as you could probably guess… that was Sonic R. This is probably the most infamous Sonic game on the system - being a racing game featuring the game’s main characters (as well as Metal Sonic and Eggrobo being unlockable among… a few others) mostly racing on foot with the exception of Amy and Robotnik/Eggman using vehicles. And I guess some of the unlockable characters float in the air but y’know what I mean.

Like 3D Blast, I reviewed Sonic R as part of my Sonic retrospective, and it’s a game I have… mixed feelings on. This was probably the game that initially got my attention the most when looking into the Saturn’s library but I ended up playing it mostly through its Gems Collection port on the GameCube. There are a few things I absolutely love about this game. The overall concept of Sonic characters racing on foot is one that I’m a little surprised they never attempted again in later Sonic racing games with the exception of Sonic Rivals and a few mobile racing games (and even then, Rivals is 2D versus R being 3D, and the mobile racing games afaik don’t offer the same full control that R does). Plus, I really like how the tracks are designed with them actually incorporating the previous games’ style of level design with different paths and hidden collectibles along the way.

But I think what I really love about Sonic R is just… it’s style. Everything about it just screams mid-to-late 90’s for me and that aspect has a charm to it that’s really unlike any other Sonic game or really any other game in general even from that era. The visuals of course have that 5th gen 3D vibe with the characters and environments being composed of polygons which, again, I’ve always appreciated, and the soundtrack… y’know, I’m usually generally pretty open to different opinions, but I’m sorry, all those people who called this game’s soundtrack bad and made fun of it back in the early 2010’s…. you guys just have bad taste because this soundtrack goes absolutely hard with its Eurodance Pop vibe. It’s one of those soundtracks I still find myself listening to quite often when working on personal projects or driving to work.

That being said, the gameplay itself is very flawed. The controls in general feel pretty off, handling isn’t very good and the way the characters turn feel dreadfully sluggish, especially when doing a 180 (which will happen pretty often if you’re 100%ing the game). It’s definitely better played with an analog control, but even then I still struggled a bit with them, both on the GameCube and on the Saturn with the Retro-bit Saturn Pro.

Not to mention the roster is hella unbalanced. Among the starting characters Knuckles very blatantly has the best handling while still being fast, with Tails also being pretty good but the others… well, Sonic feels too slippery and Amy is just… slow. But especially when it comes to the unlockable characters, if you manage to get all the emeralds and place first in each track, Super Sonic gets unlocked, and he’s literally just the best character to play as in every way - having the best handling, the best speed, plus the ability to float above water. Then on the other hand, Tails Doll is extremely slow both as a racer and especially when turning, making it kind of just a joke character rather than anything else. Certainly gave us some interesting creepypasta material in the 2010’s though.

So, yeah, Sonic R is far from perfect, but despite all of its issues, I still find myself having a slight soft spot for the game. A lot of that is down to the game’s overall style more than anything else, but I was definitely really into this game as an adolescent and it just has such a 90’s charm and vibe to it that I just can not dislike the game. More than anything else, the concept of Sonic R is one I would honestly just like to see revisited at some point - perhaps even just remaking the game with more fine-tuned controls and better balancing.

Then there’s Sonic Jam, which I think most people agree is by far the best Sonic game on the Sega Saturn. That doesn’t seem like it’s saying much on the surface since it is, at its core, a compilation of Sonic’s Mega Drive/Genesis titles (1, 2, 3, and Knuckles), but even with all the Sonic compilations that have been released over the years (including the recent Origins and Origins Plus), I still feel like Sonic Jam stands out for me because it’s a compilation with a lot of respect for Sonic’s history up to that point. This is something that Sonic Team could have easily phoned in - just developing some sort of emulator for those old games on the Saturn and calling it a day - but they actually went through with the effort of outright ‘porting’ the games to the Saturn hardware itself and not just, again, emulating them. There are differences in the sound effects for each game from their Mega Drive/Genesis counterparts, and there are bits of slowdown here and there (plus Sonic 1 has the Spin Dash which you can turn on or off), but for the most part these ports feel pretty much identical to how they were on the Genesis.

