Matt, to make this video.....you didn't stop playing your SEGA Saturn, did you? YOU MUST PLAY! UNTIL YOUR FINGERS BREAK! _UNTIL YOUR FINGERS BREAK!!!!_ *_SEGA SATURN, SHIRO!!!!_*
My favorite thing about the Sony "$299" story was that supposedly he had a whole speech written and ready to go, but when he saw how badly Sega was going to screw this up, he just said "$299", and walked off.
@@jjay350 while yes sony had a really bad start with the ps3 launch no doubt but the difference is that they did managed to turn it around and the ps3 did become successful, and redeem themselves with the ps4.
SEGA of America was afforded the kind of autonomy Nintendo of America never was. Even though the Mega Drive's best market was where it was called the Genesis instead, SEGA's Japanese HQ thought they knew best. And they probably did...for the Japanese market.
Sega of Japan's pride caused all of it. Genesis was doing great in the US at the time. Even Kalinske said it still had some life in it left. They didn't even need the 32X or CD add-ons.
The Sega Saturn is like that girl from high school that you had so much in common with but never talked to, and you didn't realize it until it was too late.
True especially since the Sega Saturn was a sexy console with no personality until you import the games from Japan I would love a Sega Saturn collection if only Sega would get off there lazy ass and do it!
Sony seems to be that nerd who had a crush on two well known students. They were in a relationship with one for a few months before getting dumped for being falsely accused of a gold digger and outright rejected by the other. Then they grew up to be a successful (although arrogant) knockout.
One of the biggest take aways I get from Sega up to the fall of the Dreamcast is how much self sabotaging Sega of Japan was because of how much they did not like Sega of America despite their contributions to the company. Sega America was a major part of why Genesis and Sonic took off in the west like they did and why Sonic has been more popular here than in Japan, yet Sega Japan constantly treated them poorly when it was primarily their own decisions that ended up biting them
Major issue was that the Genesis/ Mega Drive was not as successful in the Japanese market and Sega of Japan was infuriated with the overseas success of the console. They were single-mindedly obsessed with wanting the Saturn to perform well in Japan thus asserting more influence on the overseas handling of the console's launch and sales. Yes, the Saturn had more better sales in Japan than the Mega Drive, even coming second place by outselling the Nintendo 64. But this came at the cost of Sega's international reputation as such that it eventually led to their exit from the hardware market.
Fun fact: in addition to turning down sony, thus leading to the playstation, sega japan also turned down a potential chipset for the saturn...that ended up in the N64. They also ended up meeting with Microsoft and had talks about windows on the dreamcast, microsoft buying sega entirely, or putting dreamcast games on the xbox. Those also fell through. Sega essentially had a hand in creating all three of their competitor's platforms.
@@RXdash78 I think the Dreamcast used WindowsCE. I haven't verified this and last I heard it was when PSO was new. So I might be completely wrong. But if so then at least something came from their Microsoft talks.
I worked in a pawn shop in the 90s and you could not give the Saturn away. We bought about 20 of them and we thought we were winning because we had a pretty extreme low-ball policy......and in the end, we lost. Despite marking them down to absurdly low prices, they sat on the self until the shop went out of business in 2000
Meanwhile, collectors today kick themselves for not buying one when they were that cheap. I remember the GB Micro being in a similar situation. In the late 2000s you could barely give them away; now they're a cult classic collectible.
I knew one kid who had a Saturn here in the UK. One. And he barely played it. Compare that to the previous generation, where apart from two kids who owned the SNES, everybody else I knew who had a games console had a Mega Drive.
Man I would have wanted a saturn for such a low price if we would have known how they would have ended up becoming. Thankfully though I was still able to get a saturn for a good price off of ebay years ago, so it wasn't like I was shit out of luck, but man I feel bad for people who want to get into the saturn now. While it's not terribly expensive or anything (depending on which model you get), it's definitely up there now.
I feel bad for Tom Kalinske. After being forced to make decisions he KNEW were stupid all while having all his suggestions immediately chucked and flushed down the toilet with absolutly no pondering whatsoever, I can't blame him for leaving.
@@manoo2056 Only because Sega of Japan forced them to design and make it. Sega of America wanted the next Sega console release to be disc based. They didn't want the 32x to exist at all.
Sega: Let’s pull all support for the Saturn and try not releasing any video games for a year and a half til the Dreamcast. Also Sega: Why are we losing money?
The Saturn saga is a fall from grace of Shakespearean proportions, and it’s all the more tragic because Sega had no one to blame but themselves for literally every terrible decision made along the way
@@danwarb1 Sega did well in Europe because they were more established in the continent than Nintendo, plus more and better PAL releases though Sony still wiped the floor with them. People have no idea how many European exclusives or temporary exclusives Sony gave the PAL region, most with proper 50Hz - a trend that gave them dominance over the region for over 2 decades. I think it would be worth its own video eventually, only the wildly successful Nintendo consoles like the Wii, 2DS or Gameboy managed to put a dent on that dominance for a short period of time. It's just shocking to me how both SEGA and especially Nintendo who mostly negleted the region didn't invest more in Europe. SEGA had a chance to make it its stronghold if it wasn't for all the insane decisions from Japan.
@@danwarb1 while the Saturn did good numbers in Japan, I think we shouldn't ignore how bad it performed in other territories. SEGA actually managed to dominate some foreign markets like Brazil and other South American countries, but as someone who grew up in the late 90s, I've never seen a Saturn or knew anyone who had one, the PSOne managed to overtake all of Latin America, but even Nintendo managed to remain relevant because, unlike Sony, they did have official retailers in some LatAm countries, with commercials airing on television and then Pokémon gave Nintendo a small boost in popularity. But SEGA faded almost overnight, except for all those clone Genesis consoles that are still sold to this day.
@@michaelmartino16 in the end, I think the PSOne sold over 100 million units, the N64 33 million and the Saturn barely over 10 million. Obviously Sony was the big winner from the 32/64-bit generation, but I've heard that despite the Nintendo 64 selling less than their previous consoles they did have a good attach rate of games and they actually had some of the best-selling games annually in the U.S. (the N64 biggest market), so I would say the Saturn was on a far distant third place. Don't know if I should bring portable consoles as well, SEGA dropped their support for the Game Gear in 1997, I don't know if they ever tried to make an improved version or if they were planning a successor
@@danwarb1 Most of Europe got blown out by Sony. Of the 3, Europe had consistently been the weakest market after the Mega Drive. The fabled golden year of '93 had SoE in the red and it stayed there until '94 where then everybody got to have egg on their face with the 32x expanding into 95.
To elaborate on Stolar's horrible policies on localization: He restricted the releases of JRPGs because they were too niche, which at the time WOULD have seemed like a good idea, but the policy immediately backfired because it drove away several third-parties to Sony (including Working Designs), and then FF7 would immediately cause a boom in the western market for JRPGs. then again, this was the same guy who canceled a revival of a popular series simply because he never heard of it, so obviously it's kinda par for the course for them
I've also heard he wasn't keen on 2D gaming, which may not have been huge at the time in the West but still kept a lot of good games from crossing over.
The reason that Sega of Europe was able to produce Sonic R so quickly is because it was going to be another racing game with vehicles before it was changed into a Sonic game.
I can't find where saw this, but it seems this was really Sony showing from the beginning of Playstation how to ride the hype machine, since this price difference was a lot smaller than it seemed to be, if not nonexistent. I read (or maybe it was a video here on YT) somewhere the Saturn was bundled with a second controller and a copy of Virtua Fighter. Meanwhile, the PS1 came with just the one controller. So, quality of the game aside, to get a equivalent package with the PS1, one would need to buy a game and an extra controller separately, pushing the price of the console closer to, or even reaching the 399$ mark. Add in a memory card to the mix, something the Saturn didn't necessarily need thanks to it's internal storage, and now the PS1 is (probably) more expensive than the Saturn.
@@rodrigodavet7512 Virtua Fighter 2 was packed with Virtua Cop and Daytona USA also. That's like Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt/Track and Field 2 getting packed with the NES. They also each use a different peripheral. You had the fight stick for Virtua Fighter 2, the gun for Virtua Cop, and the wheel for Daytona USA. If you loved arcades, Sega got your back.
Having read Console Wars: Sega Japan was the sole architect of their downfall. The Japan branch was becoming jealous of the US Branch's success and started restricting what they could do. Tom Kalinske had been in talks with Silicon Graphics (who did the graphics for the N64) to develop the successor to the Megadrive/Genesis, and Sega of Japan just shot him down.
@@drunkensailor112 It's true that the book is primarily from the Sega America perspective, and there were definitely other factors at play, but to me that particular moment sticks out because they effectively kneecapped themselves right at the start of the race to make the next gen console, things could have been very different. heck Tom apparently gave Silicon Graphics Howard Lincoln's contact info (Nintendo of America) when he knew they weren't gonna do business.
@@ssppeeaarr Yeah Sonic Adventure was actually originally meant for the Sega Saturn, And as you said, Sonic Jam's 3D Hub World was a leftover of what they had done for said saturn version before they moved development to the dreamcast. But having a brand new 3D sonic game on the saturn definitely could have help the saturn a bit, and it's a shame that with all the situations that was going on behind the scenes, such a game never came to fruition.
When you look at what Japan got for the Saturn, you would think this console would be really successful. I just feel the Saturn had the potential just like the Dreamcast did, but if the Saturn never failed, we probably wouldn't have gotten the dreamcast as early as we did.
Your right but the Dreamcast was too little too late even though the Sega Dreamcast was Sega best console in my opinion does anybody know why there's know Sega Saturn mini or Dreamcast mini it's easy money for god sakes!
The whole relationship between their japanese and american branches was the reason the Saturn did so poorly in the USA. At the time, SoJ were a bit bothered by how the american branch were pretty much telling them what to do and modelling their way of thinking, the american branch were also constantly burning too much money and were responsible of creating mountains of debts to SEGA.
@@daviddennie4086 no, the Saturn was a lot better than the dream cast, but in my opinion, my personal favourite is the mega drive has the game that relate with me more, and it was Sega’s most successful console. Plus why would Sega have a Dreamcast mini or a Saturn mini both systems are complete failures there’s a reason why there is a mega drive mini.
It would still be better for Dreamcast if Saturn had succeeded. It doesn't matter if it was released a couple of years later if it got better treatment by retailers and had more 3rd party dev support. But Dreamcastm even though underrated, still has an awesome library the way it is - Sonic Adventure and its sequel, Shenmue and its sequel, Jet Set Radio, Soul Calibur, Grandia 2, Skies of Arcadia... Seriously, it was a fantastic time for gaming.
Tom Kalinske: Let's team up with Sony. Both of us together could become a next-gen threat to Nintendo. Sega of Japan: No way. Sony has no experience with video game hardware. Sony: Well then... *a year later* Sega of Japan: Well, damn. Tom Kalinske: Told you that was bad business. Have fun on the sinking ship. *Tom resigns*
The Sega Saturn STILL REMAINS a bit of an enigma to me, believe it or not. Everyone I knew AND THEIR GRANDMA was rocking with the Genesis when I was growing up. Hell, I even knew people who had like the Sega CD, the 32X, and the Turbografx-16. I DIDN’T KNOW a single person who had the Sega Saturn.
Same, here in Argentina the Genesis was a popular console, but I've never seen or met anyone who had a Saturn. The PSOne became the most popular console in the late 90s here, but there were a small group of people who had a N64. It was as if the Saturn never existed because the Dreamcast was actually kind of popular, it was expensive but you could actually find the console, games and accessories, but not for the Saturn
@@pablocasas5906 Dude, SAMEEEE (that’s interesting with the bit about Argentina cuz I heard Sega became SUPER POPULAR down there in South America back in the 80s/90s since Nintendo pretty much wholesale IGNORED the region and I’ve been recently seeing a Brazilian woman who had a mutual acquaintance that I asked about this and he seemed to confirm it as well). It really speaks to just how BADLY Sega was doing “behind the scenes” by the time Dreamcast launched because I KNEW SO MANY PEOPLE PERSONALLY that went out and bought the Dreamcast only for it to stop being officially supported after ONLY 2 YEARS.
