My Top 10 Sega Saturn Games

[Music] a top 10 sega saturn list is very personal to me the machine landed at a time of hardship in my life a time where i needed to take stock of who i was who i wanted to become and how to treat the people in my life better playing it became my anchor a point of focus while i worked hard to get out from underneath the problems i had created for myself and my family as i moved through the library of the saturn i was met with many games that fit my taste perfectly i was an arcade kid at heart and if there is one thing the saturn had plenty of it was arcade in arcade style gaming despite this it was during the life of the saturn where my love of rpg strategy and adventure games really took hold i found stuff that really showed me just how fun and diverse those genres could be and by the time it was all over many of them would become some of my absolute favorites this actually makes a list like this quite difficult how do you balance a love of arcade gaming while doing justice to the bigger deeper home exclusives choosing just 10 titles from a pool of over a thousand is no easy thing i also want to be clear that i am not trying to be objective and give games their due place just because they are popular amongst the community these are my picks for my reasons full stop so for those of you watching just to see what number panda dragoon saga comes in at i'll save you the 20 minutes and tell you now it's not here if you are still with me i hope you guys enjoy my sega saturn top 10. i had been a fan of beat em ups for a long time when i first played guardian heroes but it still managed to really give me something i had never really cared about before in a title like this options there are so many ways to go about unraveling the mysteries of this game's story your choices determine your path and there is a pretty robust fighting engine behind it all the better you get at it the more you start to understand the moves and combo systems better resulting in some pretty nasty damage you can dole out the visuals are quite unique as well lots of scaling transparencies and massive sprites are always filling the screen the two-player co-op was joined by six player competitive play so this was one you definitely wanted to play with your friends i suppose one of the reasons this imprinted on me so strongly was the fact that the 2d beat'em up genre was damn near completely abandoned during the saturn's lifetime oh it's true some games still showed up before a type of game that so dominated our time on 16-bit systems you would have thought that they would have evolved into more offerings similar to this despite that not happening guardian heroes was a great game to get exclusively on the saturn at the time it had all the boxes checked and earned its place easily on this list [Music] when the capcom tag team fighter showed up in the arcade i was immediately smitten with them they played so well and took the gameplay we all knew and really cranked up the speed and intensity as much as i loved the saturn i knew deep down there was no way in hell a cd-rom-based system at the time ever had a chance of doing an accurate home port the amount of cuts it would need would no doubt be huge lucky for me capcom and sega had an ace in the hole with the extended ram cartridge giving the home versions a real chance at greatness and man did i love marvel superheroes versus street fighter the cast of fighters met gokey and the quality of the conversion impressed me to no end it was one of those rare cases where you could hold it up against the playstation version and really brag about how much better the saturn game was it turned out so well that it made you want capcom to try and bring street fighter 3 home using an extended ram cartridge as well that didn't happen but we were still left with a number of awesome fighters that did [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] of all the great rpg content on the saturn shining the holy ark is one of the more original it takes place in first person and the story is really cool it's essentially a prequel to shining force 3 and covers issues like possession and revenge and leans more towards a mature level of storytelling the visuals have a mix of 2d and 3d engines that holds up fairly well in the soundtrack is straight up unforgettable it has the staples of town exploration buying items to improve stats random battles and if you like your rpgs with lots of dungeon crawling and plot twists this is a good one to try out it's better than shining in the darkness by quite a stretch there's not a lot like it on the saturn and the battle system keeps you entertained with pixie helpers and a choice of 8 playable characters a lot of you may have skipped past this because it tends to get lost in the conversation involving other games on the platform and i'm here to tell you that's a big big mistake every so often a title gets truly lost to the masses because it's graphical presentation just doesn't hold up well whether it's the art some technical flaw or it's just plain ugly people pass it without a second thought i believe this happened to mystaria realms of lore underneath those pre-rendered and poorly animated sprites and backgrounds happens to live a strategy game very much worth your time the story opens up with your horrific defeat at the hands of bane a powerful war mage who has returned to rule queensland and ultimately the continent of mystaria by force as prince aragon you must rally warriors to your