The Sega Saturn: A Retrospective

 

In my basement sits a sealed storage bin that holds my Sega Saturn and all the games I own for it. I really don’t have a reason to come back and play these games ever again. I’ve played them all a countless number of times, I’ve reviewed them all for my blog, and I have hundreds of other games in my backlog that I need to show some love to.

Not only may I never play these games again, I may actually never play my Saturn again, period. It was barely running when I put it into retirement. Last time I played it, I had to stack books on top of it because the lid wouldn’t stop popping open. Who knows if it will still be working in ten years, or however long it is before I decide to drag it back out and play it again? I’m sure I’m going to want to show this system to my son Channing at some point, but I have to brace myself for the idea that this may not be possible. My Saturn's playing days may be over.

Since the Saturn is the first system I own that I’ve officially “retired”, I’ve decided to take a little look back at the system that had such a big influence on me when I was a kid.

The 16-bit era was coming to an end and there were three new systems on the horizon: the Nintendo 64, the Sega Saturn, and the Sony PlayStation. My family had sided with Sega and its Genesis during the great 16-bit war. Back then I viewed Nintendo as an enemy. I certainly wouldn’t be buying a Nintendo 64. PlayStation? Sony made TVs and VCRs. What did they know about video games? My mind was set. I was going to get a Sega Saturn. Duh.

The Saturn came out in 1995, launching without any kind of 3D Sonic title. This was a disappointment to me, but I was certain it was only a matter of time before one was going to be released. Sega would never drop the ball like that. I wasn’t worried.

Even though I had been so excited to get a Sega Saturn, I didn’t have quite enough money saved up for it, so I decided to wait. The first time the price dropped, I was going to run out and buy one. But man, was that such a torturous wait. I decided in the meantime I would use a coupon I found in a video game magazine to rent an entire system from Blockbuster Video. Yup, back in the day you could rent entire video game systems from Blockbuster. My coupon was only supposed to be for five dollars off the system and two games of my choice, but the cashier misread it as if the whole rental itself would be just five dollars, both games included. I paid five bucks for an entire weekend of Bug! and Virtua Fighter. It was glorious.

I spent most of that weekend playing Bug! I liked Virtua Fighter and all, but I found it a bit too basic and boring for my tastes. Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter it was not. Bug!, however, I was fascinated by. It was a 2D side-scrolling game with some 3D elements. Instead of just going left or right, you could go up and down and take different paths through each level. To me this was absolutely groundbreaking. Each level was like a giant maze, filled with collectible items. I OBSESSED over this game, exploring every path and trying to collect as much as I possibly could. Not only was I having a blast playing the game, I was blown away by its graphics and its sense of humor. Bug! was the greatest video game I had ever played. It’s kind of laughable to think about in retrospect, but at the time it was 100% true in my mind.

I was never able to beat Bug! as I found the game to be quite difficult. I remember being so sad when I had to return that Saturn. I just wanted to play more and more and more Bug! until I couldn’t play it anymore. The Sega Saturn couldn’t drop in price fast enough.

Eventually, though, it did. I don’t know if it was a few months, a year, or what – but it did. And I rushed out and got one. I remember the day very specifically. My dad and my stepmother had told me they would give me fifty bucks if I stayed in my brother’s room for a week so his girlfriend could crash in my bedroom. She had gotten kicked out of her house and had nowhere else to go, so they had agreed to let her stay with us for a week. Understandably, they didn’t want her sleeping in my brother’s room. Hence: the fifty dollars. I gladly accepted the fifty dollars as I knew it was going to finally give me enough money to buy a Saturn. I’d been saving allowance money and gift money for months. I finally had enough.

After the week was up, I moved back into my room and immediately asked my parents to take me to Best Buy to get a Saturn. While we were out and about, they bought me a used TV for my room to replace the piece of crap I had in there. It was a major win! I even had enough money to buy an extra game along with my Saturn. It wasn’t Bug!, but it was a shooter called Solar Eclipse. I’d seen ads for it in video game magazines, and I’d seen how it had used real footage of actors to tell its story, like a movie. That enough was enough to convince me to get the game. At this point in my life, the most advanced games I’d played were for the NES or the Sega Genesis. I was ready for my world to be turned upside down. A NEW era of gaming, with real people and real actors. It was such an exciting time for me. It felt like the future was finally here.

I ran into one major problem when I got home. I didn’t have the proper cords to hook the Saturn into my TV. The Saturn came only with the red, white, and yellow A/V connectors. They didn’t come with a circular RF cable like the Genesis did – or the Saturn that I had rented. The new TV for my room didn’t have the little red, white, and yellow holes to plug the Saturn into. I couldn’t play the Saturn on my TV.

I knew that our family’s big TV in the rec room had the proper connection ports in the back of it to accommodate those red, white, and yellow cords. The only problem is that my parents were down there using the TV. I knew better than to ask them if I could come down and hook up my Saturn while they were watching Mad About You. It simply wasn’t going to happen. I ended up having to wait several long and hard hours for them to go to bed. When they did, I came running downstairs with the Saturn and all its cords bundled in my arms, held tight against my chest.

