Why did Sega Saturn do well in Japan but not America

[Anonymous No.6918376]

?

[Anonymous No.6918382]

>>6918376
Because it didn't have any good sonic games, that's what most americans cared about

[Anonymous No.6918385]

Virtua Fighter was really popular in Japan

[Anonymous No.6918386]

The Saturn's launch in America was a farce. It's like they wanted it to fail.

[Anonymous No.6918389]

X-rating red label games allowed uncensored home ports of arcade strip mahjong games

[Anonymous No.6918396]

>>6918376
Lo, I am summoned

[Anonymous No.6918398]

>>6918396
Based bernieposter

[Anonymous No.6918401]

>>6918376
>goofing off and wasting millions on a stopgap add-on no one asked for, the 32X
>panic-launching the Saturn in May instead of September like planned, which pissed-off retailers and devs, caused significant logistical and advertising issues, and gave Sony the oppurtunity to undercut them by a hundred bucks which naturally they did
>Sonic X-Treme crashed and burned during development, so Saturn never had a true mainline Sonic game or killer-app for the Western market and NIGHTS didn't cut it
>the West didn't give that much of a shit about Virtua Fighter compared to Japan, and preferred the PlayStation's Tekken
>Bernie Stolar fucking gave-up on the Saturn like a retard in mid-1997

[Anonymous No.6918402]

>>6918376
It didn’t. PlayStation and N64 btfo Saturn worldwide.

[Anonymous No.6918408]

>>6918382
>Sonic games
These weren’t even good. No one except babies played them, stop revising history.

[Anonymous No.6918440]

>>6918408
>implying baby sonic games wasn't the major part of sega's popularity in america
sure

[Anonymous No.6918443]

>>6918401
Ugh, what could have been

[Anonymous No.6918450]

Would it have been good?

[Anonymous No.6918479]

>>6918450
no. because it was just a proto Sonic Lost Worlds, which sucked ass

[Anonymous No.6918487]

>>6918401
>sega never develops 32x
>launches the saturn in september
What changes?

[Anonymous No.6918505]

>>6918487
Not much I guess, but
>never develops 32x
>launches in september
>initial price is 299
>sonic x-treme is released and is decent
>marketing campaigns are good
does it still fail?

[Anonymous No.6918506]

>>6918376

>visual novels
>turn based rpgs
>stgs (shooting games)
>romance sims
>2D games

All of these were popular in Japan but not elsewhere, and the Saturn was in many ways a continuation of the PC-Engine CD. That's also why the appeal of the Saturn and PC-Engine are lost on many non Japanese speakers since they can't play the most popular titles.

[Anonymous No.6918515]

>>6918505
>>6918487

The 32x mostly just wasted millions of dollars and wasted a lot of developer's time that could have been spent working on Saturn titles. Just to clarify, the Sega-CD was a modest success and is often unfairly lumped into the 32x since people just assume all the add-ons were failures.

[Anonymous No.6918526]

>>6918487
>Sega's reputation isn't tarnished as badly since the 32X doesn't exist, allowing the marketing team and devs to focus entirely on the Saturn
>Sony and Sega enter a pricing war between theor consoles
>devs still prefer the PSX since it renders 3D better and has more lucrative licensing
>Saturn is moderately successful compared to our timeline, but sales still stagnate a bit due to no Sonic game, etc.
>assuming Sonic X-Treme was actually completed and released it would be praised by a few for having an original concept, but cruticized by many as having a disorienting fisheye camera and being inferior to Mario 64, but it helps keep Saturn afloat and allows Sega to survive a bit further in the sixth gen than before, but they still bleed dry on money and don't make anymore consoles after the Dreamcast
>alternatively, Microsoft would buy Sega outright and the Xbox consoles would be the "official" successors to Sega's platforms, Xbox is backwards-compatible with Dreamcast as initially planned

[Anonymous No.6918562]

>>6918506
A spiritual follow-up to the PC Engine- makes sense I feel the same way about the PSX being the spiritual, "natural" follow-up to the SNES while the N64 was a more experimental successor.

