I noticed that the video seems to be hitching or glitching or... itching? something... anyway yeah so every once in a while it locks up for a split second here and there. This is not something that is happening on my original video file so I guess this is a youtube issue. I dont know. My apologies about that. I dont know if I can do anything to fix it.
Stop spreading this urban legend again and again. 🤦♂ The Saturn wasn't designed first for 2D Even 2D games were a mess to develop with the first dev kit. Very simple 2D Games like suiko Enbu fuunsaïki had TERRIBLE frame drop with the first dev kit. SEGA Saturn was a 2D powerhouse AND a 3D powerhouse but was a mess to develop on. It's the only 32bit console that had 60 FPS 3D textured game in HIGH RESOLUTION..! 😱 We were only in 1995..! Playstation never magaged to do so EVEN in 1998/1999 with their new Andromada Kit..! Just imagine what they've could achieve if they didn't abandon the system so early... (Sorry for my English)
For me it was great and had the best joypad ever. I used to play streetfighter and fighting titles in general a lot, so the 6 buttons layout was just the best. And still up to this day it's my favourite joypad. And Daytona USA...damn when I played that in the arcades it was such a new experience and then on the Saturn it was too for me.
Everyone in highschool had Playstation and talked trash on Saturn, UNTIL they came to my house... I had almost everything... We'd play Decathlete/ Winter Heat, Radiant Silvergun, The Street Fighter vs. Games, The Panzer Dragoons, Guardia Heros, and so many others... Only problem, was when they wanted to get some, the Games were almost immediately difficult to buy... Still play them to this day with my kids...
3:16 I was just watching an interview with a programmer; he said it wasn't that the Saturn was hard to program for, all new systems were hard to learn. What Playstation had was more documentation than the other systems, so it was easy to figure out how to work with it. 18:06 I have it; I should have got it free in "Ultra Game Players" magazine, but it wasn't there. But eventually got it about 20 years later off Ebay. Too bad I can't get P.T. Demo, that's why the future must remain physical. 25:02 I did a live stream of Deep Fear this October.
Although the PS1 won this war, I had to own a Saturn due to my love of beat em ups, it was superior and it hit that itch that I wanted for near perfect arcade ports. As mentioned, guardian heroes..... An all time great. It's a shame that sega of America and Japan couldn't agree with how the later days of the genesis should have been handled and muddied the waters with too many add ons, this would have early on left newbies unsure as to what was an actual next gen console. Plus I read everywhere Saturn programming was rough compared to PS1 simplified hardware.
Yeah I wasn’t a newbie but I wanted a Sega CD when it came out but I couldn’t afford it and held out for the 32X. That tanked pretty fast and being fed up with Sega’s add-on nonsense I got a PlayStation. Around ’97 I did snag a used Saturn for mostly the excellent shooters and fighters available in Japan. It is now one of my favorite consoles of all time!
Wait a minute Sega Saturn has more power under the hood than Sony Playstation 1 and I even knew it back then there is a lot more chips in that system that has not even been tapped yet with programming. And it doesn't make sense to say that SEGA went the 2D way at first knowing damn good well Panasonic 3DO was doing the 3D games in 1993. Basically every 32-bit system was designed with 3D in mind as if 3DO started at all.
Some devs had to use half its performance, maybe even less, many games, such as Sim City 2000 uses only one CPU. The PS1 has many slick advantages, yes, it's a great machine, but if properly designed, from the ground up, the Saturn could reproduce games that any other hardware at the time would have a really hard time to duplicate.
The Saturn is the real beast of all Sega’s consoles, 1107 games, more consoles variants than any other, best controller, best tactical rpg…. Ok I guess it is only my point of view 😅
To this day, I honestly believe that the Saturn might be the most underrated system of all time, and it's an absolute crime the way Bernie Stolar treated it. I'm glad to see it's now getting the love it deserves. I always wanted to get another Saturn console but the price range kept it out of my hands. Thankfully I'm able to relive the Saturn again via emulation on my Steam Deck, which runs it near flawlessly. I know you mentioned Duke Nukem 3D, which was a very impressive feat, even for a talented studio like Lobotomy, but whoever thought they'd actually get QUAKE to run on the Saturn, let alone run it quite well! The claim that the Saturn can not do 3D is one of gaming's biggest lies, almost up there when they lie about how Xbox has no games.
Stop spreading this urban legend again and again. 🤦♂ The Saturn wasn't designed first for 2D Even 2D games were a mess to develop with the first dev kit. Very simple 2D Games like suiko Enbu fuunsaïki had TERRIBLE frame drop with the first dev kit. SEGA Saturn was a 2D powerhouse AND a 3D powerhouse but was a mess to develop on. It's the only 32bit console that had 60 FPS 3D textured game in HIGH RESOLUTION..! 😱 We were only in 1995..! Playstation never magaged to do so EVEN in 1998/1999 with their new Andromada Kit..! Just imagine what they've could achieve if they didn't abandon the system so early... (Sorry for my English)
It's a cope that it was a '3D powerhouse'. VDP1 couldn't draw nearly enough polygons (what are really 2D sprites distorted into quads) fast enough to match the PS1's GTE for instance. If your game could use VDP2 to draw the floor (which has to be flat, btw, somewhat limiting potential game design), freeing up resources on VDP1, then yeah you could pull off some impressive 3D visuals &/or performance.
@@powerfulaura5166 It's the first Dual Core of the history of gaming. Why would you judge the machine without one of its processor ? Of course the Saturn on paper is a 3D power house. Like it is for 2D. 2 games also use the 2 cpu. and had a lot of issues. Some devs couldn't do trnasparencies (like Megaman X background ) when some other did an amazing job. Again , Playstation never managed to make a 3D textured game in 60 fps in high resolution. SEGA am 2 did it in 1995. Just imagine what they could have made in 1998 with a new dev Kit like Playstation ANDROMEDA Kit..! 🙂.
unfortunately none of the 90's consoles lived and had games to see the full potential of them ecept of course the playstation..imagine if playstation never existed and you had the chance to see great games from the sega saturn,atari jaguar,3do,amiga cd32 etc cause all these consoles had the power do do a lot more than what we saw,,or imagine to see other style of games than fighting games and shootemups from the ultimate neo geo..
I lived beside the factory that pressed the CD games for the Saturn. QC would throw out anything with the slightest blemish. My friends and I would go to the back of the factory each week and lift trashbags full of games out of the skip. Wed keep titles we didnt have and sell the rest to games shops as trade ins. Special times!
As a kid, I remember playing many exclusives, and actually played more 16-bit Sonic games on the Saturn than I did with the Mega Drive. The only thing they should have done is to add all Master System, the Game Gear exclusive Triple Trouble and Sonic CD to be the complete package, the museum in Sonic 3D World shows a lot of material from all Sonic versions and I somehow expected the 8-bit and CD games could be unlocked somehow, as this compilation isn't emulation, but a proper and enhanced port, like many console/arcade/computer-to console games tended to be, emulation was basically non-existent, which often meant good quality ports. Things like the dreaded Sega Smash Pack on the Dreamcast and many other 6th ports are emulated. Even back then I found Die Hard Trilogy clunky, with weird visuals, but I had so much fun playing the first and third games, Pandemonium, Croc, Sonic R, KOF96/97, Xmen vs SF, Marvel vs SF, Shining Force 3 trilogy, Alien Trilogy, Hexen, Duke 3D, The Holy Ark, Mystaria, Dragon Force, Die Hard Arcade, Virtua Cop 2, Tomb Raider, Grandia, Resident Evil, Myst, Riven and this is to name a few, it was the best time for me and my brothers, and also the best console to choose as we were totally into arcades, you could have it all with this console.
It really is one of the greatest console of all time, bar none, no question. Effing' phenomenal system... Can't wait until the homebrew community gets really good at coding for it...
I love the Saturn so much, it's right there with the SNES as my favorite system, still to this day I use a Saturn pad for all of my 6 button fighting games. And so many of my favorite games live right here on this system. Dragon Force may just be my favorite games of all time, Sega Rally on Sat is easily my favorite arcade racer of all time and Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold from the SF Collection on Sat is my favorite fighting game. The library may not have been as strong as the PS1's in NA, but the gems on the Saturn shine so bright.
The Saturn being able to play arcade perfect ports of X-Men vs Street Fighter, Marvel Superheros vs Street Fighter, Darkstalkers 3 etc to me was sorcery and truly next gen experience at the time.
