The Sega Saturn Hardware 

A new interview with Saturn hardware designer Hideki Sato goes into great detail about Saturn's time line and complexity. It sheds light on how and why Saturn ended up the way it did. It does render some details in this video in need of revision, while supporting others fully. I recommend you read it. On the MC68020 and why the SH was chosen: Quote Originally Posted by Hideki Sato, part 3.2 pages 10-11 Motorola had the MC68020, the successor to the MC68000. It was a strong-selling 32-bit CISC microprocessor. Sega of America, who were developing their own 16-bit Genesis games, wanted to use the MC68020 in the Saturn. That would have allowed for essentially updated versions of the current types of game software, and the development libraries could easily be done. They wanted to go for forward compatibility. However, from my viewpoint, this lacked the necessary “jump” in technology. I thought that it might be okay to move forward with such a continuation of the current technology, but all the same, I felt we needed to move in a new direction, to change things up. Compared with the 16-bit generation, we needed to move away from mask ROMs, from solid-state memory, which was too expensive. CD-ROMs had become cheap, but the technology was no longer new. The PC Engine had already been using it for years. We needed something more. At the time, Hitachi happened to be developing the SH processor. After seeing the specs, I was impressed by its high performance. I decided to go with it, even though it was still in development (this was a very rash move for me). The SH is a RISC (Reduced Instruction) CPU, and at that time, NEC was also developing one, the V Series. I felt that Hitachi’s SH was good, so I went with that. On how the Saturn design changed in response to the PlayStation: Quote Originally Posted by Hideki Sato, part 3.2 pages 13-14 The Saturn actually had just one CPU at the beginning. Then Sony appeared with its polygon-based PlayStation. When I was first designing the Saturn architecture, I was focused on sprite graphics, which had been the primary graphics up to that point. So I decided to go with polygons (due to the PlayStation). However, there weren’t any people at Sega who knew how to develop such software. Of course, we had Yu Suzuki in the arcade department, but I couldn’t just drag him off to the console department. He was developing titles like Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing. The expertise of all of the developers we had was in sprite graphics, so there seemed no choice but to go with sprites. Nevertheless, I knew we needed polygons. Using various tricks, adding a geometry engine and so on, I changed everything. In the end, just like the PlayStation, we had pseudo-polygons built on a sprite base. I felt no choice but to design a sprite-based architecture. Having said that, after some significant progress, pseudo-polygons did represent a “jump” in graphics in a certain way. There was a distinction of sorts. The processor was very powerful and could support 4,000, even 5,000 sprites, and I thought we could make the graphics work using a sprite engine after adding the Yamaha and such. It seemed like we were finally nearing completion. Then, the final PlayStation was revealed. It supported 300,000 polygons. Well, that was ultimately a bunch of lies, but… When you compared the Saturn with the PlayStation, we were completely missing something. The response that I chose was to add another SH processor, so we ended up with two SH-2s. By chance, the SH supported two-way cascaded data transfer. You could add a second processor and connect them in a cascade and get multi-CPU performance. When you get to about the PlayStation 3, multi-processors had become common, but the Saturn was the first home console to use multi-processors. So I added a second SH-2, but I felt that the ‘impact’ was still weak. Well, the SH-2 is a 32-bit processor, and we had two of them, so we could call the Saturn a 64-bit machine. It’s a dirty way of getting to 64-bits. But we revealed the CD-ROM-based Saturn using 64-bits as our sales point. On the difficulties of developing for the Saturn: Quote Originally Posted by Hideki Sato, part 3.2 pages 14-15 At the beginning, there was no compiler. You had to program the SH in assembly. The people at Sega were good at assembly. That’s all they had been using on the MC68000. C, C++ were too slow to use. However, third parties struggled with programming the SH in assembly, and there were two of the CPUs along with a CD-ROM. We asked third parties to make games, but without development libraries, they couldn’t do anything. They’d take a week and barely even be able to get something to display on the screen, let alone be able to start making a game. Our third party support was awful. The hardware was incredibly difficult to use. However, if you worked with it a bit, you could get a ton of sprites, with scaling and rotation and so on. On Sony’s support for third party developers: Quote Originally Posted by Hideki Sato, part 3.2 page 16 Sony was good at supporting PlayStation third party developers. Why? Sony didn’t have a development department. They didn’t have a software department. What do you do if you don’t have a software department? You ask somebody else. Sony went to Namco, to Taito, to Konami. They said that they were putting together a game console called the PlayStation, and they invited these companies to develop games for it. Sony exerted all its efforts on supporting third parties and enhancing their collective powers. Sony CEO Norio Ohga himself went to talk to the third parties. From their perspective, it was a big deal for Ohga to come and ask this. From Namco’s viewpoint, if they put out Tekken, they could compete evenly with Sega’s Virtua Fighter. The number one game in the PlayStation world was Ridge Racer. And Konami being Konami, they had their typical games. It’s obvious that the PlayStation had the better games. No matter how much effort Sega put in on its own, it wasn’t going to be enough. So Sony went to Namco, Taito, Konami, and others, and they said here are the specs, and don’t worry, there aren’t two CPUs or anything difficult like that. They said the PlayStation will be easy to develop for, and here are all the development libraries we’ll put out. Sony had a very easy-to-use SKD (Software Development Kit). And Ohga himself was making these offers, and the third parties were told they could port all of their own titles, and so on. With all of that, it certainly seemed like the PlayStation was better. On Sega’s losses associated with the Saturn and their response: Quote Originally Posted by Hideki Sato, part 3.2 pages 16-17 So we released the Saturn in 1994, and as I said before, there were two SH-2s. In addition, memory was expensive at this time, and we were using a large amount, so costs were very high. For each Saturn sold, we lost about 10,000 yen ($100). That’s how the hardware business works. But the goal was to recoup the losses from software royalties. If there are lots of third parties, lots of games sold, and we get 2,000 yen for each, it’s possible. However, if software sales are weak, and for each console sold, we’re ultimately losing 5,000 - 6,000 yen, what’s going to happen from the business perspective? We’re going to stop selling consoles. This later became a huge problem.

