The bombardment of Dreamcast coverage on the net is a great thing to see. Sega's rigorous fight back into the videogame industry has seemingly paid off with a plethora of DC coverage in magazines, television, and the Internet, spreading the word on what is certain to be THE gaming event of 1999.

After witnessing the Japanese launch of the DC over the net, I couldn't help but remember reading about the Japanese launch of the Saturn in my Next Generation magazine 4 years ago. At the time, the Sega Saturn was sure to beat out newcomer Sony in the videogame wars. After all, Sega produced the best arcade titles anywhere and the Sega brand-name was a force to be reckoned with. "Sega makes the world's best coin-ops and offers a way to bring them home. The best thing Sega has is the confidence in the brand (Dave Perry; Next Generation vol. 2)."

It's a little funny reading this quote now that we have been through a period where there was a huge lack of confidence in the Sega brand, as well as watching the Saturn fail against the mighty Playstation. In spite of all this hindsight, the Saturn did sell a remarkable 200,000 units on it's first day of launch, certainly overshadowing the PSX with AM2's mighty Virtua Fighter translation. But Sony never gave up. Namco's superb Ridge Racer translation displayed the technical superiority of the PSX when it was matched up against Saturn's Daytona USA, which was release a couple of months after RR.

We all know what happened after. Square announced that they would produce the next Final Fantasy for the system which they thought would be the most capable of handling it. The epic, or course, went to the PSX, and the rest is gaming history. The PSX started selling many more Playstations after FFVII's release and the Saturn began to lose it's third party support.

However, a number of spectacular Saturn games have made an irreplaceable mark in videogame history. Panzer Dragoon, Clockwork Knight, Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Cop, Sega Rally, Fighters Megamix, Dead or Alive, Shining Force 3, Grandia, Nights, and Burning Rangers were only some of the games that gamers could not have played without the Saturn. Personally, I'll never forget taking my import Saturn out of the box and watching the intro to Virtua Fighter. My jaw dropped when I saw those blocky polygons kick and punch each other till they died at the end of the round. Or when I played Panzer Dragoon and felt like I was flying over oceans and into caverns on a dragon. I know it sounds cheesy, but the Saturn had some great software that let everyone know the next generation had arrived. Unfortunately there wasn't enough of this originality for the Saturn to succeed.