Sega Saturn

The Sega Saturn (Japanese:セガサターン), a video game console of the 32-bit era, was released on November 22, 1994, in Japan and May 1995 in the United States; 170,000 machines were sold the first day of the Japanese launch.

At one time, the Sega Saturn had obtained second place in the console wars, placing it above Nintendo's Super Famicom in Japan and Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in North America and Europe, but the Saturn was losing power because of another newcomer: Sony's Playstation.

The Saturn was rushed to the market, just a few weeks ahead of its rival Sony Playstation which led to very few games being available when the Saturn launched.

Development

Sega's Away Team worked for an entire two years exclusively to make certain Sega Saturn was launched with the some of the worlds best hardware and software. The 27-member Away Team comprises Sega employees from every aspect of hardware engineering, product development, and marketing. They devoted countless hours, resources, and brain cells into launching Sega Saturn. Their sole mission was to ensure that Sega Saturn's hardware and design met the precise needs of both the U.S. and Japanese markets.

The Saturn design, with two CPUs and 6 other processors, made it difficult to get the maximum performance out of the console. The parallel design was too complex for many game developers. Yuji Naka is rumored to have said "I think only one in 100 programmers are good enough to get that kind of speed out of the Saturn." Third-party development was also hindered by the lack of a useful Software Development Kit. Because of this, many Saturn games needed to be written in assembly language to achieve decent performance on the hardware. Frequently, programmers would only utilize one CPU to avoid some of the trouble in programming for the Saturn.

The main disadvantage of the dual CPU architecture was that both processors shared the same bus and had no dedicated memory of their own beyond a 4K on-chip cache, which could be configured as a 2K cache with 2K local RAM. This meant the second CPU would often have wait for the first CPU to finish, reducing its processing ability -- as all data and program code for both CPUs was located in the same shared 2MB of main memory (DRAM and SDRAM). This unusual design was employed in the Sega 32X as well.

The Saturn soon started losing out to the Playstation; the main disadvantage of the Sega Saturn compared to the Playstation was the lack of more flexible and correctly functioning hardware-aided transparency. Later games like Burning Rangers used software emulation to offer transparency effects.

A common misconception is that 3D capabilities were added as an afterthought to the Saturn to compete with the Sony PlayStation and later with the Nintendo 64. Its 3D display chip, VDP1, was a logical progression of the well established frame buffer-based sprite rendering hardware implemented in Sega's System 24 and System 32 arcade platforms.

Release

In May 1995, Sega launched the Saturn in the United States, a full 6 months ahead of schedule. This was announced at that year's E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) where Sega representatives were engaged in a public relations battle with Sony. This surprise move resulted in very few sales, however. This was due largely to the high price of the system and the lack of available software. Also, Sega chose to ship Saturn units only to selected retailers. This caused a great deal of animosity toward Sega from unselected companies, including Kay-Bee Toys.

There were several aesthetic changes made to the Saturn over the course of its lifetime. The original case design was a bit clumsy and was superseded by an improved one. U.S. and European cases were colored black, and models for the Japanese market were white. A number of limited edition consoles in other colors were sold in Japan.

Some titles used cartridges to augment the Saturn's limited memory; ' 'King of Fighters '95 and Ultraman utilized 1MB ROM carts, later a 1MB RAM and 4MB RAM cartridge were released for use with multiple titles, the majority being "fighting" games that required many animation frames per character. All of these devices were only available in Japan. The Saturn was largely a failure in the U.S. market for a variety of reasons. Perhaps first among them was the distrust that gaming consumers were developing for Sega after a series of add-on peripherals to the Sega Genesis that were discontinued after only lukewarm support. Such add-ons included the Sega CD system and the Sega 32X. The Sony Playstation also had many more popular software titles much earlier in the race than Sega did. Cost was also a factor, with the Saturn initially costing US$400 compared to the Playstation at US$300. Consumers also noticed a change of marketing strategy at Sega, which traded the successful rebellious image of the Sega Genesis (for example, the Sega Scream television commercials) for a more conservative attitude. Despite being considered a failure by many in the industry, the Saturn's continued success in Japan should be noted.

The Saturn was later superseded by Sega's Dreamcast system.

