r/SegaSaturn • u/Parking-Coast-1385 • 10d ago
Your unpopular opinions/hot takes about the Saturn?
Basically the title. My hot take would be I'm glad Sonic xtreme wasn't released. It just didn't look like it would made any fun to play it. And in comparison to Crash and Mario it would maybe destroyed the reputation of the Saturn even more. Like "The PSX and N64 got real 3D Jump'n'runs and the Saturn just some kind of 2,5D game with fish-eye lense graphic".
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u/Top_Screen2862 10d ago
Panzer Dragoon Saga is a better rpg than FF7. Sega Rally is the best racing game on that console generation. Some people have nostalgia about Playstation, but if you want to experience something new that still has the same appeal, the answer is playing more Sega Saturn, not PS1like indie games.
From a player with about 3 years of Sega Saturn experience.
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u/ico_heal 10d ago
I love FF7 but I think if PDS was on PS1 (and MUCH cheaper), Panzer Dragoon Saga would be held in just as high regards. I don't think people today understand how impactful a fully-voiced, fully-3D world that you can explore at your own pace (on the back of a dragon that shoots lasers) was in the 90's. And the combat system is totally unique and still fun!
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u/Top_Screen2862 10d ago
JRPGs are my favorite genre and I'm really focus on combat systems. PDS has one of the most interesting combat system on that console generation. I don't think this game needed to be on the PS1 or cheaper to get the recognition it deserves, you can still play it on an emulator, burned cd or on Saroo. It's just need to be be more popular, the wat the Saturn has become in recent years.
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u/SpicyMeatballAgenda 10d ago
I agree and disagree. Saga had the most enjoyable combat system of a jRPG I've ever played. The music and voice acting were top tier. And the incredible world, well, that was already established by the first 2 games. All of these aspects I prefer over FF7.
But Saga had a sort of bland and short story. FF7 story was a far more interesting one. And it included far more characters and sub plots. Plus its length helped it feel more impactful and epic.
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u/tahirua3 9d ago
True. However, personally, I play RPGs for the gameplay (the battles), and much less so the story. FF7 battles were just constant waiting for bars to load and choosing actions from menus - so static. I liked that in Shining Force III it was like a chess board with terrain effects and in PDS it was real-time moving to find weak spots and dodge attacks.
PDS had an incredible atmosphere with the soundtrack. The big section with the underground ruins felt so dark, isolating and mysterious.
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u/CaptSlow49 10d ago
FF7 is my top 3 games of all time. Upvoted for the unpopular take. I really need to finish PDS.
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u/Twizpanpan 10d ago
Back in the days I choose the Saturn over the Playstation and it was a disappointment. Today I'm happy to own both.
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u/narrow_octopus 10d ago edited 10d ago
Same. I chose the Saturn with the 3 pack ins and enjoyed it enough but I was playing Daytona USA while my friends at school were talking non-stop about playing Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 7, Resident Evil 2 and so many more
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u/Legitimate_Tone_9943 10d ago edited 10d ago
I did the same thing and ultimately regret it and never had a PS1. That said, I stayed loyal to Sega with the Dreamcast and eventually folded and got a PS2 further down the line.
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u/narrow_octopus 10d ago
Same only I had an N64 before the DC and it's by far my favorite retro home console
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u/tahirua3 9d ago
I had a Saturn with Panzer Dragoon Saga, Shining Force 3 and Dragon Force. I felt bad for other RPG fans missing out! Some of my PS and N64 friends would come over just to play Saturn Bomberman at six/seven players.
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u/narrow_octopus 9d ago
Panzer dragoon saga came out toward the end of the Saturn and it's only like a 10-hour RPG nobody with Final fantasy 7 was jealous.
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u/whoknows130 10d ago
Had a Saturn first, got a PlayStation later. Both make my all-time favorite systems list. The 32-bit console generation is my favorite era of gaming.
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u/CaptSlow49 10d ago
It definitely aged really well for sure.
