Sega Saturn

The Sega Saturn (Japaneseセガ サターン, Sega Satan ), a video game console manufacturer Sega, was released on 22 November 1994 in Japan. On the first day 170,000 units were sold.

Introduction

At the end of the 16 -bit Sega Konsolenära held the second place in the console business almost worldwide behind Nintendo. The release date for Nintendo's successor for the SNES / Super Famicom, which later Nintendo 64, shifted farther and farther to the rear, so that with the Sega Mega Drive successor Saturn had a good chance to position themselves better in the market. Since established a strong market competitor with Sony's PlayStation, Sega was unable to fulfill this expectation.

In May 1995, Sega launched the Saturn in the U.S., a full six months earlier than planned. This was announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo ( E3) in the same year, where Sega representatives to an advertising battle with Sony delivered. However, this surprising step had meager sales result. This was largely due to the high price of the system and the lack of available software. Consequently, Sega decided to extradite Saturn units only to selected dealers. This caused great resentment on the part of certain companies, including Kay -Bee Toys.

In 1996, a peripheral called the Sega NetLink ( a 28.8 - kb / s modem, which is plugged into the receptacle ). Originally thought to save the console, it proved to be rather counterproductive, since it had a high price and few compatible games. A web browser was available with the device, programmed by PlanetWeb, later programmer of the Sega Dreamcast browser. A mouse and keyboard adapter was also offered for the NetLink, which can be used to view Web pages with many ISPs today. However, only very few units were sold.

In Japan the console has been promoted through a series of television commercials that showed a hero, the young people with violence continued to Sega Saturn to play " until the knuckles bleed ". The spots oriented themselves in tone and aesthetics of classical Japanese martial arts films. The hero, Segata Sanshiro, was in the course of the campaign to a pop phenomenon, the song of the commercials, Sega Saturn, Shiro! (セガ サターン,シロ! Sega Satan, shiro! ), Published as a CD single.

Technology

The hardware of the Saturn, with two CPUs and six other processors, made it difficult to fully utilize the maximum power of the console, as the parallel design for many game developers was too complex and is still today. Yu Suzuki is said to have about the difficulties to program two CPUs, said:

" The processors while at the same time start, but there are delays when one has to wait for the others to catch up. I had a single very fast main processor preferred. So I think that only one in a hundred developers know how to program the Saturn really fast. "

Game developments from other manufacturers were also hampered by the fact that not a viable development environment ( software development kit) was available. Therefore, many Saturn games had to be written in assembly language in order to achieve reasonable performance with the hardware - a very laborious manner of development. Often the programmer used only one CPU to avoid difficulties when programming for the Saturn out of the way.

The Saturn was soon compared to the PlayStation falling behind; even though he had more than twice the polygon, this output has been rarely achieved because of programming difficulties. In 2D area but the Sega Saturn was a long time the upper class - thanks to the ability of some games, access the 4 MB RAM expansion.

It has been used, a special copy protection that has not been cracked to date; However, he may by a mod chip or special import modules ( which also import games that use different region codes, can be played), are bypassed. Another option is to quickly change an original CD against a burnt. The system is started with the baked. The laser beam travels outward to check the copy of the CD and thus the authenticity of the CD with an open drawer and running Saturn is exchanged for an original. Does the laser back, the burned version must be re-inserted. This is called " swap " technique.

Games

The Sega Saturn was originally developed as the ultimate 2D console, but was redesigned for better 3D capabilities, when rumors about the Sony PlayStation widespread. Subsequently, the Saturn was rushed to the market cast to have an edge over the competition - thereby were very few games available at launch.

It is generally believed that the success of the PlayStation depended on the huge marketing campaigns that launched Sony. Sega as a pure video game companies could not keep up with the huge group step on this point. In addition, Sega had to contend with developers: Core Design, for example, the makers of the Tomb Raider series, developed according to fairly disappointing sales of Tomb Raider for Sega Saturn No more sequels, which meant a severe blow to Sega. While Western software houses converted title, but remained Saturn mostly away.

