Questions about Sega Saturn

[Akumajou]

Well yeah, that was my point. High (> 352) resolution or 16bpp rendering with lighting, pick one but never both. PS1 can do 512 or 640 wide resolution without sacrificing 16bpp rendering (indeed, 16bpp is all you get)

It's not just a matter of lighting either, having to use a 256-color global palette is more limiting in general.

Did you own a Sega Saturn back then?

I had both consoles and didn't allow the heavy bias in print magazines to influence the gameplay experience.

Fighting Vipers and Fighters Megamix were superior games to Tekken 2 and Tekken 3 however they are different with their own styles (and marketing hype focus which is why they were mostly forgotten...the 70s had an American salesman getting rich selling kids rocks in a box...this applies to consoles when stuff like RRoD gets swept under the rug versus higher quality console systems)

Last Bronx was not really an answer to SoulBlade Soul Edge...but a natural progression of making fighting games.

The Saturn version of Last Bronx was misunderstood by Western gamers and media because information wasn't properly sourced back then. However Last Bronx was a better gameplay fighting game over SoulBlade...

Both of which could be argued are 3d copies of Samurai Spirits/Showdown

Many of the comparisons here are a bit flawed because both PlayStation and Saturn were easy to make games for and they required skilled devs to make games.

Their agendas were also to get exclusive games...which if you do proper analysis the Saturn does it's 3d games well to excellent compared to PlayStation.

The main faults in Daytona and racing games were that they were rushed.

Daytona USA CCE Netlink Edition has impressive and stable draw distance even versus regular Daytona USA CCE...however compared to rushed Daytona USA by AM2 there aren't 40-ish cars on screen nor the illusion of it during the winning sequence of the oval track.

Saturn out does PlayStation in colors too.

I'm not gonna argue that Saturn was better specially when the western view doesn't like that however each console did great 3d engine effects that specially on Saturn weren't duplicated on PlayStation no different from a Ridge Racer being duplicated on Saturn based on the development tools of the time.

Also comparison of Gran Turismo is flawed as back then Gran Turismo was a crazy idea of making a console specific and mostly assembler programmed dev tools to get the most performance out of the PlayStation.

The majority of Sega's games and racing games were already developed using assembler dev tools to get the most performance out of Saturn...yet those games were designed as arcade to home ports...so there IS NO equal effort of a Sega racing game to compare because by 1997 you had Stolar sabotage Saturn market share and 1998 Sega of Japan shifting development to Dreamcast.

Sega's dev teams have a home field advantage in making a Saturn specific rival to Gran Turismo but since it was never made it's unknown.

One interesting point is the development of Panzer Dragoon series because they were interviewed about it...

Panzer Dragoon 1 missed the launch date in 1994 mainly because Saturn hardware was finalized in mid 1994...hence that game shipped in March 1995 Japan.

Panzer Dragoon Zwei was released in 1996...seems like a year and some months and all developed with no Sega AM2 or SDK2 or Sega Graphics Library Newor whatever...

Panzer Dragoon Saga which is multi-disc shipped in early 1998...roughly two years...and those games weren't flukes and weren't duplicated.

Comparing PS1 and Saturn to Nintendo 64 graphics is ridiculous...even in the most tech jargon filled way...Nintendo 64 came out in 1996 and was benefiting from being re-engineered for manufacturing on that year.

It can be argued that Nintendo 64 was impossible to ship in 1995 at those clock speeds even with a CD-ROM drive and rushed software which was the mantra by Nintendo.

Likewise looking at Virtua Fighter to Virtua Fighter Remix to Virtua Fighter II to Virtua Fighter Kids to Fighting Vipers and Fighters Megamix all these games were made and developed from mid 1994 to 1997 and somehow Yu Suzuki's team had some hobby time to secretly never show that prototype Shenmue.

It's worth noting that the SNK-Neo Geo and Capcom 1MB Cartridge arcade ports also came out with superior sound, resolution and animation NOT duplicated on PlayStation.

The 4MB ram Cartridge was out in 1997 and likewise had many Capcom arcade ports including a western dev team developed fighting game with Final Fight Revenge as a 3d engine graphics port of the ST-V Arcade hardware.

SNK didn't make games for the 4MB ram Cartridge and iirc there may have been some special deal with Capcom.

