Sega Saturn video game console games

The Sega Saturn, often referred to as just the ‘Saturn’ is a fifth-generation video game console released in 1994 in Japan. Produced by Sega, this console is the successor to one of Sega's flagship products: the Mega Drive. Particularly powerful, the Sega Saturn is designed to compete with the Sony PlayStation, released in 1994.

However, despite its technical prowess, the Sega Saturn was a commercial failure: less than 10 million units were sold. Nevertheless, this Sega console allows you to play a variety of Sega games, such as the classic Nights into Dreams, Sega Rally Championship and Daytona USA. It’s a rare and unique piece of hardware from gaming history!

Sega Saturn Snapshot

The idea of bringing a new console to market was born in the early 1990s by the Sega management team: at the time, Nintendo and Atari were developing real home consoles and Sega wanted to emulate them. The idea was to create a particularly powerful home console to succeed the Mega Drive and compete with the future consoles produced by Sony and Nintendo.

The Sega Saturn is produced from 1994 and marketed the same year in Japan. It will be marketed one year later in Europe and the United States.

The video game console is then presented as a black case that plays CDs. One or two controllers can be connected to it. At the time of its release, the Saturn was one of the most powerful consoles on the market: it was equipped with two Hitachi microprocessors and had 2 MB of RAM and 1.5 MB of visual memory. These components allow for high quality graphics rendering.

Despite its success in Japan, the console was a commercial failure in Europe. And for good reason: few developers have the capacity to develop games reflecting the power of the console. Its production was quickly stopped to make room for Sega’s final console, the Dreamcast.

Sega Saturn Games: iconic games of the 1990s

The Saturn benefited from several iconic games produced by Sega. Sega adapted its main franchises to the Sega Saturn, such as Daytona USA, The House of the Dead, Last Bronx, Virtua Cop and Virtua Fighter.

Capcom, as one of the main third-party video game developers, also decided to release its games on the console. Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire and Street Fighter Alpha 3 were added to the Sega game library. Saturn also has a number of exclusive games such as Panzer Dragoon Saga, Dragon Force and Wipeout.

However, Sega would not manage to adapt their legendary franchise Sonic the Hedgedog for release on the Sega Saturn. This situation will disappoint the players constitutes one of the main reasons for the failure of the Sega Saturn.

Find your Sega Saturn games in Japan

Due to the fact that the production of Sega Saturn was prematurely stopped, there are very few Sega Saturn consoles and games in Europe and the United States. In fact, the console was particularly well received in Japan - elsewhere, the console was a failure. For this reason, Japan has the largest amount of Sega Saturn games. It is therefore essential for fans to buy Saturn games from Japan. To buy and import your games from Japan, it's easy: just make a purchase request on Neokyo. Once the quote is accepted, the team will then purchase and import your games and console.
Similarly, it is possible to bid on Neokyo via Yahoo Auctions, to buy rare used games, or to buy on Mercer, the platform for trading used games between individuals.