The Saturn Appreciation Thread

[SMD]

I borrowed Sega Touring Car Championship off a mate in school after watching that trailer on the Saturn demo disk for months, thought it was going to be Sega Rally but for circuit racing.

 

Handling was so disappointing, cars felt garbage.

[SeanR]

STCC? That’s the one with a frame rate lower than a flip book, right? And cars that apparently steer from the rear wheels…
 

Hateful game.

 

went as far as colouring my expectations and experience of the Dreamcast title SEGA GT, and GT 2002 on the Xbox, which never got a fair look-in, possibly because of the association.

 

in fact you know what? It’d be embarrassing if it was a GBA game

[mash]

2 hours ago, SMD said:

I borrowed Sega Touring Car Championship off a mate in school after watching that trailer on the Saturn demo disk for months, thought it was going to be Sega Rally but for circuit racing.

 

Handling was so disappointing, cars felt garbage.

One of the biggest disappointments on the Saturn..How could they get it so wrong? How could they release it in that fashion? it's not as if the Saturn was dead at that point. At least the original version of Daytona was playable. probably the only game more disappointing that gen for me was Daytona CCE. 

[pastry]

The PAL release I bought in 1998 was a crushing disappointment, but honestly give the NTSC version a go if you haven’t, the frame rate bump is noticeable. It still doesn’t have anything like the nuance of Rally or the launch version of Daytona , but it has some charm!*

 

I enjoyed revisiting it more than I expected and was able to make significant leaps in understanding how to play it. 
 

 

* Well, at least the first couple of courses.. the final stage and especially the bonus circuit are a disaster!)

 

 

[SMD]

It came out in the same year as Gran Turismo, there was really no excuse.

[Protocol Penguin]

44 minutes ago, SMD said:

It came out in the same year as Gran Turismo, there was really no excuse.

I don’t think people remember how much it critically harmed Sega that 3D games on the Saturn looked obviously worse than their PlayStation counterparts/rivals. Many people who bought the Saturn had brand loyalty to Sega because of the Mega Drive. Those consumers felt ‘burnt’ buying a Saturn, having what they considered an inferior games system, and by the time the Dreamcast was rolled out, they didn’t want to buy Sega branded hardware. The Saturn flopping single-handedly destroyed Sega as a hardware manufacturer, really, which is a massive shame, as it had so many fantastic games. 

[SMD]

Just now, Protocol Penguin said:

I don’t think people remember how much it critically harmed Sega that 3D games on the Saturn looked obviously worse than their PlayStation counterparts/rivals. Many people who bought the Saturn had brand loyalty to Sega because of the Mega Drive. Those consumers felt ‘burnt’ buying a Saturn, having what they considered an inferior games system, and by the time the Dreamcast was rolled out, they didn’t want to buy Sega branded hardware. The Saturn flopping single-handedly destroyed Sega as a hardware manufacturer, really, which is a massive shame, as it had so many fantastic games. 

 

it wasn't just that they looked worse, it was the fact that a lot of games were massively inferior and third parties didn't really put in much of an effort.

 

Playstation had ISS and Saturn had Sega Worldwide Soccer. Sega Rally was fantastic but the original conversion of Daytona was tragic, especially up against Ridge Racer. The first version of Virtua Fighter didn't do them any favours and while Remix/VF2 went a long way to fix that, a lot of people had already chosen Tekken by that point.

 

No RE2 or MGS, Gran Turismo came out and Sega's answer was STCC? And Playstation already had TOCA which was so much better and deeper. In 1995 you could make an argument that arcade games were enough to compete but trying to charge full price for a game that had 4 cars and 4 circuits and handled like dogshit is a complete farce.

 

And you're right, the Saturn had great games - when they could be arsed bringing them over or printing copies. Saturn Quake should've been promoted left right and centre as the most faithful way to play one of the best FPS games of all time on console. The less said about the releases in 1998... just a complete failure of management from start to finish.

[SeanR]

I mean…

 

 

 

[Protocol Penguin]

1 hour ago, SMD said:

 

it wasn't just that they looked worse, it was the fact that a lot of games were massively inferior and third parties didn't really put in much of an effort.

 

Playstation had ISS and Saturn had Sega Worldwide Soccer. Sega Rally was fantastic but the original conversion of Daytona was tragic, especially up against Ridge Racer. The first version of Virtua Fighter didn't do them any favours and while Remix/VF2 went a long way to fix that, a lot of people had already chosen Tekken by that point.