Panzer Dragoon Zwei was a perfect example of what the Saturn was capable of. Everything people claimed the Saturn couldn't do, was showcased in plain view from the moment the title screen pops up. Amazing soundtrack, fluid game play with so much detail. I'll never give up my Saturn. 😁

THANK YOU! Misinformation has plagued Saturn discussion for far too long! Also, here's a fun thing to note: Virtua Fighter 2 is so high resolution that on real CRTs and even in this video, the dithered meshes are almost indistinguishable from true transparency.

I miss the Saturn. The games were ground breaking and fun to play!

I appreciate your Sega obsession and have subscribed.

Super video!! Very informative and well put together!! Did a great job separating fact from fiction! I NEVER regretted getting a Saturn and once I found the glory of import gaming on the machine, it quickly become one of my favorite and beloved consoles!!

This'll never happen but I sincerely hope that, one day, we'll get a Saturn Collection from Sega. There were a ton of great exclusives on Saturn that you just couldn't find anywhere else and for those to go mostly unplayed is a travesty.

Dispelled a lot of misinformation which I'd believed myself - great to have such a refreshing perspective.

This is the best video on the Saturn I’ve seen. You continue to impress me and make interesting and well done videos. You have become one of my favorite channels. I binge watch your videos on tour all the time and love that someone else loves the Saturn as much as I do! This video surprised even me with a few points. Keep up the great work 💪🏾

Great video! I love these informative videos about one of my favorite systems hardware. Complex, yet very capable was the Saturn.

This is the kind of video the retrogaming community has been needing for a long time. Retrospectively, I think that the arcade scene had globally started its decline during the mid-90's for many reasons eventhough this was not noticeable everywhere at the time. It probably was not in Japan. SEGA suffered a lot from being an arcade-focused company, in the long run.

to this day I love how well spoken you are lol. I wish I would have followed the saturn as I was growing up since I went with the PS1, and mind you I still don't regret it. Glad I at least realized what the saturn's power is today and getting to show my friend's the games for it still surprise em is what makes it even better.

