The Sega Saturn is 30 years old in North America this month, which means we’re 30 years into the Saturn being underappreciated. Well, okay, maybe 29 years—even Saturn sickos can admit the first year was missing a certain something, where that something was “games you can purchase.” Despite that slow start, the Saturn’s library is vaster than you might have realized, with over 1000 official, licensed releases on the system, but 775 of them remained exclusive to Japan, making it seem like there just wasn’t that much there to choose from.
That’s a problem that could be left in the past, if only those who could make re-releases of these games happen in the present actually do that. We’ve got a few Saturn games available on modern platforms—Treasure has made sure that the genre-subverting classic Radiant Silvergun is perpetually available ever since it hit the Xbox 360 digital shop, for instance, and City Connection’s “Saturn Tribute” series has brought the likes of Toaplan’s Batsugun, Success’ Guardian Force, Cotton Boomerang, and Cotton 2, Masaya’s Assault Suit Leynos 2, and Data East’s Wolf Fang 2001 and Skull Fang to the present, and with more on the way. That’s not nearly enough, though; the industry can do better. To help things along, here are a whole bunch of Saturn games that could stand a re-release. Understand this is just a small percentage of the whole that you should be checking out, but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere.
Panzer Dragoon Saga
Developer: Team Andromeda
Publisher: Sega
1998
We’ll just start here so some of you don’t have to wonder about whether Panzer Dragoon Saga is going to be included at all. There are multiple reasons to want the lone role-playing game in the Panzer Dragoon universe to be released again in the present, and plenty of them have to do with the quality of it. There’s another glaring reason for it that anyone who has ever sought it out is aware of, though. As of this writing, on Pricecharting, Panzer Dragoon Saga is selling—not listed for, but is actually selling for—an average of $1,083. That’s not new or graded, but “here is a copy of the game, in a box, with a manual.” Loose discs are still pulling in an average price of $736.
There are also multiple reasons that we might never actually see Panzer Dragoon Saga again. Back in 2009, GameTap said it had the rights to release it as a downloadable game, as it did with its predecessor, Panzer Dragoon II Zwei, but that a combination of the emulation for the Saturn being difficult and low demand for Saga kept them from actually bothering to do so. The source code was lost (and is maybe still lost?) at one point, but Sega could go through the trouble of emulating the game on new platforms, if they wanted to. That “if” being significant, since Sega has, for the most part, attempted to pretend that the Saturn era never happened, and also pushed remakes of the first two Panzer Dragoon titles onto another developer and publisher. One that announced that Zwei’s remake was being delayed four years ago now, with no word about it since then. Still! What’s life without hope?
Princess Crown
Developer: Atlus
Publisher: Atlus
1997
Princess Crown not having an official, translated release in the present is annoying for a whole bunch of reasons, but the one that irks the most is that there are no legal problems surrounding it whatsoever. Sometimes, licensing issues can’t be ironed out, and it keeps games from resurfacing. Not Princess Crown, though! It was developed by a team at Atlus, and then published by Atlus, and then Atlus eventually became one with Sega. Atlus could take it upon themselves to localize Princess Crown, which is for all intents and purposes the first Vanillaware game given it was George Kamitami’s directorial debut before he formed that studio. They haven’t, though, and probably won’t, which we got a great reminder of when it was included in only the Japanese release of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim.
There’s an unofficial translation of Princess Crown out there now, if you’re impatient (or realistic), so at least it’s playable for those who like to indulge in such things. For everyone else, though, they’ll just go on not knowing that they’re missing some of the finest sprite work on a system known for its sprites.
Fighters Megamix
Developer: AM2
Publisher: Sega
1997
You can play arcade fighter Fighting Vipers, a port of which is still available on the Xbox Marketplace, right now. You can legally buy and play various Virtua Fighter games in the present, as well. What you can’t do without buying a copy of the Saturn original secondhand—or emulating it, and so on—is play Fighters Megamix. And that matters, because none of those other games let you fight in a cage while throwing punches and kicks as the car from Daytona USA.
Fighters Megamix is much more than just a fighting game with a bunch of goofy, gimmicked, unlockable characters, though. It’s a fighting game that you will thoroughly enjoy playing as you unlock those goofy, gimmicked characters, one that remains a blast decades after the fact thanks to its blending of two very different fighting games into one, that also features Hornet from Daytona USA, Janet from Virtua Cop, Sonic universe characters otherwise exclusive to Sonic the Fighters, and also a giant bear with no points of articulation, for some reason. It rocks, and unironically so.
Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari
Developer: Givro
Publisher: Enix
1997
You might not know about Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari, but you probably know of at least one other Givro game. They were the developers behind E.V.O.: Search for Eden on the SNES, as well as Wonder Project J and Wonder Project J2 on the Super Famicom and N64, respectively. Whereas those three titles all focus on simulation gameplay to varying degrees, Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari is a graphic adventure, and the “graphic” part of that should be emphasized here: it’s a beauty.
