[axehandle]

These sort of woulda coulda shoulda "what if" scenarios are a lot of fun though I think a lot of users are irritated when discussions of "dead" consoles are sparked.

Other than piracy/security issues I don't think there is anything I would change about the Dreamcast. It was amazingly well designed for its time period and its a real tragedy SEGA couldn't make it work.

The Saturn on the other hand..

In terms of game library, the Sega Saturn is one of my favorite game systems of all time..in terms of hardware design it was a cluster*#($)@.

If I had been in charge of Sega I would have dropped the second CPU and used the savings to add a third VDP to aid with 3d and doubled the ram. The (negligible, due to the terrible and unwieldy single bus for 2 processors) loss of performance could be made up for by a huge increase in video ram allowing for far more texture detail and quantity than what was available on the Playstation. Anyway, an additional VDP would have probably had a more positive effect on Saturn's 3d rendering ability than another processor, at least one that was hobbled by an insufficient bus.

In the initial games (i.e launch window) Sega could have played to the strengths of the machine by employing faux-3d effects such as those seen in the System 32 arcade hardware or combined such effects with polygonal 3d graphics.

(an example of some great sprite based faux-3d from Sega System-32)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unrfa...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aSA8Iu7YuI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L9p2PAck40

[menmau]

I have fallen for Saturn games library, fast loadings, date/time configuration, RGB cable bundled, awesome controller especially the D-pad, nice interface, backup memory so there was no need to buy "memory card".
I have to complain about developers, at that time they did not show any effort into Saturn, and therefore some games were graphically disastrous. Releasing even games where the main character head would simply disappear, IIRC Croc.
Saturn had advantage on the size of video memory, which could display richer textures.
Probably the use of triangles instead of quads could have helped.
Its not like this days where the most difficult hardware console to program is praised and developers find it a challenge, therefore giving their very best. How things have changed.

Regarding the Dreamcast, whoa, I was completely flabbergasted the first instance I saw it!
Unbelievable graphics for its time, game library that pushed concept further. I see that SEGA really gave its best when choose CPU+GPU.
I would not change anything about it.

[SG79]

Originally Posted by menmau

*snip*
.

Saturn loading times were definitely not short, and like the PS, it varied from one game to another, and the backup memory was too small so you needed a card sooner or later. However, the notion that the Saturn was a capable hardware hindered only by bad libraries and developer disinterest is simply untrue. It just wasn't a capable 3D hardware and couldn't match the competition in a lot of areas (aside from the sound chip that was never used properly). It was designed well for a 2D pushing machine, and it excelled in that particularly with the RAM upgrade for Capcom and SNK releases in Japan and that's about it.

Some of you may remember Lobotomy's excellent games on the system (Power Slave and Duke, Quake ports). The DF had an interview last year with Ezra Derishbach and he had a few harsh words about the system (check the bottom and continued on page 2):

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/de...bach-interview

It really doesn't get any clearer than that when it's coming from a developer that produced the system's best looking and performing 3D games.

The DC was a 360 effort and Sega pretty much did everything right design-wise.

[menmau]

Originally Posted by SG79

Saturn loading times were definitely not short, and like the PS, it varied from one game to another, and the backup memory was too small so you needed a card sooner or later. However, the notion that the Saturn was a capable hardware hindered only by bad libraries and developer disinterest is simply untrue. It just wasn't a capable 3D hardware and couldn't match the competition in a lot of areas (aside from the sound chip that was never used properly). It was designed well for a 2D pushing machine, and it excelled in that particularly with the RAM upgrade for Capcom and SNK releases in Japan and that's about it.

Some of you may remember Lobotomy's excellent games on the system (Power Slave and Duke, Quake ports). The DF had an interview last year with Ezra Derishbach and he had a few harsh words about the system (check the bottom and continued on page 2):

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/de...bach-interview

It really doesn't get any clearer than that when it's coming from a developer that produced the system's best looking and performing 3D games.

