Ryo Hazuki's Saturn

As a part of Shenmonth I've got a very special treat. I contacted Ryo Hazuki of the 'Shenmue' games and asked him to tell us about his Saturn collection! Enjoy!

The Saturn Junkyard (SJY): Hey bro!

Ryo Hazuki (RH): Hey Barry.

SJY: I'll get right to the point: What happened after Shenmue II?

RH: I'm sorry, I cannot discuss that.

SJY: Why not?

RH: I have a NDA with SEGA and Yu Suzuki. I can not discuss my early life experiences as I have an exclusive contract. SEGA makes games based off my life story and in return I receive a cut of their profits. If I disclose the events of Shenmue III my contract is void.

SJY: But there has not been a new Shenmue for nearly ten years, surly you could-

RH: Listen! That 'Sega and Sonic Racers' really helped both me and Nozomi! Those avatar jackets alone paid for our house!

SJY: So you're married to Nozomi!?

RH: Oh sh- um... how about we talk about the Saturn.

SJY: How about this: I don't tell SEGA you breached your NDA and you tell me, personally and secretly, the plot of Shenmue III.

RH: Don't you know that blackmail is way uncool?

SJY: ... I was only joking, Ryo.

RH: [laughs] I know! Let's get sweaty and talk about the Saturn!

SJY: [laughs] Alright bro! The first thing you have to tell us is how in the world did you own a Saturn in 1987?

RH: SEGA has always been ahead of the times. The Meganet modem for the Mega Drive, 3D gaming on the Master System and 128-bit graphics on the Dreamcast. In 1987 SEGA had already developed an early model of the Saturn and chose Yokosuka as a testing ground.

SJY: That's amazing! I had thought development began in 1993, but you're telling me SEGA began work as early as 1987?

RH: Yes, however the hardware was very different. My Saturn could only play arcade ports at the time. 3D capability was still being tested. My two games were 'Space Harrier' and 'Hang-On'.

 Low-res scan of Ryo's copy of Space Harrier

SJY: Which you won in a raffle at the Tomato Convenience Store?

RH: Exactly. In an effort to promote local businesses, SEGA gave a Saturn system to select households, but did not provide games. Instead we had to win games which in turn helped the local businesses. It was a unique idea, and it worked. I could play thousand dollar arcade machine games at home!

SJY: Do you still have the games and the system? They must be very rare!

RH:  I may be a 41-year old man, but I never outgrew my Saturn. I still have it hooked up in the basement. Iwao Jr. loves 'Hang-On'.

SJY: You have a son?

RH:  DAMN! Please don't spread that information around.

SJY: No problem. Maybe we can discuss a trade? I'd love to get that copy of 'Space Harrier'. Looking for anything Saturn related?

RH:  I'm looking for a black Saturn.

SJY: I have one, but I'm not willing to trade.

RH:  Have you seen a black Saturn?

SJY: I have seen one. I own it, but I'm not trading.

RH:  I'm looking for a black Saturn.

SJY: Thanks for talking Ryo, we'll talk again soon!

RH:  Excuse me.

SJY: Yeah?

RH:  It's nothing.

SEGA Saturn surprise launch announcement anniversary

by George of SEGAbits

Oh, SEGA,  just to one-up Sony you guys decided to launch your console early. 15 years ago today, SEGA CEO Tom Kalinske stood in front of the press and announced that the SEGA Saturn would launch early do to “high consumer demand”. The announcement was made at the first ever E3.

“Many Americans have gone to the extent of paying $ 800 and more for Sega Saturn units from Japan,” Kalinske explained. “We’ve decided to bring the product to market earlier than scheduled to meet the high consumer demand, to refine our marketing strategy over the summer, prior to the important fall season, and to get a headstart on the competition.”

The SEGA Saturn launched at the price of $399.99 for the stand alone version and $499.99 with Virtua Fighter (also came with a disc that showed other titles).

Click here to read SEGA’s press release from 1995. It is like going back in time.