None of those games were localized outside Japan officially because Sega of America "claimed it would be too expensive to sell" the same people who pushed the Sega 32X for $159.99 and Sega CDX at $399.99 in 1994 and later pushed Sega Nomad at $179.99 in 1995

Plus pushing the Sega NetLink at $199.99 in 1996.

They could have pushed the 4MB ram Cartridge in 1997 or 1998 and retroactively allowed Capcom and SNK and many of the third parties to localize those "obsolete 2d games that are inferior to PlayStation 3d sauce" and gained titles and sales and market share.

 

[Exophase]

Did you own a Sega Saturn back then?

What difference does it make? The post I made, that you responded to, contained technical facts. They're not going to change no matter whether or not I played Saturn games or preferred them to PS1 games (or not)

 

[milk]

These are illustrative:

 

[Akumajou]

What difference does it make? The post I made, that you responded to, contained technical facts. They're not going to change no matter whether or not I played Saturn games or preferred them to PS1 games (or not)

I spoke about Fighting Vipers and Fighters Megamix which is when you made your quote and reply devaluing those pieces of software.

AM2 was working within hardware limitations and time limitations from when Saturn hardware was finalized in mid 1994 to Fighters Megamix release in 1997.

In order to push the lighting effects they coded, they went to a lower resolution and both those games were comparable as best possible software to what PlayStation devs at Namco had managed by 1997.

That you would have experienced the games back then in some way may have made a difference in interpretation of what was achieved at the time before the contemporary culture of dismissing any efforts produced on Sega Saturn because a western reviewers print magazine quote meme gets rinsed and repeated in the washing machine.

Also back then I played Dead or Alive on Arcade Model 2 then got PlayStation version and despite "looking pretty" was a game that suffered from precision gameplay response hence I ordered the NOT localized Japanese Saturn Dead or Alive to find exceptional graphics and precision gameplay...

Back then there was an argument that Sega of America couldn't censor it or feared lawsuits based on bouncing breasts on Sega Saturn...so it was blocked.

For hardware that's repeatedly called a "bad design" "etc rinse repeat f.u.d." and "Yu Suzuki called it a mistake" it sure as hell had way too many games made in such a short time along with that Prototype Saturn Shenmue...

Many games stick out as impressive to very impressive and were NOT duplicated nor surpassed on PlayStation because both consoles had different hardware capabilities...

The "facts" that you stated do not prove the PlayStation to be the superior solution and I don't need to get technical because the software is all the evidence that is true fact.

Btw X-Men Children of the Atom and the Street Fighter II Alpha series which didn't use any Ram Cartridges, still had faster loading times and more animations.

That the basic Sonic interactive menu in Sonic Jam gets diminished when it wasn't a game is poor analysis...that stage was nothing more but a basic demonstration and because of Sega of America and rushed Dreamcast we will never know the true potential but one thing is clear in that with Saturn having complex hardware it still took two years for Team Andromeda to produce Panzer Dragoon Saga...

And in that time other third parties were cranking out games even if it's popular to diminish and dismiss the Japanese devs and their efforts.

 

[milk]

This thread sure attracted many Saturn fans, rinsing and repeating the reasons they think the hardware was not bad like a western washing machine and etc.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

not bad like a western washing machine and etc.

 

[Liandry]

Think of it as the brains of the sound system.

Something like Cell PPU and SPUs? One give commands others calculate?

 

[Grall]

Something like Cell PPU and SPUs? One give commands others calculate?

The saturn's sound chip obviously wasn't nearly as advanced as a Cell SPU, but the MC68k, synth and DSP form a sort of computer-in-a-computer triad. The 68k does the majority of the actual processing and program execution, the DSP in the Saturn is fairly limited IIRC and probably only works on sound data.

 

[Sonic]

As someone who has owned both Playstation and Saturn and actively played games for both throughout that generation I find it difficult to come to the conclusion that the Saturn was the stronger machine. Saturn had strengths in certain areas but overall Playstation beasted it including during the time when SEGA was still actively supporting the system. I'm not saying to suggest otherwise is preposterous, it's just the overwhelming amount of evidence in the forms of games suggests Playstation was clearly the more capable machine.

To talk about the sacrifices made to port Fighting Vipers and make Fighters Megamix versus VF2 is interesting. I always had mixed feelings about the lower resolution of both games. The lighting was much better I'll admit but overall FV and FM have a more grainy/dirty look to them compared to VF2. In many aspects the graphics were better, but if they were able to pull the same off at a higher resolution thatwould have been the best. They didn't, and it does tell of Saturn's limitations..