Setup only took me a few minutes. I plugged the power cord into the wall. I attached the red, white, and yellow cords to the back of the TV. I turned the Saturn on… and nothing.

What was wrong? I was on channel 3. I picked up the remote and changed to another station and back to test it out. Yeah. I was on channel 3 all right. So why wasn’t anything happening?

I switched the television to channel 24, where they were showing reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I paged through the instruction manual looking for something I may have missed. Maybe the TV needed to be on channel 2? Nope, that didn’t work. Maybe the cords weren’t plugged in tight enough. Nope, they were. Maybe I’d accidentally gotten the colors mixed up somehow? Nope, everything was connected as it should be.

I read every word in that instruction manual, visibly shaken, ready to start pulling my hair out as Geordi LaForge battled through fire and flames on the Enterprise. It wasn’t fair that after all this time patiently waiting, I wasn’t able to play my Sega Saturn. So close, yet so far.

I picked up the remote and played with the TV’s settings. I must have went through every button on that remote before I finally pressed input. The screen went black. What happened? I pressed it again. Just like that, I was looking at the Saturn’s menu screen. All I had needed to do was change the TV’s input to the proper setting.

I tossed the remote aside and picked up my Saturn controller. It wanted me to set the time and the date. That was weird, but cool too. Before I knew it, my game was starting up. Solar Eclipse. I remember watching that opening FMV sequence, completely awestruck. Yeah there had been a technological leap from the NES to the Sega Genesis, but that was peanuts compared to this. I had officially entered the F U T U R E.

The game’s menu screen popped up. I decided to check out the options. Oh, what’s this? Previews?

A video began to play. In this video, a nerdy man-child gets hammered by kickballs while his teacher makes fun of him and calls him a pansy. All the while, previews for Crystal Dynamics video games flashed on the screen. Off-World Interceptor. 3D Baseball. Gex. Legacy of Kain. Solar Eclipse itself. My jaw hit the floor. I had already fallen in love with my Sega Saturn, and I hadn’t even started playing a game yet. This video had proved something to me. Video gaming had hit its apex. Things couldn’t possibly get any better than this.

Back to Solar Eclipse. I played the game. And I played the game. And I played the game. I wasn’t very good at it, and in fact couldn’t make it past the second level. But wow. The graphics, the story, the FMV sequences. It was like I was playing a movie version of Star Fox, but with human characters.

As if Solar Eclipse wasn’t enough, my Saturn came with a “Bootleg Sampler” disc that had four playable demos on it along with several preview videos. One of the playable demos on the disc was Bug! I must have played through the level or two included on the disc dozens of times. Dozens, I say!

Just Solar Eclipse and the bootleg sampler were enough to keep me occupied for weeks. But still, each weekend I’d rent a new Saturn title. Clockwork Knight, Virtua Fighter 2, Panzer Dragoon I and II, Die Hard Trilogy, Johnny Bazookatone, Scorcher, Shining Wisdom, Albert Odyssey, Command & Conquer, Baku Baku Animal, Virtua Fighter Kids, Fighting Vipers, Virtua Racing, Virtua Cop I and II…. the list went on and on. I was so enamored by the Saturn that I even enjoyed the crummy games, like Street Fighter: The Movie and Independence Day.

Because renting games was a lot cheaper than buying them, my actual collection of Saturn games never grew very large. But I did still buy them from time to time. Alien Trilogy turned out to be a great purchase. Couldn’t play Doom on the Saturn, so I might as well play the next best thing, right? The Legend of Oasis and Nights into Dreams were a few of my favorites. I only ended up suffering buyer’s remorse from one title: Congo The Movie: The Lost City of Zinj. While everyone hated the movie Congo, I thought it was fabulous. I saw it in the theaters twice. I liked it so much I even read the book. It seemed like a no-brainer to me that I was going to buy the game, especially because (as I just mentioned) – Doom wasn’t available for the Sega Saturn.

I had barely played the game two minutes before I realized my mistake. It was so clunky. The graphics were so bad. I could hardly even control my character. The game was TERRIBLE. But still, I stuck with it. I had spent my hard earned money on it, I wasn’t going to just not play it. Eventually I was able to beat the game, hating every second of it. But what did I do? I turned around and started playing it again. That’s just what you did back then. You didn’t have an endless library of video games at your fingertips. You played what you had.

Two games stand out in my mind, however, as being particularly bad. If I was to make a list of my ten least favorite video games ever made, these games would make the list: Space Hulk and Virtual Hydlide. I ended up renting both of these titles, and each one I ended up returning to Blockbuster 20 minutes later because they were so terrible. At the video store I claimed they didn’t work, and they let me rent something else instead. Naughty Dan! Liar! What made these games so bad, you may ask? Horrible graphics. Clunky game controls. No direction as to what you were supposed to do or where you were supposed to go. I hated every second of them. I think at the time I had rented these games I had already played Congo and I didn’t want to waste my time on something else that was horrible if I didn’t have to. So I took ‘em back.