@@jaythomas468 the thing about SEGA in South America was that many of the consoles were actually clones or bootlegs, but SEGA did have some official distribution in Argentina and Brazil thanks to Tec-Toy. From what I heard, Tec-Toy did distribute the Saturn in Brazil, but it was too expensive and the PlayStation took over the market very quickly, despite Sony not distributing the PS1 officially, almost all of the consoles were sold in the gray market and the software were almost always pirated copies. As I said, Nintendo did have official distributors in Latin America, there was an official Nintendo magazine, a TV show in Mexico and, unlike SEGA and Sony, they did air commercials in television, which at least gave them some visibility. I also finally saw a Saturn with my own eyes in a game store a few years ago, it was displayed on a glass box alongside some other classic consoles like an NES and an Atari 2600, but it wasn't for sale, which says a lot since the same store had other consoles like a PSOne, N64, GameCube and GameBoy Color for sale.
Out of every single person I knew as a kid the only one who had a Saturn at their house was one kid I knew. The rest all either had n64's, snes, genesis, pc's, ps1 etc.
Unfortunately the biggest problem for Sega in general is the Sega of Japan just started to castrate SOA. Also not understanding the gaming market. It's a shame because they could have been a massive powerhouse in the gaming industry.
Hindsight maybe 2023, but it feels so frustrating seeing Sega receive SEVERAL potential golden opportunities to grow their brand, only for them to be squashed by incompetent upper management.
Edit: don't know why it highlighted your name, @@ssppeeaarr, but I was trying to respond to someone else on another thread. UA-cam being UA-cam, I guess. Disregard this. Did you not watch the video? He literally revealed that Hayao Nakayama and Sega of Japan were the ones who made the screwball decisions that torpedoed the Saturn in the west. Sega of America and Tom Kalinske originally planned to release it in Sept with a much better selection of games at launch. Sega of Japan stupidly decided to force them to launch it four months earlier with barely any games and piss off all of the major retailers by blindsiding them. Of course it did better in Japan - it literally catered to the Japanese arcade scene. It flopped hard everywhere else, and it is universally regarded as a failed system across the board.
@@ssppeeaarr Thanks for understanding. Both sides dropped the ball big time. Saturn had the potential to be so much more, but petty infighting doomed it from the start. America didn't want to listen to Japan, and Japan allowed its anger to boil over. In the end, it's the Sega fans like you and I that lost out on what should've been a great system.
As someone who dropped out of gaming in his teens I just wanted to say I’ve learned so much about the gaming industry and history from your videos! Thank you!
From what I can recall of that time part of the reason Sega became more draconian was because they were popular everywhere else but there home country with Nintendo taking that crown and Sega wanted to claim it. Hence why all there crazy descions regarding the Saturn's design which has been speculated on, such as for example it was made more programmer friendly towards Japanese programmers then American ones which Tom noted at one point.
The coding was actually shit everywhere. its just easier if you knew how to make arcade games or were sega itself. But the petty jealousy of Sega of Japan toward Europe and US was VERY true and what led to a lot of the decisions you said. the extra "3D" chip was actually in response to the Playstation being better at 3D than Saturn was.
If Sega worked with Sony on the PlayStation Nintendo would have died after the GameCube because Sega PlayStation 2 would have laid the smackdown on that overrated GameCube candy ass!
@@gc3k Nintendo was beating SEGA and their console was mostly arcade ports because that's what they thought it was gonna bring in the cash, which it kind of did at first, but I don't know if in Japan the feud was as big as the US at all
I think it's pretty ironic that the average Saturn game's looks have aged a lot better than the average PS1 game's. Since it was a 2D console first and foremost, its sprites were big, colorful, and full of tons of animation frames. With that 4MB card (Or an Everdrive with the RAM expansion) the Saturn can play some pixel-perfect arcade conversions.
I disagree. Most comparisons between Saturn & PS1 games show that PS1 games look better, even today, with better transparency effects for example. WipeOut 1&2, Tomb Raider, Symphony of the Night...
@@armorvil Bad examples. Tomb Raider was an early title that failed to take advantage of the hardware (and in any case received an updated Japan-only version that fixed some of its issues), while the WipeOut ports were both developed after Sony acquired Psygnosis. Symphony of the Night was a ported by a team inexperienced with Saturn hardware and had no contact with the developers of the PS1 original, and in any case was rushed to release without optimisation work because Konami feared a dip in sales the longer it spent in development as the Saturn was on the way out. Graphical issues on original PS1 models were rampant, including affine texture warping (which was rare in properly-coded Saturn titles due to differences in polygon rendering), and lots of tearing and dithering. Prior to later models like the PS1 Slim, gradient banding issues were common as well, which again was rare in well coded Saturn games. And for better examples, look at the two following: Street Racer - one of those rare, properly coded western titles, which takes full advantage of what the VDP2 chip has to offer. The Saturn version has a skybox, where the cloudscape casts shadows on both the ground layer and the kart sprites (this effect is completely absent on the PS1), and the kart sprites themselves cast their own half-transparency shadows on the ground (whereas the PS1 kart shadows are opaque). As the Saturn doesn't need to waste extra CPU cycles to calculate the kart sprites and background planes, the VDP1 is freed up to render more 3D and 2D objects on the track, making them busy and detailed in contrast with the rather barren PS1 tracks. Speaking of the background, it has more layers on the Saturn, which are also more detailed. Some tracks like the spooky night time one have additional transparency effects on top of everything else, like the mist that rests just above the ground. And in addition to all of that, the Saturn version boasts richer and more vibrant colours. All of this, and it matches the PS1 version in resolution and performance. Virtua Fighter 2 - compared to Tekken 3, VF2 has a slightly smaller polygon count. To compensate, character animation is more detailed (VF2 has characters whose mouths can move, while Tekken 3 faces are simple, mostly static textures). Aside from that, Tekken 3 is one of those games that suffers from tearing and gradient banding (unlike VF2) and Tekken 3 runs at a lower resolution. Backgrounds are much nicer in VF2, which takes full advantage of the VDP2's infinite background planes. The Saturn's ability to stretch simple textures almost infinitely enabled it to simulate texture filtering (despite both the Saturn and PS1 technically lacking that feature), leading to smoother and cleaner stage background textures. And again, Virtua Fighter 2 can do all of this and still match Tekken 3 in performance. And that's just two examples. You could look at Dead or Alive (which is even more impressive than VF2) or Grandia, which both comfortably outclass their PS1 versions. As for other 3D fighters, Last Bronx, Fighting Vipers and Fighters Megamix are more impressive than any PS1 fighter. And then you can throw in other games like Shining Force III, or Burning Rangers with its highly detailed character models and crazy lighting, or Panzer Dragoon Saga. All of this for a system that was killed off halfway through its lifespan and seven years before the PS1's discontinuation, and so lacked the benefit of late-gen titles that really pushed the system to its full potential. The only glimpses we can see of what late Saturn games could have been is with the footage of the cancelled versions of Shenmue and Virtua Fighter 3, which easily outdo anything that was released for the system, and by extension far beyond what could ever be achieved on the PS1.
As Lincoln once said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand," and I can't think of a better example than Sega America VS Sega Japan and how that f**ked up the Saturn and Dreamcast
I would love to see a video of the NEC PC-FX. NEC’s ill-fated successor to the PC-Engine that failed so hard in its home country, it caused NEC to exit the gaming market in its entirety.
Loved playing Street Fighter Zero 3, X-Men vs Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter, Vampire Saviour, and Pocket Fighter on the Saturn.
My uncle got a Saturn that Christmas. I’m only a few years younger than he so we played this like it had the secret to alchemy until New Year’s Day. Amazingly it still is my favorite
As someone who grew up during the SNES-Genesis console war, Sega’s fall from grace was truly incredible. They were on top of the world in the early 90s and gave it all away to Sony and Nintendo.
I was around 5 or 6 years old when the Dreamcast was launched, I knew about video games because I used to see some shows on TV about them, but as a child I thought Sony, Nintendo and SEGA where like this three companies that would be around forever competing with each other, but then when I was in elementary I saw the news that SEGA would dropped out of the console business, and I didn't know what to feel, I had played a lot of Genesis games at a friend's house, but it felt weird seeing Sonic on the GameCube just a year after it came out on DC, but I think I got used to it pretty quickly. I don't know how it must have felt for people who grew up playing since the Mater System and the Genesis, I think it would be like if today Microsoft would announce that they would stop making the Xbox
During the heyday of Saturn, it never crossed my mind that Saturn was doing so poorly outside Japan. Sure, it was kind of falling behind Sony and Nintendo, but many friends owned Saturn and buying softwares frequently, and gaming magazines praising Sega monthly... Seeing what was really going on outside Japan was a bit shocking to say the least.
I was aware of the Saturn when it first came out. I had a choice to make, go with the saturn or wait for the nintendo 64. But one day my mom started telling me about something called a playstation and how her co-workers said that going to be the console to get. I had decided to ask for the saturn for christmas of 1995 but instead i asked for playstation based on all the things my mom was told. I forgot all about the saturn for many years after that.
Well that was a very interesting story about the Saturn lifetime, I didn't knew that Sony wanted a collab with Sega and it was also rejected. No wonder of why Sony was a big enemy for Nintendo and Sega with the PlayStation, it was technically a monster that both of them created themselves without realizing, lol!. But I think it was for the best.
The Gaming Historian did a series on the three worst mistakes ever made by each of the various video game companies. In his Sega video he listed their pulling out of the deal with Sony as their second biggest mistake they ever made. The first being the Saturn launch. For Nintendo it was their biggest however.
Sony's issue with Nintendo was the LICENSING of the CD add on tech for the Nintendo PlayStation. If Nintendo went along with Sony, Nintendo would ONLY make money on the cartridges, while Sony had the CDs. There was NO WAY Nintendo (or ANYONE for that matter) taking that deal. Sega's issue with Sony coming to help them with that tech was mostly Sega seeing Sony as "small fry" and "too young" in the gaming business to do anything. Obviously that killed them in the end.
@@gc3k huh when did square ever approach sega?? from what i read they were hardcore nintendo fanboys n loyal. n nintendo giving them that same respect to use one of their most beloved and iconic IP mario. for snes mario rpg. they had a good bond until the 64 era.... when square was making ff7 and decided to go for cd rom tech for their game and vision. thats where all the bad blood started. so they were forced to go to sony and with their ps1. i dont remember them considering the saturn...lol but if they did thats interesting. but square tried to desperately change nintendos mind to make 64 a cd based console. but nintendo wouldnt budge on that and square sadly parted ways with them... they wanted to make ff7 for nintendo tho. imagine history if that happened. also if sony and nintendo didnt part ways and nintendo playstation was a thing instead of n64 and psx. oh well. sony proved themselves as a legit gaming company tho and still remains in the game today. they sure came back hard to bite back sega and nintendo. i miss sega being in hardware tho. sega consoles were special... RIP saturn n dc
@@Candle_Calmness I guess I must have gotten lucky then. Despite reading about it in a 96 issue of Gamefan, I picked it up used on a whim in an Exchange in the Mid West. I still remember the blue wad of gum that stuck the pages of the manual together. Best impulse buy of my life. I ruined the disk by accident during a move and had to spend 80 bucks on a brand new replacement. Definitely worth the money. Amazing gameplay, design work, and soundtrack. One of my favs to this day.
I remember that Phil Harrison talked about the time he worked for Sega during the 90's and he wanted to show Sega what people perceived them as, which is basically a senile grandfather that people used to like but they don't remember why they even like them in the first place. And the executives thought he was lying and that thought Sega was still a beloved company. And he said that was the point he realized that Sega's history as a console manufacturer was over. Too bad that Phil Harrison didn't realize that he was falling into the same trappings as Sega years later with the PS3, Xbox one and Stadia.
@@darthgamer9861 Japanese game companies seems to never listen or cooperate with western companies, even if they own them. Like Square-enix Europe was basically still Eidos, just with a different name. And the Japanese side never allowed them to use their IPs or use their resources they had. Like for example ask Nixxies to port Final fantasy XV to PC.
