Its 20 years since SEGA launched the Saturn on the world. As you know I’m a bit of a SEGA fan, seeing as I believe the Dreamcast to be the best games console ever released, and as such I thought i would post my own personal experiences with the doomed playstation rival.
The media is focusing on the negative side of the launch- Sony’s petty $299 one word price point announcement, the panicked early release and the subsequent supply problems.
I’m going to tell a different story, one of joy and 90’s retail displays, of packaging and the mistaken belief that a certain blue hedgehog would turn up late to the party and save the day.
The year was 1995, Brit pop was king, baggy jeans were worn with pride, unaware of their hideous skinny future and the world (well my world) waited with baited breath for the 32bit gen to start.
Having read all about the up and coming consoles in both Edge and Mean machines magazines I was over the moon to find out the Saturn would be released early.
Back in the 90’s Virgin megastore was still a big deal in the UK; in Brighton it took up 5 floors of a building on what was then the main shopping street. Most of the floors were taken up with music, video and band posters and t-shirts; however the 3rd floor had an entire corner taken up with video games. This was when specialist game shops were not as common as today, you had to go to HMV or V store to be able to play the latest games consoles to release- and they looked great! The machines were encased in Perspex bubbles, game pad cables hidden in flexible tubes with the pads screwed to the ends to stop little toe-rags from stealing them. The attached monitors were hidden in neon and plastic to give the look of futuristic portals to other words- the whole thing looked like future zone from the crystal maze crossed with the Nostromo from Alien.
Each screen ran demos for the respective consoles, Playstation had wipeout and Toshinden, 3DO had Jurassic park (oh dear, oh dear L ) but the cream of the crop was the Saturn with Panzer Dragoon, an on-rails shooter that had dragons, castles and huge flying gunships, all beautifully rendered in 3D.
This is how I will always remember the Saturn, not as Sega’s next misstep or as a failure, but as a great console that dared to hold onto smooth and crisp 2D sprites in a world of jaggy and low textured 3D, as a great alternative to Sony’s rave loving, lad mag reading zeitgeist snatching monster.
Don’t get me wrong, the PS was an amazing machine and I still own my first one, it’s just that i also still have my original Saturn as well, and in hindsight there is not allot to hate about it- okay it had more graphics chips than a 3DFX landfill, and was a bugger to program for- but when it was done right, it was just soo right.
Well happy birthday Saturn fans.
Head for Saturn!
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