I have to admit that I was trying to procrastinate on some work I needed to do today be browsing through YouTube. One of my suggested videos was from Modern Vintage Gamer who recently shared some first impressions of the Polymega console. The video recommended to me was about the BASIC programming language and that it was even available on the Sega Saturn. As a late 80’s early 90’s kid I remember screwing around with basic back on DOS and even more recently on the Atari XE 8-Bit Computer. I like BASIC even though I am not the best at coding for it so I had to check out the video!
MVG gives a pretty cool run-down on the history of BASIC and showing off some of the home console iterations that came out over the years. I was surprised that a version of BASIC is available on Saturn and that it is so fully functional as it is. The software allows users full control over the hardware but at the limitation of only being able to use 1 meg of the Saturns RAM instead of the 2 megs it comes with. Still having the ability to code for the system this way is amazing! Sadly the Saturn version of BASIC was limited to a Japanese only release.
The whole story is really fascinating so if you love gaming history or just random programming stuff give it a watch above!