My user name comes from one of my very first exposures to 32-Bit gaming: Astal. I was used to Genesis level graphics and was not ready for a game with stunning visual, orchestrated music and real voices and cut scenes. Astal left a mark on me that will never leave, even if I'm old enough now to admit it's not the best at all. Always glad my first 32-Bit console was the Saturn, as my dad had an UNCANNY ability to choose stellar rentals for me while I was at school. I eventually moved on to the PS1 and N64, but much love for this console!
It's funny. The genesis was my side console when I was a kid, it was great but I was die-hard Nintendo. I got a Saturn when they were being purged from stores and I absolutely loved it. Easily one of my favorite consoles, I bought another back in 2009 and got a Satiator last year. It's the console I play the most these days. So many games to discover and great fan translations for RPGs. It's such a fantastic console.
I think the funniest aspect of my Saturn collection is that all I wanted in the 6th grade was Burning Rangers back in 98 and later found it's super rare. I still have it too
There's a very cool inteview by Hideki Sato, the man behind the Saturn creator, and how it came to be. Even in Japan, Sega was a very divided company with no support within.
my favorite SEGA SATURN game was IRON STORM, a WWII turn-based war simulation/strategy game, part of the larger DAI SENRYAKU series. Very few of these installments were released in the US, I can only think of this one, and Dai Senryaku VII on the PS2/Xbox. Iron Storm was a surprisingly huge game for this system, with dozens of historical battles you could command well-researched land, air, and sea units from maybe a dozen nations. There were three long campaigns with diverging paths and tech trees: depending on your performance, you could rewrite history and get bonuses in other battles, skip some events entirely, and even participate in fictional battles based on real plans and including documented late-war experimental weaponry, such as the ground invasions of Britain, America, and Japan, and even a post-war clash between Germany and Japan in India. You could probably spend a hundred hours in this game before you have finished and seen every battle in the game, and by then your sega saturn is probably falling apart and you need to find a new one at an estate sale. My dad would play this game all the time when I was a little kid. It was quite a complex game for me to get a grasp on, but I do remember playing it a ton up into my early teens. It's still one of my favorite games of all time.
Dai Senryaku goes so hard. A few years ago an updated version of Dai 8 Perfect, kind of the greatest version, was released on steam fully on english. If you like the series youll love it.
As much of a disaster everything around the Saturn was, the console brought us some amazing games I will still look back fondly on. The console came at a bad time, ill-equipped to handle the future. And the western launch was an absolute freaking disaster. But I still love the Saturn and the untold hours I spent playing some of the exclusives late at night when I didn't have to go to school.
The western launch was an absolute disaster because Japan forced them to release it four months earlier than it was supposed to release. Had they stuck to the original western plan of releasing the system in September, then it would've launched with a much better line up of games, and they would've still had the goodwill of every major retailer instead of stepping on everyone's toes with an idiotic, last minute decision to completely screw everyone over.
Also I think the first T-JRPG with a 3D battlefield came on Saturn first : Blazing Heroes (also called Riglord Saga in Japan and Mystaria : the Realms of Lore in Europe). It was released in July 1995 while Vandal Hearts 1 on the PS1 was released in October 96 and Final Fantasy Tactics in June 97. I loved that game, even though the framerate sucked and gave you a headache after a couple hours lol Very interesting open-world experience that allows you to fight "random" battles, with an addicting way of learning new abilities. There was even terraforming in it since you could dig holes or create hills. The game that introduced me to the genre and made me fall in love with it. A hidden gem imo. Too bas Sega didn't realize that westerners could enjoy RPGs - they never bothered releasing the sequel overseas.
@@armorvil Sorry to bother you again, but the first was actually Powers Kingdom (or Guardian War, if you prefer) on the 3DO, which released in June 1994.
I read the Console Wars book that details Kalinske's time at Sega. There was a lot of infighting between Sega of Japan and America well before the Saturn came along, but by the time it did, SoJ had become pretty bitter and resentful of SoA, and seemingly decided they were taking their company back. They made a lot of unilateral (and ultimately foolish or detrimental) decisions, and SoA had no choice but to go along with it, while SoJ absolutely refused to consider any other input or entertain any other ideas. It led to things like the 32X, the botched Saturn launch, a lot of arguing over the lore of the Sonic franchise, and the later years of Sega after a lot of senior employees had left.
Someone else had an interesting video that pointed out that Tom Kalinske was ACTUALLY heavily respected by the higher-ups at SOJ. The PROBLEM CAME IN where SOA started killing it in the States while SOJ floundered, causing leadership to then verbally (and ALLEGEDLY, physically) beat up on the middle management at SOJ, asking them why TF they were all so incompetent and couldn’t accomplish the things that Kalinske was over in the West. Naturally, this led to A LOT of SOJ managers beginning to HATE and RESENT this Tom Kalinsk guy that they had NEVER MET but were always being compared AGAINST by THEIR BOSSES over at SOJ. So, a lot of infighting occurred from SOJ employees who simply hated Tom Kalinske’s guts and were envious of the success that SOA had under his leadership.
The Saturn is a great console for Japanese games. It is literally chuck full of hundreds of amazing Japan-only games that were never ported to the west. You just have to get either a Japanese Saturn or modify a western one to play them.
Yeah, the western branches of Sega and Nintendo were really dumb in the 90s with that mentality that they should not publish majority of rpgs because they wouldn't sell in the west. As a result, we didn't get many great games that we otherwise could have.
7:00 The difficulty of programming for the Saturn is extra tragic considering that the MD/Gen was great for programmers. Running on two of the most common computer-grade CPUs around, it was super-easy for studios to jump onboard and produce reasonably good games quickly. That was a big part of how it had such a strong software lineup in its first year(s), especially in the US.
The amusing thing about the Saturn is the fact that it is pretty much a game console with a built-in arcade motherboard(thus making arcade conversions an easy task). Thus, because the arcade scene in Japan was still thriving at that time, they got quite a few games we never got in America, like Radiant Silvergun. Sure, that particular game did got a release here many years later, but still...
Damn, the number of unlocalized Sega Saturn games is *absurd* ! 😦 I’m genuinely curious to know more about some of those titles, because I feel like there would be at least one game that would capture my interest (like “Princess Crown” the game that would help establish Vanillaware). Speaking of large numbers of titles that were never released outside of Japan, I wonder if that weird period in the 2000s and early 2010s where Nintendo of America was very particular about what was localized, resulting in a lot of adventure games and RPGs not seeing an official release and culminating in Project Rainfall, could result in a future “What Happened” or something like it.
While not perfect Sony did manage to bring over more games from Japan then Sega and that was one of the reasons I bought a PS1 over the Saturn and Sony also had a ton of great Psynosis games (Wipeout. Colony Wars, GPolice, Rollcage all fantastic games
I've played fan translations of Saturn games but my problem with them is they're good games, maybe great but save for Panzer Dragoon Saga none have that amazing game feel.
I really love the Saturn software and while much didn't make it here, it was still so great to continue playing series I played on the Genesis by importing games (Langrisser/Warsong, the full Shining Force 3 series, etc) and the shooters and fighting games were incredible. If only we got Phantasy Star 5...
I got my Saturn when it was really marked down, for like $50. But what really unlocked its potential was when I visited a Babbage’s store that carried import games. Eventually I had X-Men vs SF, Marvel Super Heroes vs SF, Vampire Savior, and King of Fighters ‘97, all arcade-perfect thanks to the RAM cart and a US/Japan conversion cart. Clearly the Saturn’s failure was a grievous series of management errors, but what a huge shame so many quality titles didn’t make it to the west.
I love console videos like these, as going back to history I grew up with is some how a wonderful feeling. Could that be a series for you to explore, Matt? Going back on the history of consoles that maybe aren't disasters? Like how despite the uphill battle the PS1 helped Playstation become the arguably biggest brand in gaming ever? Your narration makes these videos my ultimate stress relief and I would love to see you cover both the good and the bad of gaming history.
Oddly one of my favorite systems of all time. I hold a special kind of nostalgia for that scrappy system. Nights into dreams will always be a top 5 greatest game of all time for me.
My favorite retro system. I do believe I have it emulated on every device that is capable of running it. My handheld purchases did and still do depend on whether they can run the Saturn properly. Sega is definitely the best case study of why your company needs to be on the same page.
I love this console and the community surrounding it is outright amazing. So much so that Bulk Slash, a 3d render robot shooter game by Hudson soft that is quite good and sadly never saw the light of day outside of Japan got a recent fan localization with full translation, English voice acting and even enabled twin-stick support originally hidden within the code by the developers themselves, the absolute mad lads. With Saturn emulation being more stable than ever, MANY great gems that never made it to the west finally getting some recognition like the surprising great Groove on Fight and some others getting released on other platforms like Cotton 2 and Boomerang, Guardian Force an Radiant Silvergun. This is a great time to be a Saturn fan. Saturn WAS our future.
I feel like so much of SEGAs problems can boil down to; "a jealous neighbor constantly trying to one up you, but genuinely having no ideas of their own."
I absolutely love my Saturn. Didn’t even grow up with it. Grew up with n64, but the nostalgia or just warmth of the kinds of games the Saturn has. Is absolutely amazing, it’s my favorite way to play quake, and I’m one of the few or only that like the doom Saturn port. Such great party games. Just wish I knew more people who could enjoy it as much as me.
I agree with you 100%. I didn't buy my Saturn until 2015. However, today I play my Saturn as much or more than any other console. I love the space shooters, fighting games, and cool 2 D platformers such as Astal and Nights in Dreams. Of Course really enjoy me some Baku Baku as well. So glad I took a chance on the system.
It's crazy how important Sega of America was in Sega's success, only for Sega of Japan to completely handicap & ignore them after achieving that success. Seems Sega & Nintendo have a lot in common. When on top, they get complacent & make a ton of dumb decisions... thinking they can dictate to the market what THEY want, rather than listen to what fans want. Ultimately, success is often followed by failure, unable to maintain momentum between generations.
What happened to the Saturn? Sega. Sega happened. And also Bernie Stolar, but mostly Sega. It really is nuts how much in-fighting there is in the tech industry, instead of understanding that multiple facets of one company are working towards a common goal and should help each other.
WCW and Sega have so much in common in terms of rise and fall and both died in 01 (btw I know Sega is still around but their a shell of their former self) *Backstage Politics *Stuck in the pass and not moving forward *Bitterness *Lack of management or having one that could control the asylum *Spending more of what they have and loosing more than earning *And till this day books and podcasts talk about the Rise and fall and not of them admitting the blame or swabbing the blame towards others
Lol I seriously was getting WCW vibes watching this video and thought too how much Sega was basically making the same type of mistakes WCW did. Hell like Sega, WCW was able to overtake their major competitor and become the top dog of their brand till they immediately screwed it all up
@@TheSoundwaveprime exactly man they are so similar and the fact both lost against the competition and lack of ideas and insane backstage politics alongside other out of touch players and both surprisingly went under in freaking 01 it’s so weird yet not surprising
Ill say another example I feel works in this comparison is also Don Bluth and his studio. In the 80s him and his studio sent Disney running for their money and at times surpassed Disney, but by the turn of the century, things were much more different. Point is its pretty wild how that sort of scenario of smaller entity in po culture inspired by or taking after bigger entity becomes popular and eclipses them at a point only to fall down from that pedestal and become defunct or a second fiddle to the thing you once were winning against. Interesting that these three happened in the 90s early 00s too.
We were robbed of so many good Japanese Saturn games that remained there in Japan, Bernie Stolar was one of the worst to have happened to Sega at the time.
I would say Nakayama was the one who sank that ship. Bernie just said what everyone was thinking. Remember, this is THE SAME SEGA OF JAPAN that pissed off Peter Moore (before he would go to for Xbox and then EA later) SO BAD, he famously told the interpreter to tell them he said "Go f#$& yourself" over the Dreamcast debacle. To which the interpreter said "They don't have a word for that Mr. Moore." And then he said "Oh they KNOW what I said." Shit was CRAZY over there.
