This is what an extra 8MB of video memory does to a Dreamcast.

Cant say I am impressed with the visuals, but its impressive that they actually ported the games

 

I´m impressed with Force Five; i mean, yes SC and specially DOA 2 stomps it in some aspects, but Force Five is not a AAA game and wasn´t ecven released, and it makes some interesting tricks with lighting, texturing and character design. Backgrounds despite being designed with the primitive 32 bit method of being separated for the actual stages, they look detailed and with lotta real time 3d elements. It would nice if somebody around here shows some polycount numbers....Playing it has make me think of how feasible it would a VF 4 on DC (i know, with all the downgrades of the world).

 

Well I think both DOA2 and SC are better cases for proving that a version of VF4 could be done. I think both games kill it in pretty much everything, I dont see anything special in it's lighting and texturing. Character models are very very low polygon. Basically everything seems low poly. It sits somewhere between a PS1 and a DC game.

edit: On s econd thought it does have an interesting approach though in the visuals and has a cool art direction that has potential to grow. But I am not sure that in terms of pushing the hardware does anything remarkable.

 

This is the interesting thing about Force Five, is a low budget Tekken 4 bootleg that does more with less resources. I think even VF 3TB and Fighting Vipers 2 are probably more complex games technologically speaking (more polys, etc), but Force Five manage to look more modern that both, thanks to the wise art design and smart use of low resources. Backgrounds even has 3D characters, something never seen on a DC game, and some of them, i insist, look detailed and with lotta elements rendered in real time. Characters show some low poly elements (fingers, ears, etc) when the camera makes a close up during some scenes, but normally during gameplay they look more similar to an average PS2 or at least PSP fighting character, than even Fighting Vipers 2 or VF 3 TB characters...For example...The thing is, if they manage to do this with a low budget game in 2004 that wasn´t even released, no wonder what AM2 could have achieved on DC with enough time, budget and development tech...Hope someday someone would be able to port it to DC....For me, VF 4 was the biggest debt that Sega left to DC users. We deserve it! I have VF 4 Evo on PS2, almost any PC can emulate Naomi 2 nowadays...But we really deserve to play this in our DC. It is the way it should have been!

 

I dont know man. I have no doubts that AM2 could achieve crazy things on the DC if the DC was allowed to live its full cycle. But FV2 and VF3 were Model 3 games released in 1998 and 1996 respectively and received some small downgrades on the Dreamcast.
I dont think Force Five looks that modern in comparison. The 3D backgrounds are very low in geometry. But I do give them credit for the work they ve done. It does have nice elements and interesting approach in it's visuals. Although in terms of pushing the hardware, or doing anything technically fancy, cant say I am convinced.

 

This just reminded me how good SC and especially DOA2 looked on the system. That Atomiwise game looks good too, particularly for its time, but it clearly has less of a budget to work with compared to the other two.

That's something I always tend to keep in mind when looking back at Dreamcast especially in comparison to, say, PS2. We never really got a chance to see DC games with massive AAA production budgets behind them outside of early Sega efforts like the Sonic Adventure games, and closers like Shenmue and Shenmue II. A few 3P games too like the aforementioned Soul Calibur, Dead or Alive 2, Code: Veronica etc.

But a lot of other Dreamcast games were more around AA or A-level WRT budget. Many 3P publishers held back their budgets for AAA games on other platforms, namely PlayStation 2, and by the time that system was coming into not even its 3rd month in America (and not even a full year from its release in Japan), Sega basically scaled down support for the system when they announced they were leaving the business as a console maker.

So the system literally never got a chance to be fully pushed to its limits, because we never got more games of AAA budgets similar to Shenmue that came in those 3rd and 4th years where, back then, seemed like when you'd normally start getting the bigger AAA games from 1P and 3P games with more mature understanding of the hardware. To this day I'd say performance was definitely left on the table with Dreamcast; I think some of the 6th-gen games they released post-DC, like Crazy Taxi 3, Gunvalkyrie, JSRF...those games could've definitely been done on DC with little scaled back versus what we actually got. Same goes for Virtua Fighter 4; Orta might've been a bit harder hit if it were a DC game but I'm sure Sega'd find some creative ways to work with DC hardware limitations to make it work in inventive ways.

