This is a continuation of a series whose previous entry was in February this year — you can read that here — and whose first entry was in 2024 — you can read that here.
Sega Saturn hunting in 2026 is very much a “your mileage may vary” situation. With the accessibility of various online marketplaces, you can purchase nearly any title you want as long as you have the cash to burn.
If you’re looking for in-person deals, though, life as a Saturn fan can get frustrating awfully quick. Sure, you can find everything on the internet, but Saturn prices for many desirable titles have prevented many from even taking the chance on the system.
How do we rectify this? It’s a question that I ask myself every time someone walks by and asks, “What is that?” Back in the day… they used to call it “Wheelin’ and dealin’!”
Folsom California Game Swap at Licky Boom Boom’s.
My family’s first gaming console was an Atari. I’m not sure which one. I was too young to know the name of the system or the games. I just remember it had paddles and my dad actually played Pong with my brothers and sisters. I came from a big family, the youngest of nine. Not much disposable income in our family. That Atari was a gift from a family friend, likely a hand-me-down. Most of the consoles we owned after that were purchased second-hand at garage sales or flea markets.
My gaming journey has been defined by scouring random places for the best deals. The early to mid-’90s were a great time to find deals locally…unless you were looking for Saturn gear.
I wasn’t very familiar with Atari. It was a bit before my time.
As I chronicled before, I didn’t obtain a Saturn during its retail lifespan in North America. By 2000, finding Saturn games second-hand locally was nearly as difficult as it is today. The local used game stores — Funcoland, Software Etc, Babbages, and EB Games (the predecessor of GameStop today) — were very hit or miss with Saturn. I don’t remember seeing much Saturn at yard sales. The flea market was just as bad. Whenever I did come across games, it was usually sports titles and filler. No one seemed to carry or care about Saturn back then. Also, as many Saturn fans have come to know, the cases were all beat to crap.
Saturn case graveyard. Don’t breathe too hard on them!
So where does a teenager with limited resources go to get their Saturn fix? Enter a little thing called the World Wide Web. At this point of my life, I had made a few purchases on Yahoo Auctions and eBay. However, I had never completed a peer-to-peer transaction with a random stranger. So how did it come to be that my first online peer-to-peer deal was a Saturn transaction? And my, what a doozy it would be…
My fourth sister in the pecking order was really into computers. She helped me set up Microsoft Outlook Express in 2000. In addition to email, the application had built-in servers for “Newsgroups.” From what I remember, it was like an early form of Reddit. I can’t recall how one posted on there, but you could find nearly any topic under the sun. There must have been a video game section that I scoured daily.
One day, there I was perusing newsgroups when a post caught my eye: “Sega Saturn bundle of 3 games.” Which three games? Well let me tell you: Panzer Dragoon Saga, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Alberty Odyssey. Talk about heavy hitters, sheesh! It gets better. The price is a whopping $150. At the time, Panzer was hovering around $120 to 150 and Rayearth and Albert were $40 to $50 games, but good luck finding them locally.
Smith, Marc & Fiore, Andrew. (2001). Visualization components for persistent conversations. 10.1145/365024.365073.
For you youngsters, forget what you know about Zelle, Venmo, Cash App, Paypal, and digital wallets. This is 2000 we’re talking about. We’re going down to the local post office and buying ourselves a freakin’ money order, lol. What the heck is a money order? Basically, you pay a small fee for a piece of paper that acts just like money that could only be cashed by the person you designated it for. You had a little stub that you would keep for your records as a form of tracking it, but you had no recourse if the seller decided not to ship you the goods.
$150 back then was no chump change for a teenager with no job. This deal sounded almost too good to be true, but dang it, us Saturn heads are just built different! I sent a message to the seller and sent that money order out the next day. KeeperOfFate, you better not scam me.
Send at your own risk!
That’s just how we did business back then. Have a little faith in people and hope that your faith is returned in kind. KOF did send me those three games, and I still have them to this day over a quarter a century later. Soon after that holy grail landed on my doorstep, I would sign up for a video game trading site, GameTZ.com. I eventually told KOF about the site. We ended up posting our trade to boost our street cred, since we were both still very new to trading. You can see a history of some of my Saturn deals during that stretch:
Look at #7. I think I won this trade…
Trading can make things that seem out of reach more accessible. It’s also a way to meet new people, create trading connections, and share random stories. Afraid of online scams? Talk to your local game shops and see if they know of recurring game shows in the area. There’s no shortage of vendors that would be willing to help you trade up to get that grail you have been searching for. If you can’t find anything locally, SHIRO! has some trusted sellers on the site. Shameless plug for Sega Steve and myself, lol.