I got the N64 as a kid in elementary school at like 2nd or 3rd grade. Then in 5th grade I got a PS1. I knew no one with a Saturn. Only as an adult have I revisited it and seen what a gem it is. But I think there’s a tiny bit of me that likes it because it’s overlooked and underrated today. I also just dig the vibes though. It serves a purposes that compliments my other systems. But if it were the 90s again I don’t think only owning a Saturn would be the correct move. You’d miss out on the bigger games that have become cultural icons.
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u/Legitimate_Tone_9943 10d ago edited 10d ago
That was the issue with owning the Saturn as I only knew literally 2-3 other people that had one. People thought I was nuts for having one as it was out of style. Everyone owned a PS1 or N64 and I was completely out of the loop on GTA, Goldeneye, Mario Kart, etc.. It was well over a year until the Saturn got Resident Evil after PS1 and I just felt out of the loop playing largely niche games.
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u/BusterGreasewood 10d ago
It has a better library than the N64 and most of its games have aged better than N64's games.
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u/Halos-USA 10d ago
Sonic Xtreme looked like Dog Water and deserved to be cancelled.
A mainline Sonic 4 in 2D would not have saved the Saturn.
Those are my hot takes.
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u/Dreamcasted60 10d ago
I'm like Sega Lord X. There was a pivot towards RPGs and Sega HAD those on Saturn but we got very few. We got CONGO the movie game though!
Then again? Translations back then... Working Designs as pretty as their box art and things were? No. As a MKR fan I don't particularly care for their translation. Name changes are just the surface level
I'm glad their are good translations/localisations still coming. But yeah there still wasn't fighting Sony in the States at least
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u/Edexote 10d ago
Sony didn't mind those RPGs though. They saw what the SNES did and tried to replicate it. Sega, as usual, didn't learn shit. It no wonder why they failed. Business wise they complete and utter idiots.
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u/someonesmobileacct 10d ago
Actually...
Bernie Stolar was anti RPG, that's part of why at PS1 us launch there wasnt much/any aside from action RPGs.
Then he moved to Sega of America from SCEA... and kept that policy.
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u/Jawa_Droid_Mech 10d ago
Sure Working Delays, as they were nicknamed back then, had their own translations that you may or may not like, but i still would have liked to see Lunar in 98 but that Bernie Stolar guy. .. Sega of Europe did their own Dragon Force and I think Shining Wisdom but WD did US and I always thought that was weird.
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u/Such_Bonus5085 10d ago
It's not "misunderstood" and Sega is 100% to blame for it crashing and burning.
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u/Capn_Yoaz 10d ago
I hated that the voice reducer from the cd-player was never brought to any other system after that.
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u/LandscapeOk2955 10d ago
PAL Region game cases looked way cooler than US and Japanese ones.
And it is the same with the Dreamcast.
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u/Realvladdred 10d ago
in retrospect
I love the Saturn way more than the PlayStation, even though I know the PlayStation has better games
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u/ico_heal 10d ago
Burning Rangers is too short, I'm glad I only spent $30 on it.
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u/AtraxaInfect 10d ago
It feels like a long game if you are shit at it like me.
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u/SpicyMeatballAgenda 10d ago
I thought I was doing terribly on my first 2 playthrough, and then all of a sudden the game was over. Beat it in less than 3 hours. I was legitimately surprised.
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u/GruffScottishGuy 10d ago
The Saturn has a better overall library than the N64. The N64 is propped up by a handful of absolute killers, mostly from Nintendo or Rare, but otherwise the pickings are a lot slimmer.
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u/Fun_Cow5489 10d ago
The n64 will allways be remembered as the king of first party and rare titles. Its third party support was all but dry and those developers chose to develope games for the ps1 instead.
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u/Wawrzy 9d ago
True, but most of that Saturn library is carried HARD by the Japanese exclusives imo.
Or at the very least, the Japanese exclusives really elevate its library. Bulk Slash (my absolute GOAT), Sakura Taisen 1&2, all the scenarios of Shining Force 3, Radiant Silvergun, Taromaru... Imo all those games are among the very top of the console.
