Although a series of factors led to the resounding failure of the penultimate Sega console in the west, Saturn had a brilliant start in Japan, where it came to lead the market for seasons before being overtaken by Playstation and prematurely replaced by Dreamcast.
$ 299. That cursed figure probably was a fatal blow to Sega Saturn in the West, before even a first consumer ever touched it. It was at E3 1995, exactly 25 years ago. It is perhaps one of the best-known stories in video game history. Sega was looking for a hit with the effect of putting its new console for sale (scheduled for launch in September) after its own presentation, almost immediately, throughout the United States. The intention was to get ahead of Sony and its then very promising Playstation, save time and sales, and incidentally give a blow to its rival, who was also waiting for an autumn launch.
But those 100 dollars of difference, together with several other factors (a launch with very limited units, lack of initial catalog …), led to a hard start that ultimately led to Saturn only managing to exceed one million units. placed on the US market; which in turn sentenced the machine as Sega's biggest stumbling block in his career as a hardware manufacturer.
That story, however, is incomplete without including another part of what happened: Almost six million machines sold in the Japanese country made Saturn, (despite its short commercial life) exceed sales in that market to Nintendo 64, or tripled the sales of its remembered successor, Dreamcast, being the most successful Sega console of all time in Japan, where it led hardware sales for long periods.
And the reason behind that success, as is usually the case in this industry, was not only competent hardware (although strange), but above all its software catalog. A reality that sega embodied in a lapidary campaign slogan: "Omoshiroi kara ureteiru", "sell because it entertains". Thanks to a stunning premiere that allowed him to place more than 500,000 units during its launch window, and sustained high sales during its first years, Saturn knew how to attract developers to its complex architecture and lead a wave of rarities and experiments.
This was possible thanks to a market full of great creative talents at a time of eagerness to explore new possibilities; Thanks to technical advances (Full Motion Video, 3D graphics, 2D with much more unlimited possibilities, bigger budgets …), and the progressive maturity of consumers. From authentic extravagances to small jewels, the Sega console managed to gather an extensive catalog, as well as climbing the sales leadership for long periods of their commercial life, with commercials in which they even allowed themselves the luxury of mocking their competition. This is a small assorted selection of some of the titles that made that success possible.
Eve: Burst Error
One of the genres that stood out the most in Sega Saturn was that of conversational adventures. Thanks to the use of the CD, finally storing images and videos was no longer the nightmare that was in cartridge format, and since the PC Engine CD this genre was in vogue, and Saturn became the reference console for them. Although this title premiered on PC-98, it was on Saturn that it made its leap to consoles.
One of the aspects that makes this game memorable is the presence of two protagonists with parallel stories that must alternate. The advances must be made in parallel, because if one character has not performed any action, the other cannot advance. The gameplay is based on exploring different scenarios and talking to the characters we meet in order to progress through the story, putting all the emphasis on the script. Burst Error puts us in the shoes of a private detective and a secret agent, both with parallel missions that will make them have to discover what is hidden behind the orders they have received in Japan today.
Yu No, a girl who chants love at the bound of this world.
Sharing part of the Burst Error team, surprisingly this game was born as an erotic title with incestuous content for PC-98, although it was converted into a captivating adventure on its way to the Sega console. The premise is inspiring: a young woman receives a shipment from her allegedly deceased father. This shipment includes the ability to move between parallel dimensions. From there a story opens that even today continues to reach the hearts of the players who try it, traversed generations without aging and can still be enjoyed as a timeless work.
Enemy Zero
This Saturn exclusive by Kenji Eno (arguably the most daring creator in video game history) surely has the honor of being the game with the most impactful presentation possible. After his opera cousin D became a best seller on the Sega console, and angered by the way Sony decided to deal with the game on its platform (producing a limited print run of less than 30,000 copies, and exercising tight control over marketing), Eno decided that revenge was a dish served cold. Thus, the first look at this title took place in a presentation by Sony, but to the surprise of the public, at the end of the video the Playstation logo transmuted into that of the Sega machine. A risky move that nobody has dared to repeat.