You will spend much of your time solving puzzles instead of fighting, playing as the dragon Gaūpu and interacting with various other creatures who will sometimes even join you in your adventures. On a system loaded with action that ended up with so many arcade ports, Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari is a bit of an oddball for how comparatively laidback it is, and with so little focus on violence, but it’s one that is going to probably require a re-release for people to be able to experience it in English. It never left Japan, and it also ended up being Givro’s final game, as well. We’re yet to see it get an unofficial translation, but given the rate at which those are releasing for Saturn games seems to be picking up, that could change.
Purikura Daisakusen
Developer: Atlus
Publisher: Atlus
1996
Purikura Daisakusen also released in arcades—yes, an Atlus arcade game—but it was essentially a simultaneous release on Saturn, given that it landed on shelves the next month. It’s a shooter played from an isometric perspective, where you play as characters from Atlus’ fighting game series, Power Instinct. Yes, Atlus also used to make fighting games; they weren’t always just making new things with “Persona 5” in the title.
Purikura Daisakusen is not an easy game. It starts out easy enough, but the number of things on screen that are trying to kill you goes up and up and up until you can’t possibly keep pace. Your mileage may vary on whether that’s a good thing or not. Even with its short, arcade-style run time, there’s plenty to enjoy here, with multiple playable characters and a system that sees you grow a familiar to assist you, which changes into different forms depending on whether you focus more on melee attacks or ranged ones.
Burning Rangers
Developer: Sonic Team
Publisher: Sega
1998
Sonic Team didn’t release a Sonic game on the Saturn, but outside of concerning yourself with the Business of the Saturn and what that meant for it, there’s little reason to care about that. Not when Sonic Team was busying themselves with creative offerings like Burning Rangers, where you play as one of two firefighters in a sci-fi setting with a jetpack strapped to you, trying to rescue people trapped in burning buildings and such while putting out the fires that have trapped them in the first place. And you do this using a special laser pistol. Like with Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari, violence wasn’t the point here, and it made for an experience unlike anything else in Sonic Team’s oeuvre.
Any problems that Burning Rangers has—its camera and controls are not great even taking into consideration the era—are ones that can be fixed on modern platforms, in the same way that something like Perfect Dark was translated from the N64 controller to that of the Xbox 360. Leave the game as it is, otherwise, but just bring it back and give it a second chance so people can see what Sonic Team was cooking in the era they were ignored the most.
Bulk Slash
Developer: CAProduction
Publisher: Hudson Soft
1997
Bulk Slash is a masterpiece of mech action, a game that shouldn’t control as smoothly as it does without dual analog sticks to work with, but does. It’s got speed, it’s got replayability as a core feature, it has secrets and high-quality voice acting and difficulty, and it’s got the looks and the sound it needs to elevate it even further. It’s one of the best games on the Saturn, but because it was a Japan-exclusive title on a system considered a commercial failure, it’s also a lesser-known title from Hudson Soft’s life after its partnership with NEC.
The unofficial translation of the game is one of the best examples of the importance of those projects we have to point at, and since Hudson is no more and Konami doesn’t seem very interested in much of anything in their catalog besides Bomberman—and even that can be suspect—you should probably just go play that.
Shining Force III
Developer: Camelot, Sonic Software Planning
Publisher: Sega
1998
Maybe you’ve played Shining Force III, but chances are good that you haven’t actually played Shining Force III. And yes, that sentence does actually make sense. North America did receive a version of Shining Force III in 1998 on the Saturn, but it was actually just one-third of the entire game: since this was one of the 1998 releases Sega put out before fully cutting off support to the system, they didn’t get around to localizing the other two-thirds. Shining Force III is actually made up of three scenarios, telling parts of the same larger story from the perspective of different characters, and it’s all tied together enough that, when the first scenario was localized for North American audiences, the ending had to be rewritten to make it seem as if that was that instead of it being unresolved.
There’s a lot of game here. So much game. And if you’ve ever wondered why Sega chose the cutoff point they did for re-releasing Shining Force games, with the Genesis trilogy and sometimes the Game Gear releases always being the ones you see again and again, it’s a combination of their general aversion to revisiting the Saturn era, combined with the sheer size and scope of III. At the least, though, you should know just how much Shining Force III actually exists.
Shadows of the Tusk
Developer: Metem
Publisher: Hudson Soft
1998
Did you know that the Sega Saturn had modem support? The Sega Net Link fit in the cartridge slot, and could connect you to the internet at a speed of 28.8 of God’s own kilobits per second. It wasn’t used for a ton of games (and, as with everything else on the Saturn, even fewer of them outside of Japan), but Hudson’s Shadows of the Tusk was one of those that did go online. It’s a deck-building strategy RPG, where the emphasis is very much on its online play. It has a single-player component, but it’s short to the point where it’s clear that the game was meant to be played mostly through battles with other real people.