[Anonymous No.6918575]

>>6918562

PS is the successor to both the PC-Engine and Super-famicom, while the SS is the successor to the PC-Engine and Mega Drive. Remember, that PS itself had a shit ton of visual novels and romance games too.

It's interesting that the actual follow up systems, the N64, and PC-FX were these weird experimental systems that broke trend.

N64 is THE THREE DEE CONSOLE and PC-FX is some failed attempt at a Visual novel and FMV system.

[Anonymous No.6918581]

>>6918575
Lack of support for 3D rendering single-handedly killed the PC-FX. Very bad timing from NEC.

[Anonymous No.6918605]

>>6918581
>>6918575
I always got the impression that PCFX was just NEC trying to consolidate the PC Engine and their PC98 into one device, like they were trying to bring the Japanese home computer into the living room. How much of that is true?

[Anonymous No.6918619]

>>6918581
>>6918605

I can kinda get the idea, as they were building upon their visual novel success and they seem to have bought into the FMV hype. However the SS-PS did everything the PC-FX did but better and had 3D capabilities.

[Anonymous No.6918734]

I no longer want to gut my working Saturn to put in an ODE, anyone got a broken one that they'd want to swap for?

[Anonymous No.6918742]

>>6918734
I'd just use an AR cart flashed with PseudoSaturn instead, then stick an ODE in it when the disc laser/motor fails.

[Anonymous No.6918751]

In the end, Saturn won.
People care more about Saturn than PS1 nowadays. People in the know, I mean.

[Anonymous No.6918756]

>>6918742
Ehhh...maybe. Thing is the ODE was also a matter of convenience. Just being able to pick a game from a list and off you go. Makes bringing it over for something like Saturn Bomberman parties easier too.

Plus I wanted to have a backup cart as well as a RAM cart. PSK'ing a cart erases the storage functionality (of course they also make PSK-specific carts that have the function embedded in the cart).

[Anonymous No.6918765]

>>6918751
Maybe it's gotten a lot of respect now but most people "in the know" still prefer the PS1 for sure (/vr/ isn't much of an authority in retro games, really)

[Anonymous No.6918794]

>>6918756
Unfortunately with disc based consoles you usually have to choose one or the other.

And yeah it compromises the functionality of the AR cart if you flash it yourself (not to mention doing the swap trick to boot the firmware disc is a huge pain in the ass) so I'd recommend buying a separate pre-flashed cart.

[Anonymous No.6918801]

>>6918794
And that's why one that just seems to have a dead drive motor is ideal for this kind of thing. It's not working and you can bring it back to life with relative ease (so long as it's the drive interface that isn't shit).

[Anonymous No.6918993]

>>6918376
games, more games. That's it.

[Anonymous No.6918998]

>>6918376
Segata Sanshiro.

[Anonymous No.6919015]

SOJ getting into a fistfight with SOA. One issue was that SOJ were eager to move on from the Mega Drive which had never been a major success in Japan while the American guys wanted to milk the MD cash cow as long as they could.

But most importantly, we never got a lot of the Saturn's best games due to SOA's retardation. They were really big on pushing this 90s dudebro Xtreme image and wouldn't touch stuff like JRPGs because it didn't fit their target audience of football jocks and black dudes.

[Anonymous No.6919029]

>>6919015
It's so stupid that they didn't capitalize on RPG's. My dad and uncle actually preferred the RPG's coming out on Genesis and Sega CD like Phantasy Star, Lunar, and Shining Force over what was on SNES.

[Anonymous No.6919041]

>>6918376
It didn't do well in Japan. Whenever you hear that it's from people who got duped into owning one instead of a Playstation as a kid and are still coping.

[Anonymous No.6919052]

>>6918765
>most people "in the know" still prefer the PS1 for sure
lol, what people "in the know"? Point them out.
>(/vr/ isn't much of an authority in retro games, really)
Well, /vr/ is all anonymous. But then again... I don't think there exist any authority when it comes to retro games. I don't trust anybody's tastes other than my own.

