Retro Rewind: Sega Saturn0

Ah…. The Sega Saturn, Sega’s little machine that just couldn’t get there.

That may be so but Sega’s first 32bit system that wasn’t an add-on did have some great games and accessories.

Let’s step back to 1995 and look at the upsides as well as the downsides to this under loved console.

The Sega Saturn was released in 1995 just months before Sony’s first home video game system the Playstation and whilst initial sales were great, the games just didn’t keep coming and Sega just couldn’t beat Sony’s impending behemoth of a launch for the Playstation.

The box art is so 1990's

As you can see above, the console was a decent looking console for it’s time, the controller was a 6 buttoned controller with 2 top triggers and a d-pad.

The graphic output this console had was 32-bit, which meant 3D polygonal gameplay with textures….. and that was a big thing in 95″.

In comparison Nintendo’s Super Nintendo was only 16-bit and only had very weak 3d visuals if developers even used it.

The difference in visual flair was most apparent in games like Virtua Fighter 2 and Tomb Raider, which were great games with awesome graphics (at the time).

Graphically, this was awesome

The Sega Saturn had some great titles and some really dodgy ones too, some worth mentioning are;

Nights into Dreams, Virtua Fighter 2, Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat 3 Ultimate, Daytona USA, Sega Rally, Psychic Force, Bug, Croc, Gex and there were loads more.

The Saturn also had some great and innovative accessories, however none had more of an impact than the 3D Control Pad which had an analog stick and the rest of the buttons the normal 6 Button Pad had.

Adding an analog stick was a new thing back in 95″, Sega did it first, followed by Nintendo and then Sony, so you can thank the Saturn for the analog sticks of today.

The 3D Control Pad, the age of analog sticks begins.

However that wasn’t all the 3D pad gave us oh no! We can thank Sega and the Saturn for giving us analog L&R triggers, that’s right pressure sensitive left and right triggers were born on the Saturn.

So why with all this cool stuff did the Saturn die?

Well you can thank Sony for that…. actually you can thank Sega, Sony and third party companies for it.

Back in 95″ Sega were coming off the back of the Sega Megadrive/Genesis and while that console was a success, all the add-on’s for the console weren’t and developers had lost hope in Sega.

That combined with Sony’s new shiny Playstation with it’s easy development cycles and cost effective game development were very attractive to developers like EA and they pretty much gave up on Sega and all it’s further consoles (Saturn/Dreamcast).

On top off that, Sony got games like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Final Fantasy and Tomb Raider sequels that basically killed off Sega all together and nearly Nintendo with it.

Final Thoughts:

The Sega Saturn is a forgotten gem that was cut down even before it hit it’s prime, it was cumbersome to develop for and many developers lost interest.

However it does have a great amount of titles worth playing, even today.

It will forever be apart of gaming in my house and the console and accessories can be found on ebay for a low cost.

If you have any interest in retro gaming, you should pick one up.

Until next time,

James Breadcrumbs.