(DF) Quake on Sega Saturn - the impossible port

This makes me nostalgic because I still remember Leadbetter praising these guys to high heaven for their Saturn ports when he was in charge of SSM.
 
This was an awesome port for the system it was on, when you consider you could get a SS for like £100 at the time this game came out.......a PC was a lot lot more than that.

Odd that there was never a PSX version...that said Exhumed was better on the SS than the PSX which is odd when you consider veryone was saying that the SS was awful at 3d based games, so im guess that the PSX version would have fared the same if there was one!?

Hope DF do a Quake 2 analysis for the PSX at some point
 
Lettuce said:
This was an awesome port for the system it was on, when you consider you could get a SS for like £100 at the time this game came out.......a PC was a lot lot more that that.

Odd that there was never a PSX version. Hope DF do a Quake 2 analysis for the PSX at some point
Click to expand...
If this video does well I'll do Quake 2 PSX and the two N64 Quake games
 
Interesting video, with one heck of a confusing preview image.
kBsDHww.png
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It appears to be a screenshot from a retexture project called Quake Reforged.... with cartoon eyebrows drawn over the fiend's nose to make it look like it has googly eyes?
Weird.
 
There is so much to say about this port and how fascinating it is. It makes me wish I owned a saturn honestly just so I could play through it and look for all the differences that just have to be there.

Are there many inclined surfaces in it? And does it turok view tilt them so you can actually shoot?

Do slimes and scrags just attack horizontally?
 
Great video, I lived through that era and I remember at the time how impressive it was.

Funny considering the late as port of Doom on Saturn came out the same year as Quake Saturn and was considered to be a mess lol. Lobotomy Software ftw!

I'm honestly more interested in these sorts of videos than the current stuff. :P Old school retro marvels/port stories are much more interesting to me.
 
Absolutely fabulous job, dark. I want more of these. They are really marvels of technology and the teams that worked on them.
 
dark10x said:
If this video does well I'll do Quake 2 PSX and the two N64 Quake games
Click to expand...

Nice! I hope you get to do it.
I'd be very interested in anything comparing the Saturn and PSone in particular.
There were a lot of interesting and controversial ports between both system.
The effort in bringing arcade ports to these systems was also fascinating, especially on sega's side.
Getting an indepth look at that VF3 Saturn code that afaik never left AM2's office would be awesome as well.
 
Dictator93 said:
There is so much to say about this port and how fascinating it is. It makes me wish I owned a saturn honestly just so I could play through it and look for all the differences that just have to be there.

Are there many inclined surfaces in it? And does it turok view tilt them so you can actually shoot?

Do slimes and scrags just attack horizontally?
Click to expand...
Pretty much all of the inclined surfaces from the original game are in here and the game does tilt slightly when walking on them (plus it uses auto-aim). You CAN look up and down and all around as well, but you have to hold a button.

Slims and scrags attack as they did on PC as well, which can be slightly annoying, but auto-aim takes care of it (though you can disable auto-aim).

If you use the Saturn 3D controller you can actually sort of "analog look around" like a modern game. I tried to use it by my 3D controller appears to be dead. :(

The weirdest thing is how the sense of scale is all so different. Rooms feel smaller or different than the original but it's all very similar. I really like how dark and grimy the game looks, though, and prefer that atmosphere to the clean OpenGL version (which is why I like source ports such as Engoo which are software mode).

Would be awesome to play this version at a high frame-rate with no texture warping. I know Powerslave EX exists (and was taken down) - would love if the guy that ported it over could try his hand at Saturn Quake or Duke 3D (which was also 3D).
 
I played a lot this version, I have the cd to date and was the best FPS that I played on Sega Saturn.

Excellent video :)
 
Lettuce said:
This was an awesome port for the system it was on, when you consider you could get a SS for like £100 at the time this game came out.......a PC was a lot lot more than that.

Odd that there was never a PSX version...that said Exhumed was better on the SS than the PSX which is odd when you consider veryone was saying that the SS was awful at 3d based games, so im guess that the PSX version would have fared the same if there was one!?

Hope DF do a Quake 2 analysis for the PSX at some point
Click to expand...
Lobotomy did a quick port to the PS1 but they couldn't find a publisher.