[Anonymous No.6919059]

>>6919029
And that was one of the things that sank them and Nintendo. Sony had a come one, come all open door policy with games while the other two had very specific brand images and rejected games that didn't fit those very specific brand images.

[Anonymous No.6919135]

>>6918376

If you read some of the reviews that were being put out in American media about saturn games, you get the overall sense of a demand being put on polished "cinematic" 3d games which was just not what the saturn had in its catalog. Saturn's strength lied in its fantastic ports of arcade games, a genre of game that usually did not have an overall story or require a long time to complete. Therefore, addictive puzzle games, novel beat em ups and even fighting games were given lower review scores and less press even when the reviewer acknowledged how fun they were.

I think valid comparison would be to TV/film nowadays. Look at the trend of darker and more sophisticated tv shows being put out now that try and betray a more serious existential tone.

[Anonymous No.6919231]

>>6918376
Japan had a better economy at the time so a more expensive system was a easy sell.

Plus Americans like me wanted a sonic 4 on Saturn and a shinobu 4 on Saturn and streets of rage 4

A port of golden axe revenge of death adder

The Saturn was over priced and didnt promote its flagship titles.

Every Nintendo system has had a Mario game,Zelda game,donkey Kong game.

[Anonymous No.6919242]

>>6918487
Probaly 20,000 more Sega saturns sold.

All the same mistakes such as Sega throwing in a 100 million into a 300 million Sega theme park in Australia that was all crappy VR rides.

[Anonymous No.6919245]

>>6918515
If Sega CD had a price cut and one more year of Sega game releases it would be looked back on as a modest success.

[Anonymous No.6919248]

セ
ガ
サ
タ
|
ン、
シ
ロ
!

[Anonymous No.6919253]

>>6919015
Genesis games were still selling in america Europe and Brazil when Sega of japan canceled the Genesis.

Games like road rash 3 and mk ultimate trilogy were hot sellers.

[Anonymous No.6919519]

>>6919029
Sega of Japan was just stubborn

Lots of missed opportunity's

Nights into dreams should of been reskinned as a sonic game for the American market.

Like doki doki panic was rebranded as Mario 2 for the American market.

[Anonymous No.6919765]

>>6918376
>Why
pic related
>>6918487
>Saturn still uses "quads" because it's still a 2D machine and has to use its awesome 2D tile scaling to limp along in 3D
So Saturn does less bad, and Sega wastes a little less money.

[Anonymous No.6919770]

no sports games for a while, which was the genesis biggest sellers. people bought a ps1 to play them instead

[Anonymous No.6919773]

>>6918487
All 32X games released would've been more polished and noticed on the Saturn as launch titles. Most of us would've been fine with seeing Knuckles Chaotix on the Saturn since Sonic and Knuckles already had hype around the same time.

[Anonymous No.6919776]

>>6918515
the real damage of the 32x was to sega's reputation.

[Anonymous No.6920241]

SoA did everything in their power to not lean into the Saturn. Naka was a crybaby about gaijins using his NiGHTS engine & he resented STI for directing better games than he did (remember he pulled this shit once before during the Genesis Era). They hurt their relationship with retailers super hard with the surprise launch date. Virtua Fighter was the most popular game in Japan & the Saturn had the best port of it. Basically none of the flagship IP's on the Genesis made it to the Saturn. The Ecco team went on to make Kolibri & Dwarves instead of an Ecco game. Sonic X-Treme got cucked by Naka, etc. The Saturn was a nightmare to develop for, there weren't readily available tools like there were for the Genesis.


I genuinely think out of everything, Virtua Fighter & The 32x were the biggest influences. The surprise launch certainly didn't help, but the 32x just made them look like idiots. I don't think there was anything stopping the Playstation from winning that generation, but the Saturn could have had a fighting chance. Really though, I think it just sped up the inevitable. If the Saturn wasn't where SoA & SoJ were going to fall apart, it was going to happen during the Dreamcast era.