There’s also a few difficulty options that you can choose from in this compilation for each game - the ‘Original’ mode in which the level design is 1:1 from the original versions, a ‘Normal’ mode that adds some slight tweaks to the level design to ease the difficulty in some areas, and an ‘Easy’ mode which removes certain acts, narrows all of the bosses down to three hit points and makes further changes to the level design to, as you can guess, make the game easier. I do kind of feel they went over the top with the Easy mode at times though - adding extra platforms in some areas that feel somewhat unnecessary - but I mean, it did give me a faster way to get a feel for how all these games play for the sake of this retrospective so I shouldn’t complain.

Each game also has the addition of Time Attack modes and the ability to play each of the game’s special stages sequentially, as well as the game’s English and Japanese manuals, but what really makes Sonic Jam particularly special even among other Sonic compilations is without a doubt, Sonic World. This is basically a little world that you can roam around in as Sonic, making it the closest thing to a 3D Sonic platformer on the system, containing a bunch of stuff to interact with. There’s a ‘Character House’ where you can look at the bios of the main characters, a Music Shop that lets you listen to the soundtracks and sound effects from each game as well as the menu and Sonic World themes that Sonic Jam adds, a Hall of Fame that recaps the series’ history, an Art Gallery with promotional artwork of the characters, and a Movie Theater where you can watch commercials for each of the included games, as well as Spinball, CD, and a few of the Game Gear games, as well as the full opening and ending of Sonic CD, a trailer for the OVA, and even a couple Sonic animations - specifically the ‘Man of the Year’ short and ‘Sonic Ride’ - the former of which only being shown at theme parks up to that point and the latter being an animation for a canceled Sonic motion simulator… also for theme parks.

There’s also missions you can play within Sonic World that has you interacting with the environment - picking up rings, hitting checkpoints, and having Tails pick you up as he’s flying around among other things. To put it simply, they gave you a lot to do within this little world even with it just being an extra in a compilation that also happened to be a tech demo of Sonic in 3D. Supposedly it was actually an early build of what would become Sonic Adventure which is pretty neat.

And while you can definitely say that Sonic’s output on the Saturn wasn’t the best, both compared to the Mega Drive/Genesis’ 4 ‘main’ and 3 spin off games, and the Dreamcast having 2 ‘main’ titles that were also full on 3D platformers and one spin off in addition to those, I feel like Sonic on the Sega Saturn has always stood out to me particularly just as a result of the vibe. I kind of talked about that with Sonic R with its style, but it really applies to all three games on the system. I don’t know what it is specifically, but there’s a sort of aesthetic to Saturn Sonic that I’ve always liked - both through the low-poly visuals of Sonic’s 3D models where they were used and in the soundtracks of each game with that nice 90’s red book CD-quality audio combined with the cinematic and upbeat nature… I think it was just this overall style of Sonic on the Saturn that, really, got me interested in the system in the first place, and frankly I still find myself wishing that we got a 3D Saturn Sonic game or even just had X-treme finished. X-treme probably wouldn’t have saved the Sega Saturn, but hey, I’d certainly would have liked to see what it became in the end despite being canceled.

But anyway, something to note is that with all of Sonic’s Saturn titles - X-treme included - only one of them was developed by Sonic Team themselves, and even then that was just a compilation of the Genesis games with a tech demo of Sonic Adventure. 3D Blast and R were both developed by Traveler’s Tales, so if Sonic Team wasn’t working on a new Sonic game on the Saturn… what *were* they doing in this time period?

Making Nights into Dreams, for one thing!

From what I can tell, Nights into Dreams is potentially the most popular and well-known game on the Sega Saturn. And it’s also my favorite game on the system, which may be a bit of a cliche answer but, hey, it’s cliche for a reason. This was another one of the games I was most interested in when I began looking into the system, since it was one of the most talked about and recommended, although I first played it through the game’s HD port on PC.

