Best Of Saturn
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…
Best Of Saturn
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…
Best Of Saturn
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…
Best Of 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,…
Best Of 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…
Best Of Saturn
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…
Best Of Saturn
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…
Best Of Saturn
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…
Best Of Saturn
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….
Editorial
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….
Best Of Saturn
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…
Best Of Saturn
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…
Best Of Saturn
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…
Best Of Saturn
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…
Best Of Saturn
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…
Best Of Saturn
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…
Best Of Saturn
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….
Best Of Saturn
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…
Best Of Saturn
Enix published the graphic adventure Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari / Tale of the Island of the Seven Winds exclusively on Japanese Saturns in late 1997. With gorgeous hand-drawn visuals,…
SHIRO Shorts!
Exciting news today as a new cheat code is discovered in the North American version of Dragon Force! Unfortunately, the newly discovered code doesn’t appear to work on the Japanese…
Best Of Saturn
Konami’s Parodius saw Saturn release in Japan and in Europe in late 1995 — a planned North American release was ultimately cancelled. A side-scrolling shmup consisting of two older Parodius…
Best Of Saturn
Part of a long-running series of Genki-developed racers, Tokyo Highway Battle ’97 / Shutokou Drift ’97 is a racing game through the streets of Tokyo. Race in six different cars…
Best Of Saturn
First of Capcom’s “vs.” series, X-Men vs. Street Fighter released in Japan in late 1997 to critical acclaim. Utilizing the 4MB expansion cartridge, the game retains nearly all of the…
Best Of Saturn
The 1997 expansion pack to the first Tomb Raider, subtitled Unfinished Business, finally hit Saturn in 2023 courtesy of Retro Raider John. The Atlantis levels pick up from the conclusion…
Best Of Saturn
One of the most acclaimed traditional JRPG games, the SEGA CD remaster of Lunar 2: Eternal Blue hit the Saturn mid-1998 in Japan. While the Goddess Althena sleeps, a mysterious…
Best Of Saturn
Did you know that the folks who brought us Pebble Beach Golf Links developed another four golf games on Saturn?? Their 1997 Japan-only JunClassic C. C. & Rope Club is…
Best Of Saturn
Time Gal and Ninja Hayate is a double-pack of two mid-’80s Taito Laserdisc quick-time event arcade FMV games. Time Gal tells the story of Reika as she tries to stop…
Best Of Saturn
Valhollian hit the Saturn in 1998 courtesy of Datt Japan. A strategy RPG game in the vein of Shining Force III, you take the role of Rey Brightforce and fight…
Best Of Saturn
Best MMA game on Saturn? Step up to Savaki, a mid-1998 Japan-only hidden gem from one-hit wonder studio Cynus. Choose from 14 fighters, each with their own martial art ranging…
Best Of Saturn
An early 1996 Japan-only release, Konami’s Gradius Deluxe Pack features straight conversions of the mid-1980s arcade classics Gradius and Gradius 2. In these side-scrolling shmups, you take control of the…
Editorial
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on March 27, 2018 and has been revised and republished. Saturn Myst: some people love it, some hate it, and a whole lot…
Best Of Saturn
Sports titles were a huge reason for the success of the Genesis in America, so it was perplexing that the Saturn didn’t follow suit. The system was sorely lacking a…
Best Of Saturn
A bit of a hidden gem, Impact Racing sees you combat-race on large courses, with the condition of winning being not only crossing the finish line in first place, but…
Best Of Saturn
NBA Jam: Tournament Edition “pumped up the Jam” from the title’s first iteration, retaining its progenitor’s 2-on-2 over-the-top, exaggerated arcade-style basketball fun while adding player substitutions, in-game commentary by the…
Best Of Saturn
Compilation games were of varying quality on the Saturn, but Digital Eclipse’s Arcade’s Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 1 is one of the best. Six classics: Missile Command, Tempest, Breakout,…