May 1995: Sega Saturn Surprise Launch



Sega peered into their crystal ball and saw a bleak future where the Sony Playstation dominated the American game market while Saturn consoles collected dust. That scenario was slowly unfolding in Japan. The Playstation not only was technically superior to the Saturn, but it was cheaper and easier to develop for. They understood that drastic action was required to defeat Sony. They tried a bold strategy, a surprise U.S. launch of the Saturn console. Instead of waiting until the planned fall release they hurriedly shipped $400 systems to every game store in the country.

We literally had no warning about the surprise launch. There were rumors circulating in the morning, a few phone calls asking about it, but nothing confirmed. Around noon an Airborne Express delivery guy popped-up with a stack of Saturn consoles. At the time it was rare to receive anything directly from a vendor like that. We rushed to clear out a prominent section to display this new system.

Sony responded by immediately announcing that the Playstation would still come out in September, only it would be $100 less than the Saturn. Consumers now had an interesting choice to make. Get the Saturn now for $400 or wait until fall for a cheaper, and potentially better, Playstation. Some opted for the Saturn because the Sega brand was stronger than newcomer Sony. Then there was the must-have-the-newest-system-regardless-of-price-or-game-library crowd. They snatched up the Saturn right away and more recently dropped $500-$800 on a Xbox 360 bundle.

Those that bought the Saturn early would soon be disappointed by the lack of games. Third party publishers were developing for a September release, even Sega could only manage a couple of games at launch. Those that rushed to buy the Saturn were calling Elbo on a daily basis asking if/when new games were coming. We didn't have the answer they were looking for. Between the surprise May launch and the original September release the only new game to hit the shelves was Bug!. This goofy platformer was a slap in the face to those that just spent a stack of cash on this new system. It wasn't long before parallels were drawn between the Saturn and the Sega CD/32X, the once-dominant Sega finding a way to botch another new hardware platform.

Another issue with the Saturn was the extremely poor quality controllers. They broke at a rate that made the Atari 5200 stick look downright indestructible. We saw more defective Saturn controllers exchanged than any other.

That summer our store "adopted" a kid named Kenny. His mom worked at a kiosk near our store. Rather than leave him home alone (he was old enough) she decided to use the free babysitting service provided by Elbo. What's that you say? You've never heard of this service? Parents regularly leave their unruly kids in video game stores while they go shopping elsewhere, it's a more common occurrence in December when they don't want their kids to see their presents. The kids will spend anywhere from 1-4 hours in the store reading magazines and re-arranging shelves. There was a legend of a kid urinating on the floor but I didn't believe it.

Kenny wasn't unruly though. He spent a good 6-8 hours a day at our store slowly reading the back of every box. I figured he knew the product selection better than anyone working there. He never got in the way or made a mess so we just ignored the situation. Sometimes he'd badger us with questions but we were good at ignoring that too.