Sega Saturn
So, the Saturn was a great machine, but as is the case with many of the systems on this list, there is just as much story about what went wrong as what went right.
The Saturn has perhaps the most fascinating story of all the Sega machines. The fact that Sega thought it sensible to develop and release the Saturn and the 32X at the same time is baffling as they are both 32 bit consoles. If it could have been possible it may have been smart to release the standalone Saturn, as well as a cheaper add on version that connected to the Mega Drive if they wanted to capitalise on their pre-existing install base, but having 2 32-bit machines from the same company that weren’t cross compatible was just bizarre as if nothing else the machines would compete against one another. Then when the 32X failed it meant that everyone who had supported the 32X didn’t trust Sega anymore, and this lack of trust also spread to other players who could see that Sega didn’t know what it was doing.
Next up was Sega’s strange choice to announce a release date for the machine in the US and then do a surprise early launch where only some retailers got stock of the machine. This alienated all the other retailers who then often wouldn’t stock the machine at all for the majority of the Saturn’s lifespan.
This move also meant that the Saturn had limited stock, a confused audience who already thought it was coming out at a later date, and also upset developers as the third party developers weren’t told they would release the machine early and so didn’t have games ready for launch….other than this everything went swimmingly.
Or at least it may have done if it weren’t for the Sony Playstation which absolutely dominated the generation. With the Nintendo 64 also later on the market, the Saturn ended it’s run in the generation early by around 1998. And whilst all of this sounds bad, it doesn’t change that if you were a Saturn owner there were some great games and that it was a real shame that the machine didn’t do better.
Those who had a Saturn were able to enjoy classic Sega games like Virtua Fighter 1, 2, Remix and Kids, Daytona USA, The House of the Dead, Virtua Cop 1 and 2, Fighters Mega Mix, Panzer Dragoon 1, 2 and Saga, NiGHTS Into Dreams, Deep Fear, Burning Rangers and Sonic R.
Third party games included a slew of Capcom 2D fighting games, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Fifa, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D and Croc.
Whilst there were plenty for Saturn fans to play, there were some huge gaps on the third party fornt. Playstation owners got multiple sequels to Resident Evil and Tomb Raider where as Saturn owners did not, Final Fantasy 7 was huge for the Playstation but Square didn’t support the Saturn and Sega just didn’t get the third party exclusives to match this.
On the first party front Sega did have all of the aforementioned great games like arcade ports of the Virtua Fighter, Daytona, Virtua Cop and others like Sega Rally, but as good as these were they were not known franchises before the era of the Saturn. It would have been so easy for Sega to get the ball rolling with sequels to the biggest Mega Drive games, but franchises like Streets of Rage, Ecco the Dolphin, Toe Jam and Earl, Phantasy Star and more just didn’t get follow ups in the 32-bit generation.
The biggest gap for them was on the Sonic the Hedgehog front, as whilst Nintendo put their strongest warrior Mario to hard work on the N64 with appearances in many games, Sega really fumbled things with Sonic.
Planned games like Sonic The Fighters and Sonic Xtreme never saw the light of day on Saturn (and in the case of Xtreme – never saw the light day ever) and not having a Sonic game to entice Genesis owners at launch may have been their biggest error which was completely within Sega’s own control. We did eventually get a slightly upgraded port of Sonic 3D, and the Sonic Jam collection which were all of the major 16-bit sonic games, but we didn’t get the 3D adventure until Sonic Adventure on Dreamcast. The closest we did get was the much overlooked Sonic R, which is the on foot Mario Kart style Sonic racing game. This is one of the best looking games on Saturn and is really fun, but with only 4 or 5 tracks in the game it is very short compared to the like of Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing.
The Saturn was a great machine with great games, but as I said at the start of this section, it also has the most fascinating story of success and failure of all the Sega machines. With only a couple more to go through let’s look at Sega’s biggest hit next…
