Rumor: Sega Saturn games to appear on Wii Virtual Console
by John Bardinelli 
{ Mar 16th 2007 at 4:02PM }
Nintendo recently announced support for Neo-Geo and MSX games on the Japanese Virtual Console. Will the Sega Saturn be next? The gossip comes via Rumor Reporter reader Fei34 who claims to have heard it from a fellow DigiPen employee. The DigiPen and Nintendo of America buildings are connect by a single hallway, so it seems someone has been doing reconnaissance work in-between classes.Since the VC launched, Sega has been one of its strongest supporters. Bringing on the Saturn is a likely next-step. Now if only the Dreamcast were next on the list.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Myke @ Mar 16th 2007 4:04PM
God please let it be true, I've been hoping for this since the beginning.
Unit @ Mar 16th 2007 4:07PM
PANZER DRAGOON SAGA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Diskoboy @ Mar 16th 2007 4:08PM
I see SMS games coming to the VC. If Nintendo wants to start putting Saturn games on the VC, I'm all for it *NiGHTS!*.
But they need to make the games playable from SD cards. OR they need to find a way to compress the absolute hell out of the game, so it'll fit on the Wii's internal memory. Otherwise, it aint happenin.
I hope they start putting Master System games up. You'd never be able to peel me away from Phantasy Star 1 and Zillion.
JP @ Mar 16th 2007 4:18PM
How many Saturn games can you possibly store on 512MB of flash memory?
Virtua Fanboy @ Mar 16th 2007 4:11PM
ZOMG I'm buyin a Wii!!! Oh wait. My Saturns still sitting next to my Dreamcast and 360. Nevermind.
Ismael @ Mar 16th 2007 4:12PM
I would be surprised to see any CD based games on the virtual console. Without a hard drive, you would be able to fit at most 2 games on your 2GB SD card. Aside from that, the dual-processor Saturn was one of the more complex platforms out there. If Nintendo won't even add support for Rumble/Memory Packs in N64 games, I seriously doubt they would go as far as to try to emulate the SEGA Saturn.
Dolla Dolla @ Mar 16th 2007 4:14PM
Now you're just talking dirty to me, Nintendo. Put up or shutup! :D
PinkSpider @ Mar 16th 2007 4:50PM
If this is true my Wii may get some use, Panzer Dragoon + Radiant Silvergun etc ftw.
I love my Wii, I think I made the right next gen choice but it really is getting no play (Sadly my PS2/ PC and DS are, machines ive had for all over 2 years).
sheppy @ Mar 16th 2007 4:15PM
Agreed, lack of internal drive almost debunks this. ALMOST!
Zertoss @ Mar 16th 2007 4:18PM
Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and call this one improbable, too. Maybe if they added support for VC games on SD cards like Diskoboy mentioned. Otherwise, I don't see it happening.
GJM @ Mar 16th 2007 4:19PM
Seeing as how they don't even have good Saturn emulation for the PC yet (probably the hardest vintage console to emulate) I have a lot of trouble believing this rumor. Even if this proves to be true, I would be surprised to see any nearly 2GB games like Panzer Dragoon Saga on there.
Eric @ Mar 16th 2007 4:20PM
DREAMCAST = WIN.
T-Man @ Mar 16th 2007 4:24PM
Most saturn games would fit in a reasonable sized download. Re-do audio from redbook to MP3 or ogg and you're looking at 50MB or less for most saturn games. Kids today forget that we didn't have the spare cycles for "on the fly" decompression back in the day.
Vidikron @ Mar 16th 2007 4:25PM
@10
That's because PC emulators are designed by hackers. Any emulator running on the Wii would be designed by Sega themselves. Since they have all the technical details of the Saturn they should be able to make a good emulator.
But as others have mentioned, the Wii's limited storage space is going to come into play here. Saturn games will likely fill up the space fast. But still... if this is true, it's very good news for the Wii. PC Engine (TG16), NeoGeo, and Saturn... talk about a great line-up of hardcore systems.
ChristB @ Mar 16th 2007 5:17PM
You give me Saturn, Dreamcast and 3DO support, and I'll show you my entire history of failed videogame consoles. (TG16 already included)
Dracula Jones @ Mar 16th 2007 4:28PM
Considering it took approximately 14 years to download Mario 64 on VC (and that's after the untold millenia just waiting for the VC Store to load), I am not exactly eager to experience downloading a CD-ROM based game.
Defenestrator2.0 @ Mar 19th 2007 9:52AM
OH NOES!!!1 LOOK OUT JOYSTIQ! NINTENDO'S GOING TO BLACKBALL YOU NOW, EVEN THOUGH IT CLEARLY SAYS, "Rumor!"
snatch @ Mar 16th 2007 4:30PM
NIGHTS INTO DREAMS@!#$#@$
Crono @ Mar 16th 2007 4:35PM
Dracula Jones,
I used to have the same problem. Change your routers broadcast channel from channel 6 to channel anything else. You're getting interference from other 2.4 ghz devices.
