The Sega Saturn was released in May 1995 in the US. The system retailed for $399.99 and came with a set of AV cables, AC cord, controller, and the Virtua Figher game with a Bootleg demo disk.

The Saturn was designed with 2 CPUs and 6 other processors, this made it difficult for anyone to get the maximum performance out of the system. Due to the complex nature of the systems design, and the lack of a useful software development kit, games were frequently written in assembly laguage to reach decent speeds and programers would often only utilize one of the CPUs to avoid the trouble of working with both. Another problem with the 2 CPU design is that both CPUs used the same BUS and did not have any dedicated memory of their own aside from a 4K on chip cache. The Saturn also suffered from a lack of a correctly functioning hardware-aided transparency. Usable transparency effects were only possibly through software emulation. These factors led to the Saturn losing out on third party support to the Sony Playstaion and while the Saturn stayed competitive in Japan, it was considered a failure in the US market.

While it did have faults, the Saturn's CPU was more reliable and drew less glitches than the Playstaion. The Saturn also had the upper hand in 2D games and was excellent for RPGs and Aracade games. The Saturn was overall more powerfull than the Playstaion, but due to diffiuclty in programming the consolemajor strengths were over looked.

All things considered, the Saturn was not without powerhouse games: Radiant Silvergun is considered by many to be one of the best shooters of all time. NiGHTS Into Dreams was one of the Saturns most popular games and was amazing using the 2.5D gaming aspect. Panzer Dragoon Saga, sold out immediatly upon release and is still today considered to be one of the most collectable US released game ever. Shining Force III, continued on with the same great gameplay as the first 2 of the series but took things 3D. However the game was never completely ported to the States and still years later fans eagrly await some sort of translation or re-release.

Processors (8)	Memory
Two Hitachi SH2 32-bit RISC @ 28.6MHz One Hitachi SH1 32-bit RISC VDP 1 32-bit video display processor VDP 2 32-bit video display processor Saturn Control Unit (SCU) Motorola 68EC000 sound processor DSP sound processor	2 Megabytes (16 megabits) RAM 1.54 Megabytes (12 megabits) VRAM (Video RAM) 540 Kilobytes (4 megabits) Audio RAM 540 Kilobytes (4 megabits) CD-ROM Cache
Video	Audio
VDP 1 32-bit video display processor sprite, polygon, and geometry engine dual 256KB frame buffers for rotation and scaling effects Texture Mapping Goraud Shading 512KB cache for textures VDP 2 32-bit background and scroll plane video display processor background engine 5 simulataneous scrolling backgrounds 2 simultaneous rotating playfields 200,000 Texture Mapped Polygons/Second 500,000 Flat Shaded Polygons/Second up to 60 frames per second animation 24-bit true color graphics 16. Million Available Colors 320x224, 640x224, and 720x576 Resolution	Yamaha 24-bit Digital Signal Processor @ 22.6MHz Motorola 68EC000 sound processor @ 11.3MHz 32 PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) Channels 8 FM (Frequency Modulation) Channels 44.1 khz Sampling Rate
Storage	Input/Output
CD-ROM (2X) 320 Kilobytes/Second Transfer Speed Audio CD Compatible CD+G Compatible CD+EG Compatible CD Single (8 cm CD) Compatible Optional - Video CD, Photo CD, EBook, Digital Karaoke Optional - 512KB Memory Cartridges for game save	High speed serial communications port Internal 32-bit Expansion port Internal Multi AV Port for optional Video CD (MPEG) adapter Composite Video/Stereo (Standard) NTSC RF (Optional) S-Video Compatible (Optional) RGB Compatible (Optional) HDTV Compatible (Optional) Analog Control Pad (x2)