Why has the Saturn been forgotten among modern gamers?

[FerretGamer]

I can't tell you how many times I've purchased a Saturn game that was described as like new and it came factory sealed. The Japanese Americans really underrate overrate the condition of their games, it's insane.

FTFY

Trust me, I was thinking the same thing.

[Retronomy]

On a related note, I also never understood why SoA didn't market the heck out of the Saturn's 2D capabilities. Instead, they tried to directly compete with Sony and Nintendo on 3D, which despite some amazing games like the Panzer Dragoon series, was a losing battle from the start.

because (sadly) everyone seemed to think that 3D was 'the future of gaming.' This is just a case of hindsight being 20/20 of course. Had they promoted the 2D capabilities, they could have possibly staked out a certain niche market. Or not. Who knows? Like I said, 3D was supposed to be our gaming savior at the time.

To be honest, not jumping on the 3D bandwagon would have surely doomed them even sooner. They were already working with a niche audience: People who actually owned a Sega Saturn.

People were so irrational back then, 3D gaming was the now, 2D gaming was the past or something you'd expect to see on a handheld.


@whoever brought up lack of Jrpgs
The traditional jrpg market really wasn't that big in the US at the time. JRPG craze wouldn't be at it's peak until Final Fantasy 7 would come out, bringing in a whole new generation of people new to the genre. One of the main reasons why the PlayStation had so many JRPGs is that Sony was so much more open to smaller publisher houses, and Sega, quite frankly, was not. If SoA actually tried to bring all those JRPGs here they probably would have lost money. SoA after a certain point really had to pick and choose their releases just to keep from financial failure. To be honest, limiting the titles released and cutting the lifespan short was probably the best move to make business wise, given the incredibly limited power SoA actually had granted to them by SoJ.

Yes I was being harsh on Tom, and to be honest the Saturn was doomed from the start, but he certainly wasn't helping the situation. The genesis style campaigns clearly weren't going to work in the 32 bit generation. Why he kept trying them is beyond me.

[o.pwuaioc]

The traditional jrpg market really wasn't that big in the US at the time. JRPG craze wouldn't be at it's peak until Final Fantasy 7 would come out, bringing in a whole new generation of people new to the genre. One of the main reasons why the PlayStation had so many JRPGs is that Sony was so much more open to smaller publisher houses, and Sega, quite frankly, was not. If SoA actually tried to bring all those JRPGs here they probably would have lost money. SoA after a certain point really had to pick and choose their releases just to keep from financial failure. To be honest, limiting the titles released and cutting the lifespan short was probably the best move to make business wise, given the incredibly limited power SoA actually had granted to them by SoJ.

How does that opinion square away with SNES' amazing US RPG catalog?

[Retronomy]

The traditional jrpg market really wasn't that big in the US at the time. JRPG craze wouldn't be at it's peak until Final Fantasy 7 would come out, bringing in a whole new generation of people new to the genre. One of the main reasons why the PlayStation had so many JRPGs is that Sony was so much more open to smaller publisher houses, and Sega, quite frankly, was not. If SoA actually tried to bring all those JRPGs here they probably would have lost money. SoA after a certain point really had to pick and choose their releases just to keep from financial failure. To be honest, limiting the titles released and cutting the lifespan short was probably the best move to make business wise, given the incredibly limited power SoA actually had granted to them by SoJ.

How does that opinion square away with SNES' amazing US RPG catalog?

You don't think that just because there's some good JRPGs on the system in the US that they were popular in the mainstream, do you?
Square had to release Mystic Quest in the US because they thought that americans were just too dumb to understand RPGS. Americans were way more interested in action games in general, and so most any RPG that actually gets recognition outside of final fantasy II and III and Super Mario RPG were actually action rpgs. And even then, outside of Zelda:LTTP fandom of action rpgs was still fairly irregular. We look back at the library now and go "wow, there were some great rpgs on this system" but back then most of us didn't even know what a jrpg was.

[o.pwuaioc]

You don't think that just because there's some good JRPGs on the system in the US that they were popular in the mainstream, do you?

Perhaps I just had an irregular experience, but I felt that RPGs then were just as popular as they are now. True their popularity boomed during the PS1 era, but aside from the ones you mentioned (and Super Mario RPG isn't an action RPG), popular too was Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger.