I don't know who on this board actually grew up when it was announced, but everybody had heard about the Saturn by the time the 32x was announced. I grew up in a rural part of the US, and I'm pretty sure none of the electronic stores in our area even got Saturns. It left a lot of people confused and trying to figure out whether or not the Saturn was actually out, since you had to drive an hour into the city just to find a store that maybe had one.

[Anonymous No.6920304]

>>6918487
Saturn would've been more popular with the added support but still lose to the Playstation due to being difficult to develop for.

[Anonymous No.6920336]

>>6918487
>>6918401
>>6919765
so let's say the opposite scenario happens, the Saturn gets cancelled early in development and the 32x still gets made to keep the Genesis alive for a couple more years till Project Neptune/Dreamcast is ready, how does that go?

>>6920241
>I don't know who on this board actually grew up when it was announced, but everybody had heard about the Saturn by the time the 32x was announced.
born in 1990 myself, honestly neither the 32x or the Saturn existed at all in my neck of the woods, I didn't even know they existed at all until I bought a 95 era GamePro(or maybe EGM) at a garage sale around late 99

[Anonymous No.6920350]

>>6920241
>The Saturn was a nightmare to develop for, there weren't readily available tools like there were for the Genesis
Most commonly available 3D tools couldn't handle its rectangular polys and trying to run both CPUs at once was a skill few programmers had.

[Anonymous No.6920435]

>>6920241
>They hurt their relationship with retailers super hard with the surprise launch date.
As if the 32X wasn't bad enough, pushing the Saturn release earlier was just a bad idea all around. 32X had less time to be a thing, release price was fucked, especially when the Sony guy basically said "299 US dollars" and walked off, and it fucked the schedules of the developers who were working on Saturn games. It simultaneously pissed off existing customers, new customers, developers (who already had to deal with quads), *and* retail. I know there was a bit of a feud between SoA and SoJ, but really.
>>6920350
>trying to run both CPUs at once was a skill few programmers had
And still true. Threaded programming skill is hard enough even now that almost every CPU has multiple cores, but using a pair of CPUs that probably weren't even designed to run tandem (unlike Xeons, for instance) certainly made it harder. Sega CD and 32X did that too, but there was always one "best" CPU that you could just lean on to do 90% of the work, and let the rest become I/O processors.

[Anonymous No.6920447]

Am I alone is saying that I like the idea of the Saturn more than the system itself?

[Anonymous No.6920489]

>>6920447
What's the idea of the Saturn?

[Anonymous No.6920491]

>>6920489
keeping 2d alive

[Anonymous No.6920514]

>>6920491
and pretending you meant to do that

[Anonymous No.6920543]

>>6920336
Probably not great... at first. 32X/Neptune is frowned-upon as weaksauce compared to PSX and N64 and sales grind to a halt despite having a solid library- though the Dreamcast is a fairly big hit when it comes out, and all the niggers can get their EA sports games now because EA doesn't abandon Dreamcast this time when it's released in 1997, because it's powered by 3DFX Voodoo-based hardware instead of PowerVR... Sega teams-up with Microsoft for the Xbox in 2001 as the successor to the Dreamcast and is backwards-compatible with Dreamcast and Sega CD.

[Anonymous No.6920572]

>>6920543
Hmm, I guess with Saturn cancelled, their next system (whether Dreamcast or whatever they would call it) would absolutely contain actual 3D hardware support. That was the biggest problem with Saturn, it killed 3D performance and made development harder than it should be. I'm sure it still wasn't as hard as developing for Jaguar though.

[Anonymous No.6920579]

Because SEGA kneecapped themselves with a surprise early release of the system immediately after its E3 reveal, which meant there was almost no time for advertising or word-of-mouth.

[Anonymous No.6920609]

258 US games verses 1265 Japanese.

[Anonymous No.6920727]

>>6920447

You are probably bad at video games.

[Anonymous No.6920765]

Saturn was distributed by Victor electronics and was marketed as a home entertainment device.

[Anonymous No.6920879]

>>6920609
That's a huge difference

Sega of Japan was not easy for Sega of America to work with during the Sega saturns life span.