Luckily most of my trades have aged well. Also, I double checked: SteveSaturn is not SegaSteve, lol.
Years ago when I started the Saturn Memories series, I knew I wanted to revisit my early days of trading. There are a few deals that are seared into my mind, many of them great, and just one that really bummed me out.
I always come back to the deal wtih KOF. That’s where everything started. My exploration of online trading communities, and my hunt for Saturn’s hidden gems. Sadly, KOF hadn’t logged into GameTZ for some time. My sleuthing led me to Facebook, Twitter, and other various websites. Even when I thought I had the right connection, radio silence would follow.
In my last act of desparation, I messaged a friend of a friend of his. Sometimes you put your faith out there, and your faith is rewarded, just like that money order back in 2000. Below is an extended conversation I had, two years in the making, with my old trading partner KeeperOfFate.
KeeperOfFate is a hard person to get a hold of!
Crono: How did you get into the Sega Saturn?
KOF: It was a continuation of being such a big Sega fan at the time. I got the Sega CD and there were a few games that I was really impressed with. When it came time to upgrade, the Saturn was the last console my parents helped me buy. They covered half and I covered half.
KOF’s first Sega console was the Genesis -> Sega CD -> Saturn -> Dreamcast
Crono: Oh, so you bought it new, then? You are one of the OGs, then!
KOF: I had it around that time. There is a strong possibility I got it used, but I definitely got it when it was alive and active. I loved the Genesis. I really enjoyed the Sega CD and it was the next Sega console. The idea of being able to play games I was playing at the arcade, at home, was mind blowing at the time. Eventually I picked up a PlayStation and Nintendo 64 later on, but I don’t regret it. I was the weirdo that loved the Saturn so much.
KOF likely had a model 1 during the launch year. How many teenagers had one back then?
Crono: There was only one other person in my town that had a Saturn. Nobody talked about Saturn. The fact that you picked up the Saturn before the PlayStation and N64, that makes you an OG Saturn head!
KOF: I definitely got my share of flak from friends and people, “What?! You have a Saturn? That’s so weird,” lol.
Crono: Did anybody else have a Saturn besides you?
KOF: No, I was it, lol. I was kinda a trendsetter for a lot of my friends when it came to tech and games. A bunch of my frends got an Xbox because I did, but for some reason the Saturn they were like, “Nope,” lol.
Crono: Sega of America did not do a good job. The library was good, but was limited compared to what Japan got. I don’t fault people for not buying into it at the time.
KOF: Agreed. Probably my most niche thing there was having a Saturn. They came over and enjoyed playing it when they came over, it was always like, “Cool I never got this game.” I got a lot of flak for it. Even before it totally died, going to EB Games or Babbages at the time. “Hey what do you have for Saturn?” And they’re like, “What?! Get outta here, kid,” lol.
Crono: At the time of our deal, it had to have been the fall of 2000. This is two years after the Saturn had been written off, and the Dreamcast was out. Were you still fond of the system?
KOF: I still loved it a lot. At that point, I hadn’t really got into collecting. I never really thought of the games or the system as a long-term thing that I was gonna hold on to. I remember working all summer and I bought the Dreamcast. At the time I was just focused on the Dreamcast being the new thing. As much as I loved the Saturn, I felt like I completed the games that I owned, there wasn’t anything new coming out. I wasn’t into a collecting state of mind. It was a way to fund new games. It was sad letting stuff go, but I wasn’t rolling in money. I had some minimum-wage job trying to fund my gaming fix.
KOF had moved on to the Dreamcast and Neo Geo Pocket Color.
Crono: I didn’t have a regular part-time job like you did. I was flipping stuff on eBay and trying to fund my Saturn and game collecting.
KOF: It’s funny to think about now. I remember I can make money on these! You can trade ’em in to GameStop, but I’m not trading these in for pennies on the dollar, lol. Once I kinda found out about the online world of selling and buying… “Okay, this can fund another game,” that’s all I really wanted, lol.
Crono: Do you remember how we found each other? I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but I want to jog your memory on it because I want to see how you were operating back then.