Another thing that's funny, if you look at the SNES top sellers, not including JP only releases, Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy VI all made the cut. Meanwhile, if you look at PS1 best sellers, only the Final Fantasy series (including Tactics), Chrono Cross, Legend of Dragoon, and Xenogears sold over a million. Where is the huge RPG boom? In reality, it was a huge Squaresoft boom and Sony just rode on the coattails with Legend of Dragoon.

[BurningDoom]

The traditional jrpg market really wasn't that big in the US at the time. JRPG craze wouldn't be at it's peak until Final Fantasy 7 would come out, bringing in a whole new generation of people new to the genre. One of the main reasons why the PlayStation had so many JRPGs is that Sony was so much more open to smaller publisher houses, and Sega, quite frankly, was not. If SoA actually tried to bring all those JRPGs here they probably would have lost money. SoA after a certain point really had to pick and choose their releases just to keep from financial failure. To be honest, limiting the titles released and cutting the lifespan short was probably the best move to make business wise, given the incredibly limited power SoA actually had granted to them by SoJ.

How does that opinion square away with SNES' amazing US RPG catalog?

You don't think that just because there's some good JRPGs on the system in the US that they were popular in the mainstream, do you?
Square had to release Mystic Quest in the US because they thought that americans were just too dumb to understand RPGS. Americans were way more interested in action games in general, and so most any RPG that actually gets recognition outside of final fantasy II and III and Super Mario RPG were actually action rpgs. And even then, outside of Zelda:LTTP fandom of action rpgs was still fairly irregular. We look back at the library now and go "wow, there were some great rpgs on this system" but back then most of us didn't even know what a jrpg was.

What about Final Fantasy II & III and Chrono Trigger? They were popular and aren't action-RPGs. And if you read gaming magazines back then, they were hyped to no end. Heck, Dragon Warrior on NES was pretty popular too, and that was even before the SNES.

[Violent By Design]

Another thing that's funny, if you look at the SNES top sellers, not including JP only releases, Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy VI all made the cut. Meanwhile, if you look at PS1 best sellers, only the Final Fantasy series (including Tactics), Chrono Cross, Legend of Dragoon, and Xenogears sold over a million. Where is the huge RPG boom? In reality, it was a huge Squaresoft boom and Sony just rode on the coattails with Legend of Dragoon.

That's interesting, given the topic seems to be about domesticated sales, what % of say Secret of Mana's sales American?

To be honest, not jumping on the 3D bandwagon would have surely doomed them even sooner. They were already working with a niche audience: People who actually owned a Sega Saturn.

Well, that's a little circular. If Sega had focused more on 2D sales especially in America from the start, their fan base might not be so small to begin with.


If the Saturn had focused more on it's 2D capabilities (along with Sega of America supporting it), it def would have helped the system a lot.

I remember by 98 or 99 (2 years after I got the n64, which was my first 3D console) thinking to myself, "wait a second, where the hell did all the 2D games go?". If the Sega Saturn had just hung around for a few years with a nice steady loyal audience, it could have even grown more when people started to realize that they miss 2D games.

Aside from that, the Saturn focusing on 3D gaming was just silly since it was never supposed to be its strength from the first place. All it did really was just gimp it and it tried to be PSX Lite. If they had stuck closer to their original game plan

- The Saturn would have been cheaper to make, and would have sold at a cheaper price (Saturn was quite expensive for its time)

- Waaaaay more developers would have jumped on board. The Saturn lost a lot of 3rd party help because Sega put a ton of useless processors in the Saturn which made it hard to program for.

- Way more developers equates to way more games obviously, higher chance of drawing an audience and what not.

- With more games comes something that is insanely important when it comes to selling any product; brand name. That is what the Sega Saturn really lacked, there was no brand for the Saturn other than Sega's name in itself. People may have grown tired of it, but another 2D Sonic still would have sold units, especially if they went balls to the walls with it and made it a super expansive 2D game. There were hardly any familiar franchises to appear on the Saturn. If Saturn says "BRAND NEW STREETS OF RAGE!!! ITS SO XTREME" and showed a 3D hack and slash, that shit would have sold like hot cakes just on the title alone.


