That's an interesting perspective. From what I've seen, among the Western 3rd party publishers, there are a bunch that I'd never heard of before or since. Like THQ's imprint "Kokopeli" publishing In the Hunt. Or other publishing arrangements that I wouldn't necessarily expect - like Acclaim publishing Darius Gaiden instead of Taito publishing it themselves. In hindsight, maybe Sega of America should have taken on more third party titles to publish themselves, like they did back in the Master System days. The Japanese Saturn library is one of the finest console libraries in gaming history... it's a shame more of those games weren't brought to the West.
The sudden, poorly explained "test marketing" blunder of E3 1995 made by Tom Kalinske hurt Sega of America's 3rd party relations. Kalinske did not properly explain that the Saturn "was not launching this weekend" but rather undergoing a test market prior to its September 2nd rollout. Kalinske's poor context made consumers and 3rd party publishers think the console was being rushed to the market and launched 4 months ahead of time. The publishers also had not been sought out by Sega of America for Saturn support until February of 1995. SEGA of America could have and SHOULD have spent
1994 on helping Sega of Japan win 3rd party support with Saturn while sticking to Genesis and Sega CD. They wasted that entire year on 32X. See how much of a complete misstep 32X really was?
The reason why it was difficult for Sega of America to get 3rd party support is because they waited too late to start sending out SDKs.
Sega of America's late entry into Saturn support is also why Sonic Xtreme got cancelled. Xtreme had started development as the very first from the ground up Mars/32X project back during September 1993. STI had spent 2 years developing the game as a 32X exclusive. When it was moved to Saturn in March 1995, STI found themselves between a rock and a hard place. They had NO clue how to program the Saturn because SOA NEVER properly trained them. To move the project over to Saturn, STI simply extracted the 32X engine onto Saturn's Assembly Middleware. Basically porting the whole 32X made game to Saturn instead of working from the ground up on Saturn's hardware.
Since STI didn't know how to code and properly program the Saturn to port from other hardware, they attempted to retool the project from the ground up on Saturn. This is where the Nights engine debacle came. Naka didn't like Xtreme(he personally was offended that STI didn't want to use Amy and instead created this Sally knockoff Tiara).Because he wouldn't allow the engine to be used, STI asked Peter Morewic, an engineer at STI who had undergone 3 months of training to properly utilize Saturn's development kit for help. He had little interest in Xtreme and since he had gotten skilled at Saturn programming he actually surprised them with the news that he had come up with his OWN Sonic Saturn game prototype "Sonic Pool" which was a full 3D game that utilized Saturn's 3D capabilities. He immediately asked for help in it and wanted STI to get fully involved with it. They declined. Because they were so focused on completing Xtreme, STI was pretty much disbanded by May 1996. Morewic tried to convinced its leftover programmers Mike Wallis and Chris Senn that Xtreme was doomed and that the Sonic Pool project was worth pursuing. But they didn't listen. In September 1996, Wallis threw in the towel and ordered Xtreme to be cancelled. Stolar's idea was both stupid and probably intentional: Port Sonic 3D Blast to Saturn. An already awful,slow, and boring gimmicky Genesis title to Saturn.
They should have listened to Morewic.
The Saturn really is a tragedy in the West. So much wasted potential. Think about what could have been, had SOA BOTHERED or CARED to support it from the very beginning.
