It has a cartridge slot, but used for cheating devices, RAM cartridges, and a modem for online play (only in Japan).
If I had my way, I would have told Sega of Japan and Sega of America to stop dicking around, add in an ACTUAL triangle based polygonal system, and make it backwards compatible with the Master System (via something like a Power Base Converter) the Game Gear (with another converter), the Genesis, the 32X, and the Sega CD.
It would have sold more than the Nintendo 64.
You're delusional. Saturn flopped because it was: 1) too expensive, 2) didn't have any fucking games, and 3) there was no Sonic.
Didn't it have a surprise launch in NA and it pissed off retailers so they stocked PS1 instead of Saturn in spite of Sega?
Tbh, the graphical leap from 16-bit to 32-bit CD was so big that nobody would have bothered playing Genesis games on their Saturn
How to fix the Saturn's sales:
Don't confuse the consumer by releasing the 32X
Make the price competitive
Have games
Make a proper Sonic Game
MAKE A PROPER SONIC GAME
MAKE A GODDAMN, MOTHERFUCKING PROPER SONIC GAME!
Just like how nobody is playing Xbox 360 games on Xbox One
>didn't have any fucking games
It had plenty of games, it's just that most of them were never released in the US--the Saturn did pretty well in Japan. Still, it was a clusterfuck of bad decisions--Sega was a complete and utter mess at the time with SoA and SoJ fucking with each other and doing dumb shit, the Saturn's hardware was janky as fuck and hard to program for, it was just a bad time all around.
yeah they released the Saturn the day of the 1st E3 with the retailers there because they had a secret deal in place with KB Toy stores.
mine you the 32X had come maybe 7 months earlier and Genesis was still selling, the US/EU retailers were begging Sega of America not to discontinue the Genesis, but Sega of Japan thinks of Japan first and went ahead with the Saturn and forced on to the US.
and like hour later Sony beheaded Sega by announcing the PS1 for $100 cheaper.
Bernie Stolar killed it because he hated anything that was 2D that wasn't named Rayman, even though that was the Saturn's STRENGTH (and the fact that 2D games aged far better than 3D games).
Making it backwards compatible wouldn't have saved it, and making it work with 32X games would have been far more of a hassle than it's worth. They should've delivered a 3D Sonic game at launch, and made the Saturn both far less confusing to develop for, and far more powerful than it was.
No, idiot.
At the time, moving forward was the new thing. 32 bit systems were the future, no one wanted to live in the past.
Also, sega shouldnt have decided a stealth release ANNOUNCED AT FUCKING E3!
Confuse everyone, retailers and shit. Then have zero franchises from the genesis era show up, including a sonic that probably would have been shit if the other 3D games were to take by.
>walks up to stage
$299
>walks away from stage
FUCKING
MIC
DROP
Is there an actual accurate saturn emulator? the ones i've tried all have issues
Bringing over the good games and marketing them well would have done more for the system than backwards compatibility. Also the online play works globally, you can netlink with someone playing saturn bomberman in Japan from the US no problem. Reminder, this is how Sega of America marketed what was essentially an art-house 3D shooter and is widely considered to be the best in the genre today.
Yes, SoA was consistently fucking stupid when it came to NA releases, like the whole "people don't want Japanese nerd games, they want FMV games which are the F U T U R E" on the Sega CD, which, like the Saturn, unironically had quite a few good games for it but an absolutely shit library in NA. SoJ isn't absolved of blame, though, they fucking hated SoA and sabotaged them at every turn. And again, the Saturn had really fucking goofy hardware.
There was one on GameTap (when that was still a thing). Played some Panzer Dragoon, Bug!, and Clockwork Knight, but the emulator had slowdown issues.
The ONLY thing I can even think of playing properly is Panzer Dragoon when unlocked through Panzer Dragoon Orta (which is backwards compatible on Xbox One).
that's a typical 90's ad for you
Mednafen and SSF are both good. What games are you trying to run?
That looks like a bad anti-drug advertisement. How the fuck do you mess up advertising a game where you fly a dragon?
They're both pretty shit, mednafen in particular. Just use the real hardware.
Now that you mention it, it's a fucking MIRACLE we got Shining Force CD given the relative failure that was the CD.
A fucking shame the damn game costs $140 just for a loose copy.
Shining Force Anthology FUCKING WHEN?
audio aside, Saturn's early 2d games weren't so good they couldn't be done on 32X and only the games that used the ram cart were definitively better.
Sega is still mismanaged to high hell.
They think that their only three properties are Sonic, Phantasy Star Online, and the countless Genesis emulators licensed by them, while they have HUNDREDS of "franchises" consisting of one or two games and then buried forever.
You might have been right 8 years ago, but not any more.
A lot of those franchises are coming back though, with Wonder Boy's remakes and games, SOR4, the new Space Channel game, and the new House of the Dead arcade game.
not to mention the entire yakuza series exploding in the west recently.
Mednafen's saturn has gotten a lot better recently
Panzer Dragoon, Dragon Force and Dark Savior, i tried to play those on SFF and Yabause a while ago, i remember that they can only run dark savior properly, haven't tried mednafen.
doubtful, last I heard linkle liver story crashes at the world map.
X360 to Xbone was nothing compared to 16-bit and PS1. Just take a look at mario kart ornTop Gear 2 vs Gran Turismo, Ridge racer or Wipeout
I hope Skies of Arcadia comes back. At the very least a HD port that fixes the poor quality Gamecube audio and lighting.
This fucked the Saturn harder in the ass than Bernie Stolar could ever dream
>Oh hey lets release this addon that kind of competes with our own upcoming system(already release in some markets)
Also while I am at it could have taken the 32X games and dumped them on Saturn for a better launch
Even though it took nearly 10 years just to get the Xbox 360 emulator running on severely underpowered hardware (and had to delay it from being a launch feature for 2 years only because of the stupid Kinect and forced Online and DRM thing they needed to get rid of).
Just needed a bigger marketing budget, also came around a time where people would rather eat a 10 FPS 3D game than a good 2D game. You've mentioned the whole SoJ & SoA debacle so I won't go over it
Saturn might also be too " hardcore " for its own sake: How do you sell the Saturn to a casual market, especially over its competition?
>Just needed a bigger marketing budget, also came around a time where people would rather eat a 10 FPS 3D game than a good 2D game
3D games came one generation too early. Each and every one of the 32 bit era 3D games, all look like absolute dogshit visually, and most had clunky controls. Even those that controls and plays good to this very day, all are compromised by the excessive limitations brought by hardware that wasn't supposed to run polygonal based games to begin with.