The game centers is split into two ‘stories’ regarding two kids named Claris and Elliot, both of whom are having nightmares about events that had taken place, leaving them humiliated and hopeless, before meeting up with the character ‘Nights’ and team up with them against the Nightmaren to restore peace in Nightopia. Taking a deeper look into the game’s story, there’s themes that relate predominantly to anxiety (would definitely check out this video on the subject), which at it’s core is something I could relate to being someone diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder. The story itself is on the ‘show, don’t tell’ side, with pretty much all of it being told in-game through visuals and no dialogue and the rest being explained in the manual, but I actually quite like that.

The game itself primarily has you taking control of Nights in each stage, having the ability to ‘fly’ along the routes of four different sections in each level - each section of which you’re graded on based off of how many points you can accumulate, through orbs, stars, ‘links’, and the amount of time you’re able to complete each section in while building up your score through those other methods, with your main goal being to free an Ideya by collecting 20 blue orbs minimum.

It is a game with a bit of a learning curve, and honestly it’s hard to give a simple explanation of, but once this game ‘clicks’, it becomes a rather fun, in-depth and replayable game especially when you try to go for the highest scores and best grades (with the game even requiring you to get a C or above the first three stages of each story in order to unlock the final stage).
There isn’t a whole lot of content - again, only four levels in each of the two stories, with the final levels of each being identical - but it makes up for it with arcade-y gameplay that leaves a lot of replay value in mastering Nights’ control and movement.

On top of that, the overall theming and visuals are really good for the system - definitely doing a good job of delivering a ‘dreamy’ vibe throughout each stage and honestly just being rather creative with it. There’s a great use of color in each stage, as well as a variety of different visual elements that match the overall atmosphere and theme each stage is going for. Really love the soundtrack too, especially the game’s main theme, ‘Dreams Dreams’. It’s another game I really love the ‘style’ of, and combined with the rather in-depth, arcade-y gameplay, it definitely puts it among my favorite games of all time. At least somewhere in my top 20-25.

And like I said, this game was actually released and in many cases packaged with the Saturn 3D controller, and it certainly takes great advantage of it. The overall movements really benefit from 360 degree control, with the flight mechanics just being really ‘smooth’ when playing with analog control. It’s not unplayable with just the regular controller, but it does feel a bit awkward and imprecise since you’re limited to 8 directions, so I definitely recommend using either the Saturn 3D controller or Retro-Bit Saturn Pro for this one. Unless you’re playing the 360, PS3 and PC versions in which case you probably already have a controller with analog sticks to begin with.

But in addition to that, Sega also released Christmas Nights into Dreams, towards the end of 1996 after the main game came out earlier that year. Fundamentally, Christmas Nights isn’t so much a new installment of Nights into Dreams but more of a demo/sampler containing a single level, Spring Valley, that’s dressed up in Christmas theming… at least, with an asterisk.

But Christmas Nights is pretty notable because, for being merely a demo of the main Nights game with added Christmas theming… they kinda went all out on it. For one thing (and the reason why I said ‘with an asterisk’), the theming of the main stage actually changes throughout the year. You are able to access the Christmas themed stage at any point of the year through the ‘Presents’ menu, but without going through said menu, Spring Valley retains it’s normal appearance when played outside of the winter and Christmas season, with it’s green grass and blue sky similar to that of the main game.

When played between November and February, the game becomes ‘Winter Nights’, in which Spring Valley becomes Winter-themed, with Claris and Elliot both donning winter outfits, and when played in most of December, the main portion of the game then goes to it’s “Christmas Nights” theming, with Claris, Elliot and Nights all donning Santa outfits, the Christmas-themed cutscenes being viewable, all accompanied by a rendition of Jingle Bells. And if you play on Christmas Eve or Christmas, Santa Claus can be seen making his trip in the background.

There’s even additional theme changes when the game is played on certain other holidays. When played in the first half of January, the game changes to a New Year’s theme with the title screen wishing the player a Happy New Year. When played on Valentine’s Day, hearts rain throughout Spring Valley, candies rain on March 14 for… some reason, and on April Fools’ Day, Nights’ model is replaced with Reala’s (Night’s evil twin and one of the antagonists). Granted, this can be cheated by just setting the system’s clock to the aforementioned dates, but still, it’s really cool how they implemented a bunch of different themes for the game that change depending on the time of year.

