I love my Sega Saturn

Retr0gamer

Any other Sega Saturn fans around? It's my favourite retro console that I own.

I always wanted a Saturn over a PS1. That was until I played Resident Evil. However I always felt I was missing out not owning one. I used to read about all the excellent Capcom and Sega arcade conversions in the multiformat magazines and of course all those brilliant and wacky japanese imports that never got a western release. I'm a huge shmup fan so always wanted to play Radiant Silvergun. However it wasn't until I played the xboxes magnum opus, Panzer Dragoon Orta, (no, not Halo you videogame chav ), that I decided I really needed a Sega Saturn. I was so intrigued by the panzer dragoon universe that I just had to know what happened before Orta. I needed to play Panzer Dragoon Saga.

So rendered stupid by the money I was making during a summer job I went ahead and purchased a modified japanese V-Saturn withan action replay 4-in-1 (allowing you to play games from any region). I arrived a week later and I plugged it up for some radiant silvergun to find my stupid black diamond TV only displayed 60Hz in black and white. Anyway thats another story.

So I've been the proud owner of the Saturn for 2 and a half years now and I've never looked back. I've had absolutely no trouble at all with it. Unlike early PS1's with the plastic disc drives that would fail after a year (the ghost of which returned to haunt the cheap PS2 disc drives) the Sega Saturn is a well built and durable console. The only time I've heard of disc drives fail are from people with launch models that used them rigorously for over 10 years. There's also no messing about with those evil, corpoate exercises, memory cards, the saturn has it's own battery backed up memory (although the battery needs replacing every 2-3 years).

The Saturn is contains both technical genius and technical stupidity. First the genius. The battery backed up memory has already been mentioned but there is also the cartridge slot that could be used to expand the RAM of the saturn with an extra 1MB or 4MB. This made it possible for some faithful ports of Capcom and NEO GEO arcade games that were always better than the inferior PS1 ports. At the end of it's life the saturn received a modem plug in that allowed games like Sega Rally and Duke Nukem to be played online. The Saturn also had much more video ram than the PS1 and coupled with greater processing power it made the Saturn a 2D powerhouse compared to it's rival.

And now the madness. Despite having greater processing power and video ram than the PS1 Sega choose to do all the 3D routines through software while on the PS1 it was done through hardware acceleration which was much more effecient and was the way the industry was headed. Some people believe the second processor was added to the saturn as a desperate attempt to match the PS1 but the dual processor was just a natural progression from segas own arcade dual processor boards. However very few people outside Sega had experience with dual processors. It was also notoriously difficult to use both processors at the same time due to parallelism issues (which funnily enough are still cropping up today with multi-core processors of the xbox 360 and PS3). Many developers didn't fully utilise the dual processors and some only used one. Another big mistake was that the saturn built up 3D in quadrilaterals. Most development tools were based on the industry standard of triangles and Sega lost many developers due to this. It did however make the saturn a better 2D machine.

I think that the saturns flaws make it a far more interesting machine. In the same way that I was fascinated by teams like Treasure and their ability to pull off Mode 7 type effects on the lowly Megadrive, it's great seeing transparent polygons and coloured lighting on the saturn. Despite the 3D games just looking plain ugly compared to the PS1 there were games when the saturn did things that I haven't seen on any 32-bit console, such as the malleable world in Nights. The morphing effect in Panzer Dragoon Saga is still unique and just as stunning. Here's a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qgDpPju8JQ

If you are thinking of getting a saturn, get a NTSC model. A PAL model will display all games in 50Hz with borders while a NTSC machine displays all games at 60Hz in fullscreen. The only problems with this are the Sega PAL games since a proper fullscreen conversion was carried out on these and some of the screen gets cut off.

Now on to the important part, the games. The Saturn isn't a machine for casual gamers. The saturns best games are all RPGs, or arcade shmups, racing games and beat'em ups. This does make the saturn a great console for pick up and play games. You will also need a console capable of playing japanese games to get the most out of it (action replay 4-in-1 is essential) since very few of the saturns best games made it to the west. There is a veritable treasure trove of classic japanese saturn games that most gamers will not have heard of before. Most arcade games will have menus in english or are easy to navigate in japanese anyway.

