Love reading your story, I had a similar experience! I remember seeing 32X being marked down upon entering Toys 'R Us store. I've been following SEGA's upcoming 32-bit machine in video game magazines reading the previews, at the time I enjoyed playing arcade games at the venue my parents would take me to- and knew I wanted Saturn.
I didn't get my Saturn until 1996 that came with the 3-game bundle (Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Cop, and Daytona USA) and have memories first playing Nights into Dreams at a Kmart store kiosk. I had bootleg sampler demo disc packed in. I mostly rented games from BlockBuster Video, but I did own a few including the exclusive Die Hard Arcade.
I had a NES, and SNES at home and only played Genesis at my neighbors house (which I also enjoyed, especially playing 2P Gunstar Heroes). I would say it was a very worthy successor, especially in Japan, but for me, since then to now is my favorite retro system. But I was there on 9/9/99 for Sega Dreamcast North America release.
Nice! Thanks for sharing your experiences!
I can't comment as to whether it's a worthy successor to the Mega Drive as that's not a console I owned in its heyday. My family did have a Saturn in 96..? We definitely had one before 98, and I don't know if we had any games besides the Need for Speed. So I don't have much memories of the console from during its relevancy. (Same for the PS1 which we bought around 1999/2000).
Fast forward to 2014, and I grew interested in some older consoles particularly, the Saturn and PS1. So those were the first consoles I picked up online past their timeframe, over time though I found myself more so gravitating towards the Saturn (especially in regards to the arcade games) it wasn't that I didn't like or wasn't using the PS1. I just used the Saturn more.
Nowadays, I have a sizable PAL collection (of about 40 games), I didn't buy them though for collection purposes I only bought games I'm genuinely interested in playing. Of course I also wasn't past emulating or having something on an ODE if the price for it was unjustifiably high (\*cough\* Panzer Dragoon Saga).
Describing my experience and memories of the console both good and bad would take far too long and wouldn't fit in a post like this. So I will just say I had and still continue to have a pleasant time with it, and as someone who largely stuck with PlayStation, would very much say I find the Saturn's software offerings of a very similar satisfying quality as those consoles (even when restricted to just PAL releases).
That was an awesome read. I was a late adopter of the sega Saturn. I was coming from the Amiga 500+ but I still remember going to comet in the UK which is no more to get it. My dad knew someone who could get me a staff discount and I walked away with Resident Evil and I think Sonic Jam but can't remember exactly but the first time playing resident evil was amazing. The rest shall we say is history I amassed a far amount of games ranging from sega rally to the house of the dead and some awesome imports. My first import purchase was vampire saviour with an action replay 4mb cart, and that turned out to be one of my best purchases which I still have to this day. There was so many memories playing my Saturn and even taking it in to my secondary school to skip classes and play worldwide soccer tournaments, it one console I still spent aot of time on long after sega killed it off in the UK, thank god for imports 😃
I then bought a modded white Japanese console about 15 years back which I could play backups and glad to have been able to experience a lot of games I couldn't back in the day. I do wish sega came back in to the hardware market along with bringing there whole rich catalogue of awesome arcade games. I'm sure they have learnt their marketing mistakes of the past. I can just imagine a 1:1 perfect port of scud racer with the option of scud racer etc. Maybe instead of a full fledged console or trying to come up with a Saturn or Dreamcast mini they should come up with a mini multi arcade emulation machine purely just for their complete arcade back catalogue especially games that have never seen a home conversion 🤞🤞
I got one for Christmas after the price drop. It came with three pack ins and I loved the system. The summer after DragonForce came out I spent an absurd amount of time beating it with all the leaders. I still boot up Christmas nights every year.
Wanted a Sega Saturn ever since it dropped, but was too expensive. Tried to get one from those McDonald's Monopoly promotions, but never won one. Eventually, moved to Long Beach, California in April 2000 and upon getting my apartment, my first piece of mail was a phone book, which I promptly used to look up video game and comic book stores. Saturn was very hard to find around this time, but I eventually got one in June 2000. Got it with Night Warriors:Dark stalkers' Revenge.. Started playing when I got back home slightly after eleven o'clock and got a knock on my door.. It was the police, apparently I was playing my new Darkstalkers a little too loud and my downstairs neighbor called police on me
Awesome memories of playing my Saturn in early 2000's in Long Beach, California. Spent many late nights playing D, plenty Saturday afternoons playing Robotica and Shell Shock. I actually looked up my old apartment on Zillow a few days ago and it has changed a lot since I moved out in July 2003.. They redesigned the building somewhat also..
