The 1994 Victor V-Saturn Console + Fenrir Optical Drive Emulator

Fun fact: K-B Toys was so annoyed with Sega's botched launch of the Saturn that they didn't sell them. To quote their vice president at the time: "Going back to E3 in May 1995, when Sega decided to launch early, the company excluded us from its list of retailers, and that has hurt them tremendously. It hurt them really bad. Based on that alone we decided not to carry Saturns." So it probably was not the mall store that I remember. Electronics Boutique used to be over near that same section of the mall so that'd be my second guess. Either way, the sight of a big pile of unsold Saturn games is the thing that sticks out in my mind! Poor Saturn, Sega really shot themselves in the foot.

Clint, I can’t express to you how thankful I am for the trade. So happy you’re getting use out of the console!

The only times I ever got to play the Saturn was when my dad would break down and rent it for a weekend from Blockbuster.

LGR covering the Sega Saturn is a real treat, and the rare V-Sat at that.

Thanks for the shout-out dude!

Love my Saturn. Was the only kid in my town to have one. I just last year had to rebuild the PSU inside the Saturn, it would randomly reset after playing for a while but now it works like a charm.

Fun semi-related fact, you can now bypass the optical drive on the Nintendo GameCube using a raspberry pi pico board, haven't done it myself (mine is modded in an older method) but it looks relatively easy if you're familiar with a soldering iron.

I modded a Saturn last year and haven't shut up about it ever since! Tremendously underrated console with some terrific and really forward looking games

I was a massive saturn fan back in the days, and supported it to the point some of my friendships suffered a bit back then … But I do have A LOT of wonderful memories, MANY hours spent on so many great games. Seeing it receive so much attention from the retrogaming community for the last few years really feels like the universe trying to fix one past mistake. Anyway, that’s good to see you give a little hommage to that lovely system with your usual passion and enthusiasm, Clint. Thank you for that, I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Sega Saturn Story to add to that "mystical" feel of the console - I worked at Toys R Us in the 90s between the Saturn and Dreamcast. The store's outer perimeter along the sides and back housed the area where boxed toys were stored along with swing sets, bikes, etc. The lights back there always seemed to need replacing, so it wasn't always lit that well. The common areas were fine, but the distant areas that held store supplies weren't as well-maintained. One day I was asked to look for something out of the ordinary and had to explore the darker areas of storage. I stumbled upon the remains of our entire Sega Saturn display kiosk on top of a pile of other things. It was odd to find something of that size amongst things like rolls of stickers, papers, and other supplies. However as it was promotional material of sorts that wouldn't need to be accessed on a daily basis, there it was. Those things take up a decent chunk of space, so I am sure it was a matter of "get this thing out of here" when they updated the look of R-Zone (that's what we called the video game area) at the time after the Saturn had run its course. This may have been summer of 1998. The store was remodeled in the early 00s to the racetrack configuration and then demolished a couple of years ago. I have no idea what happened to the kiosk. It was probably thrown away during the '99-'01 remodel... but then again, perhaps I recall another employee walking out with it one day when the remodel began in 1999. Over 20 years ago.... I can't quite remember...

I'm so glad you're covering this and it reaching lots of people. Even most in the retro console hobby don't know optical drive emulators exist now.

Your content has remained consistent for a long time and I am still enjoying it. Great work, sir.

LGR popping off with his first actual Saturn content yet, been watching since the 3DO Review and finally we're here

My Saturn has the Satiator, and I like it because you just plug it into that expansion slot above the CMOS battery rather than having to actually remove the optical drive.

Thank God that I'm not the only one who gets games just because "I saw it somewhere and it reminds me of that time"

My cousin got the Sega Saturn from EB games, because stores like KB Toys and Walmart refused to sell the Saturn console for leaving them out at launch! But the optical drive had some problems, probably design flaws with how the system was designed!

For me the Saturn has a sort of “what could have been” mystique to it. It’s an interesting console that I wish Sega would have not made such bone headed business decisions

I got my Saturn in 96 and loved it! Played a lot of games through a rental store. A few years later I also got a N64...

I was too young when the Saturn was around to actually be aware of it, and living in Australia the launch of the Dreamcast was so terribly handled that I really only ever knew Sega as a third party publisher. When I later got into retro gaming for some reason I was always drawn to Sega hardware, perhaps because they had a kind of mystical "fallen empire" aspect to them. The Saturn has since become one of my top 5 consoles ever, there's a lot of gems that never left that machine & it has a very distinct "feel" that you don't get from consoles anymore. I currently own a JP model modded to play burned discs but I've been curious about the ODE stuff for a while, so this video was a welcome treat, cheers LGR.

Finally someone talks about Impact Racing! Top 5 video game soundtracks for me personally.