The Sega Saturn

I never owned it, but I heard that the Saturn was a pretty good system w/ some decent games. I gave up on Sega after I got duped into getting the Sega CD. And now they're out of the console business, which sort of makes me feel better.

I remember the Saturn. I still got mine somewhere in the basement. Overall, i enjoyed the system. Mostly for Virtua Cop 2 and Virtua Fighter 2. The Panzer Dragoon games were not of much interest to me when i first got the system but later on i got a hold of a copy and i enjoyed it. I know there were probably a few more good games, such as Nights, which, to a 9 year old kid, is pretty weirs. However, that game shines out of all of them. Besides the light gun for Virtua Cop 2, the special controller for Nights, which when i think about it reminds me of the Dreamcast controller, were the only peripherals i ever got for the Saturn.

Radiant Silvergun. If you can find it without selling your first born to the black market, you'll never need to buy another shooter for the rest of your days.

The Japanese imports of the (in English) Shining Force III games are among my favorite of all time. Must owns.

I owned every single Sega console, this one being well ahead of its time.

So many gems, many already mentioned.

This was indeed a great system. I'll Second the love for Virtua Cop and especially Virtua Fighter 2 as well. Also Capcom's Night Warriors - Dark Stalkers Revenge was possibly the most entertaining 2d fighter game I ever played. Taking on Frankenstein with Dracula, or even better, the Abominable Snowman was absouletly hillarious.

If possible, I highly recommend searching for an Arcade Stick. This was a large arcade style controller with a joystick and the classic 6 button layout essential for the Capcom style fighting games, as well as most of the ported arcade classics (VF2, etc).

There were a lot of good Sega games for the system. The Panzer Dragoon games are especially worthwhile. Good luck with trying to find Guardian Heroes. Might be hard to do and expensive to boot. Same with Radiant Silvergun, but that one is definitely worht checking out for awesome 2D shooter action. It's an import so you'd need a way to play import games too. Working Designs put out decent batch of RPG type games too. Albert Odyssey is one I particularly enjoyed. It's a traditional Japanese RPG, but Working Designs did a mighty fine, and very humorous translation. The standard turn bases battle system is a little slow, but it didn't bug me.

I've been a SEGA Loyalist for a long time and I've owned all except the original system.

I loved my Saturn. I remember playing it for the first time and going "6 BUTTONS?! WHAAAAA?!"

ah yes, X-Y-Z entered my world with Saturn.

I enjoyed VirtuaCop and VirtuaFighter2 and the ever so addicting, fight-among-friend's-causing, Daytona USA

As far as the importing goes, the Saturn has a cartridge slot. It has an internal battery for saving games, but it's one of those small Nickel Cadmium (I think) batteries you can replace in any Radio Shack. I got the system in 1995 when it first came out. A while later my internal battery died and I lost EVERYTHING. I was pissed. I replaced the battery but couldn't recover anything. The cartridge slot was originally meant for a cartridge that could serve as a memory card. At first it seemed pointless to me, but it would have been nice to have one looking back at it. The system won't just play import games. You'll need a cartridge that acts as a modifier to allow you to play import games. I have one called ST KEY. Some time a while ago I bought a cart on ebay for cheap that serves as a modifier and storage device and it worked so I was happy. Now if I ever want to go back to that RPG I mentioned I can at least save my game. Besides storage and modification some import games (namely really sweet versions of SNK's King of Fighters 95 and so on also had carts that upped the RAM to play the games. Playing those entailed using the ST KEY I had and then quickly swapping that cart for the RAM cart. It was nutty... but it worked.

So in the end if you want to play import games hit EBAY for something that will let you do it and hopefully it will act as a memory card too. The system battery will be fine if you play games through and don't care if the data disappears eventually though.

I owned one strictly to play Firepro 6-Man Scramble wrestling (import from Japan). It was an awesome game I spent many hours playing, so it was well worth the cost. I sold it on ebay about 2 years ago for about $50 or so. It came with Tekken(?) or some fighting game, and Mortal Kombat II, both of which I hardly played. And to play Firepro, I bought a cartridge with it that allowed it to play import games. Like Gameshark or one of those off-brands.

The Saturn is possibly the best 2D console ever. IMO, 3D wasn't mature enough yet and there weren't a ton of great 3D games that could have easily been done in 2D. The Saturn's 2D capabilities exceed the Playstations as this can be evidenced in the Saturn's library of 2D shooter, fighters, and platformers. If you compare the titles that the two consoles have in common and you can see the difference.

The Saturn also had a RAM cart upgrade that allowed it to run arcade-acurate versions of tag-team fighters like X-Men vs Street fighter, while the PSX version had the tag-team features taken out and were very watered down.

While the US didn't get to see a lot of the best titles for the Saturn, there are a lot of great imports that can be found all over on the Net.

If you'd like more info on the Saturn, you can check out my Sega Saturn Hack and Guides page that I put together. I hope you find it useful.

I got my Saturn cheap: someone had put it out with their garbage.

Discworld is a really fun adventure game, and I had this awesome WWII strategy game but I think it was Japan only. Earthworm Jim was a blast to play also.

Two words- Dragon Force.

Massive battles, all kinds of strategy....this game was perfect. That and Guardian Heroes were the best games on the system.

You will need and should be able to find quite easily a 4-1 cartridge for your saturn which acts as memory upgrade, battery back-up, all region player, and I'll be damned i cant remember what the fourth thing is...

It's also a game genie.

I want this system, a mod chip, and loads of backup discs.

Most days, I try to forget this system. Then I look at my copy of Panzer Dragoon Orta, and I just can't stop crying.

I love my Saturn but I wish I had more games for it. The one thing I'm seriously lacking as well is a proper memory cartridge for it. As it is I have to rely on my mod cartriage which also acts as backup memory cart.

Don't know why I keep forgetting to pick one up everytime I visit Tokyo.

I think Sega Saturn is where I was introduced to Tenchu. I could be wrong but if that's true you should check it out. The first one was the best of the series.

Die hard arcade was a fun two player beat-em up on the saturn.

Die hard arcade was awesome, although Trilogy was also hilarious. Never owned a saturn, but a friend did - it was glorious.

Fuck do I love me some Die Hard Arcade.

Both Die hard trilogy and arcade were great games. I played alot of two player games on the Arcade version of Die hard arcade, being able to play it at home on my brothers saturn without it swallowing my hard earned money was even more awesome.

Dynamite cop on the dreamcast was almost as fun.

I never played Die hard trilogy on the saturn (was it released on that console? Didn't know that) but on the PS1 it was amazing value for money. 3 games in one. The car section drove me insane but when you did get to those bombs and cars on time, jesus sweet fuck, it felt good.

Road Rash - i miss that game.