Sega Saturn

Sega Saturn

File:SegaSaturn.gif
Sega Saturn
Manufacturer	Sega
Type	Video game console
Generation	Fifth generation (32-bit/64-bit era)
Lifespan	November 22, 1994 May 11, 1995 July 8, 1995
Units sold	9.5 million
Media	CD-ROM
CPU	2 x Hitachi SH-2 32-bit RISC (28.6 MHz)
Storage	Internal RAM, cartridge
Graphics	VDP1 & VDP2
Online services	Sega NetLink
Best-selling game	Virtua Fighter 2 (1.7 million)
Predecessor	Sega Mega Drive/Genesis
Successor	Sega Dreamcast

The Sega Saturn (セガサターン, Sega Satān) is a 32-bit video game console, first released on November 22 1994 in Japan, May 11 1995 in North America and July 8 1995 in Europe.

The system was supported in North America and Europe until late 1998, and in Japan until the end of 2000.

Development

Sega's 27-member Away Team, comprising employees from every aspect of hardware engineering, product development and marketing, worked exclusively for two years to ensure the Sega Saturn's hardware and design met the precise needs of both the U.S. and Japanese markets. The Saturn was a powerful machine for the time, but its design, with two CPUs and 6 other processors, made harnessing its power extremely difficult. Many of the ancillary chips in the system were "off the shelf" components. This increased the complexity of the design since less custom hardware was used. Rumors suggest that the original design called for a single central processor, but a second processor was added late in development to increase potential performance.

One very fast central processor would be preferable. I don't think all programmers have the ability to program two CPUs — most can only get about one-and-a-half times the speed you can get from one SH-2. I think that only 1 in 100 programmers are good enough to get this kind of speed [nearly double] out of the Saturn.

— Yu Suzuki reflecting upon Saturn Virtua Fighter development.

Third-party development was initially hindered by the lack of useful software libraries and development tools, requiring developers to write in assembly language to achieve good performance. At least during early Saturn development, programming in assembly could offer a two to fivefold speed increase over the C language. To save development costs and time, some programmers would utilize only one CPU. One such case was with Alien Trilogy.

The implementation of dual CPUs within Saturn was not ideal. The biggest disadvantage of the architecture was that both processors shared the same bus and had problems accessing the main system RAM at the same time. The 4 KiB of cache memory in each CPU was critical to maintaining performance. In general, very careful division of processing, in addition to the already-challenging task of parallelizing the code, was required to get the most out of the Saturn. One example of how the Saturn was utilized was with Virtua Fighter's use of one CPU for each character.

Compared to the PlayStation, the hardware was difficult to work with because of its more complex graphics hardware and lesser overall performance, as noted by Lobotomy Software programmer Ezra Dreisbach. In order to bring Duke Nukem 3D and Powerslave to Saturn, Lobotomy Software had to rewrite the build engine almost entirely from scratch to get adequate performance from Saturn. Also, during testing of an unreleased Quake port for PlayStation, Saturn's performance was found to be notably inferior for the game.

Unlike the PlayStation's and Nintendo 64's use of triangles as its basic geometric primitive, the Saturn rendered quadrilaterals. This proved a hindrance as most industry standard design tools were based around triangles, and multi-platform games were usually developed with triangles and the PlayStation's larger market share in mind. One of the challenges brought forth by quadrilateral-based rendering was problems with making some shapes, notably triangular objects. This can be seen in the Saturn version of Tomb Raider, in which triangular rocks are not rendered as well as other versions of the game. The hardware also lacked light sourcing and hardware video decompression support, the latter being a major disadvantage during a time when full-motion video was quite popular.

Still, if used correctly, the quadrilateral rendering of the Saturn had advantages. It could potentially show less texture distortion than was common with PlayStation titles, as demonstrated by several cross-platform titles such as Wipeout and Destruction Derby. The quadrilateral-focused hardware and a 50% greater amount of video memory also gave the Saturn an advantage for 2D game engines and attracted many developers of RPGs, arcade games and traditional 2D fighting games. With creative programming, later games like Burning Rangers were able to achieve true transparency effects on hardware that used simple polygon stipples as a replacement for transparency effects in the past.

