In all kinds of battles, from console wars to actual wars and most things in between, there is often talk of the losing side having a silver bullet up its sleeve. This is supposed to change the balance of power in some way, but in most cases, it's just wishful thinking.
The Sega Saturn was a kind of dream project for Sega after a few years of dabbling with all kinds of oddities for Mega Drive (not least the disaster that was the 32X), and was packed with cutting-edge technology. However, it was considered notoriously difficult to develop games for, and as we recently reported, it was even capable of ray tracing... but it took 31 years to discover this. This led many to believe for a long time that the console was weaker than it actually was, and just last year, Argonaut's founder said that "it was exceptionally more powerful than the PlayStation." And perhaps it could have been even more powerful with a silver bullet.
When it was becoming more evident that Sega had lost the console war to PlayStation and, to some extent, Nintendo 64, rumours began to circulate that a hardware upgrade was in the works. There was already a RAM pack, but at the time, Hitachi's SH-3 was said to be in the works as an external accessory, a chip that enabled incredible arcade graphics, not least in Virtua Fighter 3. Arcade games were very important to Sega.
Now, former Sega executives have confirmed in an interview with Beep21 that the rumours were indeed true. They worked on this for a year or so, but then changed their minds and decided to focus on the Dreamcast (which was equipped with Hitachi SH-4). It is highly doubtful that this Saturn upgrade would have changed the history of the console, as console upgrades have rarely proven to be particularly successful. It is more likely that Sega would have run out of money earlier and that the Dreamcast would never have been launched, or what do you think?
Today, Sega Saturn has an active community that develops new games, translates existing ones into more languages, and enjoys the titles that were actually released. Since Saturn was a veritable beast when it came to 2D graphics, many titles still hold up incredibly well today with stunning pixel graphics, and the collector's value is often very high.