SEGA Saturn -- 13 years old in the States

... tomorrow. Our favorite (or not) 32-bit system is now a teenager! (though the JP model has been one for a while now).

Think I'm gonna fire me up some Saturn action tomorrow. Maybe a little Sega Rally, topped off with some Souky or SF Zero 3 rather

Post your favorite Saturn memories (and/or rants) here

 

US game packaging. /rant

 

Rarity.

 

I got my first Saturn in 2004 and still learned to love it. My best memories with it are probably Panzer Dragoon 1, Sega Rally and Segata Sanshirou minigames. There are tons of other games as well, I just think theres no point in making a list of all the good games I ever played on the Saturn... the thing why I love this console is more due to the fact that theres a certain "warmth" surrounding this console
Only other consoles that give the this feeling are PC-Engine and maybe Mega Drive.

 

I just remember working in an import shop that got in the Playstation and Saturn a few days after the Playstation launch in Japan and even though they were expensive 900 quid anyone ($1600 at the then exchange rate) they still sold like hot cakes and the games were 100 quid each.

The first time I saw Virtua Fighter I was a little disappointed as it looked like shit compared to the silky visuals of Ridge Racer. And the other games, well you had er Tama (also on Playstation), a Mahjong game (that was on the 3DO...) and Gale Racer (a poor port of Rad Mobile and a game that started development on the Mega CD...) and if you waited a week you could also have Clockwork Knight and yes there are 3 other games I am missing but they were heavy Japanese games... and that was it for 1994...

On the Playstation you had the form mentioned Ridge Racer, which if a game brought the gaming age kicking and screaming in the 32 bit era that was it. You also had Gokujyo Parodius Da! Deluxe Pack (so you had a shooter), Tama (see above...), Nekketsu Oyako (Reasonable scrolling beat 'em up that would hit the Saturn 7 months later), Mahjong Station Mazin (Typical Mahjong game that gets released in the first week of any new system...), Crime Crackers (A game where the cute box artwork looked better then the running game apart from the animated bits...) but even then by the end of the year you would also have Motor Toon Grand Prix (which also looked fantastic and was quite a good arcade racer), Geom Cube (a puzzle game), Twinbee Taisen Puzzle Dama (Puyo Puyo clone), Twin Goddesses (Cheesy one on one fighter), Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu 95 (Cutesty Konami Baseball series) and you also had a Shogi, another Mahjong game, A.IV and some other games too a total of 17 games by the end of the year.

I waited until 1996 to buy a Saturn due to the dismal crap that was being pumped on the machine. Same could be said about the Playstation but there were decent games from day one and not day 490...

Even though I like the Saturn, I think I've got pretty much all I want on the machine, the Playstation still is a little gold mine due to vast number of games, granted there is a load of crap too but that could be said about all machines and I am still enjoying going to game shops and checking the PS games out as I will always find something else I want to play, can't really say that about most consoles now. :s

Anyway happy 13th belated birthday Saturn and Playstation.

 

Rant: No REAL Sonic game. Oh, and Bernie Stolar.

 

To me the Saturn still has the best library of any system in existence, so happy b'day to the greatest console ever. :nod:

Guardian Heroes, Radiant Silvergun, Tecno Soft's best offering, Shinrei Jusatsushi Taromaru, Capcom's arcade perfect ports, Astra Superstars, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Fighters Megamix... the list just goes on and on.

The Saturn is seriously the only console I keep hooked up through the ages. Everything else eventually gets packed up as the new stuff rolls in... but never the Saturn. It is the pinnacle of gaming in my eyes, and forever will be such.

 

Oh great now our saturns are gonna get all rebellious on us.

 

Which should be read as Bald Twat!

Yakumo

 

13 years old, that looks like jailbait to me!:lol:

The Saturn was a combination of the best and the worst of SEGA at the time. While the many internal studios were scrambling to port as best as possible such awesome titles like VF2, Daytona, SR, VirtualON, etc... execs at SOA were engaged at some sort of vendetta against SOJ execs for their past decisions regarding the 32X and other projects. Is well known that one of the first actions carried by SOA was an internal boicot of the US Saturn launch.