 

No RE2 or MGS, Gran Turismo came out and Sega's answer was STCC? And Playstation already had TOCA which was so much better and deeper. In 1995 you could make an argument that arcade games were enough to compete but trying to charge full price for a game that had 4 cars and 4 circuits and handled like dogshit is a complete farce.

 

And you're right, the Saturn had great games - when they could be arsed bringing them over or printing copies. Saturn Quake should've been promoted left right and centre as the most faithful way to play one of the best FPS games of all time on console. The less said about the releases in 1998... just a complete failure of management from start to finish.

Couldn’t agree more, or have put it better than that!

[Ketchup]

2 hours ago, SMD said:

 

No RE2 or MGS, Gran Turismo came out and Sega's answer was STCC? And Playstation already had TOCA which was so much better and deeper. In 1995 you could make an argument that arcade games were enough to compete but trying to charge full price for a game that had 4 cars and 4 circuits and handled like dogshit is a complete farce.

 

And you're right, the Saturn had great games - when they could be arsed bringing them over or printing copies. Saturn Quake should've been promoted left right and centre as the most faithful way to play one of the best FPS games of all time on console. The less said about the releases in 1998... just a complete failure of management from start to finish.

 

I find this era fascinating, if only because of how the consoles launched and what happened during those years. Like Saturn came to the UK in 94, yet in my mind i was playing Sonic and Knuckles and the Mega Drive had basically reached it's peak at that point and still had a couple of years worth of games to come. 94, 95, 96 you sort of forget that Saturn and Playstation were out and 3 years old by that point. The N64 didn't even come to the UK till 97. By modern standards a consoles 1st year is often slow but the 2nd year is where it all kicks off and its fate is sort of decided. But i really feel that the Playstation didn't really hit it's stride until 98, by which time Saturn was Dead and Dreamcast was out in Japan. Console launches are so different to before where they would take years to get going, so we all look back and say the saturn failed right from the start, yet for those first two years at least Saturn and PSone got fairly similar games from the 3rd parties, im think stuff like Swagman and Cool Spot, those strange cross over games that felt like super charged 16 bit games rather than something that couldn't have been done previously. Beyond the odd Tekken 2 there wasn't too much from the PSone that made it a must have over the Saturn.

 

In 96 were people talking about Saturn and Playstation all that much? Maybe, this was the time of the original Tomb Raider coming to saturn but i guess in 96 those consoles and the N64 felt expensive and only for the hardcore gamers, where as 97 onwards is where those consoles started feeling more attinable. I do remember Cybernet talking about the Saturn having Virtua Fight 2, Sega Rally and Virtua Cop as it's big games against playstation. So for me because of the lack of internet and only magazines Saturn and Ps1 felt sort of equal for 3 years, before Sega just sort of gave up around 97 and especially 98 we all knew it was dead and buried. But it's only in 98/99 that PSone got its heavy hitters and that probably hurt the Dreamcast more than we realised at the time.

[megamixer]

Just my thoughts, but the Saturn died in my opinion because most games had little to no depth versus their Playstation rivals. Gamers were getting used to large, involved games with fancy FMV, that had a lot going on and were so big that they needed multiple CDs. Meanwhile, the Saturn was offering arcade ports that lost a lot in the home environment with the absence of the big, loud cabinets and peripherals. The likes of the Daytona were amazing in the arcade because they were an experience and not just a videogame. At home, with a standard controller...it wasn't the same.

 

Sega Rally might well be one of the most finely-tuned rally videogames of all-time, but people wanted the career modes and depth that the likes of WRC offered. Same with STCC against Gran Turismo: there was no contest.

 

Massive games like MGS and Final Fantasy VII/VIII/IX dumped all over what the Saturn was doing. That's not to say that the likes of PDS, Dragonforce, and Shining Force III can't be considered in the same league quality-wise, but they couldn't really shout as loud as their PS1 rivals.

 

Arcade games and conversions were losing their relevance at a crazy speed as the 90's wore on and the Dreamcast following the same formula of converting games that couldn't hope to compete with the depth of Playstation/Nintendo offerings + were nowhere near as fun as playing them in the arcade would always doom it.

 

Yes, there are games for both Saturn and Dreamcast that can be considered comparable deeper experiences with a lot to do but these are the exceptions rather than the rule when it was the opposite way around on rival consoles. Times and expectations were changing but Sega seemed to be standing still. It's a massive shame because they produced some incredible arcade games during this period, but they simply weren't what the majority of gamers wanted.