To discuss the what ifs like if the playable world in Sonic Jam was expanded to a full game or if Saturn Shenmue was fully developed is nice and all but since they're entirely hypothetical beyond what was presented then there's little sense to use them in discussion other than what was presented.

I love my Saturn. It's one of my favorite consoles of all time and still has a place on my entertainment stand. But damn it's been so long and we're still having the discussion of Saturn being better at 3d graphics than the Playstation, and that's just not the case.

 

[Nesh]

I spoke about Fighting Vipers and Fighters Megamix which is when you made your quote and reply devaluing those pieces of software.

AM2 was working within hardware limitations and time limitations from when Saturn hardware was finalized in mid 1994 to Fighters Megamix release in 1997.

In order to push the lighting effects they coded, they went to a lower resolution and both those games were comparable as best possible software to what PlayStation devs at Namco had managed by 1997.

That you would have experienced the games back then in some way may have made a difference in interpretation of what was achieved at the time before the contemporary culture of dismissing any efforts produced on Sega Saturn because a western reviewers print magazine quote meme gets rinsed and repeated in the washing machine.

Also back then I played Dead or Alive on Arcade Model 2 then got PlayStation version and despite "looking pretty" was a game that suffered from precision gameplay response hence I ordered the NOT localized Japanese Saturn Dead or Alive to find exceptional graphics and precision gameplay...

Back then there was an argument that Sega of America couldn't censor it or feared lawsuits based on bouncing breasts on Sega Saturn...so it was blocked.

For hardware that's repeatedly called a "bad design" "etc rinse repeat f.u.d." and "Yu Suzuki called it a mistake" it sure as hell had way too many games made in such a short time along with that Prototype Saturn Shenmue...

Many games stick out as impressive to very impressive and were NOT duplicated nor surpassed on PlayStation because both consoles had different hardware capabilities...

The "facts" that you stated do not prove the PlayStation to be the superior solution and I don't need to get technical because the software is all the evidence that is true fact.

Btw X-Men Children of the Atom and the Street Fighter II Alpha series which didn't use any Ram Cartridges, still had faster loading times and more animations.

That the basic Sonic interactive menu in Sonic Jam gets diminished when it wasn't a game is poor analysis...that stage was nothing more but a basic demonstration and because of Sega of America and rushed Dreamcast we will never know the true potential but one thing is clear in that with Saturn having complex hardware it still took two years for Team Andromeda to produce Panzer Dragoon Saga...

And in that time other third parties were cranking out games even if it's popular to diminish and dismiss the Japanese devs and their efforts.

Heh...Neither Megamix nor Fighting Vipers could compete on the Saturn with what Namco offered at the time on the Playstation. And lets also not forget what other fighting games other companies offered which also looked better.
Even Dead or Alive on the Saturn couldnt compete with what the PS offered at the time.

Extremely few games were not duplicated or not surpassed by the Playstation if any at all. To make the conversation more meaningful you should mention these examples.

Even near the console's end, games that werent that huge projects and Sega could have focused more resources on the graphics, were still not showing a consistent if any wow factor.

Sega Touring Car Championship, Last Bronx, Deep Fear, Burning Rangers, Sonic R, Die Hard Arcade and the likes ranged from ugly, good, and sometimes great and sometimes awful range. In Saturn magazines they were hyped that they would show off the console's true potential and still when I played them I was underwhelmed. Panzer Dragoon Zwei and Saga are probably the most consistent in terms of quality and probably my favorite Saturn games. Megamix was awesome too in quality content and gameplay but still visually couldnt compete against the best fighters the PS could offer visually. Beyond that? There isnt many things to point.

At least the gameplay was intact and Sega was great at doing great games

2D games is the only place where the Saturn had an advantage technically.

It is pointless to continue arguing about Saturn's supposed superior 3D potential.

It had some advantages in some limited situations, but the overall capabilities are disadvantageous.

There is no point trying to otherwise.

 

[Liandry]

The saturn's sound chip obviously wasn't nearly as advanced as a Cell SPU

I meant just what it could be similar work process. Is it similar?

