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.

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Oh My Darling Clementine-a TWDS2 retrospective series: All That Remains

014 has just been a busy year for game releases; it’s honestly been difficult to not just cover everything in games that’s happened this year—but to even cover all of the things that we wanted to cover on Press Pause Radio. Surprisingly, one of those very games was The Walking Dead Season 2. The perfect storm of circumstance and time constraints just pushed into a corner where we missed the train on properly reviewing for you guys and gals; so simply put, we decided not to.

I was able to catch up when the second episode released, but by that time, it just would have journalistically made sense from a practical standpoint to try and cram any catch up for critique by marathoning an impromptu “poop-sock” session of the game. It would have been a disservice to our follower base, so we ultimately decided to omit it; maybe cover it a different way instead when afforded the opportunity.

And Well…I just personally just reached the end of Season 2 of The Walking Dead, a play-through that carried on all of the choices of the previous seasons, and groomed for all of the emotionally strenuous decisions that I have make, and reflecting at the end of it, I can honestly say this.

I was truly unprepared for what I had signed up for when I took the responsibility of continuing Clementine’s story, and despite some reservations of some particular moments along the way, it all came full circle in the end, and manage to tear down any disappointment I may have had about the ride when it was all said and done. This will be the first of a five post series where I’ll be sharing my opinions on each individual episode in detail because there’s just too much to gloss over to just summarize the entire Season in one post—I hope the project will be as cathartic for you as it will be for me. Oh, and if wasn’t obvious already, this editorial series will spoil the shit out of some major plot details and events from the beginning to the very end of The Walking Dead: Season 2, so read with caution or come back when you’re done—take your time too, no rush.

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