I assumed that KOF was using the same interface as me…
KOF: I think you were the very first or second time I ever did any trade or sale with anyone online. At the time, I didn’t have an internet-ready PC. I was actually using a Web TV, which is funny in and of itself. But that was kinda my [first] real experience using the internet. The Web TV interface wrapped it in its own thing. As you mentioned, we found each other through some newsgroups. I think Web TV wrapped it up as discussions.
KOF finding steals using a set top box to connect to the internet in 2000.
Crono: So you’re saying Web TV gave you access to do some posts on these newsgroups? lol.
KOF: Exactly! It was something I stumbled across. I started Web TV, and it had chat. Site of the time was called Talk City. I kind of discovered these discussion boards. Okay, that’s kinda interesting. I started off just looking through Alt.videogames. Just messing around with it, that there was this marketplace. I don’t remember if it was a dedicated market newsgroup or games.
Source: https://wiki.webtv.zone/wiki/File:Webtv-fg-chat-talkcityindex.png
Crono: It had to have been video games related, because that was the only thing I was looking for. I was looking for these newsgroups, I would search up video games or keywords. As you’re posting on these discussion boards, you were doing that yourself, no assistance from family?
KOF: No, no. My family was for a long time completely tech illiterate, lol. It was just me slowly discovering these things. At the time I wasn’t allowed to be online until after 9 p.m. It was dial up, can’t tie up the phone line. Something that kids don’t even understand at all, it makes me laugh just thinking about it.
Crono: I was still using those free 30 minute whatever CDs from the mail! Okay, you post on the ad, I can’t remember if it was $150 for the three games, I just remember it being a deal at the time. (Panzer Dragoon Saga, Magic Knight Rayearth, Albert Odyssey.)
KOF: I just remember being online and kinda looking and seeing those games have some value. I think Panzer Dragoon Saga was $70 to $80 and the other ones were market value. In my mind, all I was thinking was, “That’s a brand new game.” This is great, I didn’t bother taking the time to research how rare it was or how much I could get. If I sell it for this much, I could buy a couple of new games!
Cronole’s big gamble for $150 started with a reply to an add online in an Outlook Newsgroup
Crono: So I message you and I send you this money order. Did your parents know, or [were you like] “I just got this money and I’m gonna send these games out?”
KOF: I did it on my own. The first they knew about it was when I got the money order. As soon as they found out what I was doing, they were like, “No you can’t sell stuff online! You’re gonna get ripped off!” I made sure that they send the money first. I had an idea, I don’t want to just send these games and never see them.
Crono: I’m pretty sure I sent the money first, that’s how things worked backed then.
KOF: You did. I even had to use part of the money to pay for the shipping, lol. I didn’t have any cash on me, I’m a broke teenager. They were concerned, but going forward I started doing a lot of sales online and they got it. You were either the first or the second. I may have done one much smaller sale to test the waters, before I opened it up to the bigger stuff. I didn’t know what I was doing. There [weren’t many] built-in safety precautions. EBay had feedback and GameTZ has a rating system.
Crono: You were definitely my first peer -o-peer online deal without a marketplace involved like eBay or Yahoo Auctions. I was a bit concerned, but sometimes you’re taken in by a deal, it’s too good to be true, but you do it anyway, lol.
KOF: Sometimes it works out and a lot of times it doesn’t. I’m super thankful that you were the first or second. If that would have been a bad experience, I never would have continued on. I would never would’ve gotten into collecting, I never wouldn’t gotten on eBay, GameTZ, had I been burned on that first kinda sale.
Crono and KOF’s main stomping grounds in 2001 GameTZ.com.
Crono: Back then, that’s all you could really do. You put your faith out there, and you hope that your faith is rewarded.
KOF: I feel the reason back then. Most of the people that were on there were actual fans or actual gamers.
Crono: You’re right. I was thinking about this the other day. The bots with spamming hadn’t become a thing yet. People hadn’t figured out how to weaponize scamming people on the Web.
KOF: If games sales online just became a thing today, the internet is so prevalent there would have been people scamming 24/7.
Crono: I’m not sending out a money order in 2026, lol.
KOF: We got lucky we hit that time right before, like you said, people could weaponize the internet.
Crono: I originally thought I was dealing with an adult. I didn’t realize until maybe decades later that we were around the same age. We’re both born in ’85. Did you have any thoughts on who you were dealing with?
KOF: I also learned later down the line on GameTZ that we were around the same age. There was no information outside of the newsgroup post. We weren’t trading a lot of information.
Crono: No, no, we weren’t. It was like here’s my address, lol.