Eh even without Stolar the Sega Saturn was already struggling in the USA with the complicated hardware. Stolar also pushed to make Sonic X-treme happen but Yuji Naka said no. And Stolar was also responsible for Launching the Dreamcast before he got fired. So yes and no. Stolar was like that one strict father that did a lot of wrong but did something right in the end. He's kinda the anti hero of Sega tbh.
Stolar was an ass, sure, but it costs a lot of money to localize games, especially text and speech-heavy games like RPGs. With the Saturn's other failures, I doubt many more games would have come over because the ROI of selling to such a small install base wasn't worth it. Same thing happened to the Turbografx, especially once the CD came out.
The 3D processor on the Saturn was a big issue for ports because it worked with quads and not triangles. This meant models had to be basically remade to work properly. The logic had been that it could mean more detailed objects for more modest processing overhead but it made modelling things more complex than it needed to be and in a triangle focused industry meant most extant 3D models just weren't compatible. Incidentally this 3D processor was made by some little indie outfit named NVidia. Wonder what ever happened to them?
I only remember seeing a Saturn at a cousin's house I didn't know it was made by Sega so I got excited since I loved the Genesis, so the first thing I asked my friend to do was pop on Sonic 2 into the Saturn via its cartridge expansion slot, he sadly said he tried it and it doesn't fit or work, most of my interest on the console dropped to the floor, I than asked him if he had any 3d games for the thing since I liked the 64 and ps1 3d games, he excitedly popped out Knights into dream, Daytona and Virtua fighter to show off what the console could do, but my interest fell through the floor, I was hoping to see something like a 3d sonic or other 3d platformer/shooter game but nah, I think he tried to show off upcoming and other games via a magazine but I had no interest in the console at all after that, he perked up when I said if something like a Super Gameboy existed for the Saturn to play genesis games so went to a few local stores to ask around, sadly we got nothing, but he had his hopes up that Sega will make an attachment like the Sega cd or 32x to play older cartridge games that sadly never came out.
The Sega Saturn's a console I have a lot of respect for and sure had some neat stuff. Who knows how well it could have done if there'd just been a killer app for the Western market to latch onto? Also, it's kind of a weird suggestion for an episode, but the story of the Japanese tactical RPG Tear Ring Saga, basically the original "developer of popular game series leaves company to basically make it himself" is really bizarre, doubly so if one counts Berwick Saga, that really weird follow-up.
Literally didnt know ANYBODY who had a Saturn growing up. People had Genesis and SNES, people had Playstation and N64, but zero Saturns. I knew literally 1 person that had a Dreamcast when the next gen dropped, but lots of Xbox, PS2, and Gamecube owners
I didn’t have every system as a kid. But I was hyped when I got the Saturn for my 14/15 bday. X-men children of the atom street fighter alpha . It was a 2/d beast! Vf2
One thing we've learned since the doc leaks last year: Tom was actually fired and Tom forced SoJ's hand since SoA lost the company a ton of money, therefore putting the company in a financial position it never recovered from. So, for full context, Tom's quotes re-stated in this video is Tom's re-telling of his own history. SoJ didn't sabotage Sega, SoA's incompetence did. The Saturn is an awesome console, btw.
I love my Sega Saturn, I bought it way back in the later 90's at Toys R Us. I got the bundle pack that had Virtua Fighter 2, Daytona USA, and Virtua Cop. It also had Demos of Sega Rally and Nights. Not only that but I bought Street Fighter Alpha 2 which was still popular at arcades at the time. As time went on I built my collection to include Guardian Heroes, Radiant Silvergun, Capcoms Marvel Superheroes, X-Men vs Street Fighter, Marvel vs Capcom. I can't say enough about how awesome a 2D console the Saturn is.
You're supposed to check the "paid sponsorship" part when you upload these videos so the FTC doesn't make an example of you and use you as a reason to ruin it for the rest of us.
This is really interesting! I'd always heard the Saturn's failure in the West being chalked up to "it didn't have a main Sonic game", but now I realize that was just one of many, many pitfalls.
I feel the Saturn could've been somewhat successful over here in the US had Bernie Stolar let a lot of these games get localized . The Saturn had a bunch of JRPG's that weren't localized, and during that late 90s era of FF7 and the discovery of anime through Toonami, I feel like Sega could've used that niche to their advantage over here.
To be fair, outside the Final Fantasy series and some other JRPGs from Squaresoft, I don't think the genre was one of the biggest sellers in the 32-bit era, outside FFVII most of those games were more niche, it wasn't until the release of Pokémon Red and Blue in the West that the genre had a second explosion, but that was relegated to handheld consoles. The Saturn needed titles that could compete with what Sony and Nintendo had, the PSOne had games like Resident Evil 2, Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo, the Nintendo 64 had Super Mario 64, GoldenEye 007 and Ocarina of Time, SEGA needed titles like those
A friend of mine getting a Sega Saturn was the main reason why I got myself a PlayStation. Saturn was the first disk system I ever saw in my life, so I wanted one myself. I didn't want to be the same, so I got the "new" PlayStation. (And by got, i mean i BEGGED my mother for it.) The rest is my video gaming history, lol.
I loved the Saturn as a kid, I played hundreds of hours of Bug, Virtual On, Sonic R, Nights, etc. It kills me to see that there were sooo many games we never got in the US
Random fact, I actually spoke with one of the developers for Alien: Resurrection, and essentially, the reason why the port never came to fruition was because the developer hired to handle the port decided to try to work on the port in pure assembly language avoiding any developer tools or libraries provided by Sega incredibly slowing down his productivity. He also didn't use any of the original PlayStation title's source code, so he tried to use the assets and his intuition fearing that none of the code would be useful to his port. Argonaut decided to pull the plug due to the fact that after a long development period, he only had some basic levels with still models loaded in his engine.
Glad you mentioned that the console thrived in Japan. I feel like that's one aspect of the Saturn's history most English-speaking sources basically neglect. And as a fan of arcade games in general, it was definitely my favorite platform of that generation (although the PS1 wasn't a slouch in that department when they had Namco backing them up, and the N64 had some good Midway jank).
I think the opposite can be said about the Nintendo 64. Nintendo lost a huge marketshare of the Japanese market when they released the N64, but the console managed to stand up to PlayStation in the U.S. market, some of their games were actually the best-sellers, though the PlayStation move more software when you combine all of the games released on the console
I can't imagine Sega of japan EVER taking responsibility for it's failures in the west, specifically discarding the advice of it's western leadership. It's like an endless string of "i told you so" that really helps make it clear why sega remains the third party it is today. I'd have been super jealous of a friend with a saturn if it actually had all 1000 games localized. In my adult years i got to play dragonforce on original hardware and it was fantastic. but as a kid i had never heard of it or much else exclusive to saturn besides some fighting game ports and the panzer dragoon games i got to play for free inside Best Buy or Toys R Us for a few minutes.
People like to mention things like lack of DVD player as big reason for the Dreamcast floundering but my personal opinion is that the early abandonment of Sega Saturn in the West/etc probably played a big role in the Dreamcast's problem. Like I wanted a PS2 because of the positive experience with the PS1, which was still fresh on my mind while as a kid I mostly ended up forgetting the Saturn. (I mean I'm generally "team SOA" but Stoler really messed it up imo)
I always though that the Dreamcast sales were an improvement over the Saturn's, but checking the official numbers, both consoles sold over 9 million units more or less, those numbers are worse than the PS Vita or the WiiU. I can imagine that SEGA couldn't recapture the attention of the gamers that abandon them after the end of the Mega Drive/Genesis days. I think Nintendo managed to stay in the console market since the Nintendo 64 actually did pretty good in the U.S. market, despite the fact that they lost the Japanese and European market, not to mention their huge success in the portable market thanks to the Pokémon series, that and the fact that Nintendo didn't have an arcade division like SEGA did
If Sega didn't fool around with the Sega CD and the 32X and just went straight from the Genesis to the Saturn I think we could very well still have Sega consoles to this day
I'd be really interested in seeing you cover any of the Oddworld games, particularly Stranger's Wrath as that games development and aftermath to release were apparently so horrible it led to Oddworld Inhabitants ceasing game development all together until the release of Oddworld: New n' Tasty in 2014.
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Sega should've kept fighting like Nintendo and Xbox.
Matt, to make this video.....you didn't stop playing your SEGA Saturn, did you?
YOU MUST PLAY! UNTIL YOUR FINGERS BREAK! _UNTIL YOUR FINGERS BREAK!!!!_
*_SEGA SATURN, SHIRO!!!!_*
Dude you have to do sonic 4
How about an episode on Argonaut? The story of this studio's downfall even has ties to Super Mario 64
Have you done a video yet on pc egine/ turbografix
My favorite thing about the Sony "$299" story was that supposedly he had a whole speech written and ready to go, but when he saw how badly Sega was going to screw this up, he just said "$299", and walked off.
Biggest mic drop in history, and funny enough Sony recaptured that moment with the ps4 reveal.
@@FOXZILLA5734 exactly what i thought of after seeing that
@@FOXZILLA5734 "This is how you share your games on PS4"
@@reikiradja8030 that video is forever legendary 🤣
@@jjay350 while yes sony had a really bad start with the ps3 launch no doubt but the difference is that they did managed to turn it around and the ps3 did become successful, and redeem themselves with the ps4.
A rare case of SEGA regretting what it does that Nintendon't: Infighting.
Nice!
SEGA of America was afforded the kind of autonomy Nintendo of America never was. Even though the Mega Drive's best market was where it was called the Genesis instead, SEGA's Japanese HQ thought they knew best. And they probably did...for the Japanese market.
Sega of America's second worst enemy was Nintendo. Sega of America's worst enemy was Sega of Japan.
@@ShadowEl Man, Sega Japan and their pride almost sunk the entire company
Sega of Japan's pride caused all of it. Genesis was doing great in the US at the time. Even Kalinske said it still had some life in it left. They didn't even need the 32X or CD add-ons.
The Sega Saturn is like that girl from high school that you had so much in common with but never talked to, and you didn't realize it until it was too late.
True especially since the Sega Saturn was a sexy console with no personality until you import the games from Japan I would love a Sega Saturn collection if only Sega would get off there lazy ass and do it!
Somehow, it is just now when I read your comment that I feel the same😢
For me, it's like the girl you had a childhood crush on that moved away.
@@SEMIA123 now i´m sad.
Sony seems to be that nerd who had a crush on two well known students. They were in a relationship with one for a few months before getting dumped for being falsely accused of a gold digger and outright rejected by the other. Then they grew up to be a successful (although arrogant) knockout.
One of the biggest take aways I get from Sega up to the fall of the Dreamcast is how much self sabotaging Sega of Japan was because of how much they did not like Sega of America despite their contributions to the company. Sega America was a major part of why Genesis and Sonic took off in the west like they did and why Sonic has been more popular here than in Japan, yet Sega Japan constantly treated them poorly when it was primarily their own decisions that ended up biting them
Major issue was that the Genesis/ Mega Drive was not as successful in the Japanese market and Sega of Japan was infuriated with the overseas success of the console. They were single-mindedly obsessed with wanting the Saturn to perform well in Japan thus asserting more influence on the overseas handling of the console's launch and sales. Yes, the Saturn had more better sales in Japan than the Mega Drive, even coming second place by outselling the Nintendo 64. But this came at the cost of Sega's international reputation as such that it eventually led to their exit from the hardware market.
Fun fact: in addition to turning down sony, thus leading to the playstation, sega japan also turned down a potential chipset for the saturn...that ended up in the N64.
They also ended up meeting with Microsoft and had talks about windows on the dreamcast, microsoft buying sega entirely, or putting dreamcast games on the xbox. Those also fell through.
Sega essentially had a hand in creating all three of their competitor's platforms.
Envy is a helluva drug
@@RXdash78 I think the Dreamcast used WindowsCE. I haven't verified this and last I heard it was when PSO was new. So I might be completely wrong. But if so then at least something came from their Microsoft talks.