Two different RAM cartridges were released for the system; a 1 MiB RAM cart by SNK for King of Fighters '96 and a 4 MiB RAM cart by Capcom for X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Both companies were known for their sprite-based 2D competitive fighting games and many of their subsequent games utilized their respective cartridges.

Performance in the marketplace

The optional analog controller (North American and European version) that came packaged with Nights into Dreams...

Japan

The Japanese Saturn was rushed to the market in November 1994, just a few weeks ahead of its rival, Sony's PlayStation. The difficulties in programming for the system along with the early release led to very few games being available at launch. Approximately 170,000 machines were sold the first day the console went on sale. Although the Saturn was outsold by the PlayStation in Japan between 1995 and 1997, Saturn software enjoyed higher sales, a fact boosted by their ingenious Segata Sanshiro advertising campaign, leading to the perception that the Saturn was the platform of choice for more dedicated gamers while the PlayStation had a more casual audience.

Many of the games that made the Saturn popular in Japan, such as the Sakura Taisen series and numerous quirky anime style RPGs, were never released in foreign territories due to policies put in place by then Sega of America president Bernie Stolar (following direct commands of Sega of Japan's CEO Hayao Nakayama) who believed that RPGs (or even most Japanese games in general) were not appealing to the North American audience.

The last commercial licensed release in Japan and last official game for the system was Yukyu Gensokyoku Perpetual Collection, released by Mediaworks on December 4 2000.

North America

By the end of 1994, the 16-bit video game era was in twilight in North America and gamers were eagerly anticipating the new 32-bit machines from Japan. In early 1995, Sega president Tom Kalinske announced that the Saturn would launch in the U.S. on "Saturnday", (Saturday) September 2, 1995. This date was greatly anticipated by gamers and the media. It also allowed Sony to announce that the PlayStation release date would be one week later on September 9, 1995.

However, at the first Electronic Entertainment Expo E3 in May 1995, Kalinske announced that the "Saturnday" date was a ruse and that the system was being released nationwide by a few select retailers immediately. This surprise move shocked everyone in attendance (Sony most of all) and it appeared that Sega had a real opportunity to take a commanding lead in the 32-bit race by beating the PlayStation to the market.

In reality the "surprise attack" launch backfired for Sega. The Saturn was released at a high price point of US$399 (Sony announced a US$299 price for the PlayStation at E3 itself, as a response to the Saturn's release which it eventually had to cut to sell systems). Sega set the price high to capitalize on sales from early adopters who were willing to pay a premium to have the first machines available. Traditionally most video game hardware is sold at a loss to allow for a price point low enough for quick adoption. With Sega having the market all to itself, it saw no reason to sell the system at a loss when demand was high in the marketplace.

The early launch also made the independent software companies angry because most of the third party games were slated to be finished and released around the September 2nd launch date. The early launch of the Saturn prevented them from capitalizing on the momentum inherent in an anticipated, planned release. Essentially the only software available on the shelves at launch was software released by Sega which, to many people within the software industry, appeared to be a move calculated to bring more sales to Sega's software at the expense of its rivals.

In addition, the retailers who were not included in the early launch (most notably Wal-Mart and KB Toys) felt betrayed by Sega allowing their competition to profit on the Saturn at their expense. This resulted in Sega having difficulties with these distributors for the Saturn (and also for its successor, the Dreamcast). As an example: the leadership within KB Toys were so angered by Sega's actions that they refused to release the Saturn at all and even actually going as far as having some retailers removing anything Sega-related in stores, providing more retail space in many American shopping malls for the Saturn's competition instead.

By the time of the PlayStation's release on September 9 1995, the Saturn had sold approximately 80,000 systems. The PlayStation sold over 100,000 units upon release in the U.S. Sega's dreams of early domination of the new generation of hardware were quickly forgotten.

