20 Best Saturn Games

Metal Slug is set in 2028 and follows Marco Rossi and Tarma Roving of the Peregrine Falcon Strike Force as they try to stop a coup by the Rebel Army. The core concept during development was a simple yet exciting side-scrolling shooter with an easy control scheme, and the art takes its cues from the films of Hayao Miyazaki. You free prisoners of war along the way, and each one hands you a random item or weapon. Enemy soldiers scream loudly when they spot you, then run away or fight back.

Critics at the time liked the humor and the hand-drawn animation but found it short. Players count it among the Saturn's best 2D games.

The first Sakura Wars came out in 1996 and started a Sega series that has sold over 5.8 million copies. It mixes a tactical RPG with a dating sim and a visual novel, and the blend was odd enough that Sega called it a "dramatic adventure". The anime cutscenes came from studios such as Production I.G, and Kohei Tanaka wrote the music.

Apart from So Long, My Love and Shin Sakura Wars, the games never came out in English. Players who import for the Saturn still put it on their lists. It is the most Japanese game here, steampunk and all.

Elevator Action Returns is the sequel to the 1983 Elevator Action, and it adds four-way scrolling to a game that once only scrolled up and down. It also adds two-player co-op. Kill an enemy at close range and you get double the points. The Saturn version came out in Japan only, in 1997, and has the original Elevator Action on the same disc.

Players who know the Saturn's import library keep putting it on their lists of picks. Think of it as a run-and-gun where the elevators are the level design.

Darius Gaiden was first called Darius III, and the name changed because its story takes place between the first two games. Gaiden is Japanese for "side story". There are twenty-seven stages, but you only play seven of them in a run. Its best trick lets you capture minibosses, who then fight on your side before they self-destruct. The team almost cut that idea because they thought it made the game too complicated.

The music is famously strange. Some critics found it bizarre and others loved it. Shooter fans put it on their lists of Saturn shooters to own.

The Saturn version of Street Fighter Zero 3 came out in 1999 in Japan only, shortly after the Dreamcast version. The game lets you pick a fighting style. A-ism works like the earlier Alpha games, with a three-level Super Combo gauge. X-ism is based on Super Street Fighter II Turbo and gives you a single, powerful Super Combo, but you cannot block in the air.

There is also a Classic mode hidden away, which takes away Super Combos but stops you being juggled in the air. Fighting game fans list it among the Saturn's Capcom fighters. The Saturn was a very good place to be a Capcom fan.

Treasure made Radiant Silvergun with a team of ten people, with Gonzo brought in for the animated cutscenes. It came out in Japanese arcades in May 1998, and the Saturn port followed two months later. The scoring system is based on enemy color, so chaining hits on one color is how high scores happen. Near the end of development the team brought in professional players who held high scores in shooters to test it.

It never got a Western Saturn release, but Western critics imported it anyway and loved it. Ikaruga followed as a spiritual sequel. When players name the one Saturn shooter to play, this is very often the one.

Sega asked Team Andromeda for an RPG to compete with Final Fantasy VII, and Panzer Dragoon Saga is what they made. Mixing the series' shooting with full 3D and voice acting pushed the Saturn to its technical limits. It came out in Japan in January 1998 and in the West in April, with little marketing and only a few thousand copies in the West. Sega had moved on to the Dreamcast.

You play only one character, Edge, and there are few side quests to distract you. It has never been re-released. Players who finished it call it a great game, and they tell anyone who can run Saturn games to try it.

Guardian Heroes is a beat 'em up with three planes of battle, from front to back. You switch between them with a button press, so a fight can happen on all three at once. It also has branching story routes, and some of them end with you fighting the supreme being that made the universe. Hideki Matsutake, formerly of Yellow Magic Orchestra, is credited on synthesizer for the score.

It is considered a cult classic of the genre, and one critic called it the true successor to Streets of Rage and Golden Axe. When players are asked for the Saturn's best 2D games, it is one of the first names that comes up.

Sega Rally Championship is considered one of the greatest video games of all time. The Saturn version was praised for staying close to the arcade original, and later ports were less well received. To get the look right, the team spent three weeks driving from the West Coast of the United States to Mexico, taking photos for the textures. Finish first after the third stage and you unlock a fourth one called Lakeside.

GamePro put it plainly: "If you were disappointed with Daytona , you won't be with Sega Rally". Codemasters later named it a strong influence on the first Colin McRae Rally. Players still name it as one of the Saturn games they go back to.

Battle Garegga came to the Saturn in 1998. Its programmer, Shinobu Yagawa, had worked on Recca before this. The big idea is a difficulty level that changes with how you play. The better you do, the harder it gets.

That makes it a shooter for people who already love shooters. Shooter fans keep putting it on their lists of Saturn shoot 'em ups next to Darius Gaiden and DoDonPachi. If you only want to blast things for twenty minutes, start lower on this list.

