MyMedia Retrospective - Sega Saturn

The Sega Saturn caught my interest back when development rumours were buzzing around gaming magazines in the 90s about Sega building a 32bit system that would run rings around the Super Nintendo in terms of 2D graphics. I also remember seeing some prototype design images of the Saturn and back then the system looked amazing and just got many gamers salivating about its release. Things quickly changed when the rumours of the polygon churning beast Sony was working on wasn’t too far away. I think that was when Sega decided to stuff as much crap as they could into a box and get it out on the shelves ASAP. As bland as the Saturn ended up looking it still didn’t faze me and I ended up getting one not long after its Australian release. I got many hours of gaming enjoyment out of it (that dam Daytona song is still haunting me) and it also doubled as my CD player for some time as well, you have to admit that the space ship animation that you could view while playing a CD was pretty cool. With that said lets take a closer look at Sega Saturn.

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The Sega Saturn was the 32bit gaming system that "could" but unfortunately didn’t, with a number of factors holding the system back from gaming glory. The original concept for the Sega Saturn began life as a cartridge-based 2D powerhouse most likely aimed at putting the Super Nintendo in its place. This original 2D focused system went by the code name Jupiter but plans quickly changed when word got out that Sony was working on a 32bit system aimed at 3D gaming. The R&D invested into the Jupiter was then passed onto Sega of America which later became the 32X add-on for the Mega Drive. At this point the “Away Team” which consists of 27 specialists from Sega was under the pump from Sega’s CEO, Hayao Nakayama to turn their 2D focused cartridge system into a 3D focused system and get it on the shelves before the Playstation. In November 1994 the Saturn was rushed to stores just in time for Christmas and getting a two week jump on the Sony Playstation. This early release was noticeably rushed as Sega couldn’t offer many games for the Saturn on launch day but they still managed to move 170,000 units on its first day. Next step was the United States market where an announced early September 1995 release was locked in with the Playstation to be released one week after. In a cunning move to once again get the jump on Sony the Saturn was released to the US public in selected stores four months earlier in May. This however blew up in Sega’s face as Sony responded at the time with a price tag that was 100USD’s below the Saturn price. On top of that the Saturn was released with only a handful of launch titles as many third party developers were working towards the original September released date and couldn’t make the unexpected early dead line. When released to Europe and Australia the Saturn once again had the advantage of an earlier release date over the Playstation but it wasn’t enough to shake the momentum that the Playstation has already generated. Many consumers made the choice to hold out for the Playstation rather than get the Saturn.

From a software programmers perspective the Saturn’s hardware was notoriously difficult to program for. The hardware is made up of two Hitachi SH-2 32-bit RISC processors and six other supporting processors which made the Saturn a powerful system for its time but the main problem lies in harnessing the power from such a complicated array of components. Yu Suzuki a top game designer at Sega states that ”I don't think all programmers have the ability to program two CPUs — most can only get about one-and-a-half times the speed you can get from one SH-2. I think that only 1 in 100 programmers are good enough to get this kind of speed [nearly double] out of the Saturn. Some third party developers just used the one CPU to cut back of development time and cost. Some ports had to have the build engine completely rewritten to suit the Saturn in order to get optimum performance. The extra skill and time required to harness the Saturn’s true potential deterred third party game developers from making games for the Saturn and simply stuck to the more programmer friendly Sony Playstation. The complicated hardware of the Saturn also affected the retail price. In most cases as gaming consoles ages the manufacture will find ways to consolidate components to help lower the production cost which eventually filters its way back down to the end market price. Sega found it very difficult to do this and offered the Saturn as a package deal with the best selling games rather than a substantial hardware price drop.

In terms of graphics rather than use triangles as its basic geometric primitive to render images like the Playstation and Nintendo 64 the Saturn used quadrilaterals which can add another layer of difficulty to programming as the industry design tools are based around triangles. A good example of how this can cause problems is with the game Tomb Raider where triangle rocks didn’t look as good on the Saturn when compared to the Playstation version. The upside to using quadrilaterals is if done correctly less texture distortion could be shown on screen and this was noticeable on Wipeout and Destruction Derby which was released on both platforms. Showing a little of its original heritage as 2D orientated system the other advantages the Saturn had over the Playstation in regards to performance was a higher amount of video RAM that allowed the Saturn to render larger levels and display more on screen at once. On top of that the Saturn’s RAM could be further expanded with plug in expansion packs. This extra performance in 2D graphics attracted a lot of 2D fighting arcade ports that could not be done on the Playstation making the Saturn more appealing to fighting buffs. Unfortunately many of these games didn’t get released out side of Japan.

Sega sealed the fate of the Saturn merely two years after its release by announcing that they were working on their next system already. This news infuriated third party developers and no doubt crippled some future relationships between them and Sega. The public began to see a trend in how Sega shows its commitment with its released hardware as the Mega CD and 32X were quickly ditched in favour for the Saturn. The Saturn was officially discontinued in America in 1998 but continued on for another two years in Japan thanks to a strong user base and a good number of high quality of Japanese release titles and accessories.

