If the Sega Saturn was a painting, it would be a Van Gogh: under-appreciated in it's time, creative in it's content, and highly influential on the future.  

I remember Christmas morning, 1996.  For weeks, I had made it clear to my parents I wanted the Saturn... and not that other system.  My reason was entirely superficial: it was black.  I had owned an SNES for years, and always thought the Genesis looked so much cooler at my friends houses.     

It was the best irrational decision I ever made.  In the next couple of years, the Saturn would open up the world of video games to me.  I played my first RPG, Shinning The Holy Ark, on it.  I developed a love for fighting games thanks to classics like Fighting Vipers, Virtua Fighter 2, and Virtual On.  I discovered the masterpiece NiGHTS, and for the first time started looking to see who was developing some of these titles.  And I would constantly find myself passionately defending the system to my friends, who, of course, now all had Playstations.  Ah... those were good years!

But most importantly, I would discover that creativity and originality mattered more to me than anything. Futuristic firefighters, first-person RPG's, mascots that fly, and invisible enemies you have to locate with sound, to name a few, are some of the original ideas I'm talking about. 

It's almost tragic that many people point to the absence of an original Sonic as one of the system's flaws.  It should be celebrated!  Instead of falling back on old formulas, old characters, and old ideas, the developers tried something different.  And Sonic wasn't the only franchise missing.  Sega would show an almost stubborn refusal to exploit successful Genesis titles on the Saturn.

It's like they hit the re-boot button... kind of like in Jurassic Park where they had to shut all the power off to unlock the system.  That's what we need today, a universal, video game re-boot button that will wipe out everything!