The 68k does the majority of the actual processing and program execution, the DSP in the Saturn is fairly limited IIRC and probably only works on sound data.

Remind me please what is DSP.

 

[Grall]

I meant just what it could be similar work process. Is it similar?

No, not really. The SPUs are independent, fully programmable processors that can access PS3 main RAM (and perhaps even video RAM too, I'm not sure) through DMA. The one thing they can't do is boot up the system, so they need the PPU to do that, then kickstart the SPUs and from there on out they can work on their own.

Saturn sound system is a fairly bog standard CPU (MC68k) + hardwired ASIC setup, like you have found in computers since the dawn of the microprocessor (or at least the 1980s home computer.)

Remind me please what is DSP.

Digital Signal Processor. DSPs were born in a time where silicon chips were fairly limited in capability; you could either be general in scope and fairly slow (like a CPU), or specific but limited, and be really fast. A DSP of the era is designed to process streams of digital information (typically audio data) really fast and perform a limited set of calculations that is relevant to this type of workload - fast fourier transforms for spectral analysis is common for example.

From what I understand, early DSPs ran a simple program from start to finish on each sample, with no looping or branching, since these are problematic (or even impossible) to get to run fast for various reasons. DSPs were commonly found in higher-end audio gear to do realtime effects such as filters, echo, reverb and so on. Not just games consoles, but also PC soundcards, audio/video receivers and MIDI synthesizers and things like that had DSP realtime effects. You also commonly find DSPs in modems, probably also in stuff like sonars, echo-location gear, radar equipment and so on... Higher-end CRT monitors used DSPs to control the beam deflection coils to let you precision-adjust the geometry of the image using buttons and an on-screen menu rather than with some coarse knobs that could only do a few simple adjustments.

The specialization of a DSP means you can't necessarily do everything you can on a CPU on a DSP, but what the DSP can do, it did much faster than the CPUs at the time. Today, CPUs are fast and cheap and have largely supplanted dedicated DSPs. The DSPs that do exist have also taken on a lot of CPU characteristics, and are thus not as rigid and limited in function anymore as they were back in the day.

 

[Akumajou]

This thread sure attracted many Saturn fans, rinsing and repeating the reasons they think the hardware was not bad like a western washing machine and etc.

It far more interesting how this thread was about asking questions before it got derailed into repeating all the western print magazines misquoted phrases from 1995 than it is to make innuendo about "Saturn fanboys"

Is it that unpopular to question something that keeps getting rinse repeated with no basis on where it came from as a fact that doesn't explain and simply generalizes a cartoonish conclusion of why it failed?

It sure may be unpopular here in beyond3d which tends to question where something was said...yet despite all the talk we haven't had a single reply from the people who actually produced games for that system.

Of course arm chair speculation can have it's limitations.

As someone who has owned both Playstation and Saturn and actively played games for both throughout that generation I find it difficult to come to the conclusion that the Saturn was the stronger machine. Saturn had strengths in certain areas but overall Playstation beasted it including during the time when SEGA was still actively supporting the system. I'm not saying to suggest otherwise is preposterous, it's just the overwhelming amount of evidence in the forms of games suggests Playstation was clearly the more capable machine.

If you read every page in this thread you will see a patern where it becomes into generalizing a conclusion of:

"Failure due to hard/nightmare to dev for"

(looking at only the 3d polygon engine graphics based games...or rather the "distorted 2d sprites made to look like 3d polygons which implies they aren't 3d polygons even though in execution they appear to look like 3d polygons...??!!)

"Yu Suzuki said Saturn was a mistake" (I'm waiting for the url source material with all the names and date and year...and exact words)

"X-men Children of the Atom was better on PlayStation"

"Anything programmed on Saturn can be done better on PlayStation"

(...despite a huge gaping lack of evidence to compare during the time Sega Saturn was officially supported by Sega of America which implies 1997 as 1998 was a joke year of left over low run titles and no one mentions how Sega of America's plans left so holiday season software released giving the general public the idea that it died in 1997)

Therefore comparisons between Saturn and PlayStation software development after 1997...are null and void and I'm not saying that to favor the Saturn as I'm the only one? To have posed the idea that Sega of America simply never attempted to maintain a supportive environment...

The fair comparison of sales and software has to be year by year while noting events and press releases from CEOs even...

Hmm didn't EA release their last titles in 1998? (Not going to wiki...) before announcing how they weren't supporting the "easiest to dev for Dreamcast"?

