"The Planet smaller than a Station"

I probably don't need to explain the title. Why Sega decided to name their second-to-last console after the only planet in our solar system surrounded by a ring is beyond me. But it's still a very cool name and Sega did, in my opinion, a very good job with this system. Smart moves on behalf of other gaming companies, however, destroyed the Saturn in North America. Its main competitor, the Sony PlayStation, was much better supported and the poor Saturn didn't fare as well as the successful Genesis and surely did worse than the guys at Sega expected.

1)Software: The Sega Saturn was still a good system for 2-D games. But it handled 3-D games well, too. The games were still diverse and, overall, this system seems like it is at the crossroads between two-dimensional and three-dimensional gaming. Many 2-D fighting games were developed for the Saturn: 6-7 regular Street Fighter games, as well as 2 Vs. Street Fighter games, were released; 3 Mortal Kombat games, including the best home version of MKII (unless you're a Japanese reader), and a few other nice fighters, like 'X-Men: Children of the Atom' and 'Battle Monsters' made their way to the Saturn, too. 3-D fighters, like 'Virtua Fighter 2' are very well-done also. As for other games, you can play 2-D action ('Batman Forever') or 3-D action, 1st-person shooters ('Doom'), sports (FIFA, Madden NFL, Bases Loaded, etc.), racing ('Virtua Racing'), RPGs (Lunar), or even beat'em-ups. This system has the best (or the good, at least) of the two worlds. The only nitpick, however, and it is not a minor nitpick, is that few games were released outside Japan and, thus, the Saturn game library is awfully tiny compared to the PSX one. 33% out of 40%

2)Aspect: Very cool-looking! The Saturn looks very good, very manly. It's black, square, the buttons look cool, the logo looks cool, even the controllers look great. 6% out of 6%

3)Power: A 32-bit system, much more powerful than the 32X, but apparently a little under the PlayStation and the Atari Jaguar and Nintendo 64 (if the last two could be entered in this duel here). Nevertheless, the Saturn is ideal for 2-D games -- just imagine having NES and Genesis titles developed for this console. 16.7 million colours are available, like for the PSX. The PlayStation was able to create 3 times more flat-shaded polygons per second, and the PSX CPU ran at 33.868 MHz compared to 28.6, so I guess it was somehow superior to the Saturn. The Sega Saturn was the best system on the market for a few months, but it was harder to develop games for it, than for its adversaries, so it didn't last very long. 12% out of 15%

4)Fidelity: There were probably as many Saturn games released only in Japan as there were released for the American Saturn overall. Games like 'Akumajou Dracula X', 'Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter', 'X-Men vs. Street Fighter', and many more, were only available for the Japanese Saturn. There is a territory lock-out, too, that doesn't allow games from other regions to be played on the console; it can be bypassed by using a 4-in-1 cartridge, though. There is also a copy protection that prevents the use of burned CDs, like Sega CD systems can use. And no, one cannot use the slot towards the rear of the machine for Genesis games; only for games that require both cart and CD, like 'King of Fighters '95', or for memory carts, is that slot to be used. Sega CD games cannot be played on the Saturn, either. With adjustments, the Saturn could play VCDs, or even Photo CDs but, as always, modifications are not recommended, on any system. Other than that, everything works fine, even though people worry about over-use of the CDs. Oh, and the menu screens are the best on any console, I think. 11% out of 30%

5)Accessories: Not really a lot of accessories were made for the Saturn, but they were all cool. The 'Arcade Racer' joystick, the 6-player adapter, back-up cartridge (for extra memory), the 'Mission Flight Stick' are all good and nice. Then the 4-in-1 cart and the MPEG/VCD cards allow for some nice tricks to be performed. And, finally, the 'Netlink' adapter, used for the Internet and online play, was really innovative at the time. 8% out of 9%

Total: 70% out of 100%. Just like during the life of the Master System, in the later part of the Saturn period, developers started to leave Sega's console, in order to make games for its competitor; but this time they weren't forced to do that. The Saturn was somewhat of a premature child, who seemed O.K. at first, but turned up to be too weak later. It is a pity though, that this console didn't have more success. Some aspects of it were truly stellar. From Swordlord, 2 swords up!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/31/03