Sega of America requested a sequel for for eternal champions on 32x and saturn and Sega of japan said no it would take away from sales of virtual fighter.

Even though eternal champions fir genesis sucks,I do like the Sega CD version it was a huge money maker for sega.

Sega of Japan never realised the ps1 with Tekken would takeover the American and European market.

[Anonymous No.6920887]

>>6920572
Development and high cost of publishing for third partys on Sega platform killed the saturn also.

I still think if Sega of America were able to do things the way they wanted they could of successfully sold the genesis,the saturn,32x,and game gear till 1998.

[Anonymous No.6920901]

>>6920336
The 32x would of sold more units if
Sega of japan didnt cancel it and thet didnt waste Sega staff on sports games for it.

The should of extended ETa's 4 dollar genesis deal to the 32x

EA put out crap on the 32x intentionally because they were trying to sell their iwn 3DO system.

October 1996 came and the 3do was officially dead and EA went to the saturn and playstation.

[Anonymous No.6920904]

how easily could saturn have pulled off backwards compatibility? both genesis and sega/mega cd?

[Anonymous No.6920909]

>>6918376
I still loved my Genesis. Saturn didn't have anything.

[Anonymous No.6920919]

>>6920904
Not without significant graphics hardware compatibility. That's usually the hard part of emulation, especially before 3D. If it uses simple tile-based graphics (like NES) or a bitmap, that's not so bad, but that's about it.
The original Atari 2600 emulators required a 386/25 because it had to be cycle accurate.

[Anonymous No.6920930]

>>6918376
Bernie Stolar killed the Saturn in America. Segata Sanshiro saved it in Japan.

Segata Sanshiro > Bernie Stolar

[Anonymous No.6920996]

>>6918376
Bernie stoler dropped the ball with the ram cartridge. X-men VS Street fighter could have expanded the market.

[Anonymous No.6921071]

>>6920996
The Ram Cartridge in America would of been awesome.

Biggest Sega issue is

Sega had a Sydney Australia theme park that opened at the launch of Saturn and closed at the same time the Saturn was canceled Sega lost over a 100 million of the Sydney Australia theme park during the saturns life span.

[Anonymous No.6921080]

>>6920930
Saturn was never competitive on the american market.

Sega of America pushed nights into dreams and sonic extreme as much as they could.

Sega of japan kept pushing sega sports on Sega of America when Sega wanted more Sega PIp's to push like eternal champions.

[Anonymous No.6921091]

>>6920904
It couldn't its why the Sega CD was killed they couldn't push two $300 dollar CD based systems that were not compatible.

And Sega couldn't figure out how to make a 100 dollar retail version of Sega CD or a 150 dollar version of a Sega CD and genesis in one.

Sega of japan was really confident virtual fighter was going to be a huge hit in America and the Sidney Australia Sega theme park would be a success.
.

[Anonymous No.6921110]

>>6921091
I'll bet it could be done. I doubt many game developers had any clue how to write emulators especially on hardware as convoluted as the Saturn. They even had a 68k in there to work with, but it was being used for sound.

[Anonymous No.6921149]

>>6921110
Dream cast probaly could of emulated all the earlier systems but Saturn couldn't.

If the saturn was able to play Sega CD games it would of sold more units in America.

Kalinski of Sega of America knew what he was doing if Sega of Japan listened.

He could of had all the Sega systems on the market at the same time.

Its because of Sega of america that Aladin is the third biggest selling game for sega.

The Japanese economy is very different then Americas.

Turbo graphics 16 out sold the famicon in Japan but Nintendo outsold the turbo graphics 16 in America


In the 1980's Nintendo listened to the american offices.

Sega of japan had a hatred for Sega of America in the mid 90's.

[Anonymous No.6921154]

> Japanese Saturns are now dirt cheap on Ebay
> The only issue is being in a different region
> Device to fix this problem is only $30-$40 (and can be made yourself if you have the right hardware)

I'm surprised I don't see more Japanese Saturns in people's collections. You can get a system only model one for like $80, and a White model 2 with some games and a memory cart for not much more (pic related was $99 shipped).