The Saturn was more popular than the Sega Megadrive in Japan, while the Sega Genesis, the Megadrive's North American counterpart, enjoyed more success than the Saturn in North America. This was partly due to advertisements with a character named Segata Sanshiro in it. Segata became well known throughout Japan.

In 1996, a peripheral called the Sega NetLink (a 28.8 kbit/s modem) was released for the Saturn. Meant to save the console, it failed largely because of the high price and lack of compatible games. A web browser was available with the unit, programmed by PlanetWeb, who also programmed the web browser shipped with the Sega Dreamcast. A mouse and keyboard adapter was also made for the Netlink, which can still be used to view web pages with many Internet Service Providers. However, very few units were sold during the Saturn's life in the market.

Technical Specifications

Processors

• Two Hitachi SuperH2 7604 32-Bit RISC processors at 28.6MHz (50-MIPS)
• SH1 32-bit RISC processor (controlling the CD-ROM)
• Custom VDP 1 32-bit video display processor
• Custom VDP 2 32-bit video display processor
• Custom Saturn Control Unit (SCU) with DSP for geometry processing and DMA controller
• Motorola 68EC000 sound processor
• Yamaha FH1 DSP sound processor, "Sega Custom Sound Processor" (SCSP)
• Hitachi 4-bit MCU, "System Manager & Peripheral Control" (SMPC)

Memory

• 1MB (8 Megabits) SDRAM
• 1MB (8 Megabits) DRAM
• 512K (4 Megabits) VDP1 video RAM
• 256Kx2 (2x2 Megabits) VDP1 framebuffer RAM
• 512K (4 Megabits) VDP2 video RAM
• 4K VDP2 on-chip color RAM
• 512KB (4 Megabits) audio RAM
• 512KB (4 Megabits) CD-ROM cache
• 32KB nonvolatile RAM (battery backup)
• 512KB (4 Megabits) BIOS ROM

Audio

• 22.6 MHz Yamaha FH1 digital signal processor
• 11.3 MHz Motorola 68EC000 sound processor
• 32 slots for PCM (pulse-code modulation) or FM (frequency modulation) sound
• Any of 32 slots can be linked together for multiple operators per FM sound channel
• Usually four operators used per slot for 8 FM channels total
• 44.1 kHz sampling rate
• 16-bit stereo DAC

Video

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

Storage

• Double-Speed CD-ROM
• 320KB per second transfer speed
• Audio CD compatible
• CD+G compatible
• CD+EG compatible
• CD single (8cm CD) compatible
• Video CD (required optional MPEG add-on) , Photo CD, Electronic Books, digital karaoke (optional)
• 512KB memory cartridges for game save (optional)

Input/Output

• Two 7-bit bidirectional parallel I/O ports
• High-speed serial communications port (Both SH2 SCI channels and SCSP MIDI)
• Cartridge connect

or

• Internal expansion port for MPEG adapter card
• Composite video/stereo (standard)
• NTSC/PAL RF (optional)
• S-Video compatible (optional)
• RGB compatible (optional)
• EDTV compatible (optional)

Peripherals

• Saturn digital gamepad (8-way pad, 6 buttons)
• Analog gamepad (introduced with NiGHTS Into Dreams)
• "Stunner" lightgun (introduced with Virtua Cop)
• Multitap
• Netlink modem cartridge
• Netlink PS/2 Keyboard Adapter (for use with Netlink modem)
• 1.44 MB 3.5" disk drive (interfaces with serial port, supported by only a few games)
• Arcade Racer Joystick

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

Dimensions (US/European model)

• Width: 260 mm (10.2 in)
• Length: 230 mm (9.0 in)
• Height: 83 mm (3.2 in)

Errata

VDP1 transparency rendering quirk causes strips of pixels to be rewritten to framebuffer for 2-point (scaled) and 4-point (quadrangle) "sprites", applying the transparency effect multiple times. Rarely seen in commercial games (Robotica explosions), later titles implemented software transparency to correctly render polygons. (Dural in Virtua Fighter Kids)

External Links

• Console Database - Sega Saturn info.
• Dave's Sega Saturn Page - Famous fansite that was extremely popular during the Saturn's heyday.
• SegaFans - Sega Saturn commercial featuring Segata Sanshiro, reviews, and other resources.
• Sega Saturn Magazine - Reviews featuring a large amount of screenshots and editorials.