My argument has not been to claim that Saturn was better...clearly most of the comparisons here in this thread are arm chair analysis of screenshots and while there is some great technical analysis on how Saturn processors work which is mostly related to how emulators can reveal which chips are actually rendering what...

I kept noticing how Virtua Fighter 2, Dead or Alive and Last Bronx were dismissed by simply not having lighting effects...when PlayStation has nothing to match those games on a technology level.

Is it fair to ask that? Specially talking of actually seeing it on real hardware on CRT and not some washed out HDTV?

Or does that not sound like a technology question and simply sounds like "Saturn fanboyism"

Because last I checked...I made the decision to buy PlayStation 1 on launch day not because of print magazines but because at the time of lacking the information...it seemed like Daytona USA looked bad compared to Ridge Racer and the upcoming Tekken looked similar to the Arcade board (which in reality was an illusion because it really didn't...yet Namco did a great job making it look that way)

I purchased a Sega Saturn in 1996 during the three games free deal...after having rented it twice in late 1995 and early 1996 and noticed a weird charm to launch...flat shaded Virtua Fighter 1...and a few others.

The 1996 three games free got me to buy a Saturn yet it wasn't my first Sega console system...yet I kept noticing how other than the regular ramble of print magazines...Sega of America had nothing else promoting the Saturn in print magazine format... (back then internet doesn't count)

I should add that after buying a Saturn I wasn't gonna buy a Nintendo 64...but pulled the trigger...had SM64, Wave Race, Pilotwings 64 as soon as day one! At launch...in 1996... (Pilotwings 64 and Wave Race came later...still got them day one after sceptical speculation)

To talk about the sacrifices made to port Fighting Vipers and make Fighters Megamix versus VF2 is interesting. I always had mixed feelings about the lower resolution of both games. The lighting was much better I'll admit but overall FV and FM have a more grainy/dirty look to them compared to VF2. In many aspects the graphics were better, but if they were able to pull the same off at a higher resolution thatwould have been the best. They didn't, and it does tell of Saturn's limitations..

You may need to fire up your copy again...only Fighting Vipers had the "grainy look"... Fighters Megamix was much sharper and hardly there...the resolution is still low...

I was told here to chose one or the other...not sure what that actually means because I spoke about only Fighting Vipers and Fighters Megamix which are similar efforts by Sega-AM2 to program shadows and lighting effect system which DO cast an ambient light on the fighting character depending on stage*) on top of the Armor system laced on a variation of Virtua Fighter gameplay...

*also you can use training mode to angle the camera (or was it model viewer..?) And look closer to see the quadratic polygons...excuse me...distorted sprites.

The sacrifice in Fighting Vipers is interesting because like Virtua Fighter 2 the background is still a 2d background...encased in walls that are interactive...

Hudson Soft did make a game on PlayStation and I have it myself....Bloody Roar/Beastorizer series but despite looking like a copy...it has elements to separate a distinction to discourage a direct comparison...

Fighters Megamix seemed to encroach on Tekken series and their 2d background (I bought all Tekkens on PlayStation 1 and used to compete in arcades... (as well as Virtua Fighter 2)

We can take Virtua Fighter 2, Dead or Alive, and Fighting Vipers (despite DoA not being a Sega-AM2 dev game) and compare them to Tekken series on PlayStation...

Sure Tekken has lighting effects...and textured characters...the backgrounds are still 2d NOT 3d like in SoulBlade...and the characters tend to look lower resolution textures and lack animation of hands and face...lips and eyes...and breasts in Dead or Alive...

Getting into gameplay is where the camel's back breaks because dial a combo gets old in arcades and Virtua Fighter is just deeper gameplay mechanics...can't say the same for Dead or Alive however.

But take that as opinion because there aren't fanboys in print magazines back then...or bad marketing from Sega of America.

 

[Akumajou]

To discuss the what ifs like if the playable world in Sonic Jam was expanded to a full game or if Saturn Shenmue was fully developed is nice and all but since they're entirely hypothetical beyond what was presented then there's little sense to use them in discussion other than what was presented.

Bernard or Bernie Stolar did his quote in E3 1997...sealing both Saturn and Dreamcast's fate before he disobeyed protocols and cut the retail price in early 1999 to make noise for Dreamcast...which backfired because selling at a loss when you have losses already is not a good idea... (glad we found out about this and why he was fired then before it launched)

Therefore comparisons between a hypothetical Saturn full Sonic World game is just speculation...