[Anonymous No.6921165]

>>6921154
Because the Grey Japanese Saturn is harder to mod and play burned games in.

Saturn games are expensive on ebay

[Anonymous No.6921171]

>>6921165
Isn't it just

> Buy Model 1 Saturn
> Buy Fenrir
> ???
> Profit

or am I missing something? Who burns discs anymore?

[Anonymous No.6921173]

As many mistakes as Sega made that $299 price was too high for a 15 year old

Sega of America knew this that's why dream cast retailed for like $200 dollars
In 1998 you could buy a ps1 brand new under $200 dollars

By time 1999 came playstation was king

[Anonymous No.6921176]

>>6921171
Im not sure how to mod a saturn with a SD card drive its harder on Japanese saturns then American ones

The dream cast takes the SD card mod better.

[Anonymous No.6921194]

>>6921176
It doesn't really matter, you can buy a preflashed cart that will let any Saturn console run pirated games for like $40

[Anonymous No.6921228]

>>6921154
My ex girlfriend had a Japanese Saturn.

She was so fucking cool but too bad she was really fucked up in the head and snobby. Don't date gamer girls it's a waste of time and dick energy.

[Anonymous No.6921260]

>>6921194
I didnt know that you buy it first and let me know how well it works out for you

I Don t think those carts work well with the Grey Japanese ones.

You should consult with a Saturn expert on VR

[Anonymous No.6921263]

A lot of people on VR add gdemu to their Dreamcast

[Anonymous No.6921271]

>>6921263
I had a GDEMU not long after they originally released. I had to sell my DC though. It was pretty fuckin' nice having a (then decent sized) 32GB SD card filled with Dreamcast games. It was also really weird how much lighter the Dreamcast was after installing it.

I actually created a Paypal account specifically to order it, because I had never actually needed one until then.

[Anonymous No.6921297]

>>6921154
I own that version of the Sega Saturn, I absolutely love it.

>>6921165
>burn games
Wow, you really want to ruin your Sega Saturn, don't ya?

[Anonymous No.6921317]

>>6918376
Because Japan actually likes games, they don't care they're in 2D or 3D.
The rest of the world felt for the ''2D is old so is bad, only 3D is good now because is new'' meme.

[Anonymous No.6921427]

>>6921263
Just got one of these fuckers today. Didn't work at all, I put the games on the microsd with the sd card maker and made sure it was attached correctly. It would get stuck at the dreamcast logo. I then tried to retouch the pins on the altera and fucked up a couple (kek)

Returning it to Chang as we speak, fuckem

[Anonymous No.6921448]

>>6918376
Virtua Fighter, it was the hottest shit in the arcade at the time in Japan so having it at home was a big seller for the hardcore arcade audience.

America didn’t care for its 100 extra dollars price tag, and the PS1 launch lineup appealed more to US audiences and Sony did a huge marketing campaign.

[Anonymous No.6921457]

>>6918506
It had good ports of Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, and Powerslave though. Didn't have a good port of Doom, but that's not particularly the Saturn's fault.

[Anonymous No.6921464]

>>6921297
saturn uses CDs, burnt games wont kill it like the dreamcast.

Also i have the white "model 2" with a chip, was cheap as fuck and works great. cept 90% of PAL saturn shit is optimized so I gotta import and burn. but when NTSC shit pops up cheap im on it like a fly on horseshit

[Anonymous No.6921473]

>>6919245
tbqh the Sega CD wasn't that bad, they should have just skipped the 32X and instead supported the CD better, and not just with rereleases with new music, or FMV wank, but just exploiting the large disc space for more levels and graphics in one 16-bit game.

