So, I bought a Sega Saturn...
...and no, this isn't 1995. You wouldn't be blamed to think so, though! We all know that Sega ended it's hardware production after the Dreamcast. Much thanks to how badly the Saturn did the generation prior. It's a missed link in my gaming experience, so I decided to buy one. Here are my thoughts.
History
A little history recap first. At the end of the 16-bit era, Sega experimented a lot with add-ons to it's hugely successful Mega Drive, to help keep the system popular. First, they released a CD-ROM add-on, the Mega-CD, followed by a 32-bit add-on, named the 32X.The Mega-CD had potential, and in some ways a fair success, in pioneering the CD-ROM age, which began around it's time. With PC's sporting "multimedia" abilities with CD-ROM drives and speakers added. However, the idea of the 32X as a cheap, alternative, entry to the forthcoming 3D 32-bit era was a bad idea. It would water down the expectations for Sega's true 32-bit console, the Saturn, and divide the customer group of Mega Drive. Plus, it was an expensive add-on.
These hardware add-ons were on paper cool ideas, made with the best of intentions, but served to harm the Sega with a split user group and confusing line-up for customers. The add-on hardware was expensive and wasn't a true new console. Upgrades to existing consoles has never been positively received in the console market, before or after.
The low sales in add-on hardware always results in fewer titles being developed for them. In hindsight, Sega simply should've stuck to the base Mega Drive and continued to put money into it's library. Unlike the 32X, the Mega-CD was at least a solid proving ground for developers to test out the CD technology, which was modern at the time.
Mega CD and 32X never became the successes Sega hoped for
The rush for the true fifth generation console really kicked into high gear when Sony announced they were going into the console market. An end result of Nintendo ditching them in the plans of a Super Nintendo CD add-on, in favour of Philips. A project which ended up with no results anyhow.
For many years, rumours said that Sega supposedly changed their Saturn build hastily after seeing the Sony PlayStation's specs in regard to 3D capabilities, as if the notion of 3D was something completely new for Sega.
Although partially right about the hastily change in specs, they had to add more powerful 3D hardware at the tail end of development, Sega hadn't been naive to 3D reaching the home market. They had in fact visioned some form of 3D on the forthcoming, fifth generation, console right from the beginning. That said, adding hardware to strengthen the 3D, late in hardware development, in this era, wasn't easily available and cheap.
So, while Sega probably had envisioned 3D to be more evident in the arcades and the 32-bit generation continuing the 2D further, Sega always knew it had to move to 3D hardware soon rather than later. What Sony excelled at though, was going all in for a 3D console from the birth of it's hardware design, with a neat middle ground for all it's technical specs, making it a diverse platform for years to follow.
For younger readers, the fifth generation can best be described in hindsight as one of the biggest and most sudden advancement in gaming. The shift from 2D to 3D as the mainline focus happened far more rapidly than expected, both in development in graphics, hardware requirements, development costs and new gameplay ideas, as well as in the customers interest. The 3D arcade hits were coming to your own home!
For younger readers, the fifth generation can best be described in hindsight as one of the biggest and most sudden advancement in gaming. The shift from 2D to 3D as the mainline focus happened far more rapidly than expected, both in development in graphics, hardware requirements, development costs and new gameplay ideas, as well as in the customers interest. The 3D arcade hits were coming to your own home!
In hindsight we know the new fifth generations consoles did indeed bring many of the massive 3D arcade hits to a home port. While seemingly marketed as the same experience, we now know they were never as polished as the arcade titles. However, they'd ultimately mark the downfall for arcades around the globe in the longer run. Bringing the expensive and cumbersome arcade machines straight into everyone's living rooms.
The aforementioned haste in the Saturn's 3D hardware development resulted in an additional, and expensive, extra GPU from Hitachi. Which was one of the few companies to choose from that could deliver such hardware on short notice, this wasn't modern times where CPU and GPU hardware is readily available everywhere. This additional GPU though, didn't suffice to give the Saturn the power to edge out Sony's more all-round performing 3D hardware in it's forthcoming PlayStation.