Shadows of the Tusk never left Japan, either, but since there’s so little story to go over, that’s not an impediment to playing and enjoying the game if you don’t mind being patient about figuring out what the menu options are. The issue is that you need other people to play online against in the present, and while it’s possible, you need someone else with the setup that makes it so. There aren’t going to be many of those people out there. Expanding the pool of players is an easy fix in 2025—re-release the thing—but, circling back to the general issue with Hudson vis a vis Konami, that might not be in the cards, as it were.
Sega Rally Championship Plus
Developer: AM3
Publisher: Sega
1996
Speaking of Sega Net Link, one of the later iterations of Sega Rally Championship on the Saturn included online play. The Plus edition of the game included support for the 3D Control Pad, which included both a thumbstick and analog triggers, and being able to use that controller while playing a friend online had to be an incredible feeling only rivaled by actually seeing a row of linked Sega Rally Championship arcade cabinets out in the wild while you’re with your buddies.
One of the most important racing games out there isn’t out there any longer. Part of that is, again, due to Sega just kind of ignoring this era of their history a little too often, and another part is likely due to licensing. Sega Rally Championship had handshake agreements about its use of Toyota and Lancia vehicles, rather than anything actually written down in a contract, and chances are pretty good that the terms of a deal would be a lot different in 2025 than they were in 1995 when it first hit arcades and the Saturn. Think about how Sega re-released Daytona USA 2 within Like a Dragon Gaiden, but took out all of the licensed bits and renamed it Sega Racing Classic 2 so as not to have to renegotiate any of that. Or how they ignore the OutRun titles with licensing deals in them, or… you get the idea. Sega Rally Championship helped birth the rally racing subgenre as we know it, though, so having it just floating out there in the ether feels wrong.
Shinrei Jusatsushi Taroumaru
Developer: Time Warner Interactive Japan
Publisher: Time Warner Interactive Japan
1997
Would you like to play a 2.5D side-scrolling action game with art from Kenichi Nemoto (Grindstormer, Beatmania, Phantom Dust) and Hiroshi Iuchi (Treasure co-founder and artist on the likes of Gunstar Heroes, director of Radiant Silvergun)? Would you like that game to have an impressive mix of 2D and 3D graphics? Would it seal the deal to learn it was developed by the same studio that brought you the Saturn’s port of Virtua Racing, as well as Wayne Gretzky and the NHLPA All-Stars on the Genesis and SNES? Or that a re-release of the game would drop the price from north of $1700 second-hand to something more like $20 or $25 digitally?
Regardless of which of the two characters you pick, you use psychic powers to lock on and fire at them. The game is primarily a series of boss fights, and the art for those fights, as well as the fights themselves, are a significant draw. What’s a bit of a shame about the game is that it’s fun to play, but it’s not anywhere near as fun as the price it goes for suggests it could be, as that’s all due to its severe rarity. Relieving Shinrei Jusatsushi Taroumaru of the burden of its pricing would do a favor to both the game itself as well as those who play it.
Sakura Wars/Sakura Wars 2: Thou Shalt Not Die
Developer: Red Company
Publisher: Sega
1996/1998
Visual novels are great. Dating sims are great. Games with mechs? Great! A tactical RPG featuring mechs where the mechs are more or less powerful not because of experience points or leveling or armaments equipped, but solely depending on your interactions with the ladies you can date in between battles? That’s Sakura Wars, baby, and great doesn’t begin to cover it.
While the series remains relatively unknown outside of Japan, it was a party in its homeland. The Sakura Wars games were popular enough to spawn anime, manga, and even stage shows, and Sega just kept it to Japan instead of working to release any of them overseas at any point before 2019. The Saturn probably could have used something to make it stand out overseas, Sega! Why Sega of America never took the potentially good kinds of risks and only the kinds that slowly killed the company needs to be studied in a lab.
These are two of the finest offerings on the Saturn, and this is coming from someone devoting a whole lot of words to games on that system right now, who would write even more of them if he thought you’d read them. The games are loaded with personality, the battles are a lot of fun to figure out as you try to remember which of the women (and girls) felt butterflies in their stomach around you or the urge to punch you in the face in the last 30 minutes, and it’s so obvious how much influence other games that you probably have played would take from these titles that you maybe have not.
Sega changed the gameplay and introduced new characters in a new time period in 2019, as referenced above, and the lone English-language release before that was the (pretty good, but not must-play in comparison to these two titles) Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love. If those are your only points of reference for Sakura Wars, you need new ones. And while Sega hasn’t helped with that yet, at least some folks out there have.
Marc Normandin covers retro videogames at Retro XP, which you can read for free but support through his Patreon, and can be found on Twitter at @Marc_Normandin.
