Why is a Sega Saturn so expensive?
And why can't I find it anywhere? I know it wasn't very popular when it was out, but is there really a huge demand for it now? I remember 7 years so, I could walk into a retro game store and see a console for $45.
The Sega Saturn did a lot worse than the PlayStation outside of Japan, even compared to the Nintendo 64 - only about 2 million Saturns are thought to have been sold in the United States. And over time the disc drives have been failing on them from age. Doesn't help that Sega stopped making Saturns back in early 1998, long before the Nintendo 64 (2002) and original PlayStation (2006) were discontinued.
Combine that with the ever-growing retro gaming hobby/bubble, and now a lot of the working ones are, by this point, in the hands of enthusiasts of the system who don't really intend to sell, or collectors who would want a lot of money for them.
299 and having no games the year it released was what hurt them. Also not having an actual Sonic game. They would rather push out bad VNs.
PlayStation was less of a bitch to develop for, too. Once Sega fucked the US launch, it was over for the Saturn. Nobody was going to try learning to wrangle two CPUs, a 2D background-drawer and a 2D sprite-drawer that had its arm twisted into becoming a 3D quadrangle renderer when the market wasn't there for it.
Really, the only reason anyone collects for the Saturn is that it actually did pretty respectably in Japan on account of being the best 2D machine of the generation and actually having a competent launch strategy over there. Arcade ports, JRPGs and platformers are most of the Saturn's stand-out titles. Ironically, the Nintendo 64 with its "3D-or-bust" attitude didn't do well at all in Japan despite a respectable second place in worldwide performance.
In addition to what others have said, it’s also becoming more difficult to find Saturns with working CD drives as they continue aging.
I gave up on trying to fix my old drives. Some of the optical pickups that I bought have failed either at installation or a few months after. My Saturns have the Fenrir installed, less of a headache.
If you go the Japanese Saturn route and you manage to get one with a good drive, the 4 in 1 carts are the best option to have. There's also modchips still sold as well.
For sure, the Fenrir ODE (optical drive emulator) is a great option if the CD drive is dying or dead. The drive in my Saturn still worked fine last time I checked, but I was lucky enough to pick up a Satiator which plugs into the rear expansion port and leave the CD drive intact. (I think the MPEG decoder for VideoCD was the only official peripheral made for that port.)
I'm guessing that its rarity is boosting pricing. Have you considered emulation for gaming, or is it that you wanted the physical console?
I think Saturn emulation is one of the more difficult ones to get working right. I would go emulation, but a lot of the games I want to play are multiplayer and multiplayer on a PC just isn't as fun.
@GreenCrush At least nowadays Saturn emulation works pretty well. With the right settings, it is like emulating Playstation games. My PC CPU is from 2013 and it works fine (with a GTX 1070). I am using RetroArch, but that is another complicated software suite to get into. But the Saturn core (a plugin in RetroArch) I am using is basically part of the standalone emulator suite Mednafen: https://mednafen.github.io/ . (Edit: Sorry I forgot that I used an additional program called Mednaffe: https://github.com/AmatCoder/mednaffe, that is a GUI for Mednafen.) So if you want get into emulation for Saturn, I would recommend starting with this, if RetroArch isn't your thing.
That's fair. It took a good amount of work to get my emulation working well enough to play some of my old favorites.
Right? I wish I had the insight to save all of my old consoles. There was no reason to get rid of the nes once I got the super Nintendo. And that was gone when I got the PS1. Wish I still had all those.
It flopped. It adds mystique to the system, since so many did not play it when it was actively supported. You see this a lot with game systems that crashed and burned... the Turbografx-16, the 3DO, the Nuon, and one of Sony's rare bombs, the Playstation TV.
Like NBC used to say, "if you haven't seen it, it's new to you!" That's doubly true for game systems. People want to know what they missed.
They're kinda rare. They didn't make a lot. SEGA of America's CEO even complained to the president of the company in Japan about this before he was shitcanned, according to some recently released company reports from that period.
Yeah, Nintendo stuff might actually be cheaper because it was more in demand and common, whereas that's just less of the Sega units around in people's basements etc
@GreenCrush Since the retro boom, many retro stuff got more expensive, not only the Saturn. Also the Saturn didn't sell as well as Sony, therefore it is more rare.
A lot of systems have gone from "nobody wants this" to "precious treasure" in the last decade.
That said, if you want a reasonably-priced Saturn, I recommend looking at Yahoo Japn Auctions. Japanese Saturns are still extremely common so if you put together a large YAJ order using a proxy service like Zenmarket or Dejapan, you can still get one (and an assortment of games and accessories) for a good price.
One of the major problems is that the disc drives have been failing. If you want to go the ODE route (Fenrir/MODE/etc), it's pretty easy to get your hands on a Saturn (from any region) that can't read discs but otherwise powers on and lets you access the internal menu system.
Tbh with something like the Saturn, I'd recommend just grabbing a japanese one. They're typically found much cheaper and are also often in better condition (and come in more colours!)
Wouldn't the Japanese model also have a much larger library of games available and be able to use the RAM carts to boost performance?
It’s very easy to get around region locking with a “4-in-1” cart, plus two of the other functions are RAM expansion (1MB and 4MB modes).
i've only used the RAM cart in my US Saturn.
I have at least two carts for it, actually.
One is the 4 MB RAM upgrade, and one is 4 MB RAM plus memory card for saving games.
Then again, I don't know if a mod chip was required, which I do have installed.
I also have the Japanese Symphony of the Night for the system, as well.
The mod chip required connecting one wire.
Yes! :D
Definitely this! I just picked up a white Saturn recently and it's in great shape. I paid quite a bit more in shipping, but overall it was still less than I would've paid to buy one from the US.