The saturn had many RPGs released for it but thanks to a stupid policy imposed by Sega of America the majority did not make it to western shores. Supposedly us westerners were not interested in japanese style games and RPGs, which went a long way to explain the financial failure of Final Fantasy VII in 1997 :rolleyes: . Thankfully the wonderful people at Working Design translated and released some choice examples of the genre such as Dragon Force and there are fan translations online of games such as Wachenrodder, Princess Crown and Shining Force eps 2 + 3.

So here's a list of some unmissable Sega Saturn games and a few oddities:

Panzer Dragoon Saga: Magnificent RPG. Excellent storyline, looks gorgeous (for a saturn game) and a soundtrack to die for. Currently at the number one spot in my best games ever.

Radiant Silvergun: A smidgen overrated but no less superb shmup from Treasure. Looks gorgeous and toughas nails, just like all the best in the genre.

Nights into Dreams: Totally unique and totally brilliant. An absolute joy to play. It's short but you will play it multiple times to beat your score.

Panzer Dragoon Zwei: Great on the rails shooter in the vain of Starfox.

Shining Force 3 eps 1-3: The last true shining force game. A must have for fans of Strategy RPGs.

Quake: The PC version is of course better but as a showcase of what the saturn could do when pushed it can't be beaten. Better than the N64 conversion.

Cho Aniki: Kyuukyoku Muteki Ginga Saikyou Otoko: If only to experience the gayest game ever.

Wachenrodder: Another great Strategy RPG.

Dragon Force: Supposedly amazing but without a manual I can't make out what the hell I'm meant to be doing.

Layer Section: Stunning shmup from Taito. Probably the best looking 2D game ever. All the Taito F3 board games are converted perfectly to the saturn and before the excellent Taito Legends compilations the saturn was the best way to play them. Bubble Symphony is also rather ace.

Soukyugurentai: Wonderful Shmup that is equal parts manic, bastard hard and stupidly brilliant. It's an STV board game and isn't emulated properly yet so just like radiant silvergun the best way is to enjoy the arcade perfect saturn conversion.

Sega Rally: The best way to play it outside a dodgy arcade circa 1995.

I've left loads of games out. Saturn games can be expensive but they are basically all abandonware now so get yourself a chipped saturn. There's a massive Saturn community on the intraweb. There are also some bargains to be found, I managed to pick up an unboxed panzer dragoon saga for 20 notes.

Sorry for waffling

tuxy

I also have a saturn and still play it sometimes. Myself and a friend got one when it was about a year old. Good console, shame it was so difficult to program games for it. I've played over half the games you listed. Virtua fighter 2 and the capcom beat'em ups were also very good. Sonic r was fun.
What more can i say that you havn't covered

Lorax

The golden axe beat-em-up for it is really good

CiDeRmAn

Still love my Saturn, that analog controller was so ahead of its time, much closer to the analog controllers of today than the N64 controller ever was.
Love Burning Rangers, Nights, Sega Rally, Daytona, Virtua Racing and the Panzer Dragoon games.
Also enjoyed Sonic R and Sonic Jam for my sins!
Fighters Megamix was pretty nice to and I still enjoy the occasional blast of Quake, if you own this you have to buy DukeNukem and so play the greatest of all Saturn games, DEATHTANK!!!!!!
Must power it up again, Virtua Cop and House of the Dead are long due a replay.

Retr0gamer

Lorax wrote:

The golden axe beat-em-up for it is really good

I think it's a bad Samurai Showdown clone.

johnny_ultimate

Never owned one but have been dying to play NIGHTS lately. Anyone know of any compilations with it?

Retr0gamer

Nope. Your only hope is to buy a saturn. You could play it through emulation but I'm not sure how good saturn emulation is at the moment. I gave up years ago on it because of how bad it was.

There aren't any compilations of saturn games because of how unique a concole it was. The dual processors and use of quadrilaterals makes it a very tough console to emulate. Any ports I've seen are just the PC versions that were made from the ground up.