The DC was a 360 effort and Sega pretty much did everything right design-wise.

Snip
Yes you are right, Saturn was not much capable on 3D department, it was weak.
Although, I bought about 8 games, and backup memory was enough, I was happy about it. Sure this would not be the case if I had more games.
About loading times, all of them had fast loadings. But I cannot say it was the rule, as it always gave me that impression.

I can mention two examples of games that I could not play, frame rate was so bad that my eyes could stand it, Sega Touring Car and Wipeout 2097. I believe that more effort could overcome that.

[function]

The Saturn could only do "good" 3D when it was using vdp2 to cover large areas of the screen with one or two highly detailed planes (for example the floor and/or canopy of a forest). They could be of finite or infinite size, transparent (like the surface of water), animated, were distortion free, and could be rotated around all three axes (unlike the plane the SNES could draw).

When a game had a detailed and distortion free floor, and a detailed and suitably scaled and rotated background (or sequence of parallax scrolling backgrounds), you could focus the limited 3D power on objects within the mocked up world and make some great looking stuff. The Panzer Dragoon games were very impressive for the time, the last of which is IMO by far the best looking Saturn game around and technically amazing.

Outside of these limited situations the Saturn's 3D had a hard time simply not sucking. Had much faster loading times than the PS1 though.

I like the Saturn's games library, but the System itself should never have been built. To go up against the PS1 with an expensive scrambled redesign was a huge mistake, and one that was nicely sandwiched between many others.

[SG79]

Originally Posted by function

Had much faster loading times than the PS1 though.

For 3D? All I saw was variable times depending on the games. Capcom's RE1 port for example loaded slower than the PS original, despite not being full realtime.

[function]

The only games I was able to directly compare were a couple of Capcom's fighters, a shoot em up, and a football game so it's by no means exhaustive testing*. The Saturn was considerably faster though. In general Saturn stuff did seem to load faster (fighting games, racing games ... fighting games) but comparing genres from memory isn't necessarily an accurate or fair comparison.

The first time I remember coming across truly seamless in-level streaming of level data was in Panzer Dragoon Zwei. That's not proof of anything btw, it's just an anecdote.

Panzer Dragoon Zwei also had awesome chip generate music. Chip generated music is boss. Screw redbook audio.

Edit: * There was also the option of testing Battle Arena Toshinden, but no-one wanted to do that.

[Nesh]

Originally Posted by function

The only games I was able to directly compare were a couple of Capcom's fighters, a shoot em up, and a football game so it's by no means exhaustive testing*. The Saturn was considerably faster though. In general Saturn stuff did seem to load faster (fighting games, racing games ... fighting games) but comparing genres from memory isn't necessarily an accurate or fair comparison.

The first time I remember coming across truly seamless in-level streaming of level data was in Panzer Dragoon Zwei. That's not proof of anything btw, it's just an anecdote.

Panzer Dragoon Zwei also had awesome chip generate music. Chip generated music is boss. Screw redbook audio.

Edit: * There was also the option of testing Battle Arena Toshinden, but no-one wanted to do that.

It really depended on the game. I remember Soul Blade and Tekken 3 loaded fairly fast whereas DOA was slow.
I had no idea that Panzer Dragoon had seamless in level streaming. But I think the best level streaming example in the 32 bit era was in Soul Reaver. Simply unbelievable level morphing and almost zero loading hidden by a few second door opening from area to area.

[SG79]

Fair enough, and absolutely, Capcom's 2D fighters and everything well coded, loaded considerably faster and ran noticeably better on the Saturn even with the default hardware. On the other hand, Midway's MK games loaded slower than the PS versions and were incidentally based on previous PS work.

[Lazy8s]

While Lobotomy's grasp of the Saturn hardware far exceeded most third-party's, the divide from the expertise of the top first party software engineers at SEGA still kept them on a different level.