In addition to the different themes though, there’s also the ‘Presents’ feature, in which by replaying the main stage, you can unlock a few different modes. There’s a karaoke mode with Nights’ main theme of ‘Dreams, Dreams’, Time Attack, Link Attack, and a music player with the game’s stage themes, among other things. However, the most fascinating additional mode is the Sonic Into Dreams mode in which you play as Sonic running through Spring Valley. There’s no flying here, so you are playing the game on foot similarly to if you played the stage as Claris or Elliot without ‘freeing’ Nights, albeit with faster speed since, well, he’s Sonic. But being released even before Sonic R and Sonic Jam, this technically was the first time Sonic was playable in 3D (at least other than Saturn 3D Blast’s special stages but that mostly just on the visuals and didn’t give you full ‘3D’ control). Kind of weird to think about Sonic’s first 3D game technically wasn’t even his own. Also this mode also contains a variant of the ‘Puffy’ boss from the original game that’s skinned to appear like Eggman with the Japanese Sonic CD boss theme playing during this boss. Pretty neat.

But overall, Christmas Nights is just a really fascinating release that even while just being a demo at its core, that didn’t stop Sonic Team from going all in on it to separate it from the main game with its own quirks and features. If you own a Sega Saturn, it’s definitely a nice release to have even in addition to the original game. This game was also ‘bundled’ in with the HD remaster as an unlockable mode after playing through the main game, and while it does still retain the clock-based theming, it unfortunately does away with the aforementioned extra modes, which is a bit of a shame. Certainly wanted to see an HD version of the Christmas Nights Sonic model.

Sonic Team also published a game titled Burning Rangers for the system. This is one I haven’t admittedly played myself as of writing this but it is another game that often comes up on the topic of the best Saturn games and recommendations. That being said it was a later Saturn release, which means the US version is quite rare, going for around $200 for a disc-only copy alone, and around $600 for a complete copy. The Japanese version is still more affordable even then goes for around $50-$60 so… this may just be one I leave to my Pseudo Saturn Kai for the time being.

Outside of Sonic Team games, there’s Panzer Dragoon - a rail shooter comparable to something Star Fox, but this time… you’re riding a dragon, which is pretty lit. The series is one that Sega did continue into the sixth generation with Panzer Dragoon Orta in 2002, and even received a remake on Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One in 2020, as well as having a track in Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed (I love that game man).

I personally first played the remake on Switch, but of course, I wouldn’t be talking about it here if it didn’t start out on the Sega Saturn. It is admittedly a short game - with the main campaign only lasting about an hour - but much like many of Sega’s other IPs, it’s one that emphasizes replays through getting a high score. One thing that really stood out to me about this game compared to other rail shooters I’ve played is how the player can change the position of the camera to view the front, sides and behind them, which is useful as enemies come from all different sides of you meaning that the player kind of has to stay on their toes and keep track of their surroundings at all times.

The Saturn version does look surprisingly good for the hardware, making a good example of a game that does utilize the Saturn’s 3D capabilities surprisingly well. That being said, the first Panzer Dragoon game isn’t the most in-depth experience. There is replayability here but that’s mostly in just how many enemies you can defeat in each stage and a few different difficulty options, but at the same time, it doesn’t quite feel like a game that incentivizes more than just a few playthroughs. What is there is solid - shooting mechanics and controls feel good and I really like the game’s art style.

While I haven’t played it, it does seem like the game’s sequel, Panzer Dragoon II Zwei, does incentivize replayability a lot more - having multiple routes (again, akin to Star Fox 64), customization features, and the dragon having the ability to evolve depending on well you do in certain levels. I’ll certainly put this one on my bucket list.

But let’s say you’re more of an RPG guy than a rail shooter guy, or just thought the first two Panzer Dragoon games were too short. Well, Sega had you covered with Panzer Dragoon Saga, or Azel: Panzer Dragoon RPG in Japan. Admittedly, I haven’t played this one either, but apparently with this game being an RPG, it was definitely a lot ‘bigger’ than the first two games, spanning four discs and clocking in at around 15 hours in length according to HowLongToBeat. Which isn’t the longest game ever, but definitely a lot longer than its two predecessors.

