Saturn Games

The Sega Saturn is the most Japan-centric major console in gaming history. Of the 1,028 games released for the system, 775 were Japan-only exclusives, making up 75% of the entire library. No other platform has a gap that wide between what Japan received and what reached the rest of the world.

The reasons are intertwined. The Saturn was initially successful in Japan but struggled in the United States, and as Sega's Western operation wound down support, publishers stopped localizing. Entire genres that defined the Saturn in Japan never made the journey. Many of the games that made the Saturn popular in Japan, such as the Sakura Taisen series and various role-playing games, were never released in foreign territories because Sega of America judged them too Japanese for Western audiences. That judgment left a library of remarkable depth sitting entirely on Japanese shelves.