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A common trait amongst many 32bit gaming systems was the inclusion of some sort of multimedia functionality and Saturn offered some good options. Being a CD-ROM based system naturally audio CDs could be played with the CD player interface providing a decent amount of options that allowed the user to fiddle with how audio tracks were played. Sound options could be adjusted on sound tracks right up to the point where they almost unrecognizable. Sega released a software program called Photo CD Operating System that could allow the Saturn to view photos, the program had to be loaded up from a disc first then followed by a CD-ROM containing the photos you wanted to view. This was later replaced with the Movie Card that slotted into the back of the Saturn unit where the back up battery is located out of sight in the expansion bay. The Movie Card did what the Photo CD Operating System plus it made the Saturn into a Video CD player (MPEG). Not only was it used to play movies it also enhanced eight Japanese released titles by providing higher resolution and bitrate for full motion video cut scenes.

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Many Mega Drive owners of the time were hoping the cartridge slot behind the disk drive on the Saturn would allow backwards compatibility with all their old 16bit games, unfortunately this was not the case. Now a day’s backwards compatibility with a systems predecessor console is a “no brainer” and by allowing the use of Mega Drive games on the Saturn would have been a strong selling point considering the system had a library of over 700 games. Even if the Saturn could have worked with games from the 32X would have been a bonus but realistically Sega would have avoided the addition complexities to an already complex hardware configuration that backwards compatibility would have caused. The cartridge slot was not wasted though as there were a few items that utilized it to enhance the systems abilities.

RAM Expansion: The Saturn had enough internal RAM to run most games and applications but upon request from some developers Sega released cartridges that expanded the total RAM count in one and four MB packs. The RAM expansion packs aided in speeding up load times, adding more textures and generally improving graphical performance. Some games required a RAM expansion pack in order to function and some used it as an option extra. These were sold as an individual accessory or bundled with a compatible game and never got released out side of Japan.

ROM Pack: Performing similar functions as the RAM packs ROM packs only came out for two games The King of Fighters 95 and Ultraman: Hikari no Kyojin Densetsu. These two games would not function at all with out their corresponding ROM packs. Most likely these games were in development before the RAM packs were announced.

Multifunctional Pack: Since Saturn games were region locked a couple of after market manufactures released multifunctional cartridges that overrides the region encoding, a cheat device, 1MB and 4MB expansion all in the one tidy package. Since a large number of quality titles never got released out side of Japan this item was an importers dream.

Memory Pack: The Saturn had a battery backed internal storage of 32kb which was adequate enough for most games but once a number saved games start to accumulate that 32kb can begin to diminish quite quickly and this is where an external memory cartridge comes in handy. Available with 512kb of storage the memory cartridges expanded storage space and was great for backing up data in case the internal one decides to fail.

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The SunSeibu Saturn SGX HSG-007 is a very limited and rare version of the Saturn that is designed for hotel/arcade use. This version uses the exact same hardware as a regular Saturn and is still compatible with all the RAM/ROM packs. The only differences are the obvious heavy duty lock up casing with coin slot, an AV pass through that allows the connection of another video device and a seven stacker CD drive. The owner could set the amount of coins required to play and for how long or they could set the system to free play mode if desired. The SGX could be connected to any TV or monitor with an AV input and the game selected would be indicated on the LCD panel that is on the front of the unit. The Neo Geo started life as a hotel system and was housed in a very similar casing before being available for purchase by the public. Now a days a SGX system is worth quite a lot of money to the right collector with the last noted sale going for staggering $700USD!

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Compared to the variable cornucopia of accessories on offer for its successor console the Sega Dream Cast and the amount of hardware add-ons that were piled onto its predecessor the Mega Drive the Sega Saturn had a little less to gloat about when it came to the number of accessories available.

The Saturn standard controller is a slight redesign of the six button controller for the Mega Drive but with the addition of two SNES style shoulder buttons. The first rendition of the Saturn controller had shoulder buttons that were difficult to depress and were prone to damage. The digital D-pad was basically a circle with four other circles at each point, this design served its purpose but wasn’t the most ergonomic. A controller redesign was done when the second version of the Saturn was released with both the shoulder buttons and D-pad being replaced and a sleeker looking and comfortable casing.

Sega released a steering wheel for the Saturn that suited the number of arcade racing games that was ported over to the Saturn. Unlike the majority of digital steering wheels available at the time the Saturn version was an analogue item allowing more precise and controlled movements.

 

 

The 3D controller for the Saturn was a redesign of the original controller but with the inclusion of an analogue joystick and a different casing. Analogue controllers for home consoles were not seen for some time with the last consoles to have them as a standard feature was the Atari 5200 and the Vectrex. Both The Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn help pave the way for the standardisation of combined digital and analogue controllers. This controller was packaged with the game Nights into Dreams which combined both 2D and 3D gameplay and suited the 3D controller perfectly. The standard controller for Sega’s next console the Dream Cast was roughly based on the Saturn 3D controller design.