From 1995–1997 the Saturn became the "other" system, running a distant third behind the Nintendo 64 and the PlayStation. However, it was the preferred system for many arcade gamers who eagerly anticipated Sega's arcade classic games being ported to the system. Sales of the Saturn would generally spike as new arcade ports were released, then die off shortly thereafter. By the end of 1997 the third party releases for the system had dried up, and Sega's support was slowly fading as focus turned to the Dreamcast.

The last commercial licensed release in North America was Magic Knight Rayearth, released by Working Designs on December 11 1998.

Europe

Despite the successful results of previous Sega consoles in this region (Master System and Mega Drive were both the top-selling consoles of their generations in the European market) and although the Sega Saturn was launched in Europe in July 1995 – a few months before the newcomer PlayStation's release – the momentum for Sony's console amongst consumers began to build rapidly, stalling Saturn sales in the region. The Nintendo 64 also stole some of the limelight, despite the fact that it didn't actually hit European shelves until early 1997 and that Nintendo consoles were less popular than Sega's in Europe.

As a result, the Sega Saturn never enjoyed the success it achieved in Japan or even the post-launch hype the machine was awarded in North America, leaving the market almost solely in the competition's hands.

The last commercial licensed release in Europe was Deep Fear, released by Sega Europe in November 1998.

End of product life

As price drops continued throughout the 32-bit era, the system board design of the Saturn was not as easy to condense in a cost-saving manner and Sega fell behind after price drops offered by Nintendo and Sony. This forced Sega to "bundle" more software with the system in an attempt to make the more expensive Saturn compete with its rivals. Although the quality of the bundled software was high, gamers preferred to purchase a cheaper system from the competition and purchase game titles of their own choice instead.

The Saturn's motherboard was complex and difficult to consolidate, making it expensive to produce

By early 1997, the Saturn was trailing the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation in both North America and Europe to such an extent that senior management began planning a new platform and, by E3 in 1997, had begun talk of the system that would become known as the Sega Dreamcast. As Sega started aggressively moving forward with that project, a rift developed between Sega and many of their third-party developers and publishers. As the Saturn was popular in the Japanese marketplace, many Japanese developers saw little reason for Sega to rush another platform to market. As Sega began public discussion about their future platform to media barely two years after having launched the Saturn, many gamers decided that the Saturn was already dead. Sales quickly diminished, as the console's life expectancy dropped substantially after Bernie Stolar's public comments that "The Saturn is not our (SEGA's) future". This, combined with Sega's reputation, having pulled out on support rather quickly for both the Sega CD and 32X platforms, led to a large chain reaction that quickly caused the platform's future to collapse. Many Saturn projects were canceled, in anticipation of the new console, because of the substantial drop in sales after Sega announced that they were working on a new platform and through developers' and publishers' frustration with Sega. In a magazine article involving Will Muscaeli, he summed up the life cycle of the Sega Saturn as being "disappointing". Some major publishers such as Electronic Arts were so dismayed at Sega's early abandonment of the Saturn that they vowed not to support any Sega consoles in the future.

With Sega now publicly saying they were working on a new console, sales for the Saturn substantially tapered off in the second half of 1997. This caused many games that were planned for a western Saturn release to be canceled, including highly anticipated titles such as Sonic X-treme, Policenauts and Lunar: Silver Star Story. A chain reaction of cancellations transformed a promising 1998 schedule of releases to a small handful of titles extending little beyond Panzer Dragoon Saga, Burning Rangers, Shining Force III (only part one of the three-part series) and Magic Knight Rayearth – the only third-party title released that year. Eventually the Saturn was discontinued in both Europe and North America in late 1998.

Saturn models

Asian models

In Japan, Sega licensed the rights to produce Saturns to their hardware partners – Hitachi, who provided the CPUs and several other chips, and JVC who produced the CD drives for most models, although functionally identical Sanyo drives were sometimes used. SunSeibu released a model with a 7-CD changer for use in hotels. The concept of a multi-game player for hotel use is very common in Japan.