This was another later release on the Saturn, especially in North America and Europe, but has managed to bring up a cult following, which means that North American and European copies of the game… are super damn expensive. According to PriceCharting, ‘complete’ North American copies go for over $1000, and even disc-only copies go for over $700. European copies are cheaper, but still, are worth around $300 for disc-only copies and $700 for complete. And I thought Earthbound’s prices were crazy. Once again, Japanese copies are relatively cheaper, going for around $40-$60 complete, but as far as I know those copies are only in the Japanese language, so unless you know Japanese well, it’s probably best to just stick to emulating this game or playing through an ODE, Saroo cartridge or Pseudo Saturn Kai. I mean you’ll obviously still have to pay for 4 blank CD-Rs in the latter case but $10 for a stack of CD-Rs is probably preferable to $300-$1000 for an English copy. Sega really just needs to re-release this one if I’m being honest.

But platformers are a bit more my speed. I talked about the few Sonic games the Saturn had, but what else did the Saturn have outside of that?

One that kinda stood out to me more recently when looking into picking up a Saturn in the past few years was Astal. It’s a little strange, because this is one I don’t think I ever heard anyone talk about back in 2012-13 when I was first looking into the console, and in fact, I didn’t know about it’s existence until late 2021. You know how earlier I talked about that local game store that was having a grand opening of sorts with a bunch of consoles up on display, one of them being the Saturn with it’s 3D controller? Well, Astal was actually the game playing on the system - and that was my first exposure to it.

The game certainly stands out to me just on a presentation level alone. The game contains anime-style cutscenes and apparently hand-drawn graphics, and the visuals definitely take advantage of it’s mythology theme. The environments just look gorgeous and full of color in ways that really help it stand out, alongside the main character sprites. This is definitely one good example of the system’s original vision of being a ‘2D powerhouse’, just being a very nice looking game that holds up rather well.

The gameplay isn’t anything mindblowing admittedly, but it’s definitely solid. The controls and mechanics feel good and I just can’t help but love the different attacking moves that Astal can pull off as this strong, godlike human. I haven’t played it all the way through yet but what I did play was an enjoyable experience. Unfortunately this game is somewhat rare and both the US and Japanese versions are about the same price-wise on the used market - going for around $60-$80, so it’s another one I will be sticking with my Pseudo Saturn Kai for for the time being.

Clockwork Knight 1 and 2 are also ones that come up fairly often on the topic of Saturn recommendations. These being 2.5D platformers with a theme and style similar to Toy Story, where you take control of a toy soldier traversing through toy-like environments to save a fairy princess. I haven’t played this one myself, but it does seem like a neat concept for a video game which in of itself makes it seem interesting to me on top of being a fan of 2D platformers with an interest in some of the more obscure stuff from the 90’s.

There’s also Bug! (yes, the exclamation point is part of the title) which was released in 1995, about two months and half after the Saturn launched in the US. Supposedly this was considered as a Sonic game early in development but was changed to its own mascot after Sega of Japan rejected the idea. It was apparently well received when it first came out, but more retrospective reviews of the game have been more critical towards it with the game overall just being pretty janky with some bullshit difficulty in it’s level design. I haven’t played it myself, so I’m just the messenger here, but from what I’ve watched, it certainly seems like one of the games of all time. Same can be said about it’s sequel, Bug Too! (again, the exclamation point is part of the title).

There are probably other hidden gems on the Saturn as far as platformers go, but admittedly, the Saturn’s offering here isn’t the best. I do have to respect the focus on 2.5D at a time when most platformers were shifting to 3D, but even games like Clockwork Knight and Astal, don’t really hit quite the same as, say, Crash Bandicoot on the PS1 or Super Mario 64 on the Nintendo 64. Still, Astal and Clockwork Knight are still quite unique games that I’m definitely interested in playing myself. And Bug still definitely exists.