LoGiE

I have many fond memories of kicking ass in VF and playing NiGHTS. I also have a vague memory of playing a Space Hulk game but it could be just my imagination. It's such a same this console wasn't a massive commercial success but as you've mentioned it was a nightmare to develop games on. In case anyone was wondering Saturn emulation is quite good now if you can get hold of
GiriGiri/Cassini (XP hack version) or Satourne is another good one.

0ubliette

I used to work in a tesco a few years ago, and we had a massive stock of real old computers in our loft. I managed to get a saturn still boxed and unopened with a rakeload of games for free! Had Virtua fighter kids, NiGHTS, daytona usa or something, and a few demo discs. To be honest i didnt really enjoy it and sold it about a year later!
I also got a boxed, unopened, shrink wrapped SNES out of there too. And an amiga 600. And a boxed mega drive 2 haha..moral of the story: if you want retro, go to tescos!

um7y1h83ge06nx

0ubliette wrote:

I used to work in a tesco a few years ago, and we had a massive stock of real old computers in our loft. I managed to get a saturn still boxed and unopened with a rakeload of games for free! Had Virtua fighter kids, NiGHTS, daytona usa or something, and a few demo discs. To be honest i didnt really enjoy it and sold it about a year later!
I also got a boxed, unopened, shrink wrapped SNES out of there too. And an amiga 600. And a boxed mega drive 2 haha..moral of the story: if you want retro, go to tescos!

I think this post deserves a big "You lucky S.O.B!!" response!

brianon

Have a modified jap saturn. Put it up in the attic a few months back. Will take it down now though

Does anyone know if it is possible to play saturn games on a PC Monitor ?

spyder238

had a saturn a good few years ago with loads of accessories and games and ended up selling it for half nothing, oh how young i was, now i've bought one off ebay and waiting for it to arrive, coming with 1 controller 1 game and 1 gun, love this console and still cant remember why i sold it

admiralofthefleet

i loved it and still play it the odd time, i only had 2 games for it, theme park and sim city 2000 and only bought it to play those games in their full version as i had played the scaled down versions on the snes. does anyone remember that theme park on the snes had no game save!. i was talking to the bloke who owns gamezone in talbot street in dublin and he was saying they are going for between €150 & €200 now. i might buy another one as the controller is broke

redmosquito

Man, I love my saturn, possibly my favourite console ever. It brings back so many memories of the mid to late 90's playing it in my friends nightly (I didnt own mine till i think it was early 2005)!!

Some of the simplest and most fun games ever, especially arcade ports and some absolute genius games!

I really would love to own the japanese white 'flash' saturn!

damiennolan

My brother used to own a Saturn but sold it off to pay for his Dreamcast. Its always been a big regret.

Anyway, I just ordered a Saturn off the net, fully modified with a 50/60hz switch, region switch and modchip. Can't wait til it arrives!!

LoGiE

damiennolan wrote:

My brother used to own a Saturn but sold it off to pay for his Dreamcast. Its always been a big regret.

Anyway, I just ordered a Saturn off the net, fully modified with a 50/60hz switch, region switch and modchip. Can't wait til it arrives!!

Were did you buy from? ebay?

RichyX

Still my fav console.
It was like a golden age of gaming for me.

Panzer Saga, Nights, Shining Force III, Burning Rangers, Sega Rally etc are still fantastic games to this day.
Still have every game I ever bought for it, and that's a lot since Game were doing 2 for £15 back in the day

My saturn has a bit of an issue with it's av connection so might pick another one up second hand if I spot any.

damiennolan

LoGiE wrote:

Were did you buy from? ebay?

LoGiE, PM sent

97i9y3941

have a saturn myself,love it,have some collectable games like street fighter zero 3,marvel super heroes,marvel super heroes vs xmen,king of fighters 95,cyberbots with its limited edition packageing,radiant silvergun,yes belive the hype radiant is defo brillant

appleidog

Radiant silvergun please. In the hunt is alot better, but anyway i like the saturn aswell, for games like in the hunt, Kieo flying squadron 2, discworld 1 and 2 im not going to mention the blatently obvious stuff like capcom/snk stuff because that is all what anybody talks about when the saturn is mentioned.


