Resident Evil 2 on Sega Saturn being ported?

[Nesh]

Looks possibly legit. Quite amazing if true

 

[eastmen]

If real its looks pretty good. maybe better than the playstation.

you can skip to about 6 minutes in

 

[Nesh]

Oh unfortunately I found out that the guy who "ported" it isnt planning for a full port. Its more of a test of his engine,

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Capcom or Resident Evil. Resident Evil is owned by Capcom and this is not a game endorsed or licensed by them. This is my own game engine running with the original game assets and not a port or edit of the original game. The purpose of the engine is to allow survival horror games to be made more easily on the console. This work is not distributed. Prototype engine using RE2 data:
- Reworked the code to use a job system, now code is cleaner and jobs are balanced between SH2's (performance suffered a bit but not major).
- We now support doors!
- Masks now are loaded per camera and copied directly, there is no buffer anymore (and its faster!)
- Reworked the bss2bmp exporter to identify TIM's better

Doesnt look better to me btw.

 

[Theeoo]

Was only thinking recently how RE2 would have looked on the Saturn. Transparencies would obviously need to be dithered as they are in RE. Capcom's reason for cancelling the original port was for supposed technical reasons, but this port proves it was possible.

 

[see colon]

Oh unfortunately I found out that the guy who "ported" it isnt planning for a full port. Its more of a test of his engine,

Doesnt look better to me btw.

Doesn't look better to me either. Lots of polygons glitching on the characters, for example.

Was only thinking recently how RE2 would have looked on the Saturn. Transparencies would obviously need to be dithered as they are in RE. Capcom's reason for cancelling the original port was for supposed technical reasons, but this port proves it was possible.

I know that was the official reason, but I think we all know it was potential return on investment was the real reason. RE1 is fine on Saturn, and I'm not even sure it's the most optimized of ports. I've never tested it in an emulator but I believe that all or most of the background elements are handles by VDP1. RE2 doesn't do anything, from a technical perspective, that wasn't there in principle in RE1.

 

[Roger Cobb]

It's still the best RE game, in my humble opinion.

 

[Sonicfan]

Was only thinking recently how RE2 would have looked on the Saturn. Transparencies would obviously need to be dithered as they are in RE. Capcom's reason for cancelling the original port was for supposed technical reasons, but this port proves it was possible.

Definitely wasn't a technical reason. When Bernie said "Saturn is not our future" it basically killed any momentum sega had with the platform. Also if ported correctly, transparencies could be done. There are some good examples out there.

 

[Karamazov]

Don't think RE2 was that hard to handle as most of the scenery was background CGI pictures, not much real time 3d models in there.

 

[Nesh]

Don't think RE2 was that hard to handle as most of the scenery was background CGI pictures, not much real time 3d models in there.

Capcom in general wholly supported the Saturn with 2D games, but many times mentioned that the Saturn wasn't good with 3D, and I think they even said that when they were porting Resi1 on the Saturn.
Which was weird considering it was indeed prerendered backgrounds with a few 3D characters.
It does look though like they recreated the models for Resi1. They probably designed the 3D objects as triangular models instead of quads on the original, hence they had to remodel quad characters and redraw sprites as textures since they couldnt be UV'd. This was probably the reason why the models were different between PS1 and the Saturn and was a pain to port it.

I wonder how the guy who ported the Resi2 assets to the Saturn handled the 3D models though. Did he really manage to convert them as they were originally on PS or PC? Character textures do look less detail and much more pixelated

 

[Karamazov]

There was deep fear on saturn that was a good RE clone.

 

[Nesh]

There was deep fear on saturn that was a good RE clone.

I ve seen it but it felt to me rushed and much less refined compared to Resident Evil. I have a friend who owns it. Lucky him. Its expensive as fuck now

 

[see colon]

I ve seen it but it felt to me rushed and much less refined compared to Resident Evil. I have a friend who owns it. Lucky him. Its expensive as fuck now

It's pretty good, honestly. Not on the level or RE1 or 2, but not much in the genre was back then. I do wish it got a remake or sequel but I don't know if it would work in today's market because part of it's charm is the goofiness of the story and voice acting, and I don't know if there is a market for that now.

Technically, Deep Fear doesn't do anything that would change anyone's mind about Saturn's capabilities.

 

[Sonicfan]

Capcom in general wholly supported the Saturn with 2D games, but many times mentioned that the Saturn wasn't good with 3D, and I think they even said that when they were porting Resi1 on the Saturn.
Which was weird considering it was indeed prerendered backgrounds with a few 3D characters.
It does look though like they recreated the models for Resi1. They probably designed the 3D objects as triangular models instead of quads on the original, hence they had to remodel quad characters and redraw sprites as textures since they couldnt be UV'd. This was probably the reason why the models were different between PS1 and the Saturn and was a pain to port it.

I wonder how the guy who ported the Resi2 assets to the Saturn handled the 3D models though. Did he really manage to convert them as they were originally on PS or PC? Character textures do look less detail and much more pixelated

Saturn was actually more capable at 3D, but it was harder to implement than 2D games. Capcom said something to the effect that they didn't have the manpower to actually bother to learn it. That's why 3D games on saturn were always outsourced to a 3rd party re1 was ported by an internal sega team, ff revenge was also outsourced to i forget who, but it wasn't done by Capcom.

 

[Cyan]

It's still the best RE game, in my humble opinion.

same here. I also liked the first very much, and completed RE4 some years ago, too.

My favourite is RE2 Remake.

 

[Nesh]

Saturn was actually more capable at 3D, but it was harder to implement than 2D games. Capcom said something to the effect that they didn't have the manpower to actually bother to learn it. That's why 3D games on saturn were always outsourced to a 3rd party re1 was ported by an internal sega team, ff revenge was also outsourced to i forget who, but it wasn't done by Capcom.

First time I hear that. Are there any sources out there you can refer to?
Even Sega themselves were struggling often

 

[Sonic]

I'm not sure if the timeline and if Sega bought the dev before, during, or after RE's port to the Saturn. Dev was called Nextech or something. Sega bought them the same year RE came out on Saturn.

As for Saturn being more capable at 3d than PS1....it's a discussion that we've had many times in the past with the majority of evidence pointing to PS1 being more capable overall.

The character models do look chunkier on the Saturn.

 

[see colon]

ff revenge was also outsourced to i forget who, but it wasn't done by Capcom.

Final Fight Revenge was made by a team at Capcom USA. CPS8 I think. The guys who also did Final Fight Streetwise.