Decisions and relics

I’ve had a Sega Saturn for a few years now and I love it, but back in the day I did not have one.  I had to choose one console because when you’re a kid, money is very hard to come by for buying dumb stuff like video games.  For the previous generation I had a Genesis.  I loved Sega and was glad I jumped the Nintendo boat when it came time to choose either the SNES or Genesis.  For me and my tastes in games, Sega had the better games.  My friend was a Nintendo kid so he had a SNES.  This meant I was still able to play the exclusives at his house and vice versa.  We would always have debates on which console was the superior one.  Fun times were had by all.

Then came time to move on to the next generation of consoles.  My friend would get an N64 at launch, including a few games.  It was really fun to play Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64, but then came the question: what am I going to get?  I loved Sega, so the logical choice would have been to get the Saturn, but something about the Saturn did not get my attention as much as the Genesis did.  My other friend had a Saturn and he always talked about games like Virtua Cop 2, Daytona USA, and NiGHTS.  I was at a crossroads.  I was planning to get a console for my birthday and that was rapidly approaching.  What was I to do!  I know; these are the tough choices you have to make when you’re a kid.

But then something unexpected happened.

My friend who had the N64 had an older brother who had something called a PlayStation.  While his older bro was out he took me into his room to show me the PlayStation.  We played Tekken and Revolution X and that’s when I decided that my next console was going to be PlayStation.  Looking back that was the best choice because that was the top banana of that generation for it was the most popular with the most games to choose from.

But if I were a few years older, say in my late teens or in my twenties with a larger amount of cash to spend on stuff like games, I probably would have chosen the Saturn.

While the PlayStation gave a little something for everybody and the N64 seemed to be pointed more towards a younger crowd, the Saturn seemed to be for an older group that had a core interest in gaming.  You know, a more tight-knit community always talking about the latest news for the Saturn and whatnot.  This group would have some rough times ahead when Sega decided to give the console an early death to make way for the Dreamcast.  If you were into the Saturn, it seemed you were the type to start investing in Japanese imports.

When I started to dig deep into forums about Saturn related stuff I would occasionally run into a post where someone is referencing one of two websites dedicated to Saturn.  One is Dave’s Sega Saturn Page and the other is Dustin’s Saturn page.  I would definitely see more referencing the latter.  A few years ago, Dave’s Sega Saturn Page was brought back to life, though it’s mainly a site for archival purposes.  Most of the content was written during the time the Saturn was active.  Dustin’s website, however, was a tough one to find.  It took me a while, but I was finally able to find a link that I was able to plug into the Internet Archive and something turned up!

Both of these sites are great and have a wealth of knowledge about the Saturn.  Now I know why they were such great references for back then.  I figured they might be entertaining to peruse through so here are the links for them.

Dave’s Sega Saturn page

Dustin’s Saturn page

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