Tomb Raider II is being ported to Sega Saturn by a fan

Is it just me or do Saturn games always look lower resolutuon than PS1 games?. I mean you can always tell a Saturn game just from looking at it compared to PS1 if you get me.
I'm certain apart from the odd game running in the consoles higher resolution mode, thatboth Saturn and PS1 ran games at 240p, yet at least to my eyes Saturn games always look lower resolution.
Maybe they just look over sharpened or somehting.
PSX games run most of the time ar 512*224

That is a way higher horizontal resolution it outputs at 240i but most games are rendered at PS2 resolutions....
 


I don't know how Tomb Raider 2 will play on Saturn, but in the first Tomb Raider the difference in favor of PSX is huge, up to double the performance in favor of PSX (15 vs 30fps), even on PSX it sounds better.
 
I have the data here extracted by homebrew programmers. TR1 is the limit, any improvement on similar games is just art.
For example Daytona 1995 (launch game) pushes the Saturn hardware more than Sega Rally. however SR looks better.
Daytona for the Saturn looks hideous with it's glaring pop-up, and mesh transparency, and just highlighted the difference in power between the arcade game and the Saturn..
 
Daytona for the Saturn looks hideous with it's glaring pop-up, and mesh transparency, and just highlighted the difference in power between the arcade game and the Saturn..
Releasing a 3D game on the Sega Saturn was like running a free marketing campaign for the Sony PlayStation.

I think this TR2 port will help some Sega fans stop this myth of hidden power. I like the Sega Saturn because of Street Fighter and the controller, unfortunately, Sega was at its lowest creative level back then.
 
If there was already another thread for weirdos to talk about such things so we can talk about the tomb raider 2 port. 🤔
 
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Is it just me or do Saturn games always look lower resolutuon than PS1 games?. I mean you can always tell a Saturn game just from looking at it compared to PS1 if you get me.
I'm certain apart from the odd game running in the consoles higher resolution mode, thatboth Saturn and PS1 ran games at 240p, yet at least to my eyes Saturn games always look lower resolution.
Maybe they just look over sharpened or somehting.

No, what you're seeing g is a reduce colour pallet compared to PlayStation which makes textures appear blocky and colour banding to be visible on Lara's skin.

sQFWzDEgZhdZh1Ao.jpeg
 
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I don't know how Tomb Raider 2 will play on Saturn, but in the first Tomb Raider the difference in favor of PSX is huge, up to double the performance in favor of PSX (15 vs 30fps), even on PSX it sounds better.


Indeed

This new version exhibits the same graphical and performance flaws as the Saturn original.

Whether that's due to them using the same engine or just hitting the same limitations as Core did is unclear.

I went back and played the Saturn demo a few months back, the crackly sound effects were quite jarring.
 
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Releasing a 3D game on the Sega Saturn was like running a free marketing campaign for the Sony PlayStation.

I think this TR2 port will help some Sega fans stop this myth of hidden power. I like the Sega Saturn because of Street Fighter and the controller, unfortunately, Sega was at its lowest creative level back then.
Yeah well it's little wonder why they were at their lowest creative level when you consider all the crap behind the scenes in getting the console out in the first place..i.e the infighting, they took their eye of the ball when no such thing was the case when it came to the development and release of the Mega-Genesis..
 
No, what you're seeing g is a reduce colour pallet compared to PlayStation which makes textures appear blocky and colour banding to be visible on Lara's skin.

sQFWzDEgZhdZh1Ao.jpeg

You'd see these differences in RE too. And I prefered the Saturn characters to be honest. There is more detail in the faces, and it looks more gamey.

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Saturn Chris looked more beefy and colorful. I kind of favored it. RE I found better on Saturn, it had faster load times and battle mode. At the cost of being a full year later, ofcourse.
 
You'd see these differences in RE too. And I prefered the Saturn characters to be honest. There is more detail in the faces, and it looks more gamey.

V4JB26NT5BKWRG2FAE67B6ESPA.jpg


Saturn Chris looked more beefy and colorful. I kind of favored it. RE I found better on Saturn, it had faster load times and battle mode. At the cost of being a full year later, ofcourse.

For some reason Jill's face looks a garbled mess on Saturn as per Lara.

The textures and lighting/shading are definitely worse on Saturn

There was a myth spread back in the day that Saturn had better backgrounds, again proven false.

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Lee Nutter of Official Sega Saturn Magazine can be thanked for the long standing myth that Saturn Resi had better backgrounds than PS1

Lee Nutter was also the one who, in the very same issue, hyped Sega Touring Car up as a "Sega Rally beater".