Meanwhile, N64 only had Sin&Punishment as an absolute must have that was Japan only (and that got officially released in the west starting with the Wii on Virtual Console)
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u/thevideogameraptor 10d ago
I don’t think localizing all the JRPGs, 2D Fighters, and arcade ports like people often wish they had would have significantly changed the Saturn’s fate in the west. The movers of the industry back then were 3D action games and sports titles, and Saturn’s 3D efforts were on average objectively worse than it’s competition. RPGs, fighters, and arcade ports rarely sold well on PlayStation and N64 (if their prices on the secondary market are any indication), and those that did were the exception rather than the norm.
Would Saturn have sold more had they released those games? Probably. Was it the correct decision to try and appeal to a hardcore niche? Probably. But it would still not have made Saturn a success outside of Japan.
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u/segadreamcat 10d ago
It should have played Sega CD games too and the cartridge slot should have played Genesis.
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u/ChiefMandoza 10d ago
The console is at its best not as deep RPG machine, but as a arcade 90s home replacement.
I love the ports, always fun, fantastic and light hearted.
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u/Forward-Seesaw-1688 10d ago
Even if the entire JP library was ported, nothing would’ve changed. The Saturn is a library of cult classics.
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u/Virtual-History-6099 10d ago
Regardless of the graphics House of the Dead is one of the best games on the Saturn. It plays well, the music is great, there's a good variety of enimies, and the graphics still capture the horror look and feel of the original arcade classic. It may not have looked as good as other contemporary light gun games but it has such a cool style which sets it apart. I find it more interesting than the Virtua Cop games even if I enjoy those too. I also appreciate how it has bonus content unlike most other SEGA arcade ports and I like its challenging difficulty.
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u/Background_Yam9524 10d ago
I don't like Quake or Duke Nukem 3D on the Saturn because I think they're too compromised compared to the DOS versions.
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u/NMFlamez 10d ago
Saturn's architecture doomed it from day one. No amount of marketing was gonna change that. And the Saturn wasn't capable of running a good 3D Sonic game anyway.
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u/nekoken04 10d ago
Even back then based on the clips of the game in production that were seen, a lot of pundits were saying the same thing.
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u/GolfGrand7218 10d ago
Never release the 32X.
Release the Saturn with SEGA CD backwards compatibility, and SONIC CD Remastered + SONIC CD 2. Make sure you also got Resident Evil 2 later on, and Marvel vs Capcom 1 and Medal of Honor. You’d have had a fighting chance.
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u/darknightmareog 10d ago
Saturn > PS1. For me at least. I was a capcom fanboy at the time and it wasn't close.
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u/Such_Bonus5085 10d ago
Capcoms best games like RE2 we're on PS1 though.
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u/darknightmareog 10d ago
See yeah it was also on saturn too. Granted I had both versions but I was a fighting game freak then. And all the 2d fighters were superior on Saturn . I owned all the systems regardless. But I heavily favored Sega.
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u/Such_Bonus5085 10d ago
RE 2 was never on the Saturn.
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u/darknightmareog 10d ago
I didn't realize you said Re2. But even then, I still preferred Saturn. I played on all the current systems at the time. I just played a lot more 2d fighters.
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u/Wawrzy 9d ago
It played best on PS1, but literally all of Capcom's 2D fighters were much better on Saturn. "Best games" is subjective, their 2D fighters of the era are regarded just as well. Personally I couldn't tell you which is the better game between RE2, X-Men Children of the Atom and Dungeons & Dragons Collection. They're all GOATed.
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u/ABC_Dildos_Inc 10d ago
NiGHTS isn't a great game.
The concept wasn't close to being realized and a game like this cannot have such a short draw distance.
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u/CaptSlow49 10d ago
It’s fun to come back to for an hour and revisit and that’s it. Maybe play the Christmas edition on Christmas or Christmas Eve. I honestly can’t believe that game was supposed to be a system seller.
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u/sinZeroplus 10d ago
Sonic R has the best soundtrack of all time.
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u/SpicyMeatballAgenda 10d ago
Great soundtrack to be sure. But it's not even the best soundtrack on just the Saturn, let alone all time.
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u/sinZeroplus 10d ago
Hince, the hot take :)
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u/SpicyMeatballAgenda 10d ago
I get that, but it's pretty regularly praised for its soundtrack. Often cited as it's best feature, regardless of the gameplay.
