Sega Saturn turns 30 years old in North America

The year is 1995. Movies such as Billy Madison, Bad Boys, Desperado, Jumanji, and Toy Story hit theaters. TV shows like Fraisier, Babylon 5, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Earthworm Jim cartoon, and the Street Fighter and Darkstalkers cartoons premiered on TV. Anime such as Saint Tail, Slayers, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, and Virtua Fighter premiered in Japan and Ghost In The Shell premiered in Japanese and UK theaters. Songs like “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio, “Fantasy” by Mariah Carey, “Waterfalls” by TLC, “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” by Smashing Pumpkins, and everyone’s favorite holiday song that they never get sick of hearing after midnight every November 1st: “All I Want For Christmas Is You” also by Mariah Carey, topped the charts. Video games like Chrono Trigger, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest, Command & Conquer, Rayman, and Time Crisis came out. Sega released Genesis games like Beyond Oasis, Comix Zone, and Garfield: Caught In The Act and arcade games like Virtua Cop 2, Fighting Vipers, and Cool Riders. We were also 5 years away from entering the 21st century. We’d come a long way, but were we ready for the future?

Sega Saturn released on this day in North America three long decades ago, but as many of us know, it wasn’t originally supposed to be this day. It was originally decided to launch the console in September of 1995, but Sega of America surprised everyone by moving the launch up to May, a costly mistake that kneecapped the Saturn at the starting line. Even so, Saturn goes down in history as a beloved 32-bit system with some impressive games that stood the test of time, such as the Panzer Dragoon series, NiGHTS Into Dreams, Sonic R, Mr. Bones, Guardian Heroes, Burning Rangers, Fighters Megamix, and ports of incredible arcade games like Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Cop 1 & 2, Fighting Vipers, Sega Rally Championship, and The House of the Dead. Saturn went woefully unappreciated all around the world other than Japan, however, and sold somewhere between 9 and 17 million consoles worldwide, putting it third place behind the competition of the time, but that doesn’t mean we have nothing to celebrate today.

Join us, if you will, beyond the break for a look back on the Saturn’s history and its impact on the gaming world today.

While the Saturn had launched the previous year in Japan, the Tom Kalinske-led Sega of America had opted to launch Saturn here on September 2nd, 1995, which they had dubbed “Saturnday” (And was indeed on a Saturday). This was done to insure that plenty of Saturn consoles and a healthy lineup of games would be ready on launch day. Sega of Japan, however, infamously insisted that Sega of America launch it much sooner, as the Sony PlayStation was set to launch in NA later that same month and they believed the head start would give them an advantage. Sega of America set up a surprise early retail launch to be announced at the very first E3 show on this day way back then, but it backfired spectacularly. Sega had only a handful of games ready and very little consoles produced, they had failed to give most retailers advance notice or stock of consoles and games, and worst of all, Sony famously countered their announcement with just the words “Two Ninty-nine”, in reference to the Sony PlayStation’s launch price, a full $100 USD cheaper than the Saturn. It’s a sad story that capped off the Saturn’s time in America and will forever stick with the console, and that’s not even the end of it. Sega would go on to make almost all the opposite moves as they prepared the launch of the Dreamcast years later because of how this strategy failed the Saturn.

While Saturn spent the few years of its life in a hopeless battle of catchup with the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation, Sega still made sure to bring the best games they could, at least in some cases. The games mentioned above like Panzer Dragoon and NiGHTS Into Dreams impressed critics and consumers alike, but Sega’s golden goose, Sonic the Hedgehog, took an unusually long time to get to Saturn, and when he finally did, it wasn’t the triumphant splash that it should’ve been. The three Sonic games that did end up on the console are still well liked and memorable entries in Sonic history, but Sega’s failure to prepare an original Sonic platforming adventure did the Saturn no favors. Again, this would be a mistake they’d move Heaven and Earth to correct with the Dreamcast, making sure Sonic Adventure would be there day one in NA. Funnily enough, Sonic Adventure was originally developed to be a Saturn game, though late enough in the Saturn’s life that moving it to Dreamcast ended up being a sensible decision.