Manufacturer & Model	Case Color	Button Color	Type of Buttons	Notes
Sega HST-3200	Gray	Blue	Oval	The original Japanese Saturn. Production was ended in favour of the White Saturn. This model had a black cartridge flap and came in a box labeled HST-0001. The power cord is un-notched and this machine has a drive access light.
Sega	White	Purple/Gray	Round/oval	Sega switched from purple to gray buttons during the production run. This controller was a matching white with multi-colored buttons similar to a Super Famicom controller with the bottom row buttons colored green, yellow and blue. The 'white' plastic is a very light gray and shares its color with the later Dreamcast. The cartridge flag is visibly gray. Limited models of the Saturn had oval buttons. Some people report faster CD access time with this model.
Sega Skeleton Saturn	Translucent smoky-gray	-	-	Came with a matching smoky-gray controller. Both controller and system had "This is cool" printed on them. Only around 50,000 were produced. Has some compatibility problems, notably with Metal Slug and Space Harrier.
Sega Derby Saturn	Translucent blue	-	-	Released on March 25 1999, this model was only available as part of a promotion with ASCII's popular horse racing sim, Derby Stallion. It came with the same smoky-gray controller as the Skeleton Saturn but did not have "This is cool" printed on the system. After limited supplies of the Skeleton Saturn, the Derby Saturn was quickly bought in bulk by exporters and for a time was easier to find outside Japan than inside. Shares the compatibility problems of the Skeleton Saturn. Uses BIOS 1.01.
Hitachi Hi-Saturn	Charcoal	Khaki	Round	This machine appears similar in color to the European and North American Saturn without close inspection. Hi-Saturn is printed on the CD drive lid. Controllers have the same color layout as the unit with pinkish-beige and dark bluish/gray buttons. The Hitachi logo appears on them. The machine was packaged in an almost all-black box with a light-gray/white border. Excepting some limited promotional bundles, the Hi-Saturn came packaged with an MPEG plug-in card allowing Video CD playback. The start-up screen differs slightly from other models – instead of a shower of pieces forming the Saturn logo, the word "Hi-Saturn" shoots out from the middle of the screen and then flips around until it is readable.
Hitachi Hi-Saturn Navi (MMP-1000NV)	Charcoal	Khaki	Round	This is the only consumer Saturn to differ in functionality or shape. It is much thinner, and is flat instead of curved on top, in order to accommodate a folding LCD monitor that clips to the rear. It includes GPS capability, and has a standard port on the rear for use with an included antenna. Navi-ken CDs are used for map data. Since Navi-ken was only available in Japan, only Japanese maps are available.
JVC/Victor V-Saturn RG-JX1	Light Gray	-	Oval	Two-tone appearance, gray on top with a black base section. "V-Saturn" is printed on top of the machine. Features a V-Saturn logo in place of the Sega Saturn logo at boot-up.
JVC/Victor V-Saturn RG-JX2	Light Gray	-	Round	Two-tone appearance, gray on top, dark-gray base section. "V-Saturn" is printed on top of the machine. Besides color and markings, this is completely identical to the Sega model. Features a 1.01 BIOS, and shares the boot-up sequence of the RG-JX1.
Samsung Saturn (삼성새턴)	Black	-	Oval	Intended only for South Korea, this machine combines the older style oval-button shell with the smaller and newer mainboard which normally comes with a round-button shell. The Japanese language option was removed from the setup screen on some models.

North American models

All North American models are black in color and were produced by Sega.

Model	Type of Buttons	Manufacturing Period	Notes
MK-80000	Oval	6/95 – 3/96	Identical to the Grey Japanese Saturn but for color: the U.S. model is black.
MK-80000A	Round	3/96 – 9/96	Features a notched power cord, no drive access light and a 1.00a BIOS. Internal jumper locations are changed.
MK-80001	Round	7/96 – 98	Similar in appearance to the MK-80000A, this machine has some changed internal jumper locations.

Early models came packaged with a redesigned controller that was slightly bigger than the Japanese variant. Eventually the Japanese controller was adopted. This was similar to how the Microsoft Xbox controller ended up, with a redesigned smaller version being released.