The aforementioned haste in the Saturn's 3D hardware development resulted in an additional, and expensive, extra GPU from Hitachi. Which was one of the few companies to choose from that could deliver such hardware on short notice, this wasn't modern times where CPU and GPU hardware is readily available everywhere. This additional GPU though, didn't suffice to give the Saturn the power to edge out Sony's more all-round performing 3D hardware in it's forthcoming PlayStation.
Saturn prototypes, closing in to the final design
The Saturn's hardware featured two CPU's and two GPU's, a bold move for the early and mid 90's. One GPU for 3D graphics, named the VDP1, and the other for 2D and background effects, named the VDP2. In terms of hardware comparison to Sega's arcade board equivalents, think of the VDP1 as something between Model 1 & 2, albeit closer to Model 2 thanks to polygon texture support, and VDP2 as something close to the System 32 arcade board.
On paper, the Saturn is indeed a 32-bit power horse, but it's structure was too complex for developers to spend extra development time for optimisation. This hampered the quality of Saturn releases and, even more embarrassing, Sega's own ports of their famous, in-house, 3D arcade titles.
More bad news for Sega was about to arrive, prior to launch. At a games show, a month before Sega were going to unveil the Saturn, Sony dropped the bomb of a price tag 100 dollars lower for the PlayStation compared to the Saturn. On top of this, they now had the famous arcade rival to Sega on board as a third party developer, namely Namco.
More bad news for Sega was about to arrive, prior to launch. At a games show, a month before Sega were going to unveil the Saturn, Sony dropped the bomb of a price tag 100 dollars lower for the PlayStation compared to the Saturn. On top of this, they now had the famous arcade rival to Sega on board as a third party developer, namely Namco.
In Japan, Sega Saturn would hit shelves on November 22, 1994, but to make matters worse, Sega hastily released the console unannounced to exclusive retailers in the West on September 2, 1995. Which in turn, started a fury with other retailers, going so far as banning the Saturn from their shelves for a time period for the lack of support and trust from Sega.
This early western release, dubbed as the Saturnday, stole the opportunity from third-party developers to finish their games, cancelling a large number of them for the Saturn. Some of them making their way to the PlayStation instead. Back then, small, third party, developers relied heavily on being launch titles, as they don't have the money to build high budget titles. It's their chance, when new hardware arrives, to make their games look fantastic compared to the previous generation, despite the lower budget. Thus earning a lot of publicity before larger, more famous titles begin arriving.
Worse yet, on top of all this, was the fact that Sega's own arcade ports at launch ran badly. Most famously the port of Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter ran badly optimised and looked inferior to their arcade counterparts. The Saturn was about to lose market ground, fast.
A heavily improved second wave of titles released the following year,1995 for Japan and 1996 for the West. With famous titles like Sega Rally, Virtua Fighter 2 and the reworked Daytona USA Circuit Edition. These excellent ports proved the Saturn had the power to showcase great games and keep up with the PlayStation. However, console brand and reputation had been compromised, a lot of damage was done and the public opinion was leaning heavily into the PlayStation, developers too.
We all know that Sony in the end won the 32-bit console battle by a landslide and by 1997 Sega were struggling so much they lowered the Saturn into a coffin by 1998. Although the Saturn only featured around 250 titles in the West, Japan saw a far larger success, half of the Saturn consoles ever built were sold there. The Japanese library consisted of around a 1000+ titles and the production of consoles ended as late as 2000.
In 1998, in the West, Sega pulled the plug on a console that was making the company bleed money. Later in that geneartion, we saw the sales of the PlayStation reaching over 100 million units sold, while the Saturn peaked at over 9 million. Sega had lost, tremendously, and the amount of market and money they lost on the Saturn harmed the company in a terrible way. So bad, in fact, they never really recovered when it came to hardware production.
It may have been a fairly bulky machine back in the day, but by today's standard, at least compared to the first models of the OG Xbox and PS3, it really isn't that big. I like it's design, it looks stylish and has kept well through the years. I may actually like the look of it better than the original PlayStation.
It's a quiet console, with a fairly noiseless CD-ROM, even when it's working hard on reading CD's. The Saturn, PlayStation and Nintendo 64 were the last generation of fan-less consoles and therefore ran almost dead silent. Situated behind the CD-ROM lid there's a slot for memory cards, but unlike the PlayStation, the Saturn actually has built-in memory for saves too! I like that.