@@RXdash78 Windows is on the DC though. It wasn’t very good for game development. I think only Sega Swirl used it
I worked in a pawn shop in the 90s and you could not give the Saturn away. We bought about 20 of them and we thought we were winning because we had a pretty extreme low-ball policy......and in the end, we lost. Despite marking them down to absurdly low prices, they sat on the self until the shop went out of business in 2000
Meanwhile, collectors today kick themselves for not buying one when they were that cheap. I remember the GB Micro being in a similar situation. In the late 2000s you could barely give them away; now they're a cult classic collectible.
This is so true seen consoles for $50 in box with 5 games no one bought them ever
I knew one kid who had a Saturn here in the UK. One. And he barely played it.
Compare that to the previous generation, where apart from two kids who owned the SNES, everybody else I knew who had a games console had a Mega Drive.
Saturn was also a very hard console to pirate games, no one wanted it.
Man I would have wanted a saturn for such a low price if we would have known how they would have ended up becoming. Thankfully though I was still able to get a saturn for a good price off of ebay years ago, so it wasn't like I was shit out of luck, but man I feel bad for people who want to get into the saturn now. While it's not terribly expensive or anything (depending on which model you get), it's definitely up there now.
I feel bad for Tom Kalinske. After being forced to make decisions he KNEW were stupid all while having all his suggestions immediately chucked and flushed down the toilet with absolutly no pondering whatsoever, I can't blame him for leaving.
The dude should have been controlling all of Sega. They would still be a big player in the console business if had been given the opportunity.
@@darthgamer9861 The curse of being an American showing up in a Japanese company.
come on, Sega of America released the 32x.
@@manoo2056 Only because Sega of Japan forced them to design and make it. Sega of America wanted the next Sega console release to be disc based. They didn't want the 32x to exist at all.
@@darthgamer9861SOJ had a vendetta against SOA for some ungodly reason
Sega: Let’s pull all support for the Saturn and try not releasing any video games for a year and a half til the Dreamcast.
Also Sega: Why are we losing money?
The Saturn saga is a fall from grace of Shakespearean proportions, and it’s all the more tragic because Sega had no one to blame but themselves for literally every terrible decision made along the way
@@danwarb1 Sega did well in Europe because they were more established in the continent than Nintendo, plus more and better PAL releases though Sony still wiped the floor with them.
People have no idea how many European exclusives or temporary exclusives Sony gave the PAL region, most with proper 50Hz - a trend that gave them dominance over the region for over 2 decades. I think it would be worth its own video eventually, only the wildly successful Nintendo consoles like the Wii, 2DS or Gameboy managed to put a dent on that dominance for a short period of time.
It's just shocking to me how both SEGA and especially Nintendo who mostly negleted the region didn't invest more in Europe. SEGA had a chance to make it its stronghold if it wasn't for all the insane decisions from Japan.
@@danwarb1 while the Saturn did good numbers in Japan, I think we shouldn't ignore how bad it performed in other territories. SEGA actually managed to dominate some foreign markets like Brazil and other South American countries, but as someone who grew up in the late 90s, I've never seen a Saturn or knew anyone who had one, the PSOne managed to overtake all of Latin America, but even Nintendo managed to remain relevant because, unlike Sony, they did have official retailers in some LatAm countries, with commercials airing on television and then Pokémon gave Nintendo a small boost in popularity. But SEGA faded almost overnight, except for all those clone Genesis consoles that are still sold to this day.
@@danwarb1 Sony sold 21 million PSX consoles. Saturn was like 5.8 million to Nintendo’s 5.4 so yeah 2nd but they got blown out
@@michaelmartino16 in the end, I think the PSOne sold over 100 million units, the N64 33 million and the Saturn barely over 10 million. Obviously Sony was the big winner from the 32/64-bit generation, but I've heard that despite the Nintendo 64 selling less than their previous consoles they did have a good attach rate of games and they actually had some of the best-selling games annually in the U.S. (the N64 biggest market), so I would say the Saturn was on a far distant third place. Don't know if I should bring portable consoles as well, SEGA dropped their support for the Game Gear in 1997, I don't know if they ever tried to make an improved version or if they were planning a successor
@@danwarb1 Most of Europe got blown out by Sony. Of the 3, Europe had consistently been the weakest market after the Mega Drive.
The fabled golden year of '93 had SoE in the red and it stayed there until '94 where then everybody got to have egg on their face with the 32x expanding into 95.
To elaborate on Stolar's horrible policies on localization: He restricted the releases of JRPGs because they were too niche, which at the time WOULD have seemed like a good idea, but the policy immediately backfired because it drove away several third-parties to Sony (including Working Designs), and then FF7 would immediately cause a boom in the western market for JRPGs.
then again, this was the same guy who canceled a revival of a popular series simply because he never heard of it, so obviously it's kinda par for the course for them
I've also heard he wasn't keen on 2D gaming, which may not have been huge at the time in the West but still kept a lot of good games from crossing over.
@@darthgamer9861 wasn't pokemon the one that caused rpgs to take off and rise
what if pokemon came to the west way sooner in 1997
R.I.P Bernie Stolar
@@strangesonicfan9204 Fuck Bernie Stolar. Just because someone is dead doesn't mean they deserve respect.
The "£299" moment at E3 will always be hilarious. Sega were their own worst enemy
The reason that Sega of Europe was able to produce Sonic R so quickly is because it was going to be another racing game with vehicles before it was changed into a Sonic game.
I can't find where saw this, but it seems this was really Sony showing from the beginning of Playstation how to ride the hype machine, since this price difference was a lot smaller than it seemed to be, if not nonexistent.
I read (or maybe it was a video here on YT) somewhere the Saturn was bundled with a second controller and a copy of Virtua Fighter. Meanwhile, the PS1 came with just the one controller.
So, quality of the game aside, to get a equivalent package with the PS1, one would need to buy a game and an extra controller separately, pushing the price of the console closer to, or even reaching the 399$ mark.
Add in a memory card to the mix, something the Saturn didn't necessarily need thanks to it's internal storage, and now the PS1 is (probably) more expensive than the Saturn.
@@danwarb1 Tom Kalinske fought hard to get the Sega Genesis into Wal Mart and after the rushed launch of the Saturn, Wal Mart dropped Sega.
@@danwarb1 Nintendo tried to stay top dog back in the 90s too. Stores were afraid to sell game consoles made by the competition.
@@rodrigodavet7512 Virtua Fighter 2 was packed with Virtua Cop and Daytona USA also. That's like Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt/Track and Field 2 getting packed with the NES. They also each use a different peripheral. You had the fight stick for Virtua Fighter 2, the gun for Virtua Cop, and the wheel for Daytona USA. If you loved arcades, Sega got your back.
Having read Console Wars: Sega Japan was the sole architect of their downfall.
The Japan branch was becoming jealous of the US Branch's success and started restricting what they could do. Tom Kalinske had been in talks with Silicon Graphics (who did the graphics for the N64) to develop the successor to the Megadrive/Genesis, and Sega of Japan just shot him down.
That's a big oooffff.
Having read console wars, you've only read the Sega of America perspective. That book is more subjective than running around naked in a school
@@drunkensailor112 It's true that the book is primarily from the Sega America perspective, and there were definitely other factors at play, but to me that particular moment sticks out because they effectively kneecapped themselves right at the start of the race to make the next gen console, things could have been very different.
heck Tom apparently gave Silicon Graphics Howard Lincoln's contact info (Nintendo of America) when he knew they weren't gonna do business.
@@ssppeeaarr Yeah Sonic Adventure was actually originally meant for the Sega Saturn, And as you said, Sonic Jam's 3D Hub World was a leftover of what they had done for said saturn version before they moved development to the dreamcast.
But having a brand new 3D sonic game on the saturn definitely could have help the saturn a bit, and it's a shame that with all the situations that was going on behind the scenes, such a game never came to fruition.
Like miyamotos jealousy of rare they fumbled the acquisition on purpose I believe.
When you look at what Japan got for the Saturn, you would think this console would be really successful. I just feel the Saturn had the potential just like the Dreamcast did, but if the Saturn never failed, we probably wouldn't have gotten the dreamcast as early as we did.
Your right but the Dreamcast was too little too late even though the Sega Dreamcast was Sega best console in my opinion does anybody know why there's know Sega Saturn mini or Dreamcast mini it's easy money for god sakes!
@@danwarb1 it was definitely not successful as a whole, and Sega of Japan had a big part in squandering its potential success outside of Japan
The whole relationship between their japanese and american branches was the reason the Saturn did so poorly in the USA.
At the time, SoJ were a bit bothered by how the american branch were pretty much telling them what to do and modelling their way of thinking, the american branch were also constantly burning too much money and were responsible of creating mountains of debts to SEGA.
@@daviddennie4086 no, the Saturn was a lot better than the dream cast, but in my opinion, my personal favourite is the mega drive has the game that relate with me more, and it was Sega’s most successful console. Plus why would Sega have a Dreamcast mini or a Saturn mini both systems are complete failures there’s a reason why there is a mega drive mini.
It would still be better for Dreamcast if Saturn had succeeded. It doesn't matter if it was released a couple of years later if it got better treatment by retailers and had more 3rd party dev support. But Dreamcastm even though underrated, still has an awesome library the way it is - Sonic Adventure and its sequel, Shenmue and its sequel, Jet Set Radio, Soul Calibur, Grandia 2, Skies of Arcadia... Seriously, it was a fantastic time for gaming.
Tom Kalinske: Let's team up with Sony. Both of us together could become a next-gen threat to Nintendo.
Sega of Japan: No way. Sony has no experience with video game hardware.
Sony: Well then...
*a year later*
Sega of Japan: Well, damn.
Tom Kalinske: Told you that was bad business. Have fun on the sinking ship.
*Tom resigns*
The fact that the Saturn had online features is VERY impressive for that time.
Facts
Japanese consoles had been playing with network features for a whole generation at that point, SNES has the Satellaview cartridges, Sega had Seganet
The Sega Saturn STILL REMAINS a bit of an enigma to me, believe it or not.
Everyone I knew AND THEIR GRANDMA was rocking with the Genesis when I was growing up.
Hell, I even knew people who had like the Sega CD, the 32X, and the Turbografx-16.
I DIDN’T KNOW a single person who had the Sega Saturn.
Same, here in Argentina the Genesis was a popular console, but I've never seen or met anyone who had a Saturn. The PSOne became the most popular console in the late 90s here, but there were a small group of people who had a N64. It was as if the Saturn never existed because the Dreamcast was actually kind of popular, it was expensive but you could actually find the console, games and accessories, but not for the Saturn
My ex-brother in law had one
@@pablocasas5906
Dude, SAMEEEE (that’s interesting with the bit about Argentina cuz I heard Sega became SUPER POPULAR down there in South America back in the 80s/90s since Nintendo pretty much wholesale IGNORED the region and I’ve been recently seeing a Brazilian woman who had a mutual acquaintance that I asked about this and he seemed to confirm it as well).
It really speaks to just how BADLY Sega was doing “behind the scenes” by the time Dreamcast launched because I KNEW SO MANY PEOPLE PERSONALLY that went out and bought the Dreamcast only for it to stop being officially supported after ONLY 2 YEARS.
@@jaythomas468 the thing about SEGA in South America was that many of the consoles were actually clones or bootlegs, but SEGA did have some official distribution in Argentina and Brazil thanks to Tec-Toy. From what I heard, Tec-Toy did distribute the Saturn in Brazil, but it was too expensive and the PlayStation took over the market very quickly, despite Sony not distributing the PS1 officially, almost all of the consoles were sold in the gray market and the software were almost always pirated copies. As I said, Nintendo did have official distributors in Latin America, there was an official Nintendo magazine, a TV show in Mexico and, unlike SEGA and Sony, they did air commercials in television, which at least gave them some visibility.
I also finally saw a Saturn with my own eyes in a game store a few years ago, it was displayed on a glass box alongside some other classic consoles like an NES and an Atari 2600, but it wasn't for sale, which says a lot since the same store had other consoles like a PSOne, N64, GameCube and GameBoy Color for sale.