Derbeste @ Mar 16th 2007 4:37PM
The storage space issue of this rumor does make one wonder.
What is Nintendo's plan for storage?
They must CERTAINLY have plans to expand the Wii's storage capabilities. Perhaps maybe to support USB hard drives?
Nintendo already has users filling up the 512MB internal storage even without Saturn games. If they want users to keep buying, they need to give them more space.
So future storage expansion for the VC is not just probable...it's inevitable.
Therefore, with increased storage being more of an eventuality than a probability, it would seem to me that storage (or lack thereof) should not be enough to convince people that this rumor is false.
As for emulation capability......
It's nothing a little more duct tape couldn't handle. ;-)
Btw...where IS Nintendo getting all the duct tape it needs to tape all these systems together?
samfish @ Mar 16th 2007 4:38PM
Oh, this just made an otherwise crappy, semi-stressful SO much better!
Now make it happen.
Oh, and give us SegaCD games, too. I want my Sonic CD and the god awful Sewer Shark and Night Trap.
denney @ Mar 16th 2007 4:45PM
OMG i would buy a wii for that alone. they should also bring some out on x box live too
samfish @ Mar 16th 2007 4:44PM
Right, and as far as the storage issue goes, most Saturn games are pretty small when you take away the FMV and uncompressed music, as I understand it.
Short of just adding external hard drive support, I still don't see any reason why Nintendo or Sega couldn't put the FMVs and such on a server and stream and/or cache them to the Wii as needed.
lukee @ Mar 16th 2007 4:46PM
Might sound kinda silly, but why not emulate some GameBoy games while they are at it. Hell, I would take resonably priced Atari and C64 games.
Virtua Fanboy @ Mar 16th 2007 4:47PM
I think that if they fit Castlevania SOTN (a PS One game) on Live Arcade they could start fitting Saturn games on Live as well.
Matt B @ Mar 16th 2007 4:48PM
I once saw a band called Dracula Jones in Ithaca,NY.
Even though Saturn games were on CD, do you think that they were all full with 700 MB data? I think they will be fine for VC. They just offered more space than carts I imagine. But what do I know, I don't own a wii.
BTW, Joe Montana Football was the worst football game ever.
GJM @ Mar 16th 2007 4:49PM
Vidikron
To say all emulation programmers are hackers is rediculous. Many of them are professional programmers doing this as a hobby. Many of them have been hired by companies to emulate their older titles for new consoles. Having the hardware schematics won't be the big boon you think it is. Have you seen Sega's previous attempts at emulating there own stuff? Much of it is very poor and emulated better by your so called hackers.
majortom1981 @ Mar 16th 2007 9:50PM
First off the games can be played off of sd card .
Second , do you forget that nintendo has experience programming for dual processors?
The ds is a dual processor console so why would it be hard to emulate.
actually how powerfull were these two processors in the saturn.
could they port saturn games over to the ds? it also has two processors.
PinkSpider @ Mar 16th 2007 4:50PM
On the storage space issue. Im sure i've heard the Wii will be compatible with usb hard drives and even with it not being with compression and that im sure disk images could be sub 100mb.
Drakfyre @ Mar 16th 2007 4:50PM
Just FYI, Digipen is connected via hallway to NST (Nintendo Software Technology, a first party company), NOT Nintendo of America. Still within walking distance though, and staff of Digipen have the option of using the NOA lunchroom.
Alex @ Mar 16th 2007 4:51PM
i keep hearing this, and it definitely sounds a little absurd.. there's a grand total of two decent PC saturn emulators after all these years, and one of those was written by sega themselves (the other, SSF, is not only more legal but also more compatible, the catch being that IT REQUIRES SSE2). this isn't only unfeasible spacewise - although, yeah, those games are 80% uncompressed audio - it'd more or less have to result in compromised emulation. master system is a lot more likely, but mainly i'm just waiting for neogeo.
Mr Khan @ Mar 16th 2007 4:51PM
@ samfish, i think so too
They could easily emulate Saturn, Dreamcast, and SegaCD content by streaming it off the internet, you simply pay your $10 to have eternal access to a server that streams the content, if they didn't allow the games to be run off the SD Cards (they would have to develop a DRM to forbid you from playing it on another Wii, or just be cool about it, which probably won't happen)
But remember, you don't have 512 MB of space on the Wii when you buy it, the entire Operating System takes up about 1/3 of that 512 MB, i did the math
Cutriss @ Mar 16th 2007 4:52PM
"That's because PC emulators are designed by hackers. Any emulator running on the Wii would be designed by Sega themselves. Since they have all the technical details of the Saturn they should be able to make a good emulator."
I take it someone hasn't ever played the Sega Smash Pack on the PC. They licensed KGen98 for that, rather than build their own emulator.
i5hawn @ Mar 16th 2007 4:56PM
even if it is a rumor, i'm going to hold onto it. burning rangers is still the greatest game ever made. 21st century fire fighting and rescue with WRIST MOUNTABLE ICE GUNS!
its like jesus came back in the form of that game.
dark @ Mar 16th 2007 4:54PM
Is there anything good on that system besides sonic?
