Comments on: Why the Saturn was the worst major console of all time

Don Reisinger told you what the greatest console of all time was last week and now he wants to tell you why the Sega Saturn was the worst.

[PatrickIngham]

Panzer Dragoon 1 + 2
Panzer dragoon saga
KOF 95
Clockwork Knigh 1+2
Fighting vipers
Virtua cop 1+2
Virtua Fighter 1+2
Gungriffin
Daytona USA
Sega Rally
Guardian Heroes
Die Hard Arcade
Nights
Last Bronx
Fighters megamix
Sonic R
The house of the dead
Dragon Force
Deep Fear
Saturn Bomberman
Burning rangers
Shining Force III
Wipeout
Wipeout 2097
Steep slope sliders
Quake

30 Great saturn games.
You sir are a fool, go home to mummy and play on your kiddy little Nintendo consoles

[Lfefer]

By people like you, is why we don't have great game from companies like Sega and now all console are only mediocre reashes without innovation... (and don't say me the Wii give us some hardware innovation... all these "newer hardware" already exist a lot of time before...(please read a litle at lease)... ops and who bring us decades before??? SEGA) you fool

[dj-shen]

Wow, Don Reisinger knows nothing about video gaming. The saturn is regarded by Hardcore gamers as one of the greatest and underated sytems of all time. The west got a raw deal with most games never leaving japan. The system is held in high regard by the shmup community especially as some of the best shooters were ported to the saturn as well as recieving support from capcom. Yeah the saturn wasn't great at 3D ( although titles such as PD saga prove it could match PS1 in the right programmers hands). The totally nerdish obsession with 3D has destroyed videogaming to a certain extent , although there will always be those who aren't sheep willing to play great games regardless of their graphics.

30 titles?

soukyougurentai
radiant silvergun
kingdom grannprix
metal slug
Streetfighter alpha 3
marvel v's streetfighter
Xmen v's streetfighter
twinkle star sprites
layer section
dodonpachi
donpachi
sexy parodius
strikers 1945
strikers1945 II
blast wind
Batlle garegga
thunderforce 5
darius gaiden
kyukyoko tiger II
cotton 2
Batsugun
gunbird
panzer dragoon
panzerdragoon zwei
panzerdragoon saga
sengoku blaede
the game paradise
virtua cop
virtua cop 2
sega rally

Ah well,over thirty and I hadn't even got started it just got boring listing all the great saturn games.

Don, do yourself a favour and play some great videogames before you start spouting rubbish so the world can see what a misinformed idiot you are.

Best 3 consoles of all time in no order cause they are all great.

Snk NeoGeo
Sega Saturn
PC engine

The fact you chose SNES as the best console of all time proves what a mainstream sheep you are in terms of gaming. This blog is linked to loads of game sites worldwide. We are laughing at you Don, and I mean bricking it.

Do yourself a favour and give up your "walter mitty" existence as a wannabe journo, let people who actually know something about gaming get on with it! After all as someone states the history of the saturn is already known to "real" gamers the world over and we think it is amazing, still!!!!!!!

segasaturn.co.uk rules..........

[Geewiz]

This dude pretty much copied half his article from wikipedia. Look up "Sega Saturn" and check under the "North America" heading and you'll see what I mean.

[boballstead]

when i first got my saturn it was 1997 and it included 8 other games all for the price of 80 dollars. I enjoyed the games for awhile, especially nights, but then I shelved it. When my family finally got the internet I was shocked by how many games were "available" for the saturn. games that I wish I had back in the day. much better than most of my playstation games.
I want to poop on Don Reislinger.

My list of games I love, thanks to a high speed connect-
Panzer saga
In the hunt
Radiant Silvergun
Street fighter collection, alpha 2
mr bones
nights, (get Christmas!)
Guardian Heroes
Strikers 1945 2
cotton boommerang
3 dirty dwarfs
burning rangers
x men fighters
sega rally
panzer series
dracula x- Castlevania

[cloudrat7]

Wow, you got most of your facts wrong, why would you outright pick the Sega Saturn out of all the other consoles that failed miserably worse? I doubt that you actually even played a sega saturn. Every person i know who owned a saturn wonders in disbelief why it failed which such great and addicting games. This is not the worst system, it was just mismanaged. I own a sega saturn with over 200 games and i still play it over ps3 and xbox 360. as for 30 titles? ha ha. just add all the other posted lists and it'll mark 100. Every true gamer knows Sega saturn is an underdog. maybe you should've googled some saturn related reviews and articles before putting your 2 cents in.