I loved the Saturn. My brother had one, while I owned a Nintendo 64 instead. It was an impressive piece of hardware. Too bad nobody liked writing games for it.
Saturn was a good console. But it's a great console now. The Saturn and DC analogue sticks are drift proof because they use magnets to detect movement - so they don't wear out.
The Sega Saturn was the best fifth generation home video game console because the Sega Saturn was compatible with the Action Replay Plus RAM cartridge which allowed all Sega Saturn models to play imported USA, PAL region and Japanese Sega Saturn games such as the Japan-released only titles like X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, etc.. Plus, the Saturn was backwards-compatible with music CDs.
The Saturn was a 2d and a 3D beast. It had more raw power than the Playstation and even could do better textures. What the Saturn could never deliver better than the Playstation was the transparency effects in 3d games not the 3d itself. Look at Virtua Fighter 3, a perfect example of the console´s 3d capabilities when a game is written properly by in-house programers.
Of course could, but it was not worth the effort and hassle. Just take a look at Astal and Guardian Heroes. Also many effects took advantage of composite video, in RGB looks really nasty. Tricks of the era
@@orkoto6057 could never understand how those two games got the transparency to work right but every other game didn't. Even all the first party games. Really crappy
It's a cope that it was a '3D beast'. VDP1 couldn't draw nearly enough polygons (what are really 2D sprites distorted into quads) fast enough to match the PS1's GTE for instance. If your game could use VDP2 to draw the floor (which has to be flat, btw, somewhat limiting potential game design), freeing up resources on VDP1, then yeah you could pull off some impressive 3D visuals &/or performance.
The Saturn actually rendered games using quadrilaterals instead of triangles as other 3D systems did. This contributed to the difficulty of making games because most 3D modeling programs used triangles. As far as I know this is still the case today as "quads" never caught on.
Wrong.... the Saturn was built to be a 3-D machine right out the box. Sega built the Saturn based on their own experience of using multiple chips to make quality games. Third-party developers were not capable of developing games for a complex multichip architecture vs. the simple design of the PSX.
I don’t think people view the Saturn the way you’re describing anymore. We Saturn fans have gone out and showed people the great exclusives on Saturn and people understand the value of the Saturn Library.
The Saturn's problem wasn't the hardware. The Saturn's problem was Sega. Their strategy was confusing, and they showed with the 32x they would drop it immediately, if they wanted to. Which they did. Then of course you have the Playstation, whose marketing made it the 'cooler' product, and so many flocked to that.
Unfortunately, in the west the Saturn is viewed much more favorably as a retro console that it ever was as a current console back then. Back then people were blown away by the 3D graphics coming from the PS1 and N64. In retrospect, the 32-bit 2D games have aged better than the early 3D games did. So 2D PS1 games like Symphony of the Night are some of the best looking games on that system in retrospect. This also means that since the Saturn is a 2D powerhouse it is looked at much more favorably now than it was at the time, because 32-bit 2D graphics are viewed very favorably now.
Great commentary video, i love my saturn, but i hated how it got treated here in the states, i was the only one out of my friends with a saturn, thumbs up for mentioning wing arms!
Saturn was basically arcade hardware shoehorned into a console. And yes it was meant to do 2D AND 3D. Back when 486 PCs' were trying to brute force 10,000 flat shaded polygons Saturn/ST-V were pushing 200K texture mapped, gourad shaded polys at great frame rates and having a 2nd GPU just for backgrounds/ playfields was the icing on the cake. Some ports suffered but games built from the ground up on it and developed by experienced programmers were magical.
I do not think this video is very accurate to what really sega had in mind. Keep in mind what sega had in the arcades. Virtua fighter, Daytona USA, virtua racing. They clearly knew where the industrybwas headed with 3d polygons. The saturn was designed to take the arcade experience home. You'd be pretty dumb to think sega didn't know where the industry was headed when you look at what was going on with thier arcade games. Lol.
The Saturn and the Dreamcast are 2 consoles that i absolutely love. Its such a shame some of the coolest titles never left Japan. There are so many RPGs on both consoles never got localized for the west
This regurgitated bullshit again? There are design papers as early as 1991 that talk about 3D. 3D was in the original design. It's not an afterthought. Sega designed the Saturn coming from the arcade, predictably. It caused the design to be convoluted. The only reason Saturn's 3D looks bad (or an afterthought) is because the Juggernaut Sony just had so much more resources at its disposal. If you compare the Saturn to it's contemporaries (consoles and PC's), it's actually pretty amazing for the price. Sony just set the bar much higher for the whole industry which is pretty unfortunate for Sega.
what the saturn needed,the gpu of the ps1,no vdp1 and vdp2 btw saturn has more cpu power.the mips3000a in the ps1 was slowwww.a single sh2 is like 5times the power of the mips 3000 cpu.
Had tons of fun with the Sega Saturn back as a kid! Daytona USA, Daytona USA: Championship Circuit Edition, Virtua Cop, Virtua Cop 2, Tomb Raider, Last Bronx, Nights into Dreams, Sega Rally Championship, Manx TT Superbike, FIghting Vipers, Destruction Derby.. and many more! Bought a lot of used games on the cheap so had a pretty good set of games for it😁
The megadrive will always be my all time favourite console, i never had a saturn back in the day i switched to the ps1 but i got a saturn last year and love it ❤️
The whole "bad at 3D" thing is just as hypocritical as the "failed console" thing. The Saturn has great games, they cannot deny that, especially Virtual On. Virtual On was one of the very first 3D Action games that convinced me not only that the Saturn could handle Model 2 games as well as the Genesis handled Arcade titles before it, but that a 3D Action game could be fast and precise. No unavoidable hits, no cheap gameplay mechanics, constant motion and action, I did not believe it was possible before Virtual On in a 3D game. Sadly, most 3D games decades later fail to achieve this. As for a "failed" console, that definition is always loaded. Take the attach rate of any given "successful" console, then look at those console's top selling games and their sales numbers if you can find them. Then look at the failure rate of said console, how many revisions to fix that fail rate were released, how many slavish consumers bought those revisions because their launch model definitely failed. Do The Math, I'm still trying, but I think for this generation 20 million consoles sold was more than actual users.
Ppl don't support these systems when they're out but always like it after its gone The sega Saturn The sega Dreamcast The Nintendo GameCube I think it's bcuz ppl love an underdog
I’m still buying games for the Saturn and my Saturn is still hooked up to a CRT ready to go. I love the shmups genre meaning I absolutely adore the Saturn’s shmup library.
If you have the money you should check out the Japanese ones on eBay I bought one last year and it didn't have a scratch on it and the disk drive runs perfectly not to mention the games are cheap as hell.
I've had my Saturn for 20 years or so, Still play it all the time. Sataurn and Neo Geo CDZ are my gotos these days. I love the games and am sick of having to install games on the new consoles. I just want to put a disc in and play.
@@andriodman1 Radiant Silvergun, Shinrei Jusatushi Taroumaru, Elevator Action Returns, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, Street Fighter Collection, Magic Knight Rayearth....I could name more, so many good games
Saturn was always designed to do 3D. Check your sources before making a video... It was design to push both 2D and 3D with its hardware, and this is part of what made it complicated. PS1 and N64 only have 3D capabilities in mind, and anything 2D has to be done while circumventing what the hardware was built for.
I grew up during the '90s a.k.a. the Platinum Age of gaming. The Saturn was one of those consoles that I always wanted but never had when it was new. Didn't score mine until five years ago, when I got lucky and found a working unit at a flea market along with a few games: Virtua Fighter Remix, Virtua Fighter 2, and Daytona USA. Among the games I do want to find for it: Sonic Jam, Fighters Megamix, Dragon Force, the 2D Capcom games (even though I have Street Fighter Alpha 1 and 3 on PS1 already), Magic Knight Rayearth, and the various shmups on it. I can't help but feel cheated out of those experiences because I had a PS1 and N64 back then. To all the fanboys, fangirls, and everybody in between and beyond who bitch and moan about the Saturn: Can't we all agree that the Saturn, PS1, and N64 all had great games? That's all that matters! Let people enjoy things! As long as you're having fun, that's the most important thing that matters!