But beyond the anecdote, Enemy Zero is one of the most particular horror games in history. As was characteristic in Eno, we are facing a game that does not mind irritating the player. Combining full motion video and shooter, we play again Laura, D's protadonist, to face invisible enemies that we can only perceive through the sound signals we receive. For this, we only have short-range weapons that must be loaded before each shot, although overloading them will only force us to do it again. A failure will mean death, and in many moments we will not even have the possibility to attack, forcing us to flee to survive with an intentionally slow and clumsy character.
Real Sound: Wind’s Regret
This other title of Eno for the Sega console is again a unique game in its proposal: an adventure only sound, without the need for visual support (although the subsequent port to Dreamcast did include visual accompaniment). All the gameplay is based on listening and making the decisions we want while listening to a cast of actors in order to reach different endings. His curious love story was intended for all audiences, but especially for blind people, for whom the game included an instruction manual in Braille. In addition, in exchange for its exclusivity, Eno agreed with Sega to give away 1,000 Saturn to groups of people with visual disabilities.
According to Eno confessed in his blog in 2008, he himself was in charge of selecting the known voices interpreted by the different characters, despite the fact that at that time he did not watch television and therefore had to do a job of watching videos to find the voices he wanted. Eno was aware that in a game with no input other than sound, the quality of the performances was the most important thing. His proposal achieved a 27 of 40 in Famitsu (7,6,6,6), and a 24,2 of 30 in Saturn Fan, moderate notes that, together with weak sales, buried what could have been the beginning of a saga, despite the post-Dreamcast port.
Princess crown
This game from Atlus and Sega for Saturn has the honor of being the father of Vanillaware, and a pioneer of the style adopted by his later titles. As you can expect with those credentials, Princess Crown is a mix of beat’n Up and RPG whose world is explored in careful 2D worlds that are advanced in side scroll. Despite having four protagonists to control, most of the time the player is at the controls of Gradiel, a young princess who escapes from her castle to help her needy compatriots, in a subversion of the classic role of defenseless little princess.
Psychic Assassin Taromaru
With similarities to Castlevania and Shinobi, the positive comments of the critics towards this hack'n slash of feudal setting is inversely proportional to the print run it had, since economic problems caused its developer, WB Japan, to close its doors shortly after its launch. . However, its mix of 2D and 3D, its fast action and clever level design, as well as its cooperative two-player mode make this title one of the most desired by collectors. But beyond its rarity, it is a difficult yet competent game that would have deserved more chances of succeeding at the time.
Soccer RPG
Although in recent years the developers have been daring with more current and risky themes, and there have even been a few more sports RPGs, in general the RPG genre has always been linked to fantasy worlds and epic adventures. However, in this RPG of Enix for Saturn, the protagonist gets into the skin, no more and no less, than the national soccer coach of Japan. So unique does it feel, that its own Japanese title "Sekaihatsu Soccer RPG" literally means "the world's first soccer RPG." To make the experience more realistic, the game featured voices from a former Yokohama Marinos coach and a television commentator on the Fuji network.
The game mixes, on the one hand, mechanics typical of a conventional RPG (exploring scenarios, talking to characters, obtaining objects …), including among its characters 36 real Japanese players with whom we can interact and attract our team. But beyond exploration, our job as a coach also requires guiding the formation of our players, alignments, strategies … which we then contemplate in 3D recreations of the matches themselves to suffer as if we were Simeone or Zidane. With television commercials and a license from the Japanese soccer federation, it is a shame that the franchise had no further track.
Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari
One of the keys to Sega Saturn was its power as a 2D graphics machine, well above its generation competitors. And thanks to this, 2D adventures could be created with a striking graphic finish for the time, and even today. That is the case of titles such as Astal or the one in question, Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari, the history of the island of seven winds.
This Enix title can boast enormous beauty in its settings, as well as animated characters as if it were the same studio Gibli. But not only the graphics, but also the musical and sound effects are very well cared for, rounding off a game of undeniable beauty. With a gameplay that combines platforms and exploration, it is an apena that never crossed the borders of Japan.
Game Tengoku
One of the characteristics of the games of the first 32 bits was to break with some of the topics of video games of the time and cross the fourth wall, and that is what makes this conversion of a Jaleco arcade in which the protagonist She is transported to the world of video games from the arcade room where she works with the mission of protecting him from a perverted stalker. With long, high-quality vocal performances that make the player feel like in an anime, the cross-level sequences of mantamarcianos are capable of scratching more than just a smile at the players, and is a great example of how to imaginatively and sub-realistically spin around existing genres.