Showcases of custom effects like the later Panzer games with their dynamic pools of water, NiGHTS with its morphing terrain in Soft Museum and liberal usage of particles accenting many environmental interactions, Grandia's wide world of texture quality and variety, and Saturn Shenmue's sheer complexity were not matched by PlayStation games. Still, PSone's rendering capabilities were obviously faster in more basic ways which, considering the lower cost of the hardware, made it an impressive feat of engineering.

[tangey]

I'm sure Sega will address all the issues in their new console. LOL !

http://seganewswire.webs.com/apps/bl...ower-segadrive

[Shifty Geezer]

That link leads to FGN, the hideous hideout of TEXAN and his many hateful aliases, our repeat SEGA troll. I consider that worthless as a source. In fact I consider FGN a swearword on this board that should be bleeped out!

[Nesh]

Originally Posted by Lazy8s

While Lobotomy's grasp of the Saturn hardware far exceeded most third-party's, the divide from the expertise of the top first party software engineers at SEGA still kept them on a different level.

Showcases of custom effects like the later Panzer games with their dynamic pools of water, NiGHTS with its morphing terrain in Soft Museum and liberal usage of particles accenting many environmental interactions, Grandia's wide world of texture quality and variety, and Saturn Shenmue's sheer complexity were not matched by PlayStation games. Still, PSone's rendering capabilities were obviously faster in more basic ways which, considering the lower cost of the hardware, made it an impressive feat of engineering.

I believe that some of your examples were matched and probably surpassed by some Playstation games.

Crash Bandicoot 3 had some amazing water effects. MGS also introduced us to some water distortion effects at the beginning of the game. Soul Blade presented us with some great water effects in Long's stage. Oh and Rapid Racer. That was 60fps had great lighting and water effects and if I am not mistaken it was also in 640x480 resolution
Cant think of any game that had constant terrain morphing but Soul Reaver introduced to us to environmental morphing in much more complex environments and lighting effects. Nights although looked great it suffered from limited draw distance and extreme pop ins. Grandia was also released on the PS1 and AFAIK it wasnt developed by Sega.
Shenmue is probably the only example that I cant think of any PS1 game being able to match. But that was unreleased unfortunately so we dont know how it really was apart from the released video

The Saturn didnt age as well as the PS1 though. At the same timframe Saturn was bringing the best it could offer in visuals the PS1 was already coming up with its own. The Saturn's offerings were overshadowed. Panzer Dragoon Saga was the last game I saw on the Saturn and said "wow" but it also had its own visual problems here and there usually when your character was off the dragon

[Squeak]

Originally Posted by Fafalada

Geometry storage went up at least 4x with PS2, space remained an issue. And goalposts(new platforms) moved by the time PS2 software got out of its early mistakes.

Ok, but PS2s power/flexibility ratio was the highest last gen, right? You could have much higher compression levels of the geometry (modifying instances, rotations and scaling of simple parts, tessellated curves, simple fractal rendering. etc.) And there were games that were either ports of DC games or with DC or slightly better levels of geometry. Why didn't they have better texturing?

Originally Posted by Simon F

But it is
I think that is, possibly, somewhat offensive.

Not intentionally I insure. I have nothing but respect for the PVR tech. But whether the CLX2 was an off the shelf part or not, it still was made more with overall budget in mind than GS. Am I wrong?

I'm sorry but that would be a silly thing to do. The VQ textures did not have to use a full 2kB LUT - You could, and would, use a smaller table for small textures.

Furthermore, it was possible to order a chain of (small) textures, A, B, C, D etc, so that A had a full 2k LUT, of which B re-used some of the VQ entries and introduced new ones, of which C used a portion and etc etc.

Neat. Ideal for MIP mapping I think?

Originally Posted by Simon F

Absolutely not. IMG were developing a PC-based arcade chip (ARC1) and from that evolved CLX2 (via, I think, a paper-only CLX1). Certainly aspects of ARC1/CLX2 were used in a PC chip, but CLX2 was not for the general PC market.