Is it insane to talk about it or were the distorted sprites and flatness of the models not impressive back then? As it has been implied in preceding posts here.

I'm fully aware that Yuji Naka himself and his team made Sonic World as an experiment on the nightmare to dev for Sega Saturn...maybe the distorted sprites are all smoke and mirrors... there is an actual interview...

The mentioned Sonic X-Treme as a bad idea by Sega of America when Yuji Naka was making NiGHTS into Dreams "distorted sprites engine" as discussion is valid because footage was released and a book writer asks that it might have made a difference...yeah it looks like a bad idea...

We can safely assume Yuji Naka immediately felt that Sonic needed a more advanced distorted sprites engine...after all he made NiGHTS and Burning Rangers as original new IP...

Back then my question was that Sonic on Saturn should have been a 2d non-distorted sprites game running at high resolution, framerate and 2d art...but there were many print magazine media who felt 2d was obsolete...so that's a crazy talk...

Shenmue Saturn Prototype was never public back then...that's all internal Yu Suzuki's hobby...on Sega Saturn's hard/nightmare to dev for...maybe back then if he or Sega released footage it would have been dismissed. But that's speculation...

The facts are the footage exists and shows something no one though possible...and that's not a retail game that's polished...we don't know anything about it other than what was mentioned and stated.

I love my Saturn. It's one of my favorite consoles of all time and still has a place on my entertainment stand. But damn it's been so long and we're still having the discussion of Saturn being better at 3d graphics than the Playstation, and that's just not the case.

Retrospective analysis is being discussed...I'm sure there's some here talking about actually seeing and playing on real hardware and not arm chair screenshot analysis and making contemporary memory recollections "that it's inferior because in 1995 a print magazine said that Sega Saturn was and forever will be inferior and hard/nightmare to dev for...etc rinse repeat and call anyone who questions that a Saturn fanboy"

I never argued that Saturn was superior to PlayStation...I did argue that both consoles were dramatically different hardware design solutions made before the advent of PC 3d Accelerators which dramatically lowered (or helped lower) the price of 3d chips back when Sega Model 2 cost $10,000 USD a pop and Sega Model 3 cost a bit more... (I'm sure if we were to analyze this Arcade hardware issue further...the Dual SH4 Sega Hikaru and NaOmi 2 Arcade hardware board which the latter was cheaper and technology inferior...cost less to make or buy compared to Sega's Model 1/2/3 boards.)

Sega Saturn did have superior technology NOT found on PlayStation just like PlayStation had the edge of having the GTE or chip that did the lighting calculations...

There's pervasive evidence that Fighters Megamix renders more colors or a richer color palette than Tekken series...maybe it's an illusion...?

Tomb Raider did factually start development on Sega Saturn...that video of the distorted sprites engine in quadratics rendering shows warping under water effects not found anywhere else in ports...

Tomb Raider 2 was in development during Sega of America's Mr Stolar's statements... perhaps Sony making a contract didn't mean squat even if a Saturn sequel was retail...but yeah that's speculation...doesn't exist...

Heh...Neither Megamix nor Fighting Vipers could compete on the Saturn with what Namco offered at the time on the Playstation. And lets also not forget what other fighting games other companies offered which also looked better.
Even Dead or Alive on the Saturn couldnt compete with what the PS offered at the time.

Extremely few games were not duplicated or not surpassed by the Playstation if any at all. To make the conversation more meaningful you should mention these examples.

Even near the console's end, games that werent that huge projects and Sega could have focused more resources on the graphics, were still not showing a consistent if any wow factor.

Sega Touring Car Championship, Last Bronx, Deep Fear, Burning Rangers, Sonic R, Die Hard Arcade and the likes ranged from ugly, good, and sometimes great and sometimes awful range. In Saturn magazines they were hyped that they would show off the console's true potential and still when I played them I was underwhelmed. Panzer Dragoon Zwei and Saga are probably the most consistent in terms of quality and probably my favorite Saturn games. Megamix was awesome too in quality content and gameplay but still visually couldnt compete against the best fighters the PS could offer visually. Beyond that? There isnt many things to point.