My Lame 'Nuts & Bolts' Saturn

Before you execute a Segata stanglehold on me for not posting a pic from a Saturn game, let me explain. I recently picked up the 360 game 'Banjo-Kazooie Nuts & Bolts' and am throughly enjoying it. Particularly the vehicle building aspect. Finally a way for me to play with Legos as a grown man! Of course, my first order of business was to build a Sega Saturn car. As you can see above, I did a so-so job. As this is my first vehicle, and my parts inventory is small, I ask you to forgive me and let me have another crack at it once my skills improve. Expect a "model 2" in the coming month. Do I get extra points for adding the memory cartridge?


Fun fact: 'Nuts & Bolts' has one degree of seperation from Segata Sanshiro. Banjo & Kazooie appeared in the 360 version of 'Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing', and Segata himself was considered as a racer early in the dev stages. They even drew up concept art (which has yet to be seen)! His lack of inclusion was, in part, due to Sega not owning the likeness of Hiroshi Fujioka (Segata's actor).

Obligatory vintage Hiroshi image:

UPDATE – I gave it another try and made a much better Saturn vehicle:

'Panzer Dragoon Saga' Sequel = Necessary

We haven't had a post in a while and I'm short on time! Thankfully, Game Trailers did the work for me and listed 'Panzer Dragoon Saga' in their "Top 10 Necessary Sequels" list. Watch, enjoy and weep:

Video Games | GT Countdown | Top 10 Necessary Sequels

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

SASAR Saturn Reference Roundup

With Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing hitting the one month mark of being available, I thought I'd give a roundup of references that Saturn fans can find within the game.

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing is an excellent game (a 9/10 in my eyes), but it lacks in the Saturn reference department. To illustrate this point, take a look at the badly designed graph below:

Sega Franchises in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Broken Down By Hardware on Which They Debuted

Note: Some IPs receive multiple mentions when specific characters or sequels debuted on multiple formats, i.e. Sonic on the Mega Drive and Shadow on the Dreamcast

As you can see, not much love for the Saturn. Damn you Dreamcast for winning our hearts and in turn taking most of the IPs! So what does Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing offer for Saturn fans? The most prominent franchise would have to be The House of the Dead, which offers up three exciting tracks taking place in, around and under the Curien Mansion as seen in the Arcade and Saturn version of The House of the Dead. To accompany the tracks are two memorable tunes for the first game, Into the Dark and Aura of Dread.



Up next is the Saturn fighting franchise, Virtua Fighter! Okay, so Virtua Fighter is technically an Arcade franchise. But when it came to playing Virtua Fighter at home, the Saturn reigns supreme! While the models, animations and voice samples of Jacky and Akira are pulled from Virtua Fighter 5, the All-Star icon for Akira's boost comes direct from Virtua Fighter Kids. Awww, how kawaii!


With Richard Jacques in charge of the music, it wasn't much of a surprise to see some music from Sonic R featured. The main theme Super Sonic Racing appears in the Casino Park tracks while Can You Feel The Sunshine? accompanies Seaside Hill tracks.



Last and unfortunately least is the Saturn's golden child, NiGHTS. Nearly forgotten, NiGHTS slipped into the game after crazed jester fans pushed Sega and Sumo to give him/her some representation. What is NiGHTS role? Why she/he's the flagman!

In my opinion this is the best place for NiGHTS. I think he/she'd look too goofy driving a car and probably deserves a toned down appearance after bringing us the so-so Journey into Dreams.

With DLC on the horizon, Saturn fans can only hope that franchises like Virtua Cop and Panzer Dragoon get some love. Janet in a squad car and Keil Fluge on a dragon please! Skip ahead to 2:15 and tell me that Virtua City would make for an AWESOME track:

Hiroshi Fujioka - The Official Blog!

Since a couple of days actor and singer Hiroshi Fujioka has his very own blog. You may want to check it out right here and you better bookmark it right now! Unfortunately there is no RSS feed.

Then, after you have bookmarked it, the next thing you have to do is send him a personal letter with your congratulations on his 45th anniversary of his career! Congratulations, Segata-San!

There is no Segata Sanshiro related Post yet, but I bet there will be. At the latest when Sega is releasing the Saturn 2 in 2011.

Rally Cool!

A member of the AtariAge forum is selling his 1995 model Toyota Celica GT, one of the automobiles featured in the video game Sega Rally Championship. Judging from the pictures, it's in fantastic shape for a fifteen year old car, with much work done on the body to keep it in tip-top quality. There are even a few modern amenities, like a touch screen GPS that's the next best thing to a passenger barking "Hard right! Easy left!" in your ears before every turn. It's hard to say if this machine is street legal, but if you spent any time playing Sega Rally Championship during the Saturn's brief glory days, you're sure to agree that it's damn awesome.