And like what I said earlier, the system did have some multiplat platformers (that sounded a little funny) that were available on the Saturn in addition to the PS1, some of which are often associated with said console. I mentioned Rayman and Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, but the Saturn also had versions of Mega Man 8, Earthworm Jim 2, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (albeit only in Japan), and Gex. Also Bubsy 3D apparently was planned for the Sega Saturn and I sure wonder why that ended up getting canceled.

On the other hand though, one genre that the Sega Saturn did have a surprising amount going for though was actually JRPGs. I already talked about Panzer Dragoon Saga, but there actually are a decent amount of other RPGs for the system. Only problem is… most of them were released only in Japan. There are some that were released internationally - such as the aforementioned Panzer Dragoon Saga, Shining the Holy Ark (which is often considered among the best… and was one I actually got with the console) and Magic Knight Rayearth - but only 27 out of 139 of the Sega Saturn’s RPGs were available with an English translation with certain ones getting English translations after the fact. These include games like Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner, Bulk Slash, Super Robot Wars F, and Lunar: Silver Star Story (which, interestingly, had a US release on the PS1), among others. There’s also this one game I got with the system that I’m not quite what the name of it is. It’s this football (soccer) themed game with the tagline on it saying ‘Become the coach for the national team!’ (which is actually in English translated from the actual title) and the listings for it either refer to it… as that tagline, but others just call it “Seikatsu Soccer RPG”. Sometimes both at the same time.

Point is though that, like I said, I get the impression that Sega of America just didn’t embrace JRPGs like they did in Japan. I mean, again, the Sega of America president from later on in the Saturn’s life had this belief that JRPGs wouldn’t take off in the west right as Final Fantasy VII released and popularized the genre. Like I said, this guy could not cook. Also worth mentioning is that even for the RPGs that got localizations, the English versions are pretty damn rare and expensive, and with the Japanese versions being, well, only in Japanese, even if you do want to import you’re probably either going to have to use Google Lens on all the text or just learn Japanese yourself. Maybe I should give Duolingo another shot and have that bird stalk me.

In fact, what I said about only a portion of the Sega Saturn’s RPGs getting US/European releases can be said for the system’s entire library in general. According to Wikipedia’s list of Sega Saturn games, there were about 1028 on the system. Which is a pretty impressive number especially given the system’s short lifespan, which keep in mind, is a number over 2.5 times that of the Nintendo 64’s library of 388 games. Just one problem… 785 of those games were only released in Japan - about 75% of the system’s library. In terms of games that were released internationally, that drops the number down quite significantly to 243, which is *less* than the Nintendo 64’s library. Granted, I don’t know how many N64 games were released only in Japan to subtract from the system’s total number and make it fair, but I can’t imagine it being that much, especially not… 75% of the system’s library.

There are more Saturn games I have heard get recommended in addition to all the ones I talked about here - Dark Savior, Grandia, Guardian Heroes, the Shining Force games, Saturn Bomberman, Baku Baku Animal, among others. But since this retrospective has been going on for 30 pages in my Google Doc (~20 of which being about the game library)… I think it’s time I wrap things up.

Final Thoughts

So, why did the Sega Saturn fail (at least outside of Japan?)

To an outsider, the most common reasons for the Sega Saturn’s failure are attributed to the Saturn’s early US launch, the system being difficult to develop for, poor marketing, and infighting between Sega of America and Sega of Japan. And these certainly contributed, but there have been consoles since the Sega Saturn that had similar issues to it yet have been relatively more successful. The PlayStation 2 was also hard to develop for, and yet it’s remained the best selling console to this day with only recently the Nintendo Switch *maybe* catching up to it soon. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox One both had bad launches, and while the latter particularly wasn’t the most successful console either, both did receive at least a decent amount of sales - the PlayStation 3 even outselling the Xbox 360 at the end of it’s life.

Keep in mind, those reasons were ones I believed in that results in the Sega Saturn’s failure… but then I watched this video by Sega Lord X that… actually made an interesting point.

