Monday 1 August 2016

Was the Saturn a Flop?

It's a fairly safe bet that most of us retro gamers have a lot of love for Sega and their mighty Saturn. A good few of us probably owned one back when it was first released and I'm sure many more of us have owned one since. It's been a particular favourite among collectors for many years now and, now that I stop to think about it, it's a console I've rarely heard a bad word about.


Recently, however, I saw an eye-catching article about it on the Sky News website, heralding the achievements of a talented engineer who has 'saved the console from extinction' by finally 'cracking its security systems', allowing the system to read from and write to other storage mediums such as flash drives. It's a grand triumph to be sure but one that was of limited interest to me if I'm honest.

I've never found the Saturn to be a particularly inaccessible machine though - it and many of its games can be bought inexpensively, and if you can't stretch to the financial heights of its pricier games, it can be made to play 'backups' easily enough (not that I would endorse such actions, obviously). Plus of course, it can be emulated rather splendidly. So while I applaud this achievement, it's one I'm unlikely to make use of any time soon. No, what interested me most about the article was how many times the word 'flop' was used. The title was 'Flop Sega Saturn console given new lease of life'. Elsewhere I saw 'The 1994 console - which was a commercial flop - was on the verge of extinction before an engineer cracked its code' at the top of the page and a picture of the Saturn was captioned with 'The clunky console was released in 1994 but was a commercial flop'.

That wasn't all either but I'm sure you get the point. Some might ask what Sky really know about the games industry but it did get me thinking - was the Saturn really a flop? I don't think many of us would classify it as such would we? Surely a flop is something like Amstrad's GX4000 or the Phillips CDi that only ended up with a handful of mediocre (at best) releases, not a lovely machine like the Saturn?

Let us consider the numbers which reveal that the Saturn sold around 10 million units. Admittedly that's a figure dwarfed by the likes of most Sony and Nintendo systems but it's still a hell of a lot of consoles. It seems like it to me at least, and the same goes for the number of releases. To me, a true flop system is one that doesn't tend to have many titles available for it, and in most cases you'll struggle to find any that are much good, but the Saturn is home to over a thousand games. A thousand! Many of these were released only in Japan admittedly, but that's still a crapload of games for a 'flop' system, and as most avid retro gamers will know very well already, a far from insignificant number of them are motherflippin' awesome too! I don't know about you but I'm still discovering hidden gems on this fine system to this day, and I expect to continue finding them for some time.

So, as you may have worked out for yourself, I personally do not consider the Saturn to be a flop or anything even approaching that. Do I wish it had fared better against the 100+ million-selling PlayStation? Of course I do, I would be foolish to think it didn't come out of that contest second best in terms of overall success, but I'm also confident in saying that many gamers nowadays don't consider nearly so large a gulf between the systems in terms of the quality of games available for them.


In fact, I'd even go so far as to say the Saturn is looked upon more favourably in recent years, and its games have aged better overall too. So what in the blue blazes was the writer of Sky's article blathering on about? Perhaps he meant it was a 'flop' in comparison to the MegaDrive/Genesis, the Saturn's predecessor, which sold over three times as many units, or perhaps he was pointing out that Sega's inefficient development process didn't result in much in the way of profits for the disorganised oafs. That's about all I can think of anyway, but I'm interested to hear your opinions as well - whether you like the system or not, do you consider it a flop?

 

10 comments:

  1. Hmm...I wouldn't call it a flop but it was certainly flawed right from the off. The demise of Sega started with the Mega CD and 32X really and if the time/money spent on those had been put into the Saturn instead then who knows what would have been?

    The two biggest complaints about the Saturn was that it was far inferior to the Playstation in terms of its ability to do 3D and also that it was difficult to program for hence why a lot of publishers didn't want to port popular games over. The latter was down to a second processor being hastily added into the design at the last minute when Sega saw what the Playstation was about and what it would be capable of. I think Sega assumed that 2D gaming would still be quite popular and the Saturn was geared more towards that to begin with, 3D only being considered a secondary priority. I can understand their thinking really with recent high profile 3D failures such as the 3DO but imagine if they'd taken the plunge and made the Saturn an equal to the PS1 specs-wise?

