The White Flag Is Up...

Rao Wu
rwu@ix11.ix.netcom.com

"THE WHITE FLAG IS UP; THIS IS YOUR FINAL LAP!!!": Booms loudly from the voice announcer from Daytona Racing, as it clearly displays the state of the Sega Saturn. Greetings gang, its been quite a while since I've written an editorial, but I've been quite up to date on what's been going on in the gaming world, especially with the Sega Saturn. It looks as though the prognisticators predict that this will be the Saturn's last Christmas, with the Black Belt/ Dural on the horizon for a possible late 98 release. No this isn't a "poor pittly Sega Saturn" letter, or a gripe on the Saturn itself. In fact, it is quite apparent that the Saturn will finish with its best "final lap " ever. Neither is this letter written to tell Sega Saturn owners to hold up their heads high and " rah, rah " the Saturn's end times. This letter is simply written as a personal vent, or maybe for self-solace reasons. Now let's make one thing clear, I like my PSX and my N64 as well. In fact, I would be playing Wild Arms, Street Fighter Ex Alpha 2 ( import ), Dyanasty Warriors, and Starfox 64 all the time, if it wasn't for: Shining The Holy Ark, World Series Baseball 98, Worldwide Soccer 97 , SAturn Bomberman ( import ), Enemy Zero ( import ), Last Bronx ( import ) , Rockman X4 ( import ) , and Thunderforce 5 ( import ). And these are only the latest games that I have purchased or have been playing, not to mention the rest of my collection. Quite simply put, with the allocated time I have for gaming ( which is very little these days ), you guys know that its been the consumer's "third best" system that has been getting switched on all the time.

Now I've not always been a loyal Sega Fan. Back in the days with the Nintendo 8 bit Master System, I rarely played my Sega Master System ( with the exception of Phantsy Star ). During the 16 bit battle days, I preferred my Turbo Grafx 16 to the Genesis ( except Tommy Lasorda Baseball and Madden Football ) and then chose the Super Nintendo over the Genesis after the TB16 died. Now that Sega has finally become my system of choice, what do they do? Go and make way too many mistakes ending up in third place behind Nintendo and Sony.Is it a mental affinity or fixation that I have for supporting the underdog that cause me to back the inevitable system losers??? No. With subdivisions in Sega ranging from AM2, AM3, AM1, The Sonic Team, and Team Andromeda ( Panzer Series ), how can one not like the quality of Sega Gaming???

I guess, overall, that I have to say that I had hoped and longed for a Saturn comeback in 97. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if Sega had played their cards differently, they would be currently right in the thick of the race, perhaps even overtaking the almighty Nintendo in the standings here stateside. There is no doubt that the Saturn's lineup from here on out will be top notch killer games. Saturn Bomberman, Enemy Zero, Manx TT, and Shining The Holy Ark are all great games, but should have been released much , much earlier in the year here in the U.S. Can you imagine; the average gamer purchasing his Saturn in 96 with the 3 pack deal, and then buying quality games like these right after, in January and February??? He'd be die hard for life. These games were certainly available in Japan ( I had the imports ) but are still waiting to be released here or have just been recently released. Instead, you have average gamers getting his Saturn with 3 pack in games, and then buying games like Road Rash, Robotica, and Toshinden URA only to say that they would NEVER buy another Saturn game again ( my friend is the case in point here ). The atrocious turn around time on import games is ridiculous. Quicker turn around time would mean that I would actually wait instead of buying an import, thus hurting SOA sales numbers.With some advertising and more reasonable release times, Sega would have a much stronger core audience to work with, instead of losing some of their newly acquired customers due to the aforementioned scenario. All in all, things could have been dramatically different.

There's still much promise left this year, with perhaps an even stronger finishing year in 98. Rumors for late 97 and 98 include such possibilities stateside as: Thunderforce 5 ( Spaz anyone??? ), Grandia, Phantasy Star 5, Virtual Fighter 3 ( yeah,yeah ), A new 32 bit Sonic Platform game, Nights 2, a new mascot game from Yuji Naka, and other third party supported games like maybe even Resident Evil 2. How would a 98 like that sound, folks?

Anyway, the Black Belt / Dural looks like its going to be Sega's new thing. Would I buy one??? Hell YES! I can't wait! But just because its Sega doesn't mean I'll support it, if the 64DD and PSX 2 prove to have better games, then you'll see my editorials on their pages. On the other hand, with Sega's in house development teams, I guess you really can't go wrong with a new Sega Console System.