[megamixer]

20 hours ago, mash said:

probably the only game more disappointing that gen for me was Daytona CCE. 

Not long ago played this for the first time and I couldn't believe how different it was from the original. I know that the subject was always American, but CCE just feels SO American, especially with the remixed music which barely resembles the original OST. I didn't hate CCE but it was certainly different.

[SMD]

6 minutes ago, Ketchup said:

 

I find this era fascinating, if only because of how the consoles launched and what happened during those years. Like Saturn came to the UK in 94, yet in my mind i was playing Sonic and Knuckles and the Mega Drive had basically reached it's peak at that point and still had a couple of years worth of games to come. 94, 95, 96 you sort of forget that Saturn and Playstation were out and 3 years old by that point. The N64 didn't even come to the UK till 97. By modern standards a consoles 1st year is often slow but the 2nd year is where it all kicks off and its fate is sort of decided. But i really feel that the Playstation didn't really hit it's stride until 98, by which time Saturn was Dead and Dreamcast was out in Japan. Console launches are so different to before where they would take years to get going, so we all look back and say the saturn failed right from the start, yet for those first two years at least Saturn and PSone got fairly similar games from the 3rd parties, im think stuff like Swagman and Cool Spot, those strange cross over games that felt like super charged 16 bit games rather than something that couldn't have been done previously. Beyond the odd Tekken 2 there wasn't too much from the PSone that made it a must have over the Saturn.

 

In 96 were people talking about Saturn and Playstation all that much? Maybe, this was the time of the original Tomb Raider coming to saturn but i guess in 96 those consoles and the N64 felt expensive and only for the hardcore gamers, where as 97 onwards is where those consoles started feeling more attinable. I do remember Cybernet talking about the Saturn having Virtua Fight 2, Sega Rally and Virtua Cop as it's big games against playstation. So for me because of the lack of internet and only magazines Saturn and Ps1 felt sort of equal for 3 years, before Sega just sort of gave up around 97 and especially 98 we all knew it was dead and buried. But it's only in 98/99 that PSone got its heavy hitters and that probably hurt the Dreamcast more than we realised at the time.

 

If we're talking about the UK then it's hard to talk about that era without also talking about the PC. The mid to late 90s were a weird time when a lot of computers were suddenly entering people's homes in a way that was 'good enough' for major PC and multiplatform releases. It was really common for games to just be released on Playstation and PC in that era and while you'd lose a lot of immediacy and accessibility playing on PC over PSX, you'd most likely get better performance on a machine that wasn't really intended for gaming. It's not like your PC would accidentally come with a 3DFX card but you'd easily get some competent graphics card that let you run games in better fidelity than the Playstation.

 

So for a lot of people, their access to games might be a mix of console and PC. Anecdotally I knew loads of other kids who had a Mega Drive or a SNES but also a PC so by the time they got a Playstation, they'd already had one foot in that gen anyway. Tomb Raider, Destruction Derby, hell even Final Fantasy VII and MGS made it to the PC - and not the Saturn.

 

I didn't get my Saturn till 98 so it was practically dead at that point but I'd still read about the games loads in magazines or played them on demo kiosks in Debenhams or Currys.

 

At first it came down solely to price. Saturn launched in the middle of 1995 for £400 and the Playstation cost £300 with better and cheaper games. Sega's problem was that companies just didn't see any reason to keep supporting them, so you'd have Resident Evil, Wipeout (+ 2097) and Tomb Raider on both platforms but then sequels wouldn't bother. I don't think Namco showed up at all, neither did Square while Konami paid lipservice. Capcom tried but ended up just sticking to 2D fighters.

 

There was just no reason to bother with the Saturn after 1996. Sega had no idea what they were doing, it was a crap system to develop for and Playstation had the numbers and developer friendly environment to attract a more diverse library.

 

What I'll never understand is that Sega didn't look at what Lobotomy were doing and didn't immediately buy them out and put them on port duty. They only ever made three fucking games! What a waste of talent and a potential legacy.

[Ketchup]

Yeah I guess 94/95 as a developer you’re making your game with a 1-2 year cycle. So Saturn got support between 95-96 but for your next game it was clear PlayStation was the way to go which is also why I think the first few years probably were fairly neck and neck and then the sudden collapse of Saturn.

