I still remember the first time I saw the Saturn, that mythical system GameFan and all the other magazines were raving about back in those 3DO and SNES/Genesis days of 1995. I was walking by a mall in Upstate NY, minding my own business with my father when I saw EB employees setting up a demo unit in their window. Since the E3 show had been taking place at the time, I naturally thought that this was just Sega's way of publicizing their unit ahead of the "Saturnday" launch of September 1995. But the employees at EB told me that they were selling them for real, and that if I wanted a Saturn I would better get one soon or they would run out. My father offered to loan me the money to buy one right there on the spot (since I was ready to graduate from College and did it with a halfway decent GPA), and in what turned out to be one of my wisest decisions in gaming history, I declined the offer and said that I would stick with my 3DO and watch the Saturn library grow before I jumped into Sega's new planet.

Why??!! A couple of years before I blew it big-time by selling my Genesis, an arcade stick and a dozen top-notch Genesis games (including a copy of the all-mighty "Phantasy Star II"!) in exchange for, of all things, an Atari Lynx and several games ("Blue Lightning", "Stun Runner", "Checkered Flag", "Batman Returns", etc.). So I wasn't ready to owe my father over $400 for an unproven system with a glitchy demo CD, a copy of "Virtua Fighter" and a control pad. And, sad to say, those fears were confirmed when the awful-looking "Daytona USA" game was released a few weeks later; I wouldn't even think of owning a next-generation system (besides my 3DO) until March of 1996, when the sight of "Sega Rally Championship", "Resident Evil" and "Virtua Fighter 2" made me open the wallet and cash a paycheck for a Saturn and a PSX.

Fast-forward three years later to May of 1998, and the winners and losers of the next-generation war have clearly emerged. The N64 (known back then as the hush-hush "Ultra 64") is kicking-ass in the US but struggling in Europe and (of all places) Japan; a glut of mediocre and expensive cartridges, the lack of good RPG's, and fighting games and a ridiculous waiting period for the really good games (from Nintendo) are this system's main drawbacks. The 3DO and the Jaguar, the cutting-edge systems of 1995, can be found (if at all) on discount bins across the country for as little as $2 for some games and $35 to $50 for brand-new systems; it is safe to say that the technology under the hood of these two pretenders didn't live up to the hype their entrance in the marketplace generated. The Virtual Boy came and went, swept under the rug by Nintendo when they realized that it was better to keep their amazing little GameBoy going for as long as it could keep giving them unbelievable profits, via either killer software (the "Pocket Monster" games in Japan) or convenient redesigns of the main unit (Pocket GameBoy in a variety of colors, the upcoming Color GameBoy, etc.). Sega's Nomad? It went, hand-and-hand with the GameGear, to where the Turbo-Grafix 16 and the Atari Lynx went: hand-held hell! The 32X? Ugh! And the undisputed winner of the console wars (PC's are excluded because anything that requires thousands of dollars in constant upgrades, via 3dfx accelerator cards and RAM, better be incredibly good to justify the cost) was Sony's PlayStation, a cheap and very fragile (ask all the people that have to play their games with the unit upside-down and a fan next to it) but powerful system that caught the fancy of third-party developers the world over which resulted in an avalanche of software that, to this date, has got to be this system's main draw: variety! You want a game with a robotic mech fighting in an out-of-this-world environment? Off the top of my head I can think of two games: "Armored Core" and "The Hive". Have the need for a game where you control the dancing/singing of cartoony characters? "Parappa the Rapper" and "Bust-a-Move" (by Enix, of "Mischief Makers" and "Dragon Quest" fame) are out there. Fishing games? Board games? War simulation games? Racing/Driving games? Fighting games? The PSX library, which is numbering in the hundreds, has a number of titles from each genre that guarantees the most exotic tastes in video gaming (mahjong game where the player is rewarded with anime porn? While of course we do have those... in Japan!) will be satisfied. The PSX has lifted Sony's corporate profits to new highs according to a story in the Business Page of the 5/9/98 edition of the N.Y.Times, and it's the dominant platform in all key gaming territories (Europe, Japan, the US). In other words, Sony kicked Sega's ass big-time and is giving Nintendo's monopoly over the console gaming industry an even bigger headache than Sega did with their 16-bit Genesis.