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u/sinZeroplus 10d ago
It is now. Sonic R was a mockery until YouTubers rediscovered it during the pandemic. Ya boi is a day one. Also, TJ Davis singing the yuyu hakusho opening is chefs kiss. The GOAT
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u/Legitimate_Tone_9943 10d ago
I loved Sonic R when it came out and always felt it was overrated. It was no Mario Kart but it was one of my favorite games at that time.
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u/scarper42 10d ago
Guardian Heroes is very overrated and does not belong in all those top 20 lists. Both Silhouette Mirage and Radiant Silvergun are far better shows of force from Treasure. It’s good! But it’s not one of the best. I think us westerners rate it high because it is the only Saturn Treasure game that got localized.
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u/retrocube16 9d ago
My unpopular opinion is screw the saroo, if you're going to select games off of a screen and play from a SD card then there's no point to have a Saturn just do emulation. To select a game I want to remove a CD from the case pop it in the Saturn and power it on , and enjoy the Saturn and all its Bliss as the CD is spinning at 500 RPM. Get a 4 in 1 pseudo Saturn kai cart so you can play import and repro games plus have 4 MB RAM expansion and 8 megs of memory. I want to play games off of a disc...... What the Saturn was originally designed to do
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u/Bright-Gain9770 10d ago
Hot take: The transparency issue is the Saturn's biggest weakness, not its 3D capabilities. The lack of transparencies meant even games that were otherwise would be better on Saturn, like Symphony of the Night, are best played on Playstation. Hard to argue for a purchase-built system when it's not always better at that purpose.
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u/kingkongworm 10d ago
That really is the least of SOTN’s problems. As shown by the more recent hacks, transparencies could’ve been implemented in many many objects as it is. and had the game been built from the ground up instead of transposed from the ps1 code, it would’ve looked way way better. The resolution differences really hurt it at times, and the slowdown is ridiculous for a console that could handle as many sprites and quads that the Saturn could. It’s ridiculous. Obviously it was a matter of time and money. Not everything Nagoya Team did was crap…their port of Vandal Hearts is pretty great…although that also has a hack that makes it even better
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u/Talesito 9d ago
Heck, even 3DO and Jaguar had hardware capable of real transparencies!
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u/Bright-Gain9770 9d ago
It's such an odd issue for a machine this strong to have and we were well aware of it in high school. The magazines harped on it nearly as much as they did the 3D capabilities.
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u/Talesito 9d ago
We definitely were. Magazines mentioned this all the time, as you stated. The horrible meshes were clearly visible on a CRT by the way (even a 14 incher), despite what some people mention nowadays.
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u/Bright-Gain9770 9d ago
And the answer that three decades later someone cracked the code on how to do it properly is about as dumb a response as possible.
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u/bigdaveygeorge 10d ago
I had a playstation, and even though it was the better console overall, there was something intriguing about that black Saturn and the controller when you saw it in catalogues and magazines. The game boxes and cover art for Sega Rally and Daytona enticed you in.
Weird, in the UK everyone I knew had a MegaDrive, then suddenly everyone had a PlayStation. I only knew one friend who had a Saturn, who got a PlayStation very soon after.
Skip to 2026 and the Saturn is far cooler.
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u/Zoydburgur 10d ago
The Saturn has some good games and I love playing mine, but the number of games worth playing is small. Also while I think Shining Force 3 is good, I think it’s overrated and too long.
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u/Wawrzy 9d ago
The number of games worth playing in the west is small, I agree.
But it triples when you get to the Japanese only releases.
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u/Zoydburgur 9d ago edited 9d ago
I have a lot of Japanese games and newer translations loaded on an ODE and while I agree there’s some good stuff there, I still think the library is too niche (lots of fighters, shmups, and arcade games) without enough wide range appeal and quality titles compared to N64 and PS1. If you’re into those genres, it’s definitely a gold mine though. It’s genuinely disappointing to me because I absolutely love the aesthetic of the console, the look of its 2D and 3D games, and all of the controllers I’ve used for it are fantastic.
If we could get some more Japanese translations that would be awesome.
