Saturn games that never came stateside...

[Melf]

Props to Dragonmaster Dyne for the site link provided in the SoR for DC thread.

The Saturn portion of the site tells the dismal story of the console and provides some keen insight as to why some of the most eagerly awaited titles never came to these shores. There are a bunch but I've posted the bigger titles.

I'll post them here but be warned: it's quite a long read!

Eternal Champions: The Final Chapter

This was perhaps the most acclaimed 2D fighting game to ever be created somebody other than Capcom or SNK. In fact, Eternal Champions was dreamed up by none other than Deep Water, one of Sega of America's own in-house programming teams. The Genesis version was pretty good, and the Sega CD version was spectacular but suffered from the limitations of its consoles. Eternal Champions: The Final Chapter would have picked up on one of the loose ends from the Sega CD game - the appearance of the Infernals - and gone on to introduce new characts and an all-new tournament.

Sega of America was already making plans to release the third and final installment on Saturn and souping up the game engine big time when their superiors over in Japan put their foot down and said "NO!" It wasn't going to happen because they wanted Virtua Fighter - a game that had come out of their own programming stable - to be the definitive fighting game for the platform. Not only did Eternal Champions for Saturn never see the light of day, it never even got its foot in the door. It's a crying shame, too, because the Sega CD version received a lot of good reviews and many American gamers were looking forward to playing a spiffed-up Saturn version. Word leaked in October 1996 that the game was indeed going to be axed, and Sega of America reluctantly confirmed that sad reality before the year was out.

In retrospect, Eternal Champions: The Final Chapter might have been one of those regional titles that could have helped push console sales had it been given a fair chance, but it never got that opportunity. Sega of Japan killed Eternal Champions for Saturn before one line of alpha code ever made it through a Saturn development kit.

Grandia

In 1997, everyone knew that Final Fantasy VII was turning out to be the monster hit that had been expected; furthermore, everybody thought they knew what Saturn RPG that Sega had in its Japanese arsenal to best counter it. This was none other than Grandia by GameArts, which was released in December of 1997 to eager Saturn gamers in Japan and was already being hailed as a masterpiece and a milestone insofar as the use of 3D environments in an RPG was concerned. To the surprise and anger of Western gamers, though, Sega passed on Grandia in 1997 and instead opted to translated and release the first installment of its own Shining Force III series. This seemed to fly in the face of all reason, if you were an eager Saturn gamer or RPG addict following the videogame market that year. It was quite a different story in the corporate boardrooms of the companies involved.

What most Western gamers do not understand is that Grandia for Saturn did not do all that well in Japan. It may have been one helluva game, in fact the best RPG ever created for the console and one of the all-time RPG classics, but it didn't exactly take the Japanese market by storm. Grandia for Saturn only sold some 350,000 copies during its original market lifetime - large numbers for a Saturn game to be sure, but nowhere in the ballpark compared to what Square's Final Fantasy VII was doing. That, combined with the sad reality that Saturn had failed in the West, was the reason why both Sega and GameArts agreed not to do an English language port of the game. Their sales projections show that they couldn't make enough money off of an English language port in the West, where the Saturn market was already small and shrinking daily, to justify the expense of the translation effort. On 10 January 1998, Sega angered RPG fans worldwide when it announced that Grandia for Saturn would never be translated into English for a Western release. It is a grudge that both Sega diehards and RPGers hold against Sega even to this day, made all the more painful by an obviously inferior English-language port for PlayStation released by Sony approximately two years later.

Sakura Taisen (Sakura Wars)

Perhaps the one classic Saturn game that anime addicts dearly wanted Sega to bring to the West in an English translation is the one classic Saturn game that was guaranteed never to make it out of Japan. Sakura Taisen, i.e. Sakura Wars, combined the action-packed antics of mech combat with a delightfully entertaining dating simulation ... and therein lay its problem. Dating simulations are quite popular in Japan due to the culture of that country, but they have almost always bombed in the West. It didn't matter one whit that it achieved the prestigous title of Overall Game of the Year in Japan - there was simply no way that Sega was going to release such a game in a market where a sizeable audience for it simply did not exist. To be frightfully honest though, and I know this is going to irritate a lot of Sakura Taisen fans, nobody else save them has missed its presence or that of its later Dreamcast incarnations.

Sonic X-Treme

Without doubt, Sonic X-Treme is the saddest "lost software" story in the saga of the Sega Saturn. You see, despite stories to the contrary, Sega planned all along to have a brand-new Sonic game for Saturn that would showcase the console's power - just as the original Sonic had done with the Genesis years before. Sonic X-Treme, originally planned for the 32X, was to have been that game. Its loss is due in part to its develoment team and in part to none other than Sega of Japan.

As with the later Sonic efforts, Sega Technical Institute (STI) over in America was tasked with the latest incarnation of Sega's beloved mascot. This time, they had the formidable job of creating the first-ever fully 3D next-generation Sonic game. They had lots of ideas and wasted no time in throwing together executable code in order to demonstrate their ideas. Sonic X-Treme, as was revealed to a number of videogame industry reporters and magazines at the time, looked nothing short of fantastic. It had the look of every Sonic lover's dream - full 3D environments in which Sonic could maneuver in all directions, rich gameplay enviroments true to the series legacy, and so on. Sonic fans worldwide were salivating as 1996 came to its end and 1997 loomed on the horizon.

This is where Sega of Japan enters the picture.

