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I know very little about the Saturn.  I don't recall even seeing anything about it when it was launched (probably because I was too busy with post-graduate training at the time).

Talking about this is a great way to start fights between Sega fans, but I wanted to pick up on this.  I'd say that was equally due to bad marketing on Sega's part as it was your being busy, the launch of that console was completely botched.  Basically, Sega was run as a multi-headed hydra with the Japanese, U.S. and U.K./European offices all being on different pages.  The MD, CD add on and 32x were all not particularly successful in Japan and the 32x bombed in the U.S. as well.  Sega pushed up the launch of the console, which meant it had few games for the first six months and little advertising.  Killing the 32x so early with shelves full of them angered U.S. retailers also, many of whom stopped selling Sega consoles altogether.

Here's a video that goes in depth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqx9Liby_uU

The Saturn has to be the no. 1 console for this, because so many great games were JP only.  The problem is that almost none of them have been translated.  I'll just go with a couple of picks that are playable without a translation that don't normally make hidden gems lists for this console.

Astra Superstars - One of the best fighting games out there, it has fun characters that are all parodies of characters in other games.  It's beautiful to look at and has a great OST, too.

Super Tempo - Sequel to the Genesis platformer, it's JP only but playable.  It has a great OST and really beautiful sprites, it really shows off the 2D capability of the Saturn.

Street Fighter Zero 3 - I actually prefer the Saturn port of this one to the Dreamcast version, it's my favorite port of the Zero/Alpha games.

Cyber Speedway - A really underrated racer that feels like an F-Zero rip off, it has a great OST. 

I thought about this, and there are some really great and underrated Game Gear games.  Some of them are JP only and not very playable without a patch, I'll make note of that.

Sylvan Tale – A really underrated action RPG, it's JP only.  It came out in 1995, which is probably why it never got an English release.  I think it's one of the best games on the console though, maybe someone will make a repro cart for the Game Gear or Master System.  It has a patch.

Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict – It's an JP only SRPG and there are patches and even repro carts out there.

Phantasy Star Adventure + Phantasy Star Gaiden – Both of these have patches, being spin offs of PS1 and PS2.

Dragon Crystal – It's an underrated roguelike, I talked about it in the Master System thread awhile back.  It was import only on the Master System but came out in English markets for the Game Gear.

Psychic World – This is another one on the Master Sytem also, it's a really underrated platformer.

1.  Mario Teaches Typing ended up being one of the best received and well remembered educational games of all time, generations of kids learned typing from it.  Today there are open source clones and there were many derivatives, such as Typing Of The Dead.  Do you feel the same about the success and legacy of educational games in the way that you do about games created mostly as entertainment, or is it different?
2.  Rock n' Roll Racing often makes be best/underrated games lists and is received very well today by retro gaming enthusiasts; is there another title that you feel never got its' due (whether it was a hit or not) when released that you think gamers need to give another look?
3.  You worked with noted illustrator Garth Ennis of Preacher on Loaded; is there another illustrator you would have liked to have work on a game if given the opportunity?
4.  We often hear stories about games with tremendous potential that were never finished and were left to the dustbin of history, short of a leak.  Were you involved with any unfinished games that you'd like to mention, or was that something you avoided in your career?

http://youtu.be/ejZlgP418J0

Download here

Source

That was interesting, it's funny how quick Nintendo and Capcom's relationship changed when the X games jumped to the Saturn and PSX while leaving the N64 behind.  I had completely forgotten that Capcom were a late Sega adopter, but thinking back all of those MD games came later in the console lifespan.

This is a really interesting run down of forgotten adventure games for various computer platforms.  The only obvious one on the list is Full Throttle, the rest of these aren't any I knew about.

The 1990s were a good age for adventure, if your idea of adventure is playing video games. Point-and-click adventure games were at their peak, offering new worlds and new mysteries to explore. Companies like Sierra Games and LucasArts were publishing titles that often simply dropped players into a new world and let them test and explore in order to find their way, searching for the correct item or action that would let them progress. Clues were often infuriatingly hard to come by, but when you could finally solve that tricky puzzle, you felt like a real genius. 

And now, adventure games of the '80s and '90s are making somewhat of a comeback via modern titles, and remakes of classic versions. Titles like The Secret of Monkey Island and Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis (LucasArts is the undisputed king of the genre), are still hot topics among gamers, but there are many other games that have fallen by the wayside, or been forgotten completely. Well, thanks to the awesome Internet Archive and their vast collection of old software, we can take a look at some of greatest forgotten and unknown gems of the genre.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fo ... ture-games

This is a pretty cool Amiga article I ran across, I thought some here might be interested.

The story of the Amiga family of microcomputers is akin to that of a musical band that breaks up after one incandescent, groundbreaking album: the band may be forgotten by many, but the cognoscenti can discern its impact on work produced decades later.

So the Amiga 30 event held at Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum in late July was more than a commemoration of some interesting technology of the past. It was also a celebration of the Amiga's persistent influence on personal computing.

The highlight of the event was the premiere of Viva Amiga, a crowdfunded documentary telling the Amiga story. Directed and produced by Zach Weddington, the documentary is an impressive achievement. Following the introduction and initial success of the original Amiga A1000 in 1985 by Commodore, the story could easily have become bogged down in the business machinations that eventually led to the almost complete loss of market share for Amiga computers. But Weddington manages to capture the essence of the story, and bring fresh light to several aspects of the Amiga rollercoaster.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the- ... le-machine

Really cool, I always wished Sega had gone with the Archie comics characters and done games based on them instead of all those secondary characters everyone hated (like Big The Cat).

