The Sega Saturn met its untimely demise in equal part due to Sony’s immaculate PlayStation launch and to Sega’s own poor decisions. There’s one thing they did well, however, and that was coming up with a short-but-sweet game catalog that holds way more gems than most remember.
Tomb Raider
Sadly, few people remember that one of the most popular and influential video game series began its life on the Sega Saturn.
Yeah, even though many used to see Lara Croft as an unofficial PlayStation mascot due to how she blew up on Sony’s platform, the truth is that the original Tomb Raider was actually a brief Saturn exclusive in Europe.
Another really cool thing is that though Sega didn’t make the Saturn with 3D graphics as its main focus, the game runs just as well on the Saturn as it does on the PS1. Also, it features better colors, and, many of its effects, like the underwater distortion, look much better on the Saturn — because the PS1 version straight-up cut many of these effects.
Play it if you like: Uncharted, Soul Reaver, Dark Souls
Panzer Dragoon Saga
This article isn’t a ranking, but I’d like to point out that if it were, Panzer Dragoon Saga would easily land on #1 for me.
Saturn is a very strange planet, likely the only one in the solar system where a studio can turn an arcade-y on-rails shooter into a full-blown RPG and have it rival contemporaries. This is an RPG like you’ve never seen before, and likely never will again, as it suffered a tragically unfair fate.
Yes, Panzer Dragoon Saga got serious critical acclaim upon release, but only relative commercial success. You see, it did sell well, so well in fact that it sold out in only two days, too bad it did so because Sega only ever printed around 20,000 copies for North America. That’s because Saga only made it out to market once no one believed in the Saturn anymore.
So where’s the remake/remaster? Well, that’s another complicated matter, as details regarding the location of the game’s source code are so scarce that many have been spreading rumors that Sega has lost it altogether. I sure hope I’ll one day get to play Panzer Dragoon Saga again without having to resort to emulation or the $650 bank loan that I’ll need to buy it on eBay.
Play it if you like: Final Fantasy, Chrono Cross, Vagrant Story
Saturn Bomberman
Remember the Xbox’s Bomberman reboot? With the cover that looks so gritty it might have inspired the poster for Chris Nolan’s Oppenheimer? If you do, you probably remember it because it sucks. Interestingly enough, however, the doomed Sega Saturn is actually the home to one of the best, if not the best, Bomberman games in existence.
Saturn Bomberman picked up on everything people already liked about this series and then added more stuff and more players. Yes, multiplayer Bomberman on the Saturn was as fun as any of Nintendo’s many party games, and sadly not the kind of game that we saw on the Saturn very often.
Play it if you like: Bomberman, Mario Party, ruining friendships in style.
Darkstalkers 3
As I’ve previously pointed out, the Sega Saturn wasn’t meant to be a vehicle for 3D games. Sega made it in the attempt to build the home for the best 2D games ever made, and boy did it deliver on that front.
There are many 2D fighting games worthy of this list, such as Street Fighter Alpha 3, X-Men Children Of The Atom, and X-Men Vs Capcom, but I’d say Darkstalkers 3 either edges them out via its originality. The world and characters of Darkstalkers 3 looked beautifully weird and unique, and many miss it dearly.
As with all other games mentioned above, Darkstalkers 3 uses the Saturn’s hardware to provide an experience that’s a near-perfect reproduction of the arcade version. If you were to get a Saturn, a good old CRT monitor, and a copy of DarkStalkers 3, you’d still be in for an absolute blast of a play session.
Play it if you like: Any good arcade fighting game.
Virtua Fighter 2
Please don’t let my previous talk paint a bad picture of the Saturn’s 3D capabilities. Though Virtua Fighter 2 isn’t a pure 3D fighter — sorry, fighting game pros just wouldn’t allow me to ignore the fact that the gameplay only takes place in the two-dimensional realm — it does a great job of looking 3D.
It sure isn’t as good as Tekken 3, but it’s a damn interesting alternative, one that blends beautifully blends 2D gameplay with 3D graphics, and ties it all with unmatched animations for its time.
Play it if you like: Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter
Sega Rally Championship
One thing that Sega did right long before the PlayStation was rally games. Sure, you could say that Sega Rally Championship was no Gran Turismo, but have you ever tried the early Gran Turismo’s rally mode? Ugh, it’s rough. Sega Rally had a novel approach to Rally and that was to just make it fast and fun as hell. It worked.
Detractors might also say that it featured far less attention to detail than the Colin Mcrae Rally series, but it was way more of a blast to play. Though the graphics look severely dated nowadays, the gameplay remains more fan than that of any of its better-looking competitors of today.
Play it if you like: WRC series, Dirt series
House of the Dead
To be entirely honest, I feel like you can easily make a good case to replace House of the Dead with any other of the Saturn’s once massively popular on-rails shooters. That’s not even a diss — they were all very good — especially since they allowed us to play them without having to spend a fortune at the arcades.
Still, I think this is by far the coolest-looking one of the bunch. Also, it’s the one responsible for one of the most hilariously bad-acted sequels in the history of gaming, so there’s that.
Play it if you like: Time Crisis, Virtua Cop, Typing Of The Dead but with a gun
Radiant Silvergun
We’d be doing any Sega console a huge disservice if we were to forget the bullet-hell genre. Radiant Silvergun is one of the best (yes this is another “if not the best” situation) bullet hell games of all time, and a precursor to more well-known hits such as Ikaruga.
Once again, what makes Radiant Silvergun such a gem is a string of awesome design choices coupled with the Saturn’s ability to make it run as well and look as good as it did on arcades.
Though this is likely the most difficult game on this list and thus not for the faint of heart, it’s still a Saturn title that we wish everyone would give a chance.
Play it if you like: R-Type Delta, Ikaruga, Undertale (yes, that’s true)
Shining Force 3
Do you like Nintendo’s Fire Emblem series so much that you can’t wait for the next installment? Then perhaps consider betraying everything you stand for and trying out Shining Force 3, Sega’s answer to the FE series. Tired of RPGs whose stories bite way more than they can chew? Then Shining Force 3, a game that puts emphasis on neat gameplay mechanics and not on weaving the most unnecessarily convoluted story threads might just be what you need.
Sadly, Sega had to cut a lot of content from the Japanese version of Shining Force 3 for the Western release, but the game that we ended up getting still remains one of the best RPGs on the Saturn.
Play it if you like: Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics
Fighters Megamix
Everyone knows and loves Super Smash Bros., but it wasn’t the first series to pit 3D characters from many popular IPs against each other. That pioneering achievement belongs to Sega, the company that in ’96 decided to invite many of its AM2 characters to a fighting arena.
Sure, its gameplay isn’t as original and it doesn’t feature as many characters as Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but it features one hell of a lot more characters than the original SSB for the N64 did. Also, we’d argue that it features even more variety than any SSB game ever did since we can play as a car from the Daytona series or even the palm tree from the AM2 logo. SSB fans had to wait until 2018 to get to play as a plant, pfft.
Play it if you like: Super Smash Bros. Virtua Fighter, Fighting Vipers, Tekken
Published: Aug 9, 2023 12:00 pm