Thanks for making this video, one of my favourite consoles still have mine set up in my front room

One of the few RU-vidrs I watch EVERY video ALL the way thru EVERY TIME. Thank you for doing these! Your content is unrivaled!!

One of the best videos regarding Saturn' hardware that I've ever seen. Good job, man! Keep up with the outstanding work.

Wow! This video is excellent, dude! Bringing in the facts and researched information is exactly what we need more of on the internet! Im amazed at how much rumours, misconceptions and common lack of knowledge can become "fact" online 😮. Even I never questioned the "3D as an after thought" rumour before watching this video as that is probably one of the most common misconceptions surrounding the Sega Saturn. I feel enlightened! Well done! Keep up the high quality, SLX! 🖒🖒

So glad to see u making videos again you and customgrow420 returned and I couldn't be happier

Not everyday I learn something new about Saturn. Great video!!!

Hey man,glad to see you back,when your channel went down I was disappointed because I was getting into the Saturn very hard,and was enjoying your videos

Excellent informative video. I love that mystique of the SS. An over engineered complex beast that just needed to be harnessed.

Only had my first Saturn about a year. (thanks to this and the old channel!) games are great. Love that directional pad on the controllers. Great info as always. This is still the best channel for the Saturn on RU-vid period

Awesome video. To this day, the Sega Saturn is my favorite system, not to mention it had possibly the best controller ever made. I got it on launch and never regretted a second. I still have the thing plugged up to my old tube TV and play it every now and again. I just wish it was more popular in the US, so it could have had more releases. I am glad it at least did well in Japan.

I think what many people don't realise is that the SH2 chips were specifically designed to work as a pair in Master / Slave mode. They even have to have a specific pin tied high or low, to tell them which mode to run in, so it definitely wasn't an afterthought. The exact same chips were used in the 32x, and while they have Sega-specific part numbers, they really are just off-the-shelf Hitachi SH2 CPUs. (I just found a source for the chips, and received a pair of them a few days ago.) The same chips have been used in countless other devices before and since the Saturn, such as printers, scanners, routers / switches, telecoms, white goods etc., so there's nothing custom about the CPUs specifically. Another interesting thing is that the 32x only uses 16-bits of the 32-bit data bus on the SH2s, while the Saturn uses the full 32-bit bus width. It's probably not a huge deal in reality, and only one SH2 can access the bus at a time anyway, but it does make me wonder what improvement it could have made to the 32x. The Saturn (and PlayStation) kind of passed me by in the 90s, but I really appreciate both consoles now. Well done on the vid. Always good to see well-researched retro vids with some good hardware details. :)

Such a fantastic video! I love the Saturn and will always miss Sega of old. Quality content as always.

Great video! The Sega Saturn was a good machine. I still own it today and it play every now and then.

What a video!!!! Wow!! Thank you so much!!!!! Still play my saturn to this day! Love it!

Awesome video man. The Saturn has a profound mystique.

I had Duke Nukem 3D on Saturn and it was truly impressive. Showed that the Saturn had lots of potential and power that was only used by a few talented developers.

Great video. outstanding. Thank you for explaining that the Saturn wasn't the literal last second thrown together processor frankensaturn. As you said, Sega knew what they were doing having experience with complex multi-processor arcade machines. You said it best, it was The Saturn's curse but largest blessing at the same time. Sega internally had tons of experience, tools, personnel and confidence to Exploit the Saturn's power. unfortunately third parties struggled thereby taking easier routes. people today see that meshing is ugly but back then in standard resolution and on crt tv's, meshing wasn't as apparent. but with todays hi res tv's, it becomes more noticeable. There is a video on RU-vid that shows that Sega was working on a VF3 for the Saturn. it would have pushed the system pretty hard but would have been mindblowing. I wish Shenmu would have come out on it as well. I wonder if the ps1 could have done Shenmu as well as the Saturn? The Saturn is my favorite Retro system, perhaps of all time. its mystique, power and under utilzed features make it a very interesting system to study and enjoy.