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Saturn Chris looked more beefy and colorful. I kind of favored it. RE I found better on Saturn, it had faster load times and battle mode. At the cost of being a full year later, ofcourse.

Load times were easy worse on Saturn too

It's great that we finally have the likes of Wobbling Pixels and DF Retro to disprove the copious amounts of bullshit printed in Sega magazines back in the day

 
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Yeah well it's little wonder why they were at their lowest creative level when you consider all the crap behind the scenes in getting the console out in the first place..i.e the infighting, they took their eye of the ball when no such thing was the case when it came to the development and release of the Mega-Genesis..
They lacked strategic vision.
The challenge: ''How can we compete with a console with a GPU twice as powerful ?''
Sega's solution was to fake the background and floor on 3d games with 2D planes using vdp2.
The problem: This compromises the rendering of geometry with relief and limits artistic vision.

What should they have done? Never allow a 3D game made for the Saturn to be released on the PlayStation.
Increase the production of games like Guardian Heroes to an industrial level. Just as the PS1 received dozens of RE1 clones, the Saturn could have received Guardian Heroes clones. A strategically minded person would know that competing in 3D was madness. Note Raiden1 when it comes to 3D games, the Saturn has worse textures, lighting effects, shadows, and frame rates than the PS1. Everything that makes a 3D game enjoyable is simply worse.
 
Sega's solution was to fake the background and floor on 3d games with 2D planes using vdp2.
The problem: This compromises the rendering of geometry with relief and limits artistic vision.

What should they have done? Never allow a 3D game made for the Saturn to be released on the PlayStation.

Sega didn't have enough leeway to get third person exclusives like this.

As for 2D games the likes of Guardian Heroes were total flops in the west.

The best selling UK Saturn games were…

1. Sega Rally
2. Tomb Raider
3. Sega Worldwide Soccer 97
4. Virtua Fighter 2
5. NiGHTs: into Dreams

…all 3D
 
Sega didn't have enough leeway to get third person exclusives like this.
As for 2D games the likes of Guardian Heroes were total flops in the west.

The best selling UK Saturn games were…

1. Sega Rally
2. Tomb Raider
3. Sega Worldwide Soccer 97
4. Virtua Fighter 2
5. NiGHTs: into Dreams

…all 3D
So what do you suggest? ''How can we compete with a console that has a gpu twice as powerful?''
 
Load times were easy worse on Saturn too

It's great that we finally have the likes of Wobbling Pixels and DF Retro to disprove the copious amounts of bullshit printed in Sega magazines back in the day


The differences in Resident Evil are anecdotal at best. The Saturn version runs fine and looks very close to the PS1 version. Everything is overblown as soon as it is about making an argument against the Saturn lol.
 
Wonder why there are people obsessed with this, when there are modern and much better ways to play these Masterpieces.

I love retro games and always want the authentic experience. Nothing beats playing on original hardware with all its quirks.

Modern remasters are great for allowing new audiences to easily discover older games, but they're not for me.
 
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Load times were easy worse on Saturn too

It's great that we finally have the likes of Wobbling Pixels and DF Retro to disprove the copious amounts of bullshit printed in Sega magazines back in the day



Why are you guys making this a console war thread? Why do you care if tomb raider 2 is on Saturn. Did anyone say it was better than the ps1 version?
 
The differences in Resident Evil are anecdotal at best. The Saturn version runs fine and looks very close to the PS1 version. Everything is overblown as soon as it is about making an argument against the Saturn lol.

Do you even know the meaning of the word anecdotal?

I provide screenshots and videos and the best you can do is write them off as "anecdotal"?
 
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same sort of thing in WipeOut



anecdotal of course LOL


Ah, another example of Saturn games typically having lower colour depth compared to PlayStation

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More Official Sega Saturn Magazine lies exposed by John Linneman too.

This time it's his current boss, Richard Leadbetter, responsible for the review

mwL7tgzeoi0XS47V.jpeg
 
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I liked the Saturn version of RE more and to me the load times felt shorter. Battle mode was cool, and the very first mercs mode. It had a gold Tyrant.

Its true SSM did lie a lot. I liked the magazine, they were also critical at other times and bashed stuff. This is what lost them the license.

But yeah, they pushed a lot of narratives of Saturn versions being better than PSX, like Symphony of the Night. Which isn't true. I've fully completed the map twice or so, but its worse than the PS version. It just had more content. Wipeout 2097 also isn't as good and lacks the PSX OST. Saturn versions of software were generally worse.

There were some outliers, mainly 2D games. But even there the PSX sometimes prevailed, such as MMX3, Dodonpachi, Castlevania. With RAM expansion, something Sony didn't release, Saturn games like XvsSF and Vampire Savior were basically next-gen. Its only from Dreamcast onward that consoles could natively match this on screen.
 
