Sega Saturn

First to the Party

Just as the 16-bit Sega Genesis hit the streets well before the Super Nintendo / Super Famicom, the 32-bit Saturn was also first to the party for its generation of home gaming consoles. In this way, it initially competed against the SNES and was winning, until the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 (N64) hit shelves, and literally took the wind out from under the Saturn's wings.

A Powerful But Complex Design

The Saturn had a heck of a lot of processing power for its time, and is said to be potentially more powerful than both the PlayStation and the N64. However, because Sega's development team created the Saturn with dual CPUs (Hitachi 28.6 Mhz SuperH-2 7604), along with 6 other processors, game makers found it difficult to harness all of this power. What made things difficult was that the two CPUs made use of the same memory, so in effect, sometimes one processor would have to finish what it was doing before the other could start its task.

This parallel processing design was incredibly complex, "one very fast central processor would be preferable," said Yu Suzuki. Also, whereas development kits for the Sony PlayStation were more game-maker friendly, the kits provided for the Saturn weren't exactly useful.

Where's the Third Party Support?

Combining the above-named two factors, Sony quickly began to lose third party support, especially to the Sony PlayStation, just as the Nintendo 64 did due to the limitations and high costs of cartridge games. In this way, the vast majority of "big" titles found on the Sega Saturn were developed in-house or were ports of Sony's arcade games. Case in point, the all-time best selling Sega Saturn game was Virtua Figher 2. The general public lost some confidence in Sega's products as well, given the quick in-and-out history of the Sega CD and 32X.

Where's the Mascot?

Sonic The Hedgehog became a very popular character on the Sega Genesis, so it comes as quite a surprise that the super-fast running superstar made such a limited appearance on the Sega Saturn. Nintendo was still pushing Mario on its Nintendo 64, and the PlayStation had quite a few amiable personalities, but the Saturn kind of came up short. The only remotely successful Sonic title to hit the Saturn was Sonic 3D Blast (pictured right).

Popular Titles

From creepy third-party horror games like D to in-house developed racers like Daytona USA, the Sega Saturn had a reasonable selection of games, but nowhere close to the huge library found on the Sony PlayStation. Many of the most popular titles were designed and marketed by Sony itself. Some of the notable games along the way include:

• D
• Daytona USA
• Die Hard Arcade
• Fighting Vipers
• Mega Man X3
• NiGHTS Into Dreams

• Panzer Dragoon Orta
• Policenauts
• Sega Rally Championship
• Sonic 3D Blast
• Tomb Raider
• Virtua Cop
• Virtua Fighter 2