«Our Saturday Retro Night» Part №3: A new acquaintance with the Sega Saturn, but on good old arcade sticks.

Well, folks, it’s time for another retro gaming session! This evening started on a bit of a rough note due to some not-so-great news, and honestly, it was hard to focus at first. But retro games are like a warm blanket for the soul, so we decided to go ahead with our plan and dedicate the night to a console none of us had ever played before – the Sega Saturn.

Yep, believe it or not, no one in our group had a Saturn growing up. That meant no nostalgia to cloud our judgment-we were experiencing everything with fresh eyes. And you know what? That’s a rare and interesting way to explore retro gaming. No “it was better in my childhood” bias, just raw, honest impressions.

First Impressions

I won’t bore you with the technical details-there’s already plenty of info online. The key thing to understand is that the Sega Saturn was meant to compete with the PlayStation 1, but direct comparisons don’t really do it justice. Let’s just say that Saturn falls behind in terms of game library, number of great exclusives, and even the controller, which feels more like a Sega Mega Drive evolution.

But when you power it on… there’s a certain charm. A pleasant startup sound, vibrant colors, solid picture quality. Plus, I was lucky enough to find a Saroo cartridge in Kyiv, which lets you run games from a microSD card. That’s a game-changer! No need to hunt for rare discs-just load up your favorite titles and play. If you’re thinking of getting a Saturn today, this cartridge is a must.

Games We Played – The Good, The Bad, and The WTF

We put together a list of games to try, kind of like a retro tasting menu-sample, discuss, move on. Here’s what we got through:

• Battle Arena Toshinden Remix – “Why does it feel so stiff?” That was our first reaction. This version is different from the PS1 release, but still… it’s just not great.

• Battle Garegga – WOW! Now this is what we came for. A masterpiece of a shoot ’em up-pure pixel art beauty. Even those who don’t usually play shmups got hooked.

• Blast Wind – Another great shooter, though simpler than Battle Garegga. Still, a solid pick.

• Criticom – We should’ve never launched this. Just… no.

• Dead or Alive – Recognize these faces? Yes, it’s that Dead or Alive. But the first game feels strange. The physics are wonky, but you can already see the series’ signature style forming.

• D-Xhird – Another 3D fighter, another disappointment. Saturn wasn’t exactly the king of this genre.

• Final Fight Revenge – “Why did Capcom do this?” That’s the only question that came to mind. A 3D fighting game based on Final Fight, and it just feels… weird.

• Galactic Attack – A smooth and enjoyable shoot ‘em up. Definitely worth playing.

• Goiken Muyou - Anarchy in the Nippon – Strange title, strange game, strange feeling afterward.

• Illusion Shou – Honestly, we still have no idea what this game is about.

• Last Bronx – Finally, a good fighter! Stylish, fast, and brutal. We had a blast with this one.

• Earthworm Jim 2 – This one turned into a laugh riot. We invented a challenge where we had to jump from one “booger” to another (if you’ve played it, you’ll know what we mean). Hilarious but insanely difficult.

After all this, we realized: yes, there are games worth playing, but true gems are few and far between. Maybe we need to dig deeper into the Saturn library, but that’s an adventure for another night.

Final Thoughts

Sega Saturn is not a failed console, despite what some may say. Yes, Sega made some mistakes, and yes, the competition was fierce. But the 90s Japanese aesthetic is alive and well in this machine. It’s a flawed but fascinating system.
And as the night wound down, we wrapped things up with a Tekken 3 tournament and some foosball, giving our eyes a break after all the shmups and fighters.
Now we’re preparing for our next retro gaming night! In the meantime, drop your favorite Sega Saturn games in the comments-we want to explore this console even further.

And as always…
Play games, play together!

 

[LiberoVulpes]

Its so cool to see you give so much love to an amazing console like the Saturn.

For Saturn games, i would say my favorite has to be Virtua Fighter 2, is such a good 3D fighting game, which actually makes use of the 3D space, i highly recommend it.

And, if you are in the mood for a 3D shoot em up, check out Bulk Slash as well.

 

[jago-2077]

the good old days i have some of sega saturn game its realy fun

 

[DunkeyKong]

This is a really, really great piece of an article once again. Sega Saturn definitely deserves more love despite it's flaws. My favorite game though would be Powerslave, amazing FPS. I also love how they created a special engine for Saturn called Slave Driver. It was able to render more complex levels, including rooms above other rooms, which was not possible on the Build engine

Lobotomy software did a great job building a new engine, just to bring this game to Sega Saturn

 

[Jotaro]

something i want to mention is, saturn in most of the 2D games it had, they were superior to the ps1 ones, saturn was known for a reason as a 2D powerhouse, most 2D fighting games on saturn, for example, run better, there with better textures and framerate, compared to their ps1 counterparts

now, their 3D games were very limited and no that good, thats where ps1 overpowered them, with better tech and utilized the 3D potential of the console, far better

both consoles overall had many pros and cons, depending on the game, but overall, ps1 > saturn, on the whole thing, by a slight margin

still, both of them are classic levels, in quality, each console, had their own gems, obviously

 

[kristycocopop]

Man, I'm so Jelly of you guys! LOL

 

[Octopus]

Man, I love your articles; it's just great to see some friends goofing around with a beer in their hand and playing some retro games.

The Panzer Dragoon saga games are of course classics of the rail shooter (sort of) variety, really recommend those. I also think Guardian Heroes is a pretty good beat 'em up RPG hybrid. Definitely takes some getting used too control wise though.

If you're not against untranslated games, there's the definitive home console ports of a whole metric ton of Capcom fighting games that never made their way out of Japan.