You see, STI also had some major problems coding Sonic X-Treme. Even the executable alphas they created took up far too much of the Saturn's resources to ever hope to make a playable game out of theme. The situation was so bad that Sega of America was pulling programming resources from other departments (such as Sega Sports) in an effort to overcome the obstacles. They wanted Yuji Naka's help, but he was busy working on NiGHTS and was therefore unavailable. Executives over at Sega of Japan were not pleased by the reports they were getting about STI's production problems, so a delegation was sent over to review their work first-hand. According to reports, they came back appalled and reported the dismal findings to their superiors, who then relayed them to Sega CEO Hayao Nakayama and the senior corporate staff at Sega. A short time later, in early 1997, STI was coldly informed that Sonic X-Treme had been officially canned. STI never recovered from this debacle and broke up shortly thereafter. Parts of Sonic X-Treme would later wind up in Sonic R, Sonic Jam, Sonic 3D Blast, and Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast a few years later.

On 08 December 1997, Sega of America released Sonic R for Saturn to a disappointed American gaming public. Although it received wide acclaim for its stunning graphics, it was not the 3D Sonic riot that Sega of America had originally promised. Even to this day there are many Sega diehards who complain that Sonic R was no "true Sonic game" and deride it at every opportunity. Overall, opinions about Sonic R remain mixed to this day.

Poor, poor Saturn...

[dog$]

Wouldn't such an actual list be comprised of 1000 titles or more?

They're all heart-wrenching stories, sure, but it's also the tip of the iceberg. I wonder which generation truly had the highest amount of discrepancy between each region's software library. On impulse I'd say 32-bit land, but I think cases could be argued for earlier generations...

[Adrian]

It's a good thing Sonic X-treme was canned; it was utter shite and development was taking too long as they were badly under-staffed. Translations for both Sakura Taisen and Grandia exist online. Too bad about Eternal Champions though.

By far the most interesting games to be canned though were Shenmue and Virtua Fighter 3.

[Despair]

The ones that really upset me, are Shining Force 3 (2&3) and Dragon Force 2. I played them as imports, and had great time, but I wish I could actually enjoy them in English.

Deep Fear was decent action/horror game in style of RE. Since all of the voice acting was in English, I dont understand why in was never released in US.

Capcoms Dungeons & Dragons collection.

[gamevet]

I've read the article a good year ago and it is a great read.


If you've ever read the European Saturn Magazine, you will see some great reviews of games that made localization over there and also reviews of Japanese Saturn titles. The one that I really could'nt understand, was that Europe recieved "Deep Fear" and the US was left dry. This was an excellent survivor horror game and looked much nicer than the Resident Evil game that the Saturn recieved.


The game is based on a ship(Water) and it's up to your character to find out, what is going wrong. While said to not be quite up to par with Resident Evil, it was a Saturn exclusive with pretty solid gameplay and actually looked as good as Resident Evil on the Playstation. Maybe one day, I'll find the import of the European version.

[Adrian]

Deep Fear as a game is nothing special (no way near Biohazard quality) but is worth playing through for the ridiculously bad cutscenes. Unintentionally hilarious.

[FX]

Originally posted by dog$
Wouldn't such an actual list be comprised of 1000 titles or more?

They're all heart-wrenching stories, sure, but it's also the tip of the iceberg. I wonder which generation truly had the highest amount of discrepancy between each region's software library. On impulse I'd say 32-bit land, but I think cases could be argued for earlier generations...

You're right about that one. You can start with the one that may have very well put the nail in the coffin of the Saturn.

X-men vs. SF ( no one would pay $80 for a game, they said. If that was true, why did everyone and their uncle import it? )

A few more:

King of Fighters 95'
King of Fighters 96'
King of Fighters 97'
Marvel Super Heroes vs. SF
DoDonPachi
Soukyugurentai
Macross: DYRL
Radiant Silvergun
Real Bout Fatal Fury Collection ( RBFF: Special rocked )
Samurai Spirits Collection

Here's one more that GameFan raved about:

Princess Crown

[Melf]

The site mentions X-men vs. SF. It says that Sega was even planning to distribute the RAM cart and everything but then put a stop to it.

You see, Sega had been in negotiations with Capcom for several months about licensing Capcom's own RAM cart and selling it in the West under the Sega label, along with Capcom's X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Those negotiations fell though, however, because increasing concern over Saturn's plummeting market fortunes caused Sega executives both East and West to rethink their strategy. In their joint opinion, there was no point in releasing a costly piece of hardware to a market that was fast shrinking for the simple reason that there was no profit to be made. Hardware is expensive and has the least profit margin in the product line. Sega was already losing money on Saturn hardware, and stood to lose more by releasing the RAM cart in the West by every estimate they ran.

It's incredible how arrogant SOJ was. They touted the Saturn as the end-all-be-all of gaming and then did their best to make sure it failed.

[Click_Stick]

Put it this way: anything worth owning was never released here.

[Werewolf]

Probably one of the best strategy RPG's around, the Langrisser series 1 - 5 for Sega Saturn in Japan, I wish they made it out here

Policenauts is another one I wish came here

Shining Force III scenarios 2 & 3 pisses me off that Sega only released 1/3 of the actual game in the USA. Companies should be made to release a complete series once they start releasing them, there's nothing worse then starting something and never being able to completely finish it... they should really have the budget for the whole series and not count on the first one to cover the costs of the following releases ... well at least Bandai seems to be doing that right with .hack so we won't be left with less then half a game, Sega could never finish what they started which was sad