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The Sega Hitachi HiSaturn Navi Console
- jonhohle 3y agoAs a console collector with a good number of odd consoles, this has always been a bucket list item. It reminds me of the PC engine LT in design sensibility. Sega did a lot of console licensing in the 90s - JVC and Pioneer both released versions of the Genesis/Sega CD.
- Grazester 3y agoDo you collect for the Saturn? There are a number of very expensive games for this console
- mistyvales 3y agoHow the hell have I never heard of this?! Thought I knew all the unique JP consoles.. Thanks for sharing
- gryson 3y agoThe Hitachi product site for this is still online (from 1995; Japanese): https://www.hitachi.co.jp/New/cnews/9512/1201.html https://www.hitachi.co.jp/New/cnews/9512/1201.html It was intended as an in-car game console / GPS navigation combo unit. One of the unique selling points was that it could use the Saturn hardware to create a 3D map simulation of a planned route that you could view in advance of going on a trip. So, you could take it in the house, watch the simulation, then put it in the car for the actual trip and use the GPS navigation.
- throwaway128128 3y agoKnowing the quality of Saturn 3D games I can't imagine the 3D GPS feature was any good..
- Grazester 3y agoThe Saturn had good 3D games! The work it took to get a decent 3D games not many game studio could do. In fact it might have been only Sega. And for something as simple as a 90's 3D map the Saturn could certainly do with ease, once again if it wasn't half assed
- sillywalk 3y agoIIRC the Saturn used quadrangles.
- Grazester 3y agoYeah that's fine. The model 3 arcade board also used quads. The issue was the architect of the Saturn hardware itself along with the woefully inadequate development tools that developers had to use from sega
- sillywalk 3y ago8 Processors! https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/sega-saturn/ https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/sega-saturn/
- scheeseman486 3y agoThe most impressive engine released retail on Saturn was Slavedriver, which was developed by Lobotomy for Powerslave and re-used for ports of Duke Nukem 3D and Quake. If counting homebrew though, there's this demo which clearly developed by some kind of magician: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpcjkDDLoXM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpcjkDDLoXM
- tuna74 3y agoI would claim Burning Rangers is the most impressive game on the Saturn. The effects are crazy and use the Saturn HW in totally creative ways.
- gary_0 3y agoSeeing a product photo from that era evoked a particularly weird feeling of nostalgia that I had never reflected on before. I think it's the sleek molded-plastic consumer electronics design combined with crisp photography that still lacks the uncanny valley of extensive digital photo retouching or full-blown 3D rendering that would become prevalent only a few years later. Now I kind of want to find a website with scans of old product advertisements from the 90's. While they seemed to lack the cultural distinctiveness of previous decades, the 90's were still a happening time and the eye of the storm of (post) modernity we find ourselves in now.
- fidotron 3y agoIn this case “crisp” means high contrast. Modern photographers and post process people would look at the histogram of the photo on that site and die inside.
- auto 3y agoI had the same feeling, and I think along with what the other commenters have said, the bit rate of the image contributes to it as well, you can see the grain in the light background where it doesn’t have the practically infinite color spectrum to work with and you get the color dithering effect instead.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoI know how you feel. Really miss that era. > crisp photography Old photos just look so good, really miss them. Is it even possible to achieve this with current technology?
- HelixEndeavor 3y agoEarly digicams weren't powerful enough to pull off a lot of the fancy behind-the-scenes instant post-processinf modern cameras do before you even get to see the picture. The result was they often resembled film photography in many ways, especially the digital noise that in the right circumstances didn't look too dissimilar from film grain. This is why I personally have a small collection of early digicams I like shooting on from time to time, and why they've recently become a whole TikTok trend. I think if we allowed modern cameras to have an option that performs little to no post-processing on captured photos (without having to resort to RAW capture), we could get pictures that a lot more closely resemble this stuff.
- mootpt 3y agoDefinitely don’t miss accidentally bending an s-video pin
- slowhadoken 3y agothis reminds me of the Sony PSOne with LCD screen attached
- macshome 3y agoThis is pretty much the holy grail of Saturn units for collectors.
- twbarr 3y agoWould be awfully fun to emulate this. With new maps from OSM... On Android Auto...
- canadianfella 3y ago[dead]
- thevagrant 3y agoSega made a Genesis mini a few years back with 40 games. Would be great if they made a console that let you play most games from master system, genesis, saturn to dreamcast.
- imiric 3y agoIt still used emulation, though. None of these "mini" official systems is appealing to me. I can already use emulators on any device I already own, and have an equivalent or better experience. Why would I pay for a cute enclosure bundled with the same emulator I already use and a handful of games? Legality aside, they're a cash grab tugging at nostalgia strings. What I _would_ like to see from the original manufacturers is an actual "mini" system, reimplemented using modern hardware components, and using software improvements (filters, upscaling, etc.). I would even settle for an FPGA implementation, which companies like Analogue are currently cashing on. The original manufacturers have an obvious advantage they can use, but it takes more effort than slapping together an emulator and some ROMs. It would also be great to have an official digital storefront specific to these systems, with the entire game library, or as much as they have the right to publish. Similar to what Nintendo has done with their legacy systems, just separate from the Switch itself. It just seems like a huge wasted market opportunity to not do this right.
- thevagrant 3y agoThat's what I was getting at but didn't articulate it well enough. I'd pay per title if the prices were reasonable. It does seem like a missed opportunity. I know plenty of people in their 40s who'd more likely slap money on retro titles than they would on any new game.
- tuna74 3y agoSony provided exactly what you wanted in for PS1 games on the PS3/PSP/Vita, but stopped doing that for PS4. I am going to assume it was not a very big business.
- 3y ago
- ethbr1 3y agoObligatory link to the Dreamcast Fish Life fishtank simulator: https://segafish.museebolo.ch/en/presentation/ https://segafish.museebolo.ch/en/presentation/ And yes, of course it had a microphone. So passers-by could talk to the fish.
- a1o 3y agoSomehow this was a different game than what I expected, this is an actual fish tank console!