European/Australian models

European and Australian Saturns are identical as both regions share the same AC voltage and TV standard. There is no internal variation between PAL and SÉCAM machines as all were shipped with SCART leads. All models are black and externally quite similar to the North American variations. PAL and SECAM machines will have "PAL" next to the BIOS revision number on the system settings screen instead of "NTSC".

Model	Type of Buttons	Notes
MK-80200-50	Oval	Version 1.01a BIOS.
MK-80200A-50	Round	Lacks a drive access LED. Buttons are grey.

Game packaging

Japan

File:Sega Saturn Bubble Symphony Inlay.jpg

The inlay and spinecard for the Japanese release of Bubble Symphony – games were packaged in standard CD jewel cases

Japanese software was packaged in standard CD cases jewel case with a spinecard – a threefold piece of light cardboard that hugs the spine of the jewel case and is held in place by the overall shrinkwrap usually with a gold and black background and the Japanese Saturn logo and lettering printed vertically. Some games that came with thicker instruction manuals came in slightly thicker CD cases than the normal type. Only about 20% of Saturn games used this packing. Saturn collection games have a red and white spinecard with white lettering, the Saturn Collection logo under that, and the 2,800 yen price featured prominently. Spinecards are valuable to collectors, and necessary if one wishes to sell the game as "complete". The spinecard bears the name of the title to which it is attached.

The game manual is included in place of liner notes and the cover will usually carry a bar similar in design to the spinecard and the Japanese rating, if there is one. The back card usually features artwork or screenshots from the game and a black bar at the bottom containing necessary legal information such as copyright notices.

Some games were packed in "double" CD cases or in a non-standard slightly thicker variant of the single case. The game Super Robot Wars F (a Japanese-only game produced by Banpresto) comes in a special jewel case, approximately 1 mm thicker, made necessary by its 54-page manual. Also Langrisser 3 and Riglord Saga 2 used a similar case for the same reason.

North America

File:Sega Saturn North American Street Fighter Alpha 2 box.jpg

The box for the North American release of Street Fighter Alpha 2, showing all vertical edges

In North America, the existing tall, single hinged case design used for Sega CD games was adopted for Saturn titles. The cases incorporate a white spine containing a 30 degree stripe pattern in gray, with white outlined lettering displaying the words "Sega Saturn". The manual slides into the case in the same manner as the liner notes in a normal jewel case, and the cover often carries a back insert with information about the game. The manuals were substantially larger than standard CD manuals, and as a result had more room for art.

These cases had several problems:

• Their sheer size made them vulnerable to cracking.
• The mechanism that keeps the cover closed wears out quickly if the cover is opened and closed too much
• There is sufficient empty space inside the case that if the CD comes loose of the case's spindle then it can easily suffer scratching or be shattered during case transportation. Some games (especially early in the system's life) came with a foam brick to keep the disc from falling off the spindle.

Games packaged with the system or a peripheral such as Virtua Fighter and NiGHTS Into Dreams often came in a standard CD Jewel case.

Europe

File:Sega Saturn European Saturn Bomberman box.jpg

The box for the European release of Saturn Bomberman, showing all vertical edges

The European Saturn cases were custom designed and similar to a DVD case, composed of either a two piece clamshell enclosure held together by a single large piece of card comprising both the front and back covers and spine, or a single-piece plastic case with a paper insert detailing covers and spine underneath a flexible plastic outer window similar to a commercial VHS video case except in dimensions. Some titles, notably those from Electronic Arts featured an extended deeper version of the VHS style case.

When the case is opened the disk rests inside the case to the right of the hinge, while the booklet was placed to the left. Standard art design includes a solid black spine and white lettering displaying the words "Sega Saturn".

