The Sega Saturn was a 32-bit video game console released by Sega in 1994 in Japan, and 1995 in North America and Europe. The Sega Saturn was designed to go up against the newer systems that were being planned, such as the Sony PlayStation. The system was an ultimate failure outside of Japan due to the low amount of games released, as well as the coinciding with the release of the 32x. The Saturn was also a difficult system to program for, leaving most games with the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. Hardware wise, the Saturn was an amazing system, but due to the difficulty of its SDK, its full potential was rarely seen. The Saturn sported 2 processors for just about everything, making it a powerhouse, much like today's PlayStation 3. Although the Saturn was a failure in the States and Europe, in Japan the Saturn rose higher than the Mega Drive in popularity. Japanese programmers knew the system like a child, producing amazing games making use of a medley of features that most American developers would have only dreamed of. On the technical side, the Saturn had two Hitachi SH2 processors at 28.6MHz, two VDP processors (One for scroll planes, one for video output), an M68K sound processor, a Yamaha FH1 DSP sound processor, and a Hitachi 4-bit MCU SMPC. The Saturn could handle up to 704x480 progressive output, giving it a very high quality of video output at the time. The Saturn even had a module for the playing of VideoCD's.