The auction for the Toyota Celica GT has started at $2500, with the reserve price expected to be twice that amount. It's a small price to pay for driving and retro gaming excellence.

Virtua Fighter Kids in New Sega Racer?

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Sorry, but I'm too excited to type! According to the newly launched Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing website, Jacky Bryant has joined the roster of playable characters. Today has been a big day for Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing reveals. Ulala and B.D. Joe of Crazy Taxi were announced this morning. But those are Dreamcast stars, now it's time for a Saturn All-Star to shine!


Why are they showing Akira over Jacky's name? Well Akira is actually the icon for Jacky's All-Star move, a special character specific move in the game. This means that not only do you race as Jacky (presumably in a race car), but if you get the Akira icon, Jacky's old sparring partner comes out to lend a hand.


Also, note the character style for Akira. Could Sega be reviving the Virtua Fighter Kids art style?

Happy Sexy New Year

Happy New Year from the Saturn Junkyard!

You're looking at the screenshots, right?

Perverts.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays!

Here is a repeat of a nice video review from Guru Larry about NiGHTS into Dreams!

Segata Statue Breaks the SJY Silence - Updated 12/20

In the absence of posts, Segata always comes through for us.

In my YouTube searches I stumbled upon this recently uploaded gem. Is thing thing for real?! I have never seen one before!



If anybody has any information on this, outside of it being from Sega Toys and made in 1998, let me know in the comments section!

12/20 Edit: I've finally bought the holy grail of Saturn games! What? No, not Pants Or Dragon Sega or whatever it is. I'm talking about SEGATA SANSHIROU SHINKENYUGI!!!


$35 on ebay, shipped from a state away. Worth the price?

Happy Birthday Saturn - 15th Anniversary DJ Mix

I've been wanting to do this for a while...and well, this is the perfect time. Behold...the Sega Saturn 15th Anniversary DJ Mix. I didn't have a whole lot of time to put into this, but I've taken some of my favorite tracks from Saturn exclusive games like Nights, Daytona, Sega Rally, Guardian Heroes, VF2 and put them together in a continuous DJ mix (about 40 min. long).

As a very involved hobby/side thing, I've been DJ'ing (techno, house etc., etc.) at clubs/parties for many years, so I've actually taken some of my skills from that area, and have been able to sit down with this mix and blend together and layer some tracks here and there for some interesting results. A lot of the tracks just aren't that DJ friendly, and in the spare time I've had to put this together, this is the best that I could come up with. The other limiting factor is actually getting the tracks off of the Saturn discs. Games like Daytona and Virtua fighter are great, because all of the music data is stored as normal compressed audio, which can just be copied directly from the disc. Other games like Nights, Panzer Dragoon Saga, and Radiant Silvergun have their music stored elsewhere, so I was only able to pull out a few tracks here and there.

In any case, every one should download the mix, and give it a listen. If you are going to download it though, there is one caveat.....you have to listen to the entire thing in one continuous play through...i.e. no fast forwarding and jumping around here and there. It's a DJ mix, and thus is intended to listen from the start to end. After you've listened to the whole thing once, then feel free to jump around to all of your favorite parts.

One thing I've noticed while making this, is just how well produced all of this music is. You can tell that a lot of effort and time went into making these songs. I've never really listened to many of them in my good headphones, or on a good sound system. But they all sound great, and are mastered really, very nicely.

Hopefully there are a few "oh, that's cool" moments for every one in this mix. The Junkyard crew should recognize most, if not all of the tracks...but if there are any that youcan't figure out...feel free to ask. As I said before, I only had a limited amount of time to work on this mix, and as a result I've obviously left out many awesome songs that should rightfully be included. Well, there can always be a version 2.0!

Listen and enjoy.....and let me know what you think.

The Sunshine Returns

C'mon, that's what it essentially is.