Ah, another example of Saturn games typically having lower colour depth compared to PlayStation

OKBVekoll3PV75CR.jpeg




More Official Sega Saturn Magazine lies exposed by John Linneman too.

This time it's his current boss, Richard Leadbetter, responsible for the review

mwL7tgzeoi0XS47V.jpeg

It's not color depth it's compression. The Saturn textures for wipe out are heavily compressed and low res where as the PlayStation can decompress textures on the fly for each draw. It's one of ps1s many strengths.
 
You guys should all team up and create a fake discussion website / digital console war monument where AI agents fight about ancient consoles forever, this shit is awesome.
 
Its true SSM did lie a lot. I liked the magazine, they were also critical at other times and bashed stuff. This is what lost them the license.

What lost Emap was the licence was Sega wanting more of a lifestyle/lads mag with staff visiting student's unions and bars getting the public involved.

Dennis offered that, Emap offered more of the same.

Neither deserved it though, Future's DCUK was the best by far but Sony didn't want the publishers of Official PlayStation magazine making the official Dreamcast one.
 
I provide screenshots and videos and the best you can do is write them off as "anecdotal"?
Because that's what they are.

What are you trying to prove here ? That RE was amazing on PS1 and shit on Saturn ? The differences are so minor, and the game so perfectly playable, that nobody gave a shit back then. Who thought "Oh my god that Saturn version is awful!" ? Nobody. You can have preferences, fine, but these two games are close enough that the differences are irrelevant.
 
Because that's what they are.

What are you trying to prove here ? That RE was amazing on PS1 and shit on Saturn ? The differences are so minor, and the game so perfectly playable, that nobody gave a shit back then. Who thought "Oh my god that Saturn version is awful!" ? Nobody. You can have preferences, fine, but these two games are close enough that the differences are irrelevant.

Sega Saturn is the only console I've ever been bullied for owning, "Shiturn" being the most common jibe at school.

And trust me, most of this was down to just how badly multiplats were on Saturn, people were more than well aware of that back then, mags were constantly pointing out Saturn's inferiority.

But yeah, it was all down to the marketing innit.
 
Sega Saturn is the only console I've ever been bullied for owning
Bro you were bullied for having a Saturn ? Because multiplats were bad ?

are-you-serious-spiderman.gif


This is so sad !

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So that's why now you have decided to take your revenge !

Well since you told me your story, I am going to tell you mine. We were several friends having a Saturn at school and we all loved our console and games, and didn't buy a PS1 because we were happy with our Saturns. We bought the Dreamcast when it launched though. And nobody was bullied, but we were going to a normal college and high-school.
 
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The moderators notified me. Anyone who wants to talk about things other than TR2 can use my thread.

I won't post here again, so don't quote me.
 
The screenshot was taken from the video I was quoting.

How obtuse can you get!
And I replied about the screenshot, but I can get much more obtuse.

But I'm just messing with you, I know what video it is, it's the old Wipeout comparison from the PS1 vs Saturn faceoff, Saturn has half the color depth on some textures (4bpp v 8bpp) because Saturn since it's primitives are just distorted sprites hence you cannot do proper UV mapping as you can with PS1 and prior GPUs, so textures have to be stored in RAM in the way they are going to be mapped which makes it necessary to lower detail because of the redundancy, but overall color depth in the image is comparable. And sticking on topic, it's likely this why the "port" TR2 might have memory issues on it, that and the split memory pool between VDP1 and VDP2.

What's funny is you comparing about color depth (without specifing texture btw) when the PS1 on that screenshot absolutely murders most of the detail by dithering the entire image from top to bottom, something pretty much every game on it does. But again it's only a crime when Saturn does something that lowers image quality, when the PS1 fills the entire screen with eye piercing dithering or awful texture warping, it's apperently fine, we can only point out instances where the Saturn does poorly.
 
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Bro you were bullied for having a Saturn ? Because multiplats were bad ?

are-you-serious-spiderman.gif


This is so sad !

pat-good.gif


So that's why now you have decided to take your revenge !

Well since you told me your story, I am going to tell you mine. We were several friends having a Saturn at school and we all loved our console and games, and didn't buy a PS1 because we were happy with our Saturns. We bought the Dreamcast when it launched though. And nobody was bullied, but we were going to a normal college and high-school.

Cool story

Fact is everyone viewed Saturn as a vastly inferior 3D machine and quite rightly so, at a time they were craving 3D games with great graphics across many genres.

Apart from a handful of games that made good use of VDP2 the Saturn, in terms of 3D, delivered mostly ugly poor performing games.

