Sega Saturn

From Sega Retro

Sega Saturn, Japanese model
File:Saturn euro.jpg
Sega Saturn, European model

The Sega Saturn (Japanese: セガサターン; Romaji: Sega Sataan), an innovative 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 Japanese 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 world's 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 PS2 has a similiar problem. However, very skilled programmers could quite easily get good performance out of the machine.

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.

From a development standpoint the architectural design problems of the Saturn meant that it quickly started losing out on third-party support 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

The release day in the US was to be 'Saturnday' on September 2, 1995. Sega realized though that Sony was releasing the Playstation at the same time and decided to gamble and get the Saturn on store shelves 4 months early. Not only did the announcement take third-party software developers by surprise, but it also meant that Sony would have more time to put some finishing touches on their Playstation, draw up a well-planned strategy and learn from the pitfalls of the Saturn. One thing that Sony did on release of the Playstation was to slash its pric e to $299, making it $100 cheaper than the Saturn. This move, along with much better marketing than that of Sega of America, wreaked havoc on the Saturn's place in the market and ultimately caused its downfall. 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. 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 and to avoid long CD load times. King of Fighters '95 and Ultraman utilized their own 1MB ROM cart, each containing their frquently accessed game data to provide instant loading from cartridge rather than from CD. Later, a 1MB RAM (used by SNK and Capcom) and 4MB RAM (only used by Capcom) cartridge were released for use with multiple titles, the majority being 2D fighting games that required many animation frames per character or instant access to multiple unique characters that were highly detailed. All of these cartridges were only available in Japan.

The Saturn was largely a failure in the U.S. market for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the biggest 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 be a cheap alternative to browse the web (compared at a time when PCs cost an average of US$1200) using the console, it failed largely because of the high price and lack of compatible games. As mentioned above, a web browser was packaged in 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.

Sega still had a large base of fans in the US and the Saturn was selling well in Japan. While Saturn systems were being outsold by Playstation systems in Japan in 1995-1997. Sega actually sold more software for the Saturn during the same time period. The result was that in Japan the Saturn became the platform of choice for more dedicated gamers while the Playstation had an audience comprised of more casual gamers who bought fewer titles.

Unfortunately, many of the games that made the Saturn so popular in Japan such a s the Sakura Taisen series or many of the quirky anime style RPGs that sold well in Japan were never released in the US. Much of the reasoning behind this was due to policies put in place under the management of former Sega of America president Bernie Stolar who believed that RPGs were never to have great commercial success in North America.

After the holiday shopping season in 1996 the Saturn had fallen far behind the Playstation and Nintendo 64 in North America and Europe (while remaining competitive in Japan) and senior management at Sega wanted to produce a new platform get the jump on the next generation of systems ahead of their competitors. The result was that by E3 1997 Sega had already begun talk of the new system code named Katana which would eventually turn into the Dreamcast. As Sega started aggressively moving the Katana project forward it caused something of a rift between Sega and many third party developers. As mentioned before the Saturn was more than holding its own in the Japanese marketplace where the vast majority of game development is based out of. As a result many Japanese developers saw little to no reason for Sega to rush another platform to the market and in the process effectively kill the Saturn which had a large user base and many projects under development.

After another third place turnout during the Holiday season in 1997 a number of third party publishers started cancelling titles, as a result many games planned for a US Saturn release including renowned titles such as Policenauts and Lunar The Silver Star Story. A chain reaction of cancellations rushed through the Saturn market transforming a seemingly promising 1998 schedule of North American releases to a small handful of titles.

Other Notes

Consumers also noticed a change of marketing strategy at Sega of America, which traded the successful rebellious image of the Sega Genesis (for example, the Sega Scream television commercials) for a more conservative attitude. Perhaps most importantly, however, was the fact that Sega's flagship character and mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, never made a particularly major Saturn appearance - an enhanced Genesis port, a racing game and a compilation of his major Genesis adventures were made, but only the racing game was exclusive and it was hardly a major title. In fact, the one truly major title (Sonic X-treme) wound up being cancelled.

The Saturn had a cartridge slot used for various purposes. Although it was designed primarily for memory cards, various other peripherals would go on to use it (see Peripheral listings below). Unfortunately, the internal pins in the cartridge slot would easily wear down (particularly from third-party cartridges) and the size and depth of the slot varied from various models of the Saturn. Carts would fit fine in one Saturn while needing to forced in on other models. The result was a lot of consumers found it difficult to get cartridges to work consistently.

The Saturn was far 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.

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.

For more information on specific Sega Saturn builds, see Sega Saturn Models.

Game Packaging

Japanese Packaging

Japanese Saturn software usually come packaged in standard jewel cases, much like music CDs. They also often came with spinecards. These are three-fold pieces of light cardboard that hug the spine of the jewel case with the shrinkwrap holding it on (they are valuable to collectors, and necessary if one wishes to sell the game "complete.") The spinecard also indicates that the CD is for use with a Sega Saturn console - specifically Japanese NTSC systems. There were also "double" CD cases, and a variant of the single case which was slightly thicker and VERY hard to replace.

Most of the time the spinecard will have a gold and black background with the Japanese Saturn logo and lettering printed vertically. Saturn collection games will have red and white spinecard with white lettering, the Saturn Collection logo under that, and the 2,800 yen price featured prominently. Manual is included with the cover seen through the front of the jewel case. The left side of the manual will usually have a bar similar in design to the spinecard. The Japanese rating, if there is one, will be included on the manual front (usually on one of the corners). There is also the insert on the back which may feature artwork or screenshots from the game. A black bar on the bottom of the insert contains information much like the spinecard, licensing information, et cetera.

US/European Packaging

The US and Europe used much larger jewel cases identical to the US Sega CD jewel cases, since many of these were in fact leftover Sega CD jewel cases. The US case has a white spine containing a 30 degree stripe pattern in gray, with white outlined lettering displaying the words "Sega Saturn". The European case has a solid black spine, with white lettering displaying the words "Sega Saturn". The manual slides in the case just like a normal jewel case and there is a back insert with information about the game. These cases were unpopular for several reasons:

  • Their sheer size made them more vulnerable to cracking.
  • The mechanism that keeps the cover closed wears out quickly if the cover is opened and closed too much
  • There is too much empty space inside the case. If the the CD ever came off the case's spindle on its own (caused by rough handling of the case), the CD ends up being tossed around the inside of the case, causing either huge amount of scratches on the disc from careful handling of the case or shattering the disc from continued rough handling of the case.


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 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

Video

Storage

Input/Output

  • Two 7-bit bidirectional parallel I/O ports
  • High-speed serial communications port (Both SH2 SCI channels and SCSP MIDI)
  • Cartridge connector
  • Internal expansion port for video decoder card
  • Composite video/stereo (JP Part No: HSS-0106)
  • NTSC/PAL RF (US Part No.: MK-80116, JP Part No.: HSS-0110)
  • S-Video compatible (JP Part No.: HSS-0105)
  • RGB compatible (JP Part No.: HSS-0109)
  • EDTV compatible (optional)

Peripherals

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).

Sonic Team games for the Saturn

Sonic Games

A fourth game, Sonic X-treme, was in development, but was never published.

The Dreamcast game Sonic Adventure was originally developed for the Sega Saturn.

Sonic Team Games

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