*EDIT*
And why was this ressurected its more then 1 1/2 years old.

97i9y3941

cause i recently joined lol,you pay a pretty penny for radiant on ebay

CCCP^

I really like House of the Dead on the Saturn, it wocks!

97i9y3941

if anyone has a pal/uk copy of that game,hang on to it,it seems to command a fair amount on ebay,just because its rare

Ostrom

Love mine too!

Recently picked up virtual on for under a tenner. By the way if anyone has a copy of burning rangers for sale...

Also sonic jam, if only for the archive of japanese tv adverts. And the original sonic CD intro. Toot toot sonic warrior!!!!!!

dlofnep

Virtua Fighter 2, Sega Rally & Panzer Dragoon!

97i9y3941

sonic jam is intresting,must be the only sonic that hasnt made onto any other compilation,maybe cause the saturn was too hard to program,alot of reasons why some sat games didnt get ported over to modern consoles

Ostrom

Sonic mega collection and gems made it to ps2 et al?

The mini-game was fun though, appearanty a demo engine for a saturn sonic that never was

97i9y3941

yes thats correct,all the sonic games,but the main thing "sonic world" hasnt been ported yet,indeed it was a test ground to see sonic work in 3d,sonic 3d blast was intresting aswell,the pc and ps2 ports are just the megadrive version,however the saturn version is slighty different,it has a f#!kin brillant bonus stage,have a look here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsED4AOAE68&feature=related

Ostrom

I forgot about that! Saturn is at home, was just on watching all the old videos on youtube. The japanese sonic 2 ad was our cult favourite - the sonnnniiiiiic funky actionnnnnn one!

edit - sorry that was sonic spinball

97i9y3941

im a saturn and a retro gamer fan so please to meet all of ye lol

CCCP^

Fred83 wrote: »

if anyone has a pal/uk copy of that game,hang on to it,it seems to command a fair amount on ebay,just because its rare

HotD? I just looked it up on Ebay. Ridicolous prices. Mostly from 'stores' - the rip off merchants of Ebay. The game goes from 15 dollars up to 125 dollars. It's stupid.

97i9y3941

i think its to do with collectors sake aswell,one game defo springs to mind is panzer dragoon saga,you can pick up the jap version fairly cheap but for the uk/usa version it goes for €100 plus because it was released in small quantitys,another game for collectors is
Akumajou Dracula X on the saturn,it has couple of nice extra features compare to the psone version(which was symphony of the night)

saturn review here

http://www.gamespot.com/saturn/rpg/dracula10/review.html

RichyX

Fred83 wrote: »

if anyone has a pal/uk copy of that game,hang on to it,it seems to command a fair amount on ebay,just because its rare

I considered selling that a few years back.
Assumed it wouldn't be worth much, it was top of the Saturn sales charts on release, although that doesn't count for much!

97i9y3941

have a nice saturn collection myself,i took advantage of the time when the dollar was weak against the euro so i got some games really cheap off ebay,i still have them

appleidog

Sonic jam is the best sonic compilation because they took time and care with it, very very good compilation with different difficulties and sonic 1 spindash, fantastic compilation.

And welcome to retro forum. The saturn is definatly a nice piece of hardware.

though symphony of the night is much better on ps1, the same goes for unfortunatly In the hunt aswell it was more arcade like but suffered because of it with some unfortunate slowdowns.


And house of the dead is uncommon not exactly rare. Discworld 2 now that is rare, Love that game excellent port for the saturn truly outstanding,

ANd another alltime saturn classic is Guardian hereos great game lots of fun like Streets of rage and guilty gear on crack great fun.

And the original Resident evil is very good on saturn, and Tomb raider is better on Saturn due to it was designed for the machine first very good games, those 2 with Resident evil getting its own Mini game.