KOF: Yeah, here’s my address. Please don’t show up and kill me, lol. I had no idea who I was dealing with. I was in Ohio, it was kinda cool [that] I’m sending this to the other side of the country. That was the first experience I had with long-distance mail. Your name and address was all I had.
Crono: We didn’t even call each other or anything. We didn’t exchange any information other than our names or addresses.
KOF: It was so new to me. All I was thinking about was getting some new Dreamcast games, lol. My games were just sitting there. The post I did was the very first experience I had with e-commerce. I had listed most of my Saturn games at the time, and I can’t rememeber if someone else besided you had purchased a game first off the list. I didn’t start doing eBay until much later on. I think you may have actually introduced me to GameTZ.
KOF used the Panzer money to score some new Dreamcast games.
Crono: It’s hard to remember exactly how it went down. At some point I saw you make a post. “Let me reach out to KOF to see if we can our deal to boost my feedback.”
KOF: You’re right we postdated it. I remember using GameTZ after our first deal. I couldn’t remember if you had turned me on to that, or if I stumbled across that. I remember using my Web TV to log into GameTZ which was a painful experience, lol.
Crono: Oh my goodness, you were still using that tech?!
KOF: I didn’t get an internet-ready computer until a few years later. My parents were worried. They must have seen something on TV about dangerous predators, lol. I’m thankful that all of these things worked through the Web TV, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to experience them.
Crono: I didn’t realize until I reached out to you initially that you [had] gone into a career in gaming. It’s inspiring and cool that somebody that I knew way back then ended up pursuing a career in games. Did you gather any inspiration from Saturn titles that informed some of your gaming ideas in your career?
KOF: I can’t think of a specific game. Saturn was the time and the console that cemented my love for games. I’ve always been a gamer. I was young, just transitioning to becoming an adult. It was so powerful and there were so many great games on that console that opened my eyes to what games could be. It wasn’t just about 2D going into 3D. Games at that time were starting to enter their exploratory phase into what they could become. That hit its stride around Dreamcast and they had so many crazy experimental games on Dreamcast. The Saturn was my experience with a lot of firsts for a lot of genres and being able to play arcade titles at home for the first time. There were a lot of things that cemented my love for games.
KOF was excited for arcade quality ports and experimental games like Bug.
I wasn’t locked in to what I wanted to do with my life. It was kinda the exact same time I was starting to think about the future. I didn’t know that I was going to be a programmer for a very long time. I came across some old papers i had written. Apparently I wanted to be a QA tester, because I thought that was gonna be my only avenue to get into the game industry. It definitely locked me in that I wanted to do something with games. I didn’t know what it was yet or if it was going to happen. There were so many of my favorite games of all time are on the Saturn. These are awesome and I want to do something with this.
Crono: You mentioned that I may have triggered some nostalgia. How long have you had your current Saturn set up?
KOF: I got rid of a lot of my stuff going into college. Completely broke. I cut down on my games then. I was still collecting a little bit. But there was just a small collection. I hadn’t really thought about the Saturn until you reached out to me.
Crono: Okay, so this is in the middle of 2024.
KOF: It kinda got me thinking about some of the old games again, the stuff I hadn’t played. It was like an itch almost. It didn’t make any sense, I don’t have that much time to play. More and more I wanted to play Shining Force and Panzer Dragoon. I finally caved and bought a set on eBay. I did keep one of my original games, which was one of the Romance of the 3 Kingdom games.
KOF restarting the Saturn collection in 2024 with a classic!
Crono: Wall of Fire? Wait you kept that since the ’90s?
KOF: Yeah, that’s my original copy.
Crono: You kept that one and not Magic Knight Rayearth? Or Albert Odyssey or Panzer Saga? lol.
The lone survivor of KOF’s Saturn purge from the ’90s. Maybe should have kept Panzer Dragoon Saga instead?
KOF: The one that I could have easily bought again, lol. It was not a conscious decision to hold on to. “Hey it is in a box of my things, cool,” lol. That was the one that I kept. I got Albert Odyssey, Dragon Force, and Shining the Holy Ark. I repurchased those three, mostly because they weren’t insanely expensive like Rayearth or Saga.
KOF slowly buying back some bangers.
Crono: Within reason for us 40-somethings, lol.
KOF: I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been craving to buy a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga again. I’d probably get killed by my wife if I’m just like I bought a $1,300 game, I hope you don’t mind, lol. I need to figure out to what extent I’m gonna get back into Saturn collecting.
