I've been starting to get into producing my next video, which will cover the Sega Saturn's Japanese launch and its releases from launch through the end of 1994. This will definitely be a shorter video than PSX ep 1, but I'm trying to take all of the lessons from making that first episode and put them into making this one better and a bit less arduous to produce.
I've mostly just been starting to put together my thoughts and capture footage of a variety of games for the opening sequence and other b-roll. Something that's been nice is remembering that the Saturn fucking rocks. Despite a lot of crossover in the PS1/Saturn libraries, the Saturn's weird hardware architecture Saturnifies everything it touches. Its exclusives, though, which is what this subseries will focus on, really feel distinct from PS1 games. Sega's consumer divisions in particular were seriously On One in this era, and the third parties that put effort into making Saturn-exclusives titles that took advantage of the hardware's strengths created some amazing games.
I don't have physical Saturn hardware right now, so I've been relying on software emulation (Mednafen, although I want to experiment with a few alternatives). There is a MiSTer Saturn core that's coming along nicely, although it's not yet at the point where it's a viable option. (Side note: Please support srg320, the MiSTer Saturn core's author, through his Patreon! He is in eastern Ukraine, so he's facing a lot of really tough challenges right now. He has confirmed previously that he can still access this money.) While I love how far the MiSTer and software emulation have come, I've been seriously considering starting to acquire fifth generation hardware again. Mednafen is great for now, but I'd really like an ODE'd Saturn by the time I'm covering when the library really starts to pick up late '95-ish.
(fwiw, I recorded almost all of the PSX ep 1 footage through my MiSTer, except for platforms that don't have MiSTer cores, which was just a few minutes of b-roll of 3DO, Jaguar, and Saturn games. The MiSTer PSX core is very mature and accurate, and it has some advantages over real hardware, like save states. That being said, I also want to get an ODE'd PS1, especially for edge cases like games with weird peripherals that might not play nice with the MiSTer core.)
I've been really happy so far to see how well PSX ep 1 has done. As of this writing, it just crossed 2,000 views! That's way over what I ever expected to happen so fast. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. I have had a few troll comments on YouTube, but I almost take them as a compliment. If anonymous people are trolling you, it means you've achieved enough success to attract some haters.
I have a few things ambiently on my radar for next steps, although I may very well get distracted into a different direction.
- I need to build a good release list for Saturn games. My PS1 release list is built from PSX Data Center and Redump (using Scrapy to pull the data), with some manual research/confirmation mostly from MobyGames and Wikipedia. The closest equivalent to PSX Data Center for Saturn seems to be Satakore, so I'll probably use that plus Redump to build the initial list.
- It may sound completely unrelated, but I think it's finally time for me to play through Dark Souls. I've played a bit of it before and a bit more of a few other Souls-likes, but it's just one of those things that's been on my radar but always displaced by something else. But PSX ep 2 will cover King's Field, so I want to speak from a more informed viewpoint on how From got from King's Field '94 to Dark Souls.
- I've been feeling the urge to actually write some stuff that's a little more personal and less video games history/media criticism. I'd probably just put this on Cohost, since I use it in a very LiveJournal-y way a lot. I don't really have a timeline for this. I have some drafts and fragments hanging around that need revisiting.