At least the gameplay was intact and Sega was great at doing great games

2D games is the only place where the Saturn had an advantage technically.

It is pointless to continue arguing about Saturn's supposed superior 3D potential.

It had some advantages in some limited situations, but the overall capabilities are disadvantageous.

There is no point trying to otherwise.

And yet you're claiming an argument was stated indicating that it was mentioned that Saturn was superior.

Your opinions and experience are great...as are your feelings...

Perhaps you also experienced a far different atmosphere in your region since you did have a Sega Saturn print magazine...

I am aware that as far as Virtua Fighter was considered back then there was a mostly western perspective that people hated the block button and or thought the gameplay was simply PPK...yet Mortal Kombat's block button is useful for buckets of blood... (I have Mortal Kombat last gen btw...)

This reflected in arcades...I hardly found opponents in Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Fighter 3, and Virtua Fighter 4...

However as far as VF2 and VF3 as people had PlayStation and played Tekken series instead...they were seen as alien...I noticed a lack of information...print magazines used to reprint the same and rinse repeat strategies for SFII...then Tekken for years...there wasn't much promotion for VF series outside Japan...

 

[Grall]

Please, Aku. No need to ride to the defense of your favorite console like a knight champion of old. It's just a hunk of plastic.

Also, enough with the self-martyrization, alright? Saturn ultimately did fail because it was overly expensive to build (and thus sell), whilst underperforming* versus the cheaper PS. There's absolutely no disputing that; demonizing "western media" (lol!) changes nothing, because this is a well-established fact easily backed up by other facts.

*Both in raw hardware power and ease for programmers to tap said power.

 

[Nesh]

And yet you're claiming an argument was stated indicating that it was mentioned that Saturn was superior.

I blame the Saturn magazines and die hard fans. Fighter's megamix was great but still not comparable with the best PS1 fighting games visually.

Your opinions and experience are great...as are your feelings...

It ahs nothing to do with my feelings

Perhaps you also experienced a far different atmosphere in your region since you did have a Sega Saturn print magazine...

The general atmosphere was the same as everywhere else. There was a general paranoia by Sega fans that the Saturn was suffering from a general smear campaign from the press (also claiming that it was due to Sony paying the media for it) and the Saturn Magazines were telling the real picture. It was the opposite. The Saturn Magazines were trying to paint reality differently. They were reporting Saturn's shipped numbers in Japan as proof of Saturn's superiority in the region (consoles were sitting on the shelves but not selling to consumers) and hyping Saturn games that rarely delivered. The rest of the gamer community was underwhelmed by the Saturn's lackluster library.

I am aware that as far as Virtua Fighter was considered back then there was a mostly western perspective that people hated the block button and or thought the gameplay was simply PPK...yet Mortal Kombat's block button is useful for buckets of blood... (I have Mortal Kombat last gen btw...)

I wasnt talking about gameplay. But since you mention it I have to agree that the VF series was underestimated. It was designed around flow and it was unorthodox compared to what people have been used to. Using guard with kick, or GPK to perform special moves also felt strange.The PPK was how I experienced VF when I played it for the first time too. I was young and I couldnt understand the depth of fighting games so I didnt get the logic of VF back then. Tekken made more sense for beginners. MK sucked but also made more sense because it was very similar to what people were experiencing in the past. Special moves were performed the old traditional way.

This reflected in arcades...I hardly found opponents in Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Fighter 3, and Virtua Fighter 4...

However as far as VF2 and VF3 as people had PlayStation and played Tekken series instead...they were seen as alien...I noticed a lack of information...print magazines used to reprint the same and rinse repeat strategies for SFII...then Tekken for years...there wasn't much promotion for VF series outside Japan...

It is kind of expected. Playstation was more successful, had an arcade perfect version of Tekken 1 and 2, and it was easier to get into. Whereas Tekken and VF started with similar level of realism and depth, VF3 went deeper and more complex gameplay, whereas Tekken 3 became more direct and over the top. With more console popularity and easier to grasp gameplay, it was expected that Tekken would surpass VF. Saturn's userbase was tiny, VF3 wasnt as good on the DC and the DC died fast. Even when 4 was released on the PS2 it was too late and still unorthodox (althought underestimated) to most people
Virtua Fighter is today the deepest, most complex, and most balanced fighting game in my book despite its low popularity

 

[Exophase]

"Failure due to hard/nightmare to dev for"

(looking at only the 3d polygon engine graphics based games...or rather the "distorted 2d sprites made to look like 3d polygons which implies they aren't 3d polygons even though in execution they appear to look like 3d polygons...??!!)