Crono: What was your first gaming system?
KOF: My first one, my dad bought me an NES. I was probably 4, well after it had launched. It kicked off my love for games.
Like many Millennials, KOF and Crono started out as Nintendo kids.
Crono: Dad purchased you an NES in ’89. When did Sega come into the mix? A lot people that start out on the Nintendo back then, they were entrenched. “I was a Nintendo kid or I was a Sega kid.”
KOF: I was a Nintendo kid for a little while. I started with NES and then I got a Super Nintendo a little while later. I remember pestering my parents about it. I was almost locked in as a Nintendo kid. The thing that got me wanting a Genesis… I had started reading gaming magazines and it was probably EGM or Game Players (later Ultra Game Players). One of them had a mini strategy guide for Shining Force. It talked about some of the characters, a couple of the levels, and some tips and tricks. I remember reading that strategy front to back over and over and over and fantasizing about playing this game.
It was Shining Force that got me to pestering my parents for it. They kept saying, “You already have a Super Nintendo!” “But they don’t have this game!” Eventually, I did something good and Santa was kind enough to bring it to me. I got the Genesis and Shining Force and that started my Sega journey. I just stuck with them after that.
The guide that stared KOF’s Sega journey.
Crono: That’s a cool story! In similar fashion, an Electronic Gaming Magazine article got me interested in the Saturn.
KOF: It’s something that’s hard to communicate to people. The impact that those gaming magazines had was major. Not until much later on did we have the internet. We couldn’t just watch a video or see someone play it or do a quick search about what a game played like. Especially when they did a big feature on a game that went in-depth. Clearly we both experienced something that came out of one of these magazines that prompted a lifelong interest in Sega. The rest was history. Sega had a great catalog to go with it. I got every Sega console from that point forward.
Even though the Saturn didn’t have a massive library or following in the U.S., I feel that the niche status helped to lock in how much love I had for the games. When you got a new game, it was meaningful. Locking in and finishing these games start to finish, it was the last time it was seared into my memory. I love games here and there, but I remember every game I bought for the Saturn or finding stores that even carried the games for it!
Gaming magazine articles kickstarted the Sega love for both KOF and CronoLe.
Crono: Everything is a hidden gem because nobody played it at the time, lol. Your top three or five Sega Saturn games? Either they were super memorable, or they were your favorite
KOF: There are a lot of ones going in and out. My top three are a little easier. Dragon Force, I’ve played through it a number of times. Shining Force 3, they are some of my favorite games of all time, the series. I think 3 was the pinnacle of the series. Someday I’ll get around to Scenario 2 and 3. Those are easily my top 2. I really enjoyed Shining the Holy Ark.
Shining Force III makes KOF’s top three list of greatest games of all time.
Crono: Holy Ark is one of my favorites. I enjoyed the story, the graphics and art direction with the muddy and worn down towns.
KOF: When I first started with the game, being like, turned off by the first-person RPG. It was a weird concept to me. I hadn’t played Wizardry or the first-person dungeon crawlers. I was used to my RPGs and JRPGs being standard top-down. I do appreciate it. It was the first game that I rebought. The opening and the first tiny dungeon. It was very unique and the art style was different and interesting. The combat is enjoyable and the difficulty level is stable. It doesn’t get the respect that it deserves.
Top Sega Saturn titles for both KOF and CronoLe.
Crono: It’s not too long of a game, either. A lot of these open world games today, people get caught up in, “I’ve spent 200 hours playing this game.” I don’t have 200 hours to play a game.
KOF: I still have that urge to play those games. When I get into one, I’ll get through it, but then realize I lost six months of my life, lol. More importantly, I didn’t get a chance to play anything else in that time. I still love a big immersive game, but it’s so hard to dedicate the time. My time is much more limited as an adult. Those are my top three Saturn titles. The first two even being in my top games of all time.
Crono: This has been great, KOF. Two years in the making. Thanks for taking the time to catch up with me today. I believe it’s important to highlight our gaming journeys to see how the industry has evolved and why we got into it in the first place.
KOF: I appreciate you getting us together. I know I’m a pain the ass to get a hold of.
KOF has been in the gaming industry since graduating from college. I’ll be paying him a visit next month. If you think I’m a nice guy, no, I will not be returning his games to him after all these years. However, I will have a little surprise for one of the few original Saturn fans.
Thank you KOF for an amazing deal. Can’t wait to finally meet you.
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