This is one of the best videos on the internet about the Saturn.

Outstanding video! I'm so happy to see a video on Sega history based on facts and not rumors and revisionism, and even more happy that the name "Tom Kalinske" wasn't mentioned once! That one book from him has spawned so many half-truths; it's fantastic to see you simply representing the machine as it is without embellishment. Kudos!

I learned a lot! Really like this style of video, and I hope I find more of them not only in your backlog, but on my subscribed feed when you release more videos in the future!

Saturn is one tough console even after all these years stored in a outside shed mine still works.

A very informative video. Many thanks for the tech info too. I have finally acquired a Model 2 Saturn with ten games for a great price. It need a refurb and a good clean though. Im looking forward to Playing Resident Evil, Tomb Raider and Powerslave/Exhumed again.

What a fantastic video. I've been waiting for a decent video on saturn hardware for a while now as quite often I find people generalise. Sounds like you know your stuff. Thanks for sharing this.

I still own a Saturn and have played quite a few of the games. One of my favorite systems of all time. A cool era for gaming.

Fantastic video! Greatly appreciate all the in-depth information. Would love to hear your take on the Dreamcast. Keep it up man, your content keeps getting even better

You have to remember that assembly language was more or less the norm for most games in the 80s and early 90s, it was often the only way to get otherwise very primitive machines to produce decent results . Problem was that by the mid 90s, games were getting bigger and thus assembly language was very time consuming. That said to my knowledge, many late PS1 games were also coded in assembly in order to get every bit of power out of the system. The VDP1 also was more or less a sprite pusher, and its rendering method was quite wasteful. The main advantage the PS had was really its rendering speed, it was blazing fast at rendering polygons at the time (more than any home system at the time, not as good as model 2 or Nacmo 22 though). Most 3rd party games utilized this and built games around the PS. As you said , a good Saturn game needed to make good use of VDP2 to save VDP1's more limited capability, and of course most devs never bothered much . Alot of devs also went with Sony for the simple reason that they wanted to get away from Nintendo and Sega, both companies had develped a reputation for being a bit douchy with odd business practices (Nintendo more so) , and Sony were the first to pull things off well, in that they produced a capable machine that was easy to work with , and didn't cost a fortune (main flaws of the Jaguar and 3DO), they also had great marketing (something NEC couldnt do well with the TG16)

It was and is a awesome piece of hardware,, still love it and play it all the time. Love your videos brother!! Good to see that I’m not alone in my obsession with anything sega!!!! Keep em coming

Awesome video. The truth needs to be heard more often with regards to the saturns development. It's really frustrating to see saturn hardware videos over and over again putting out misinformation about the machine being intended as a 2d powerhouse and its 3d almost an afterthought, or just put there for good measure. Even without the VDP2 in the picture the saturn still easily outguns 3do and jaguar by a good margin. Take the Playstation out from history and people would be looking back at the saturn as having 3d ahead of its time for a console. Relative to what the N64 brought to the table almost two years later with its own 3d shortcomings, the saturn could still hold its own, and in all honesty had the playstation never come to fruition, sega and nintendo would have had a very tight battle for that generations console king.

Oh wow! Sega Lord X is back! Welcome back dude

Man, so many new informations about the Saturn. To think that everything i ever geard about this console was actually wrong... thanks for making this video, the Sega Saturn was my very first console. Also, thanks for showing so many cool games and they names.

MAN, BEST VIDEO ON SATURN!PERIOD! thank you!

Very informative video. One thing people forget is that by 97 Sega had created tools which made programming for the system much easier, but Sega had already done a lot to damage themselves by that point.

Wow! Didn´t know you were back on youtube. That is great since you had one of my favourite channels.

