Sega did build the ulimate 2d system... however I guess they felt alpha blending was a non-issues. Hence, the Saturn much like the genesis (and unlike the SNES) cannot do translucency. To get this effect (as seen in some saturn games) the sprites had to be redrawn with the translucent effect to actually get what looked like translucency. Hence you may need multiple sprites just for one alpha blended sprite. Pretty shitty if you ask me. As the alternative is to use the genesis blink and dither approach to translucency.

_ _ - - = = Pr3tty F1y = = - - _ _