These cases had several problems:

• The cardboard hinges wore out very quickly
• The spindles which held the discs in place wore out very quickly, causing discs to move around in the cases in transit and scratch
• There was nothing holding the manual in place; as the manuals were often heavy, with several languages, it was difficult to close the cases without the manual falling out of place.
• The mechanism for closing the cases wore out very quickly and was very ineffective to begin with

The cases were redesigned closer to the end of the life of the console in Europe in later years, with a plastic case and a sleeve insert, much like a DVD case, the games cases were fairly hard to open but more sturdy and less prone to breaking, the later games were all released in these cases and some earlier games were released both in this case and the older one, like Athlete Kings and Sega Rally.

Technical specifications

Processors

• Two Hitachi SuperH-2 7604 32-Bit RISC processors at 28.63 MHz (50-MIPS) – each has 4 KiB on-chip cache, of which 2 KiB can alternatively be used as directly addressable Scratchpad RAM
• SH-1 32-bit RISC processor (controlling the CD-ROM)
• Custom VDP 1 32-bit video display processor (running at 7.1590 MHz on NTSC Systems, 6.7116 MHz for PAL Systems)
• Custom VDP 2 32-bit video display processor (running at 7.1590 MHz on NTSC Systems, 6.7116 MHz for PAL Systems)
• Custom Saturn Control Unit (SCU) with DSP for geometry processing and DMA controller (running at 14.3 MHz)
• Motorola 68EC000 sound controller (running at 11.3 MHz / 1,5 MIPS)
• Yamaha FH1 DSP sound processor, "Sega Custom Sound Processor" (SCSP), running at 22.6 MHz
• Hitachi 4-bit MCU, "System Manager & Peripheral Control" (SMPC)

Memory

• 1 MiB (8 mebibits) SDRAM
• 1 MiB (8 mebibits) DRAM, combined with SDRAM to make the main 2 MiB memory area
• 1.5 MiB (12 mebibits) VRAM
• 4 KiB VDP2 on-chip color RAM
• 512 KiB (4 mebibits) audio RAM
• 512 KiB (4 mebibits) CD-ROM cache
• 32 KiB nonvolatile RAM (battery backup)
• 512 KiB (4 mebibits) BIOS ROM

Audio

• Saturn Custom Sound Processor

Video

• VDP1 32-bit video display processor
• VDP2 32-bit background and scroll plane video display processor

Storage

• Saturn double-speed CD-ROM drive

Input/output

• Two 7-bit bidirectional parallel I/O ports (controller ports)
• High-speed serial communications port (Both SH2 SCI channels and SCSP MIDI, also used for the Serial port)
• Cartridge connector
• Internal expansion port for MPEG adapter card
• Composite video/stereo (standard)
• NTSC/PAL RF (optional RF adapter required)
• S-Video compatible (separate cable required)
• RGB compatible (separate cable required)
• EDTV compatible (separate cable required)
• Hi-Vision (separate cable required)

While the Saturn is capable of VGA (progressive/non-interlaced) video, no software ever used this mode and the system cannot force software to run in this mode. Some development systems had VGA ports, but no consumer units ever offered this or other high-res functionality.

Power source

• AC120 volts; 60 Hz (US)
• AC240 volts; 50 Hz (EU)
• AC100 volts; 60 Hz (JP)
• 3 volt lithium battery to power non-volatile RAM and SMPC internal real-time clock
• Power Consumption: 25 W

Dimensions (US/European model)

• Width: 260 mm (10.2 in)
• Length: 230 mm (9.0 in)
• Height: 83 mm (3.2 in)

Errata

VDP1 transparency rendering quirk causes strips of pixels to be rewritten to framebuffer for 2-point (scaled) and 4-point (quadrangle) "sprites", applying the transparency effect multiple times. Rarely seen in commercial games (Robotica explosions), later titles implemented software transparency via direct framebuffer access to correctly render polygons (Dural in Virtua Fighter Kids).

Another technique developed for pseudo-hardware transparency was to rasterize polygons using one or two pixel tall sprites with transparency enabled to fill in horizontal spans. Because 2 of the 4 quadrangle points were identical, there was no framebuffer rewrite during rendering.

The Linux kernel contains code specifically designed for the Saturn; it is unclear if this effort was ever completed.