While we here at the SJY rarely cover them new-fangled "next gen" games that feature useless shadows and something called DLC (Devil Lay Cry?), this tidbit of next gen news is quite Saturn related. Unless you've been living under a rock, Sega has teamed with developer Digital Sumo to bring us Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing. The game itself looks to include a few Saturn stars such as... okay I've got nothing. At the moment the character roster is mostly rooted in Master System, Genesis and Dreamcast games. The Saturn's poster child NiGHTS has yet to have a mention, but I'm 99% sure that he'll make a cameo (However, I'm 1% sure that Panzer Dragoon will make an appearance).

In any case, a glimmer of hope for some Saturn love has come through in a recent interview at Original Sound Version with Sumo Digital's Steve Lycett. Here are the meaty bits of the interview:

OSV: SEGA fans are extremely excited for this game, and one of the most exciting aspects is the audio approach in these crossover titles. Let’s start by talking about the music itself, what can we expect?

Steve: Why not, good place to start! For this game we’ve once again been given the keys to SEGA’s big audio closet. What we try and do with the All-Star games, is get a good mix of music both old and new. That way we can hopefully raise some fond memories of older games you’ve played if you’re a SEGA fan, surprise you with some new songs – and also – hopefully- introduce a whole new legion of players to the music we’ve all enjoyed.

To this end we’ve got classic tracks from many, many games. If we take just the Sonic courses, we’ve got music from Sonic Heroes, Sonic CD, Sonic R and many more. Outside of Sonic, we’ve raided official sound tracks to get new arranged versions of music. We’ve even managed to get a Crush40 track in there!
What we do is give you a track for each course, then by playing the game, you earn SEGA Miles, which you can spend on the in-game shop. As you buy new music, you can then select from the ones you’ve unlocked when you start a race.

OSV: Finally, what can we expect for the DS version? How are you cramming all that content into the handheld cart?

Steve: Want to play on the move, we’ve also crammed all these sounds and more into the DS version. As we’ve got to squash all this onto a cartridge, we’ve enlisted the services of Allister Brimble to compose us unique MIDI versions of all the games tunes . You won’t believe what he’s done with it. My personal favourite is “Can you Feel the Sunshine”, a track I didn’t think would ever work in MIDI format, but amazingly it does. Again – the byword for the game is “How much SEGA can we legally squeeze into one game” and I think Allister has done us proud.

So Sonic and friends racing about classic Sega settings to classic RJ tunes? Sega can have my $60 now, I'm sold.

Video Game Vault - Die Hard Arcade

Video Games | ScrewAttack | Video Game Vault: Die Hard Arcade

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Finally Doing It!

Maybe every one at the Junkyard has been wondering.....where has the plushiest been? Well, I've been a busy boy all summer and fall. I finally have some time to get back into gaming, and even do a few posts. I've been playing a few awesome games lately (Uncharted 2, Muramasa (the same devlopers as Princess Crown), and Bioshock), but I'm finally on to Panzer Dragoon Saga....yes, the real deal US copy that I picked up back in the spring time.

I didn't want to start on this game until I was good and ready, but I think I finally am. I've only spent a few hours with PDS, but so far I can say that it is great. I haven't every really played a whole lot of RPGs, and I think this is why PDS appeals to me so much....they game and battle mechanics are right up my alley. Everything is very straight forward, and I really like how there is are still real-time elements to the fight sequences. I will do a real review of the game once I'm finished, but here are some initial thoughts:

1. Game play: very original. Makes great use of the classic panzer dragoon game style, and blends some very interesting RPG elements. I love how you can freely fly around, and the dynamic battles are very cool.

2. Music: So far it's really good. Was there a separate original score album released for this game?

3. Graphics: Definitely some, if not the best on the Saturn. One of the few Saturn games that could easily compare to PS1 titles. Albeit a very small detail, there are sections in the game where you fly over water, and can actually see and interact with fish swimming around. Sounds pretty funny to say that something as simple as that appeals to me...but I can't think of any other 3D Saturn game (maybe Tomb Raider, Nights, or Resident Evil) with as much graphical detail. Obviously transparency effects are working on this game, how come people always say the Saturn couldn't do this?


On another note, does any one remember Radmobile? The game made famous by Brendan Fraser This was released under the title "Gale Racer" on the Japanese Saturn in '94. Saw it on Ebay for about $3.00, and thought about picking it up. It's like a slightly more updated version of the classic Outrun style game play!