Best Of Saturn
In 1993, Technosoft prepared an overhead / vertical shmup called Blast Wind for the arcades, but ultimately never released it. When the time was right, a 1997 limited release conversion…
Best Of Saturn
Today we present one of the most fascinating fan translation stories on the Saturn as a whole: Asuka 120 Burning Fest. (festival) Limited, was a late 1997 Japan-only title by…
Best Of Saturn
Battle Arena Toshinden Remix, Virtua Fighter Remix… how about Yumimi Mix Remix? Yumimi Mix is a 1993 Game Arts collaboration with manga artist Izumi Takemoto, releasing exclusively for the Japanese…
Best Of Saturn
After the 1996 release of the mega-successful Saturn Bomberman, Hudson Soft crafted a sequel: 1997’s Saturn Bomberman Fight! For the first time in the series, the 2D levels are replaced…
Best Of Saturn
In our quest to highlight Saturn fan translations this year, it’s also worth mentioning the handful of English activation patches available. Some Japanese games have English text baked right in,…
Best Of Saturn
We’ve been blessed with dozens of Saturn translations over recent years, but today we give a nod to one of the trailblazers: the 2016 fan translation of Hideo Kojima’s Policenauts….
Best Of Saturn
Camelot Software Planning unleashed the massively ambitious Shining Force 3 trilogy in Japan over a 12-month span starting December 1997. The trilogy comprises three SRPG “scenarios” featuring 30+ battles apiece,…
Best Of Saturn
Following the mega-success of the first game, SEGA and Red Company unleashed Sakura Wars 2: Thou Shalt Not Die on Japanese Saturn players in April 1998. Set two years after…
Best Of Saturn
Sakura Wars (Sakura Taisen) was a fall 1996 release in Japan, and is best described as a visual novel, dating sim, and strategy game mashed up into one. Set in…
Best Of Saturn
EMIT Vol. 1: Lost Child of Time is the first of a trilogy of EMIT games from Koei, all debuting within the span of roughly a month. Designed to teach…
Best Of Saturn
Point and click adventures were all the rage for PC gamers in the ’90s, but they never translated well to home consoles… but no one told Japan, as Saturn gamers…
Best Of Saturn
Stellar Assault SS came to the Saturn in 1998 courtesy of SIMS Co., being a remake of sorts of the SEGA-developed 32X game Stellar Assault (Shadow Squadron in the U.S.)….
Best Of Saturn
Initially released in late 1995 on the Super Famicom, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together is the seventh entry into the Ogre Battle series and was ported to the Saturn…
Best Of Saturn
A September 1997 release, Silhouette Mirage is the second Treasure game to hit the Saturn. Set in the year 2xxx, the worldwide AI known as Edo malfunctions and splits everyone…
News
The first demo of Saturn Tomb Raider 2 is available now — grab it here! 1996 saw the release of the very first Tomb Raider, hitting the Saturn first, followed…
Best Of Saturn
Released at the tail end of 1997, Takara and Red Company’s Arcana Strikes is a fusion of an overhead RPG and a card-battling game. You take the role of young…
Best Of Saturn
Delisoba Deluxe was a giveaway to studio audiences (possibly, contestants) of the Japanese TBS game show Tokyo Friend Park 2. On the show, contestants engaged in various video mini games,…
Best Of Saturn
The Wizardry series began way back in the early 1980s on Apple computers, being a formative attempt at bringing a Dungeons & Dragons-like experience to video games. The sixth and…
Best Of Saturn
The fine folks at Japanese software house Altron Corp. were clearly into the good stuff, and in early 1998, they conjured up the absolutely bananas Jung Rhythm! Conceptually reminiscent of…
Best Of Saturn
Remember that 1997 movie Face Off, where John Travolta and Nicholas Cage literally swap faces? It was done the year prior in DeathMask — an FMV adventure game converted to…
Best Of Saturn
Grab your semi-automatics, your rocket propelled grenade launchers, and your trusty machetes — it’s time to “start something” on the mean streets of Logic Puzzle Rainbow Town! Logic puzzles, also…
Best Of Saturn
A summer 1997 release in Japan, Aorn’s Rabbit is a 2D versus fighting game similar in feel to the Street Fighter 2 series. The visuals are very colorful and the…
Best Of Saturn
Note: The #BestOfSaturn posts will be a little bit different for 2026. I won’t cover any original retail games, and that means pausing the Gold and Silver as well. Instead,…
Best Of Saturn
Rayman first hit the Atari Jaguar in September 1995 before being ported to the Saturn with slightly rebalanced gameplay and a superior Red Book soundtrack for a November release. The…
Best Of Saturn
The Saturn absolutely hums when in capable hands, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Irréel — a demo of the first Unreal game that was created from the…
Best Of Saturn
Sankyo Fever, hitting store shelves at the height of pachinko popularity in 1997, is the first in the Fever series of Saturn releases. A pachinko simulator, the game features four…
Best Of Saturn
“The Saturn can’t handle the additional complexities of Tomb Raider 2”… so said Core Design in the late ’90s, but no one told modern hero RetroRaider John. Hot on the…
Best Of Saturn
SEGA AGES was a single release in the West, but in Japan, it was an entire series of classics from SEGA’s past. Phantasy Star Collection, released in 1998, featured the…
Review
The Renaissance Period We are living through a Saturn renaissance. Buckets of titles previously locked away in Japan are seeing new audiences, thanks to the herculean efforts of small but…
Best Of Saturn
Late 1998 saw Bandai release Digital Monsters Ver. S: Digimon Tamers exclusively in Japan. An evolution of sorts of the Tamagotchi concept, players hatch, care for, scold, clean up after,…
Best Of Saturn
By 1998, the Saturn was gasping for life in the West. Releases had slowed to a trickle before drying up for good by year’s end. Game over… but don’t tell…
Best Of Saturn
A fusion of 2/3 visual novel and 1/3 strategy RPG, Devicereign from Starlight Marry Corp hit the Saturn in early 1999. Three high school friends are suddenly accosted by a…
Best Of Saturn
Whizz is a Flair Software isometric platformer that first saw life on the DOS, Amiga, and CD32 back in 1994 before being ported to Saturn and releasing in Japan and…
Best Of Saturn
Acclaim, Acclaim… once the darlings of American third-party publishing houses, they fell into disrepute in the mid-’90s by increasingly releasing games that simply weren’t the best of Saturn — or…
Best Of Saturn
What hasn’t been said about SNK’s sweet, sweet Metal Slug? Initially a NEO GEO game, it was ported to Saturn in early 1997 by Yumekobo and is one of the…