Back in 1995, Sega released the Sega Saturn as its first home video game console with a dedicated CD-ROM. The system is the successor to the Sega Genesis and was in direct competition with Sony’s newly released PlayStation, which began filling (and soon leaving) store shelves the previous year. The Sega Saturn is an excellent console that was engineered well with great capabilities, but it was a bust, as it couldn’t outcompete Sony’s debut entry in the video game console marketplace. Despite this, the Sega Saturn featured many great games, some excellent arcade ports, and remains a fan favorite to those who owned one.
For its time, the Sega Saturn was a powerful machine, boasting 2 MB of RAM, 1.5 MB of VRAM, two 28.6 MHz processors, and more. By today’s standards, that’s nothing, but in 1995, it was a game-changer. While the Sega Saturn was on the market, which admittedly wasn’t very long, several rumors arose about a planned graphics accelerator, which would have boosted the system’s processing power. Had that happened, it might have made the Sega Saturn more competitive, giving it a longer shelf life. The rumor wasn’t baseless because Sega did the same thing with the 32X, helping keep the Genesis alive. Now, after 31 years, the rumor has been proven true.
There Was a Graphics Accelerator for the Sega Saturn
The thing about a rumor is that it’s often based on fact, even if it’s only a tiny truth surrounded by hundreds of assumptions. Sega’s development of transitional devices like the 32X and Sega CD kept the Genesis going for longer than it probably would have without them, so it made sense that something similar might happen for the Sega Saturn. The biggest rumor prevalent during the mid-late 1990s was that the purported graphics accelerator would have enabled the system to run a port of Virtua Fighter 3, a demanding, graphics-intensive game that the Saturn, on its own, couldn’t handle.
As it happens, the rumors were true, as revealed in a recent interview with Beep21 in which Junichi Naoi, formerly of Sega, shared details. The rumor of the graphics accelerator arose and was confirmed during the talk. Not only that, but it would have employed the Hitachi SH-3 chipset; Naoi helped develop the first and second iterations. Naoi was the one responsible for pitching the graphics accelerator to Sega, as he noticed that Sega’s Model 3 arcade system featured games that were too complex for the Saturn. A device was needed to port titles like Virtua Fighter 3, which was desired, as Sega had been porting its successful arcade games to the Genesis for years.
The graphics accelerator project was codenamed TRIP, and while development continued for some time, it was ultimately cancelled. Sega opted to shift its focus away from the Saturn, as it wasn’t capable of competing with the PlayStation, and instead developed its new console, the Sega Dreamcast. The technology that went into the development of project TRIP was likely included in the creation of the Dreamcast, so the work done on the accelerator wasn’t lost — it just didn’t benefit anyone who owned a Sega Saturn, which lost its small share of the market and was discontinued in 1998.
The Graphics Accellerator Lived on in the Sega Dreamcast
Image courtesy of Beep21/X
While the rumor that the Sega Saturn’s graphics accelerator was proven true after 31 years is fascinating, it centers on a series of commercial failures. All of the transitional devices made for the Sega Genesis were commercial flops, and it’s likely that the graphics accelerator for the Saturn would have been as well. That’s probably why Sega decided to drop project TRIP in favor of the Dreamcast. Unfortunately, that system was also a bust, as it failed to achieve much of a market share, though the Dreamcast was an excellent system that featured plenty of great games. Sega understood this, which is a primary reason why it stopped making hardware and now focuses on game development.
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