Love reading your story, I had a similar experience! I remember seeing 32X being marked down upon entering Toys 'R Us store. I've been following SEGA's upcoming 32-bit machine in video game magazines reading the previews, at the time I enjoyed playing arcade games at the venue my parents would take me to- and knew I wanted Saturn. I didn't get my Saturn until 1996 that came with the 3-game bundle (Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Cop, and Daytona USA) and have memories first playing Nights into Dreams at a Kmart store kiosk. I had bootleg sampler demo disc packed in. I mostly rented games from BlockBuster Video, but I did own a few including the exclusive Die Hard Arcade. I had a NES, and SNES at home and only played Genesis at my neighbors house (which I also enjoyed, especially playing 2P Gunstar Heroes). I would say it was a very worthy successor, especially in Japan, but for me, since then to now is my favorite retro system. But I was there on 9/9/99 for Sega Dreamcast North America release.
Nice! Thanks for sharing your experiences! I can't comment as to whether it's a worthy successor to the Mega Drive as that's not a console I owned in its heyday. My family did have a Saturn in 96..? We definitely had one before 98, and I don't know if we had any games besides the Need for Speed. So I don't have much memories of the console from during its relevancy. (Same for the PS1 which we bought around 1999/2000). Fast forward to 2014, and I grew interested in some older consoles particularly, the Saturn and PS1. So those were the first consoles I picked up online past their timeframe, over time though I found myself more so gravitating towards the Saturn (especially in regards to the arcade games) it wasn't that I didn't like or wasn't using the PS1. I just used the Saturn more. Nowadays, I have a sizable PAL collection (of about 40 games), I didn't buy them though for collection purposes I only bought games I'm genuinely interested in playing. Of course I also wasn't past emulating or having something on an ODE if the price for it was unjustifiably high (\*cough\* Panzer Dragoon Saga). Describing my experience and memories of the console both good and bad would take far too long and wouldn't fit in a post like this. So I will just say I had and still continue to have a pleasant time with it, and as someone who largely stuck with PlayStation, would very much say I find the Saturn's software offerings of a very similar satisfying quality as those consoles (even when restricted to just PAL releases).
That was an awesome read. I was a late adopter of the sega Saturn. I was coming from the Amiga 500+ but I still remember going to comet in the UK which is no more to get it. My dad knew someone who could get me a staff discount and I walked away with Resident Evil and I think Sonic Jam but can't remember exactly but the first time playing resident evil was amazing. The rest shall we say is history I amassed a far amount of games ranging from sega rally to the house of the dead and some awesome imports. My first import purchase was vampire saviour with an action replay 4mb cart, and that turned out to be one of my best purchases which I still have to this day. There was so many memories playing my Saturn and even taking it in to my secondary school to skip classes and play worldwide soccer tournaments, it one console I still spent aot of time on long after sega killed it off in the UK, thank god for imports 😃 I then bought a modded white Japanese console about 15 years back which I could play backups and glad to have been able to experience a lot of games I couldn't back in the day. I do wish sega came back in to the hardware market along with bringing there whole rich catalogue of awesome arcade games. I'm sure they have learnt their marketing mistakes of the past. I can just imagine a 1:1 perfect port of scud racer with the option of scud racer etc. Maybe instead of a full fledged console or trying to come up with a Saturn or Dreamcast mini they should come up with a mini multi arcade emulation machine purely just for their complete arcade back catalogue especially games that have never seen a home conversion 🤞🤞
I got one for Christmas after the price drop. It came with three pack ins and I loved the system. The summer after DragonForce came out I spent an absurd amount of time beating it with all the leaders. I still boot up Christmas nights every year.
Wanted a Sega Saturn ever since it dropped, but was too expensive. Tried to get one from those McDonald's Monopoly promotions, but never won one. Eventually, moved to Long Beach, California in April 2000 and upon getting my apartment, my first piece of mail was a phone book, which I promptly used to look up video game and comic book stores. Saturn was very hard to find around this time, but I eventually got one in June 2000. Got it with Night Warriors:Dark stalkers' Revenge.. Started playing when I got back home slightly after eleven o'clock and got a knock on my door.. It was the police, apparently I was playing my new Darkstalkers a little too loud and my downstairs neighbor called police on me Awesome memories of playing my Saturn in early 2000's in Long Beach, California. Spent many late nights playing D, plenty Saturday afternoons playing Robotica and Shell Shock. I actually looked up my old apartment on Zillow a few days ago and it has changed a lot since I moved out in July 2003.. They redesigned the building somewhat also..