Great video pal. I've recently got my Saturn modded with a Fenrir Duo ODE, and I'm so glad I did! Being able to play Panzer Dragoon Saga, Radiant Silvergun, Shining Force 3, X-Men vs Street Fighter, Metal Slug, Dead or Alive, King of Fighters 95/96 to name just a few, without having to spend hundreds, nay, thousands of pounds for the privilege is truly wonderful. I owned my original Saturn way back in 1996, and whilst many friends thought it rubbish next to the PS1 and N64 (because they all believed the massive media bias that existed back then), I personally never felt as much love for a console as this. I also still own a PS1, N64 and Dreamcast, and frankly, I've always enjoyed this era of gaming far more than modern machines. Gameplay is key, as opposed to the obsession with photo-realistic visuals. Was the Saturn a failure? No doubt yes, next to the PS1 in terms of sales, but there seems to have been a recent resurgence in the retro market for this truly wonderful console. The number of emulators, mods, and various geekery sites are great, and I heartily recommend that anyone who never gave the Saturn a chance back in the day, or modern day gamers who were too young to remember it, take advantage of the marvellous variety of options to play such gems of gaming history. I would, however, recommend getting hold of the console, modded or otherwise, together with the 3D controller, rather than an emulator. It's a far better experience overall. Unless you're a collector, though, I'd suggest a mod, as some of the top titles will set you back upwards of £100-800! There's a couple of HDMI converter cables available nowadays, so there's no real issues with playing on modern TVs!
We bought ours shortly after the Saturn was released early to the public in '95. Having played Daytona USA in the arcades, the Saturn port looked dreadful and it immediately gave me a bad vibe about the console. After the initial game library that we picked up, we picked up NHL Powerplay '96 as our last game for the system and it collected dust for many many many years. Fast forward to about 2019 when I decided to get a Pro Action replay and try out some of the Japanese games that I would burn to disc. And holy shit... The Saturn went from something I didn't care about at all, to a console in my top 5 now. It blows the N64 away imo. The library of arcade games and 2 gaming is incredible. It is such an underrated console, I'm so happy that it's getting it's due 27 years after it's launch. Hail Sega Saturn. :)
Yeah it was a bit taxing at the beginning with dude's ultra-relaxed cadence. He could use a cup of coffee before recording, or maybe a script to follow instead of just rambling on. The content is good, it's just hard to listen to someone talking in a casual rambling manner.
A lot of people talk about how overengineered the hardware was, but the Saturn had a second problem that made porting games over to it a pain: Quad polygons. Everyone else was using triangles, so models had to be heavily modified for the Saturn ports of games like Resident Evil, which is why they look so different.
That is a common misconception, Sega knew the future was polygon, it had already released Virtual Fighter and Racing in the arcades followed up by Daytona. Sega knew where the future lied as the genesis and CD had polygon games on them. Sega wanted a 2D power house as well as a mildly powerful 3D system on the grounds of a 32X with more memory. Then Sega found out about the PlayStation with it's lighting and texturing abilities. Sega sh!t thier pants realizing they were gonna be out done with 3D so they threw in more processors and created a freaking Frankenstein of a console. Powerful but difficult to control all it's power and capability. It took developers too long to exploit it's power and most didn't even try. Most of the Saturn's graphically impressive games were in-house developed.
Sega always intended for this to be a dual-CPU system. They had been doing this in the arcade for years up until this point. The last addition to the system , which was a knee-jerk reaction- was the VDP-2. The original design only had a single VDP.
There was a lot of infighting between Sega of Japan and Sega of America. SoA wanted to prolong the life of the Genesis by releasing the 32X but SoJ would have none of that. SoJ didn't want Sega competing with itself by having two different consoles. And the 32X was a stupid idea anyway. If they had me around, they'd have skipped the 32X entirely and gone straight to the Saturn. Gamers knew it was wiser to wait for the Saturn than to get suckered into buying another add-on for the Genesis.
I had a sega saturn the year before they came out and wow - ill never forget how ahead of its time it was. Blows my mind this wasn't bigger than playstation.
I played a lot of Resident Evil on that platform and it didn't disappoint. The dogs attacking gave me chills. Overall it was a disappointing console. The genesis had a great lifespan with very addictive games.
We never had a Saturn. We had the Dreamcast, which really was a tremendously good console, but suffered under the poisoned past of Sega's failings with the 32X, Sega CD and ultimately the Saturn. Saturn looks like another console with so much untapped potential! Sucks that these things happen, but often times people in big business and especially management seem to actually be really stupid.
I ❤️ the Saturn. It was not as much of a love back in the 90s. The PS was king then. But decades later my fondness grew for this system (and the N64) immensely. I just wish it was so with everyone else, because I cant afford games anymore! Why the hell did I ever get rid of my old game collection...?
Its the same problem when any of us gets rid of an old system, games, trading cards, toys and all that stuff. We never think to put it back in the box and hang onto it.
@@jasonleveck8546 that's the truth. I think everything i ever had while growing up, I've repurchased the past 10 years, at exorbitant prices! I really am gullible...
I bought this in the UK on day 1… for me aa you said one of the best consoles ever made…. Loved it.. but the marketing of it especially in the uk let it down as all you saw on TV then was Sony Sony Sony…. The rest is history! It wasn’t the console it was the way it was marketed arc the time that let it down….😢
@@maroon9273 the 68000k was not the main cpu, it was just a cpu to do little stuff here and there like reading input from the controller. The CPU TOM and the GPU Jerry were real 32bits. Motorolla were never Risc CPU and Risc is always faster than cisc.
My beat time on video games. And I had them all at one time. But the Saturn was awesome. Luckily I had access to the world wide market. I got more Japanese games than EU ones.❤
Sega saturn flopped in the United States and PAL regions. Plus saturn architecture was difficult to create games for. Another problem is that the saturn launched at 400 dollars vs Sony with ps1 at 299.99 and N64 at 249.99 respectively and both had superior 3d graphics vs the saturn. Saturn on the other hand did well in Japan up until the launch of the dreamcast. But in the states, all of Genesis player market moved over to the ps1.
The Saturn was designed to port 3D arcade games. Even the 32x was designed to bring enhanced 3D capabilities to the Genesis. To suggest that the Saturn was designed for 2D is nonsense.
Nice video, too bad about the glitching. With the sad state console gaming finds itself in these days (Pokémon Violet & Scarlet anyone?)I’m enjoying rediscovering my vintage systems and lately I’ve really been digging my Saturn. I much rather buy a nice copy of a stellar game like Batsugun for around $100 than pay the same for one or two new “games” requiring a day one patch and endless updates to even be playable. The physical editions might look good on your shelf now but good luck playing them in 25 years…if you’d even want to🤷🏻♂️
After the marketing machine settles and people forget the hype, these machines have to stand on their own merit. Which explains why peeps tend to only appreciate these machines years after they fail.
The ways of programming are evolving rapidly. However, there are cases such as government levels which continue to use, for example, old web browsers such as Internet Explorer 8-9 😂
It pretty much is true that it was always intended to be 3D. That was confirmed by Hideki Sato who is the person who designed the hardware. There's a lot of rumors about Saturn's design but what we know from the Hideki Sato interviews is this: Originally Saturn was going to be 1 SH2 and the SCU DSP to help with 3D math calculations. VDP2 and VDP1 seem to have always been there in some form, along with the SCSP and 68K to drive it. Around late 1993 Sega felt they weren't getting the performance they wanted out of the single SH2 + DSP set up and asked Hitachi if they could increase the clock speed. Hitachi wasn't able to do this but instead said they could use 2 SH-2s in a master slave configuration. Sega tried this and it helped their performance issues and that's what they went with. So the fabled last second change was adding the 2nd SH2. It seems at this point any further development on the custom DSP in the SCU stopped which could explain why that chip is a bit of a buggy mess. With the 2nd SH2 a lot of the the original intent for the DSP goes away because anything the DSP can do, the 2nd SH2 can do just as fast if not better. But at this point it would cost more to get rid of the DSP than to keep it due to redesign costs so they kept it for helping in cases where CPU resources are the bottleneck. By about late 1993 the Saturn's overall design was becoming finalized with any other changes being things like adding additional features like High Speed Shrink to VDP1 and what not. So basically 3D was always intended to be there, it's why they went with the SH2 and why the DSP was originally there in the SCU. And it's why they added another SH2 to make the 3D performance better.
@@SegaFanatic5188 - You’re correct, and remember at the time of the console’s development, Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter were all the rage. They had plans to bring those games to the console and needed to design the hardware to run them.
@@SegaFanatic5188 Personally, Dual SH2 and warped sprites is a bad idea for the saturn. A better performing single SH3, MIPS, NEC, Arm and power pc cpus would've made the saturn performance more efficient reduce the programming difficulties.
