The Beginning
The early days of the Saturn were dark indeed. Sega was primarily counting on home conversions of
Virtua Fighter and
Daytona USA to carry its hype, especially during the summer of 1995, when it was surprisingly launched at a rather pricey $400. Although fans gobbled them up, Namco had a one-two punch of
Tekken and
Ridge Racer, which were being released for Sony's brand new PlayStation.
Despite not having quite the same level of arcade street cred, they both looked much better, and helped begin Sony's dominance in the console gaming field. Meanwhile, Sega scrambled to make its
Virtua Fighter port look less embarrassing with the release of
Virtua Fighter Remix, and tried to create a number of other properties such as
Clockwork Knight and
Bug!, neither of which were terribly impressive.
In these dark early days, one of the only truly original titles that Sega fans could get excited about was
Panzer Dragoon, created by a Sega team known as Team Andromeda. Although it was specifically designed for the home console,
Panzer Dragoon felt much like an arcade game -- it was short and shallow, but remarkably pretty, at least for the time.
In many ways,
Panzer Dragoon is a light-gun game without the light gun -- the gamer term for this is a "rail shooter." Although you pilot a flying dragon, the game's path is completely pre-calculated, so all you need to do is shoot at enemies and dodge incoming fire.