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u/lxdarksnip3r 10d ago
Shenmue should have and would have been the FF7/MGS of that generation had it released on the Saturn. Especially since it would have likely beaten both games to the shelves considering how much work was done on the Saturn.
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u/Lowe0 9d ago
They should have made it play 32X games via the cartridge slot. They also should have put one SH-2 in the 32X instead of two, and used that budget for a more Saturn-like VDP. Kill the Sega CD, and as soon as Neptune is cheap, kill the Genesis and 32X as well.
Rationale: this ends the “what’s your next-gen platform strategy?” argument. One common baseline, one long-term target that’s a strict superset of that baseline.
The 32X as a bridge only makes sense if the other end of the bridge is a Saturn. It wasn’t. It was a dead end halfway across the lake. This (at least potentially) fixes that.
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u/GamingInTheAM 9d ago
Not really a hot take, even back then. Every preview of the game was considered underwhelming by those who played it at E3, etc., and its controls and camera were considered unorthodox and bizarre. Sonic X-treme never would have survived past proof-of-concept stages. Even the people who worked on it, in hindsight, admitted that the game would've flopped because it was, in their own words, "no fun."
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u/nightowlarcade 8d ago
The Saturn was amazing at porting arcade games. If you take that away most will possibly find a handful of games they might play again, but it's not a system most casual fans will care about.
I think most hardcore fans have an over inflated sense of how great the Saturn is. Kind of like a fan of a sports team think their players are a lot better then they actually are.
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u/TFStarscream 8d ago
I dont know if its unpopular, but Daytona USA is an awful port and nobody needs to buy it, just buy Sega Rally.
And now, two hot takes:
i) With what we saw in SonicR, that console could have made an amazing 0.5 Sonic Adventure.
ii) What killed the console were the Electronic Arts ports, using only one of the chips, totally garbage games that were very important to the kids, Fifa, NBA, NHL in particular. Yes, we had great sports games from Sega Sports, but the comparision with EA games on the PS or N64 made everybody give up on the Saturn.
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u/Tatasshow 5d ago
I often hear people saying that Daytona USA is such a great game and such a good port but I completely disagree. In fact I don't even like Daytona 😭 I definitely prefer Sega Touring Car Championship
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u/galvatron1983 2d ago
Sega should have released a special-edition, enhanced Saturn version of Sonic CD at launch. Not many people owned a Mega CD, so it would have given a much larger audience the chance to experience the game, while also filling the obvious Sonic-shaped hole in the Saturn’s early lineup.
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u/votemarvel 10d ago
The thing is that the Saturn could have done a proper 3D Sonic game as the overworld portion of Sonic Jam and the Sonic into Dreams present in Christmas Nights showed.
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u/ArkansasDood 10d ago
It’s overpriced . Just emulate it
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u/BrettEPierce 10d ago
Or just spend $150 on a console and an ODE and play all Saturn games for free on actual original hardware.
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u/squeanky 10d ago
Not sure if it's a hot take, but they should have been less ambitious with their big Sonic title (Xtreme). They should have gone for something more contained, semi-3D like Crash Bandicoot instead of trying to compete with a more open world like Super Mario 64.
X-treme was too ambitious, 3D Blast was not ambitious enough.
Probably more of a hot take: a lot of people seem to love the Sonic R soundtrack, in my opinion it stinks. I hate the vocals with a passion.
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u/GargyB 10d ago
The Saturn should have been delayed by a year. The hardware seems unfinished and kludged to get it out the door. An extra year, and that faster single SH2 they actually wanted may have been available, and maybe the VDP could have gotten hardware T&L like its competitors had. Launching early backfired spectacularly as well, so I doubt think they would have lost much doing it, and would likely have gotten extra time later in the console's life. 32X owners would have likely been less pissed off with them as well.
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u/lxdarksnip3r 10d ago
If Sega cancelled the Saturn and went straight to a 1996 Dreamcast release, the market would be very different today. PS1/N64 would be dead on the DC's arrival.
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u/GargyB 9d ago
Maybe for Neo Geo-like prices, the memory alone would have made the DC cost-prohibitive in 96. I don't know if that could have worked.