@@maroon9273 The SH2s are fine. They're the least controversial part of the Saturn and are very good and powerful CPUs for the time. When it comes to things like Multiplication and Division the SH2s significantly outperform the MIPS CPU in the PS1. The real reason the PS1 pulls ahead is that it's GPU has a significantly higher fillrate than Saturn's VDP1, and the GTE Coprocessor just edges out the SH2 for 3D Math performance because it's a custom chip with Hardware implementations of 3D Math functions. It's not the use of Quads/Distorted Sprites that's a problem either. It's simply the lack of Texture Coordinates, and that VDP1 is slower than the competition. That said, it's not nearly as poor as people try to claim either. Finally, bringing up the SH3 is just plain silly because without the Saturn using the SH2, there is no SH2 (so no 32X either). Without the SH2, there is no SH3.
Thunder Force V better on PS? Alien Soldier? Street Racer? Duke Nukem & Powerslave... ...there have certainly been conversions of 3D games that were better on the Saturn than on the PS. The Sega Saturn is of this world. However, Sega did not hit the mainstream of the west. Saturn was initially incredibly expensive in Europe. Sony's better 3D hardware and marketing power did the rest in the west.
The Saturn deserved better, especially outside of Japan. Imagine if we would have gotten games like Sonic Xtreme and Shenmue on the system, that would have been insane!
For a time I wanted a Saturn but never got one. Same with the first PlayStation. Ended up with the N64 instead. Completely missed out on 32 bit. I did get a dreamcast in 2002.
Unfortunately, the Saturn had only been successful in Japan, if you want to get to the good games you can't get around the Japan imports because the best games came out there.
@@gedrooney9305 I’ll be honest they are crap. I was listening to their first two albums yesterday. I just prefer bands like Soundgarden if I wasn’t my 90s grunge fix. They sound more heavier and metal.
@@outerspaceman7534 Im a Soundgarden/ Stone Temple fan, I never bothered buying another PJ album after Vitalogy as a kid. Moved onto Beefheart and down that rabbit hole..I’m a 43yr old rock climber now..Grunge energy keeps me pulling hard on rock instead of smashing shins on my board..
It's a fantastic console, sadly by then SEGA Europe was under SEGA USA's rule and ... well.... they screwed up majorly. It was certainly a system that deserved better, and the later 3D games more than kept up with the PS One. I mean Burning Rangers even showed the translucency effects that people were moaning about lol :P . And I do say moaning, as for most people it wasn't an issue. They were still playing on analog screens and sometimes even with composite signals, and then the mesh translucency works fine as it blends :P . And the 2d effects could really help in 3D. The Sonic Jam showed some of that. By using a play field in the bottom you could use it as a high res floor with holes in it and only have to spend a few polyons to create hills and rivers, etc. Saving you a lot on polygon budget. At the same time it looked great. Panzer Dragoon did similar things :). Not to mention the sprite effects you could use to enrich 3D. And at high resolution! Earlier games were running slower, but even Daytona USA got improved along the lifetime of the console (new versions), and later 3D fighting games ran in a very high resolution at 60fps, a thing not possible on a PLaystation. Fighter Megamix and Blazing Vipers were two great examples. But yeah, Sonic Jam uses a playfield/2d bakcground for the surface, with transparency (see through not translucency) areas, and filling those in for holes and hills :) .
@@marcbasil It really was a system that grew with age. Burning Rangers did things that one couldn't have imagined at the launch of the system. I really do think they could have waited one more year and flesh the Dreamcast out a bit more to have a bit more memory. As the Dreamcast had issues with it's main memory and polygon budget. It could easily push over 6 million a second but you'd run in to issues with memory space. Heck, adding multipass rendering would have really hit it out of the park. Ah,. yes theorycrafting about a thing that would never have existed XD. We have our dreams :P .
People say arcade conversions were not good. If Sega in that time released a full on arcade system for the home with exact games it would have been a dream. Imagine Daytona USA the same as the arcade but on your TV at home.
@@Hahnsoulo I think Sega should have followed a similar technique of Sony in terms of similar game titles released that made the PlayStation successful.
When i got the Saturn at it's late life, i never touched my Playstation. Till Saturn had no games anymore. Problem was from what i've read, is that Sega Japan and Sega USA weren't on the same line. Then they went their own way with the system. I can say that Sega Japan did far better. I got all those late Capcom fighters which were awesome with the extra memory card. Saturn in the west didn't had enough titles, that was the problem. I think it could live way longer if the west had the same or just more titles. Great system and i still have mine. Also still have Dreamcast.
Great video! What's amazing about the Saturn is just how many games there are for it -- as you mention prob 50+ high quality shooters and tons of arcade perfect ports; Space Harrier, Out Run, Afterburner, All the SF2/Alpha variations, Ghouls N Ghost/Ghosts n Goblins to name a few. The 3D does let it down a bit, but the top tier 3D games hold up and the 2D library is incredible.
I noticed that the video seems to be hitching or glitching or... itching? something... anyway yeah so every once in a while it locks up for a split second here and there. This is not something that is happening on my original video file so I guess this is a youtube issue. I dont know. My apologies about that. I dont know if I can do anything to fix it.
Stop spreading this urban legend again and again. 🤦♂ The Saturn wasn't designed first for 2D
Even 2D games were a mess to develop with the first dev kit.
Very simple 2D Games like suiko Enbu fuunsaïki had TERRIBLE frame drop with the first dev kit.
SEGA Saturn was a 2D powerhouse AND a 3D powerhouse but was a mess to develop on.
It's the only 32bit console that had 60 FPS 3D textured game in HIGH RESOLUTION..! 😱 We were only in 1995..! Playstation never magaged to do so EVEN in 1998/1999 with their new Andromada Kit..!
Just imagine what they've could achieve if they didn't abandon the system so early...
(Sorry for my English)
Hitch, glitch and itch all rhyme.
Apparently, this is a myth that Saturn was always intended to be a 3-D machine.
100% correct man. Launch titles were 3D games, goes to show you the system had 3D in mind from the get go
For me it was great and had the best joypad ever. I used to play streetfighter and fighting titles in general a lot, so the 6 buttons layout was just the best. And still up to this day it's my favourite joypad. And Daytona USA...damn when I played that in the arcades it was such a new experience and then on the Saturn it was too for me.
Everyone in highschool had Playstation and talked trash on Saturn, UNTIL they came to my house... I had almost everything... We'd play Decathlete/ Winter Heat, Radiant Silvergun, The Street Fighter vs. Games, The Panzer Dragoons, Guardia Heros, and so many others... Only problem, was when they wanted to get some, the Games were almost immediately difficult to buy... Still play them to this day with my kids...
Of course it is out of this world, it's a SATURN! 😁
3:16 I was just watching an interview with a programmer; he said it wasn't that the Saturn was hard to program for, all new systems were hard to learn. What Playstation had was more documentation than the other systems, so it was easy to figure out how to work with it.
18:06 I have it; I should have got it free in "Ultra Game Players" magazine, but it wasn't there. But eventually got it about 20 years later off Ebay. Too bad I can't get P.T. Demo, that's why the future must remain physical.
25:02 I did a live stream of Deep Fear this October.
Although the PS1 won this war, I had to own a Saturn due to my love of beat em ups, it was superior and it hit that itch that I wanted for near perfect arcade ports. As mentioned, guardian heroes..... An all time great. It's a shame that sega of America and Japan couldn't agree with how the later days of the genesis should have been handled and muddied the waters with too many add ons, this would have early on left newbies unsure as to what was an actual next gen console. Plus I read everywhere Saturn programming was rough compared to PS1 simplified hardware.
Yeah I wasn’t a newbie but I wanted a Sega CD when it came out but I couldn’t afford it and held out for the 32X. That tanked pretty fast and being fed up with Sega’s add-on nonsense I got a PlayStation. Around ’97 I did snag a used Saturn for mostly the excellent shooters and fighters available in Japan. It is now one of my favorite consoles of all time!
Wait a minute Sega Saturn has more power under the hood than Sony Playstation 1 and I even knew it back then there is a lot more chips in that system that has not even been tapped yet with programming. And it doesn't make sense to say that SEGA went the 2D way at first knowing damn good well Panasonic 3DO was doing the 3D games in 1993. Basically every 32-bit system was designed with 3D in mind as if 3DO started at all.
Some devs had to use half its performance, maybe even less, many games, such as Sim City 2000 uses only one CPU. The PS1 has many slick advantages, yes, it's a great machine, but if properly designed, from the ground up, the Saturn could reproduce games that any other hardware at the time would have a really hard time to duplicate.