Out of every single person I knew as a kid the only one who had a Saturn at their house was one kid I knew. The rest all either had n64's, snes, genesis, pc's, ps1 etc.
Unfortunately the biggest problem for Sega in general is the Sega of Japan just started to castrate SOA. Also not understanding the gaming market. It's a shame because they could have been a massive powerhouse in the gaming industry.
Hindsight maybe 2023, but it feels so frustrating seeing Sega receive SEVERAL potential golden opportunities to grow their brand, only for them to be squashed by incompetent upper management.
Tale as old as time. Song as old as rhyme.
Edit: don't know why it highlighted your name, @@ssppeeaarr, but I was trying to respond to someone else on another thread. UA-cam being UA-cam, I guess. Disregard this.
Did you not watch the video? He literally revealed that Hayao Nakayama and Sega of Japan were the ones who made the screwball decisions that torpedoed the Saturn in the west. Sega of America and Tom Kalinske originally planned to release it in Sept with a much better selection of games at launch. Sega of Japan stupidly decided to force them to launch it four months earlier with barely any games and piss off all of the major retailers by blindsiding them. Of course it did better in Japan - it literally catered to the Japanese arcade scene. It flopped hard everywhere else, and it is universally regarded as a failed system across the board.
@@ssppeeaarr Thanks for understanding. Both sides dropped the ball big time. Saturn had the potential to be so much more, but petty infighting doomed it from the start. America didn't want to listen to Japan, and Japan allowed its anger to boil over. In the end, it's the Sega fans like you and I that lost out on what should've been a great system.
As someone who dropped out of gaming in his teens I just wanted to say I’ve learned so much about the gaming industry and history from your videos! Thank you!
Welcome back 2 the fold brother😂😂😂😂
@@G.L.999 I played mostly anime games and Pokémon, and school started to get too busy for me.
From what I can recall of that time part of the reason Sega became more draconian was because they were popular everywhere else but there home country with Nintendo taking that crown and Sega wanted to claim it. Hence why all there crazy descions regarding the Saturn's design which has been speculated on, such as for example it was made more programmer friendly towards Japanese programmers then American ones which Tom noted at one point.
The coding was actually shit everywhere. its just easier if you knew how to make arcade games or were sega itself. But the petty jealousy of Sega of Japan toward Europe and US was VERY true and what led to a lot of the decisions you said. the extra "3D" chip was actually in response to the Playstation being better at 3D than Saturn was.
@@lordxmugen i already made a reply to the same comment you replied , please take a lot at it as it has much detailed information
If Sega worked with Sony on the PlayStation Nintendo would have died after the GameCube because Sega PlayStation 2 would have laid the smackdown on that overrated GameCube candy ass!
Someone's mad
@@gc3k Nintendo was beating SEGA and their console was mostly arcade ports because that's what they thought it was gonna bring in the cash, which it kind of did at first, but I don't know if in Japan the feud was as big as the US at all
I think it's pretty ironic that the average Saturn game's looks have aged a lot better than the average PS1 game's. Since it was a 2D console first and foremost, its sprites were big, colorful, and full of tons of animation frames. With that 4MB card (Or an Everdrive with the RAM expansion) the Saturn can play some pixel-perfect arcade conversions.
I disagree. Most comparisons between Saturn & PS1 games show that PS1 games look better, even today, with better transparency effects for example. WipeOut 1&2, Tomb Raider, Symphony of the Night...
@@armorvil Bad examples. Tomb Raider was an early title that failed to take advantage of the hardware (and in any case received an updated Japan-only version that fixed some of its issues), while the WipeOut ports were both developed after Sony acquired Psygnosis. Symphony of the Night was a ported by a team inexperienced with Saturn hardware and had no contact with the developers of the PS1 original, and in any case was rushed to release without optimisation work because Konami feared a dip in sales the longer it spent in development as the Saturn was on the way out.
Graphical issues on original PS1 models were rampant, including affine texture warping (which was rare in properly-coded Saturn titles due to differences in polygon rendering), and lots of tearing and dithering. Prior to later models like the PS1 Slim, gradient banding issues were common as well, which again was rare in well coded Saturn games. And for better examples, look at the two following:
Street Racer - one of those rare, properly coded western titles, which takes full advantage of what the VDP2 chip has to offer. The Saturn version has a skybox, where the cloudscape casts shadows on both the ground layer and the kart sprites (this effect is completely absent on the PS1), and the kart sprites themselves cast their own half-transparency shadows on the ground (whereas the PS1 kart shadows are opaque). As the Saturn doesn't need to waste extra CPU cycles to calculate the kart sprites and background planes, the VDP1 is freed up to render more 3D and 2D objects on the track, making them busy and detailed in contrast with the rather barren PS1 tracks. Speaking of the background, it has more layers on the Saturn, which are also more detailed. Some tracks like the spooky night time one have additional transparency effects on top of everything else, like the mist that rests just above the ground. And in addition to all of that, the Saturn version boasts richer and more vibrant colours. All of this, and it matches the PS1 version in resolution and performance.
Virtua Fighter 2 - compared to Tekken 3, VF2 has a slightly smaller polygon count. To compensate, character animation is more detailed (VF2 has characters whose mouths can move, while Tekken 3 faces are simple, mostly static textures). Aside from that, Tekken 3 is one of those games that suffers from tearing and gradient banding (unlike VF2) and Tekken 3 runs at a lower resolution. Backgrounds are much nicer in VF2, which takes full advantage of the VDP2's infinite background planes. The Saturn's ability to stretch simple textures almost infinitely enabled it to simulate texture filtering (despite both the Saturn and PS1 technically lacking that feature), leading to smoother and cleaner stage background textures. And again, Virtua Fighter 2 can do all of this and still match Tekken 3 in performance.
And that's just two examples. You could look at Dead or Alive (which is even more impressive than VF2) or Grandia, which both comfortably outclass their PS1 versions. As for other 3D fighters, Last Bronx, Fighting Vipers and Fighters Megamix are more impressive than any PS1 fighter. And then you can throw in other games like Shining Force III, or Burning Rangers with its highly detailed character models and crazy lighting, or Panzer Dragoon Saga. All of this for a system that was killed off halfway through its lifespan and seven years before the PS1's discontinuation, and so lacked the benefit of late-gen titles that really pushed the system to its full potential. The only glimpses we can see of what late Saturn games could have been is with the footage of the cancelled versions of Shenmue and Virtua Fighter 3, which easily outdo anything that was released for the system, and by extension far beyond what could ever be achieved on the PS1.
It was not a 2d console first and foremost. You don't know what you're talking about.
@@dukeofhmph6348 You just fiuked armoville in the ass, he deleted his youtube account ,lol
As Lincoln once said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand," and I can't think of a better example than Sega America VS Sega Japan and how that f**ked up the Saturn and Dreamcast
Tom and his guys won the west for Sega and Japanese suits were like "We can't trust you. We know better."
Got to love 90's SEGA infighting.
Wow, Matt. Real bold to make a 20 minute video about Sony saying “299” at E3.
I would love to see a video of the NEC PC-FX. NEC’s ill-fated successor to the PC-Engine that failed so hard in its home country, it caused NEC to exit the gaming market in its entirety.
@@markofthewolvessucks8930 Agreed. Zenki FX comes to mind.
supergrafx too. Nec fiuked up
I've been enjoying all your videos and going through backlog of them; great work!
Guardian Heroes was the reason I got a Saturn back in the day..speedy blue mascot, Ecco..😅😂 well played , sir
Loved playing Street Fighter Zero 3, X-Men vs Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter, Vampire Saviour, and Pocket Fighter on the Saturn.
My uncle got a Saturn that Christmas. I’m only a few years younger than he so we played this like it had the secret to alchemy until New Year’s Day. Amazingly it still is my favorite
As someone who grew up during the SNES-Genesis console war, Sega’s fall from grace was truly incredible. They were on top of the world in the early 90s and gave it all away to Sony and Nintendo.
I was around 5 or 6 years old when the Dreamcast was launched, I knew about video games because I used to see some shows on TV about them, but as a child I thought Sony, Nintendo and SEGA where like this three companies that would be around forever competing with each other, but then when I was in elementary I saw the news that SEGA would dropped out of the console business, and I didn't know what to feel, I had played a lot of Genesis games at a friend's house, but it felt weird seeing Sonic on the GameCube just a year after it came out on DC, but I think I got used to it pretty quickly. I don't know how it must have felt for people who grew up playing since the Mater System and the Genesis, I think it would be like if today Microsoft would announce that they would stop making the Xbox
During the heyday of Saturn, it never crossed my mind that Saturn was doing so poorly outside Japan. Sure, it was kind of falling behind Sony and Nintendo, but many friends owned Saturn and buying softwares frequently, and gaming magazines praising Sega monthly...
Seeing what was really going on outside Japan was a bit shocking to say the least.
These sort of episodes really show that for a time, Sega's biggest enemy was Sega, huh?
Definitely. Plus the Dreamcast suffered from the looming ps2.
I was aware of the Saturn when it first came out. I had a choice to make, go with the saturn or wait for the nintendo 64. But one day my mom started telling me about something called a playstation and how her co-workers said that going to be the console to get. I had decided to ask for the saturn for christmas of 1995 but instead i asked for playstation based on all the things my mom was told. I forgot all about the saturn for many years after that.
Well that was a very interesting story about the Saturn lifetime, I didn't knew that Sony wanted a collab with Sega and it was also rejected.
No wonder of why Sony was a big enemy for Nintendo and Sega with the PlayStation, it was technically a monster that both of them created themselves without realizing, lol!.
But I think it was for the best.
The Gaming Historian did a series on the three worst mistakes ever made by each of the various video game companies. In his Sega video he listed their pulling out of the deal with Sony as their second biggest mistake they ever made. The first being the Saturn launch. For Nintendo it was their biggest however.
Sony's issue with Nintendo was the LICENSING of the CD add on tech for the Nintendo PlayStation. If Nintendo went along with Sony, Nintendo would ONLY make money on the cartridges, while Sony had the CDs. There was NO WAY Nintendo (or ANYONE for that matter) taking that deal. Sega's issue with Sony coming to help them with that tech was mostly Sega seeing Sony as "small fry" and "too young" in the gaming business to do anything. Obviously that killed them in the end.
@@gc3k huh when did square ever approach sega?? from what i read they were hardcore nintendo fanboys n loyal. n nintendo giving them that same respect to use one of their most beloved and iconic IP mario. for snes mario rpg. they had a good bond until the 64 era.... when square was making ff7 and decided to go for cd rom tech for their game and vision. thats where all the bad blood started. so they were forced to go to sony and with their ps1.
i dont remember them considering the saturn...lol but if they did thats interesting.
but square tried to desperately change nintendos mind to make 64 a cd based console. but nintendo wouldnt budge on that and square sadly parted ways with them... they wanted to make ff7 for nintendo tho. imagine history if that happened. also if sony and nintendo didnt part ways and nintendo
playstation was a thing instead of n64 and psx.
oh well. sony proved themselves as a legit gaming company tho and still remains in the game today. they sure came back hard to bite back sega
and nintendo. i miss sega being in hardware tho. sega consoles were special...
RIP saturn n dc
@@danwarb1 that trend continues with Sony to this day, destroying studios after buying them.
"Guardian Heroes" doesn't get enough love. As an old school Sega fan, it breaks my heart to learn about how they just dropped the ball.
@@Candle_Calmness I guess I must have gotten lucky then. Despite reading about it in a 96 issue of Gamefan, I picked it up used on a whim in an Exchange in the Mid West. I still remember the blue wad of gum that stuck the pages of the manual together. Best impulse buy of my life. I ruined the disk by accident during a move and had to spend 80 bucks on a brand new replacement. Definitely worth the money. Amazing gameplay, design work, and soundtrack. One of my favs to this day.
