25 years of the Sega Saturn: Part 1-The Doomed Singularity

ut of all the rituals that you’d expect a seven-year-old to have in the early nineties, feverishly running to the supermarket newsstand for the latest video game magazine isn’t one that I’d imagine topping a Family Feud chart anytime soon. Yet there I was, a twinkle-eyed sap who cared for nothing more than to drool over the latest news and gossip of the one brand that ruled my kid life: SEGA.

The year 1994 was a particularly lucid period, because of the gaming hype for releases like Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country, and Sonic & Knuckles, nothing was more exciting to me than Sega’s 32-bit project, the Sega Saturn. I couldn’t tell you how many times I read the August issue that year of Electronic Gaming Monthly, and the preview coverage they gave to the specifications of the system, and games that were going to be able to run on it like Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter, and Virtua Cop.

May 11th, 2020 marked the 25th anniversary of the polarizing console—even to this day, the same fevered school ground arguments over the Saturn have transcended into keyboard wars across online forums and social networks because unlike anything else like in the medium. The Sega Saturn is a complex story that peels back like an onion; so I figured what better way to way to reminisce on my favorite game machine than with an editorial series on it.

In this chapter, we’re going back to where it all began, as the system’s origin is one that’s born through a gradual divorce between the East and West divisions of SEGA, with the Saturn being the child that was caught in the middle of it all.

Even in its prime, the allure of the cosmic machine was the level of mystique it maintained, especially during the early whispers of its development. SEGA had fostered such a near-indomitable stock of good faith in the industry by offering a different experience that none of their contemporaries could brand for themselves. The Sega Genesis kept a strong momentum in the face of heavy competition, the company started working hard on their revolutionary Model 1 technology, as the Japanese juggernaut had set their sights ahead with something that would forever change the home experience

Codenamed Project Saturn, this new system was going to be everything that made the Genesis a success amped past eleven; a machine that would blur the lines between the spectacle of arcade action, and the comfort of playing at home on your living room TV—all through a unique mechanical architecture that utilized a dual-CPU called the SuperH RISC Engine. The Saturn’s dual-engine allowed the advantage of operating a multiprocessor that would be able to produce advanced 2D visuals and to a lesser degree, 3D effects, that were intended to bolster the 2D potential of its software. 

The Motherboard that powered the ambitious Sega Saturn

The boost in processing meant that Sega could properly port the Model1 hits developed by Sega Am2 for the living room like Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter without little, to no compromise in terms of performance. Even older titles from Sega’s early arcade years like After Burner, Outrun, and even Galaxy Force II would be able to able to take full advantage of the Super Scaler technology that defined those entries on the Saturn, something that admittedly the Genesis was never able to do. The promise for the hardware was certainly exciting, but the direction wasn’t without a crucial flaw—the concession to the faculties responsible for 3D processing. The limited nature of the Saturn’s 3D capabilities would inevitably be the very flaw that spear-headed its turbulent life in the fifth generation of video games among a slew of other obstacles, along with unveiling the widening divide between Sega of America, and Sega of Japan.

Tom Kalinske, the president of Sega of America throughout the early nineties, had already expressed reservations about what the Saturn could do under the hood, taking every opportunity he can to express these concerns to his counterparts in Japan. Sega of Japan’s response to Kalinske was tepid at best; they felt the argument was already moot as the internal design of the Saturn had already been finished for some time, and was under production. The Eastern branch also felt that Kalinske’s insistence for a heavier focus on 3D out from the system would discount a lot of what the system could do for 2D software—a factor that Kalinske argued should not have come anywhere near the discussion for Sega’s future in the industry. There was merit for the argument, as Sega had focused the engineering of the Saturn to compete with two specific platforms in the west, the Atari Jaguar and SNK’s Neo Geo; consoles that had, at best, shared a modicum of success in America. While these competing set-tops were already on the frontlines however, they were still far from the looming brand that would pose a direct threat to the Saturn—Sony’s PlayStation.

As more information on the upcoming 32-bit console released on various gaming rags across the globe, Sega of Japan’s confidence in the Saturn gradually started to waiver in response. The rumored specs of the PlayStation’s 3D horsepower prompted the development team to implement an additional video display processor that would work to improve the 2D output even more while simultaneously improving texture mapping for 3D modeling, an area that the Sony system was lacking in. While changes were being made near launch, Kalinkse was still unsatisfied, as he had pushed for the graphics hardware of the internal design to be headed by a westerntech company by the name of Silicon Graphics instead of the Hitachi layout, leading to an inconsistent messaging when it came to the promotion of the Saturn between the various regions.

The confusing build-up to the Saturn was further exacerbated by the simultaneous marketing for an additional 32-bit piece of hardware, the Sega 32X, Sega’s answer to the budget-minded market-share that were hesitant to adopt a Saturn at launch, even though they owned a Sega Genesis.

Sega of Japan initially wanted to release the Saturn with a cartridge variant for the demographic that that felt skeptical towards the viability of Compact Disc Media; that route would have cost thousands upon thousands of dollars for the company. So instead, Sega retooled that idea into a Stop-Gap measure with the 32X, one that was especially aimed at the American Market. The 32X was always intended to be a transitional console, but was staunchly promoted as an alternative to the Saturn, a brazen move that appealed to consumer-choice on paper, but commercially, it made little to sense in execution. The company ostensibly cannibalized its product line with rushing the doomed Genesis add-on to the ‘94 Holiday Season that was missing the Sega Saturn—the result ended up fracturing already busy console line, while simultaneously eroding any of the steam the brand earned with the casual market towards the Saturn.

Nothing however, could prepare Sega for the consequences that would come from their biggest missteps yet with the machine…

               That does it for this entry of the 25 years of the Sega Saturn; in the next entry, I’ll be covering the incredibly rocky launch of Sega’s cosmic darling, and the even rockier marketing campaign that bizarrely hyped the machine.