So on the one hand we have people who at least have some understanding of games programming and old console hardware looking at Saturn and saying that it's going to be harder to develop for than PS1. On the other hand, we have you saying they're both easy to develop, with it being really unclear what you're actually basing this on. Because you had both consoles and were comparing the games, apparently?

You keep saying we've been misled by a negative western media when that has nothing to do with that. The difficulty statement is based on things like:

- Having to use the second CPU to get reasonable performance. That means having to worry about concurrency and synchronization on processors that don't even have atomics and locking operations. You also have to manage flushing the cache because they're not cache coherent. These are huge pitfalls for programmers, they're not easy problems. And then trying to actually divide up tasks to get a good work balance on both cores is going to be very hard unless the game has a design that lends itself well to a simplistic partitioning.

- Having to do all the geometry stuff in software, in CPUs that don't have proper divides. The lighting calculations in particular are a lot of work to get right and efficient, which is probably why games don't even bother with it. But even without that the games have to calculate camera transformation, perspective division, frustum culling, backface culling, and depth binning while the GTE on PS1 while either perform these operations or at least compute flags to help you handle them. And god help you if you have to clip.

- Pure quads are just plain harder to mesh decently, making life a lot worse for the artists.

- There's no decompression hardware like the MDEC on PS1 (unless you count the add-on MPEG card), so it has to be done in software. You could use third party libraries like Cinepak, but Cinepak sucked...

- VDP2 is super convoluted. You have to actually set registers that program how the VRAMs are accessed every cycle, and depend on this being consistent with the other settings you've programmed (some games messed this up anyway). There's all sorts of one off features that are not that useful, and some extra design complications that don't really make sense like how the maps are partitioned hierarchically. The rotation layers are not at all intuitive to set up. And the documentation is very confusing, or at least the English documentation is. On PS1 there's less flexibility and raw power with 2D but it's more straightforward to manage, even if you have to turn maps into display lists yourself. You could do 2D games fully on VDP1 but it'd be more limited than PS1 for sure...

- You have to manage the interaction between VDP1 and VDP2, meaning you have to worry about how priority is encoded. And if you want to do alpha blending that isn't broken it has to be on VDP2, but that's very limited and will likely involve having to draw occlusion geometry in VDP1 to make parts of VDP2 layers visible, at least if you want it in moderately complex scenes. Speaking of which, Sonic Jam's use of VDP2 probably involved occlusion geometry as well.

- You need code running on the 68k to babysit the audio hardware, which is really generally not necessary (managing some voice keys is not a demanding task). I'm guessing Sega probably offered libraries for all the audio stuff, though.

- The SCU DSP is really, really hard to code for, which is probably why few games use it for much of anything. You have to think a lot about how operations happen implicitly, in parallel, and in pipeline, and you have very limited memory to do it all in.

Now sure, PS1 has some areas where it's probably harder to program for. You have to manage a small explicit scratchpad in the CPU instead of a transparent unified cache, you have to be careful with how your code is organized to avoid conflict misses in the icache, and you have to be careful with textures to avoid thrashing the texture cache (generally probably means avoiding > 64 wide @ 4bpp textures per triangle if it's in real 3D stuff). But the laundry list for Saturn easily outweighs this.

And it might be pretty easy to program a simple 16-bit style 2D game on Saturn, where you only need to use one CPU, have no FMVs or anything, no reason to use the DSP, and only needing the VDP1 and VDP2 in a really limited straightforward fashion. But is that really what we want to call a baseline for the system?

 

[swaaye]

I'd like to see a discussion thread about Atari Jaguar. That one is mysterious too. It's interesting that it sounds like it is designed for Gouraud-shaded 3D. The end results in games are reminiscent of 3DO.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I added a clarification there as 'Jaguar' means something else these days. And feel free to start a conversation asking a question.

 

[Exophase]

I'd like to see a discussion thread about Atari Jaguar. That one is mysterious too. It's interesting that it sounds like it is designed for Gouraud-shaded 3D. The end results in games are reminiscent of 3DO.

I'll talk Jaguar if you start the thread.. or wait for Liandry to..