May 11, 1995 was the opening day of the very first E3 show. Perhaps best remembered for Sony’s infamous ‘$299’ announcement, it is also the Saturn’s launch day in North America. During this inaugural, industry / press-only expo held in Atlanta, Georgia, SEGA aggressively rolled out the Saturn.
Press kits were distributed primarily to reporters and other industry show attendees. These kits consisted of a Saturn-branded soft briefcase, a VHS ‘SEGA E3 Highlights’ videocassette, a ‘Head for Saturn’ poster and a portfolio containing all of SEGA’s press releases for the event. Saturn press releases headlined ahead of Genesis, Genesis 32X, SEGA CD, Game Gear, and Pico products. The press kit was themed after the ‘Head for Saturn’ launch campaign colors and motifs, matching store brochures and flyer promo material as well as the Saturn Choice Cuts demo disc branding. The easily-recognizable head shots of Hannah Sim (bald Saturn lady) as produced by Ken Loh of The Mednick Group feature prominently.
SHIRO! Media Group has acquired the 1995 press kit and are proud to present and preserve its contents here, for your enjoyment. Below, are photos of the press kit and contents. Further down are thumbnails of each Saturn-oriented section of the Press Kit – click on each preview to see the full .pdf of the particular section.
Table of Contents – (2 Pages)
Consumer Demand – (4 Pages)
Astronomical Marketing – (4 Pages)
It’s Out There! – (2 Pages)
Web Page – (1 Page)
Virtua Fighter – (3 Pages)
Panzer Dragoon – (2 Pages)
Daytona USA – (3 Pages)
BUG! – (2 Pages)
Clockwork Knight – (2 Pages)
Ultimate Sports Machine – (2 Pages)
Hardware Specs – (3 Pages)
Tech Speak Glossary – (6 Pages)
Star Fleet – (3 Pages)
Third Parties – (1 Page)
Out There with the “Away Team” – (11 Pages)
Saturn White Paper – (14 Pages)
Artwork Request Form – (1 Page)
A Saturn fan since the beginning, Peter plays Saturn almost exclusively. For Peter, Saturn represents a moment in time where 2D games were at their best, 3D was just rising, and fascinating gaming ‘firsts’ were commonplace. There are very few Saturn games that Peter cannot find some enjoyment in!
Great find Peter, thanks a lot for sharing!
Thanks for sharing!! Can’t wait to see this in person (I’ll wear white gloves..LOL) and for game nite again 😁
What’s with the watermarking done on every page when I look at the PDFs? That’s horrible for preservation reasons.
That’s a great question.
We have the original kit of course, and have un-watermarked high-resolution scans of the contents in multiple redundant locations for pure preservation. Because what we present here is still in high resolution, we felt a watermark would protect from unsavory activity such as others grabbing the material, printing it, and potentially profiting off it. We see this approach as the best of both worlds – being able to share the content while protecting it at the same time.
Thanks a lot for these! The “Head For Saturn” web page will be helpful for me in a project I’m working on (reconstructing Sega of America’s website from the time of the Saturn launch), which is how I came across this article in the first place. Did you scan any of the non-Saturn stuff? On the “Table of Contents” it lists “The Sega World Wide Web Home Page”, which I presume is a different screenshot of the Sega website from the same time. Is there any chance you could share that if you have it?
Hi Matthew, yes there was a second web page printout. Shoot me an email at contact@segasaturnshiro.com and I’ll send you a scan. Cheers, Peter