[Anonymous No.6921507]

>>6918376
It matched up so poorly against the PlayStation it was pitiful, it was rushed and absolutely snatched

[Anonymous No.6921510]

>>6921507
I'm drunk and read the question backwards. It has a better catalogue in Japan, very effective advertising campaigns and didn't suffer content drought to the extent it did in US is my impression

[Anonymous No.6921545]

>>6921457
The Saturn was nuts with FPS games for some reason

> Quake port has more level geometry than the N64 version
> Duke Nukem 3D runs better than the PS1 version and isn't censored like the N64 version
> Powerslave runs better on the Saturn than it does on the PS1
> MechWarrior 2 on the Saturn looks better than the PS1 version
> Had a solid version of Hexen
> Had a solid version of Alien Trilogy

The Saturn was basically the go to console for 90s shooters for years until PS1 software releases went into fucking overdrive and we started seeing games like Medal of Honor, Dark Forces, and Quake II. It's a shame that the version of Doom that it got was so godawful (mainly due to John Carmack being a theta level turboautist), it would have been interesting to see what it would have looked like if the developers were allowed to actually fully utilize the Saturn's hardware.

And yes, I will admit that the PS1 version of Duke having that extra episode based on playstation IPs was pretty rad, the Saturn had a version that supported online deathmatch and that is just nuts.

[Anonymous No.6921557]

Mike Matei was streaming some Saturn last night, showed off some of his rare games.

[Anonymous No.6921561]

>>6921557
Was he actually playing them, or just showing off a shelf full of games that will never actually be played?

[Anonymous No.6921572]

>>6921561
He played them a bit, showed off some shooters, Taromaru and PD Saga.

[Anonymous No.6921636]

>>6918376
>Never the console
>Never drew a dime
>Never had a good game outside Japan or that utilizes 3D capabilities
>Tanked the buyrate of Dreamcast so hard it caused Sega to stop making consoles
>Difficult to develop or emulate due to complicated architecture and use of quads
>Only the 3rd best-selling 5th generation console worldwide
>Only the 3rd best when it comes to 3D rendering performance
>Jannetty to PlayStation even later on in Japan
>Launch Daytona USA port so badly optimized Sega Rally guys had to code a better port
>Sonic game development shafted so badly that FIVE Genesis Sonic games have to be ported
>High reliance on arcade ports
>Every decent first-party Saturn game with international release had a PC port, further questioning relevance of Saturn
>Online services used by nobody
>Porn games literally allowed in Japan in pitiful attempt to get salarymen dimes, causing a ROM site to list a stripping game the most downloaded Saturn game at one point
>Existence pretty much erased from Sega's official history books outside Japan as a result of tanking Sega's console chances

[Anonymous No.6921637]

>>6921636
Sup bernieposter. Still trying to force it, eh?

[Anonymous No.6921641]

>>6921636
>>High reliance on arcade ports

Implying this is a bad thing. One of the reasons for buying a Saturn was to get arcade quality games at home (without having to spend $800 on a Neo Geo).

As for the rest of the items on your list, half of them are true, and the other half are you just being retarded.

[Radiochan !FhErN6z1NQ No.6921651]

>>6918376
It was not our future.

[Anonymous No.6921652]

>>6921154
A friend had one BITD but something would happen to Saturns where the mobo would just die, and that happened to his. I put a US board into it, with a switch to let it play JP games. Really the only reason he had it was because it was cool. The only functional difference was that all the menu screens were in Japanese.
I installed region switches into at least half a dozen Saturns. There were four region inputs, and US vs JP used two of them switched in opposite directions, ez DPDT switch mod. Nobody gave a fuck about PAL, but another input was 50/60Hz and I think the fourth was needed for PAL region ID.
The thing is that I saw so many different board variants, with the jumper points in a completely different place on all of them. It's like they re-routed the board every few months just for the fun of it. I'm sure there may have been some arrogance on the part of SoJ not wanting filthy gaijin in the US to play Japan region games, because all but one board had the two points I needed on opposite sides on the board. It was a real pain in the ass for most of them.
But region switching was even more of a pain on Sega CD, you would need a custom ROM to be region-free because the game-side part of region locks was a different size. I'm sure someone eventually figured it out, but I'm pretty good at that kind of stuff all I could do was facepalm at the spaghetti that was the Sega CD region lock.

