As a lifelong PlayStation guy, I recently picked up a Saturn and I *love it*

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I was a middle schooler when the 32-bit / 64-bit generation dropped, but my family had no money so my only exposure to this whole era was via classmates and borrowed gaming magazines. My only meaningful experience with the Saturn during its lifespan was a classmate who had one and let me play it a couple times. She had Tomb Raider and I thought it was so cool at the time, but then another classmate let me play Final Fantasy VII and I was instantly converted to PSX fanboy.

When I finally had enough money to buy my own console, I went with a PS1 and never looked back - I’ve had every Sony console since (including the PSP, Vita and even a PocketStation) and I’ve built up a respectable collection of games for those systems. For example, JRPG’s are my ‘happy place,’ and over the years I’ve slowly collected nearly every US-released JRPG that came out for the PS1 (I’m still missing a few exceptionally-rare titles, but I’d guess I’m at around 75-80% completion).

Anyway, I recently bought a US Model 2 Saturn over on r/GameSale and have been picking up a mix of US and JP-region games for it - here on Reddit, a few from eBay, and several from my local indie game store (shout-out to The Experience Share in Alameda, CA!). The Saturn has been the “featured console” on the Sony PVM that sits in our living room for a couple months, and I just can’t believe how fun it’s been. Along with my own excitement to explore this library of awesome games, my wife and son have had a BLAST doing nightly Virtua Fighter 2 tournaments (my wife loved VF2 in the arcade where she grew up, and her long-unused skills came back quickly!).

The PS1 certainly has its advantages - not the least of which that it was the “winner” of its generation, resulting in a vast library of games across every conceivable genre. That said, the Saturn embodies something uniquely fun and funky that I can’t quite put my finger on. On paper, the differences between the Saturn and PS1 should seem coldly technical - polygons per second, system RAM, etc. - but in practice, they have a surprisingly different vibe. Perhaps my impressions are skewed somewhat by the fact that I’ve been mostly playing Saturn-exclusives (and many of them import-only titles), but the games for this system often feel delightfully weird and quirky and full of unexpected humor.

For example, my whole family was lounging around a couple weeks ago when I popped in “Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire” (yes, that’s the correct no-typos name!), and in the heat of battle, the ultra-cute “Little Red Riding Hood-esq” character suddenly pulled a FREAKING UZI out of her picnic basket and started blasting like Frank from Always Sunny. We all instantly burst out laughing and couldn’t stop getting the giggles over it for hours.

Anyway, I’m going on too long. Thanks to you all for keeping the Saturn flame alive - this oddball console is suddenly a newfound passion of mine, and I can’t wait to keep playing!
submitted by /u/wowbobwow
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Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/SegaSaturn/com ... ly_picked/