Saturn speedrun records smashed in March, 2021

Speedruns on the Sega Saturn are not something the gaming community talks about often. Believe it or not, there are active runners busting out world records on the benchmark of engineering excellence. In fact, two of its most popular first party titles saw new records this month.

The first top time to get shattered is the precision heavy Sega Rally Championship. This arcade racing masterpiece appears to have at least a couple dozen active runners according to speedrun.com. The list shows runs across multiple ports of the game, but many are using the trusty Saturn conversion.

A runner going by the all caps name “SEGA RALLY” drove a clean 3’15”00 in championship mode on March 10th, 2021. Using the Toyota Celica in manual, you can watch the runner glide through the plush dirt curves in near-perfect fashion. Keep in mind, this is with one of the default vehicles, not the unlockable (and faster) Lancia Stratos. Three minutes and 15 seconds would be difficult to achieve with the Stratos, let alone the slower Celica.

Championship is the standard arcade mode, requiring you to race one lap on the three main tracks. At times, the runner SEGA RALLY appears to purposely bump into the fronts of opponents for little boosts. These collisions are timed in just the right way to get that extra nudge forward.

Sega Rally veterans know driving in manual allows one to shift down at turns instead of relying on the brakes. This runner does so masterfully, making the “caution hairpin right” at the Mountain track look simple. You can tell, whoever is behind the controller played this game at least a few times.

This record is the fastest official time for the Sega Saturn, and the second fastest across all platforms. The only time to beat it is a 3m 14s 890ms run on the PC port — played by the same person.

Firmly clutching a 3D Control Pad, Pochilin set the other major Saturn world record this month. He managed to beat NiGHTS into Dreams in 23 minutes flat on March 18th, 2021. This is the first person to set a world record in the All Levels category in more than two years, according to the speedrun.com list.

In each level, you fly as NiGHTS, and must bring five Ideyas to the Ideya Palace. An Ideya is earned by collecting 20 blue chips and turning them in at the Ideya Capture. Each level ends with a boss fight. This video game is difficult to explain with words, so you might be better off watching a gameplay video or trying it out yourself.

For those familiar with the game, there are points in the run where Pochilin purposefully plays as the child on foot instead of NiGHTS for faster level times. Pochilin is clearly not playing this game to get good ranks or a high score — instead going through a specific route optimized for sheer speed.

You can see the archived Twitch live chat pop off about 20 seconds before the run came to a close, seemingly realizing this is a new world record before reality set in for Pochilin. He is heard saying “no way” as the timer creeps closer to 23 minutes, beating the previous world record by a mere two seconds.

This is not the only NiGHTS runner to make waves this month. A runner who goes by the name “Fart Daily” set world records in two categories on the same day, March 20th. He set a 13:14 in the Claris levels, and a 13:26 with Elliot.

The overall speedrunning scene and Sega Saturn community both started out small, but have been quickly growing in popularity in recent years. As a longtime Saturn fan, it’s good to see the two communities come together, even if the console is not as popular to speedrunners. Many of the Saturn’s classics don’t have that many speedruns, but you will find a few well optimized games here and there. If you’re into watching the long games, Panzer Dragoon Saga and Magic Knight Rayearth have a handful of runs. Maybe someday, a Pebble Beach Golf Links speedrun community will emerge. When that day comes, please let me know.