Sega President: Sega Saturn Mini Would be Difficult - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 August 2023 / 3,654 Views
Sega President and COO Yukio Sugino in an interview with Famitsu (and translated by VideoGamesChronicle) said it would be difficult to create a Sega Saturn Mini.
"The Sega Saturn is surprisingly high performance, so the difficulty of miniaturization is also high," said Sugino. "I don’t think it’s a case of saying 'let's make another one because it sells well,' it looks like it's going to be a little longer.
"I'd like to think about it when we're in a situation where we can openly develop it together with people who have always loved the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast."
The Sega Saturn released in the same generation as the PlayStation 1 and Nintendo 64. Sony has released a mini console of the PlayStation 1, however, Nintendo has yet to release a mini console of the Nintendo 64.
Sega Saturn released in Japan in November 1994, in North America in May 1995, and in Europe in July 1995.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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How about a collection of games for modern consoles? They can do something like that recently announced Metal Gear collection but with some Saturn games. Vol. 1 could have the Panzer Dragoon games, Vol. 2 has something else, etc etc.
The Switch has the Grandia games and a remake of the first Panzer Dragoon game.
I will support ANYTHING that helps lower the prices of the actual OG games. Some of those things are crazy expensive.
Then just make a decent emulator and use it to port Saturn games to modern hardware.
And while you're at it, emulate your arcade boards like the Model 2 and NAOMI.
Eventually Sega will be able to get a cheap, small mobile chipset with high enough specs to properly emulate the Saturn and it's dual processor design, but as of now a chipset powerful enough to emulate Saturn would be prohibitively expensive for a sub-$100 mini console. Believe it or not, it is less hardware intensive to emulate Dreamcast than Saturn, so we will surely see Dreamcast mini first.
City Connection has a full on Saturn Emulator in their Switch ports people discovered. Saturn has become a lot easier to emulate.
You can emulate Saturn games on a 1.5Ghz Quad-Core Krait, 3GB Ram and Adreno 320.
Modern low-end cheap SoC's like the Unisoc T618 would wipe the floor with that... And is actually found in cheap Android handhelds like the Anbernic's which emulate Saturn games just fine.
So a mini console is more than feasible today.
Most of the best games are stuck in Japan and it's Japanes library is massive and amazing. The one game that would be worth it tho is SAGA. As much as I want Hyperduel and Bulk Slash. SAGA is one of the best RPGs ever and so few got to play it.