Interesting. Was ARC1 also for Sega, or someone else?

[Megadrive1988]

This article about Dreamcast (and Saturn ) comes from Totalgames.net but I cannot provide a link as it's not in their archives.

The Dreamcast Story

''A do-or-die machine which will decide whether Sega stays in the
hardware biz''

Dreamcast is a system born out of Sega's darkest hour, a do-or-die
machine which will decide whether the company stays in the hardware
business. Its precursor, the 32bit Sega Saturn, had been widely
expected to conquer the world with Nintendo's own second next
generation system heavily delayed -- due to the collapse of an
alliance with Sony -- and neither Atari nor 3DO seriously threatening
mass market success.
All that changed with the November '93 announcement of the Sony
PlayStation, a system which would heavily defeat Sega's system and
become a considerable influence on how Sega designed Dreamcast.
Although there had been rumours of Sony producing a console, what came
as a heavy shock to Sega was the technical superiority of the
PlayStation. While the Saturn had been designed as perhaps the
ultimate 2D arcade machine, albeit with a substantial 3D capability,
PlayStation was totally committed to polygons.

Sega boss Hayao Nakayama angrily berated Sega's engineers for their
failings, but it was too late to totally redesign the system if the
1994 launch was too proceed. Instead, Sega added yet another processor
to an already over-complicated design. In terms of raw power, the new
Saturn was much more of a match for PlayStation, but it would never be
an easy machine to program for. The twin CPU design in particular
demanded highly specialised machine code rather than the C most
Japanese developers prefered: barely a year after Saturn's launch a
key Sega manager admitted only one in a hundred programmers would have
the skill to use the machine's full potential.

Ironically, the Saturn's Japanese launch would be Sega's best ever
performance in its home territory. Even a flawed version of Virtua
Fighting was enough to transform the company's traditional weakness in
its home territory. Overseas, however, it was to be a different
matter. Scepticism about the prospects of a CD-ROM machine succeeding
in the cost-sensitive US market meant Saturn was originally partnered
with a low-cost, cart-based system codenamed Jupiter -- principally
due to American scepticism that a CD-ROM machine could be
competitively priced. When Saturn was upgraded, Jupiter got axed in
favour of Mars, an upgrade for Sega's 16bit Mega Drive which was
supposed to protect the company's hugely lucrative US market. In fact,
32X was an unmitigated disaster, drawing vital developer support away
from Saturn and destroying the company's reputation among gamers who
found themselves with an add-on with barely a handful of games.

The Saturn debacle would cost the jobs of Sega's American and Japanese
bosses, beside reducing its US empire to a ruin running up losses of
$167 million in 1997. For any replacement machine the lessons were
clear: a single format, complete user-friendliness for developers and
a new brand -- so low had sunk the once mighty Sega name.

As soon as any console is launched, work is usually underway on a
replacement but the Saturn's troubles gave this process an unusual
urgency for Sega. By 1995, rumours surfaced that US defence
contractors Lockheed Martin Corp. were already deep into the
development of a replacement, possibly even with a view to releasing
it as a Saturn upgrade. There were even claims that during Saturn's
pre-launch panic a group of managers argued the machine should simply
be scrapped in favour of an all-new LMC design.

Sega originally entered into partnership with LMC to solve problems
with its Model 2 coin-op board, however by 1995 the relationship had
soured somewhat with the Model 3 board suffering massive delays.
Around the same time, 3DO began shopping around its 64bit M2 system.
According to informed sources, Sega's Japanese bankers had brokered an
unwritten deal whereby Matsushita would manufacture M2 units, while
Sega would concentrate on the software. M2 devkits were supplied to
Sega in early 1996, with initial work reputedly concentrating on a
Virtua Fighter 3 conversion for M2's launch.

