Video games weren’t a huge part of my younger childhood. My dad didn’t like media so they weren’t allowed in the home. But when I visited my aunt in the summers she had a Saturn. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. She let me stay up as late as I wanted drinking Dr Pepper and playing Clockwork Knight and Nights. Dope system.
Growing up in the 90’s, I never met anyone who actually owned a Sega Saturn. Game Gears were pretty rare too. I was the only kid in my class with a Sega game gear. (Everyone had game boys). My parents even bought me the “gear-to-gear” adapter that lets you play multiplayer. It never got used. 😢
I knew a couple people with Saturns…usually it mean their dad was also into sega stuff. But I had a game gear and some of my friends did too. It wasn’t so uncommon, at least where I grew up
As a 90’s kid the real reason it failed was because we never saw it on display or for sale at the stores that our families would visit. I have no memory of seeing it at target, walmart, or the mall. And I was a huge sega genesis fan
I loved my Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, Saturn and Dreamcast. The day I had to buy an Xbox I died a little inside. And no I never got a 32X. I knew it was junk.
This was a really great video essay about the failure of the Sega Saturn. I mean anybody who just doesn't know anything about video games it's just going to say that it failed because it was a bad console but that's definitely not the reason. I remember seeing some commercials for the Sega Saturn back then but my memory of it is so vague and it could be because they weren't advertising that much because of how much it was failing. What stands out most is that screaming SEGA! At the time. Wow my family did have a Sega Genesis although we also had an SNES, we never had a Sega Saturn. We did have a PS1 and an N64 But even so I had nothing against a Saturn. It's just a system I hardly heard about back then
Yeah same here. I didnt find out about the Saturn until 2019. I was 16 when the Saturn released. I had a NES,SNES and a 64 growing up. I remember the Genesis and knew people who owned it. But Saturn wasn't heavily advertised in my area at least. As far as I knew I thought the Dreamcast was the successor to the Genesis😅.
Nothing went wrong most people just bought a PS1 or N64 or were still playing Genesis and Super Nintendo at the time luckily I’ve seen and have all NTSC consoles from 1980-Now was the only one in NY who had some of the more obscure consoles such as turbo Grafx Neo geo Sega cd 3do nobody had these consoles during those times most likely couldn’t afford them I live a blessed life
Uh yeah Sega made a couple of mistakes regarding the Saturn. The ill advised early release. Releasing a 32 bit add on before releasing the Saturn led to consumer confidence going down. So yeah alot went wrong
@@domls1317 The consumer confidence element really can't be overstated. I knew a lot of kids and teenagers who just didn't see the point in getting a Sega Saturn after everything Sega had done up to that point
I initially wanted and received a Saturn for my 13th bday in July 1996. I loved it. Such an impressive console at the time. However, It wasnt long after that, it was obvious that this Playstation thing actually had legs. I ended up selling it and replacing it with a PS1 before it got really bad for the Saturn. Such a shame, as it really was a great console that got caught up in alot of Sega politicing.
I know you can't directly insert Genesis carts in the expansion slot, but are there any other technical barriers preventing backwards compatibility? If somebody made an adapter for the expansion slot, could Saturn play Genesis games?
Sega made bad decisions after bad decision, everything that could go wrong at that time, did go wrong! The whole $299 announcement was also a falsehood, yes the Saturn was $100 more expensive but that price did include software, plus other things like built in memory and a cartridge port for extended Ram, Roms and Memory, so the hardware itself was surely more expensive than Sony's offering and with them being an electronics manufacturer, they made a lot of those chips etc in house, so cheaper still, its a real shame, and all those great IP's Sega forgot about too! although the writing was on the wall for Sega before the Saturn was even released, they were already on their way to financial dire straights with buyback contracts with their previous unsold hardware.
info from me, ea reverse engineering the sega genesis costed sega itself an debtload of money, especially when they got freebie deals like being able to make their carts and outsourced ports for the snes
It sounds to me like they just fucked up real bad by trying to extend the genesis's lifespan instead of doing what everyone else was and focusing all their efforts on developing their next gen hardware (and software line-up) instead.
@@hollowgonzalo4329 well yes, although not their biggest, definitely high up amongst the numerous mistakes Sega made during the transition from 16 to 32bit hardware, and as much as i think the 32X is a pretty cool bit of hardware, it had to have taken resources away from the Saturn Launch and production of software, and creating a rival for your own premium product really makes no sense whatsoever.
Playstation just came out at the right time, at the right price. The 3DO, had similar specs, but came out like 2 years earlier at a much higher price. I doubt that Sony expected the Playstation to sell as well as it did. Sega kind of stepped in dogshit with the 32x add-on for the Genesis launching around the same time as the Sega Saturn. Also, there wasn't as much synchronicity between Sega of America and Sega of Japan, which led to more issues. Also, for whatever reasons, not a lot of third-party publishers supported the Saturn as much as the Playstation.
Sega was just another coin op chip maker. they couldnt compete with sony and nintendo had to go in a completely different direction too. A company that was making 40 billion dollars a year and liked to lose 2 billion dollars selling televisions to advertise themselves was in an unvearable positi9n financially. So y sells chips and dabbles in consumer and professional electronics