I loved my Saturn.. I was like a treasure hunt for games at time of release... My brother was playing Final Fantasy 7, Tekken, and Einhander... And I was playing Panzer Dragoon Saga, Radiant Silvergun, and the great Sega and Capcom fighting games... I also, have many great memories of playing Decathlete and Winter Heat... Good times...

Your still the professor to me Sega Lord. Love your Videos.

thank you as a fellow Saturn owner. Even back then, when people say it cant do transparencies, I'd show then Cupido's stage in Toshinden, the entire arena is transparent polygons.

Great video. The best history lesson I've ever seen. I loved that console and had a huge library.

This is an excellent video and cleared many myths surrounding it's hardware.

Great video! I love the Saturn. I've always felt there was something special about the Saturn, but I could never put my finger on what exactly about the Saturn made it unique. I don't know if its just nostalgia or there is actually something special. This video helps me to see that it's not only a feeling, its not just nostalgia.

The Saturn is one of those machines that I never could get myself to purchase. I’ve had multiple opportunities to get small collections over the years. I am not much of a 2d fighter game person and that was what most of those collections had. There are times when I watch videos like the ones you produce and I think, ‘Man, I shoulda got a Saturn’. Great vid.

I personnaly love the Sega Saturn's esthetics in terms of graphics. It looks more to me like an artistic movement than software limitation issues. These graphics are sybolic of their time. I know it's juste me, but when I see these graphics, I see an epoch of promises, the next step of 3D rendering and a realization of what would come in the future and of all the progress that still had to be made. It was magical in a way. Modern days of gaming are less enchanting than what we had back in the 32/64 bits era. Future looked better in the past.

Awesome video man, super informative

Absolutely on point with this video. I was never more disappointed with the execution and reception of a system than I was with the Sega Saturn. Even to this day I love this system and wish it had more time to mature. Dreamcast was great to but I was more prepared for that ones failure. Saturn was totally unexpected.

Wow, this was an eye opener 🤔 Been fooled my whole youth, yet I knew it deep inside while enjoying all the best releases.

Very informative. Love the Saturn. It's worth getting one even today since I hear it's so difficult to emulate properly. It's over complexities make it special and harder to replicate

Top video! Very well documented and explained

Great video. I absolutely love the Saturn it is one of my favorite systems.

Thank you for the great video! I heard a lot of stuff, that you wouldn't hear on the mainstream part if the internet.

Didn't know you were back but I'm glad you are

Another excellent and informative video. Thanks for this👍

This was a very enjoyable and well-made video. I just recently found the channel and have been in a Saturn mood ever since. I've been playing mostly Daytona USA and Virtual On in recent days. Daytona USA may not be a brilliant port technically, but it's still great fun. I think it looks good in many ways. Virtual On still looks great after all these years. That game was always one of my favorites on the system, and I bought it without knowing anything about it. I picked up a Saturn a few months after launch in 1995, so I've always been a fan. I really loved that system when it was current. I had no regrets going with Sega that generation, even if the games dried up too soon. I bought plenty of imports, but that wasn't going to help with the likes of Panzer Dragoon Saga, which I searched for in 1998, but never found. Unfortunately for me, both Saturns that I have are acting up, so I think I will turn to emulation to keep this platform alive going forward. I never did find much solid info on the Saturn's development years ago when I looked around a bit. I always suspected that the SH-2 pair was always intended and that VDP2 was the later addition. It would make sense to take the load off VDP1 by having a chip that specialized in background rendering. My only question was how long would a custom VDP2 take to include from start to finish. If I recall correctly, I think Virtua Fighter 1 didn't use VDP2 for floors. That also points to VDP2 being added later in development. I always doubted the story of the second SH-2 being a late addition to the Saturn because the 32X had dual SH-2 chips as well. In the end, I think the biggest problem with the Saturn's design was the cost of all the components. Sony forced Sega into a price war they couldn't afford.

Thank You For Making This Video.