Sega's M2 project soon fell apart however. 3DO's Trip Hawkins blamed
corporate ‘egos' for the collapse, while Sega insisted its engineers
were unconvinced M2 was the breakthrough technology they needed.
Instead, the company was increasingly preoccupied by the PC market --
unlike Nintendo, it was fully prepared to convert its games onto the
format and in mid-1995 it had entered into a partnership with PC
graphics card manufacturer nVidia. Under the terms of the deal, Sega
would supply ports of key Saturn titles exclusively for the nVidia PC
graphics card. At the time, pundits wondered if Sega might be
switching from Saturn to nVidia as its principal platform.

By 1996, this speculation was ebbing away as two clear frontrunners
emerged in the PC graphics market: VideoLogic's PowerVR and 3Dfx's
Voodoo chipsets. Sega approached both companies to be partners in two
parallel Saturn 2 projects, each of which having minimal if any
knowledge of the other. The 3Dfx-Sega of America project was codenamed
Black Belt, while the VideoLogic-Sega of Japan system was known as
Dural. Although console development is usually shrouded in total
secrecy, Saturn 2's development coincided with the rise of the
Internet and Black Belt soon became a popular topic of gossip. For a
time, many presumed Black Belt was the only new Sega system.

All this changed on July 22nd, 1997, when 3Dfx was informed them Black
Belt was cancelled. It was a shattering blow -- "Our contract with
Sega was considered to be gospel right up until we received the call,"
admitted marketing manager Chris Kramer. Two months later, 3Dfx issued
a lawsuit against Sega while blaming VideoLogic's Japanese backers,
NEC, for bringing influence to bear on a decision which would
otherwise have gone to 3Dfx. An initial burst of publicity soon gave
way to highly confidential discussions which settled the lawsuit away
from the public eye in August 1998.

For outsiders, 3Dfx had always been the favoured partner due to their
leadership in the PC market, moreover Sega let it be known the
decision to cancel wasn't due to either performance or cost reasons.
What may have been a factor is 3Dfx's very strength made it a
difficult partner for Sega, VideoLogic's second-place status obviously
made it the hungrier partner. Moreover, whereas 3Dfx see themselves as
creating a new gaming platform around their Voodoo hardware and Glide
software, VideoLogic were much more eager to use Microsoft's Direct3D
API.

Whatever the reasoning behind the decision, the PowerVR decision
further dampened excitement about a machine soon to be redubbed
Katana. In January '98, UK trade newspaper CTW ran a savage onslaught
upon the new format: "When one looks at a format owner that actually
struggles to garner interest in its latest hardware announcements, you
know it''s in trouble. From Black Belt to Dural and Katana,
journalists have leapt into headline mode, but the level of
disinterest elsewhere is palpable." Commenting upon the latest
redundancies in America and Britain, Dinsey wondered whether the
company was "giving up and trying to re-invent itself as a PC
publisher."

In May, Sega gave its response with the official announcement of its
new system, its specifications and that controversial name: Dreamcast.
The marketing campaign began with the announcement of the marketing
campaign and its $100 million budget for each territory: America,
Europe and Japan. Sega boss Shoichiro Irimajiri put the cost of
hardware development at $50-80 million, software development at
$150-200 million, which with marketing added up to half a billion
dollars.

The PR statements were suitably bullish: "Dreamcast is Sega's bridge
to world-wide market leadership for the 21st century" commented Sega
US VP Bernie Stolar. "I am confident that Dreamcast will become a de
facto standard for digital entertainment" claimed Sega chairman Isso
Okawa. However, it was at E3 itself that the tide really began to turn
for Sega with bravura software demos finally earning the machine
journalists' respect. Post E3 reports were full of adoration , as
impressed by the restoration of Sega's old self-confidence as the raw
processing power on show. Dreamcast's launch date was set as November
20th and this time all Sony can threaten is the announcement of new
hardware -- 1998 is Dreamcast's alone.