calls and take back your homeland gameplay uses the typical grid based movement you expect but the real star here is the ability to learn so many different attacks and spells which depend on how you play the cast of playable heroes is quite large and varied you get dragons archers mage and even hawkmen to command this one is done by micro cabin so if you know their games you know it has that stilted choppy feeling to the way everything looks and runs had this game a better engine i feel it would be discussed easily among juggernauts of the genre like shining force 3 and final fantasy tactics don't let the visuals and performance sway you this game is deep varied and loaded with incredible battles some of you may know it by its alternate title blazing heroes but it's the same great game either way [Music] [Music] the street fighter alpha series appeared first during the saturn's generation and all three games were released within its lifetime and while i loved all of them part 3 was something special it expanded the single player options added a ton more fighters and gave multiplayer modes few games in the series ever came close to equaling it was a hell of a good looking game too the detail and animation were a high point for the series on saturn and bested pretty much every other 2d fighting game at the time it came out when the saturn was already dead in the west and in steep decline in japan so you knew this was likely going to be one of capcom's last titles for the platform even with its release after the dreamcast version it was still well worth owning for the dramatic battle options to this day one of the best feelings street fighter has ever given me was battling two cpu controlled fighters and coming out on top the skill needed against two fighters adds some real intensity that one-on-one battles just don't have it's crazy expensive these days but i still recommend you find a way to play it pound for pound there isn't a better fighter that generation [Music] you win there's a lot of folks out there that don't understand the appeal of powerslave they say it's an ugly relic of the early days of the first person shooter but what many don't understand is that this was far more than some simple doom clone it was metroid prime six years before that game showed up guided by the egyptian pharaoh ramses this world is wide open for you to explore stuff is hidden everywhere and power ups make new areas accessible all the time alien forces have taken over the karnak valley and you must find ancient relics to gain the power you need to stop them the environment is fully 3d and much more impressive than most other first-person shooters at the time and you could only play it first on the saturn the pc version was a different game and the playstation version lacks some of the game's better elements like colored lighting and larger rooms these kinds of games look so much more realistic these days but that doesn't lessen the charm and historical significance of a title like this it really did show that these types of games could be so much more than switch flipping and gunning down ai that runs straight into your weapon fire you could have platforming exploration permanent power-ups swimming and all the other things that made side-scrolling games great in this type of engine i really wish someone would remake this on a modern platform in europe it was known as exhumed during the early days of the japanese saturn i was playing virtua fighter heavily into a few new games began coming out among those was pander dragoon and on-rail shoot em up with beautiful visuals and a soundtrack from the orchestral gods this one gripped me immediately i loved its war-ravaged world sense of scale within its environments and its impeccable art design from the moment the opening video begins rolling you are treated to nothing less than a powerful emotional journey full of action and excitement each stage represents a new area of the vast world you are in and the variety in those visuals is commendable in fact it was one of the prettiest games on the platform the first year it was on the market and while part two bested in pretty much every way it still holds its own some of you may be wondering why this is here over the sequel it boils down to my love of the soundtrack and the power of that opening cinematic it's so iconic so nostalgic it encapsulates what owning a saturn was all about uh sega rally was a saturn racer with only four tracks a few cars a time attack and a very simple split screen mode compared to racing games today its anemic on content may have some wondering why it has such a high place on this list the best way i can put this is is that sega arcade racers were more than just racing games it was just as much about the joy of driving a car like outrun before it there were always other obstacles in the way or timers to worry about but the real appeal was the handling of the car the music in the background and the set pieces you passed along the road these things all formed a feeling of joy that few car games ever matched at the time of course cigar rally was a great looking game too especially after the rough visuals of the first daytona port this gave you a rock solid frame rate a much farther draw distance and vastly superior textures rally games weren't a huge thing in the us but my friends and i still played the ever loving hell out of this it really gave me high hopes for indy 500 and motor raid on the saturn yet those never materialized on the plus side the