When you boot up the Saturn for the first time you need to enter the date and preferred language. I believe the PlayStation had no record of date and time. My Saturn asks me this each time, but that's because I need to replace the motherboard battery, easily accessed at he back of the console. It's nice to be able to save a few games without purchasing an expensive memory card. If you plan on playing many games though, you need to buy a memory card.
I've got both generations of controllers for my Saturn, the Mark 1 and 2 models. The Mark 2 model is often touted as the best d-pad ever made, perfect for 2D titles, especially fighters. I must say I agree, it's fantastic for 2D games! The Mark 2 controller is actually the original controller the console launched with in Japan.
The Mark 1, which was bundled with the console for it's US and Europe release, Sega believed westerners needed a larger controller, is a strange, yet futuristic, looking controller. The buttons are nice and springy and the d-pad works well, but the shape of it is better on the Mark 2. The shoulder buttons on the Mark 2 are improved from the Mark 1 which are hinged at the top and give hardly any feedback when pushed, just a slight click. The Mark 1 is also quite large compared to Mark 2.
Let battle commence!
A heavily improved second wave of titles released the following year,1995 for Japan and 1996 for the West. With famous titles like Sega Rally, Virtua Fighter 2 and the reworked Daytona USA Circuit Edition. These excellent ports proved the Saturn had the power to showcase great games and keep up with the PlayStation. However, console brand and reputation had been compromised, a lot of damage was done and the public opinion was leaning heavily into the PlayStation, developers too.
We all know that Sony in the end won the 32-bit console battle by a landslide and by 1997 Sega were struggling so much they lowered the Saturn into a coffin by 1998. Although the Saturn only featured around 250 titles in the West, Japan saw a far larger success, half of the Saturn consoles ever built were sold there. The Japanese library consisted of around a 1000+ titles and the production of consoles ended as late as 2000.
In 1998, in the West, Sega pulled the plug on a console that was making the company bleed money. Later in that geneartion, we saw the sales of the PlayStation reaching over 100 million units sold, while the Saturn peaked at over 9 million. Sega had lost, tremendously, and the amount of market and money they lost on the Saturn harmed the company in a terrible way. So bad, in fact, they never really recovered when it came to hardware production.
My own Saturn
My console was obtained through a seller from England on Ebay, the console was quite popular over there and is in beautiful condition. In fact, the console itself looks almost new. It's a Mark 1 model, recognised by the oval shaped power and reset buttons, the later Mark 2 has round ones, but is similar looking otherwise.It may have been a fairly bulky machine back in the day, but by today's standard, at least compared to the first models of the OG Xbox and PS3, it really isn't that big. I like it's design, it looks stylish and has kept well through the years. I may actually like the look of it better than the original PlayStation.
It's a quiet console, with a fairly noiseless CD-ROM, even when it's working hard on reading CD's. The Saturn, PlayStation and Nintendo 64 were the last generation of fan-less consoles and therefore ran almost dead silent. Situated behind the CD-ROM lid there's a slot for memory cards, but unlike the PlayStation, the Saturn actually has built-in memory for saves too! I like that.
When you boot up the Saturn for the first time you need to enter the date and preferred language. I believe the PlayStation had no record of date and time. My Saturn asks me this each time, but that's because I need to replace the motherboard battery, easily accessed at he back of the console. It's nice to be able to save a few games without purchasing an expensive memory card. If you plan on playing many games though, you need to buy a memory card.
Mark 1 and Mark 2 controllers
The Mark 1, which was bundled with the console for it's US and Europe release, Sega believed westerners needed a larger controller, is a strange, yet futuristic, looking controller. The buttons are nice and springy and the d-pad works well, but the shape of it is better on the Mark 2. The shoulder buttons on the Mark 2 are improved from the Mark 1 which are hinged at the top and give hardly any feedback when pushed, just a slight click. The Mark 1 is also quite large compared to Mark 2.
Comparing games and consoles
The games! It's all about the games isn't it? Well, it's what makes and breaks a console. Luckily, the Saturn has many great exclusives titles brought straight from their arcade successes, at least on paper. Sadly, the home versions in the first wave of releases were broke by bad ports.