The Saturn is the real beast of all Sega’s consoles, 1107 games, more consoles variants than any other, best controller, best tactical rpg….
Ok I guess it is only my point of view 😅
Long live the saturn ❤ thank you for sharing 🙏🏾
To this day, I honestly believe that the Saturn might be the most underrated system of all time, and it's an absolute crime the way Bernie Stolar treated it. I'm glad to see it's now getting the love it deserves. I always wanted to get another Saturn console but the price range kept it out of my hands. Thankfully I'm able to relive the Saturn again via emulation on my Steam Deck, which runs it near flawlessly.
I know you mentioned Duke Nukem 3D, which was a very impressive feat, even for a talented studio like Lobotomy, but whoever thought they'd actually get QUAKE to run on the Saturn, let alone run it quite well! The claim that the Saturn can not do 3D is one of gaming's biggest lies, almost up there when they lie about how Xbox has no games.
Stop spreading this urban legend again and again. 🤦♂ The Saturn wasn't designed first for 2D
Even 2D games were a mess to develop with the first dev kit.
Very simple 2D Games like suiko Enbu fuunsaïki had TERRIBLE frame drop with the first dev kit.
SEGA Saturn was a 2D powerhouse AND a 3D powerhouse but was a mess to develop on.
It's the only 32bit console that had 60 FPS 3D textured game in HIGH RESOLUTION..! 😱 We were only in 1995..! Playstation never magaged to do so EVEN in 1998/1999 with their new Andromada Kit..!
Just imagine what they've could achieve if they didn't abandon the system so early...
(Sorry for my English)
It's a cope that it was a '3D powerhouse'. VDP1 couldn't draw nearly enough polygons (what are really 2D sprites distorted into quads) fast enough to match the PS1's GTE for instance. If your game could use VDP2 to draw the floor (which has to be flat, btw, somewhat limiting potential game design), freeing up resources on VDP1, then yeah you could pull off some impressive 3D visuals &/or performance.
@@powerfulaura5166 It's the first Dual Core of the history of gaming. Why would you judge the machine without one of its processor ?
Of course the Saturn on paper is a 3D power house.
Like it is for 2D. 2 games also use the 2 cpu.
and had a lot of issues.
Some devs couldn't do trnasparencies (like Megaman X background ) when some other did an amazing job.
Again , Playstation never managed to make a 3D textured game in 60 fps in high resolution. SEGA am 2 did it in 1995.
Just imagine what they could have made in 1998 with a new dev Kit like Playstation ANDROMEDA Kit..! 🙂.
@@michaelromeo9567 the first dual core when the console Sega made exactly prior to it had the same 2 processors? bruh
@@jc_dogen First time we had 2 cpu.
Never heard about a console working with 2 CPU before. Never.
@@michaelromeo9567 He's right, the 32X had two Hitachi SH-2 processors. So the Saturn wasn't the first console.
unfortunately none of the 90's consoles lived and had games to see the full potential of them ecept of course the playstation..imagine if playstation never existed and you had the chance to see great games from the sega saturn,atari jaguar,3do,amiga cd32 etc cause all these consoles had the power do do a lot more than what we saw,,or imagine to see other style of games than fighting games and shootemups from the ultimate neo geo..
I lived beside the factory that pressed the CD games for the Saturn. QC would throw out anything with the slightest blemish. My friends and I would go to the back of the factory each week and lift trashbags full of games out of the skip. Wed keep titles we didnt have and sell the rest to games shops as trade ins. Special times!
That’s the craziest thing I’ve heard! What a lucky location
SEGA is the best video game company that ever existed
As a kid, I remember playing many exclusives, and actually played more 16-bit Sonic games on the Saturn than I did with the Mega Drive. The only thing they should have done is to add all Master System, the Game Gear exclusive Triple Trouble and Sonic CD to be the complete package, the museum in Sonic 3D World shows a lot of material from all Sonic versions and I somehow expected the 8-bit and CD games could be unlocked somehow, as this compilation isn't emulation, but a proper and enhanced port, like many console/arcade/computer-to console games tended to be, emulation was basically non-existent, which often meant good quality ports. Things like the dreaded Sega Smash Pack on the Dreamcast and many other 6th ports are emulated.
Even back then I found Die Hard Trilogy clunky, with weird visuals, but I had so much fun playing the first and third games, Pandemonium, Croc, Sonic R, KOF96/97, Xmen vs SF, Marvel vs SF, Shining Force 3 trilogy, Alien Trilogy, Hexen, Duke 3D, The Holy Ark, Mystaria, Dragon Force, Die Hard Arcade, Virtua Cop 2, Tomb Raider, Grandia, Resident Evil, Myst, Riven and this is to name a few, it was the best time for me and my brothers, and also the best console to choose as we were totally into arcades, you could have it all with this console.
It really is one of the greatest console of all time, bar none, no question. Effing' phenomenal system... Can't wait until the homebrew community gets really good at coding for it...
Imo it’s THE best. Saturn, MegaCD, & GameCube are the GOATs
@@marcbasil why the gamecube?
I love the Saturn so much, it's right there with the SNES as my favorite system, still to this day I use a Saturn pad for all of my 6 button fighting games.
And so many of my favorite games live right here on this system.
Dragon Force may just be my favorite games of all time, Sega Rally on Sat is easily my favorite arcade racer of all time and Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold from the SF Collection on Sat is my favorite fighting game.
The library may not have been as strong as the PS1's in NA, but the gems on the Saturn shine so bright.
The Saturn being able to play arcade perfect ports of X-Men vs Street Fighter, Marvel Superheros vs Street Fighter, Darkstalkers 3 etc to me was sorcery and truly next gen experience at the time.
Alpha 1-3 too
@@macuser7048 Alpha 3 on Saturn is peak Saturn. Still considered the best port by many. Peak price too though.
@@macuser7048 Yes EVERYTHING by Capcom, SNK even Sunsoft ( the ones who made Astra superstars) and Sega themselves Nights, Astal Panzer Dragoon etc
@@aegisreflector1239 Speaking of Sunsoft, Waku Waku 7 is on PS4 and XBOX One
@@davy_K Yeah it's gotten crazy now. lol The other Marvel games and Street Fighter games aren't as high in price now though.
I loved the Saturn. My brother had one, while I owned a Nintendo 64 instead. It was an impressive piece of hardware. Too bad nobody liked writing games for it.
Saturn was a good console. But it's a great console now. The Saturn and DC analogue sticks are drift proof because they use magnets to detect movement - so they don't wear out.
The Sega Saturn was the best fifth generation home video game console because the Sega Saturn was compatible with the Action Replay Plus RAM cartridge which allowed all Sega Saturn models to play imported USA, PAL region and Japanese Sega Saturn games such as the Japan-released only titles like X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, etc.. Plus, the Saturn was backwards-compatible with music CDs.
thats why it was the best? lololol
@@TrevorFosterTheFosterDojo I'm not sure... Maybe some forgot that the PS1 played music CD's as well?
@@23GreyFox ps1 dominated the Saturn these morons
@@TrevorFosterTheFosterDojo Saturn? Shit N64 too! I had no faith in PlayStation and BOY…did I bet wrong!🤦🏻♂️🤣
The Saturn was a 2d and a 3D beast. It had more raw power than the Playstation and even could do better textures. What the Saturn could never deliver better than the Playstation was the transparency effects in 3d games not the 3d itself. Look at Virtua Fighter 3, a perfect example of the console´s 3d capabilities when a game is written properly by in-house programers.
Of course could, but it was not worth the effort and hassle. Just take a look at Astal and Guardian Heroes. Also many effects took advantage of composite video, in RGB looks really nasty. Tricks of the era
@@orkoto6057 could never understand how those two games got the transparency to work right but every other game didn't. Even all the first party games. Really crappy
@@andriodman1 take a look at this channel its quite revealing
ruclips.net/video/f_OchOV_WDg/видео.html
It's a cope that it was a '3D beast'. VDP1 couldn't draw nearly enough polygons (what are really 2D sprites distorted into quads) fast enough to match the PS1's GTE for instance. If your game could use VDP2 to draw the floor (which has to be flat, btw, somewhat limiting potential game design), freeing up resources on VDP1, then yeah you could pull off some impressive 3D visuals &/or performance.
Saturn was horrible with lighting and used warped sprites/polygons.
The Saturn actually rendered games using quadrilaterals instead of triangles as other 3D systems did. This contributed to the difficulty of making games because most 3D modeling programs used triangles. As far as I know this is still the case today as "quads" never caught on.