97i9y3941

have guardian heroes too,excellent,intresting thing about in the hunt is,some versions of the game wont work on what model saturn you have,i have a pal version of the game but sometimes i have to reset and reset again to try get it going,metal slug is another worthy mention

appleidog

In the hunt won't work if it is japanese not on a japanese system, everything else would work fine. I have all copies of in the hunt bar the pcb which im aqquiring, In the hunt on ps1,pc offical wins 95,saturn.

Metal slug is a good game on saturn, especially since it is a music cd of the game aswell. oh speaking of which if you have kof 95 on saturn put it in as a music cd and play the last track and you hear the neo geo startup song, du du du du du du du du. pretty crazy stuff.

97i9y3941

the kof series on the saturn was excellent,the fatal fury series was the same too,and ohh megaman/street fighter series

Ostrom

appleidog wrote: »

though symphony of the night is much better on ps1, the same goes for unfortunatly In the hunt aswell it was more arcade like but suffered because of it with some unfortunate slowdowns

I remember in the glory days of CVG (terribly missed...) when they awarded the saturn version of Street fighter zero 3 a high five (one more than the playstation) because of the ram cart.

Then again Ed Lomas was always a sega fanboy (anyone remember this....??)

I did put on tomb raider again and they still havent come close to it, the level design, the well placed ambient sounds and music. Quake still plays great on it

97i9y3941

street fighter zero 3 was well deserved,i have it too and man it is fantastic,it has some little cool touches that was missing out of the ps2 anthology,one such feature is world tour mode,which has a little story line included,quake on the saturn is out standing port

CCCP^

Do you really need the RAM cart to get the most out of Saturn games? I remeber I had Alone in the Dark: Jack is Back on the Saturn and the framerate was woeful. Bit of a pisser, kind of like the deal with N64's and the expansion pak. What was that expansion slot on the end of the Saturn used for, apart from more RAMs.

97i9y3941

ram pack was useful,the idea of it aswell was,to load the some of the animation/data into the cart which allowed more arcade perfect games,also it cut down on loading times,one place where i defintantly noticed it was playing samurai shodown 3 on the psone,if anyone who was unlucky enough to play it on the psone would notice how bad the loading was,then i played the saturn version *japan only release* and it was quicker to load thanx to the ram cart,small few games took advantage of the ram cart option

Retr0gamer

Really did not like the Saturn port of Symphony of the Night. The slowdown was horrendous. Loads of the Playstations transparency and bloom effects were missing or replaced with terrible looking dithered ones.

AS for Panzer Dragoon Saga costing far more for as a western release than the japanese version well it's fairly understandable. The story of PDS is wonderful and you'll never experience it without a good knowledge of japanese. Also It's hard to come by because not only is it rare but it's probably the greatest game ever made so most people aren't willing to part with it.

Radiant Silvergun is indeed superb but I rarely hear much mention about Soukyugurentai which for me is just as good. Anyone that liked radiant silvergun needs to check that game out.

97i9y3941

agree with u retro about castlevania,it kinda embrassed the saturn too,showing it coundnt do some effects the psone could do,as for souky yes i have that game too

97i9y3941

and of course who could not forget thunderforce V,i played that game to death

Retr0gamer

Not a fan of Thunderforce V. Thought it was really quite boring and far too easy, I beat it on normal on my first go. Still better than the PS1 version.

It wasn't embarassing that the saturn couldn't handle the effects in SotN that the PS1 could. It could easily have done them. The saturn have problems with transparencies in 3D games and could easily do them in 2D. There should have been no slowdown either considering the saturn used it's ram better than the PS1 and was a 2D powerhouse. Whats really strange is that some really complicated transparency effects like the reflective polygonal lava are present in the saturn version and look great but the really simple effects aren't present. Just look at the amount of transparencies and sprites soukyugurentai pumps out compared to how SotN slowing down.

appleidog

Fred83 wrote: »

street fighter zero 3 was well deserved,i have it too and man it is fantastic,it has some little cool touches that was missing out of the ps2 anthology,one such feature is world tour mode,which has a little story line included,quake on the saturn is out standing port

alpha 3 on saturn is the best version there is better then,noami,dreamcast,ps2 ect....