Although the Saturn in Japan more successful than the previous Mega Drive was, he was on the North American and European markets largely a failure, for which a variety of reasons comes into question. Perhaps one of the most important was the suspicion that the players for Sega developed after a series of add-on peripherals were released for the Mega Drive, which were dropped after excessive support. These included the Mega - CD and Sega 32X that. The Sony PlayStation also had many popular software titles earlier in the race than Sega, except Tomb Raider, which actually first appeared on the Saturn. Also, the cost was a factor, because the Saturn initially cost U.S. $ 400 - in contrast to the PlayStation, the $ 300 cost. In this context it must be mentioned that the PlayStation could be relatively easily converted for black copies, which at Saturn, although theoretically possible, but was much more complicated.

The Saturn hailed by fans to this day as a cult console. Although the reactions of known arcade titles such as Daytona USA or the Virtua Fighter series today as 3D pioneering work, the Saturn was at that time to its end in the shadow of the PlayStation. The hardware could come up with luxury, but also expensive features that were denied the PlayStation buyers ( internal memory, MPEG support - which made it possible to play back Video CDs; RAM expansion ). There also appeared a few exclusives, now among fans enjoy cult status ( NiGHTS into Dreams, Panzer Dragoon, Sega Rally ). What is missing are the big names and heroes of Nintendo, Sony, and their alternative manufacturers.

1998 appeared the game Deep Fear in Europe as the last title for the Saturn. In Japan, however, the Saturn also enjoyed great popularity, which is not least due to the large mass of role-playing games, many of which did not reach Europe.

Various models

There were several models of Saturn. The first model with oval buttons was gradually replaced by a second round switches. Together with the second model, the revision gamepad was delivered. In Europe, Australia, Canada and the U.S., the consoles were black, in the Japanese market, however, white and gray. Some other color versions were released in a limited edition in Japan: The Skeleton "Cool" Saturn with a gray-tinted semi-transparent case and the Saturn Derbysta with semi-transparent bluish housing with the logo of the horse racing game Derby Stallion.

In addition, the consoles were built by other manufacturers in Japan, such as the JVC / Victor V- Saturn and the HiSaturn from Hitachi. In Korea, some consoles were manufactured by Samsung.

Also, were produced for France consoles for the local SECAM standard, which are, however, actually acted to PAL devices with a converter that converted the video signals.

Specifications

Main processors

• Two SH-2 7604 32 -bit RISC processors, each with 28.6 MHz ( 25 MIPS each ) - each with 4 kB "on-chip " cache, of which 2 kB usable as directly addressable RAM
• SH-1 32- bit RISC processor, 20 MHz ( 20 MIPS), to control the CD -ROM drive
• Saturn Control Unit ( SCU) 32 -bit DSP with 14.3 MHz, DMA controller and processing of geometry
• Hitachi 4-bit MCU, "System Manager & Peripheral Control" ( SMPC )

Video

• VDP1, 32 -bit video display processor
• Sprite, polygon, and geometry engine (4 -cornered polygons)
• Dual 256 KB framebuffers for rotation and scaling effects
• Texture Mapping
• Gouraud shading
• 512KB cache for textures
• Background Engine
• Five simultaneous scrolling backgrounds
• Two simultaneously zooming / rotating game levels
• 200,000 texture - mapped polygons per second
• 500,000 flat -shaded polygons per second
• 60 animation frames per second
• 24 -bit true-color graphics
• 16.7 million colors
• Resolutions: 352 × 240, 640 × 240 and 704 × 480 pixels
• Programmable display resolutions: (Horizontal sizes of 320, 352, 640, 704 pixels ), ( Vertical sizes of 224, 240, 256 scanlines, non-interlaced ), ( Vertical sizes of 448, 480, 512 scanlines, interlaced), only PAL consoles support Scanline Viewing 256 and 512
• 7.1590 MHz clock rate for NTSC systems, 6.7116 MHz for PAL systems

