SEGA Saturn was shipping in Nov. , 1994. It is the next generation of SEGA TV-game machine. Its existence acclaims the new age of 3DCG, and brought this age into your house !

Let's see what it is :

•CPU : Sega Saturn uses a pair of SH2 , a kind of 32-bit RISC processor by Hitachi, for computing and video output, and one M68000 for audio output. The total computing ability is about 56 MIPS.

•RAM : Sega Saturn uses 2MB as main RAM, 1.5 MB as V-RAM, 512 KB as Audio Output and another 512 MB as CD-ROM buffer. Total RAM used is 4 MB!

• 3DCG : Sega Saturn has build-in hardware supporting 3DCG, of course. It is able to display ( compute ) about 200,000 polygons, including flat-shading, gouraud-shading, and texture-mapping. It uses Z-sort to solve the problem of Z value, and about 3 light sources.
• 2DCG : Sega Saturn also supports 2D image processing. It can display 1 layer of sprite in front of 5 layers of BG, including scaling, stretching, and rotating (by 3 axis). In addition, SS could support animation of its own format (about 2/3 screen sized).
• CD-ROM : Double-speed CD-ROM driver. Of course it can be used to display normal CD(usually used as BGM), Photo CD, CD-G, and video CD(MPEG1,optional).