Compatibility

In addition to playing games, all of the Saturn models could play music CDs and CD+G discs. A software disc was sold by Sega to allow the playing of PhotoCDs. An MPEG decoding hardware module was released by Sega, JVC and Hitachi, allowing VideoCD playback. JVC later released a VideoCD module that included the software for displaying PhotoCDs, eliminating the need for a software disc.

There were some titles that could be played on both U.S. and Japanese consoles. Street Fighter Alpha 2 was one of the titles that could be played on both regions systems without a converter.

Marketing techniques

In 1996, Sega started a marketing campaign that featured a beautiful naked woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. It used screenshots from the games to cover her breasts and pubic area.[1] It was very successful, and EGM selected the campaign as the best ad during the 1997 Buyer's Guide.

For a time, Sega mailed out videotapes containing an infomercial advertising its system to potential customers. It ran roughly eight minutes long and featured gameplay footage and a collection of Saturn commercials. It has become somewhat infamous for its bizarre content (a bald woman with a ring around her head, a dancing slacker, etc).[2]

A device resembling a Saturn appears briefly in Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 23, with a Sega-badged TV. Sega was a sponsor of the program and the movies, but it is unclear why it was not featured more often or more prominently.

A Sega Saturn can be seen in the movies, Mallrats, First Kid, and Dead man on Campus.

Also in the Jet Li movie Black Mask, Tracy Lee is playing a Sega Saturn with various games while she is being held hostage by Tsui Chik, with two of the games being Virtua Fighter and Darius Gaiden.

One of the more infamous marketing techniques used by Sega to promote the Sega Saturn was Mr.Segata Sanshiro. A man who devoted his life to the way of gaming. He would discipline himself to true power and then discipline those who did not play the Sega Saturn. Although his way of promoting the Sega Saturn could be conceived as quite sinister he was received with critical acclaim in Japan. His reign did not reach any country other than Japan however.

The Sega Saturn was also prominently featured atop Drew Carey's TV in The Drew Carey Show for some time, even after its discontinuation. Eventually, in Season 6, it was replaced with a Sega Dreamcast.

In Shenmue for the Sega Dreamcast, a Sega Saturn can be seen in Ryo's TV Room in his house. You can come back at a later time in the game to play it.

Accessories

Arcade Racer

Arcade Racer is a steering wheel type of joystick for the Sega Saturn, helpful when playing racing games. Unlike most controllers at that time which were digital, the Arcade Racer is analog. This gives the controller a smoother response. The controller works with a variety of Sega Saturn games including:

• Time Warner Interactive's V.R. Virtua Racing
• Sega's Daytona USA.

As a classic console

While the Saturn did not see much success outside Japan during the fifth generation, the console has generated something of a cult following fan base around the world, and its games are sought after by hardcore gamers and collectors. However, the majority of casual gamers show little or no interest in the Saturn. This is probably due to the fact that the better software was mainly released in Japan, and the good software released outside of Japan is difficult to find and exceptionally expensive. Games such as Burning Rangers, Radiant Silvergun, Dragon Force, Guardian Heroes, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Battle Garegga, Shienryu, and Shining Force III range from US$80–$200.

See also

• List of Sega Saturn games

External links

• SegaBase Volume 6 - Saturn - Eidolon's in-depth look at the history of the Saturn.
• Sega Saturn News!
• Sega Saturn Slim DVD Covers!
• Sega Saturn Review Archive
• SegaFans – Sega Saturn commercial featuring Segata Sanshiro, reviews, and other resources.
• Sega Jumps the Gun, Gets Shot – #4 on Gamespy's 25 Dumbest Moments in Gaming.
• Sega Saturn Magazine – Reviews featuring a large amount of screenshots and editorials.
• Sega Saturn the Pleasure and the Pain – After ten years, a look back on Sega's third home system.
• Sega Saturn Database - Huge Game Screenshot Database for the Sega Saturn
• SUHS Saturn – Sega Universal Historical Society's Sega Saturn Page.
• Sega Saturn Emulation and Information
• Sega Saturn UK – A community and information point for all things sega saturn.