I wonder who came up with the idea of using quads for the Saturn --- that was a big mistake.
Wrong.... the Saturn was built to be a 3-D machine right out the box. Sega built the Saturn based on their own experience of using multiple chips to make quality games.
Third-party developers were not capable of developing games for a complex multichip architecture vs. the simple design of the PSX.
I don’t think people view the Saturn the way you’re describing anymore. We Saturn fans have gone out and showed people the great exclusives on Saturn and people understand the value of the Saturn Library.
The Saturn's problem wasn't the hardware. The Saturn's problem was Sega. Their strategy was confusing, and they showed with the 32x they would drop it immediately, if they wanted to. Which they did.
Then of course you have the Playstation, whose marketing made it the 'cooler' product, and so many flocked to that.
Sega was, many times, it's own worst enemy.
Unfortunately, in the west the Saturn is viewed much more favorably as a retro console that it ever was as a current console back then. Back then people were blown away by the 3D graphics coming from the PS1 and N64. In retrospect, the 32-bit 2D games have aged better than the early 3D games did. So 2D PS1 games like Symphony of the Night are some of the best looking games on that system in retrospect. This also means that since the Saturn is a 2D powerhouse it is looked at much more favorably now than it was at the time, because 32-bit 2D graphics are viewed very favorably now.
Great commentary video, i love my saturn, but i hated how it got treated here in the states, i was the only one out of my friends with a saturn, thumbs up for mentioning wing arms!
I was the only kid in northern Canada with a Saturn. World series baseball was my happy place
@@mrfake675 my happy place was panzer 1-2, sega rally and gun griffin.
Sega as a whole company was ahead of it times point blank!
Saturn was basically arcade hardware shoehorned into a console. And yes it was meant to do 2D AND 3D. Back when 486 PCs' were trying to brute force 10,000 flat shaded polygons Saturn/ST-V were pushing 200K texture mapped, gourad shaded polys at great frame rates and having a 2nd GPU just for backgrounds/ playfields was the icing on the cake. Some ports suffered but games built from the ground up on it and developed by experienced programmers were magical.
I do not think this video is very accurate to what really sega had in mind. Keep in mind what sega had in the arcades. Virtua fighter, Daytona USA, virtua racing. They clearly knew where the industrybwas headed with 3d polygons. The saturn was designed to take the arcade experience home. You'd be pretty dumb to think sega didn't know where the industry was headed when you look at what was going on with thier arcade games. Lol.
I NEVER see "Firestorm: Thunderhawk/Thunderstrike 2" in these videos. VERY underated game if you like flight simulators!
Sad that console wise we are now down to two options. PS or Xbox.
Loved the days of the console wars.
I cant believe that the guys behind the Virtua series, truly thought that the Saturn should have a 2D emphasis.
The Saturn and the Dreamcast are 2 consoles that i absolutely love. Its such a shame some of the coolest titles never left Japan. There are so many RPGs on both consoles never got localized for the west
So many great memories of the saturn. Sega rally, virtua fighter 2, fighters mega mix, the panza series, athlete Kings and so many more great games.
This regurgitated bullshit again?
There are design papers as early as 1991 that talk about 3D. 3D was in the original design. It's not an afterthought.
Sega designed the Saturn coming from the arcade, predictably. It caused the design to be convoluted.
The only reason Saturn's 3D looks bad (or an afterthought) is because the Juggernaut Sony just had so much more resources at its disposal.
If you compare the Saturn to it's contemporaries (consoles and PC's), it's actually pretty amazing for the price. Sony just set the bar much higher for the whole industry which is pretty unfortunate for Sega.
Ku$ony made it possible for shite programmers to make games quick and ok looking in a short time.
its kinda sad, but i'm glad finally we can all appreciate how amazing this generation of gaming really was
Normal since saturday means Saturn day.
The Saturn died too soon. I really liked the system but I remember hearing that it was too difficult for programmers to make games for it.
what the saturn needed,the gpu of the ps1,no vdp1 and vdp2 btw saturn has more cpu power.the mips3000a in the ps1 was slowwww.a single sh2 is like 5times the power of the mips 3000 cpu.
Sega had the best 3D arcade games at the time.
"Hey lets focus on a next gen 2D console and not utilize our established IPs. Why am I losing?"
They were such a mess
Love the Saturn. Panzer Dragoon Saga is my favorite RPG of all time
Such a beautiful gaming system! I ♥ the SEGA Saturn!
Had tons of fun with the Sega Saturn back as a kid!
Daytona USA, Daytona USA: Championship Circuit Edition, Virtua Cop, Virtua Cop 2, Tomb Raider, Last Bronx, Nights into Dreams, Sega Rally Championship, Manx TT Superbike, FIghting Vipers, Destruction Derby.. and many more! Bought a lot of used games on the cheap so had a pretty good set of games for it😁
Those pixels look super crisp... I'm guessing it looked smoother on the CRT screens people had back then
The megadrive will always be my all time favourite console, i never had a saturn back in the day i switched to the ps1 but i got a saturn last year and love it ❤️
The whole "bad at 3D" thing is just as hypocritical as the "failed console" thing. The Saturn has great games, they cannot deny that, especially Virtual On. Virtual On was one of the very first 3D Action games that convinced me not only that the Saturn could handle Model 2 games as well as the Genesis handled Arcade titles before it, but that a 3D Action game could be fast and precise. No unavoidable hits, no cheap gameplay mechanics, constant motion and action, I did not believe it was possible before Virtual On in a 3D game. Sadly, most 3D games decades later fail to achieve this.
As for a "failed" console, that definition is always loaded. Take the attach rate of any given "successful" console, then look at those console's top selling games and their sales numbers if you can find them. Then look at the failure rate of said console, how many revisions to fix that fail rate were released, how many slavish consumers bought those revisions because their launch model definitely failed. Do The Math, I'm still trying, but I think for this generation 20 million consoles sold was more than actual users.
Ppl don't support these systems when they're out but always like it after its gone
The sega Saturn
The sega Dreamcast
The Nintendo GameCube
I think it's bcuz ppl love an underdog
Hindsight is 20/20
I’m still buying games for the Saturn and my Saturn is still hooked up to a CRT ready to go. I love the shmups genre meaning I absolutely adore the Saturn’s shmup library.
Man, I wish I had gotten a Saturn back then!
If you have the money you should check out the Japanese ones on eBay I bought one last year and it didn't have a scratch on it and the disk drive runs perfectly not to mention the games are cheap as hell.
I've had my Saturn for 20 years or so, Still play it all the time. Sataurn and Neo Geo CDZ are my gotos these days. I love the games and am sick of having to install games on the new consoles. I just want to put a disc in and play.
What games do you find yourself playing now a days on the Saturn? Just curious. Thanks
@@andriodman1 Radiant Silvergun, Shinrei Jusatushi Taroumaru, Elevator Action Returns, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, Street Fighter Collection, Magic Knight Rayearth....I could name more, so many good games
Saturn was always designed to do 3D. Check your sources before making a video...
It was design to push both 2D and 3D with its hardware, and this is part of what made it complicated. PS1 and N64 only have 3D capabilities in mind, and anything 2D has to be done while circumventing what the hardware was built for.
I grew up during the '90s a.k.a. the Platinum Age of gaming. The Saturn was one of those consoles that I always wanted but never had when it was new. Didn't score mine until five years ago, when I got lucky and found a working unit at a flea market along with a few games: Virtua Fighter Remix, Virtua Fighter 2, and Daytona USA. Among the games I do want to find for it: Sonic Jam, Fighters Megamix, Dragon Force, the 2D Capcom games (even though I have Street Fighter Alpha 1 and 3 on PS1 already), Magic Knight Rayearth, and the various shmups on it. I can't help but feel cheated out of those experiences because I had a PS1 and N64 back then.
To all the fanboys, fangirls, and everybody in between and beyond who bitch and moan about the Saturn: Can't we all agree that the Saturn, PS1, and N64 all had great games? That's all that matters! Let people enjoy things! As long as you're having fun, that's the most important thing that matters!
Great video pal.
I've recently got my Saturn modded with a Fenrir Duo ODE, and I'm so glad I did! Being able to play Panzer Dragoon Saga, Radiant Silvergun, Shining Force 3, X-Men vs Street Fighter, Metal Slug, Dead or Alive, King of Fighters 95/96 to name just a few, without having to spend hundreds, nay, thousands of pounds for the privilege is truly wonderful.