Keep playing your snes, which is probably the only system you ever played.

[MrWesker]

Sega Saturn as the worst major console of all time. Yeah right, and I'm definitely Chuck Norris.

You don't even know what you are talking about. I can count more than 10 consoles featuring inferior catalogue than the Sega Saturn. You are totally forgotting its Japanese success, in fact. And in global terms, the system managed to have a wider catalogue than a console of the same generation like the N64 (even if this was more popular in USA).

You are totally wrong with this statement. And it seems I'm not the only way thinking this way.

[SpringheelMac]

No, the WORST game system of all time was the Magnavox ODYSSEY! No matter what game you played, the graphics were the same! You were a blocky guy that maneuvered around blocky walls and shot dots at things. It was the most atrocious game system ever. Oops, I guess I dated myself. Yep, I've played them all, and the Saturn was a friggin' Xbox360 compared to the Odyssey. Ok, so it was the FIRST major game system, but it was still a game system (Pong and single game units don't count).

[mrkotfw]

I signed up just to comment on this article. What a terrible, terrible article! Don Reisinger, you are very very ill informed. You have done little no research; your facts do not extend outside the U.S. market, and on top of that, your argument is very weak. While the Saturn, in numbers did not win over the American market, it certainly had an extremely strong hold on the Japanese market. The Japanese market were receiving hit after hit nonstop while on the American side, received **** games.

The next time you write an article, please write a better one.

[SegaIsMe]

Who is this idiot? The Saturn was a great system and still stupidly difficult to emulate and therefore well worth owning. Its back catalogue speaks for itself. Oh and while we're on the subject of consoles that never lived up to expectations, try the Nintendo 64. Expensive, mediocre games, with the exception of a couple of choice titles (Zelda being an obvious one). Many people act like the 64 was the the second coming of Christ, yet what did it give us outside of Zelda?... Perfect Dark? GoldenEye? Two dated shooters with horrific graphical and framerate problems that I didn't even enjoy at the time. Super Mario 64? Inconsistent, small, with the most tedious water stage this side of Ecco: Defender of the Future... Smash Bros.? Mundane, repetitive fighter,,, Donkey Kong 64? Banjo? very ordinary platformers.Still, it didn't stop Nintendo from making us wait a full year for each one of these "gems" and shell out £50 for the priviledge of playing their 256 megabit cartridges

[Old-Wizard]

I put Saturn #4 on my Top 5 Worst Consoles ever list:

http://old-wizard.com/?p=470

4. Sega Saturn

The Sega Saturn was Sega?s first serious entry into the 32 bit market. It did not last long though in the market as the Saturn was yet another failure in Sega?s repertoire. The Sega Saturn first off was always more expensive than other systems in the 32 bit era which were all better. Beyond the exorbitant price point of the Saturn, there were no memorable games. The Saturn launched many arcade titles like the Street Fighter Series which never can claim greatness for a video game system. Beyond these arcade replicas though, the original games were easily forgettable further establishing Sega as the company who didn?t know how to create good games. One had to rely on sub-par originals like Shining Force 3 and Dragon Force to attain any sense of originality in the Saturn system. Other games like ?Shining the Holy Ark? and ?Magic Knight Rayearth? were conspicuous reasons for Saturn?s and Sega?s demise. The games for the Saturn held expensive price points just like the system itself creating a low market for any of the Saturn?s games. That Saturn had to compete with the likes of Playstation 1 was daunting considering that Playstation was 10X the system of the Saturn and was less expensive. Saturn was obviously demolished by the Playstation 1 which was a system which created memorable games at every release. The combination of below average games, lack of originality, expense, and being regarded side by side with the Playstation led to the Saturn?s doom. Once again (as we will see with the rest of the article), Sega would prove that it could not compete with the greater systems in each class.

[DariusBlackthorne]

Read the previous comments. People seem to remember quite a few titles for the Saturn in a positive light. The Saturn was an importer's wet dream. Furthermore, the Saturn's controller was the best 2d controller to hit the market. You also forgot about NiGHTS: Into Dreams, Burning Rangers and the Panzer Dragoon series. While I'm at it, I reccomend that you actually get a Saturn, hook up your PS1 and compare the following games: Mega Man X4, Mega Man 8, Quake, Resident Evil and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. After that, I suggest you reconsider your position.