From E3 onwards, Sega orchestrated a careful drumbeat of
announcements, including the launch of the VMS unit on July 11th to
tie-in with the Godzilla movie and a much hyped August 22nd PR event
for Sega's old mascot in Sonic Adventure. In September, Sega ran an ad
showing MD Eiichi Yukawa being abused by members of the public who
preferred Sony -- and promising all would change with Dreamcast's
arrival. And so it is, everything now rests with the machine and its
software.

SEGA *should* have scrapped the 1994 Saturn design entirely, not tweak it, simplify it, or make it more powerful but SCRAPPED it alltogether, in favorite of an all-Lockheed Martin Real3D designed console (GPU side) with an IBM-designed, Hitachi manufactured PowerPC (CPU side) in order to compete with and beat the most powerful consumer 3D technology of that generation, the 3DO M2, and allowed decent ports of Model 3 arcade games at home, as well as scaled up versions of Model 2 games. By 1996, a Lockheed Martin Real3D + IBM/Hitachi based console could've launched for $299, less than the Saturn's $399/$449 U.S. price in May 1995.

[Lazy8s]

The price at which the designer wants to sell the product determines the die sizes of the processors, not how ambitious the designs are. The designs of five square millimeter mobile cores aren't necessarily any less or more ambitious than five hundred square millimeter discrete graphics chip add-in boards.

Focusing a lot of the 42 mm^2 @ 250nm sized SH-4 on SIMD like the EE would've reduced its ability to process the gameplay and housekeeping threads and ultimately bottlenecked the games more; its existing design entierly represented a balance to be the best gaming CPU forty square millimeters of silicon could buy.

Ambitiousness is intangible and is a quality of a design that can't be measured, but performance for a given area/power/heat can.

[function]

Originally Posted by Squeak

Not intentionally I insure. I have nothing but respect for the PVR tech. But whether the CLX2 was an off the shelf part or not, it still was made more with overall budget in mind than GS. Am I wrong?

I'd say you're wrong! Given how broke Sega were, and how rolling-in-money-and-laughing Sony were, I don't see how the GS could possibly have been built more with budget in mind than CLX2. Which makes it all the more incredible that it could smoke everything in existence (edit: particularly talking about the Japanese launch in 1998).

Originally Posted by Megadrive1988

SEGA *should* have scrapped the 1994 Saturn design entirely, not tweak it, simplify it, or make it more powerful but SCRAPPED it alltogether, in favorite of an all-Lockheed Martin Real3D designed console (GPU side) with an IBM-designed, Hitachi manufactured PowerPC (CPU side) in order to compete with and beat the most powerful consumer 3D technology of that generation, the 3DO M2, and allowed decent ports of Model 3 arcade games at home, as well as scaled up versions of Model 2 games. By 1996, a Lockheed Martin Real3D + IBM/Hitachi based console could've launched for $299, less than the Saturn's $399/$449 U.S. price in May 1995.

Or they could have slapped the Saturn's CD drive on the N64. Increase the size of the texture cache (they'd already enhanced the design once for SoA) and add the Saturns sound processor too and you'd be laughing.

[function]

A Saturn related question:

Does anyone know about the Saturn SCU's DSP, and what kind of 3D work it could assist with? There are some documents here, but I can't find any details (perhaps I don't know what I'm looking for):

http://koti.kapsi.fi/~antime/sega/docs.html

System 16 says the following about the ST-V: "SCU DSP : fixed point maths coprocessor, up to 4 parallel instructions". Does this mean you could do matrix multiplication for 3D transforms?

[Lazy8s]

Squeak was saying CLX2 was made with budget in mind "more", not made with "more budget".

That's still wrong, though. While it was built for a lower price point for sale, its desgn wasn't any less ambitious at trying to deliver the most performance for a given cost.

[Megadrive1988]

Originally Posted by function

Or they could have slapped the Saturn's CD drive on the N64. Increase the size of the texture cache (they'd already enhanced the design once for SoA) and add the Saturns sound processor too and you'd be laughing.

