What Went Wrong With The Sega Saturn?

Were you Team Nintendo or Team Sega in the 90s? Can anyone hope to join the console game today as a viable 4th competitor? 🎮

I absolutely loved the Sega Saturn. My older sister's boyfriend sold me his Saturn and games for really good price in around 1995. I was 14 and had a next-gen system with a decent amount of games, and it left such a great gaming mark on my life, that I'll always look back with such fondness on the Saturn. The number of hours I spent playing Virtua Fighter, Albert Odyssey, Daytona USA, Bug, Myst, Nights and others was pretty extraordinary. I also ended up getting a PlayStation and Dreamcast over the next year or two, but there was always something special about the Sega Saturn to me.

Sega always had this habit of releasing consoles in-between other console's life cycles, so they always felt like a 1.5 upgrade from previous gen. There were some advantages of being first to market, but this also came with some disadvantages as well. Your competitors know what your retail price and hardware capabilities are ahead of their own launch and can counter with a lower price point and better hardware.

The Saturn is genuinely my favourite console of all time. Now I’m not naive, Im not saying it’s the best, but personally this is the one that I love the most. Just at the right time in my life to really hit me and there was something about it being the underdog and the specialness which came with importing games no one knew about. The games just appealed more than most PS stuff too. I loved it so much. I eventually moved onto the N64 when they stopped supporting it but this was the console for me.

I absolutely love this series. I'm a software engineer by trade and I've always had an interest in the history of the industry, so there's something about the format of a well-researched breakdown of an important event that really tickles my brain. Also, excellent biscuit prop work. 10/10, no notes.

I love the Saturn to bits, glad to have one, it's my absolute favorite Sega console.

My original release-day Saturn still works and has a place in my gaming heart. Not even close to perfect but there's still just something about it.......

1. No [mainline] Sonic game. 2. The United States market, which was responsible for Genesis' success, was completely ignored.

I loved my Sega Saturn. Die Hard arcade, virtua fighter, virtua cop, Sega rally, knights into dreams. Loved it!

In 2001, I did a home stay exchange in Tokyo. Dreamcast was long dead by then. My home stay brother had a Saturn with a good selection of games including DBZ Legends. Seeing the Saturn from a Japanese perspective rather than the American view was extremely different

Imagine the atmosphere at Sega after that $299 line.

"We have to do something about the Atari Jaguar!" - Hayao Nakayama: Sega CEO when pushing for the 32X Sega really was the embodiment of the phrase "Ready, Fire, Aim!"

Segata died for all of us and we must respect and love his sacrifice. Also Dark Saviors is one of the strangest games I ever accidentally played, and I loved it. That and Dragon Force are my favorite memories of this blighted, misguided console.

Sega’s incompetence and all round jackassery is absolutely mind boggling.

Such a sad story. I was a massive Sega fan in the 90s (still am, in truth), and I actually bought the Dreamcast the day after it was released in the UK (only games console I've ever bought on launch). It was such a groundbreaking system, so far ahead of its time, and I honestly still believe that Sega would have been Sony's main gaming rival for years to come if they hadn't burned so many bridges and tarnished their reputation so badly with the Saturn debacle.

Family friend had a genesis, with the 32x and the sega CD. Holy shit did those CD games look AMAZING.

This was a fantastic, well-researched and incredibly well-presented piece. I never had a Saturn growing up - I had a Mega Drive at launch and didn’t get a new console until midway into the Dreamcast’s life - but a friend of mine did and we spent hours playing Sega Rally at home. Weirdly, we also spent a lot of time playing Command & Conquer on it…

The “sager of seger” 😂

Even though I grew up with Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 as a kid, I've been getting into older Sega games as of the past 10 years and Saturn has to be one of my favorites for some of its fun, unique, and underrated games that don't get as much recognition that I feel they deserve.

The fact that they shadowdroped a console