For what its worth, Sega made the Saturn to be a technically impressive piece of tech for its time. As a 32-bit console leveraging CD-Rom technology, Sega made sure to stay ahead of the curve, especially as Nintendo stuck to increasingly-expensive cartridges at the cost of much needed third-party publisher support. The decision to use two 32-bit Hitachi SH2 processors, as they had done with the 32X, was a controversial design decision, but it was done to allow more complex Assembly code to be written and executed at a faster pace. In practice, very few programmers were able to take advantage of this, especially when it came to porting games from other platforms that used more conventional hardware setups. It was also built in such a way to use quads to draw 3D shapes, which worked well for 2D sprites, but was less practical for 3D, especially as it was the only home console that ever did this. Nowadays, we have better understanding of how to use these unconventional features, even if it’s unnecessary with any hardware available today.

If you’re curious about how to optimally program for this setup, former-Traveler’s Tales programmer Jon Burton, who worked on Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic R and was one of the few western developers able to wrap his head around the Saturn’s architecture, made these helpful videos breaking it down, as well as some of its practical use in Sonic R.

What’s less well known about the Saturn was how it pioneered console internet gaming. People often attribute the Dreamcast for making big strides in this field, but Dreamcast was not the first console to have internet functionality. It was only the first console equipped out of the box to connect to the internet. The Saturn did not have a modem built into it like Dreamcast, but a Saturn modem called the Netlink was released later on that included a mouse, keyboard, and internet browser, and enabled online multiplayer with any of five compatible games. Sega released special Netlink enabled versions of Daytona USA Special Championship Circuit, Cyber Troopers Virtual-On, and Sega Rally Championship, while Duke Nukem 3D and Saturn Bomberman had Netlink multiplayer functionality built-in, a feature many owners of the latter two games probably didn’t even know was there for a long time. Japan also had its own Saturn Modem available separately with all the same features and a wider variety of compatible games. Saturn essentially came the closest of any console until Dreamcast to having all the internet functionality that any computer had. Sega had also put together a prototype model of a Saturn with the Netlink modem built into it called the Pluto, but this was never released to retail. However, at least two fully functional prototypes of the Pluto exist in the wild and are often displayed at retro video game conventions.

The only country in the world where the Saturn saw any real success was its home country of Japan. There, Saturn’s story played out opposite of how it did everywhere else. It came out in first place against the Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo 64 and had a much larger number of games, which kept coming up until December 2000, just one month before Sega’s announcement that they were leaving the console race behind them. Because of that, many of its most notable games were exclusive to the country, including Sega’s own Sakura Wars series, which remained Japan exclusive aside from just two games from long after the Saturn’s time. Those Japanese games, as well as Japanese versions of games also available internationally, have gone on to be hot collectors items and fan translations of many Japanese games continue to be worked on constantly.

Japan also had an original mascot to represent the console there. This being Segata Sanshiro, the commanding Judo master played by Japanese actor Hiroshi Fujioka. He’d appear in a series of hilarious TV commercials in which he’d beat people up while commanding them to play Sega Saturn, go on dates with Sakura Wars protagonist Sakura Shinguji, and ultimately sacrifice his life to rescue Sega of Japan from a missile launched by a cartoonishly evil parody of Sony.

Segata Sanshiro would also make a brief cameo appearance in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. If you’re in the lead at the start of the third lap on Race of Ages, pay attention and you’ll see him latched onto that same missile flying by at the starting line.

Unlike Sega’s other consoles, the Saturn didn’t have much of a homebrew history thanks to its notoriously difficult development environment. However, that didn’t stop plucky developers who love the Saturn, maybe even more than we do, from doing what they could with the hardware. Now because of their efforts, its future as a homebrew haven looks bright. Homebrew developers have put together all new development tools so advanced and so efficient that developers who worked on Saturn games in the 90’s probably wish they had these tools back then. Even before those tools came to be, people have managed to create some truly impressive tech demos for the console. For years, the SegaXtreme forum community hosts an annual Saturn homebrew competition, with the winners of this year’s winners set to be revealed on May 17th. Before long, people are going to be able to make some incredible games for Saturn, and when they do, you can bet your bottom dollar we here at SegaBits will be there to tell you all about it, as we have done in a few cases.