For the ultimate comparison test of 32-bit, 90's wonder, consoles, I dug out my old PlayStation and asked a friend to come and try out a few titles from the same release years and genres.
Side by side, the 32-bit rivals of the 90's
Race!
First out, were the racing games. An absolute genre favourite of mine. It was the classic 90's battle: Daytona USA, Sega's beloved arcade hit from '93/'94 ported to the Saturn in '94/'95, versus Ridge Racer, Namco's arcade drift racing hit.
Daytona USA is known to be a bad port, and man did we notice. The draw distance is terrible, rendering the road a few hundred yards in front of the car and the framerate must be closer to 20 than it ever is 30. Ridge Racer, however, has great draw distance and stable framerate. The picture is also clearer in RR, with less grain further into the distance.
While arcade titles don't matter now, in '94/'95 this would easily have made you pick the PlayStation, simply seeing how much better RR is visually than Daytona USA, from an objective point of view.
Staying with the racing spirit, we took the following years titles up for a race: Daytona USA: Championship Circuit Edition versus. Destruction Derby 2. The original Destruction Derby was released on both consoles the year before, the sequel, however, never made it to the Saturn.
While arcade titles don't matter now, in '94/'95 this would easily have made you pick the PlayStation, simply seeing how much better RR is visually than Daytona USA, from an objective point of view.
Staying with the racing spirit, we took the following years titles up for a race: Daytona USA: Championship Circuit Edition versus. Destruction Derby 2. The original Destruction Derby was released on both consoles the year before, the sequel, however, never made it to the Saturn.
This comparison was intended for a stock car racing comparison of 1996! Straight off the bat, Daytona CCE looks way better than the first Daytona USA. It has a much cleaner picture, stable framerate and a fair draw distance. Making it far more playable, even a decade after release. Daytona CCE does, however, look slightly different from the original Daytona USA in aestethics, ending up being a sort of new title in the series.
Destruction Derby 2 fights well back, with a solid framerate, far superior physics engine with detailed crashes and visual damage. Much like Daytona CCE, DD2 doesn't have a spectacular draw distance, perhaps RR was one in a few that managed this better amongst the early titles?!
Destruction Derby 2 fights well back, with a solid framerate, far superior physics engine with detailed crashes and visual damage. Much like Daytona CCE, DD2 doesn't have a spectacular draw distance, perhaps RR was one in a few that managed this better amongst the early titles?!
I'd say it's a kind of draw between Daytona CCE and DD2: Daytona looks slightly cleaner, while DD2 has a more advanced physics engine.
We also gave one of my all time favourite arcade titles a spin: Sega Rally. This Saturn port was done by Sega's internal team AM2. It proved the console could run it's arcade titles just fine, and helped develop Daytona CCE. It's fast and smooth and has the fantastic Sega Rally feel present.
We also gave one of my all time favourite arcade titles a spin: Sega Rally. This Saturn port was done by Sega's internal team AM2. It proved the console could run it's arcade titles just fine, and helped develop Daytona CCE. It's fast and smooth and has the fantastic Sega Rally feel present.
We gave it a spin against V-Rally on PlayStation, but this was kind of an unforgiving comparison. Sega Rally is from 1995 and V-Rally from 1997. V-Rally looks better and marks the point were PlayStation development started to leap far ahead. It's much more detailed and has a cleaner and superior picture quality. Sega Rally wins on the gameplay though, hands down. Sega knew how to nail great gameplay back then and it still shows. V-Rally is erratic and bad to control in comparison.
Another, unfair, but similar set of racers is Sega Touring Car Championship and Gran Turismo. Again it proves the PlayStation leapt on further to new graphical heights. STCC is a terrible port, with one of the worst framerates I've ever seen in a racer. A shame, because when we booted up STCC and stood at the starting line, it actually looked like Saturn racer with mid-life PlayStation graphics. Sadly, it was unplayable.
Another, unfair, but similar set of racers is Sega Touring Car Championship and Gran Turismo. Again it proves the PlayStation leapt on further to new graphical heights. STCC is a terrible port, with one of the worst framerates I've ever seen in a racer. A shame, because when we booted up STCC and stood at the starting line, it actually looked like Saturn racer with mid-life PlayStation graphics. Sadly, it was unplayable.
