If you're old enough to have lived through the war between Sega, Sony and Nintendo in the mid-'90s, then you may recall reading rumours that Sega planned to release a graphics accelerator for the Saturn which would bolster its processing power and give it an advantage over its rivals.
These rumours suggest that this accelerator would enable the console to host a port of Virtua Fighter 3, but they were just that – rumours. When Sega announced it was working on a successor to the Saturn, which would be released in 1998, many assumed the report was simply hearsay.
However, in a new interview with Beep21, former Sega staffer Junichi Naoi has confirmed that the graphics accelerator was indeed real and would have used the Hitachi SH-3 chipset.
According to Naoi, who pitched the idea of the accelerator, the decision was made when it became apparent that Sega's new Model 3 arcade system was producing games that were far more advanced than Saturn could handle.
The accelerator – codenamed 'TRIP' – would have powered the ambitious Saturn version of Shenmue, but the project was eventually cancelled, and the game was shifted over to Dreamcast.
Naoi would move into Sega's AM Hardware Research and Development Department to work on the HIKARU arcade standard, before joining Sony Computer Entertainment and its PS3 project.
You can read the full interview here, which requires a subscription.