Sega Saturn Shenmue Gameplay Video

[Clashman]

Found a link to this off of the Rage 3D forums. I was pretty impressed. I'd seen screenshots before, but never a video of the game in motion. Worth checking out. This site also has tons of cool ads for Gamegear, Saturn, MegaCD, and Dreamcast.

http://www.sega-network.de/mmarchive/satmedia.htm

 

[cthellis42]

Pretty funky. ^_^ Where did it come from, I wonder?

 

[marconelly!]

Comes from the Shenmue 2 for Dreamcast. Once you finish the game, this video becomes unlocked. I agree, quite impressive. AM2 were the true masters of the Saturn trickery.

 

[Lazy8s]

It was the combination of all of those processors that added up to a lot of power, so true potential was only seen when the apps split their workload among the processors intelligently and then carefully maintained the balance so that performance was sustained.

 

[Crazyace]

to be honest

the framerate sucks a lot - I think the PS1 would have done a better job
Things dont really look much better than the tomb raider games.

 

[notAFanB]

Re: to be honest

the framerate sucks a lot - I think the PS1 would have done a better job
Things dont really look much better than the tomb raider games.

really? My memory is pretty hazy on this item (been awhile), but hte combination of art direction and good resource usage was pretty nice. In hond sight it might have been due to just finishing the bloody thing prior to seeing this.

 

[Evil_Cloud]

Re: to be honest

the framerate sucks a lot - I think the PS1 would have done a better job
Things dont really look much better than the tomb raider games.

Err, it was an unfinished build, and the game did not make use of the RAM expansion cards... The game was like 30 - 40 percent complete? (code)

This video is also quite short in comparison to the full version btw.

 

[Clashman]

Re: to be honest

the framerate sucks a lot - I think the PS1 would have done a better job
Things dont really look much better than the tomb raider games.

PS1 might have been able to do it better, but comparing it to tomb raider is a bit ridiculous, IMO.

Speaking of PS1, what would you all say is the most graphically complex or impressive game for PS1? I know that in general Playstation has some impressive titles, but I'm vague on specifics.

 

[Lazy8s]

By the time they were working on Shenmue, AM2 was very experienced with the Saturn and always turned out very polished products. The framerate seen there is quite typical of a game at that point in development and would've turned out great going by their Virtua Cop 2 work as an indicator.

The Saturn seemed to sustain better framerates than the PS overall and had more solid looking 3D movement as a result. Games like SEGA Rally, Virtua ON, and Virtua Cop 2 were very convincing examples of the more arcade-like smoothness seen from the versions on SEGA's Model X boards. Sure the PS flashed more transparencies, but even a game like WipeOut, that was only ported to the Saturn, ran with a more consistent and higher average framerate... as anyone who played it and appreciated the better sense of movement and speed can tell you.

 

[Crazyace]

I loved Virtua Cop 2 and Sega Rally 2 , but Colin McRae eventually came and stole the crown...
I'm not sure about the framerates comment - I'd guess that the much larger collection of games for ps1 contains more dross as well as quality... There were quite a few poor Saturn games as well.. (HOTD and ManxTT weren't quite as good - and Daytona didn't match up with RidgeRacer - and there's always VF1 )

 

[Clashman]

Comes from the Shenmue 2 for Dreamcast. Once you finish the game, this video becomes unlocked. I agree, quite impressive. AM2 were the true masters of the Saturn trickery.

Anyone know if it's on the XBox Version, too?

 

[Evil_Cloud]

Comes from the Shenmue 2 for Dreamcast. Once you finish the game, this video becomes unlocked. I agree, quite impressive. AM2 were the true masters of the Saturn trickery.

Anyone know if it's on the XBox Version, too?

I am not sure, but I believe it is featured in the Xbox version as well.

 

[Guden Oden]

The Saturn seemed to sustain better framerates than the PS overall and had more solid looking 3D movement as a result.

Sure the PS flashed more transparencies, but even a game like WipeOut, that was only ported to the Saturn, ran with a more consistent and higher average framerate... as anyone who played it and appreciated the better sense of movement and speed can tell you.

Geez, that there's a big load of horse-apples! Looking back through history with rose-colored glasses, are we? NO WAY that is true! I played both versions and there's no chance in hell Saturn Wipeout ran smoother than PS. It did have less polygon warping, but that's not quite the same thing, and polygon warping got much better in later PS titles anyway.

I can't think of a single title - perhaps excepting where Saturn was the original version or where 2D processing was involved - that ran better than it did on PS. There might be some, but they're definitely not a majority that's for sure.

The PS is just plain superior at 3D and that's a *fact*. At best, Saturn versions ran neck to neck with their PS equivalents, not counting the ugly "transparencies" of course.

 

[Tagrineth]

Very few Saturn games used the SCU DSP... damn shame. Apparently the system can push upwards of 700k polys with that thing in full use. (see also: VF3)

 

[Lazy8s]

Crazyace:

There were quite a few poor Saturn games as well.. (HOTD and ManxTT weren't quite as good

These have no relevance to any comparison specified here, and they're not even examples of top-tier Saturn titles like the more applicable Virtua Cop 2 or even the older SEGA Rally.

Ironically, HOTD, Manxx-TT Superbike, and the Wipeouts were all programmed for the Saturn by the same company, Tantalus Interactive:
http://www.tantalus.com.au/games_boxes.htm

Tantalus didn't work the Saturn as well as SEGA's teams, the ones behind the Virtua Cop 2 and SEGA Rally Championship conversions.

- and Daytona didn't match up with RidgeRacer - and there's always VF1 )

Those early Saturn titles, AM2's first releases for the system way back in 1994, are obviously not representative of its potential judging from the later games.