Excellent video, an interesting topic well explained

Long live the Saturn. I never had one growing up but always wanted one. Now, as an adult i have 3 of them and am now enjoying the library especially the Jp games.

Still love my Sega Saturn, keep up the good work!

One of my favorite consoles ever and turns out to be the very first console I ever got as a kid. I don't have the same Saturn I got as a kid I've got a model 2 now that I bought at this used game store but I really enjoy firing that thing up and enjoying some classic Saturn gaming.

Very good analysis. Clears up a lot of misconceptions about the hardware and gives great insight into how Sega anticipated it working. If the PlayStation had not been so damn easy to develop for in C, we no doubt would have received a lot more capable titles for the Saturn.

Glad to see you're back.

Awesome video so informative

Great to see your back, keep up the great work and i hope you get round to checking the sega collections just released for the current gen consoles and what you think of them.

I love the new intro. Awesome video!

Superb video! Nice to see a Saturn document that's not just ripped from Wikipedia.

The Saturn era was one of my favourite times in gaming. I adored my Saturn...

Oh, poor Saturn, you died too soon 😭 I can't help but wonder how things would have gone if the Saturn was under better management. Like, what if Grandia and the Lunar remakes had still been Saturn exclusives during the post-FF7 RPG boom? What if the west got that port of Symphony of the Night? I love my PlayStation, but it breaks my heart that the Saturn's reputation is built on misinformation and falsehoods

An amazing MACHINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Y’all take a shot of your fav liquor every-time Lord X speaks the word MACHINE! Great retrospective episode Lordy X!

this is awesome !!!!!!! proud to be a saturn owner in summer 1997 even though I was late!~!!!

I LOVED my Saturn back in the 90s, and I LOVE my Saturn now. Nice system that got a bad rap. GameCube and Saturn are my favorite systems to collect for.

Extremely informative! Thumbs up and subbed :)

That was the best Saturn hardware video I ever seen

That's a very interesting video. I didn't realise any of that stuff was going on. Thanks for making it :) But "best home version of duke nukem 3d" my eye!

Welcome BACK!!!

i love my Saturn. i wish i had an original copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga.

Holy fuck, you're back. Loved your video's a year or so back , i think i watched the lot. I recommended you to a few people only to find you'd vanished. Damn i've got some bingeing to do.

That was a great lesson in Saturn history. Honestly, I didn't know much about what happened during that era. I bought the Playstation at launch after gaming on a SNES since it's launch and never went the SEGA route. I remember the Saturn, of course, but most of my friends had a SNES and were moving to the Sony platform. Before my PS1 purchase, I looked at some screenshots on the back of the retail boxes on both the PS1 and the Saturn. In my eyes, the PS1's screenshot box art looked better. I believe now that I've watched this documentary on the Saturn system, I was looking at third party games that didn't utilize the second processor for transparencies, and saw dithering. After seeing a couple games like that, my decision was final.

Thanks amazing video and I've learned a lot watching it, in the end the problem was the hurry to release and poor dev tools.

that was a fantastic video, i always wanted to do a saturn episode,, but from here on ill be referring people to this!

It is amazing that Sega expected developers to easily illustrate multi cpu usage, when it was not until several years later when multi cpu use occurred on PCs and to this day there still exists many pc game engines that do not use multi cores to potential. Great video.. I remember the night and day difference between versions of games like Toshinden on PS1 vs Saturn.

I’m a hardcore af Saturn fan and home brew developer and you honestly cleared up some shit and taught me shit here. Fucking awesome dude.

Subscribed. Keep up the good work.

Great video!

A Really great video of A Great Machine.

Great video! The Saturn is so underrated.

I just bought a region free modded V Saturn on eBay today. So many memories of this system from back in the day.

I was a sega fanboy from the release of the sms to the Dreamcast often importing many games from japan for the ladder 2 great times and great memories for sure

amazing video ,,,and very well explained ,,,,plz continue

I love that batman sound at the end,one of the best soundtracks ever ;)

GREAT VID BROTHER!

Very informative.