Ezra: The most striking thing about the PSX port was how much faster the graphics hardware was than the Saturn. The initial scene after you just start the game is pretty complex. I think it ran 20 fps on the Saturn version. On the PSX it ran 30,but the actual rendering part could have been going 60 if the CPU calculations weren't holding it up. I don't know if it would have ever been possible to get it to really run 60, but at least there was the potential.

Other than that, it would have looked identical to the Saturn version. Except for some reason the PSX video output has better color than the Saturn's.

So I know something about the PSX. And really, if you couldn't tell from the games, the PSX is way better than the Saturn. It's way simpler and way faster. There are a lot of things about the Saturn that are totally dumb. Chief among these is that you can't draw triangles, only quadrilaterals.
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http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9391
 
I remember Saturn's Duke Nukem 3D played better because its gameplay was better suited to the Saturn's gamepad, but Saturn Quake was a marvel because it ran at all in spite of all the adjustments to its levels.

Having both was also essential to unlocking Deathtank Zwei.
 
There is something weirdly addictive about this port. I actually played through the entire shareware episode and half of the second one. Just seeing how the levels were adjusted for the Saturn is so fascinating.

What really surprises me is how some of the larger levels in episode 2 appear almost more accurate than the earlier, smaller ones. That huge castle keep level is very very similar and runs at a more stable frame-rate than some of the other areas.

Quake still has that unforgettable atmosphere going on thanks to the gritty visuals and soundtrack.

Now I need to figure out how to fix my 3D controller.
 
I like the chunkiness of Saturn games. Lol. Even the Tomb Raider port, which is obviously inferior to the PSX version, I still play occasionally...
 
While we're on the topic of crazy ports of id games, you guys might think about doing a video on Doom 3 Xbox. I remember being blown away that it ran as well as it did on on the xbox back in the day without blowing up my xbox.
 
pa22word said:
While we're on the topic of crazy ports of id games, you guys might think about doing a video on Doom 3 Xbox. I remember being blown away that it ran as well as it did on on the xbox back in the day without blowing up my xbox.
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Yes, Doom 3 was insanely impressive on Xbox. It runs very consistently as well.

Half-Life 2 is another good one. Runs a lot worse than Doom 3 but it's the entire HL2 experience.

Celine said:
IMO for N64 would be more interesting Top Gear Overdrive (coded by Ezra Dreisbach, ex-Lobotomy) than the two Quake.
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Oh? Now that's interesting. I need to research that one.

/goes to eBay
 
Interesting to know there could have been a PS1 port of Quake 1 but they couldn't find a publisher!

Saturn fans got to enjoy having the bragging rights there, at least until the N64 one came out. :P
 
What? No complaints about horrible framerates or other downgrades compared to the PC version like in the other DF threads? :P
 
Conrad Link said:
Interesting to know there could have been a PS1 port of Quake 1 but they couldn't find a publisher!

Saturn fans got to enjoy having the bragging rights there, at least until the N64 one came out. :P
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Shame it didn't exist. Wonder if they have source code sitting around somewhere? Unlikely but you never know.
 
I picked Quake up back in my Saturn days, and I guess I just didn't have an appreciation for it. I didn't like the game at all at the time, and thought it was quite brown and ugly looking on my TV.

Wish I could go back in time and look at it again.

Loved the video and would like to see more retro titles!
 
Why was the Saturn so weak at 3D rendering compared to the PS1/N64? Was Sega banking on developers becoming good at programming for the CPUs? I can't help but compare the Saturn a bit to the PS3 in terms of hardware complexity.
 
Speaking of canceled PSX FPS ports, there was also Unreal being made. Would probably have been more of a spinoff than an actual port though, since the levels would have been entirely different to accomodate the hardware limitations.

https://www.unseen64.net/2009/06/03/unreal-psx-cancelled/

Luis1986 said:
Why was the Saturn so weak at 3D rendering compared to the PS1/N64? Was Sega banking on developers becoming good at programming for the CPUs? I can't help but compare the Saturn a bit to the PS3 in terms of hardware complexity.
Click to expand...

Saturn hardware was being conceptualized significantly earlier around 1992, when it wasn't a sure thing that the shift to true 3D would happen so quickly.
 
dark10x said:
I know Powerslave EX exists (and was taken down) - would love if the guy that ported it over could try his hand at Saturn Quake or Duke 3D (which was also 3D).
Click to expand...

Powerslave EX is a bespoke conversion using the dev's own engine (much like Saturn Quake itself!) so a "Saturn Quake EX" wouldn't be worth bothering with in that regard.
 
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