By late 1996 SEGA had better options than N64's MIPS R4300i + RCP which was always intended for a 1995 launch. In 1996 Sega could've used 3DO M2, 3DFX Voodoo1 or PowerVR PCX1, at the very least. A custom Lockheed Martin Real3D chip would've beaten all of those and absolutely spanked the N64.

I will admit though, an improved N64 chipset wit 16K texture cache and 8 MB Rambus RAM would've been interesting, but only if launched in late 1995 to combat the U.S. release of PlayStation.

[swaaye]

How much do you want your Sega console to cost? 3DO M2 in 1996!? I saw ERP say in another thread years ago that in ~1997 or so he couldn't figure out how M2 could ever be priced competitively. And then it became obsolete anyway. The M2 games that are out there aren't much better visually than N64 IMO. Quite a few have been showing up on Youtube.

And a Voodoo1 card alone cost ~$300 in 1996. I've read that $300 happened because they lucked out when the DRAM market did its periodic implosion in '96. 4MB used to be the realm of those $600 2D cards. In '96 Voodoo1 hardware would have been an awfully expensive portion of a console.

I've been thinking that they should have pushed Saturn for a few more years and then made something a bit better than Dreamcast and competed with Xbox/PS2/Cube. But I don't know if the market can support 4 players so maybe it was a lost cause for Sega regardless of what they did.

[Nesh]

Originally Posted by swaaye

The M2 games that are out there aren't much better visually than N64 IMO. Quite

?? We ve got M2 games available??
I am interested to see

I've been thinking that they should have pushed Saturn for a few more years and then made something a bit better than Dreamcast and competed with Xbox/PS2/Cube. But I don't know if the market can support 4 players so maybe it was a lost cause for Sega regardless of what they did.

I think it would have been a bad idea to prolong Saturn's life considering how much money it bled. They had to replace it with something healthier as soon as possible to start getting money back or they would go bankrupt.

I think it would have benefited them more if they decided o go multiplatform from there on. I doubt they had much choices given their position. It was either DC in 1998 or multiplatform

[Squeak]

Originally Posted by function

Or they could have slapped the Saturn's CD drive on the N64. Increase the size of the texture cache (they'd already enhanced the design once for SoA) and add the Saturns sound processor too and you'd be laughing.

You'd be laughing when you saw the price.
The N64 should have launched with the 64DD as standard storage device. 64Mb was more than enough for games of the time and the loading time was allegedly very fast.
It would have made memory cards look ridiculous.
It would have made games much cheaper. Cheaper still if they had employed a download feature where you could get games either from a modem connection or vending machines. All the you'd need would be a blank disc. No more worries about over or understocking.

The texture "cache" shouldn't have been bigger, it should have been a real cache and not just a tiny piece of software managed scratchpad mem.

And while you're at it, split the memory in VRAM and normal RAM.

[swaaye]

Originally Posted by Nesh

?? We ve got M2 games available??
I am interested to see

The unreleased IMSA Racing was apparently almost complete. One of the original developers released it to the web recently.


And there are the arcade games that ran on M2



two more
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaCDPTF7nTM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syq1zYffO0k

[Crazyace]

Originally Posted by function

A Saturn related question:

Does anyone know about the Saturn SCU's DSP, and what kind of 3D work it could assist with? There are some documents here, but I can't find any details (perhaps I don't know what I'm looking for):

http://koti.kapsi.fi/~antime/sega/docs.html

System 16 says the following about the ST-V: "SCU DSP : fixed point maths coprocessor, up to 4 parallel instructions". Does this mean you could do matrix multiplication for 3D transforms?

It was a DSP - so it could load 2 32 bit values , perform an integer 32x32 -> 48 bit MAC , and store the result in a single cycle. ( using a small internal memory )
No division though - although you could lookup a table in external memory, and it was clocked at ~14MHz