If it is legitimate, I think I get why Nintendo bailed on this project. Where is the name, Nintendo, anywhere in prominent view on this thing?!  It makes it look like Sony were just muscling them out of the console business.  It kind of reminds me of that scene in the Woody Allen movie, Broadway Danny Rose, when his client tells him he has to make a change of management.

I thought some of the Amiga fans here would enjoy this.

As I'm sure I've mentioned in the past, I've worked most of my professional life in the tech industry, specifically working for a managed services consultant in Chicago. One of the things we do is advise our clients on hardware rotations. Client machines, like desktops and laptops for instance, are typically recommended on a four to five year rotation. Because, let's face it, a five year old computer is either functionally worthless or is probably hanging onto a single strand of twisted copper before crapping out entirely, amirite?

Please don't send this post to my customers. Why? Well, because this is the story of the Grand Rapids Public School System in Michigan and the Commodore Amiga, originally bought during the Reagan administration, that is still running the schools' heating and air conditioning today.

    The Commodore Amiga was new to GRPS in the early 1980s and it has been working tirelessly ever since. GRPS Maintenance Supervisor Tim Hopkins said that the computer was purchased with money from an energy bond in the 1980s. It replaced a computer that was "about the size of a refrigerator." The computer is responsible for turning the heat and the air conditioners on and off for 19 school buildings.

Great. My HP laptop from six years ago has the keys falling off the keyboard and I'm pretty sure the fans inside the chassis have had their fins whisked down to tiny little fan-nubs, but this beast from the cold war times is still making sure little Johnny doesn't get sweaty during his lunch period. What's insane about all of this is the intricacy with which the whole thing manages to work. The computer controls the boilers, fans and pumps, while also monitoring temperatures within the schools... and it was programmed by a local high school student in the 80's. Not only that, but because the Amiga is a thing that belongs in a museum somewhere, whenever the school district needs help with the machine they still go back to that very same "programmer" who is all grown up now and happens to still live in the area. I mean, just listen to this.

    "It's a very unique product. It operates on a 1200-bit modem," said Hopkins. "How it runs, the software that it's running, is unique to Commodore."

    Hopkins said the system runs on a radio frequency that sends a signal to school buildings, which reply within a matter of seconds with the status of each building. The only problem is that the computer operates on the same frequency as some of the walkie-talkies used by the maintenance department.

    "Because they share the same frequency as our maintenance communications radios and operations maintenance radios — it depends on what we're doing — yes, they do interfere," Hopkins said.

    If that happens, "we have to clear the radio and get everyone off of it for up to 15 minutes."

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150 ... oday.shtml

You should try joining the forums over at http://www.romhacking.net. They are always crying out for people just capable of being able to read and translate Japanese text.  They do the coding so you wouldn't have to worry about that.  They usually get a text grab from each game then someone works their way through it all then they format and re-insert.

I might consider it if I know I'll have more free time down the road.  I tried getting involved with a translation group years ago and it went badly because I didn't have the time to work at the pace they wanted.  I wish more people would just post full text dumps, then if someone picks up on them and gets it done great, if not it's no big deal (I think the issue is the group wanting credit for being the first to complete a game in a lot of cases, and not letting someone else gain notoriety from their work).

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/arch ... -2015.aspx

I'd say it's the end of an era, but there isn't much of the old Sega left at this point, anyway.

We have some bad news for Sega fans (and, especially those holding out hope for a Shenmue announcement at E3). The company has confirmed to Game Informer that it will not have its own booth at the show next month in Los Angeles.

Sega will be teaming up with some of its partners, though. So you might see titles at booths belonging to platform holders or PC partners.

"Over the next months, SEGA of America will be focusing on the restructure and relocation to Southern California, and we have decided to not attend E3 with our own booth this year," a representative told us via email. "With the majority of our bigger titles launching later in 2015/2016, particularly those from our AAA studios Relic Entertainment, Sports Interactive and Creative Assembly, we are concentrating our efforts for some of these major announcements after our relocation. Instead, we will be collaborating with our various business partners for this year's E3 show."

Sega announced a major restructuring in January that heralded significant layoffs. At the time, the company said it was planning to refocus on PC and mobile gaming. Most recently, Sega announced Total War: Wahammer under development at Creative Assembly.

Well,i'm not translating them XD,but i want the people to know that there's more games being translated

Sorry, I misread your post there.  I have to say, it's not surprising that so few of these have been translated.  I'm a Japanese speaker myself, and I spent about a year trying to work on a Saturn game before giving up, because I'm just not cut out for coding (plus I could have made so much progress on anime/manga in that time).  When you consider that there just aren't that many people who have both the coding knowledge and the Japanese proficiency to pull the text, then translate it, then patch the game, it's no wonder this console is so unknown due to the lack of translated games.

Looks good, nice to see this available to try.

More will be on the way, from what I've read.  Apparently the engine itself was finished, as were the levels (the estimate I read said 70% done) and most of the artwork and plot details have already leaked years ago, meaning it would be possible to "finish" this game 20 years later.  Also, the reason this is a true port is that Sega had partnered with NVIDIA (remember how the Saturn used quads and not polygons?) to make games that would run with their NV1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NV1 card and allow for easy PC ports (also remember all those Sega PC ports, i.e. Sonic R, Virtua Fighter, etc.).