    In any case, I don't think it matters because gamers still 'won' and received a crapload of awesome games. The only issue was the the arcade nature of most of them was also something that the public were not interested in anymore so you can say that the software was as much to blame as the hardware in the Saturn's 'failure'.

    I love mine and plan to have it modded soon to play games from all regions. I think if you limit yourself to just the PAL library then you're missing out on too much. Just a shame that the RPG's such as Panzer Dragoon Saga and Dragonforce are incomprehensible in Japanese and far too expensive to buy in PAL. I think the latest security crack will benefit those who want to play these sorts of games. I don't personally endorse it but I can't blame anybody who doesn't want to lay out £150+ on PDS...

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    1. Yes, great point regarding the MCD and 32X - both were unnecessary and cost Sega a lot. But they made so many mistakes during the Saturn's development too. The competition between their Japan and USA arms didn't help matters.

      It's definitely a machine that needs access to its import library - I couldn't believe how many more games the Japanese got when I started discovering them. As I said, I'm still discovering 'new' ones now that I've never heard of.

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  2. I loved it when I had one it was a good console for its time but so was Amiga 32

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    1. Haha, the CD32? I've got one of those. Most games were just straight ports of Amiga titles, sometimes even retaining their keyboard-based instructions! It had some great titles too, though :)

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  3. It's a fun machine, there's one plugged into my telly right now, but "back then" I was aware that it wasn't doing as well as the "other two" big systems. We skipped the 32-bit generation so I can't really comment that much, but I do have a GAME brochure from 1998 in which the Saturn only has one page, and I remember being in Berlin in 2000 and being surprised that they were still selling Saturn games there.

    Two examples there, one from when the Saturn was three years old and the other from when it was five years old, with a relative invisibility. Considering there's still Xbox 360 sections in shops nowadays and that system's eleven years old this year, it's easy to see why to the casual journalist the Saturn could be seen as a "flop".

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    1. I suppose it's mainly down to the PlayStation's enormous success in comparison. I remember well how helpless I felt as the reviews section in Official Saturn Magazine got smaller and smaller and wishing that some of the PS1's top titles would get ported. But it wasn't to be, I guess :(

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  4. I think it's a bit of a stretch for the "journalist" to claim the console was saved from extinction. Just that fact the Saturn was discontinued in 2000, I think one could consider the Saturn an extinct console a long time ago. Personally the use of "extinct" here is probably a stretch. Does anyone consider any other gaming platform extinct?

    Judging by the rising cost of games on the second hand market, the Saturn is still going, it's not like it ever disappeared from gamers' minds. Hell, I still play mine daily.

    As for the flop thing, wikipeadia considers it a commercial flop, but the Saturn sold more units worldwide than the DC

    Considering how short the article is and how badly thought out it seems to be, for example the Saturn has been subject to the same circumstances as the PS1; It's possible to play backups of both consoles through various means, so there is nothing really all that special going on (in regards to DRM), I put this article down in the "crappy click-bait" section of the internet.

    I saw this news before through a youtube video interview, and I hope the guy manages to get the usb thing up and running. My Saturn games collection is large enough and the games I want to play are mainly the ones heading into the BS Bucks range of price. If I can play them on original hardware, I'd be rather happy.

    My summary of thoughts: Badly written article provided for a slow tech news day. Notice how no-one has put their name to this article either.

    I love my Saturn :)

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    1. Haha, nicely said Mr. Tets (your name reminds me of the Tom Cruise film, Oblivion, by the way). I love my Saturn(s) too!

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  5. Commercially? Yes, especially in the west, although we can argue it was sucessful in Japan. Gameswise I prefer the Saturn over the N64. I feel its games have more variety and the 2D gameplay aged really gracefully when compared to many 3D games for the N64 and PS1.

    I absolutely love my Saturn. Such an underrated system.

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    1. Yes, that seems to be have been the general consensus from the many comments my post received on Facebook... US = Flop, Europe = Medium, Japan = Not Flop :P

      I love the Saturn too, and the N64, but each for very different types of games :)

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