Wachenröder
Under this German title, which would come to mean life reapers, hides an interesting steampunk SRPG in which we are presented with a dystopian world where steam is like electricity today and the Victorian aesthetic is still in vogue. The protagonist seeks to fight for fair access to drinking water, in a world in which the wealthy are the only ones who have access to this basic necessity. Armed with his steam chainsaw, he sets out on a journey to avenge his sister, who is ill because she cannot access safe water.
With an aesthetic inspired by German industrial design, Wachenröder has earned, despite not having been located in any other language or released on any other platform, a cult following among some fans, in part for having concentrated on an important list of reputed creatives in their credits, and partly for their aesthetics and setting.
Soldnerschild
Continuing with the games with a Germanic name, this strategic RPG produced by Koei's father, Kou Shibusawa, (also responsible for the most recent of Nioh) leads us to a more medieval setting. Although he later had a reissue on the playstation called Special, the original was an exclusive collaboration of Sega and Koei herself for Sega Saturn.
The charm of this game is in the elaboration of its mechanics. We embody a group of mercenaries whom we must guide and train in a world at war. Before each battle we will have to decide which of our mercenaries go into combat, and even conjure up monsters to fight alongside us. Once in combat, we will have turns to advance across the stage, followed by the turns of the enemies. Battles affect both morale and the reputation of our teammates, so we must control these factors well to progress successfully in the game.
Digital Dance Mix: Namie Amuro
In addition to Shenmue or Virtua Fighter, Yu Suzuki has this title on his resume, starring nothing more and nothing less than the one who was the queen of Japanese pop, and who retired from the stage in 2018 when he turned 40. In 1997 Namie was in one of the sweetest moments of her career, and Saturn lacks a title that truly shows the power behind her under-exploited and complex hardware. From that combo came this title, which could be defined as an interactive single (in fact, its price was only slightly that of a normal CD single).
In addition to offering us two songs by Namie to listen to, the album offers us an opportunity to dress her up, choose the setting and the song we want her to perform, and to become the camera operator of her performance. In addition, if what we want is to voice ourselves, the game includes a karaoke option (which is also usually offered by default Japanese singles). To this is added a rhythm game in which we must press the appropriate button at the correct moment, and some mini-games to find the repeated image or the necessary piece of a puzzle, and solve mazes. A proposal that, although simple, managed to sell more than 100,000 copies in Japan.
Message Navi
One of the elements that Sega Saturn brought to video games was an approach to eroticism, with a large number of products with a clear sexual inuence. Among them, this franchise stands out, which on its cover, with three cute girls posing for the camera, makes their intentions clear. A cover in which the same game boldly claims to contain the private information of more than 1,000 people. And that is what this title is about: meeting young people. Literally.
The "game" describes on its back cover the different categories it has: we can see the personal data (age, job, blood group, but also place of residence and, in some cases, telephone number …) of a thousand people , as well as a search engine that includes the possibility of knowing who lives near you. It also includes photos of beautiful people found on the street, as well as a cosplay photo section. Also, if you arm yourself with courage to go out into the real world to try to interact with real people, it has a guide to recommended popular places. And if your partner catches you playing this, you can always hide by entering the horoscope section. A rarity of many that reached the Saturn catalog and are proof of Sega's laxity in allowing any type of software to reach your console, compared to the control exercised by its competitors.
Miniskirt Police
In the line of games more focused on spiciness than gameplay is this miniskirt police game. A spirit that is defined in its back cover message: "Sometimes we kick, sometimes we punch, and we don't care if our panties are ever seen." Based on a self-titled television show, the game mixes real video scenes with mini-games with content as subtle as using the suspension of a car to make it jump and thus open up the legs of a passenger.
The list is just a small sample of everything that Sega's penultimate console gave in the Japanese market. Unfortunately, the western failure and the rapid arrival of Dreamcast cut short the future of the machine, without it being able to show its full potential. Little by little Playstation was cutting the differences in Japan to get ahead.
The launch of Dreamcast in November 1998, as well as the arrival of heavyweights on the Sony console as Metal Gear Solid in September of that year, ended up burying the legacy of a machine that, despite leading sales and accumulating a more rapid pace 300 new releases in one year, ended up going down in history as the great failure of Sega.