Dracula Jones @ Mar 16th 2007 4:57PM
@Matt B: They're named after Dracula Jones Carver, the inventor of the vampire peanut. No relation whatsoever.
syco @ Mar 16th 2007 4:58PM
I would pay something like 3000 Wii points to play Radiant Silvergun. Hell yeh!
Nicholas Sulikowski @ Mar 16th 2007 5:00PM
Unless Nintendo releases a firmware update to allow for an external hard drive to be plugged into the USB, or lets you play off your SD card, Saturn on the Virtual Console seems unlikely.
GJM @ Mar 16th 2007 5:04PM
"I would pay something like 3000 Wii points to play Radiant Silvergun. Hell yeh!"
I paid more than Halo 3 Legendary Edition to play Radiant Silvergun... so YEAH
JodyAnthony @ Mar 16th 2007 5:03PM
"They're named after Dracula Jones Carver, the inventor of the vampire peanut. No relation whatsoever."
hahaha, this made my day.
Charron @ Mar 16th 2007 5:11PM
Here's a wildly impractical solution: offering some sort of custom compilations on physical disk. All that gets changed is the frontend menu and what games are actually on the disk, a setup they could probably automate. You trade off persistence (you lose the disk, you lose it) for portability (not tied to a console). But it's way better for the companies involved to just do their own compilation and push crappy games on the customer along with the good ones. But hey, it's an idea.
Steve @ Mar 16th 2007 5:11PM
Genesis and Saturn but no Master System? That's odd.
Ismael mentioned Nintendo's laziness when it came to N64 emulation and why Nintendo would bother with Saturn. First off, I guess Nintendo believes that the lack of those N64 features in its emulator won't affect the sales of games. It's sad, but true. Maybe Nintendo wants to fight that fire when they release an N64 game that really demands those features.
Second, I thought I read somewhere that 3rd parties are responsible for creating the emulators so in this case Sega would be the one creating the emulator.
It's sad that the Wii will be incapable of playing the Saturn CDs because of the Wii's optical drive not supporting CD. It's possible that the Saturn games would need recompiled anyway so that they could run efficiently on the Wii.
I hope this rumor is true, but I think I know even less about the Saturn than I do about the TGX!
ssuk @ Mar 16th 2007 5:14PM
Whoa, welcome to 4 months ago. I was sure you lot had already reported on this too...
ssuk @ Mar 16th 2007 5:16PM
btw, SEGA Saturn emulation is basically pretty rubbish at the moment as well. GiriGiri is probably the best emulation for Saturn so far and that leaves much to be desired on the PC, how well it'd preform on the Wii is another matter though. At least this way on the Wii, you can play NiGHTS without your hand becoming an odd shape by the end of it thanks to the Saturns controler.
aaron @ Mar 16th 2007 5:17PM
"I would pay something like 3000 Wii points to play Radiant Silvergun. Hell yeh!"
"I paid more than Halo 3 Legendary Edition to play Radiant Silvergun... so YEAH"
Good grief. I saw a copy of RS at a reputable store for $80 bucks.
How about the Saturn version of POLICENAUTS? Nobody brought that one up...
Mr Khan @ Mar 16th 2007 5:18PM
@ Steve
Nobody's really sure of exactly what those Wii Disc Drives can or can't read
That's one of the disadvantages of Nintendo's purely proprietary discs, we know that they are DVD9s, but their encryption is a mystery
in reality, anything's possible...
GJM @ Mar 16th 2007 5:21PM
"Good grief. I saw a copy of RS at a reputable store for $80 bucks.
How about the Saturn version of POLICENAUTS? Nobody brought that one up... "
Well, I had to ebay it and on ebay they normally go for $150-$200 in mint condition.
Policenauts would have to be translated so that's probably why nobody brought that up (or the fact that most people don't know about Policenauts or that there was even a Saturn version)
idioteraser @ Mar 16th 2007 8:22PM
Ahem you guys need to look at what Hudson said when the vc was first disclosed with them on it. They said one of the cd-rom formats was being supported.
Most cd-rom games of the past in reality were a tenth of what the disc said they were. They were uncompressed and the audio formats took hundreds of megabytes of space. If you were to take the same audio and record it today with the programs today it would only take a few megs compared to hundreds of megs like it did in the past.
PinkSpider @ Mar 16th 2007 5:26PM
@Sega smash pack emu - lazy port.
@PC ports - Sega have the hardware documents and arent just homebrew teams.
Also; how was Panzer dragoon on the xbox run? port? (the unlockable extra in orta).
syco @ Mar 16th 2007 5:26PM
Nah, I'm pretty sure Wii disks are just Gamecube disks that are physically larger... and Cube disks were DEFINANTLY not DVD9's at all.... It's a completely different wavelength and I'm pretty sure the data is written backwards on the disk so you have to spin it backwards to read it (well, backwards compared to DVD's anyway)