CREDIT: HOUSE OF THE DEAD WIKIA
The Saturn boasts having the only playable home port of zombie-blaster House of the Dead.

People just love to fawn over the Dreamcast, Sega's last entry into the console market before they decided to call it quits and continue disappointing us through means of mediocre software alone. As cool as the Dreamcast was — being a receiver of some truly exceptional home ports of popular arcade games — it's easy to notice how its predecessor, the Saturn, has been left in the dust, and unfairly so.

Although by no means obscure to those who know the first thing about video games, attempting a discussion about the Sega Saturn with the average person will likely net you a reaction of, “Yeah, I remember that thing, I never owned it.” It's a classic case of everyone backing the right horses only and refusing to give the straggler a chance. Gamers weren't exactly to be faulted with their treatment of the Saturn, still reeling from Sega's earlier gaffes in the form of the Sega Genesis addons: the Sega 32x and 32x CD. Towards the end of the 16-bit Genesis' lifespan, Sega decided the only way to supplement its aging console into the next generation of 32-bit as a holdout until their next big gizmo dropped, was to release add-ons that could play a library of theoretically better-looking games. What instead happened was that two very mediocre (and still fairly underpowered) pieces of hardware underwhelmed gamers, sucked their wallets dry, and gave them a library of under-average games.

Naturally, releasing a console with your fanbase already feeling gypped by your previous endeavours isn't quite the right environment for the big launch, but Sega trucked ahead, surprising everyone at E3 1995 by proclaiming that, unlike its rival, the brand new Sony PlayStation, the Saturn was already in stores!

Wrong move.

Consumers were pissed, retailers were miffed, game developers even moreso. You're supposed to let your fans save up, your retailers advertise, and your developers actually make some damn games in time. The surprise launch of the Sega Saturn, releasing weeks before expected, were what truly hurt its chances at greatness, at least in North America. Despite its short lifespan here, the Saturn received some great (and slowly getting rarer and rarer) titles, like the acclaimed RPG Panzer Dragoon Saga, and badass beat- 'em-up Guardian Heroes. It isn't all gloom and doom for Sega's early-orphaned red-headed-stepchild console, for there exists a surprisingly vast library of Saturn games outside of our cushy continent, although you might end up needing to brush up on your Katakana to play the various RPGs and shoot-'em-ups that Japan received.

I'm probably rushing ahead of myself here, because chances are, you probably don't have a Saturn in the first place. I still consider my ownership of one to be a unicorn killing stroke of rare luck. More than likely, you'll have to resort to *cough* emulation. The Saturn's difficult-to-program-for brand new (at the time) dual core processor, which was one of the factors that made developers shy away from making games for the console, is only now getting understood for the purpose of emulation. Take a look at Yabause or SSF if you want to jump in the action quick.

If you really do care to try out Sega's battered but loveable console as originally intended, scour the flea markets, take any opportunity to cheaply own this console whose value has sadly been driven up largely by collectors. A bit of, ahem, modding will easily allow you to unlock a huge library of forgotten but still fun titles. With region restrictions no harder to bypass than simply patching disc image files, there isn't any excuse to avoid the amazing arcade action the Saturn has to offer.