[SMD]

wouldn't even say neck and neck, some of the games we got on the Saturn came months if not a full year after the Playstation release. I was just a kid so it wasn't like I was buying anything day 1 but I can imagine for people with disposable income, it wasn't even close to acceptable.

 

That's another thing, it's easy to look back now and say 'well the Saturn has an interesting library, particularly in Japan' but for most people the drip feed of releases was terrible and most people didn't really have access to imports.

[mash]

On 04/09/2022 at 17:09, SMD said:

 

 

There was just no reason to bother with the Saturn after 1996. Sega had no idea what they were doing, it was a crap system to develop for and Playstation had the numbers and developer friendly environment to attract a more diverse library.

 

 

 

Are we talking about the UK and US? As  a PAL gamer I remember there being some terrific games released in 1997. Fighters Megamix, Die Hard Arcade, Duke Nukem 3d, Last  Bronx, Manx TT, Resident Evil, Saturn Bomberman, Sega Worldwide soccer, Virtua Cop 2. 

 

Japan is another story. I became an import Saturn gamer in 1998 after reading about Capcom's 4mb fighters and games like Radiant Silvergun in Sega Saturn Magazine. 

 

 

I did have the luxury of owning all three of the formats of the time however. So I could pick and choose the best from all three formats. 

[Down by Law]

I didn't get my Saturn until mid 97 (as a 12 year old i had to post a lot of papers to save up) but it was still fairly healthy then. I had a great time with it even though it broke 6 months later, which is odd as most Saturns today still work, though it was a bit of a blessing for me back then as it was under guarantee I got all my money back which went toward a Playstation (Resident Evil 2 was an absolute must have which made me pick it over a N64 for Goldeneye). It was obvious the Saturn wasn't going to last when half of the pages of the official magazine were pushing you to get a 60hz switch and an all region mod and those things just werent feasible for a teenager in a pre internet age.

 

As was the norm back then when it became obvious you were on the losing team you got rid of all your software before it became 'worthless' and I traded in my stack of Saturn games for PS1 titles. I did the same with my Neo Geo Pocket Color in the early 2000's and it still pains me to this day that i traded in a mint system with Sonic, Metal Slug 2 and Dynamite Slugger for £45 of store credit. Still it was the done thing back then and how could we realise the value these items would increase tenfold over the coming years.

 

Anyway it was a great time while it lasted though. Exhumed remains one of my all time favourite games and that summer of '97 was mainly spent hunting for team dolls. Getting Christmas Nights as a coverdisc was incredible and it was such a great game, definetely made a few PSX schoolfriends jealous with that one. When it died there were still games coming out I wanted for the system like Burning Rangers and Steep Slope Sliders, so I bought another one back in late '99 from Gamestation for something daft like £25 and picked up some of the stuff I'd missed like Marvel Super Heroes, NHL All Star Hockey '98 and Sonic R for peanuts. 

 

You could tell that Sega's heart wasn't in it anymore though with stuff like the aforementioned Touring Car being rushed to release when it needed more time to cook. But the Dreamcast was on the horizon by this point and after seeing an imported machine running an arcade perfect version of House of the Dead 2 in my local Gamestation I knew Sega had learned from their mistakes and there was no way the Dreamcast would go the way of the Saturn. 

.

.

.

How cruel the industry can be.

[Kevvy Metal]

On 04/09/2022 at 16:46, Ketchup said:

 

I find this era fascinating, if only because of how the consoles launched and what happened during those years. Like Saturn came to the UK in 94, yet in my mind i was playing Sonic and Knuckles and the Mega Drive had basically reached it's peak at that point and still had a couple of years worth of games to come. 94, 95, 96 you sort of forget that Saturn and Playstation were out and 3 years old by that point. The N64 didn't even come to the UK till 97. By modern standards a consoles 1st year is often slow but the 2nd year is where it all kicks off and its fate is sort of decided. But i really feel that the Playstation didn't really hit it's stride until 98, by which time Saturn was Dead and Dreamcast was out in Japan. Console launches are so different to before where they would take years to get going, so we all look back and say the saturn failed right from the start, yet for those first two years at least Saturn and PSone got fairly similar games from the 3rd parties, im think stuff like Swagman and Cool Spot, those strange cross over games that felt like super charged 16 bit games rather than something that couldn't have been done previously. Beyond the odd Tekken 2 there wasn't too much from the PSone that made it a must have over the Saturn.

