Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus #BestOfSaturn
Shmup fans are well-catered to on the Saturn, having access to fresh titles as well as compilations of past-generation games. Enter Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus: Salamander (1987), LifeForce (the 1988…
Shmup fans are well-catered to on the Saturn, having access to fresh titles as well as compilations of past-generation games. Enter Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus: Salamander (1987), LifeForce (the 1988…
Frequently rated amongst the Saturn’s greatest titles, 1995’s SEGA Rally Championship hit the system with a mission — to show the world that the Saturn can competently handle 3D graphics….
Long-time readers may be aware that my very first foray into the original Resident Evil occurred in 2019, with no prior experience. Playing through the game as Jill Valentine, I…
Eidos’ first foray into Saturn development, 1996’s CrimeWave is a vehicular combat game viewed from an overhead perspective. The streets of Mekeo City are overrun with crime and it’s your…
Nowadays we take some types of games for granted as simple freeware or shareware, but in the Saturn’s heyday, they were full-fledged standalone releases. Aquazone could perhaps fall into this…
Every legend needs a hero… and perhaps after Craig Stadler, the next biggest Saturn sports hero is Minnesota Fats himself! Minnesota Fats Pool Legend is a 1995 Data East release…
An action-adventure with a good dose of Metroidvania sensibilities and a touch of RPG trappings, the Story of Thor 2/The Legend of Oasis landed as a 1996 sleeper hit. Join…
1997’s Voice Fantasia is perhaps best described as a minigame-driven RPG-like hodgepodge title reliant on copious voice acting as its main draw. In the game, three crazy girls must use…
Developed in 1997 by Daft and published by Xing, K1 Fighting Illusion is a martial arts-type game and one of three K1-based Saturn titles in Japan. Select from 12 fighters…
Transport Tycoon is a mid-’90s PC business sim that made its way over to the Saturn in Japan. Looking very much like Sim City 2000 with its isometric viewpoint, here…
Virtua Cop 2 kicks off our sixth year of the #BestOfSaturn series in style — and introduces our all-new Gold and Silver hashtags! Once a month we will showcase a…
Senken Kigyouden — a.k.a. “Xian Jian Qi Xia Zhuan” in Chinese or “The Legend of Sword and Fairy” in English — is a 1999 Saturn conversion of a 1995 DOS…
Takara’s early 1998 release of Choro Q Park finally saw the Penny Racers brand hit the Saturn after multiple entries on the PlayStation and even a Nintendo 64 game. This…
Zero 4 Champ Doozy-J Type-R is a drag racing game with a story mode. Meet other characters, find/buy/update your car with new and improved parts, and go win those races!…
Ever wish that Sim City 2000 was Sim City 1600? Step up to Edo City Renaissance, a town management sim set during the Edo period in Japan. Speak with important…
A total curiosity, Hudson’s Willy Wombat materialized in mid-1997. A 3D-ish action adventure game, you control the wombat across various landscapes, collecting gems as you go. The best way to…
Proving yet again that gaming was a far more serious affair in Japan, Densha De Go! EX, a train conductor simulator arcade conversion, hit Japanese Saturns in late 1998. Playable…
Taito released the two-game compilation Chase HQ (1988) and Special Criminal Investigation (SCI, 1989) for Japanese Saturns in 1996. Fairly frills-free, these straightforward coin-op conversions have you chase criminal cars…
A Christmas 1997 release in Japan, Texthoth Ludo ~Arcana Senki~ from Pai and Falcon is a 1- to 4-player board game fusing the classic Ludo game with Tarot cards. There…
The flashy 3D graphics of Battle Arena Toshinden attracted PlayStation gamers like flies to a pile of turd… so much so, that Takara felt it wi$e to develop a Saturn…
Guide the loveable Croc across seven islands (worlds), rescuing cute and fuzzy Gobbos from the evil clutches of Baron Dante. As one of the few true 3D platformers on Saturn,…
Move over Gordon Ramsay, Iron Chef: Kitchen Stadium Tour has been cooking on Japanese Saturns since early 1996! Be warned, however — this isn’t really a “game.” You can do…
We are living in the Great Saturn Renaissance… Kingdom Grand Prix, the Japan-only shmup/racing game hybrid, has been translated to English! The King has had enough of decades of conflict…
Another long-running series that got its start on SEGA Saturn, OmiyaSoft’s Culdcept landed on Japanese consoles in late 1997. This is a strategy game done in the style of a…
FEDA The Emblem of Justice, a 1994 Super Famicom strategy role-playing game, got the Saturn remake treatment exclusively in Japan in mid-1996. The Balformian Empire is rife with corruption and…
Madou Monogatari (Sorcery Saga) — hidden gem? We say YES! An overhead isometric, gorgeously hand-drawn RPG whose visuals astound whether in-town, in the overworld, in dungeons, and especially in combat….
It was never especially well highlighted outside of Eastern markets, but the humble Saturn was in fact built to handle various disc-based media over and above game and music CDs….
Who remembers the Tamagotchi craze of the mid-’90s? Bandai wasted no time in releasing the relatively simple Tamagotchi Park on the Saturn and included a bundled pink memory cart with…
Söldnerschild’s Ayami Kojima cover art gives strong Symphony of the Night vibes, but this SEGA and Koei collaboration is nothing the like. A strategy game set in medieval Europe that…
If The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the Saturn ever made a baby, it might be named Cho Aniki (Big Brother). A shmup, it features homoerotic digitized man-sprites on hand-drawn…
A mid-1995 Japan-only release based on the PC original, the psychological horror Dark Seed is a point-and-click adventure in the style of H.R. Giger. As a successful executive, you wake…
A man with a reputation and a mission, you are the Gale Racer! Released to Japanese gamers in 1994, Gale Racer is based on the 1991 SEGA arcade game Rad…
For such a huge franchise, it’s surprising that Mega Man X3 only saw Saturn release in Japan and in Europe. Perhaps it being a straightforward, visually bordered port of the…
Sandwiched between the two mainline games, Lunar Magic School is a remake of the Game Gear original, releasing exclusively on Saturn in Japan in late 1997 with obvious audiovisual enhancements….
A hugely important game in Saturn history, 1995’s Virtua Cop was the first of Christmas 1995’s “Big Three” arcade conversions meant to showcase that the Saturn had what it took…