I’m sorry, I really am. I’ve neglected you in favour of new younger, bustier models. You know I’ll always love you, that you will forever occupy a special place in my heart, but I’m just not sure that the spark is really there any more.

Cute and Cuddly, a great was to restart a friendship.

The Sega Saturn is my most loved console, but she’s been lying unplayed for a while now since the PS2 and Xbox have entered the house. Maybe it’s time to consign the old girl to the attic? So, before I make that decision, once more around the block - for old time’s sake?

We start gently, with a quick session of Baku Baku Animal to warm up with. I’ve never really given it much serious playtime before. Insanely difficult, but I imagine that given time new and ingenious ways of feeding randomly-falling animals will present themselves. Very satisfying countering a big attack with an even bigger attack though, it’s possible to completely incapacitate your opponent with just one chain.

Suitably happy. Guardian Heroes next - an old favourite that has, over the years, repeatedly and constantly kicked my arse. I’d forgotten how good this one was - a surprisingly deep scrolling fighter which, to its credit, doesn’t rely on certain moves to defeat certain characters. It’s all about tactics, and it works very well.

Somehow I managed to complete one of the routes, something which I’ve never done before. I think it was the miraculous discovery of the ‘block’ button, I make a mental note to read manuals occasionally.

What next? Saturn Bomberman maybe? A game that I bought for the collection ages ago and which I’ve never really played. This one came as a bit of a surprise; to be honest it’s a franchise I’ve never really clicked with. This one is decent though - a smattering of different game types and a frankly insane 10-player free for all battle mode on an absolutely giant map. I am totally useless at this.

Just time to take the old classic out for a spin - Sega Rally. Unfortunately, a few years back I had a problem with my memory cart which eventually led to it getting wiped, along with all my sparkling Sega Rally replays... now I have only the one, in which I stutter around the Desert course and somehow manage to clock up a 52.7s lap, seemingly entirely based on fluke.

It’s getting late now and I’ve still got lots more to go... so a quick go on Sonic 3D before bed and more the next day, I reckon. ‘Quick’ meaning ‘Discover you can’t save at all and end up somehow completing the game on your first go, ending at 1:50am’. Mediocre at best, but one less thing to go ‘ooh, I must play that at some point and see if it’s any good’.

So, bed.

Being in Love makes the time fly.

The next day I awoke with the prospect of either playing more games, or cleaning the car. So, games it was. Grabbed Dark Savior off the shelf and had a quick run around - another game I never did manage to complete, and so another one I look forward to replaying. The intro sequence is lovely, you are stranded on a burning seaship and the captain is being attacked by some alien thing. You have to get to the captain’s cabin as soon as you can, and depending on how long it takes you to get there, you get a different storyline from a choice of five. A lovely game.

The one that surprised me most was Myst. I’d never played Myst or anything similar to it before, besides a game called Dragon something-or-other on my first PC which was massively rubbish - basically, for the three people in the world that have never heard of it, Myst is a graphic adventure where you are stranded on Myst island. Your task is to find out why you’re there, what’s going on and how to get away from the island, and you have no backstory whatsoever - everything is slowly unravelled to you in the game by hunting for clues and solving puzzles. The whole thing is horrendously compelling, and smacks so much of the ‘Multimedia’ dream that many companies went on about so much back in the mid-nineties.

The Multimedia Dream.

Navigation around the island is achieved by looking at your surroundings - a still picture - and then deciding where you want to go. You’ll be greeted with another picture. And another one. And another one. The entire game is full of audio clips and many books you find strewn about contain small, grainy video clips. The whole thing just feels like it was created on the premise that it had to be something that couldn’t be done with floppy disks.

Despite all that, it’s surprisingly lovely and is also the first game since Ultima IV on the Master System which has compelled me enough to take notes. I’m sure it’s going to swallow up a horrendous amount of my life.

So has the Saturn still got what it takes?What’s that you say? Quick spin of NiGHTS before bedtime? Oh, go on then, if you insist...

June 2006

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