From the perspective of a Jr High kid back in the mid-90's, the brilliant Saturn was a victim of just a lot of bad marketing and misinformation.
This was, of course, before the days of the internet being available to the mass market. We who played video games relied heavily on gaming magazines, game store employees, and fellow nerds to help determine our next purchases. We were at first confused as to what exactly the Saturn was after years of Genesis peripherals. I remember Babbages employees telling me (erroneously) that the Saturn was going to be just the same as a Genesis+SegaCD+32X, and that the cartridge socket was for Genesis games.
The growing Sony hype was also very real. Although people initially thought this newcomer to the electronic games industry was going to end up flopping like Panasonic, the more publishers they brought on board, and the more space they took up in gaming magazines hyping up the PlayStation, we realized that they were going to give Nintendo and Sega some serious competition.
Even after I figured out that the Saturn was a full-fledged new next-level console, I still didn't know too much about it nor about its games. As time went on, I heard less and less about the Saturn. I barely ever saw commercials for it. When I did, they were with that bald lady and bland game footage- it didn't speak to me and certainly didn't excite me. Gaming magazines didn't talk much about the Saturn, and when they did, it was about how "inferior" it supposedly was to the PlayStation. I don't remember seeing it often in stores; maybe once I might've seen a kiosk display with Clockwork Knight playing (memories are kinda fuzzy). I didn't know anyone who had one. I basically forgot about Sega in the late 90's until the viral marketing campaign for the Dreamcast began in '99.
Fast forward to 2007, and I was feeling nostalgic for Dungeons and Dragons arcade. I was a Mame newbie at the time and had no idea on how to get it to run on my PC. Through my research, I discovered it had been released in Japan on the Saturn. I called around and finally found a Japanese import shop in San Francisco that had Saturns in stock. This was before the retro-gaming fever craze, so they had a pretty big inventory of new and used consoles and games for cheap. Picked up the Saturn, along with D&D Collection, X-Men Vs SF, and Final Fight Revenge. This was my first time ever even touching a Saturn, and I was instantly sucked in. The controller was like 2D heaven in my hands. After I played those three to death, I scoured used game stores and the internet for more titles. Needless to say, I couldn't believe what I had been missing out on, and over the next few years, reveled in discovering hundreds of hidden gems and underrated quirky titles (especially from the expansive Japanese library). There are now literally thousands of videos and articles praising the Saturn and its library. It's amusing to me to see games that I paid 30-50 bucks (or less) for going for double, triple, or even ten times more than what I bought them for a decade and a half ago. But I think the Saturn is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Better late than never, I suppose.
TL;DR - The Saturn was unfairly maligned in the West and suffered from a disastrous marketing campaign, making it relatively obscure to the English-speaking world and easily outshone by the PlayStation and N64. I, like many others, only discovered the genius of the Saturn many years later after its demise. In modern day, it has gone from being an underrated system to highly-revered by gamers and collectors alike.
Is Saturn emulation not good? Is it like PS3 emulation?
Saturn emulation is wonderful to superb these days (for the majority of games)! As an example, I will just say that playing Bulk Slash using the XBox controller's dual thumbsticks to steer and navigate (instead of the Saturn controller's d-pad and shoulder buttons) and trigger buttons to shoot is pure joy! (PS3 emulation has vastly improved too- RPCS3 can play several titles at 60 fps as long as your PC is up to snuff)
The system has a fascinating history (well documented) and was one of the key nails in the coffin for Sega in the hardware business, but at the same time had Neo-Geo 2d capabilities and was a more affordable system than SNK's arcade at home system...