Some of Saturn's most famous exclusive racers
Fight!
Beat 'em ups then. First on the line is Virtua Fighter, a fighter brought to life after making an animated pit crew in Virtua Racing and the creator, Yu Suzuki, thinking it would be cool to make a 3D beat 'em up. VF looks very dated, with it texture-less and extremely blocky fighters. This port isn't even a good one either. I can see why gamers thought Tekken and Toshinden on the PlayStation were far better.
We quickly switched over to VF2 for the test, and brought out Tekken 2. VF2 really impressed us! It's a fantastic port and has an amazing framerate. It's smooth, has clean and massively upgraded graphics It's a giant leap from VF1 and it actually puts Tekken 2 to shame. VF2 turned out to be the most impressive Saturn title we tested of them all.
We quickly switched over to VF2 for the test, and brought out Tekken 2. VF2 really impressed us! It's a fantastic port and has an amazing framerate. It's smooth, has clean and massively upgraded graphics It's a giant leap from VF1 and it actually puts Tekken 2 to shame. VF2 turned out to be the most impressive Saturn title we tested of them all.
Virtua Fighter is one of the best beat 'em up series ever made
Zombies!
The last title we dug out for comparison, was perhaps the most direct one of them all: Resident Evil. The exact same game for each console!
We watched the intro of both versions and hoped the Saturn version featured the uncensored Japanese one, but no such luck. In-game the games look almost identical, the Saturn version having a more grainy picture in the intro video.
The character models are newer textured and modelled in the Saturn version, due to it's later release. It also has a faster dialogue loading and does not have the terrible CD-ROM reading sounds the PlayStation version has.
The character models are newer textured and modelled in the Saturn version, due to it's later release. It also has a faster dialogue loading and does not have the terrible CD-ROM reading sounds the PlayStation version has.
Otherwise the PlayStation version probably is the best one for price and availability, while also retaining the original vision for character models. However, they're so identical that you are going to have the same experience and enjoyment regardless of which version you choose.
Capcom's survival horror classic, an excellent title regardless of system
Summary
It's been fun buying a console that I personally favoured for the PlayStation before the released, but ultimately didn't buy due to it's non-presence here in Norway. It's also been a trip down memory lane, giving me a clearer picture of how it fared against the competition.
I may not end up playing on the Saturn so much, considering how the games have aged, but it's cool to have the option to be able to. I feel my true journey into this consoles soul is when I explore the massive Japanese library!
The play testing has even inspired me to buy the Daytona USA HD version on Xbox Live and enjoy it the way it was meant to be like at the arcades!
Personally, the 3D titles that have impressed me most on the Saturn have been Sega Rally and Virtua Fighter 2. SR still manages to hook you in with it's great handling and VF2 looking technically impressive and proving not much has developed in the fighting genre other than graphics since. I suspect, however, that some great discoveries yet on the Saturn is in it's many advanced 2D titles.
At the end of the day, the Saturn was an overpriced, unevenly powered and mismanaged console, yet it's worth delving into, simply because it's a history lesson in early 3D gaming. It's also uniquely an alternative 2D timeline, where 3D titles weren't the main focus and 2D developed further from 16-bit to 32-bit.
Personally, the 3D titles that have impressed me most on the Saturn have been Sega Rally and Virtua Fighter 2. SR still manages to hook you in with it's great handling and VF2 looking technically impressive and proving not much has developed in the fighting genre other than graphics since. I suspect, however, that some great discoveries yet on the Saturn is in it's many advanced 2D titles.
At the end of the day, the Saturn was an overpriced, unevenly powered and mismanaged console, yet it's worth delving into, simply because it's a history lesson in early 3D gaming. It's also uniquely an alternative 2D timeline, where 3D titles weren't the main focus and 2D developed further from 16-bit to 32-bit.
The Saturn, clearly, is a console which deserved far better sales compared to the massively popular PlayStation. If the Saturn had benefited from large sales, who knows what amazing titles we would have seen later in it's lifecycle?
