As someone not deeply familiar with console history beyond the basic narratives everyone repeats, my main takeaway from this is that Sega of America really fucked up the Saturn. Astal sounds like a decent game caught in a situation only exceptional games could survive unscathed.
Pretty much, yeah. The Saturn is really a great system, different from the competition in the same way that the N64 and PSX were both different from the competition, but that's largely on the strength of its Japanese catalog, since North America had a small install base that should have been a lot bigger. If not for, you know. This stuff. Their brand was in such tatters by the time of the Dreamcast that they considered not putting "Sega" anywhere visible on the system.
As someone not deeply familiar with console history beyond the basic narratives everyone repeats, my main takeaway from this is that Sega of America really fucked up the Saturn. Astal sounds like a decent game caught in a situation only exceptional games could survive unscathed.
Pretty much, yeah. The Saturn is really a great system, different from the competition in the same way that the N64 and PSX were both different from the competition, but that's largely on the strength of its Japanese catalog, since North America had a small install base that should have been a lot bigger. If not for, you know. This stuff. Their brand was in such tatters by the time of the Dreamcast that they considered not putting "Sega" anywhere visible on the system.