Sega unveils Shining series

[Lazy8s]

Ty:

And yet they didn't have issues with the Saturn?

Much to SEGA's chagrin, their developers quite vocally took issue with the Saturn's design. Personnel in their AM divisions like Yu Suzuki spoke out at their dissatisfaction with the hardware's dissimilarity to SEGA's arcade boards.

Even still, the Saturn was the company's exclusive home focus and platform. And they liked that the Saturn was actually a powerful machine among that cluster of processors and in some ways the last of that old arcade-architecture design mentality of packing in a whole array of separate chips.

 

[Farid]

And again i wonder, what's stopping developers from making a game in 2D that exploits the very powerful hardware of current consoles?

If i think of how idle the hardware must be while rendering 2D games, i'm left wondering why developers don't use all the power that's there to push more special effects, more and bigger sprites on screens, more of everything.

The perspective in my opinion shouldn´t die, but it needs new elements to make it attractive again. For example, I find very interesting what Tales of Rebirth is doing in terms of graphics, the character simulates being in a 3D world when navigating towns while looking entirely 2D at the same time.

Here comes Mario.

Off course the game use 3D background, but they could make it 100% 2D "looking" (just "looking" because it's always "flat polygons" and therefore 3D rendered).
The number of "sprites" is simply amazing.

 

[Lazy8s]

The look of that game is simply striking.

 

[Ty]

Even still, the Saturn was the company's exclusive home focus and platform. And they liked that the Saturn was actually a powerful machine among that cluster of processors and in some ways the last of that old arcade-architecture design mentality of packing in a whole array of separate chips.

So basically they managed to master the difficulty of programming for a multichip console after awhile.

So given some time with the PS2 what would you expect?

 

[Lazy8s]

They never favored the compromises chosen of the PS2 design - speed over quality in rendering. So, it's not so much an issue of experience with the hardware as it is an issue of interest.

Their R&D people actually had included the system among a group of technologies for evaluation as a next-generation arcade platform back before the PS2 launch.

 

[London Geezer]

Here comes Mario.



Off course the game use 3D background, but they could make it 100% 2D "looking" (just "looking" because it's always "flat polygons" and therefore 3D rendered).
The number of "sprites" is simply amazing.

Oh My God.............

What's that? That simply looks A M A Z I N G. It's what i've been dreaming of since i first played Super Mario on the NES!!!!

 

[I.S.T.]

I do believe he's passed out from shock.



Anyway, doesn't look that much different that Paper Mario to me. Just higher pollys. Edit: It's Paper Mario 2.

 

[Crazyace]

They never favored the compromises chosen of the PS2 design - speed over quality in rendering. So, it's not so much an issue of experience with the hardware as it is an issue of interest.

Their R&D people actually had included the system among a group of technologies for evaluation as a next-generation arcade platform back before the PS2 launch.

I would guess that the main striking point against a PS2 arcade board is the lack of scalability - Naomi ( and Chihiro and the GC board to a certain extent ) use commodity ram for video/texture storage, which makes it relatively easy to up the spec for the arcade. PS2 is pretty much fixed due to the embedded dram ( a good design for a mass produced console isn't necessarily good for a less cost driven arcade board )

( I still think the reason Naomi 2 uses 2 CLX chips rather than more powerfull Kyro variants is because its a good way to use inventory.. )

 

[Farid]

Oh My God.............

What's that? That simply looks A M A Z I N G. It's what i've been dreaming of since i first played Super Mario on the NES!!!!

It's Paper Mario 2.

Gamespy
Gamespot

It's a Rpg, not a platformer so it basicly on the other side of the game spectrum.

 

[Almasy]

Here comes Mario.

Off course the game use 3D background, but they could make it 100% 2D "looking" (just "looking" because it's always "flat polygons" and therefore 3D rendered).
The number of "sprites" is simply amazing.

That´s what I´m talking about. It looks great, has a "new" look and is still 2D (and just by looking at it you get that feeling that it is a current gen game). You know what´s funny, though? That if you looked at GCN FE, you´d never guess that the same studio is in charge of both FE and PM2.

 

[Farid]

That´s what I´m talking about. It looks great, has a "new" look and is still 2D (and just by looking at it you get that feeling that it is a current gen game). You know what´s funny, though? That if you looked at GCN FE, you´d never guess that the same studio is in charge of both FE and PM2.

Yeah Fire Emblem look like a "minimalist painting".

OTOH the Fire Emblem serie always got bad/cheap graphics.

 

[Lazy8s]

Crazyace:

I would guess that the main striking point against a PS2 arcade board is the lack of scalability - Naomi ( and Chihiro and the GC board to a certain extent ) use commodity ram for video/texture storage, which makes it relatively easy to up the spec for the arcade. PS2 is pretty much fixed due to the embedded dram ( a good design for a mass produced console isn't necessarily good for a less cost driven arcade board )

Yeah, I think that was among the critical factors. SEGA's arcade games run non-interlaced on monitors, so the developers couldn't afford to downgrade to field rendering when space would be tight.

( I still think the reason Naomi 2 uses 2 CLX chips rather than more powerfull Kyro variants is because its a good way to use inventory.. )

That's sensible since making use of their part already in mass production was an efficient usage of resources, and the potential for backwards compatibility was already there by smartly enabling the additional hardware like ELAN to act transparently for that setting.

 

[passerby]

Speaking about 2D games.

Want to know what 2D can do that 3D can't?

300MB SRW:MX DVD-rip: BitTorrent for obvious reasons.
http://www.4tracker.net/details.php?id=993

I admit it, I'm a fan. But an important reason is that it's also one of the best(if not the best) Turn-based strategy series.