Sega Saturn Shrine!
The Sega Saturn is the coolest console ever made. This is the peak of design, aesthetics and beauty. There has never been a console that even comes close to looking as good as the Sega Saturn. This is the only console that I have nostalgia for because of the circumstances surrounding how I played it in 1995 and 1996. Every other console I've had I kept, along with my games, so I always went back to them and never had that nostalgia feeling that other people describe. The games I grew up with were always there, a constant, so I never had that period of time without them to experience the nostalgia. The Sega Saturn was my Aunt's Boyfriend's Sega Saturn. I think that duees name was Stan and that's honestly all I remember about that dude. But I do remember the Sega Saturn he bought and spending a hell of a lot of time over at my Aunt's house playing the everloving heck out of Road Rash and Panzer Dragoon. He had Myst and I remember all the adults playing it at a Thanksgiving or Christmas get together.
It was around 2006 when I started reminiscing about the Sega Saturn and was working at the airport my first decent job that gave me enough disposable income to waste on amazon. At that time I had a massive amazon habbit and would at least a few times a week look for old games that I had missed out on as a kid and would buy them up. At that time you could just pick up tons of games listed at .99 with the shipping price of $3.99 and easily justify pulling the trigger on all of these $5 dollar games. That's how a large portion of my collection was achieved. Then I finally pulled the trigger on a Sega Saturn. I forget what game I got with it at first but I know I picked up Panzer Dragoon 1 and 2 later in 2009 or 2010. The used Saturn I picked up had a cool Saturn sticker on the front in the center which is still there to this day.
I wouldn't really sink my teeth into the Saturn until 2009 when I discovered the Netlink which is also when my youtube channel really took off. I had discovered the Saturn Netlink and if you still had an analog phone line, I did at the time, you could still use it! So with a little googling I found the Saturn League. This is where most of my besst pick ups would be made from my Netlink Buddy DragonHunterG. He found me a beautiful copy of Saturn Bomberman for $40 shipped to my door. He found it locally in a thrift shop in Indianapolis I believe. The disc did pop loose from the Saturn case in transit but survived. He insisted on knocking a few bucks off because of that so I paid $30 total. Man if only we knew how much the prices on that title would shoot up! But this was at the tail end of the 2008 economic crisis and games were especially cheap as people unloaded their games and junk to stay afloat and make mortgage payments. This is also when I first played Bomberman and what an introduction to the series! I was lucky in a way to play the best one first but also kind of a shame I never felt that high again.
Duke Nukem 3D was the first and most readily available Netlink game so I bougth that first and played it over the Netlink with DragonHunterG and Derek. The first of many Netlink matches. Derek would eventually sell me some very nice copies of Panzer Dragoon and Panzer Dragoon 2 and threw in a loose copy of Dark Savior just to be a really rad dude. Then I was on the hunt for Virtual On Netlink edition which would be my best Saturn deal of all time tbh. It was in a regular jewel case because it was part of a Netlink modem bundle originally. The ebay listing it listed it incorectly as a Playstation game so I got that bad billy for $5 shipped. It was also factory sealed and you better believe I opened that bad billy and played it on the Netlink.
Occasinally I would pick up some more Saturn games along that way but to be honest most of the best games I have played on the system were with the help of a Modchip and later on my Saturn M.O.D.E. optical disc drive. Which man what an awesome upgrade that thing is! There were so many games that I passed on over the years because of my penny pinching thrifty ways that I now regret as the prices have shot up. I could have had a $50 complete House of the Dead, a $50 Die Hard Arcade complete and I passed on a a complete pristine copy of Panzer Dragon Saga for $146 shipped. I very much regret not snagging that Panzer Dragoon Saga at that bargain bin price but I did alert one of the bros from the Saturn League that a decent, at the time, priced copy was available and they picked it up. So that's cool that at least someone I sorta know gave that copy a good home. Collecting for this system was always expensive but at the time $20 was the top dollar amount I was willing to pay for used games lmao. Which ultimately worked out very well for me as I built my massive collection but man if I only I knew how high the prices for Saturn games were going to get I would have made a few more exceptions.
I also picked up a few of the MPGEG cards that let you play Video CD and view Photo CDs. That's kind of neat. I managed to find a few VCD's locally at thrift shops mixed in with the music CDs. Clueless and Silence of the Lambs are what I tested out the VCD playback feature with. Honestly if you had this in the 90's it probably would have been pretty cool. I tested them on my HDTV so I can't say how they compared to VHS at the time but it's not a bad way to watch a flick. There are honestly so many cool things for the Saturn in Japan especially. There was a 3.5 in floppy disc drive that games could be saved to but was also used for some other software like a word processor. There was even a Saturn variant with an LCD screen, gps antenna and GPS software for use in Japan. That is wild! The Sega Saturn was a full decade ahead of it's time with just about every feature that the PS3 had.
Let's examine the evidence of the Saturn's supremacy!
- Incredible games
- Online and networked gameplay
- Web browser
- Movie playback via a Video CD expansion
- Photo CD viewing
- Playback of music CDs
- GPS navigation
- Word processing
- Built-in memory for games
- Cartridge for extra saves
- Expandable RAM for more intense games
Holy cow! What didn't this thing do? What an incredible machine. But don't take my word for it listen to the sage words of these wisend and distinquished gentlemen!
This die hard Panasonic 3DO enthusiast cannot deny how awesome the Sega Saturn is but don't ask this rascal about the PSX.
This man is coming with factual argumentation.
You just got power bombed by FACTS and LOGIC.
Now let's take a look at just some of the cool accessories and games that made the Sega Saturn such a powerhouse.
I think I actually play the game better with the normal controller but you cannot deny how cool the Twin Sticks are. It's always a blast to play the game with this bad boy. I acutally have a phone line simulator so I can make a Local Area Network with Two Saturns, Two Netlinks and two copies of the games. Of course I only have one legit copy of the Netlink games (Minus Daytona USA Netlink Edition) but I do have an ODE. So I did set up and test it out once. But one day I'd like another pair of Twin Sticks so I can experience the arcade side by side gameplay but in my awesome game room! I don't know who I'll trick into playing Virtual On with me but they're going to be one lucky dude.
This game is massively slept on. I bought a loose copy and enjoyed it so much I bought a complete copy. I'm glad I did before the prices sky rocketed. People are just now starting to talk about how great this game is and man is it. The plot is absolutely bonkers insanity. A group of mega genius children are being held by the military to harness their psychci powers. Their escape plan? Play a D&D game to summon their dwarf characters into the real world. As the general is taking them for more experimentation one of the egg head kids tosses their die and summons the Three Dirty Dwarves! But the portal brings in the orcs too! So you bash and blast your away across the land to rescue the kids. This is an awesome game, probably a great multiplayer experience I've never sat down with someone to play it together but I get that feel it's perfect for co op, the gameplay is astounding and the soundtrack is 11/10.
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