Virtua Cop was one of the Saturn’s selling points and that game is perfectly complimented with the Saturn Stunner light gun which was a decent rendition of the arcade version. A total of nine games were released that could utilize the Stunner but unfortunately not all of them were available world wide.

 

Stunner Compatible Games

• Death Crimson (Japan-only release)
• Die Hard Trilogy
• The House of the Dead
• Mighty Hits (Japan & European -only release)
• Scud the Disposable Assassin
• Maximum Force
• Mechanical Violator Hakaider (Japan-only release)
• Virtua Cop
• Virtua Cop 2
• Policenauts (Japan-only release)

Arcade fighting games were very popular during this era and Sega released their own joystick to suit. A street fighter style button layout was used with the “L” and “R” buttons placed on either side. This layout did a good job at recreating the original arcade feel of basically all fighting games released for the Saturn.

As you can see Sega manufactured most of their accessories with something to suite the popular arcade styles of games. The accessories listed above were released worldwide and were commonly available though videogame specialist stores. There were numerous aftermarket versions of controllers, joysticks, memory cards, etc which is common with any gaming system.

Sega released two accessories that enhanced the multiplayer experience which were the Multi-tap and the link cable. The Multi-tap was an adaptor that added a further six controller ports to the Saturn which allowed a total of seven people to play at the one time. Games like Bomberman and Fifa 98 took advantage of this accessory. A Saturn to Saturn Link Cable could also be used for multiplayer gaming but required two Saturn consoles, two copies of the same game and two screens to view on.

 

Sega released a very limited number of PC style hardware and accessories of the Saturn and as usual most of them never made it outside of Japan officially. Pictured to the left is a 3.5 inch floppy disc drive that could be used to store and transfer data to and from the Saturn. It was actually possible to get the Saturn online via the 28.8bps dial up modem that slotted into the port behind the disc drive. Only five games had online capabilities, four of which were re-released as Netlink special editions. Even online browsing was possible and all of this was done though providers called Netlink and Seganet which was available only in America and Japan respectively. To help with online browsing an official Sega keyboard was released that could also be used for word processing on the You Word Processor program. These Saturn keyboards were released in limited numbers and were a little pricy but a cheaper alternative was available in the form of an adaptor that allowed the use of any generic PC keyboard. To get work from the You Word Processor program to paper a Saturn printer was released in Japan only. This printer is basically a Canon BJC-210J printer with an adaptor to suit the Saturn’s coms port. Even a mouse was released, dubbed the Shuttle Mouse this accessory could be purchased separately or bundled with a compatible game. Surprisingly there’s decent amount of games that supported the Shuttle Mouse and add to that the online browser and word processing programs.

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Processors

• Two Hitachi SuperH-2 7604 32-Bit RISC processors at 28.63 MHz (50-MIPS) – each has 4 KB on-chip cache, of which 2 KB can alternatively be used as directly addressable Scratchpad RAM
• SH-1 32-bit RISC processor (controlling the CD-ROM)
• Custom VDP 1 32-bit video display processor (running at 7.1590 MHz on NTSC Systems, 6.7116 MHz for PAL Systems)
• Custom VDP 2 32-bit video display processor (running at 7.1590 MHz on NTSC Systems, 6.7116 MHz for PAL Systems)
• Custom Saturn Control Unit (SCU) with DSP for geometry processing and DMA controller (running at 14.3 MHz)
• Motorola 68EC000 sound controller (running at 11.3 MHz / 1,5 MIPS)
• Yamaha FH1 DSP sound processor, "Sega Custom Sound Processor" (SCSP), running at 22.6 MHz
• Hitachi 4-bit MCU, "System Manager & Peripheral Control" (SMPC)

Memory

• 1 MB SDRAM
• 1 MB DRAM, combined with SDRAM to make the main 2 MB memory area
• 1.5 MB VRAM
• 4 KB VDP2 on-chip color RAM
• 512 KB audio RAM
• 512 KB CD-ROM cache
• 32 KB nonvolatile RAM (battery backup)
• 512 KB BIOS ROM

Audio

• Saturn Custom Sound Processor

Video

• VDP1 32-bit video display processor
• VDP2 32-bit background and scroll plane video display processor

Storage

• Saturn double-speed CD-ROM drive

Input/output

• Two 7-bit bidirectional parallel I/O ports (controller ports)
• High-speed serial communications port (Both SH2 SCI channels and SCSP MIDI, also used for the Serial port)
• Cartridge connector
• Internal expansion port for MPEG adapter card
• Composite video/audio (standard)
• NTSC/PAL RF (optional RF adapter required)
• S-Video compatible (separate cable required)
• RGB compatible (separate cable required)
• EDTV compatible (separate cable required)
• Hi-Vision (separate cable required)

Power source

• AC120 volts; 60 Hz (US)
• AC240 volts; 50 Hz (EU)
• AC100 volts; 60 Hz (JP)
• 3 volt lithium battery to power non-volatile RAM and SMPC internal real-time clock
• Power Consumption: 25 W

Sources: Wikipedia.org vidgame.net sega-saturn.us youtube.com

 

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Written by: Matthew Armitage