 

Yes I agree that the DC potential were left untapped. I am very interested in both the Dreamcast and Saturn in that respect, what they could have produced if they lived a healthy life.
It is a shame that we will never know. I think some people produced a homebrew game on tne DC that looked really good and had bump mapping but cant remember the name.
The DC's image quality and significant amount of VRAM were big advantages and I am sure it would have surprised us if given the time.
Even the Saturn had it's wow moments. Quake looked astonishingly good and was a technical marvel, VF2's high resolution visuals and high poly models came very early in the Saturn's life cycle and even though it lacked lighting in those two departments it competed well against Tekken 3's, and Fighter's Megamix looked outstanding (even though I think poly wise the models were a step back from VF2).
Considering how much developers invested on the PS2's capabilities despite not being a straightforward machine (producing crazy results like MGS2, DMC, ZOE2, Shadow of the Colossus etc), it makes you wonder what would have the Saturn produced if it was a commercial success and thus developers got smart with it's innards.

Come to think of it do we have Poly numbers of VF2's Akira and Tekken's Jin?

Edit: Well what do you know?
Gunvalkyrie on DC beta. Looks good:

 

Damn the DC version of that does look good! On another note I'm quite impressed with Sega's post-Dreamcast 6th-gen output considering they had some really good-looking and performing games on three very different systems architecture-wise, but that probably shouldn't be too surprising considering their history with even more disparate architectures and ports between those systems/platforms.

Regards Saturn, we got a couple of teases in what it could've done if pushed further: the Shenmue test demo running on a stock Saturn (AFAIK) looking quite impressive. To a lesser extent, remember the 3D World stage in Sonic Jam? I still don't get why Sega never made a Saturn Sonic game with that particular 3D engine. Yeah it may've not been as fast as the 2D games but maybe it didn't need to be? Ultimately the Dreamcast games look better but that section in Jam showed that the Saturn could do a decent 3D Sonic title even if they decided to make it a side game.

And speaking of Quake, Lobotomy were wizards with Saturn hardware. That game and Exhumed/Powerslave were technical marvels plus also being very well-playing. Sega's business side was a complete disaster during the second half of the '90s because they should've purchased Lobotomy as an in-house studio given the results they showed. Same goes for Treasure. I get at that time major studio acquisitions rarely happened and companies like Sega (and Nintendo) preferred growing their talent in-house and hiring talent to join existing in-house studios, but seeing that Sony had already made a few purchases (Naughty Dog, Psygonsis etc.), and Sega were competing with them at the time, why not purchase studios that clearly had history with you as a company and even seemingly preferred your hardware over competitors? Stupid Sega of Japan xD.

 

They did. Visual Concepts.

 

I keep forgetting VC were purchased by Sega before Dreamcast. In retrospect tho I honestly wonder if it was the smartest decision; it's arguable one of the reasons Dreamcast failed long-term was because of lack of EA support. EA were willing to support DC but only if they had exclusive dibs on sports games for the platform. SoA declined to shut down VC and so EA walked.

If it meant the difference between having VC exist or still having Sega as a platform holder, even if for just a bit longer, I honestly think Sega should've bit the bullet and relinquished VC or spun them into doing games other than sports. The EA support would've gone a long away in the West for the brand, and perhaps the VC money (if they hadn't bought them by that point) could've been better served buying aforementioned Lobotomy, who could've made some fantastic Dreamcast-exclusive FPS titles like maybe a sequel to Exhumed/Powerslave.

Maybe could've gotten Treasure too, for a sequel to Guardian Heroes, Radiant Silvergun (we got a pseudo-sequel/spiritual successor anyway in form of Ikaruga but that's besides the point) or a Gunstar sequel more advanced than the one that eventually came to GBA. In hindsight I just don't think buying Visual Concepts was the best business move Sega should've made at the time, considering EA's power back then and that their support still meant a lot especially in America. It was a major blow to Dreamcast that it would not recover from.