soundtrack here was redone for the saturn and is really good stuff if you want a legit disk of this go for the japanese release the us version was rushed to market and is missing graphical assets here and there like trackside geometry and replay options despite the limited content this is just as playable today thanks to that sweet sweet sega magic [Music] taking your own sweet time it was during the saturn's lifetime that my love for role-playing and strategy games really began to blossom i had played games in these genres before but i didn't really learn to appreciate them fully until around 1995 or so when shining force 3 dropped on the saturn i was blown away by its story its characters and its robust battle engine a nefarious force is pushing two countries to war and it's up to you to find out why and stop it like a lot of these games you get areas that let you explore and talk to folks and you get battles where you must survive to move on to the next area best part was is that this was a game they just kept on giving in japan there were a total of three episodes that fleshed out the story from differing viewpoints the second and third were not brought out in english at the time but have thankfully been fan translated in the years since once you play all three games you get a much better appreciation for what's going on and how the developers wanted you to experience it shining force 3 is also a great looking game exploration is composed of 3d environments and 2d sprites battle switched to 3d models to really show off the effects better as you might expect the soundtrack is freaking epic as well maybe the best the series has ever seen the opening alone sends chills down my spine every time i hear it mystaria was good but this right here was some of the best strategy play on any system of that era [Music] [Music] ah choosing a favorite game on a favorite platform typically comes with a load of doubt and reservation i mean most of the time on a favorite system you love tons of games but in this instance i need no second guessing and i leave no doubt in my position dragon force is the best game on the sega saturn i initially played this with no help no guide no advice no internet and man did it make a world of difference with how i approached it i learned its intricacies on my own i developed my own game plan for fighting the various armies and perhaps most importantly i did not go into every fight with the rock paper scissor mentality that ruins the game for other people on purpose i marched the map with a certain troop type so i could face each battle with a true challenge staring down the screen at 80 dragons against 80 soldiers would seem like a losing proposition the most but i found ways to win i used the formations and special attacks to the best they were capable of the side effect of that freedom came endless replay value trying to conquer the map with all mages was no easy task and it often took many battles to weaken the stronger armies enough to defeat them don't get me wrong i played the game by stocking up all my armies with dragons as well but these playthroughs lack challenge and strategy that really made this game special i learned to play it so well i could tell you the best places to search for which items without the need of a walkthrough i also love that dragon force was a 2d game that really showed off the power of the saturn 100 versus 100 sprites strewn across a battlefield that zoomed and scaled at will it seemed like something you would never have seen on the previous generation and something even the playstation and nintendo 64 couldn't have done the same way this is by far my most played saturn games in terms of hours logged hell just talking about it makes me want to play it right now the sequel was unfortunately left in japan by sega but dedicated fans translated it a few years back [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] i honestly have been putting off this video for a number of reasons one and let's be real here i talk a lot about these games every selection here has been in multiple videos of mine and will likely be in many more in a way you can take that as proof as to how much i actually enjoyed them while the more successful platforms tended to have many many more games available i'd put these 10 games up against the best 10 games elsewhere any day of the week many in retro gaming seem to be under the impression that a platform is superior purely because of the amount of games it sees in its lifetime i'd argue that a platform's worth is predicated more on how much you actually enjoy that library while i would have loved to have included software like decathlete knights into dreams cotton 2 and many others the 10 i presented you with remain some of my favorites to this very day they weren't always the best looking the best running or the best sounding games around but they sure as hell were some of the best playing i'm single lord x thank you guys for watching and i will catch you next time [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Sega Lord X

Views: 107,783

Keywords: segalordx, sega lord x, sega saturn, sega genesis, sega dreamcast, mega drive, megadrive, game gear, 32x, mega cd, genesis, saturn, master system, sega, sega cd, gameplay, review, movies, retro games, retro gaming, video games, ps4, xbox, wii, nintendo, gamecube, n64, ps1, ps2, ps3, psp, vita, switch, atari, top 10

Id: YK_uF0EBv6U

Length: 20min 55sec (1255 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 23 2021