Had We Made Good Choices
September 4, 2026 — Somewhere after midnight
There is a phrase that has recently entered the Mr. Germlin vocabulary:
Had we made good choices.
It is an extraordinarily useful phrase because it requires neither anger nor explanation. It merely acknowledges that, somewhere along the road, somebody encountered a perfectly functional fork and confidently drove into a drainage ditch.
Tonight's exhibit is the Sega Saturn.
I had been watching Game Sack, as one does when normal people are asleep, when an enormous bald man's head appeared on the screen and frightened the shit out of me.
The video responsible for tonight's archaeological expedition:
Game Sack — “New to the Saturn? Play These Games First to Understand Why it ROCKS!” Link here
I recommend watching it if you want to understand both why the Saturn was a fascinating machine and why, several decades later, I am investigating the identity of a gigantic floating bald man instead of sleeping.
This was apparently advertising.
“You have come a long way. But are you for the future?”
Sir.
I merely wanted to play video games.
We subsequently attempted to identify Bald Saturn Man. We found the advertisement. We found the era. We found the campaign. We found his gigantic head.
We did not find him.
The boring tech does not create fan fiction, so his file remains open.
But somewhere during this investigation I started looking at the Saturn itself and realized something considerably more interesting:
This thing didn't have to die like this.
The Saturn wasn't some Coleco-grade appliance Sega assembled in a garage while everyone was drunk. There are genuinely impressive games on the thing.
Virtua Fighter 2.
Sega Rally.
Guardian Heroes.
Panzer Dragoon Zwei.
Fighters Megamix.
Radiant Silvergun.
X-Men vs. Street Fighter.
Game Sack even points out that Sega Rally and Virtua Fighter 2 helped shut people up about what the Saturn could do in 3D once Sega actually figured out its own machine.
And the thing could be an absolute 2D monster. X-Men vs. Street Fighter used the 4MB RAM cartridge to deliver something remarkably close to having the arcade game at home.
The hardware had something to say.
Unfortunately, Sega was holding the microphone.
The tragedy of the Saturn isn't that Sony arrived with the PlayStation and revealed Sega had brought a butter knife to Normandy.
The tragedy is that Sega had a gun.
Then Sega examined the gun.
Loaded the gun.
Pointed it directly at Sega.
And began experimenting with the trigger.
First, there was the 32X.
Because apparently the correct thing to do when preparing an expensive next-generation console is to convince your existing customers to purchase a mushroom that attaches to the previous console.
Then came Saturn.
The American launch was supposed to happen in September 1995.
Sega walked onto the E3 stage in May and essentially announced:
SURPRISE. IT'S OUT RIGHT NOW.
Retailers who weren't included:
Huh.
Developers who thought they had several more months:
Huh.
Customers:
Huh.
Sony:
“$299.”
And somewhere inside Sega headquarters, a raccoon quietly placed both paws over its face.
But imagine for a moment:
Had we made good choices.
No 32X.
Genesis gets to grow old with dignity.
Saturn gets its proper launch.
Developers receive decent tools and enough time to understand Sega's bizarre hardware.
Retailers aren't unexpectedly informed that Christmas has been moved to May.
Sega looks at the enormous pile of excellent Japanese Saturn games and reaches the revolutionary conclusion:
“Perhaps Americans would also enjoy purchasing video games.”
Because that's another recurring theme in the Saturn library.
Street Fighter Zero 3 stayed in Japan.
Bulk Slash stayed there too.
Radiant Silvergun.
Other shooters.
Fighters.
RPGs.
Interesting weird shit.
Japan got a Sega Saturn.
America sometimes seemed to receive a Sega Saturn brochure.
Had we made good choices, Sega could have leaned directly into what the machine did well.
Sony could have the enormous mainstream PlayStation ecosystem.
Nintendo could have Mario, Zelda and its polygon wizardry.
And Sega could have planted its flag:
This is the arcade bastard.
Fighters.
Shooters.
Sega arcade conversions.
Capcom.
Treasure.
Excellent 2D.
Increasingly competent 3D.
Japanese weirdness translated into English because people generally need to understand the words appearing on their television.
Would Saturn have defeated PlayStation?
Probably not.
And that's okay.
You don't have to win everything to remain alive.
There's a lesson hiding in there somewhere.
Instead, Sega spent years teaching customers an unfortunate lesson:
Do not become too attached to Sega hardware.
Sega CD.
32X.
Saturn.
And then along comes the Dreamcast.
Wonderful little machine.
Fantastic games.
Online capability.
A year ahead of much of its competition.
And Sega has to stand before the public like a boyfriend who has somehow burned down three kitchens:
“Okay. I understand why you're concerned. But I've learned a lot.”
Then Sony wheels the PlayStation 2 into the room.
DVD player.
PlayStation backward compatibility.
Massive developer support.
Massive consumer confidence.
And Sega discovers that consequences occasionally have sequels.
Dreamcast dies.
Sega leaves the hardware business.
Sonic eventually appears on Nintendo hardware.
Somewhere, a Genesis owner from 1992 feels a disturbance in the Force.
The fascinating question isn't whether Saturn could have conquered Sony.
It's whether Sega could have remained Sega.
Maybe Saturn sells enough.
Maybe developers retain confidence.
Maybe retailers don't hate them.
Maybe Dreamcast arrives not as Sega's desperate final roll of the dice but simply as:
the next Sega console.
Maybe Dreamcast survives.
Maybe there's another machine afterward.
Maybe in some alternate 2026, people are arguing about:
PlayStation 6 vs. Xbox Whatever vs. Nintendo Switch 3 vs. Sega Fuckmaster 9000.
And I'm waiting for the Sega Fuckmaster 9000 to drop below $150 on eBay because:
Act Broke.
Some doctrines transcend timelines.
But that isn't what happened.
The Saturn sold poorly outside Japan.
The Dreamcast became Sega's final console.
And thirty-one years later, I am sitting here after midnight watching Game Sack, investigating an unidentified bald man from a 1995 advertisement because apparently this is what adulthood became.
I still don't know who he is.
But I know what he asked:
“You have come a long way. But are you for the future?”
Apparently Sega wasn't.
Had we made good choices.
The boring tech does not create fan fiction. The Saturn Man file remains open.
— Jerry “The Ankle-Biter” Silverhand
Jerry's Marginalia
September 4, 2026