The Sega Saturn was a 32-bit VG console released in Japan on Nov. 22, 1994 and in the US on May 11, 1995 (Europe release followed shortly afterwards on July 8, 1995).
If you stop to think about it, the Sega Saturn was quite similar to the PS3 in concept. The Saturn had two CPU's and six other processors. However, rather than increase raw power, this made it difficult for developers to program for the Saturn. The Saturn was released with a view to compete against Sony's Playstation, however, due to the many different problems, that it faced (high price, difficult dev tools, lack of 3rd party support, etc.), the Saturn never really sold Sega's target amount of units.
There were plenty of great titles that came out for the Saturn in Japan, however, these were never released in the United States due to some policies that Sega of America was following.
Sega used a number of interesting marketing campaigns for the Sega Saturn. From the Saturn wiki:
In 1996, Sega started a marketing campaign that featured a naked woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. It used screenshots from the games to cover her breasts and pubic area.[12] It was very successful, and EGM selected the campaign as the best ad during the 1997 Buyer's Guide.
As far as Saturn emulation is concerned. It wasn't an early system to be emulated. Most probably due to the complex hardware that the system design featured. However, as of the time of writing, there are many Saturn emulators out on the internet. You should definitely try Satourne, SSF and Yabause to get your games working. SSF is being constantly worked on and has quite an impressive compatibility right now.