This condition was furthered by the fact that those first games intentionally were trying to replicate the design of the arcade game and not take advantage of the Saturn's specific capabilities: Daytona tried to have all the simultaneous cars of the arcade version, which no other console racer was stupid enough in design to try to approach (until F-Zero 64 later), and they purposely left Virtua Fighter without texture mapping to match the build of the original (which SEGA soon after revised with the more feature-advanced, Saturn-specific Virtua Fighter Remix... complete with texture mapping and no glitching.)

Guden Oden:

I played both versions and there's no chance in hell Saturn Wipeout ran smoother than PS.

You're the one who missed it, then.

It was this way - the PS version ran flashier, the Saturn version ran smoother - as it was with more than a few games that appeared for both platforms. There was a Mechwarrior title, PowerSlave, NHL PowerPlay '96, Duke Nukem 3D, Grandia (which, for all the slowdown it had, was still better than the PS rev), Quake, and many others. The system's custom titles most often excelled for their consistent, higher framerates - the smooth 3D of solid engines like NiGHTS, SRC, VC2, and Decathlete being the platform's defining efforts.

Many top developers felt that the Saturn was more powerful than the PS when both machines were taken advantage of - lots of devs under the ESP label, for instance. Snowblind's core team and founders, who previously founded Lobotomy Software, learned the Saturn inside and out and felt this way. Their games were great on both systems, but were able to be more advanced on SEGA's.

Of course, such a determination always exists in a subjective realm depending on which aspects of graphics impress you most.

 

[zidane1strife]

Speaking of PS1, what would you all say is the most graphically complex or impressive game for PS1? I know that in general Playstation has some impressive titles, but I'm vague on specifics.

Well, I played Omega boost, and at times there were, I'd say, more than 50 objects on screen. Some reviewers have claimed that over 100 enemies can be seen, and that the secret levels feature 60fps with dozens of enemies. If indeed it features dozens of enemies on-screen at 60fps it would be a strong contender for most impressive. ( also the main char. seems to have both a texture and fake reflections.)

Other impressive titles, are the ffviii-ffix -models-, vagrant story, -some areas in -xenogears, parasite eve 2, etc. Most impressive gphx complex models, from what I recall, would be some of the bosses in chrono cross, individual moving fingers, polygonal animated facial features, etc.

 

[Paul]

Speaking of PS1, what would you all say is the most graphically complex or impressive game for PS1? I know that in general Playstation has some impressive titles, but I'm vague on specifics.

Omega Boost. Absolutely insane for a PSONE game, It was based on the GT2 Engine. Hell I wanted to see a Omega Boost 2 based on the GT3 engine for PS2.. But ah well; maybe with ps3...

 

[Crazyace]

Tagrineth
Very few Saturn games used the SCU DSP... damn shame. Apparently the system can push upwards of 700k polys with that thing in full use. (see also: VF3)

The SCU DSP wasn't as usefull as you might think ( This more than anything seemed to me to be a 2D part ) It has very fast integer multiplies - but no division, which made it superb for traditional sprite rotation and scaling, but not so good for 3D transformation and perspective ) - It was also clocked at 14MHz rather than 28MHz - another advantage for the SH2s..

Lazy8s

It was this way - the PS version ran flashier, the Saturn version ran smoother - as it was with more than a few games that appeared for both platforms. There was a Mechwarrior title, PowerSlave, NHL PowerPlay '96, Duke Nukem 3D, Grandia (which, for all the slowdown it had, was still better than the PS rev), Quake, and many others

I never noticed this about Wipeout - maybe it was a PAL/NTSC thing.
I never player the hockey titles on both machines ( I probally have it for the PS1, but never bought it for the Saturn.. ) but there are technically better PS1 games in the same genre ( especially the football and american football games - as well as the very early basketball games for the PS1 )
some of the other's ( including the abysmal Duke game ) form an interesting subgenre where you could claim an advantage for the Saturn - that of PC style 3D engines/doom/quake clones - As the PS1 was a dedicated polygon machine, raycast engines often required a complete rethink, or a reversion to software rendering - which was slightly easier on the saturn due to the more memory mapped view of the display memory from the cpu's.

Grandia I would claim almost as a sloppy conversion ( They do happen, as you said with HOTD/Manx TT )

If you move into the realms of the 2D games the Saturn holds it's own against the PS1 - as emulating the scrolling backgrounds and rotating floors takes quite a lot of polygons.
Even there though the best Saturn games were the ones using the extra memory packs, the improvements having little to do with any processing or drawing capabilities..

For me, Sega Rally 2 was above all a superlative game - graphically it was
outclassed by the Ridge Racer launch title... and Toshinden ( another launch title ) is graphically better than both VF1/VF1 remix and VF2 -- ( gameplay is another matter )

Virtua Cop and Virtua Cop 2 are the titles that compare best graphically - It can be argued that these are the titles where most of the Saturn's grunt
went into the graphics - and also, due to the slow streaming nature of the games I'd say that these are the 'best case' titles to use the extra 512k of CD buffer ram ( Having it's own SH1 cpu that wan't really that much slower than the main SH2's... ) - The Saturn was worth it for those games and the lightgun's alone...

I guess it's inevitable that as systems grow older - rose tinted memory starts - you only remember the good parts ( such as the brillian SR gameplay ) and forget the poor ( such as the poor gfx ) - and completely bury somethings ( dukenukem ps1 - or godzilla dreamcast!!
)

 

[ChryZ]

Tohshinden : PSOne VS Saturn , head to head

 

[ChryZ]

Off World Interceptor Extreme : PSOne VS Saturn, head to head