And what about the Saturn you ask? Well...The Saturn was rushed in its development cycle to compete with the 3D routines of the PSX, and in that process it made the learning curve of developing a Saturn game unnecessarily hard. Although the machine excels at doing 2D games (which made for some great Capcom fighting game ports, like "X-Men versus Street Fighter", and "Street Fighter Alpha 2"), the gaming world made a turn for 3D for the better, and the Saturn initially had a hard time keeping up with the times. For every "Panzer Dragoon" there were a dozen "Bug!" and "Robotica"-quality games, which failed to impress the crowds and gave credence to an already biased and negative press buzz that the Saturn wasn't going to live up to expectations. Not even the all-mighty games developed by Sega's internal teams sparkled sales to the degree that Sony's exclusives did for its PSX. Sure, "NiGHTS...Into Dreams", "Panzer Dragoon Zwei II", "VF2", "Fighting Vipers", "Sega Rally", "Virtua Cop 2", "Virtual On" and "Fighters Megamix" were oozing quality-game play, but their sales numbers paled compared to the number of units shifted by "Tekken 2", "Ridge Racer", "Resident Evil", "Wild Arms" and "WipeOut" (and, to be fair, the sales of any of these titles are nothing compared to the monster sales of N64 software). The third-party developers, with very few and noticeable exceptions (PlayMates' "Powerslave" and "Skeleton Warrioirs", ASC's "Mass Destruction", Capcom's "Resident Evil", etc.), either failed to exploit the hidden power of the Saturn or just got lazy and ported PSX code, which resulted in games that played fine but looked inferior or half-assed: Probe's "Die Hard Trilogy", all EA Sports games, Eidos' "Tomb Raider", any Acclaim game, etc. And, when things fell to the bottom of the barrel in 1997/98, Sega just happened to release one of its best line-ups in years for the Saturn, with a heavy dose of 'A' or 'B' titles ("Duke Nukem 3D", "Last Bronx", "Shining the Holy Ark", "Sonic R", "Enemy Zero", etc.) that outnumbered the crappy one's ("NHL All-Star Hockey '98", Fox's "Croc", "Sky Target", etc.). Curiously the graphics of these third-generation Saturn titles were quite uneven, with some ("Panzer Dragoon Saga") looking fantastic, while others ("House of the Dead", "Sega Touring Car Championship") looked like shit, which is a departure from the norm of most games looking better and better as the developers get used to a machine's structure (look at "Waverace 64" and "1080 Snowboarding on N64, or the evolution from "Tobal #1" to "Tobal 2" on the PSX).

On the positive side, the Saturn has established itself as a strong second in the Japanese market (second to the PSX but ahead of the N64) which is an incredible advancement over the disastrous market share of their two previous home systems, the MegaDrive and the MegaDrive CD (the Japanese names of the Genesis and the Sega CD). Sega still produces some of the world's best arcade games AND is capable or reproducing sprite-intensive 2D games, which guarantees some hot exclusives for Saturn that can't be easily replicated on competing systems ("X-Men Vs...." anyone?). And it all guarantees that Sega has learned its lessons and are now ready to apply what they learned in the school of hard-knocks to newer platforms (Katana, Dural, etc.) that are about to replace the Saturn. Sega of Japan should make sure that Bernie Stolar, who runs the Sega of America operations, does not repeat the mistakes of previous management which led to SOA being the main reason for a $300+ million loss in the previous fiscal year! Hopefully the next time Sega, its third-party developers and gamers around the world dance, it will be at unison and to one synchronized tune, instead of every party dancing to their own tune with an individual Walkman. We shall see.