Rpg mixed with beat-em up gameplay created a new genre, real innovative, alot of Saturn games were innovative in fact
I remember that Phil Harrison talked about the time he worked for Sega during the 90's and he wanted to show Sega what people perceived them as, which is basically a senile grandfather that people used to like but they don't remember why they even like them in the first place. And the executives thought he was lying and that thought Sega was still a beloved company. And he said that was the point he realized that Sega's history as a console manufacturer was over. Too bad that Phil Harrison didn't realize that he was falling into the same trappings as Sega years later with the PS3, Xbox one and Stadia.
@@darthgamer9861 Japanese game companies seems to never listen or cooperate with western companies, even if they own them. Like Square-enix Europe was basically still Eidos, just with a different name. And the Japanese side never allowed them to use their IPs or use their resources they had. Like for example ask Nixxies to port Final fantasy XV to PC.
I'm so happy to have another exciting and fascinating What Happened episode to brighten our Saturn-Day! 😁
You should totally do an episode on the localization journey of Magic Knight Rayearth on the Saturn. That is an insane story in itself.
The most expensive saturn game right ?
My user name comes from one of my very first exposures to 32-Bit gaming: Astal. I was used to Genesis level graphics and was not ready for a game with stunning visual, orchestrated music and real voices and cut scenes. Astal left a mark on me that will never leave, even if I'm old enough now to admit it's not the best at all.
Always glad my first 32-Bit console was the Saturn, as my dad had an UNCANNY ability to choose stellar rentals for me while I was at school. I eventually moved on to the PS1 and N64, but much love for this console!
It's funny. The genesis was my side console when I was a kid, it was great but I was die-hard Nintendo. I got a Saturn when they were being purged from stores and I absolutely loved it. Easily one of my favorite consoles, I bought another back in 2009 and got a Satiator last year. It's the console I play the most these days. So many games to discover and great fan translations for RPGs. It's such a fantastic console.
I think the funniest aspect of my Saturn collection is that all I wanted in the 6th grade was Burning Rangers back in 98 and later found it's super rare. I still have it too
There's a very cool inteview by Hideki Sato, the man behind the Saturn creator, and how it came to be. Even in Japan, Sega was a very divided company with no support within.
We've been waiting for a Saturn video and Matt has delivered!
21:29 that's an episode I'm waiting for, 9 years, 3 developers, and at the end miraculously actually came out in a mediocre, but playable state
my favorite SEGA SATURN game was IRON STORM, a WWII turn-based war simulation/strategy game, part of the larger DAI SENRYAKU series. Very few of these installments were released in the US, I can only think of this one, and Dai Senryaku VII on the PS2/Xbox.
Iron Storm was a surprisingly huge game for this system, with dozens of historical battles you could command well-researched land, air, and sea units from maybe a dozen nations. There were three long campaigns with diverging paths and tech trees: depending on your performance, you could rewrite history and get bonuses in other battles, skip some events entirely, and even participate in fictional battles based on real plans and including documented late-war experimental weaponry, such as the ground invasions of Britain, America, and Japan, and even a post-war clash between Germany and Japan in India. You could probably spend a hundred hours in this game before you have finished and seen every battle in the game, and by then your sega saturn is probably falling apart and you need to find a new one at an estate sale.
My dad would play this game all the time when I was a little kid. It was quite a complex game for me to get a grasp on, but I do remember playing it a ton up into my early teens. It's still one of my favorite games of all time.
Dai Senryaku goes so hard. A few years ago an updated version of Dai 8 Perfect, kind of the greatest version, was released on steam fully on english. If you like the series youll love it.
As much of a disaster everything around the Saturn was, the console brought us some amazing games I will still look back fondly on. The console came at a bad time, ill-equipped to handle the future. And the western launch was an absolute freaking disaster. But I still love the Saturn and the untold hours I spent playing some of the exclusives late at night when I didn't have to go to school.
You mean the Japanese games you imported because most of the American games absolutely sucked
The western launch was an absolute disaster because Japan forced them to release it four months earlier than it was supposed to release. Had they stuck to the original western plan of releasing the system in September, then it would've launched with a much better line up of games, and they would've still had the goodwill of every major retailer instead of stepping on everyone's toes with an idiotic, last minute decision to completely screw everyone over.
Also I think the first T-JRPG with a 3D battlefield came on Saturn first : Blazing Heroes (also called Riglord Saga in Japan and Mystaria : the Realms of Lore in Europe). It was released in July 1995 while Vandal Hearts 1 on the PS1 was released in October 96 and Final Fantasy Tactics in June 97. I loved that game, even though the framerate sucked and gave you a headache after a couple hours lol Very interesting open-world experience that allows you to fight "random" battles, with an addicting way of learning new abilities. There was even terraforming in it since you could dig holes or create hills. The game that introduced me to the genre and made me fall in love with it. A hidden gem imo. Too bas Sega didn't realize that westerners could enjoy RPGs - they never bothered releasing the sequel overseas.
@@armorvil Sorry to bother you again, but the first was actually Powers Kingdom (or Guardian War, if you prefer) on the 3DO, which released in June 1994.
I read the Console Wars book that details Kalinske's time at Sega.
There was a lot of infighting between Sega of Japan and America well before the Saturn came along, but by the time it did, SoJ had become pretty bitter and resentful of SoA, and seemingly decided they were taking their company back. They made a lot of unilateral (and ultimately foolish or detrimental) decisions, and SoA had no choice but to go along with it, while SoJ absolutely refused to consider any other input or entertain any other ideas.
It led to things like the 32X, the botched Saturn launch, a lot of arguing over the lore of the Sonic franchise, and the later years of Sega after a lot of senior employees had left.
Someone else had an interesting video that pointed out that Tom Kalinske was ACTUALLY heavily respected by the higher-ups at SOJ.
The PROBLEM CAME IN where SOA started killing it in the States while SOJ floundered, causing leadership to then verbally (and ALLEGEDLY, physically) beat up on the middle management at SOJ, asking them why TF they were all so incompetent and couldn’t accomplish the things that Kalinske was over in the West.
Naturally, this led to A LOT of SOJ managers beginning to HATE and RESENT this Tom Kalinsk guy that they had NEVER MET but were always being compared AGAINST by THEIR BOSSES over at SOJ.
So, a lot of infighting occurred from SOJ employees who simply hated Tom Kalinske’s guts and were envious of the success that SOA had under his leadership.
@@jaythomas468 what was the video called
The Saturn is a great console for Japanese games. It is literally chuck full of hundreds of amazing Japan-only games that were never ported to the west. You just have to get either a Japanese Saturn or modify a western one to play them.
100%. A good chunk of those games have been translated too.
Yeah, the western branches of Sega and Nintendo were really dumb in the 90s with that mentality that they should not publish majority of rpgs because they wouldn't sell in the west. As a result, we didn't get many great games that we otherwise could have.
7:00 The difficulty of programming for the Saturn is extra tragic considering that the MD/Gen was great for programmers. Running on two of the most common computer-grade CPUs around, it was super-easy for studios to jump onboard and produce reasonably good games quickly. That was a big part of how it had such a strong software lineup in its first year(s), especially in the US.
The amusing thing about the Saturn is the fact that it is pretty much a game console with a built-in arcade motherboard(thus making arcade conversions an easy task). Thus, because the arcade scene in Japan was still thriving at that time, they got quite a few games we never got in America, like Radiant Silvergun. Sure, that particular game did got a release here many years later, but still...
Damn, the number of unlocalized Sega Saturn games is *absurd* ! 😦 I’m genuinely curious to know more about some of those titles, because I feel like there would be at least one game that would capture my interest (like “Princess Crown” the game that would help establish Vanillaware). Speaking of large numbers of titles that were never released outside of Japan, I wonder if that weird period in the 2000s and early 2010s where Nintendo of America was very particular about what was localized, resulting in a lot of adventure games and RPGs not seeing an official release and culminating in Project Rainfall, could result in a future “What Happened” or something like it.
While not perfect Sony did manage to bring over more games from Japan then Sega and that was one of the reasons I bought a PS1 over the Saturn and Sony also had a ton of great Psynosis games (Wipeout. Colony Wars, GPolice, Rollcage all fantastic games
I've played fan translations of Saturn games but my problem with them is they're good games, maybe great but save for Panzer Dragoon Saga none have that amazing game feel.
I really love the Saturn software and while much didn't make it here, it was still so great to continue playing series I played on the Genesis by importing games (Langrisser/Warsong, the full Shining Force 3 series, etc) and the shooters and fighting games were incredible. If only we got Phantasy Star 5...
I got my Saturn when it was really marked down, for like $50. But what really unlocked its potential was when I visited a Babbage’s store that carried import games. Eventually I had X-Men vs SF, Marvel Super Heroes vs SF, Vampire Savior, and King of Fighters ‘97, all arcade-perfect thanks to the RAM cart and a US/Japan conversion cart. Clearly the Saturn’s failure was a grievous series of management errors, but what a huge shame so many quality titles didn’t make it to the west.
Sega not self-sabotaging challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)
I love console videos like these, as going back to history I grew up with is some how a wonderful feeling. Could that be a series for you to explore, Matt? Going back on the history of consoles that maybe aren't disasters? Like how despite the uphill battle the PS1 helped Playstation become the arguably biggest brand in gaming ever? Your narration makes these videos my ultimate stress relief and I would love to see you cover both the good and the bad of gaming history.
Oddly one of my favorite systems of all time. I hold a special kind of nostalgia for that scrappy system.
Nights into dreams will always be a top 5 greatest game of all time for me.
My favorite retro system. I do believe I have it emulated on every device that is capable of running it. My handheld purchases did and still do depend on whether they can run the Saturn properly.
Sega is definitely the best case study of why your company needs to be on the same page.
May I ask what Saturn emulators are good? I should see about getting into some.
What emulator are you using?
Saturn has such a complicated hardware that emulating games is a pain in the ass.
@@DavideGendo I use Mednafen and Yaba Sanshiro cores of Retroarch, depending on the game.
@@amtraklover I use Mednafen and Yaba Sanshiro cores of Retroarch, depending on the game. On Android, I use Yaba Sanshiro 2.
Sega was truly the WCW of video games
You ain't wrong.
I love this console and the community surrounding it is outright amazing. So much so that Bulk Slash, a 3d render robot shooter game by Hudson soft that is quite good and sadly never saw the light of day outside of Japan got a recent fan localization with full translation, English voice acting and even enabled twin-stick support originally hidden within the code by the developers themselves, the absolute mad lads. With Saturn emulation being more stable than ever, MANY great gems that never made it to the west finally getting some recognition like the surprising great Groove on Fight and some others getting released on other platforms like Cotton 2 and Boomerang, Guardian Force an Radiant Silvergun. This is a great time to be a Saturn fan. Saturn WAS our future.
Did this show not used to be called "Wha Happun" or am I just having a Mandela effect?
Nah it did
whenever I hear that Sega Playstation story, and how SoJ killed it on the vine, I can't help but feel second hand frustration for SoA.
I feel like so much of SEGAs problems can boil down to; "a jealous neighbor constantly trying to one up you, but genuinely having no ideas of their own."
I absolutely love my Saturn. Didn’t even grow up with it. Grew up with n64, but the nostalgia or just warmth of the kinds of games the Saturn has. Is absolutely amazing, it’s my favorite way to play quake, and I’m one of the few or only that like the doom Saturn port. Such great party games. Just wish I knew more people who could enjoy it as much as me.
I agree with you 100%. I didn't buy my Saturn until 2015. However, today I play my Saturn as much or more than any other console. I love the space shooters, fighting games, and cool 2 D platformers such as Astal and Nights in Dreams. Of Course really enjoy me some Baku Baku as well. So glad I took a chance on the system.
It's crazy how important Sega of America was in Sega's success, only for Sega of Japan to completely handicap & ignore them after achieving that success.
Seems Sega & Nintendo have a lot in common. When on top, they get complacent & make a ton of dumb decisions... thinking they can dictate to the market what THEY want, rather than listen to what fans want. Ultimately, success is often followed by failure, unable to maintain momentum between generations.
Man. If they had just waited until it was SUPPOSED TO LAUNCH, it might have had a chance in the States!!
What happened to the Saturn? Sega. Sega happened. And also Bernie Stolar, but mostly Sega.