If you’re a homebrew developer yourself working on something way past cool for the Saturn, or any other Sega console, for that matter, feel free to let us know and we’ll help you pass the news along. We’ll love to see what you’ve got cooking and we wish you the best of luck putting it together.

New hardware for Saturn is also aplenty. ODEs to replace a Saturn’s aging disc drive have come along, such as the Fenrir, the Rhea, the Satiator, the SAROO, and the Phøde. A device to allow an ODE to be installed alongside the disc drive and for the two to be switched easily is also being worked on, so you soon won’t even need to replace your disc drive anymore if you didn’t need to. You can also get quality made A/V cables from Retro Gaming Cables UK and Insurrection Industries, as well as HD Retrovision’s component video cables which are sold by Stone Age Gamer and Castlemania Games. While not really hardware in the same sense as video cables or ODEs, replacement longbox CD cases are also currently available at Stone Age Gamer to replace any broken US game cases you may have.

New controllers have also been available from Retro-Bit and officially licensed by Sega for years, with their current dual-joystick equipped Pro controllers being a popular choice at this time. That’s the closest you can get to ordering brand new top quality controllers direct from Sega today. Retro-Bit might also have a new Saturn arcade stick on the way too, but for now, Retro-Bit’s controllers are highly serviceable. We also happen to be running a giveaway for some of their Pro Controllers in partnership with Retro-Bit as of this writing, so go ahead and enter here.

As for re-releases of Saturn games, there’s not much going on there either. Up until December of last year, Sega did have a pretty nice HD remaster of NiGHTS Into Dreams available on Steam, Xbox, and PS3, but if you didn’t get it before then, then we’re sorry to say you have no way of buying it now. Hopefully sometime soon, Sega will work out new re-releases of their own Saturn classics like NiGHTS. We know the Sega Ages development team at M2 really wants to make it happen.

EDIT: Apparently, NiGHTS Into Dreams is still available on PS3, so if you have one, you’re still free to buy it there. Keep in mind the PS3’s PlayStation Store can now only be accessed directly from a PS3 and funds can only be added from the browser store or from a PS4 or PS5 if you want to buy anything on the PS3 or Vita PlayStation Store.

Publisher City Connection have also put together a series of emulated Saturn games called the S-Tribute series, available on consoles and Steam today, featuring several well known Japanese exclusive games such as Cotton 2, Cotton Boomerang, Elevator Action Returns, Metal Black, and Assault Suit Laynos 2 (We’re actually prepping a review of that last one, so stay tuned for that.) They’re currently preparing releases of a few more niche Japanese Saturn classics right now: Farland Saga 1 and 2, Steam Hearts, and Advanced V.G. (Those last two are a bit too steamy for Xbox, but you’ll be able to get them on anything else.) Beyond City Connection’s efforts, two of Treasure’s classic Saturn games, Guardian Heroes and Radiant Silvergun, are thankfully available on Xbox now, with the latter game also being accessible on Nintendo Switch (Also available physically from Play-Asia) and Steam (Windows only). Occasionally, you’ll see re-releases of games that were on other consoles, but just happened to have Saturn versions as well.

If you’re down to further reminisce about Saturn, you can listen to Barry and George wax on about some of the Saturn’s finest 3D games in their Sega Talk video on the subject. There are several other Sega Talk videos about different Saturn games that you can listen to as well. If you got a Saturn, then I can think of no better time to fire it up and enjoy a trip down memory lane or discover a Saturn gem you may never have played before.

Were you there to see the Saturn launch in North America? Did you own a Saturn back in those days? Are you a younger gamer only now discovering the Saturn? What are your favorite games and memories of the console? Let us know in the comments below. And remember, it’s how you play the game.

(Also, remember to tell your mom Happy Mother’s Day, especially if she bought you a Saturn or enjoyed some Saturn game time with you.)

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