Shining Force III took nearly two years to make, and work on it began while Shining the Holy Ark was still in development. In Japan it came out in three parts on three discs, released across late 1997 and 1998. Only the first, Scenario 1, was translated, and it reached North America and Europe in mid-1998 simply titled Shining Force III.

It came out late in the Saturn's life and did not sell much, but it was well received. Fan translations exist for Scenario 2 and Scenario 3, so you can finally play the whole story in English. Players who love the Saturn name it among their favorite games on the system.

Virtua Cop is a light gun game in which you shoot criminals in first person, with a gun or a joypad on the Saturn. It was influential, because later light gun games such as Time Crisis and The House of the Dead switched to 3D polygons after it. It also helped inspire GoldenEye 007. The targeting reticles and zooming camera came from a commercial for Pokka Kilimanjaro coffee.

In France, Sega's general manager said this and two other arcade conversions had boosted Saturn sales. Players who got a Saturn back then remember the hours they spent on Virtua Cop.

Panzer Dragoon is a rail shooter, so the path is set and you aim anywhere on screen. The young team found the new hardware hard to work with and missed their deadline, which was the Saturn's Japanese launch in November 1994. Their first two levels, a desert and a forest, were bare because nobody knew how far the machine could be pushed. The soundtrack mixes orchestral and synthesizer tracks, and Yoshitaka Azuma, who wrote music for NHK TV shows, composed it.

It was followed by Panzer Dragoon II Zwei and Panzer Dragoon Saga on the Saturn. Players list it among the first games to play on a Saturn.

X-Men vs. Street Fighter was Capcom's third fighting game with Marvel characters and the first in the Marvel vs. Capcom series. It came out in arcades in 1996 and on the Saturn in 1997. The PlayStation port followed in 1998 and lost several features, including tag team battles, while the Saturn port was praised for keeping the arcade experience.

That difference is why it matters here. Players who owned both consoles point to it as proof the Saturn was better at 2D, and fighting game fans still put it near the top of their Saturn picks.

Virtua Fighter 2 took Sega AM2 a year to make, led by Yu Suzuki. The Model 1 arcade board could not do texture mapping, so Sega built the Model 2 for it. It added two new fighters: Shun Di, an old drunken fist master, and Lion Rafale, who uses praying mantis kung fu. The Saturn port came in November 1995, and it took months of compression work to fit every move into the console's memory and keep it at 60 FPS.

It came in the same Saturn bundle as Daytona USA and Virtua Cop, and players remember that box fondly.

Development was led by Sonic Team veterans, Yuji Naka among them. The idea goes back to 1992, during work on Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Two kids, Elliot and Claris, escape into the dream world of Nightopia and team up with Nights to stop Wizeman. You fly through each dream and beat a boss, and how quickly you beat it multiplies your score. A shorter Christmas version, Christmas Nights, came out in December 1996.

It received acclaim for its graphics and soundtrack. Players call it one of their favorite games and one of the Saturn's best 3D exclusives.

Grandia came out in Japan in 1997, and the English version only arrived later on the PlayStation. Much of the team had made the Lunar series, including producer Yoichi Miyagi and composer Noriyuki Iwadare. Justin, a boy from the port town of Parm, sets out to learn about the Spirit Stone his missing father left him. Sneak up on an enemy from behind and you get the first strike, and the same goes for them.

Playing the Saturn original means importing it. Players still name it among the Saturn's best RPGs.

Dragon Force is a strategy game about eight monarchs who learn they are the Dragon Force, the only ones who can kill the dark god Madruk. Each monarch has their own storyline, and two of them only unlock after you finish the game. Between battles you hand out awards to your generals and recruit new ones, and you can talk captured enemy generals into joining you. In battle the enemy always picks first, so you can choose a counter.

A Japan-only sequel came out on the Saturn in 1998 and was later translated by fans. Players tell anyone with a Saturn to look it up.

Saturn Bomberman was the eleventh game in the series. It came out in Japan in July 1996 and in North America in September 1997. It has dinosaur helpers that hatch from eggs hidden in soft blocks, and they can only take one hit no matter how big they get. There is also a master mode where you race through levels and get a rank based on your time.

Critics praised the multiplayer but said it did not move the series forward enough. Players remember it as a party game for up to ten people.

Daytona USA was the first game on Sega's Model 2 arcade board, which Sega built with GE Aerospace. Toshihiro Nagoshi directed it, and the team mapped Daytona International Speedway for research. It became one of the highest-grossing arcade games of all time, praised for its graphics and soundtrack. It came to the Saturn in 1995.

Players remember the arcade original as king of its day, and they still call it a magical game from their childhood. It also came in the box with Virtua Fighter 2 and Virtua Cop in a Saturn bundle that players remember well.