The Sega Saturn had a presence at Retrocon last weekend, with attendees of the São Paulo, Brazil, gaming convention getting the chance to see a prototype console as well as an in-development homebrew Saturn game.

Luis Nai was tucked away in a booth with his Saturn and a SAROO cartridge running his homebrew Dragon Ball beat ’em up when the well-traveled caretaker of the Sega Pluto, Adam Koralik, approached and asked if he could set up the two-of-a-kind hardware there.

Nai happily obliged, and once they popped his SD card into the Pluto’s Satiator , he got a once-in-a-lifetime thrill: Playing his own game on the rarest Saturn in the world.

“This is one of the most special moments in my life,” Nai said.

“I’m honored,” Koralik replied.

Nai knew Koralik would drop by with the Pluto at some point but “there was no plan to leave it at his booth,” Koralik told SHIRO!. “I ended up deciding to do that instead of keeping it behind glass as the con originally wanted.”

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“It was a unique experience, one that we’ll cherish forever,” Nai said in his video’s description. “And the coolest part: besides me, the audience that stopped by my booth also got to play and learn about the project running on this never-officially-released prototype.”

Luis Nai, aka NaiSan, is a Brazilian developer and retro YouTuber who’s been working on Dragon Ball since late last year. SHIRO! last reported on his progress in June .

Adam Koralik chronicles his travels — and meals — on his YouTube channel . He brings along the Pluto and takes photos of it with backdrops both scenic and historic, posting them to social media . TraynoCo and SaturnDave of SHIRO! hosted a panel with Koralik at GameOn Expo last year ; and in 2021, Koralik talked about the Pluto on the SHIRO! Podcast .

Nai wasn’t the only one who got to check out his Dragon Ball homebrew running on the Pluto. Rodrigo Goniadis, the Brazilian fan who runs the Sega Saturn Mania BR accounts on YouTube , Instagram and Facebook , gave it a spin, too, and seemed to be thrilled by the opportunity.

“My first game with the Sega Pluto,” Goniadis said in Portuguese. “How wonderful. This is beautiful.”

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On the Sega Saturn Mania Facebook page, Goniadis said, “Luiz Nai rocked Retrocon. His booth was a huge hit with the games that were there for people to play. The Dragon Ball demo from Sega Saturn and being playable on Sega Pluto … were hits at the event. The audience was impressed by what they were seeing and even asked to hear the story behind the production of the [game] and Sega Pluto.”

Tosaki comments on Pluto’s history

Perhaps by coincidence, former Sega peripheral engineer Kenji Tosaki posted on social media Sunday about the Pluto.

Pluto
SOJ
5

GENESIS

The post was in Japanese. Here’s a translation:

There seem to be many stories about the Pluto that are different from the facts. The correct one is as follows:
[Sega of Japan] developed it.
Five samples were made.
The performance is the same as [a normal] Sega Saturn.
Hypothetically a device for a game subscription distribution service. They wanted to give the Saturn the service that the Genesis offered.
The cost was high, so it was canceled.

He followed that up with two posts that he wrote in English:

I think the modem specs are tentative. I think the plan was to eventually use CATV cable networks to download at higher speeds. It was intended to be a set top box for game consoles.

Subscription contracts stabilize sales. Reduce inventory risk. They just wanted to implement a business model that is now commonplace. So the specs won’t change. I don’t think Microsoft [was] involved.

Tosaki answered questions in SHIRO!’s Facebook group a few years ago about the Saturn and Dreamcast controllers and peripherals that he worked on while at Sega in the ’90s.

	Danthrax
		Danthrax is a member of the SHIRO! Media Group, writing stories for the website when Saturn news breaks and helping to manage the group's social media accounts. While he was a Sega Genesis kid in the '90s, he didn't get a Saturn until 2018. It didn't take him long to fall in love with the console's library as well as the fan translation and homebrew scene. He contributed heavily to the Bulk Slash and Stellar Assault SS fan localizations, and he's helped as an editor on several other Saturn and Dreamcast fan projects such as Cotton 2, Rainbow Cotton and Sakura Wars Columns 2.