 

In 96 were people talking about Saturn and Playstation all that much? Maybe, this was the time of the original Tomb Raider coming to saturn but i guess in 96 those consoles and the N64 felt expensive and only for the hardcore gamers, where as 97 onwards is where those consoles started feeling more attinable. I do remember Cybernet talking about the Saturn having Virtua Fight 2, Sega Rally and Virtua Cop as it's big games against playstation. So for me because of the lack of internet and only magazines Saturn and Ps1 felt sort of equal for 3 years, before Sega just sort of gave up around 97 and especially 98 we all knew it was dead and buried. But it's only in 98/99 that PSone got its heavy hitters and that probably hurt the Dreamcast more than we realised at the time.

 

Xmas 1996 was when I bought a Saturn and was probably the peak of it's popularity in the UK. 

Sega Saturn Magazine was great at the time, and I got the Panzer Dragoon Zwei pack for xmas that year. 
The new Sega console was the right choice because the new Nintendo console wasn't out any time soon, and that new Sony thing was basically just a Philips CD-i right?

Xmas 1997 I got a Nintendo 64 to go along with my Saturn because Mario 64 was incredible and FINALLY the new Nintendo console where the real action was going to happen! Right? Well,.. not really.

I think I owned around 20ish games in the end and they were pretty much everything you'd want to buy for the machine, especially at that horrible RRP price.

 

1998 I Finally bought a PS1 and I don't think I had ever played more games on one system before!
The price of games dropped to £30! Remember that? There was a huge library already and incredible stuff came out for it all the way into 2001!

I loved my PlayStation 1 so much and kinda feel it was the platform that my love for videogames really truly blossomed on. The PS1 (and PS2, PS4) have to rank right up there as my favourite consoles of all time. 

 

There's a good Youtube channel called Sega Lord X, where he outlines some of the history and competition between Sega and Sony, especially in Japan at the time. 
In a nut shell, they were pretty much neck and neck in terms of sales and popularity until January 1997 when Final Fantasy VII hit Japan. That game was basically a huge run-away success and phenomenom that sold machines and decimated the competition. That's the main turning point. 

Sega also stopped all development and production of Saturn games and hardware in 1998 to concentrate on the late 1998 Dreamcast launch in japan. Sega went almost a year without anything on the market to actually sell!  

[Paulando]

2 hours ago, Down by Law said:

I did the same with my Neo Geo Pocket Color in the early 2000's and it still pains me to this day that i traded in a mint system with Sonic, Metal Slug 2 and Dynamite Slugger for £45 of store credit. Still it was the done thing back then and how could we realise the value these items would increase tenfold over the coming years.

But just imagine if you’d bought £45 of Apple shares.

[bplus]

On 04/09/2022 at 13:29, SMD said:

It came out in the same year as Gran Turismo, there was really no excuse.

I don't think people realised at the time the effort, talent and vision that had gone in gran turismo, it's no surprise looking back that nothing could compete. Sega GT wasn't a good game (I wanted it to be as a DC owner).

[Lyrical Donut]

10 hours ago, Down by Law said:

I did the same with my Neo Geo Pocket Color in the early 2000's and it still pains me to this day that i traded in a mint system with Sonic, Metal Slug 2 and Dynamite Slugger for £45 of store credit. Still it was the done thing back then and how could we realise the value these items would increase tenfold over the coming years.

 

 

I sold my This Is Cool Saturn and a collection of absolute JP bangers (all mint with spines) to fund a GBA I couldn't fucking see. Fuck.

[pastry]

Sold my collection to emigrate, long before the prices boomed. Every single thing. That's why MiSTer is so damned fantastic to me!

[Colonel Panic]

I got a Saturn way after release. Maybe the mid 2000s and a pile of imports from VideoGameImports as well as a load of PAL games so I could really cherry pick my collection. 
 

Lately I got myself two JPN models. One for a Fenrir and another I have kept stock and enjoyed a Saturn shooter renaissance. 
 

I wasn’t really into the PS back in the day either. A friend had one so I got to play it sometimes, but I was all about the N64!

[spanky debrest]

No-one I knew gave a shit about the Saturn during its life - including me, a Sega Fan from before the SMS era. 

 

I'd historically shared consoles & videogames with a younger brother, and he got caught up in the FFVII hype which resulted in him trading our pretty large SNES collection in for a PSX bundle. Not once did we have a conversation about the Saturn. It just wasn't seen as a credible console. 

