Thursday 13 December 2007

Today is Sega Saturn Day!

Why is today of all days Sega Saturn day? Because Father Krishna says so, that's why! His blog The Saturn Junkyard, has been up and running for a whole year today, and unlike this place it updates very often with great content like interviews with the creator of Radio Sega, and info all the latest remakes/ports of Saturn games to pop up in Japan a lot recently. He even has a little chat box thingy on the side of the blog, which is nice. I've drawn up a quick Segata Sanshiro in it's honor:

I still remember when I got my Saturn. I got it on my 10th Birthday in November 1996, if I remember correctly. This was probably the most Sega induced time of my life as soon after this Birthday me and some school mates went up to visit the newly opened SegaWorld (see the previous articles about that). It came from Argos and was £200 with a bunch of bundled games: Sega Rally, Manx TT Superbike, Sega Ages, Sonic Jam and Bubble Bobble Collection. I still remember soon after a mate telling me of a rumor that the Saturn could play Mega CD games, which I tried out and ended up having to get the system replaced! Doh!

Being a Sonic nut at the time (my birthday cake that year had Sonic Pogs sitting on it, for petes sake!), Sonic Jam was a dream come true: All 4 mega Drive titles, which had already given me hours upon hours of fun, all on one disc with lots of added options, modes, difficulty settings and best of all: a time attack feature. It was, and still is, the best collection of the original Sonic games ever made: far better than Mega Collection which was just a bunch of ROMs slapped on a disc.

Sega Ages also filled me with mountains of joy: finally I could play After Burner just like the cabinet they had down the theme park along the seaside at home. I didn't have any interest in the Playstation: as far as I was concerned it didn't have Sonic or any of Sega's arcade games which, living by a seafront full of arcades, were something I would alway want to blow my pocket money on, so owning them at home was just what I wanted.

This is my collection at the moment. Most of these games were bought back when the console was out, many of which were being flogged off as the Saturn was slowly fading from selves. Outside of Ebay the games are pretty hard to find now, but a few have popped up at Car Boot Sales from time to time, including Guardian Heroes, Street Fighter Collection and House of the Dead.

Oh, and make sure you check out the latest issue of Retro Gamer, it featured an article on one of the saturn's defining games NiGHTS, as well as a great article on the Official Sega Saturn magazine, all the issues I bought of which I still own and is my all time favorite game magazine.

10 comments:

NebachadnezzaR said...

Damn impressive collection you got there :D

fatherkrishna said...

Gagaman(n)! I'm touched and honoured thank you so much for this excellent post on this most noble of blogs!

How do you fancy being the next subject in the "Sega Heroes" interviews???

Animated AF said...

I haven't excatly been doing Sega Memories for long, but sure, why not?

Caleb said...

!

You got a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga!!!!

That games is VERY hard to find!

I am pleased beyond belief that I too found a copy of guardian Heros. What a kick ass game!

I really need to get new collection pics up now...

Animated AF said...

It's just the first disc of it, I'm afraid. The official Saturn magazine was generous enough to give it away with one of the issues. Just one more reason why it was the greatest gaming mag ever.

Smindas said...

I have that issue of SSM, despite never even having a Saturn (I jumped from MegaDrive to Dreamcast). I still remember being in awe at Sonic R's amazing graphics... they have not aged well.

Animated AF said...

I don't know, it was one of the better looking Saturn games. Hell, it was *almost* N64 quality.

Unknown said...

Poor Saturn, if only it wasn't a bloated black brick run by a watch battery. However, I do have to thank my father for getting me a Playstation instead of a N64 or Saturn back then.
I do have fond memories of the Saturn from when I owned it for about 6 months. Had I found a copy of Burning Rangers, I'd probably still have said Saturn.
-ila

Anonymous said...

Is it possible for you to scan for me Nights and Virtua Cop covers? I don't have mine. :(

I search in the web and i couldn't find them.

I'll have to show you my Saturn collection (is a bit bigger that yours)

A hug

James said...

This is probably the most under rated console ever and I was so annoyed when it flopped. For me it had the best version of Theme Park there was out there and really could have taken the PS1 for a fight, if only the third party software was developed and pushed better :(