Hardware Heaven: This Is Cool Saturn
» MANUFACTURER: Sega » YEAR: 1998 » COST: ¥20,000 (launch), £150+ (today, unboxed), £350+ (today, boxed)
Is this the coolest console that Sega has ever created? Darran certainly thinks so
It’s been well documented both online and within the pages of Retro Gamer that Sega’s 32-bit console was not a very popular system in the west. While the Saturn may have failed to gain a foothold in countries like the UK and the USA, it was a different story in Japan and as a result there were not only plenty of great games, but also plenty of hardware revisions to choose from, including a white model and machines by Victor and Hitachi.
Our favourite models however are the two ‘Skeleton’ editions which were released: the This
Is Cool edition we’re covering here and the later Derby Stallion edition. Aside from their gorgeous translucent smoky grey shells and matching joypads, they also feature round power and reset buttons, as opposed to the oblong ones found on earlier revisions of the Saturn hardware. Of course, there’s a cost to beauty, and in the case of the Skeleton Saturns it comes in the form of slight compatibility issues with games like Space Harrier and Out Run (fixed revisions of the games were released, but are now hard to find and more expensive). Created by Seiyo Denshi, 30,000 units were released for the This Is Cool Saturn, meaning it now fetches hefty prices online (you’ll pay even more for the rarer Derby Stallion edition, which came out in 1999). We’d argue it’s worth tracking down, though, as it really is as cool as the name implies.