One of the most influential Saturn games I played has to be the very first entry into the Tomb Raider series. I was absolutely in love with that game. The puzzles, the story, the level designs, and of course: Lara herself. What was not to love about the game? I played it religiously day and night. Fun fact – this is the first ever video game I can recall turning to the Internet to for help. It was that level in Greece with the rising water levels and all the alligators swimming around in the water. Holy shit did that stage stump me.

As much as I loved my Saturn, I quickly became all too aware of its limitations. The PlayStation and the Nintendo 64 both boasted better games and better graphics. When a game came out on all three platforms, the Saturn version was always the worst. And then they didn’t bring Tomb Raider II to the Saturn. I was like WTF. Everything changed when my stepbrother brought his PlayStation over to our house one random weekend and we rented Resident Evil. That game absolutely blew me away. It was like nothing I had ever played before. Scary, cinematic. It kept me on the edge of my seat. It was light years better than anything I had played for the Saturn. That one game alone made up my mind for me: I was going to get a PlayStation. I liked my Saturn, but I hadn’t yet stumbled upon anything as completely amazing as Resident Evil for this system. And still there were no Sonic games.

I got a PlayStation. I got a Nintendo 64. I turned all of my attention to those two systems. I hadn’t even had the Saturn a year or two and already I could see it was in a steady decline. I still rented games for it from time to time. Guardian Heroes, Three Dirty Dwarves, Mr. Bones. But the pickings became very slim, very fast. The system got a port of Sonic 3D Blast for the Sega Genesis, but no new Sonic game of its own. I had been really hyped for Sonic Xtreme, only to learn that the game got canceled midway through production. Seemed like Sega was waving the white flag on the Saturn.

At the end of the system’s lifespan I added a couple bargain bin games to my collection: Fighters Megamix and Sonic R. I even ended up (finally!) getting my hands on a used copy of Bug! But by then the writing was on the wall: the Saturn was toast.

Every night I cry myself to sleep because this game was never finished

The system did go out with a bang, however. I remember reading in the video game magazines how amazing Panzer Dragoon Saga and Burning Rangers were. These were two of the last games to be released for the Saturn stateside. They weren’t available to rent at Blockbuster. I hit up all the Best Buys, all the video game stores at the mall, Target, K-Mart, anywhere that sold video games. Could I find either game? No. I looked and looked and looked and could not get my hands on a copy of either title. Panzer Dragoon Saga I especially wanted to play, because all of the reviews had said it was the RPG of a lifetime – possibly even better than Final Fantasy VII which by this time I had played through many times.

I ended up giving up all hope that I could find a copy of these games. Now I see that people are selling them online for thousands of dollars. Oh man. If only I’d been able to find a copy of either of these games, I’d have priceless artifacts in my hands. But it’s not even the money I care about. I just want to play the games. I feel as if I won’t be able to find closure in my life if I don’t get to at least play Panzer Dragoon Saga. I know that sounds kind of sad, but it is true!

In retrospect, the Saturn was not the best video game system. It was technically inferior. It didn’t have a big library of great games. It didn’t even have the 3D next-gen Sonic game I had been hoping for. I don’t want to say the system was a complete failure, but its unsuccessful run definitely left a sour taste in my mouth.

Would I learn from my mistake? No. A few years later when the Sega Dreamcast hit store shelves, I ran out and bought one on day one. I was blindly loyal to Sega, what can I say? The Dreamcast would crash and burn even worse than the Saturn – and just like that Sega’s days as console creators were over. It made me sad.

As rocky as my relationship with the Saturn was, I still remember my time with it fondly. Renting the system and playing Bug! nonstop for an entire weekend. That first day I brought home my system and struggled to get it set up while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. All the games I rented, all the games I bought. Really, a system is defined by its games and as maligned as the Saturn is, it had some great titles. Alien Trilogy, Fighters Megamix, The Legend of Oasis, Nights into Dreams, Panzer Dragoon, Solar Eclipse, Sonic R, Tomb Raider, Virtua Cop 2 – all these games hold a special place in my heart. Did I have some buyer’s remorse when I bought my Saturn back in the late 90s? Absolutely. Would I go back and change anything? Absolutely not.

Here's a complete list of every title I have played for the Saturn (demo versions not included). The games I own (there are only ten of them) are in bold.

Albert Odyssey: Legend of Eldean

Alien Trilogy

Baku Baku Animal

Bug!

Bug Too!

Casper

Clockwork Knight

Command & Conquer

Congo The Movie: The Lost City of Zinj

Dead or Alive

Die Hard Trilogy

Fighters Megamix

Fighting Vipers

Guardian Heroes

Independence Day

Johnny Bazookatone

Legend of Oasis, The

Manx TT Superbike

Mr. Bones

Nights Into Dreams…

Panzer Dragoon

Panzer Dragoon 2

Scorcher

Shining Wisdom

Solar Eclipse

Sonic R

Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels

Street Fighter: The Movie

Three Dirty Dwarves

Tomb Raider

Virtua Fighter

Virtua Fighter 2

Virtua Fighter Kids

Virtua Cop

Virtua Cop 2

Virtua Racing

Virtual Hydlide

Wipeout

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