It really is nuts how much in-fighting there is in the tech industry, instead of understanding that multiple facets of one company are working towards a common goal and should help each other.
WCW and Sega have so much in common in terms of rise and fall and both died in 01 (btw I know Sega is still around but their a shell of their former self)
*Backstage Politics
*Stuck in the pass and not moving forward
*Bitterness
*Lack of management or having one that could control the asylum
*Spending more of what they have and loosing more than earning
*And till this day books and podcasts talk about the Rise and fall and not of them admitting the blame or swabbing the blame towards others
Lol I seriously was getting WCW vibes watching this video and thought too how much Sega was basically making the same type of mistakes WCW did. Hell like Sega, WCW was able to overtake their major competitor and become the top dog of their brand till they immediately screwed it all up
@@TheSoundwaveprime exactly man they are so similar and the fact both lost against the competition and lack of ideas and insane backstage politics alongside other out of touch players and both surprisingly went under in freaking 01 it’s so weird yet not surprising
So that makes Sega Japan the SWO?
Ill say another example I feel works in this comparison is also Don Bluth and his studio. In the 80s him and his studio sent Disney running for their money and at times surpassed Disney, but by the turn of the century, things were much more different. Point is its pretty wild how that sort of scenario of smaller entity in po culture inspired by or taking after bigger entity becomes popular and eclipses them at a point only to fall down from that pedestal and become defunct or a second fiddle to the thing you once were winning against. Interesting that these three happened in the 90s early 00s too.
Hah! This is great and all too accurate. They gave us the highest highs and lowest lows as kids/teens in the 90's.
We were robbed of so many good Japanese Saturn games that remained there in Japan, Bernie Stolar was one of the worst to have happened to Sega at the time.
I would say Nakayama was the one who sank that ship. Bernie just said what everyone was thinking. Remember, this is THE SAME SEGA OF JAPAN that pissed off Peter Moore (before he would go to for Xbox and then EA later) SO BAD, he famously told the interpreter to tell them he said "Go f#$& yourself" over the Dreamcast debacle. To which the interpreter said "They don't have a word for that Mr. Moore." And then he said "Oh they KNOW what I said." Shit was CRAZY over there.
yep
Eh even without Stolar the Sega Saturn was already struggling in the USA with the complicated hardware. Stolar also pushed to make Sonic X-treme happen but Yuji Naka said no. And Stolar was also responsible for Launching the Dreamcast before he got fired. So yes and no. Stolar was like that one strict father that did a lot of wrong but did something right in the end. He's kinda the anti hero of Sega tbh.
Stolar was an ass, sure, but it costs a lot of money to localize games, especially text and speech-heavy games like RPGs. With the Saturn's other failures, I doubt many more games would have come over because the ROI of selling to such a small install base wasn't worth it. Same thing happened to the Turbografx, especially once the CD came out.
@@strangesonicfan9204he matched energies if anything he did 😂😂
The 3D processor on the Saturn was a big issue for ports because it worked with quads and not triangles. This meant models had to be basically remade to work properly. The logic had been that it could mean more detailed objects for more modest processing overhead but it made modelling things more complex than it needed to be and in a triangle focused industry meant most extant 3D models just weren't compatible. Incidentally this 3D processor was made by some little indie outfit named NVidia. Wonder what ever happened to them?
Other franchise histories?
Bomberman. It needs to be done.
I only remember seeing a Saturn at a cousin's house I didn't know it was made by Sega so I got excited since I loved the Genesis, so the first thing I asked my friend to do was pop on Sonic 2 into the Saturn via its cartridge expansion slot, he sadly said he tried it and it doesn't fit or work, most of my interest on the console dropped to the floor, I than asked him if he had any 3d games for the thing since I liked the 64 and ps1 3d games, he excitedly popped out Knights into dream, Daytona and Virtua fighter to show off what the console could do, but my interest fell through the floor, I was hoping to see something like a 3d sonic or other 3d platformer/shooter game but nah, I think he tried to show off upcoming and other games via a magazine but I had no interest in the console at all after that, he perked up when I said if something like a Super Gameboy existed for the Saturn to play genesis games so went to a few local stores to ask around, sadly we got nothing, but he had his hopes up that Sega will make an attachment like the Sega cd or 32x to play older cartridge games that sadly never came out.
*clears throat*
Two-ninety-nine.
The Sega Saturn's a console I have a lot of respect for and sure had some neat stuff. Who knows how well it could have done if there'd just been a killer app for the Western market to latch onto?
Also, it's kind of a weird suggestion for an episode, but the story of the Japanese tactical RPG Tear Ring Saga, basically the original "developer of popular game series leaves company to basically make it himself" is really bizarre, doubly so if one counts Berwick Saga, that really weird follow-up.
I'd love to see this as a Fire Emblem fan
@@mylifeisadumpsterfire5194If i'm not mistaken Tear Ring Saga is to Fire Emblem what Xenogears and Xenosaga are to Xenoblade Chronicles, right?
Literally didnt know ANYBODY who had a Saturn growing up. People had Genesis and SNES, people had Playstation and N64, but zero Saturns. I knew literally 1 person that had a Dreamcast when the next gen dropped, but lots of Xbox, PS2, and Gamecube owners
Hey kids, remember when Sega made consoles... Probably not, it's been that long now.
Will never get rid of my Saturn, Dreamcast, or og Xbox, gave me the best gaming memories I've ever had : D
I didn’t have every system as a kid. But I was hyped when I got the Saturn for my 14/15 bday. X-men children of the atom street fighter alpha . It was a 2/d beast! Vf2
One thing we've learned since the doc leaks last year: Tom was actually fired and Tom forced SoJ's hand since SoA lost the company a ton of money, therefore putting the company in a financial position it never recovered from. So, for full context, Tom's quotes re-stated in this video is Tom's re-telling of his own history.
SoJ didn't sabotage Sega, SoA's incompetence did. The Saturn is an awesome console, btw.
If Sega of America told us to play Sega Saturn, maybe we would've listened.
I love my Sega Saturn, I bought it way back in the later 90's at Toys R Us. I got the bundle pack that had Virtua Fighter 2, Daytona USA, and Virtua Cop. It also had Demos of Sega Rally and Nights. Not only that but I bought Street Fighter Alpha 2 which was still popular at arcades at the time. As time went on I built my collection to include Guardian Heroes, Radiant Silvergun, Capcoms Marvel Superheroes, X-Men vs Street Fighter, Marvel vs Capcom. I can't say enough about how awesome a 2D console the Saturn is.
You're supposed to check the "paid sponsorship" part when you upload these videos so the FTC doesn't make an example of you and use you as a reason to ruin it for the rest of us.
This is really interesting! I'd always heard the Saturn's failure in the West being chalked up to "it didn't have a main Sonic game", but now I realize that was just one of many, many pitfalls.
I feel the Saturn could've been somewhat successful over here in the US had Bernie Stolar let a lot of these games get localized . The Saturn had a bunch of JRPG's that weren't localized, and during that late 90s era of FF7 and the discovery of anime through Toonami, I feel like Sega could've used that niche to their advantage over here.
To be fair, outside the Final Fantasy series and some other JRPGs from Squaresoft, I don't think the genre was one of the biggest sellers in the 32-bit era, outside FFVII most of those games were more niche, it wasn't until the release of Pokémon Red and Blue in the West that the genre had a second explosion, but that was relegated to handheld consoles. The Saturn needed titles that could compete with what Sony and Nintendo had, the PSOne had games like Resident Evil 2, Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo, the Nintendo 64 had Super Mario 64, GoldenEye 007 and Ocarina of Time, SEGA needed titles like those
You know, i never really knew Sony tried to collab with Nintendo and Sega, which is why i love these videos you always let us know every detail!
A friend of mine getting a Sega Saturn was the main reason why I got myself a PlayStation. Saturn was the first disk system I ever saw in my life, so I wanted one myself. I didn't want to be the same, so I got the "new" PlayStation. (And by got, i mean i BEGGED my mother for it.) The rest is my video gaming history, lol.
I loved the Saturn as a kid, I played hundreds of hours of Bug, Virtual On, Sonic R, Nights, etc. It kills me to see that there were sooo many games we never got in the US
Sega itself is worthy of its own What Happened.
I loved my saturn. So what did sega do? Created a thing of beauty for me
I used to import Japanese games for my Saturn. I had all of the Marvel/Capcom fighting games at home.
Random fact, I actually spoke with one of the developers for Alien: Resurrection, and essentially, the reason why the port never came to fruition was because the developer hired to handle the port decided to try to work on the port in pure assembly language avoiding any developer tools or libraries provided by Sega incredibly slowing down his productivity. He also didn't use any of the original PlayStation title's source code, so he tried to use the assets and his intuition fearing that none of the code would be useful to his port. Argonaut decided to pull the plug due to the fact that after a long development period, he only had some basic levels with still models loaded in his engine.
Glad you mentioned that the console thrived in Japan. I feel like that's one aspect of the Saturn's history most English-speaking sources basically neglect. And as a fan of arcade games in general, it was definitely my favorite platform of that generation (although the PS1 wasn't a slouch in that department when they had Namco backing them up, and the N64 had some good Midway jank).
I think the opposite can be said about the Nintendo 64. Nintendo lost a huge marketshare of the Japanese market when they released the N64, but the console managed to stand up to PlayStation in the U.S. market, some of their games were actually the best-sellers, though the PlayStation move more software when you combine all of the games released on the console
There is something to be said about Sega's naming system being unique, as opposed to the typical 'blank' 2, 'blank' 3, etc.
I can't imagine Sega of japan EVER taking responsibility for it's failures in the west, specifically discarding the advice of it's western leadership. It's like an endless string of "i told you so" that really helps make it clear why sega remains the third party it is today. I'd have been super jealous of a friend with a saturn if it actually had all 1000 games localized. In my adult years i got to play dragonforce on original hardware and it was fantastic. but as a kid i had never heard of it or much else exclusive to saturn besides some fighting game ports and the panzer dragoon games i got to play for free inside Best Buy or Toys R Us for a few minutes.
People like to mention things like lack of DVD player as big reason for the Dreamcast floundering but my personal opinion is that the early abandonment of Sega Saturn in the West/etc probably played a big role in the Dreamcast's problem. Like I wanted a PS2 because of the positive experience with the PS1, which was still fresh on my mind while as a kid I mostly ended up forgetting the Saturn.
(I mean I'm generally "team SOA" but Stoler really messed it up imo)
I always though that the Dreamcast sales were an improvement over the Saturn's, but checking the official numbers, both consoles sold over 9 million units more or less, those numbers are worse than the PS Vita or the WiiU. I can imagine that SEGA couldn't recapture the attention of the gamers that abandon them after the end of the Mega Drive/Genesis days. I think Nintendo managed to stay in the console market since the Nintendo 64 actually did pretty good in the U.S. market, despite the fact that they lost the Japanese and European market, not to mention their huge success in the portable market thanks to the Pokémon series, that and the fact that Nintendo didn't have an arcade division like SEGA did
I'm fond of these japnese exclusive Saturn games. Very experimental and weird stuff.
It adds to the overall mysterious vibe the Saturn has.
To this day SEGA's worst enemy has been SEGA themselves
ERROR GAME RESET, Yoko Taro's New Mobile GAME put SEGA as its main antagonist
@@markofthewolvessucks8930 having good Sonic game dosent mean they wont make dumb desicions in the future
If Sega didn't fool around with the Sega CD and the 32X and just went straight from the Genesis to the Saturn I think we could very well still have Sega consoles to this day
I still hate the fact we only got 1/3rd of shining force 3, that game was sooo good!
There's a magnificent fan translation!
Man, I love some good Console What happun' ! And a SEGA episode on top of it? Just what I needed to endure a weekend sick
I'd be really interested in seeing you cover any of the Oddworld games, particularly Stranger's Wrath as that games development and aftermath to release were apparently so horrible it led to Oddworld Inhabitants ceasing game development all together until the release of Oddworld: New n' Tasty in 2014.
That Japanese guy in a lot of those commercials in this video is the original Kamen Rider actor, Hiroshi Fujioka.