The best Sega Saturn games

[LarryTyphoid]

I've always been a fan of NiGHTS Into Dreams; it's probably the Saturn game most people are familiar with, because it was made by Sonic Team and is referenced a bunch in Sonic games. The only other Saturn games I've played are the first two Panzer Dragoons (I have yet to play the RPG Saga, though I hear it's highly regarded), Burning Rangers, and Guardian Heroes. Burning Rangers kinda sucks and I haven't played enough Guardian Heroes to make a judgement, so my vote's for NiGHTS.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Dark Saviour was an interesting exclusive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Savior

 

[v1rus]

I havent played many Saturn games, but I always like to mention Shining Force 3. Just love that game. Lots of early Shining games fans around codex, but most people seem to have skipped this one (prolly because part 2 and 3 were never officially localized). Cant say its one of the best, because, duh, lack of experience, but people, do you love older Shining games? Do you love srpgs full of beautiful childish naivete? Give the gaem a try.

 

[Falksi]

Some more for your list dude:

• Guardian Heroes
• Radiant Silvergun
• Baku Baku
• X-Men Vs Street Fighter
• SEGA Rally
• Saturn Bomberman
• Legend of Oasis
• Hyper Duel

 

[Tweed]

Clockwork Knight

 

[Nutmeg]

Burning Rangers kinda sucks

It's jank, but it doesn't suck. I dream of a hack to fix the input handling, and overclocking on saturn emulators to fix the frame rate (altho that might be something that requires a hack too). I can accept the dropped polys, it's part of the charm, IMO.

Lots of cool games on the Saturn. Play Bulk Slash and Asuka Limit Over. Great mid 90s otakucore. Add Cotton 2 for similar vibes, native to the Saturn's arcade sister hardware the ST-V.

If you like mecha, in addition to Virtual On, there are the first two Gungriffon games (there's a free spiritual sequel for PC which recreates (parts of) the Saturn games' engine) and also the third Assault Suit game -- Assault Suit Leynos 2.

All the above mentioned games are from traditionally (J)PC focused devs, as is the already mentioned Hyper Duel (Saturn mode has remastered graphics and a button to lock shooting direction). Though an arcade port, it's from legendary dev Tecnosoft, moreover, it can be seen as an alternative take on Herzog (Zwei)'s transforming mechanic.

Lots of great arcade ports too. I like the extras included ports of Vampire Savior and Zero 3 (CPS2), and Twinkle Star Sprites (NeoGeo). Elevator Action Returns and Rayforce (Taito F3) are more no frills but also very good. Speaking of shmups, there's Battle Garegga (great practice options) and Batsugun (CD BGM).

 

[Great Deceiver]

Batsugun Saturn also included the Special Version, which is a lot easier than the regular game in the first loop but subsequent loops get a lot harder. Easy to recommend to a newcomer.

 

[Nutmeg]

Yes today we can emulate the original arcade special version, but I heard it was only ever a location testing board or something like this. In any case it wasn't produced or distributed in large numbers, so the Saturn port would have been the way most people played it BitD till emulation caught up.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

overclocking on saturn emulators to fix the frame rate

I wonder why Burning Rangers ran so poorly, anyway. At first I thought it was because the Saturn couldn't really handle a 3D platformer since it was originally made to be a 2D console, but Panzer Dragoon 2 arguably looks better than Burning Rangers yet runs at a very smooth and consistent framerate. Could those transparent sprites alone really be the cause of the performance issues? You would think Sonic Team, at that time, would've had a better handle on the Saturn hardware than anyone else. I guess no other dev of that time would have dared to make an entire game based around a juryrigged transparency hack.

My problem with Burning Rangers is more the really terrible English localization. They bothered to make a whole new English version of the theme song, so you'd think the actual game would've had some of that effort put in, but no. The constant unskippable rescue cutscenes are filled with empty, awkward pauses, because the changes in the timin between the two languages wasn't accounted for. And when I heard about a game where you're a firefighter and the entire point of the game is rescuing people (I recall Yuji Naka said that a motivation behind Burning Rangers was since most games focused around harming your enemies, he wanted to make a game about only rescuing people), I envisioned having to carry victims on my back and evade danger to bring them to safety, not just walk up to them and start a unskippable cutscene where they get teleported away instantly.

The lack of any in-game music is also a huge turn-off; it's a real missed opportunity since Sonic Team games always have awesome music. The only reason music was exempted was because they wanted to have that system where you call Chris and she gives you voice-acted directions, but man, what a waste to exchange that for some decent music. And Chris's English voice actress sounds like she's about to fall asleep.

 

[Häyhä]

Seeing as I bought an actual Sega Saturn a few years ago, just to play them again, I'm going to have to say Virtua Cop 1 & 2. Amazing ports, obviously not graphically quite as good as the arcade versions, but in every other way simply amazing home-arcade fun blasting hundreds of crooks on your TV.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Play Bulk Slash

Thanks for this recommendation. I had never heard of this game and it's pretty sick. I couldn't believe this game's never been released outside of Japan; the fan translation even includes English voice acting, which sound really authentic, so I totally thought I was playing an official version before I looked up info about the game. If Sega of America had gotten more gems like this brought overseas then the Saturn would be remembered a lot more fondly.

 

[Higher Animal]

Heard some interesting things about:
Dragon Force
Daytona USA
Dark Savior
Magic Knight Rayearth
Decathlete
World series baseball 98
Enemy Zero
D
Powerslave

I heard emus are pretty bad for Saturn, but I won’t pretentiously ivory tower judge you for that choice.

 

[lefthandblack]

Ghen War




Out of my fifteen or so Saturn games, this one and Shining: The holy Ark are the ones that I put the most hours into. Holy ark was lots of hours going back and forth trying ro solve a puzzle that I never did solve, the game won.

 

[The Limper]

Special spots in my heart for Shining Force and Langrisser (Warsong). Saving Bayard and repeatedly thrashing that arse-licker Lance!

 

[Late Bloomer]

One of my favorite platform games of all time was on the Sega Saturn. Astal.

https://segaretro.org/Astal

From the list I chose

Guardian Heroes - Friend and I had a tremendous amount of fun playing this.
Dragon Force - Some novel ideas. Loved the big battles and the music.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

I bought a Saturn in 2000 to play Panzer Dragoon Saga. I played through it a few times and it is a cool and unique game. I also got Dragon Force and Guardian Heroes but I didn’t play them much. I was going to let Ian Miles Cheong (Rex Exitium) borrow my Saturn but there was some Asian flu going on then and the codex told me not to do it. That’s some old Codex history.