I owned my original Saturn way back in 1996, and whilst many friends thought it rubbish next to the PS1 and N64 (because they all believed the massive media bias that existed back then), I personally never felt as much love for a console as this. I also still own a PS1, N64 and Dreamcast, and frankly, I've always enjoyed this era of gaming far more than modern machines. Gameplay is key, as opposed to the obsession with photo-realistic visuals.
Was the Saturn a failure? No doubt yes, next to the PS1 in terms of sales, but there seems to have been a recent resurgence in the retro market for this truly wonderful console. The number of emulators, mods, and various geekery sites are great, and I heartily recommend that anyone who never gave the Saturn a chance back in the day, or modern day gamers who were too young to remember it, take advantage of the marvellous variety of options to play such gems of gaming history.
I would, however, recommend getting hold of the console, modded or otherwise, together with the 3D controller, rather than an emulator. It's a far better experience overall. Unless you're a collector, though, I'd suggest a mod, as some of the top titles will set you back upwards of £100-800! There's a couple of HDMI converter cables available nowadays, so there's no real issues with playing on modern TVs!
We bought ours shortly after the Saturn was released early to the public in '95. Having played Daytona USA in the arcades, the Saturn port looked dreadful and it immediately gave me a bad vibe about the console. After the initial game library that we picked up, we picked up NHL Powerplay '96 as our last game for the system and it collected dust for many many many years.
Fast forward to about 2019 when I decided to get a Pro Action replay and try out some of the Japanese games that I would burn to disc. And holy shit... The Saturn went from something I didn't care about at all, to a console in my top 5 now. It blows the N64 away imo. The library of arcade games and 2 gaming is incredible. It is such an underrated console, I'm so happy that it's getting it's due 27 years after it's launch. Hail Sega Saturn. :)
I just installed a Fenrir in my Saturn, best decision ever! Now I want to mod all of my pre Wii era disc based consoles with ODE's!
anyone else actually finish this 30 minute video that felt like 2 hours due to the extremely slow narration???
Yeah it was a bit taxing at the beginning with dude's ultra-relaxed cadence. He could use a cup of coffee before recording, or maybe a script to follow instead of just rambling on. The content is good, it's just hard to listen to someone talking in a casual rambling manner.
The nerdiest arguments in the comments you will ever see ;0
Who remembers Guardian Heroes? They re released it in X360 with ONLINE PLAY!! And outside of arcade 1up, Saturn had the best release of Xmen vs SF
A lot of people talk about how overengineered the hardware was, but the Saturn had a second problem that made porting games over to it a pain: Quad polygons. Everyone else was using triangles, so models had to be heavily modified for the Saturn ports of games like Resident Evil, which is why they look so different.
That is a common misconception, Sega knew the future was polygon, it had already released Virtual Fighter and Racing in the arcades followed up by Daytona. Sega knew where the future lied as the genesis and CD had polygon games on them. Sega wanted a 2D power house as well as a mildly powerful 3D system on the grounds of a 32X with more memory. Then Sega found out about the PlayStation with it's lighting and texturing abilities. Sega sh!t thier pants realizing they were gonna be out done with 3D so they threw in more processors and created a freaking Frankenstein of a console. Powerful but difficult to control all it's power and capability. It took developers too long to exploit it's power and most didn't even try. Most of the Saturn's graphically impressive games were in-house developed.
Sega always intended for this to be a dual-CPU system. They had been doing this in the arcade for years up until this point. The last addition to the system , which was a knee-jerk reaction- was the VDP-2. The original design only had a single VDP.
There was a lot of infighting between Sega of Japan and Sega of America. SoA wanted to prolong the life of the Genesis by releasing the 32X but SoJ would have none of that. SoJ didn't want Sega competing with itself by having two different consoles. And the 32X was a stupid idea anyway. If they had me around, they'd have skipped the 32X entirely and gone straight to the Saturn. Gamers knew it was wiser to wait for the Saturn than to get suckered into buying another add-on for the Genesis.
Later revisions of Daytona USA proved it could be done if it wasn't rushed.
Virtua cop was a great game for Saturn
If not the best
I had a sega saturn the year before they came out and wow - ill never forget how ahead of its time it was. Blows my mind this wasn't bigger than playstation.
Dreamcast was amazing! broke the console/PC console/Arcade threshold
I played a lot of Resident Evil on that platform and it didn't disappoint. The dogs attacking gave me chills. Overall it was a disappointing console. The genesis had a great lifespan with very addictive games.
We never had a Saturn. We had the Dreamcast, which really was a tremendously good console, but suffered under the poisoned past of Sega's failings with the 32X, Sega CD and ultimately the Saturn. Saturn looks like another console with so much untapped potential! Sucks that these things happen, but often times people in big business and especially management seem to actually be really stupid.
The Sega Genesis, Sega CD, and Sega 32X should have been all in one system.
As far as Playstation being better I beg to differ sir.Saturn Tomb Raider is better...Power Slave for Saturn is far better.
Soviet Strike was better on the Saturn, too.
Need for Speed and Independence Day were better on Saturn
I ❤️ the Saturn. It was not as much of a love back in the 90s. The PS was king then. But decades later my fondness grew for this system (and the N64) immensely.
I just wish it was so with everyone else, because I cant afford games anymore! Why the hell did I ever get rid of my old game collection...?
Its the same problem when any of us gets rid of an old system, games, trading cards, toys and all that stuff. We never think to put it back in the box and hang onto it.
@@jasonleveck8546 that's the truth. I think everything i ever had while growing up, I've repurchased the past 10 years, at exorbitant prices! I really am gullible...
@@LukeDodge916 Yeah the older we get the more we love to replay the past.
I love seeing new videos on Saturn but this was poorly researched and executed.
I bought this in the UK on day 1… for me aa you said one of the best consoles ever made…. Loved it.. but the marketing of it especially in the uk let it down as all you saw on TV then was Sony Sony Sony…. The rest is history! It wasn’t the console it was the way it was marketed arc the time that let it down….😢
What killed the Saturn and Jaguar was the lack of a proper SDK and documentation.
For the jaguar cpu. M68k is terrible cpu while atari could've used motorolla 32-bit cpus instead.
@@maroon9273 the 68000k was not the main cpu, it was just a cpu to do little stuff here and there like reading input from the controller. The CPU TOM and the GPU Jerry were real 32bits. Motorolla were never Risc CPU and Risc is always faster than cisc.
I enjoyed this video. Thank you.
My beat time on video games. And I had them all at one time. But the Saturn was awesome. Luckily I had access to the world wide market. I got more Japanese games than EU ones.❤
Sega saturn flopped in the United States and PAL regions. Plus saturn architecture was difficult to create games for. Another problem is that the saturn launched at 400 dollars vs Sony with ps1 at 299.99 and N64 at 249.99 respectively and both had superior 3d graphics vs the saturn. Saturn on the other hand did well in Japan up until the launch of the dreamcast. But in the states, all of Genesis player market moved over to the ps1.
The Saturn was designed to port 3D arcade games. Even the 32x was designed to bring enhanced 3D capabilities to the Genesis. To suggest that the Saturn was designed for 2D is nonsense.
I still have my original and still works in 2022
I almost wish video games would have stayed 2D for a while longer. The 2D era was some of the best gaming in history
Sega Saturn was awesome.. thx for this video!
Awesome system. Legend of Oasis, Dark Savior, Astal, Guardian Heroes, Sega Rally….. there were amazing games on this thing.
Nice video, too bad about the glitching. With the sad state console gaming finds itself in these days (Pokémon Violet & Scarlet anyone?)I’m enjoying rediscovering my vintage systems and lately I’ve really been digging my Saturn. I much rather buy a nice copy of a stellar game like Batsugun for around $100 than pay the same for one or two new “games” requiring a day one patch and endless updates to even be playable. The physical editions might look good on your shelf now but good luck playing them in 25 years…if you’d even want to🤷🏻♂️
What do you mean in 25 years? Do you mean they deteriorate and might not work in 25 years?
After the marketing machine settles and people forget the hype, these machines have to stand on their own merit. Which explains why peeps tend to only appreciate these machines years after they fail.
The ways of programming are evolving rapidly. However, there are cases such as government levels which continue to use, for example, old web browsers such as Internet Explorer 8-9 😂
I thought that was a rumor and Saturn was always intended to be 3D
Saturn's 2 processor design mimics their arcade tech not their console tech
Its very possible. Im learning a lot from everybody's comments and links Im being sent. This has all been really educational. Im grateful for that.