[BuckoA51]

This article annoys me on two levels. Firstly, having bought a second-hand Saturn a few years back I can safely say there are more than 30 good games on the system. In fact the Saturn version of Bomberman is to this day the finest version on any console or computer. Every year I hold a Bomberman Tournament for friends and family using my Sega Saturn, its fantastic! :)

Radiant Silvergun and Nights are still highly enjoyable too, but I won't waste time listing all the good games on the system as others have already done that.

Secondly, I find it annoying that such utterly poor, lazy journalism continues to exist on the internet, even on major sites like cnet. Mr Reisinger must have put all of five minutes research into this article, which fails to mention such things as the consoles relative sucess in Japan and as others have pointed out even gets key facts and dates wrong. Shame on you, if you want to try and justify calling the Saturn the worst console of all time, you could have mentioned the systems esoteric architecture or its weak 3D performance compared to the Playstation and N64 but no, that would actually require some research. Instead you mention Segas poor marketing, which would make the the worst marketed console of all time, not the worst console of all time.

A stunningly bad article weather you like the Saturn or not.

[DariusBlackthorne]

Looking at the likes of NiGHTS, it's kinda hard to say the Saturn sucked at 3D. NiGHTS was easily the best looking 3D game of the time.

At the same time, the Saturn is a pain to program for...

[J-byrd]

I can't say anything that the good people before me haven't already said. I am simply offended that someone can say such a thing about the Sega Saturn. It certainly pays to at least RESEARCH before you decide to write about something. Way to go.

[Tokimemofan]

Sega Saturn the worst? I have 2 of them! Look, as someone who plays Japanese style RPGs, and ren'ai games, the Xbox comes to mind as the "Worst" as the only game I even want I already have for 2 other game systems. That said I rate it "Worst" because it is the only "Major Console" that lacks any of the games I like no more no less. And no I never owned an Xbox because I wouldn't have any games to play on it. Alternatively I could pick any Pre 1984 console because such games didn't exist until those systems were a dying breed. My point is that this whole idea of "Worst Console" is too subjective. For example had the NES trial marketing failed in 1985 wouldn't we regard the NES a failure? Sega tried a stunt and it failed, Nintendo succeded. This comment is particularly arrogant "After all, can anyone actually name 30 great games they played on the console?" This assumes the "Hey all you Xbots" mentality that drives me away from gaming forums. Was this even Factchecked? "Believing the console was dead in the water, Sega abandoned the Saturn far too early and by 1998, the company released its last game for the system -- one year after third-party support dried up."
Ummmmm Ooops as this is about as clear as mud I'll just throw the kitchen sink at it with a list.
Magic Knight Rayearth ------- 12/11/98 ---- Working Designs ----- Last US game for the system
Yuukyuu Gensoukyoku Hozonban Perpetual Collection ---12/04/00 --- MediaWorks Last JP game for the system
Sonic 3D: Flickie's Island 10/14/99 Sega's last game in Japan

For the record I am a platform agnostic, I own a Sega CD, Turbografx, and most semi-recent systems (about 20 systems) and have plans to get all 3 next-generation systems.

[clsmithj]

I agree with you so much on this. Too many people today try to praise Saturn like it was some forgotten great console. They don't realize that this was the system that was a over priced FU from Sega when they dropped support for the Sega Genesis.

[DariusBlackthorne]

No, Sega of America's managers were just incompetent and forgot that 2D gaming existed.

There wasn't really anything wrong with the system.

[Kajicat]

You want 30 good Saturn games? Well, let me put it this way: I own 56 Saturn games, and not one of them is bad. Go figure. AND I know there are still many more out there that I don't own. This "journalist" needs to do a tad more research before making himself look like a fool.

[charliebutters]

Don Reisinger: you wanker... I bet your just thinking "all these people are wrong" but seriously... 1 out of 43 comments agreed with you!..I mean where's the balance in that?
Do yourself a favour, you uneducated nutjob get yourself a Saturn.. play it... then after that write about it..
and in fact do that with anything u hope to write about in the future thanks,, its people like you that give internet journalists a bad name..

[gameofyou]

The Saturn is one of the most collectible systems.
If you want to see some of the great games that came out for the system, you can view these Youtube videos of 155 great games:
http://www.youtube.com/user/gameofyou1

[trevgauntlet]

This article makes no sense, and it sucks, period.