Audio

• Yamaha FH1 digital signal processor (DSP) with a 22.6 MHz
• Motorola 68EC000 sound processor with 11.3 MHz ( 1.5 MIPS)
• 32 channels of PCM ( pulse-code modulation) or FM ( frequency modulation ) sound
• Any many of the 32 channels can be connected for multiple operators per FM sound channel
• Normally four operators per channel for 8 FM channels were used in total
• 44.1 kHz sampling rate
• 16-bit stereo DAC

Memory

• 2 MB RAM ( main memory)
• 1.54 MB of video RAM

Media

• Double - speed CD -ROM ( 320 KB / sec transfer rate)
• Audio CD - compatible
• CD G compatible
• CD EG - compatible
• CD single (8 cm CD) - compatible
• Video CD ( MPEG1 ), optional
• Photo CD, optional ( due to extra software)
• Electronic Books, optional ( due to extra software)
• Digital Karaoke, optional
• 512KB Memory Cartridges for Score assurance, optional

Input and Output

• High -speed serial communications port
• Internal 32 -bit expansion port
• Internal Multi- AV port for video CD adapter
• Composite video / stereo (standard)
• NTSC / PAL / SECAM RF ( optional)
• S-video compatible (optional)
• RGB compatible ( optional)
• Hi -Vision ( EDTV ) and 31 kHz ( VGA) display: (31 kHz: 320 × 480 or 640 × 480 non-interlaced ), ( Hi-Vision: 352 × 480 or 704 × 480 non-interlaced ) Requires compatible monitor and video cable ( optional)
• Analogue control pad optional
• Two control pad connectors

Power supply

• AC120 volts; 60 Hz ( U.S. / CAN)
• AC240 volts; 50 Hz ( EU / AUS )
• AC100 volts; 60 Hz ( JP)
• 3 -volt lithium battery (CR 2032 ) for driving the non-volatile RAM and SMPC internal real-time clock

Television standards

• NTSC -J ( JP)
• NTSC -US ( U.S. / CAN)
• PAL ( EU / AUS )
• SECAM (F)

Power consumption

• About 25 W

Size ( Europa-/US-Modell )

• Width: 260 mm ( 10.2 " )
• Depth: 230 mm (9.0 " )
• Height: 83 mm ( 3.2 " )

Accessories

• Digital Gamepad ( 8-way D - pad, 6 buttons)
• Analog gamepad " ThumbPad " (introduced with game NiGHTS Into Dreams and saw the later Dreamcast controller already very similar )
• " Stunner " light gun (introduced in Virtua Cop )
• Multitap
• " Arcade Racer" Steering Wheel
• Netlink modem card
• Netlink-PS/2-Keyboard-Adapter ( to use with Netlink modem)
• 1.44 MB 3 5 " floppy drive (serial interface, only a few games supported)

Emulators

For the Sega Saturn emulators are different, for example Sato urn, Saturin, SSF, and Yabause.

Also, there are emulators that emulate the Saturn other systems, eg Gameboy, Atari Lynx, WonderSwan Color or SNES.

Others

Sega was planning games for the Saturn isolated to publish a module to do away with the load times in games and so to allow an uninterrupted flow of play. This was indirectly performed with games like King of Fighters 95 or Ultraman. These games have the actual files on ROM modules, while the music was loaded from the CD, but the game can only be started with the CD together. Later games were delivered for reasons of cost instead of using a ROM module containing the actual software, with a RAM module (1, 2 or 4 MB). When starting the game, the program code is loaded into the module and, apart from the music loaded from there, resulting in significant reductions in loading times. Especially reactions known NeoGeo games like King of Fighters or Capcom Vampire Savior games were thanks to this technique almost 1:1 reactions of the arcade originals, while reactions for the Playstation were only possible with swabs.