I love my Sega Saturn

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