I’m a sucker for Sega titles, mostly due to my well documented love of Sonic. The little blue hedgehog sold me their consoles in my younger years, and continues to sell me downloadable re-releases of games I already own. I don’t know why I buy I them, I just can’t resist. So when the announcement of Dreamcast games appearing on newer consoles came I was more than a little excited. I’d missed out on the console the first time around, but now I had a chance to redeem myself. Of course it did seem a little strange that they’d skipped an entire generation of consoles, but it seems that their considering bringing titles from the oft overlooked Saturn to the downloadable market place.
That’s right, in an interview with Impress Watch (translated by Andriasang) Sega’s Yosuke Okunari, the man responsible for the Dreamcast re-releases, said they weren’t completely ignoring the Saturn but had simply put it to the back of the cue due to the lack of success for the platform. According to Okunari “…the Genesis and Dreamcast are well known, but Saturn is unknown. During that period, PlayStation and Nintendo 64 were a success overseas, but to be honest Saturn was not a success.” To say it’s unknown is a little bit harsh on his company’s console, but I can certainly understand his position on the matter. The Saturn was the start of Sega’s fall from grace, and was hardly a commercial success.
So you’d think the outlook for the Saturn looks gloomy right? Not quite. When pushed on whether Sega would ever bring the Saturn’s games to modern consoles Okunari responded “”What we announced this time is a project where we will have consecutive releases of titles that were debuted on Dreamcast. Separate from this, we’re of course thinking about ports of Saturn games.” So at the very least they’re considering the matter. Hopefully we’ll see titles like Sonic R come to light sooner rather than later.