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Sega Saturn Appreciation and Emulation Thread

M

MikeMyers

Member
SevenDevils said:
You have Galactic Attack listed twice. One with 8, the other 6.
Click to expand...
Whoops.

StevieWhite said:
My top 10 (based purely on estimated personal playtime over the years and nothing else):

10. Dark Savior
9. Resident Evil
8. Street Fighter Collection (specifically, Super Turbo)
7. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei
6. Panzer Dragoon Saga
5. Fighters Megamix
4. Steep Slope Sliderd
3. Radiant Silvergun
2. Dragon Force
1. Guardian Heroes
Click to expand...
I added this list in. Still waiting for Tain's vote, unless they dont want to, otherwise I'll just close it then.
 
K

Khaz

Member
Jimmy Stav said:
Were games that required the RAM add-on also sold without it? Games sans RAM are often cheaper, but I'm wondering if that just means they're incomplete.
Click to expand...

Some did, others didn't. Some games that were sold with a RAM cart in a cardboard box had their back cover on the jewel case missing by design. If a game is sold "complete" but without a back cover, it means it was part of a set with RAM.

A good website to check for this sort of info is http://www.satakore.com/, it has info on most releases, variations, rarity, etc. With pictures.
 
M

MikeMyers

Member
SaturnGAF's Top 10 Sega Saturn Games!

01. Fighters Megamix (Sega AM2, 1997)
megamix-jpbox.jpg

02. Panzer Dragoon Saga (Team Andromeda, 1998)
5983_front.jpg

03. Panzer Dragoon Zwei (Team Andromeda, 1996)
zweijp.jpg

04. Nights into Dreams (Sonic Team, 1996)
RgYOAyD.png

05. Virtua Fighter 2 (Sega AM2, 1995)
virtuafighter2saturnj.jpg

06. Guardian Heroes (Treasure, 1996)
5srKQzB.png

07. Sega Rally Championship (Sega AM3, 1995)
osEh8Ks.jpg

08. Daytona USA (Sega AM2, 1995)
2785_front.jpg

09. Street Fighter Alpha 2 (Capcom, 1996)
6aL7Ue9.png

10. Dragon Force (J-Force, 1996)
dragon-force-japan-front-cover.jpg
 
S

Splash Wave

Member
Khaz said:
Some did, others didn't. Some games that were sold with a RAM cart in a cardboard box had their back cover on the jewel case missing by design. If a game is sold "complete" but without a back cover, it means it was part of a set with RAM.

A good website to check for this sort of info is http://www.satakore.com/, it has info on most releases, variations, rarity, etc. With pictures.
Click to expand...

This is extremely helpful! I'm assuming that if I search for a game (D&D Collection, for example) and it yields two results, that means there are two SKUs?
 
K

Khaz

Member
Jimmy Stav said:
This is extremely helpful! I'm assuming that if I search for a game (D&D Collection, for example) and it yields two results, that means there are two SKUs?
Click to expand...

Yep. There are photos of the full packaging in each entry so you can compare to what is being sold to you. For D&D the only way to be sure that the box and discs you're getting aren't part of a dismantled box would be to have the spine card and a blue registration card.

I don't know if there were games that were only sold with a RAM cart, the few that I checked all came in two packagings.
 
D.Lo

D.Lo

Member
I hate RAM cart boxes, the cardboard is so flimsy.

I only have one now (KOF 95 which is ROM so is required), I replaced all mine with the standalone versions.
 
J

Jake Murrin

Neo Member
I'm bumping this purely in the hope of attracting some informed comments to help me resolve a discrepancy I have noticed in Saturn sales figures. I would have started a new thread, but I cannot.

Saturn sales worldwide are commonly estimated at 9.5 million. More recently, CESA put the total at 9.26 million, which sounds pretty accurate at face value. After all, Saturn sales are commonly put at about 1 million in Europe, 2 million in the US, and more than 5 million in Japan. But what happens when you delve a little deeper?

Steve Kent's Ultimate History of Video Games, page 558, is the source for the "2 million in the US" figure. It is obvious from the context that Kent bases this estimate on a New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/14/b...urn-video-console-us-market.html?pagewanted=1) from March 14, 1998. Kent contrasts this with the 10.75 million PlayStation consoles shipped by Sony at that time. However, there is reason to believe that final US Saturn sales were higher than reported by this early date: In early 1999, ZDNet (http://www.zdnet.com/article/sega-makes-play-for-dreamcast-support/) provided an estimate of US Saturn/PlayStation sales of 2.7 and 13.4 million, respectively, sourced to Fairfield Research Inc. Not seeing an issue here? You will.

The Japanese Dreamcast Magazine 2000/Vol.12, "Good Bye (!?) Sega Saturn" (http://segaretro.org/File:DCM_JP_20000407_2000-12.pdf), apparently producing figures accurate as of March 1999, gives the following estimates for worldwide Saturn sales:

Japan: 5.75 million
US: 1.8 million
Europe: 1 million
Other: 0.53 million

Europe seems hard to dispute. I've seen reports of 971,000 Saturns sold in Europe by July 1998, of some 400,000 Saturns sold in the UK (which reportedly accounted for 40% of the European total), ect. However, I see no reason to trust this magazine's figures for the US market over those provided by ZDNet.

