How long will Sega Saturn hardware last?
Nov 8, 2018 22:36:02 GMT
Post by sonix on Nov 8, 2018 22:36:02 GMT
So recently I dug out my Sat after 5 years of (yet another) break, purchased a bunch of games, already made a list of every game I find remotely interesting along with average price for future reference. If you want to seriously get into Saturn, in the year of 2018, while starting pretty much from scratch, you realize that it'll take some hefty investment, even if you exclude the outrageously priced games like PDS or half of the shoot'em ups, and it can only get more expensive. So, looking at the prices of Saturn games, stuff that's already at least two decades old, I started to wonder how reasonable it is to actually buy this stuff - how long could it last from now on?
In precisely 2 weeks it'll be the 24th anniversary of Saturn's Japanese launch. This pretty much means that almost all of Saturn hardware is at least 20 years old. On one hand the Saturn is widely regarded as one of the most durable systems ever made - especially among consoles with optical drives. In my experience it's definitely been true, aside from a small incident with a blown fuse (luckily it could be easily replaced) - absolutely no issues over the years, although I'm aware that a faulty Saturn unit is not a rare sight. Then again, I had long breaks with the system, I think that over the 19 years I owned it I used it for around 8 years, and the rest was spent in confinement. Still, it feels like the hardware design makes the Saturn very reliable - as long as you keep it in good condition it shouldn't die on you just like that.
But even the most durable hardware will give in sooner or later, not only due to wear and tear but also time. Obviously we still have Atari's and NES's that work like a charm, not to mention numerous other computer hardware that's older and still running, although the simplicity of those machines also makes them more sturdy than anything more modern. As far as I know, there hasn't been any "mass exctinction" of any particular video game system yet (though apparently the Famicom Disk System was notoriously failure-prone from the very start), but it's just a matter of time. For some systems it's not a big deal - Famicom is constantly reborn through various clones, and can be emulated flawlessly on pretty much everything. Famicom hardware dying out is not a big deal, because the games are all preserved and easily playable on modern machines - same goes for most systems we consider "retro".
As we know, it's not necessarily true in case of Saturn. We will never see any Saturn clones in the future (well, that's true for pretty much any disk-based system). The emulation is there, but SSF, while doing a great job, was never completed and probably won't be (I don't know if it's been officialy abandoned, or is there any chance for an update in the future), and in my personal experience it does not replace the original hardware in the same way any NES, SNES or Mega Drive emulators can. There are some other projects but I doubt we will see any new Saturn emulator that matches SSF performance anytime soon, let alone surpass it, not to mention that at some point SSF itself may become incompatible with some new Windows revisions. Some (very few) Saturn classics have been ported here and there, but plethora of games exclusive to it will never find a second home. Basically - Saturn itself is still necessary to own if you want the definitive experience, and there's no guarantee this will change in the next, say, 5-10 or even 20 years.
(This post is way longer than I planned)
So how long can Sega Saturn last? Do you think that some units will still work like new 20 years from now? Would that be most units or only some lucky ones? How would other systems compare (PSX, Mega CD, Dreamcast...)? There's also this case of disc rot, which may or may not affect CD's and DVD's, but from what I've read, CD's can last up to 100 years (at least in theory), so most likely the storage should outlive the hardware in most cases. Which hardware components are most prone to failure? Is there a general estimation for how long the laser/CD drive can last (I've heard figures like up to 60,000 hours of actual work)? It may be silly to get so worked up about whether or not I will be able to play Daytona USA on original hardware (or at least perfectly emulated) in 2038 but nevertheless it's a topic that becomes more and more important with each passing year.
In precisely 2 weeks it'll be the 24th anniversary of Saturn's Japanese launch. This pretty much means that almost all of Saturn hardware is at least 20 years old. On one hand the Saturn is widely regarded as one of the most durable systems ever made - especially among consoles with optical drives. In my experience it's definitely been true, aside from a small incident with a blown fuse (luckily it could be easily replaced) - absolutely no issues over the years, although I'm aware that a faulty Saturn unit is not a rare sight. Then again, I had long breaks with the system, I think that over the 19 years I owned it I used it for around 8 years, and the rest was spent in confinement. Still, it feels like the hardware design makes the Saturn very reliable - as long as you keep it in good condition it shouldn't die on you just like that.
But even the most durable hardware will give in sooner or later, not only due to wear and tear but also time. Obviously we still have Atari's and NES's that work like a charm, not to mention numerous other computer hardware that's older and still running, although the simplicity of those machines also makes them more sturdy than anything more modern. As far as I know, there hasn't been any "mass exctinction" of any particular video game system yet (though apparently the Famicom Disk System was notoriously failure-prone from the very start), but it's just a matter of time. For some systems it's not a big deal - Famicom is constantly reborn through various clones, and can be emulated flawlessly on pretty much everything. Famicom hardware dying out is not a big deal, because the games are all preserved and easily playable on modern machines - same goes for most systems we consider "retro".
As we know, it's not necessarily true in case of Saturn. We will never see any Saturn clones in the future (well, that's true for pretty much any disk-based system). The emulation is there, but SSF, while doing a great job, was never completed and probably won't be (I don't know if it's been officialy abandoned, or is there any chance for an update in the future), and in my personal experience it does not replace the original hardware in the same way any NES, SNES or Mega Drive emulators can. There are some other projects but I doubt we will see any new Saturn emulator that matches SSF performance anytime soon, let alone surpass it, not to mention that at some point SSF itself may become incompatible with some new Windows revisions. Some (very few) Saturn classics have been ported here and there, but plethora of games exclusive to it will never find a second home. Basically - Saturn itself is still necessary to own if you want the definitive experience, and there's no guarantee this will change in the next, say, 5-10 or even 20 years.
(This post is way longer than I planned)
So how long can Sega Saturn last? Do you think that some units will still work like new 20 years from now? Would that be most units or only some lucky ones? How would other systems compare (PSX, Mega CD, Dreamcast...)? There's also this case of disc rot, which may or may not affect CD's and DVD's, but from what I've read, CD's can last up to 100 years (at least in theory), so most likely the storage should outlive the hardware in most cases. Which hardware components are most prone to failure? Is there a general estimation for how long the laser/CD drive can last (I've heard figures like up to 60,000 hours of actual work)? It may be silly to get so worked up about whether or not I will be able to play Daytona USA on original hardware (or at least perfectly emulated) in 2038 but nevertheless it's a topic that becomes more and more important with each passing year.