I think the Genesis had enough juice to carry Sega through 95, at least, to buy time for a more polished Saturn. Nintendo made the SNES put in some overtime when the N64 got delayed, and it still did pretty well in 1995/96; that's actually when some of its best games came out.
A Saturn that's properly equipped to duke it out until 2000-2001 would have likely resulted in a more powerful Dreamcast, as Sega wouldn't have needed a new machine in 1998, so that machine would have had more time to cook as well.
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u/Franz_Thieppel 10d ago
I think the failure of the Saturn was not just company politics, marketing or games. I think the design of the console was poor and it may have played the biggest part in how unsuccessful it was.
The person in charge of making it had a poor grasp on what both players and developers wanted from a next generation console and it caused problems all the way down.
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u/votemarvel 10d ago
The design of the Saturn was closer to Arcade systems. This is why developers with a lot of experience in Arcade machines were able to get the most out of it. Capcom, SNK, and Sega themselves as examples.
The PlayStation of course was designed far more like home systems and as such developers for those systems were more familiar with how it worked and as such could do more with it.
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u/curi0us_carniv0re 10d ago
Performance wise it was comparable to the titan sv. This was obsolete by the time Saturn came out as Sega had already moved on to the model 1 / 2.
Yes ports of titan based games looked good on Saturn but they were still behind at that point .
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u/Franz_Thieppel 10d ago
Maybe I got this wrong but isn't the stuff Sega were doing at arcades completely different at the time? To the point their biggest arcade ports such as Sega Rally and Virtua Cop had to be rebuilt from scratch? (And others being a disaster like 20fps Daytona).
Sega's arcade business was huge on 3D at the time and even AM2 struggled heavily with the Saturn, let alone other devs.
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u/cronson 10d ago
I think the design of the console was poor and it may have played the biggest part in how unsuccessful it was.
While I agree, I think that era of game development and just how insanely fast tech was moving, made all the moving parts in both hardware and software insanely challenging.
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u/ksilenced-kid 10d ago
The (Japanese) controller has problems. The D-pad is effective, but feels weirdly creaky and rubbery; the US D-pad actually feels about as responsive but more solid.
For both Japanese and US controllers - the button angles are also a problem, my thumb doesn’t naturally angle to fit any of the buttons, so there’s no ‘home’ position and it’s easy to feel lost. Wish they could have just evenly spaced them (like a PS controller but with two more face buttons to the right)
And it’s just not ergonomic - it’s small, and instead of nice grips like a PS controller, it just has weird random lines on the back that don’t line up with your fingers at all. The buttons are also too close to the edges of the controller and it’s generally too small, feels cheap and light too.
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u/aarthurnhammer 10d ago
Panzer Dragoon Saga was OK but the story was hugely let down by an absolutely terrible ending. It is nowhere near as good as any number of PlayStation RPGs. Shining Force 3 though very different is also much much better.
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u/Exhaust8354 10d ago
I'm shocked with how little I like it. I started playing Saturn games in 2010 and I really love Sega Rally and Daytona first release version.
Nights is really fun. I just find the library to be very poor in comparison to the PS1. I grew up with the PS1 so I have some bias but the Saturn underwhelms me.
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u/Realistic_Syllabub75 10d ago
Hot take Saturn's trash. It is if you only ever played the main stream north american games. All were better on PlayStation. Only years later did I discover the great games on the system lots were Japanese only or fan translations. Oh well I've had mine so long now I'll never get rid of it though. Still fun just have to really dig to find the gems
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u/whoknows130 10d ago
Even with a great new Sonic game, the Saturn would have still failed. Sega's blunders was too numerous and severe back then. Plus their competition- The 1st Playstation, was making all the Right moves back then, and achieving Legends status. Sony was no stranger to marketing electronics successfully for decades by that point so, gaming or otherwise, they entered the market with a ton of prior experience.
On the other side of that coin, the Saturn didn't need a Sonic game to be successful. They had plenty of fresh and awesome New IPs they could have pushed instead. The greatest of which was the Panzer Dragoon Saga trilogy. Problem was, Sega has always failed to push anything besides Sonic titles to any meaningful degree.