Here is the problem: Adding the Dreamcast Magazine figures together produces a figure of 9.08 million, well below the standard estimates. On the other hand, if we keep the rest of the magazine's estimates but raise the tally for the US to 2.7 million, we reach a grand total of 9.98 million, which would seem to be far too high.

How can this be explained? Does it have anything to do with the third-party variations Sega licensed to other manufacturers? Do we have any way of knowing which estimates measured what or of reconciling the data?
 
M

MikeMyers

Member
According to Sega Retro Tec Toy handled it in Brazil, while Samsung handled it in Korea. Apparently the Saturn did decent there. So maybe those are the lost sales?
 
M

MikeMyers

Member
I see.

Speaking of, I was actually doing million sellers list for the Saturn, and came to the conclusion that the Sega Saturn has five games that sold over a million worldwide:

-Virtua Fighter 2
-Virtua Fighter
-Virtua Cop
-Daytona USA
-Sega Rally Championship

In comparison, Dreamcast has 7 games that sold over a million worldwide.
 
C

Celine

Member
MikeMyers said:
I always thought the number was 9.26 million, while Dreamcast was 9.13 million.
Click to expand...
It is.
9.26M is Sega Saturn final shipment (source: CESA).
9.08M is until March 1999.

EDIT:
Jake Murrin said:
How can this be explained? Does it have anything to do with the third-party variations Sega licensed to other manufacturers? Do we have any way of knowing which estimates measured what or of reconciling the data?
Click to expand...
Shipment data isn't an estimate.
Manufacturers always know exactly how many units they have shipped to their own division or retailers (or produced in the case of Sony with PS1).
There is no telling if what Sega reported include other licensed manufacturers's units though the quantity should be minuscule in the grand scheme.

Also note that CESA never specified what was the last fiscal year reported for the figures provided.
My educated guess is that for Saturn it is March 2000 (because it matches the shipment progression from the previous years).
 
S

Splash Wave

Member
Is the 8-button Virtua Stick worth 25 bucks? I'm sure it's a good deal, but I rarely hear people talking about it. My main problem is getting it back to the states.
 
D.Lo

D.Lo

Member
Celine said:
It is.
9.26M is Sega Saturn final shipment (source: CESA).
9.08M is until March 1999.

EDIT:

Shipment data isn't an estimate.
Manufacturers always know exactly how many units they have shipped to their own division or retailers (or produced in the case of Sony with PS1).
There is no telling if what Sega reported include other licensed manufacturers's units though the quantity should be minuscule in the grand scheme.
Click to expand...
Stand corrected, but maybe the difference is 3rd party produced consoles (Hi-Saturn etc). Seems pretty unlikely retailers accepted 200k Saturns a year after the DC was out, and the 3rd party Saturns are actually quite common.
 
C

Celine

Member
D.Lo said:
Stand corrected, but maybe the difference is 3rd party produced consoles (Hi-Saturn etc). Seems pretty unlikely retailers accepted 200k Saturns a year after the DC was out, and the 3rd party Saturns are actually quite common.
Click to expand...
A shipment of 180K is fairly small.
Last fiscal year Nintendo shipped 460K Wii and it's been years since WiiU was introduced.
 
J

Jake Murrin

Neo Member
To someone who isn't familiar with the source, then, how do we know this Japanese Dreamcast Magazine actually is reporting official Sega estimates? Those are higher Japanese and lower US sales figures than reported in numerous other sources. Obviously, the sources are wrong if Sega says they're wrong, but CESA doesn't tell us anything about whether 1.8 or 2.7 million of the total 9.26 million were in the US, or whether it was 5.4 or 5.75 million in Japan. It might be easy enough to reconcile the CESA and Dreamcast Magazine numbers, but to a layman who can't read either source, how do you know both are based on the same data?
 
C

Celine

Member
Jake Murrin said:
To someone who isn't familiar with the source, then, how do we know this Japanese Dreamcast Magazine actually is reporting official Sega estimates? Those are higher Japanese and lower US sales figures than reported in numerous other sources. Obviously, the sources are wrong if Sega says they're wrong, but CESA doesn't tell us anything about whether 1.8 or 2.7 million of the total 9.26 million were in the US, or whether it was 5.4 or 5.75 million in Japan. It might be easy enough to reconcile the CESA and Dreamcast Magazine numbers, but to a layman who can't read either source, how do you know both are based on the same data?
Click to expand...
I did not actually see the scan you are talking about (Dreamcast Magazine) so I can't talk about the specific case (you should ask BKK).
Usually what I do to discern if it's shipment data has nothing to do with the magazine being from Japan instead usually it is cited in japanese (but also in english in the CESA White Paper) that the information come from the manufactures.
The granularity of the data is also usually a multiplier of 10K.
Sometime happens that there is data for multiple consoles so the "unknown" data is cross checked with what is already know to be official shipment data.
This was the case with CESA White Paper for instance which had data that matched what was reported officially by Nintendo, Sony and Sega (Dreamcast).