It pretty much is true that it was always intended to be 3D. That was confirmed by Hideki Sato who is the person who designed the hardware. There's a lot of rumors about Saturn's design but what we know from the Hideki Sato interviews is this:
Originally Saturn was going to be 1 SH2 and the SCU DSP to help with 3D math calculations. VDP2 and VDP1 seem to have always been there in some form, along with the SCSP and 68K to drive it. Around late 1993 Sega felt they weren't getting the performance they wanted out of the single SH2 + DSP set up and asked Hitachi if they could increase the clock speed. Hitachi wasn't able to do this but instead said they could use 2 SH-2s in a master slave configuration. Sega tried this and it helped their performance issues and that's what they went with.
So the fabled last second change was adding the 2nd SH2. It seems at this point any further development on the custom DSP in the SCU stopped which could explain why that chip is a bit of a buggy mess. With the 2nd SH2 a lot of the the original intent for the DSP goes away because anything the DSP can do, the 2nd SH2 can do just as fast if not better. But at this point it would cost more to get rid of the DSP than to keep it due to redesign costs so they kept it for helping in cases where CPU resources are the bottleneck.
By about late 1993 the Saturn's overall design was becoming finalized with any other changes being things like adding additional features like High Speed Shrink to VDP1 and what not. So basically 3D was always intended to be there, it's why they went with the SH2 and why the DSP was originally there in the SCU. And it's why they added another SH2 to make the 3D performance better.
@@SegaFanatic5188 - You’re correct, and remember at the time of the console’s development, Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter were all the rage. They had plans to bring those games to the console and needed to design the hardware to run them.
@@SegaFanatic5188 Personally, Dual SH2 and warped sprites is a bad idea for the saturn. A better performing single SH3, MIPS, NEC, Arm and power pc cpus would've made the saturn performance more efficient reduce the programming difficulties.
@@maroon9273 The SH2s are fine. They're the least controversial part of the Saturn and are very good and powerful CPUs for the time. When it comes to things like Multiplication and Division the SH2s significantly outperform the MIPS CPU in the PS1. The real reason the PS1 pulls ahead is that it's GPU has a significantly higher fillrate than Saturn's VDP1, and the GTE Coprocessor just edges out the SH2 for 3D Math performance because it's a custom chip with Hardware implementations of 3D Math functions.
It's not the use of Quads/Distorted Sprites that's a problem either. It's simply the lack of Texture Coordinates, and that VDP1 is slower than the competition. That said, it's not nearly as poor as people try to claim either.
Finally, bringing up the SH3 is just plain silly because without the Saturn using the SH2, there is no SH2 (so no 32X either). Without the SH2, there is no SH3.
Thunder Force V better on PS? Alien Soldier? Street Racer? Duke Nukem & Powerslave... ...there have certainly been conversions of 3D games that were better on the Saturn than on the PS. The Sega Saturn is of this world. However, Sega did not hit the mainstream of the west. Saturn was initially incredibly expensive in Europe. Sony's better 3D hardware and marketing power did the rest in the west.
Wipeout and wipeout 2097, DOOM, Resident Evil, RoadRash, Diehard, and so on… way better on PS1. I still love the Saturn though!
Great video ! We still love segasaturn 😀
The Saturn deserved better, especially outside of Japan. Imagine if we would have gotten games like Sonic Xtreme and Shenmue on the system, that would have been insane!
Now that you've mentioned it. I still need to play Shenmue 3 to finish the story. Played 1 and 2 on the Dreamcast.
I cam image a Shem Mue on the Saturn, it already run horrible on the Dreamcast.
For a time I wanted a Saturn but never got one. Same with the first PlayStation. Ended up with the N64 instead. Completely missed out on 32 bit. I did get a dreamcast in 2002.
Would've been worse to miss the 64 if you only had one choice
Unfortunately, the Saturn had only been successful in Japan, if you want to get to the good games you can't get around the Japan imports because the best games came out there.
Daytona was GREATNESS as a 14yr old with long hair, a skateboard and a Pearl Jam T-shirt…
Pearl Jam wasn’t good bro.
@@outerspaceman7534 For a teenager in the 90’s the first two albums were awesome- after that they went shit
@@gedrooney9305 I’ll be honest they are crap. I was listening to their first two albums yesterday. I just prefer bands like Soundgarden if I wasn’t my 90s grunge fix. They sound more heavier and metal.
@@outerspaceman7534 Im a Soundgarden/ Stone Temple fan, I never bothered buying another PJ album after Vitalogy as a kid. Moved onto Beefheart and down that rabbit hole..I’m a 43yr old rock climber now..Grunge energy keeps me pulling hard on rock instead of smashing shins on my board..
AIC > PJ and STP
I was a big fan of the Dreamcast too. If you liked certain types of games, both were pretty great.
Grandia 2 and Skies of Arcadia are my 2 favorite RPG games of all times that came out on the dreamcast.
It's a fantastic console, sadly by then SEGA Europe was under SEGA USA's rule and ... well.... they screwed up majorly. It was certainly a system that deserved better, and the later 3D games more than kept up with the PS One. I mean Burning Rangers even showed the translucency effects that people were moaning about lol :P . And I do say moaning, as for most people it wasn't an issue. They were still playing on analog screens and sometimes even with composite signals, and then the mesh translucency works fine as it blends :P .
And the 2d effects could really help in 3D. The Sonic Jam showed some of that. By using a play field in the bottom you could use it as a high res floor with holes in it and only have to spend a few polyons to create hills and rivers, etc. Saving you a lot on polygon budget. At the same time it looked great. Panzer Dragoon did similar things :). Not to mention the sprite effects you could use to enrich 3D. And at high resolution! Earlier games were running slower, but even Daytona USA got improved along the lifetime of the console (new versions), and later 3D fighting games ran in a very high resolution at 60fps, a thing not possible on a PLaystation. Fighter Megamix and Blazing Vipers were two great examples.
But yeah, Sonic Jam uses a playfield/2d bakcground for the surface, with transparency (see through not translucency) areas, and filling those in for holes and hills :) .
I mean….it got over 1,200 titles developed for it, the most of any Sega console lol. It was developed for from 1994-2001.
@@marcbasil It really was a system that grew with age. Burning Rangers did things that one couldn't have imagined at the launch of the system. I really do think they could have waited one more year and flesh the Dreamcast out a bit more to have a bit more memory.
As the Dreamcast had issues with it's main memory and polygon budget. It could easily push over 6 million a second but you'd run in to issues with memory space. Heck, adding multipass rendering would have really hit it out of the park. Ah,. yes theorycrafting about a thing that would never have existed XD. We have our dreams :P .
Sega six button for street fighter 2 is perfection.
I do agree that the Sega Saturn is an underrated console
People say arcade conversions were not good. If Sega in that time released a full on arcade system for the home with exact games it would have been a dream. Imagine Daytona USA the same as the arcade but on your TV at home.
That would have been much more expensive than the Sega Saturn, sadly.
They kind of did do this, but later. The Dreamcast. It had a whole bunch of arcade perfect ports.
@@Hahnsoulo I think Sega should have followed a similar technique of Sony in terms of similar game titles released that made the PlayStation successful.
I love the Saturn ... My fav ever. I still have all of my games with receipts! :)
This backup unlocked sounds awesome!!!! I have close to a hundred CDs I burned for Saturn during lockdown...I love the system
I have a Japanese Saturn and Christmas Nights. Will definitely play it this Christmas!
There is definitely something special about that system
When i got the Saturn at it's late life, i never touched my Playstation. Till Saturn had no games anymore.
Problem was from what i've read, is that Sega Japan and Sega USA weren't on the same line.
Then they went their own way with the system.
I can say that Sega Japan did far better.
I got all those late Capcom fighters which were awesome with the extra memory card.
Saturn in the west didn't had enough titles, that was the problem.
I think it could live way longer if the west had the same or just more titles.
Great system and i still have mine.
Also still have Dreamcast.
Great video! What's amazing about the Saturn is just how many games there are for it -- as you mention prob 50+ high quality shooters and tons of arcade perfect ports; Space Harrier, Out Run, Afterburner, All the SF2/Alpha variations, Ghouls N Ghost/Ghosts n Goblins to name a few.
The 3D does let it down a bit, but the top tier 3D games hold up and the 2D library is incredible.
go to japan go to one of those retro stores you can pick up a saturn like it was nothing
I play SS throughout my teenage years...a lot of fav games...but im just gonna name 2.. Magic Knights Rayearth and Dragon Force.
Ray earth is a great ass game