[Anonymous No.6921653]

>>6921641
It would be okay if 99% of those arcade ports weren't flawed compared to the real thing.

[Anonymous No.6921803]

>>6921545
I'm pretty amazed that the Saturn version of Quake has comparable performance to what you'd get with the average consumer grade PC at the time, Lobotomy Software really knew what they were doing.

[Anonymous No.6921881]

>>6918376

[Anonymous No.6921893]

>>6921881

[Anonymous No.6922121]

>>6921149

A Saturn that could play Mega Drive CD games would be cool. There could be new CD editions of MD games made intentionally for the saturn.

[Anonymous No.6922124]

>>6921653
99% of the arcade ports on Saturn are perfect or better than the arcade versions.

[Anonymous No.6922158]

>>6922124
As much as I like the Saturn, I don't believe that.

[Anonymous No.6922161]

>>6922158
Apart from a couple of 3D Sega home ports, most games are either perfect or better (additional modes, characters, settings, etc.)

[Anonymous No.6922186]

>>6918376
who fucking cares, I owned one growing up, still have it plugged in today, loved and love it, I wouldn't have changed a thing about it or its library

[Anonymous No.6922197]

>>6918450
Not really, no. Original idea doesn't mean good the fisheye lens camera was disorienting and level design was all over the place. Wasn't well-received at E3 1996 and the my scrambled to rework the game, even going so far as to beg Yuji Naka to borrow the NIGHTS engine but he wouldn't let them. Would have been BTFO by Crash Bandicoot and Mario 64 anyway.

The game's development was kind of sad. One dude busted his ass on the game so much that he ended up in the hospital very sick and nearly dead, so he had to leave the project and the game was cancelled shortly after in early 1997, which is basically when Sega of America gave up on the Saturn.

[Anonymous No.6922206]

>>6918450 #
Not really, no. Original idea doesn't mean good the fisheye lens camera was disorienting and level design was all over the place. Wasn't well-received at E3 1996 and the devs scrambled to rework the game before the holiday, even going so far as to beg Yuji Naka to borrow the NIGHTS engine but he wouldn't let them. Would have been BTFO by Crash Bandicoot and Mario 64 anyway.

The game's development story was kind of sad. One dude busted his ass on the game so much that he ended up in the hospital very sick and nearly dead, so he had to leave the project and the game was cancelled shortly after in early 1997, which is basically when Sega of America gave up on the Saturn.

[Anonymous No.6922210]

>>6922186
Thank you for being honest. That isn't easy on 4chan.

[Anonymous No.6923234]

>>6922121
The hardware for the Saturn couldn't emulate a Sega CD and a genesis archetecture

The system would of sold better if it played Sega CD games.

[Anonymous No.6923245]

Sega saturn was never going to be a success in America with a $399 launch price.

[Anonymous No.6923259]

>>6920904
with megaCD could have been posible?

[Anonymous No.6923398]

Is there a quakity difference between different manufacturer's S-Video cabkes, or can you just buy whatever is in stock?

I'm picking up a TV tonight and it has an s-video port, so I want to see hiw differebt it looks compared to composite

[Anonymous No.6923417]

>>6923398
I'm phoneposting here, I promise I'm not having a stroke

[Anonymous No.6923459]

>>6918450
There's a reason Naka didn't want them tainting his image from borrowing his Nights code.

[Anonymous No.6924815]

Jarpigs

[Anonymous No.6925023]

>>6918376
The original killer app for the Saturn (Virtua Fighter) eventually came out on the PC, where it even ran better too, and since NA actually had a large PC market and PC gaming culture there was little incentive to get a Saturn.

[Anonymous No.6925114]

>>6921545
It could have had a great version of Doom too if Carmack wasn't such a sperglord at the time.

[Anonymous No.6926269]

>>6918376
>Sega Saturn? Heh more like GAYga FATurn!
There's your reason OP. Americans are that fucking dumb.

[Anonymous No.6926305]

>>6918376
>Why did Sega Saturn do well in Japan but not America
NOGAEMZ