- The Saturn came out in like 94, 2D gaming was still well alive. It really wasn't in till Super Mario 64 that people started to look to the future and forget about 2D games. That's a year or two of solid production and sales for the Saturn to build a good foundation and core fan base (much bigger than what they actually did in reality, in which they released the Saturn prematurely with no games at a high price).

Sega also didn't do itself any favors trying to alienate some of its demography. If Sega had stayed more 2D oriented, it likely would have tried to market itself toward a younger audience, which is a lot better than basically ignoring them considering that video game consoles were primarily thought of children toys in the 90s by the masses.


I do agree that Sega was right giving the Saturn some 3D capability. Though I can't imagine their original plan was to literally release an all 2D console, I'm sure it had some 3D capabilities since they had plans to released Virtual fighter for it for a while and what not.

[o.pwuaioc]

Another thing that's funny, if you look at the SNES top sellers, not including JP only releases, Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy VI all made the cut. Meanwhile, if you look at PS1 best sellers, only the Final Fantasy series (including Tactics), Chrono Cross, Legend of Dragoon, and Xenogears sold over a million. Where is the huge RPG boom? In reality, it was a huge Squaresoft boom and Sony just rode on the coattails with Legend of Dragoon.

That's interesting, given the topic seems to be about domesticated sales, what % of say Secret of Mana's sales American?

I have no idea, but it got fantastic reviews in gaming magazines, including EGM and Game Informer, and NP covered it in two different issues.

[Violent By Design]

I have no idea, but it got fantastic reviews in gaming magazines, including EGM and Game Informer, and NP covered it in two different issues.

I don't think anyone is going to deny that those games have high acclaim, I mean there is a reason why they are still talked about today. But a game having high acclaim doesn't mean it sold a ton. I mean the highest acclaimed game is probably Ocarina of Time and it is far from the highest selling.

RPGs back then targeted what people would call "core" gamers, I would agree with the notion that RPGs in themselves were not really mainstream yet. To be honest, I did not know what Final Fantasy was in till FF7 and I am certainly not the only one.

I mean heck, I was a Genesis kid (as was everyone in my school) which was a system that barely had any RPGs, and nearly half of the gaming community in NA were Genesis guys. Not to mention a lot of people became fans of games in the 90s due to arcade games like Street Fighter 2. From my own personal experience, I nor most people in my school did not know what some of these games like Chrono Trigger were in till I started emulating games around 99-2000.


When I think of mainstream games in the 16 bit era, I think platformers, Beat em Ups, run and gun, fighters and to an extent shoot em ups. Light gun games were pretty popular too.

For what it is worth, I am saying all of this with out assuming Zelda is an RPG. Zelda was quite popular obviously, but regardless if it's really an RPG or not, it's still a very different type of RPG from some of the games being mentioned here.

[Retronomy]

You don't think that just because there's some good JRPGs on the system in the US that they were popular in the mainstream, do you?

Perhaps I just had an irregular experience, but I felt that RPGs then were just as popular as they are now. True their popularity boomed during the PS1 era, but aside from the ones you mentioned (and Super Mario RPG isn't an action RPG), popular too was Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger.

Another thing that's funny, if you look at the SNES top sellers, not including JP only releases, Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy VI all made the cut. Meanwhile, if you look at PS1 best sellers, only the Final Fantasy series (including Tactics), Chrono Cross, Legend of Dragoon, and Xenogears sold over a million. Where is the huge RPG boom? In reality, it was a huge Squaresoft boom and Sony just rode on the coattails with Legend of Dragoon.

Um, maybe I worded that weird, but what I was saying was other than those three games, most of the attention was on action rpgs. And no, that list isn't exhaustive, purely for example.

And yes, they were all praised because they were just damn good games. But again, this isn't because JRPGs were booming, they were good games that happened to be jrpgs. 10 or so well liked games in the genre is not a good indicator of widespread interest, especially in retrospect.

The difference with the PSX however, is that after the popularity of FF7 and subsequent square titles on the PSX, countless JRPGs were being churned out left and right by more than a few North American publishers. The list of JRPG releases, successful or not, for the PSX absolutely dwarfs the snes's list. There's especially so many obscure games that got stupidly small print runs (that would put atlas to shame) on that system. People such as Working Designs come to mind. PSX's RPG list is second only to the PS2's, as far as I'm aware.