Throughout the 90s and early 2000s, Sega was by far the most innovative gaming company and history has validated them at every turn.
In the early 90s, they were the first company to realize they needed to develop a mascot to rival Mario. They proceeded to create Sonic the Hedgehog, a character that has stood the test of time as one of the most popular video game characters of all time.
No company could ever match arcade games like Virtua Racing, Daytona USA, Sega Rally or Virtua Fighter. They were truly ahead of their time and provided Sega with a healthy base of titles to bring to their home consoles. While almost every single company failed to come up with a title to rival Street Fighter II, Sega managed to produce Virtua Fighter, a true competitor to rival SFII in Japan. The Saturn was massively successful in their home market due to this one franchise, while almost every other company failed with their attempts to capture the SFII magic.
Sega was the first company to realize online gaming was the future, and they were the first one to bring it to consoles with the Saturn Netlink service.
The Dreamcast was also a console truly ahead of its time with its built in modem that made it the first system with the capability to download content off the internet. Whatever you think of DLC, you have to admit Sega had the right idea there.
Sega was also ahead of the curve when it came to releasing titles outside of its own consoles: many Saturn and Dreamcast exclusives got PC releases. You might think this was a bad thing considering the feasibility of Sega’s own systems, but in the end this was the right way to go all along, as in 2025 console exclusives outside of a handful of Nintendo titles are essentially dead.
They completely fucked the launch of the Sega Saturn in multiple ways. Priced $100 higher than the PS1, launched too early with barely any games, and focused the hardware on high end 2D rather than 3D from the start. That, and also the Dreamcast had to compete with the PS2, which killed it very quickly after launch.
Unrelated to the launch, but my PS1 still works perfectly and neither of my Saturns do lol.
What part of the Saturns don’t work? If it’s the disc drive, you can replace them with an optical drive emulator that you can put SSDs in.
Also early PS1s were known to have disc drive failures as the laser would heat up due to its proximity to the PSU, but mine still works fine :P
Pretty sure it’s the disk drive, been too lazy to replace it tbh. It’s tempting though, since I’m a sucker for playing stuff on the original hardware and buying Saturn games is insanely expensive.
Didn’t know about the laser failures on PS1s! Mine is a slim so that might explain why it’s still kicking.
I’m getting a MiSTer soon, so I’m probably not going to bother with my Saturn. The PS1 failures were limited to the very first models. Sony moved the laser assembly after that to rectify the issue.