With Sega starting out as an arcade developer, they’ve always had that core design philosophy in the structure of their games. It’s more obvious with some games than others, but Sega has always incentivized replay value in their titles. I mean, classic Sonic was built with branching pathways that allow the player to play through the level in different ways, and that element did carry over for many of the franchise’s 3D titles, and even in the more linear games, they still had a score/grading system with the intention of players replaying to get the highest scores and grades. Even in more modern stuff like the Bayonetta titles, there’s still that grading system there that very much rewards mastering the game’s mechanics and combos. Okay yeah I know that’s technically a PlatinumGames title that Sega just owns but I think it’s still a good example of that DNA being there.

This was especially the case in the 90’s though, and while it worked out well for the Mega Drive/Genesis, by the time the Sega Saturn released and was in its prime, the game industry was shifting towards ‘bigger’ games that pushed the envelope even if replay value wasn’t as much of a factor. You saw this with the popularity of games like Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy VII, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Super Mario 64, and the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and even while a couple of those had Saturn ports, what Sega was really pushing exclusive-wise were more of those arcade-y games that were usually shorter in length and emphasized replayability. Even as much as I love games like Nights into Dreams, I really wouldn’t consider it to be a ‘big’ title on the same scale as those PS1 and N64 games I mentioned.

In layman’s terms, one of the core issues more than anything… was the shifting tides of the industry. It’s part of the reason why I specifically focused on Sega of America not embracing JRPGs as well as Sega of Japan - some of these could have been big releases that, perhaps wouldn’t have put the Saturn over the PS1 and N64, but would’ve at least given it some boost in interest. And the lack of a mainline 3D Sonic game in an era of Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot didn’t exactly help things either.

In spite of all this however… actually buying and playing the Sega Saturn, and writing this retrospective for it, brought me to a conclusion. The Sega Saturn… might be my favorite Sega console. I’ve had my fun times with Sega’s other consoles - particularly the Mega Drive/Genesis and Dreamcast (at least before the latter’s laser broke down on me… thank god I still was covered under my warranty from my local game store) - but the Sega Saturn stands out to me just for having a more niche and unique library that’s… really not quite like any other console I’ve played. And yeah, my favorite genre and potentially favorite franchise didn’t have the best representation on the console, but I felt like the more unique, experimental titles actually made up for that, alongside the different arcade ports.

The Sega Saturn is not for everyone, I’ll fully acknowledge that. And even if you’re slightly interested in the console, the used market prices will probably scare you away from anything other than emulation. But there’s a good reason why it fascinated me so much as an 11-12 year old and kept my interest coming back throughout my life up until this point. It’s a unique console, with a very unique appeal - something that won’t appeal to a general audience in the same way that PS1 will - but it’s for that reason why it stands out to me even now, despite the console’s failure with a lifespan that ended before I was even born. And I certainly think it’s a console that more people should look into and perhaps give a shot through the games that have been ported to modern systems or even just through emulation. You might find something you like.

Like I said with my previous post here, this will most likely be my last video game-related review, at least for a while, and on that note… I certainly think this was a good way to go out on a bang, on the topic of a console that certainly fascinated me as an adolescent, and one I finally managed to pick up after all these years of said fascination.

Sources

https://archive.org/details/nextgen-issue-002/page/n37/mode/2up
https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/sega-saturn/
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https://www.pricecharting.com/
https://segaretro.org/Daytona_USA_Circuit_Edition
https://segaretro.org/Sega_Rally_Championship_Plus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjhDXStrFdc
https://www.wired.com/2012/09/how-virtua-fighter-saved-playstations-bacon/
https://archive.org/details/Official_Sega_Saturn_Magazine_001/page/n37/mode/2up
https://virtuafighter.fandom.com/wiki/Virtua_Fighter_Remix
https://retrocdn.net/images/5/53/CVG_UK_171.pdf#page=98
https://web.archive.org/web/20161025110523/http://www.retrogamer.net/retro_games90/the-making-of-rayman/
https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Sonic_X-treme
https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Sonic-16
https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Sonic_Jam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8AVwj0K5nw
https://www.reddit.com/r/SegaSaturn/comments/n4ho9h/sega_saturn_full_rpg_list/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_Saturn_games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_64_games