CCCP^ wrote: »

Do you really need the RAM cart to getthe most out of Saturn games? I remeber I had Alone in the Dark: Jack is Back on the Saturn and the framerate was woeful. Bit of a pisser, kind of like the deal with N64's and the expansion pak. What was that expansion slot on the end of the Saturn used for, apart from more RAMs.

Well it all depends on if you like arcade games or not because if you don't then there really isn't any use of getting one there are still fantastic Saturn pal games out there aswell as alot of non ramcart games.
To be honest ALone in the dark was woefull anyway compared to resident evil.


It was also used as a rom cart for Kof 95 and memory card and cart for the internet.

efla wrote: »

I remember in the glory days of CVG (terribly missed...) when they awarded the saturn version of Street fighter zero 3 a high five (one more than the playstation) because of the ram cart.

It wasn't because of the ram cart the saturn version would of still got 5 stars anyway, the saturn outclassed the ps1 in 2D ten fold. And the reason 4 stars on the ps1 was because they actually started porting the cps2 game to the ps1

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Not a fan of Thunderforce V. Thought it was really quite boring and far too easy, I beat it on normal on my first go. Still better than the PS1 version.

It wasn't embarassing that the saturn couldn't handle the effects in SotN that the PS1 could. It could easily have done them. The saturn have problems with transparencies in 3D games and could easily do them in 2D. There should have been no slowdown either considering the saturn used it's ram better than the PS1 and was a 2D powerhouse. Whats really strange is that some really complicated transparency effects like the reflective polygonal lava are present in the saturn version and look great but the really simple effects aren't present. Just look at the amount of transparencies and sprites soukyugurentai pumps out compared to how SotN slowing down.

it was just plain lazyness on konami's part really just like in the hunt was it could of easily handeld the slowdown.

97i9y3941

saturn was hard to program too,it had 2 cpus,also the 3d chip was added at the very last moment

Retr0gamer

Fred83 wrote: »

saturn was hard to program too,it had 2 cpus,also the 3d chip was added at the very last moment

The saturn was hard to program for 3D games but for 2D it was perfect. Also it didn't have a 3D chip which was it's main problem. The Saturn outclassed the PS1 when you look at the specs but the PS1 had a dedicated 3D chipset which acted like a 3D accelerator you would have in a PC. The hardware accelerated 3D of the PS1 was extraordinarily more efficient than the saturn that had to run everything in software mode. The saturn did everything with brute force CPU calculations while the playstation designated 3D specific processes to a chipset that was streamlined for 3D calculations.

Many people say that the 2nd cpu was added at the last minute but it's absolute bull**** especially considering getting a dual CPU machine even running would have taken months rather than the few weeks that sega supposedly did it in and have denied. Sega had been using dual CPU based systems in their arcade machines since Outrun. Unfortunately Sega were the only company with any experience programming for tricky multiple CPU systems.

It was built primarily as a 2D machine with 3D capability. It's biggest flaw was using Quads to build polygons instead of triangles. You needed more polygons on the saturn to make the same area on the PS1 and triangles were the industry standard with nobody having any experience with a quad based system.

In dual cpu systems both cpu's can't work on the same process. Processes have to be split between CPU's. This isn't so tough with 2D games but with 3D games it can be tricky designating processes, you usually end up with a lot of unused processing power. Sega said that their two most advanced games Virtua Fighter 2 and Panzer Dragoon Saga really only got 80% of the power out of the Saturn. It's actually a problem that is cropping up with the multiple core consoles and PCs that are around today.

appleidog

Look what could be done when skilled companies could get out of the saturn like treasure and capcom, so sure it was hard to program, but still no excuse.

The n64 was hard to program and they come out with games like golden eye,mario 64, wave race, zelda, sin and punishment.

97i9y3941

did you see the prototype for shenmue running on sega saturn,it was amazing,pity it didnt see a release on the saturn itself,virtua fighter 3 would had been intresting aswell