Why am I bothered? Because Dreamcast was great (still my favourite console of all time) and Saturn had killed Sega's reputation by then.
 
But again it's only a crime when Saturn does something that lowers image quality, when the PS1 fills the entire screen with eye piercing dithering or awful texture warping, it's apperently fine, we can only point out instances where the Saturn does poorly.

Will you admit the vast majority of 3D multiplats ran worse on Saturn?
 
Yes, why?

Then you can surely see that most of the time ,when comparing, people are going to point out where the Saturn does poorly.

WipEout was a huge release here in the UK and the attention paid to the inferior Saturn port had a huge effect.

People tend to counter argue with VDP2 assisted titles like Mass Destruction. I can assure you no one gave a shite about the likes of Mass Destruction.

It was the big big titles where Saturn was lacking (WipEout, WipEout 2097, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil) and people certainly noticed and made purchasing decisions based on that.
 
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Then you can surely see that most of the time ,when comparing, people are going to point out where the Saturn does poorly.

WipEout was a huge release here in the UK and the attention paid to the inferior Saturn port had a huge effect.

People tend to counter argue with VDP2 assisted titles like Mass Destruction. I can assure you no one gave a shite about the likes of Mass Destruction.

It was the big big titles where Saturn was lacking (WipEout, WipEout 2097, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil) and people certainly noticed and made purchasing decisions based on that.

Fair, but at the same time you say this:

It's great that we finally have the likes of Wobbling Pixels and DF Retro to disprove the copious amounts of bullshit printed in Sega magazines back in the day

But we shouldn't point out the awful dithering? As you said, we can only spot much of the differences in a modern lens, I doubt many were noticing the lower color depth on texture back in the day.
The framerate maybe, but not 4bpp v 8bpp.
I doubt many would point out Mass Destruction since the Saturn port was never released.
 
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The first TR didn't push the Saturn to it's limits. Not even close.
It was rushed out on the Saturn, due to an temporary exclusivity deal of 6 months.
If you want to see what the Saturn could do at the time, take a look at the cancelled version of Shenmue on the console.
Paul Douglas told EDGE mag less than 3% of TR code was specific to Saturn.

And it's getting boring now, even the PS fans know the Saturn version was rushed but are just just trolling...
The 'crunch' hit its peak when Jeremy Heath-Smith came down to the Tomb Raider team to tell the developers that he had done a deal with Sega for the game to come out on the Saturn before the PC and PS1. This meant that the team had to deliver the finished game six weeks before they had expected to. "Can you do it?" Heath-Smith asked. This did not go down well.

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"We said no," Rummery remembers. "He went, yeah, but it's a really good deal. I really need it to happen. Can you do it? No.

"We went round that circle three or four times. Suddenly we had to work like crazy loons. We had four and a half months, then we had three months. We lost a month and a half off the end."






same sort of thing in WipeOut



anecdotal of course LOL

That's 30 years ago, let it go man *rollseye*
 
Fair, but at the same time you say this:



But we shouldn't point out the awful dithering? As you said, we can only spot much of the differences in a modern lens, I doubt many were noticing the lower color depth on texture back in the day.
The framerate maybe, but not 4bpp v 8bpp.
I doubt many would point out Mass Destruction since the Saturn port was never released.

We certainly got Mass Destruction in the UK, not that it garnered much attention.

PlayStation's dithering was a far more subtle effect than Saturn's jarring mesh transparencies. I used my PS1 on a CRT with an RGB cable which meant dithering wasn't noticeable.
 
SEGA fans are talented and dedicated, and will eventually have translated all the most relevant SEGA games, fixed and enhanced games, developed their own games and made a ton of great homebrews on the consoles they love. While PS fans can't do shit.
Not sure if you are serious with this kind of posting.

Isn't the Saturn supposed to be the console that didn't reach it's "full potential"? Isn't that what all you hardcore Saturn fans are saying all the time?

Well, the PS1 didn't have that issue. From day one, they could make good use of the hardware and produce good looking games and after that, some really impressive stuff later on. I'm sure you agree the PS1 reached 100% of it's potential since it was the easiest to develop for, had more developers working for it and lived the longest life compared to it's competitors.

So what's the issue then? What do you expect the PS fan community to do if there's nothing else to squeeze from the console?

It's only natural for the Saturn to have a more active homebrew scene nowadays, if it was indeed not squeezed properly in it's lifetime, plus it also has an army of disappointed fans who want to prove it could do better. And the same exact thing also applies to the N64 scene, which also had a bad run when it comes to "squeezing it's hardware" and that's why it also has a very strong homebrew presence nowadays producing impressive demos and games.

The PS1 has nothing else to offer. It's fans were satisfied and moved on.
 
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