 

 

I was back on-board for the Dreamcast though (and began catching up with both Saturn and N64 a few years after that - with Sega Rally and Sin and Punishment being their respective 'killer apps'). 

[Colonel Panic]

Dreamcast was what got my into Sega in any form. I was in uni, had a part time job and some disposable income and the console looked amazing. And the idea of 60Hz support without importing?! 
 

That got me to look back at Sega’s other stuff with interest and now the Saturn is one of my favourite consoles. 

[pastry]

I got mine in mid 1996; I'd been poring over the little tri-fold brochures (x2 32-bit RISC processors! x2 Video Display Processors!) for a year or more, and trying to get my Dad excited about Pebble Beach Golf. In the end, he loved Virtua Racing – maybe the only true fan of that particular conversion!

I spent all my paper round money on Sega Power, SSM, Mean Machines, CVG and occasionally Gamesmaster, and a friend of mine had a PS1 as a Birthday gift in 1995, so I'd played it a lot and knew what I was getting before making the decision to stick with Sega.

At the point of sale I had the experience a lot of Saturn buyers are familiar with – "Are you sure you don't want a PlayStation?" 

And of course at school I was the only kid I knew with a Saturn. But I didn't care about that, I loved it and never regretted buying it. There were enough quality releases to keep me happy, especially given how much I could spend as a teen. Stuff like NiGHTs and Burning Rangers were so different, and only on Saturn. 

I had a great library in the end, including loads of NTSC-J titles which I bought from Lee @ VideogameImports – @Colonel Panic, not sure if you were local but very handy when you were a Teesside uni student with a loan to blow

 

I must admit in Christmas 1995 I'd have been absolutely delighted to get a PS1 with Wipeout or Ridge Racer. But the ubiquity of the system meant I always had access to one via my cousins and friends, so I didn't feel like I missed out at all. I even borrowed one for several weeks to play through MGS.

I eventually bought a PSone when they launched but by then I was well into my launch day purchases of Dreamcast and PS2, having also been lucky enough to pick up a N64 in probably early 1998. God, to have so much free time!!

 

Great time in gaming regardless of which platform you owned!

[Rex Grossman]

I got a PS1 on launch day (first console I bought with my own money) and gradually all my friends picked one up as well.

 

I didn’t know a single person with a Saturn. Always felt like I was missing out a bit because of that. You’re right in what you say - the PlayStation was so popular you’d always have access.

[Colonel Panic]

9 hours ago, pastry said:

I had a great library in the end, including loads of NTSC-J titles which I bought from Lee @ VideogameImports – @Colonel Panic, not sure if you were local but very handy when you were a Teesside uni student with a loan to blow

Lucky for me I don’t live anywhere nearby! I’d have loved to visit the shop in person back in the day. 
 
We just used to pore over the web store instead. Got a load of Super Famicom stuff from him in amazing condition too. 

 

Lee was a sound chap, always good with recommendations and even lent me some shooters he thought I’d like (knowing I’d probably buy them)

[Zio]

I deliberately got a Saturn at the time (must've been around Christmas 1997). I was a huge fan of many of Sega's arcade games and the idea of being able to play Daytona USA, Sega Rally, the Virtua Fighters and the Virtua Cop games was too much to pass up. For whatever reason, I wasn't interested in the Playstation, even though I had a few friends who had one. Most of the Playstation games I would've wanted either already had versions on Saturn or soon would (Wipeout, Wipeout 2097, Resident Evil, Alien Trilogy and Die Hard Trilogy).

 

Of course, a couple of years later I did indeed end up getting a Playstation of my own. But I still have the Saturn and I still have a major soft spot for it.

[Kevvy Metal]

23 hours ago, spanky debrest said:

No-one I knew gave a shit about the Saturn during its life - including me, a Sega Fan from before the SMS era. 

 

I'd historically shared consoles & videogames with a younger brother, and he got caught up in the FFVII hype which resulted in him trading our pretty large SNES collection in for a PSX bundle. Not once did we have a conversation about the Saturn. It just wasn't seen as a credible console. 

 

 

I was back on-board for the Dreamcast though (and began catching up with both Saturn and N64 a few years after that - with Sega Rally and Sin and Punishment being their respective 'killer apps'). 

 

I had a whole group of school chums who all - including myself - got a Sega Saturn so we could all swap games. Aged 16 at the time, there was about five of us! 
Before we were all spilt between the SNES and Megadrive, and this was a conceited effort to all get on the new Sega console and actually swap games between us.