If you have more doubts feel free to ask in this thread:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=981407

I doubt BKK is much of a Saturn player (don't remember him hanging around this thread).

EDIT:
Jake Murrin said:
Here is the problem: Adding the Dreamcast Magazine figures together produces a figure of 9.08 million, well below the standard estimates. On the other hand, if we keep the rest of the magazine's estimates but raise the tally for the US to 2.7 million, we reach a grand total of 9.98 million, which would seem to be far too high.
Click to expand...
I warn you against mix matching different sources, you risk to compare apples with oranges and in doing so generating unreliable results.
This the reason (with the lack of easily available official sources and knowledge) why wiki often has questionable numbers for old console LTDs.
 
J

Jonneh3003

Banned
Local store was selling The Story of Thor 2 (Legend of Oasis) for £22. Never heard of it but I checked the Ebay/Amazon prices and it was an instant purchase. Looks kind of like Zelda: ALTTP from the screenshots so i'm pretty hyped to give it a go.

I'll post a pic later!

Edit:
xzjB16G.jpg
 
N

NDPsycho

Member
Jonneh3003 said:
Local store was selling The Legend of Thor 2 (Legend of Oasis) for £22. Never heard of it but I checked the Ebay/Amazon prices and it was an instant purchase. Looks kind of like Zelda: ALTTP from the screenshots so i'm pretty hyped to give it a go.

I'll post a pic later!
Click to expand...

It's a great game, especially if you played the original on Gen/MD. These are the kind of games that are timeless to me.
 
M

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Jonneh3003 said:
Local store was selling The Story of Thor 2 (Legend of Oasis) for £22. Never heard of it but I checked the Ebay/Amazon prices and it was an instant purchase. Looks kind of like Zelda: ALTTP from the screenshots so i'm pretty hyped to give it a go.

I'll post a pic later!

Edit:
xzjB16G.jpg
Click to expand...

Nice find! Beyond Oasis (aka Story of Thor) is one of my favourite Genesis games, and the Saturn sequel (don't worry you don't need to have played the original), called Legend of Oasis here in NA, is amazing too. Very challenging, unlike the first one which was fairly easy.

It is my great shame that I never finished Legend of Oasis. ;_;
 
T

Teknoman

Member
The only thing that sucks is that the soundtrack is more ambient than the first game. Yuzo is great, but it kinda turns me off when he goes too much on the experimental side.
 
IrishNinja

IrishNinja

Member
gotta check out Powerslave now, and damn i didn't partake but that's a mighty fine list!

Dragon1893 said:
Man, Deep Fear isn't getting nearly enough love in this thread.
I'm sad.
Click to expand...

it's just so hard to play in english for a fair price, is the thing
i totally imported & intend to play it with the dub one day though

StevieWhite said:
Just finished streaming D, in honor of Halloween. MAN, the puzzles are weirder than I remember. They aren't terribly difficult - it's usually just a matter of finding the answer somewhere in the environment. The problem is, Laura moves so slow, that any miscue costs you lots of valuable time. Finding the right way to navigate to an object in the environment can be a real exercise in frustration.

Nevertheless, it looked a lot better than I remember it (the back of the US box calls the graphics "photo-realistic," which isn't quite right, unless you've got a really bad camera). I probably hadn't played that game in about 18 years! Now that I've got about 3/4 of the puzzles figured out, I imagine I'll be able to shave a ridiculous amount of time off.

Also, the revolving room on the second disc, while frustrating, was a pretty smart way to save on disc space.
Click to expand...

yeah, tried getting into it the other night but i just got stuck early on - not sure what i was expecting, faintly reminded me of Mansion of Hidden Souls though (the sega CD one)
 
M

MikeMyers

Member
Yeah, looks interesting.

It has a live-action film directed by the guy who did the original Japanese versions of The Grunge movies. Might be worth a look.
 
D.Lo

D.Lo

Member
It has very cool packaging (Japanese version), nice animations and graphics too. Plays kind of like Last Blade?
 
M

MikeMyers

Member
I mean, the game got a live-action film adaptation, not that the game comes with it. My bad.

Weird how this got a film and not Virtua Fighter, though.
 
O

oneida

Cock Strain, Lifetime Warranty
while I usually get the US version of any Saturn game, jp version of last Bronx has a second disc with great training modes
 
S

Splash Wave

Member
What's the consensus on In The Hunt? I hadn't heard of it until recently, and I can get the Japanese version for a little less than $50.

On a similar note, I recently came across Metal Slug for around the same price sans spine card/ram cart. That i passed on it says a lot about how picky I'm getting!
 
O

oneida

Cock Strain, Lifetime Warranty
Jimmy Stav said:
What's the consensus on In The Hunt? I hadn't heard of it until recently, and I can get the Japanese version for a little less than $50.

On a similar note, I recently came across Metal Slug for around the same price sans spine card/ram cart. That i passed on it says a lot about how picky I'm getting!
Click to expand...
PSX version is superior iirc
 
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