The more I learn about corporate culture the more I think that what happened at SEGA back then isnt uncommon. Just yesterday I was reading an article wrote by a recent ex-googler about how the company has been going downhill since 2005. In the blog he mentions how real talent is fleeing the company while uneducated egomaniacs are taking over. Also they're hiring former dotcom bubble burst guys for management and accounting, which in my opinion is asking for the whole company to explode since it was that kind of people what created an 8 trillion hole in the market some years ago.

I guess all companies no matter how strong are prone to decadence.

 

So did anyone else celebrate today?


I made runs through Blast Wind, Hyper Duel (well, got to the final boss on one credit, and his final form proceeded to rape me as per usual), Shinrei Jusatsushi Taromaru, Panzer Dragoon II Zwei, played some Game Tengoku, and played some Panzer Dragoon Saga.

All of which is quality gaming that cannot be found on any other console. ALL HAIL THE SATURN!!!!!!!! ray:

 

what i get on my mind about saturn?

complicated hardware, costy console, no marketingin europe, no PAL optimization of 60Hz mode... etc etc. this was the first impression i got.

afterwards in years after buying a jap one i loved it a lot and regretted A LOT MORE sega's ineptitude to sell anything and the ridicoluos choice to not bring to the western countries most of the best games and killing the saturn earlier to make room to dreamcast... Some real great games/gems around, and some even exclusives.

in short, one of my favorites machines.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY17gMP5QvI&feature=related I think this song is appropriate for the Saturn

 

What? Yes, there were good ports of many Capcom arcade games, but please don't use the word "Perfect". The resolution was not the same (less horizontal pixels). That meant they generally just cropped the edges out entirely. That's not too bad, but you can notice that. Also, music not fading out in SFZ3, that's annoying.

Sorry but I just can't let that get by with "Perfect". They were superb ports, almost always better than the Playstation versions. The prime cases being the Versus series where the Saturn's RAM cartridge allowed full animation, where the Playstation had garbage.

I love my Saturn. Very nice system indeed. Shame it didn't do better in the states.

 

Oh Culdcept, Torico, Worms, Keio 2, Sega Rally how I love you..

 

Happy birthday again, Saturn ;-)

Ahh, shadowlayer - if I see you posting about a suspicious stain in your Saturn, I won't be happy!

 

I probably never came across such good shooters than on the Saturn. I mean 16 Bit is cool and new CAVE shooters are great, but on Saturn there is just a great selection of everything. Modern and impressive-looking games with a deep score system (Batte Garegga, RSG) and pure retro classics in unknown 1:1 arcade port quality like the Arcade Gears compilations.

The PlayStation had loads of good games either, I especially appreciate the unknown japanese gimmick games such as Pepsiman, Gunnm, Kyuun and so on. The only thing that still keep me away from collecting PlayStation games is that I'm missing the "heart". PSX has a dead, cold appearance to me somehow so that I could never collect it with nearly as much joy as I collect Saturn-games.

 

word!! The PSX lacks pesonality, and this is true for every single PS ever made for some reason :S it just feels so lifeless..

 

I think what made the Playstation so cold and lifeless was the shear number of games available with a lot of cheap rehashed and reheated titles available. Still careful hunting and picking does reveal a vast number of entertaining, playable and enjoyable games, one of the reasons I do like looking for Playstation games is the fact I will always buy something that I've never played before (we'll ignore the fact that a lot of them are Mahjong titles...) but certain other games like Densha De Go and the Namco games do bring a special type of magic back.

The Saturn front end was a lot nicer (esp the Spaceship and the stars an the bouncing curved cubes) and less clinical then the Playstation one and the Saturn felt like a big games machine rather then a clinical piece of hardware that the Playstation looked like (and the PSOne was a cheap childs toy) (we'll ignore the fact that the Saturn was over engineerered....)

Most of the Saturn 'fans' here did buy the machine way after launch and if you didn't have the rose coloured or sega hardcore glasses on and you saw the Saturn with Virtual Fighter and Gale Racer compared with Ridge Racer and Parodius I am sure most of you would have picked up the Playstation...

 

part of my dislike of the PS brand has always been and will be the controller, it never felt engaging enough, or an extention of my fingers. I had to think before I pressed any buttons. The shape-based references (triangle, square etc) also make it hard for me sometimes, and I have to look down!