30 years ago - PlayStation and Saturn western launch details announced at E3

Which did you buy back in the 90s?

  • PlayStation

    Votes: 143 89.4%
  • Sega Saturn

    Votes: 44 27.5%

  • Total voters
    160
The first few years of Saturn software were diabolical, aside from bright spots like Panzer Dragoon. By the time they started making bangers it was too late.

The best period for Saturn was late 1995 to mid 1996….

Virtua Cop
Sega Rally
Virtua Fighter 2
Panzer Dragoon Zwei
Guardian Heroes
Nights: into Dreams

…all came out in that period where as PlayStation, after the launch window featuring impressive titles like WipEout, Tekken and Ridge Racer experienced a huge drought.

It took until late 1996 with the likes of Resident Evil and WipEout 2097 for PlayStation to get going again where as Sega's first party peak had passed by then.

But people had already made their minds up by launch, Tekken, Ridge Racer and WipEout blew what Sega were offering out of the water technically and Sega's great comeback (starting with the 'big three') was completely ignored by the mass market.

 
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PlayStation really is a masterclass into how to purchase your way to market dominance :messenger_clapping:

In 1995 what Sony offered was an incredible 3D console with a well designed controller, great tools and a marketing team that could do no wrong.

Seriously, they absolutely nailed the PS1 marketing here in the UK like no gaming company has done before or since…


However if you exclude WipEout, and Crash Brandicoot, which were produced by teams that Sony purchased, it took until late 1997 for them to have their first home grown hit, Gran Turismo.

Saying that, you could say Microsoft is a masterclass in how not to purchase your way to market dominance. Billions spent and little to show for it.
 
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The best period for Saturn was late 1995 to mid 1996….

Virtua Cop
Sega Rally
Virtua Fighter 2
Panzer Dragoon Zwei
Guardian Heroes
Nights: into Dreams

…all came out in that period where as PlayStation, after the launch window featuring impressive titles like WipEout, Tekken and Ridge Racer experienced a huge drought.

It took until late 1996 with the likes of Resident Evil and WipEout 2097 for PlayStation to get going again where as Sega's first party peak had passed by then.

But people had already made their minds up by launch, Tekken, Ridge Racer and WipEout blew what Sega were offering out of the water technically and Sega's great comeback (starting with the 'big three') was completely ignored by the mass market.


Nah mid 96-98 is where its at:

Shining Force 3
Panzer Dragoon Saga
Dragon Force
Guardian Heroes
Burning Rangers
Shining The Holy Ark
Sonic R
Dark Savior
NIGHTS
Fighting Vipers
Virtua Cop 2

:messenger_ok:
 
Nah mid 96-98 is where its at:

Shining Force 3
Panzer Dragoon Saga
Dragon Force
Guardian Heroes
Burning Rangers
Shining The Holy Ark
Sonic R
Dark Savior
NIGHTS
Fighting Vipers
Virtua Cop 2

:messenger_ok:

1997 felt like a bit of a lull for Sega's first party.

Die Hard Arcade - good, not great
Manx TT - rip off
Fighters Megamix - very little originality
Last Bronx - great graphics, average fighter
Sonic R - looked great but played poorly
Sega Touring Car - abysmal
Worldwide Soccer 98 - nothing new

Bomberman and Labotomy's Quake and Duke Nukem ports were the only great titles we got that year.

1998 was actually better despite being only half a year

Panzer Dragoon Saga - masterpiece
Burning Rangers - good, but aged badly
Shining Force 3 - great, if unfinished
Deep Fear - good Resi clone
House of the Dead - looks ugly, plays great
Winter Heat - great Athlete Kings sequel
NBA Action 98 - great NBA2K precursor

Apart from PD Saga though nothing lived up to the likes of Sega Rally, Virtua Cop, Virtua Fighter 2, PD Zwei and NiGHTS after 1996.
 
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I had both and loved both! Of course in the end the playstation ended up being my favorite console of all time, I just have too many great memories with it not to be (second being the mega-drive/genesis).
Still had like 2 great years of fun with the saturn but when I got the PSX it was over for that console. I'd still turn it on from time to time but very rare.
I'll never forget the first time I played Tomb Raider on the saturn though, my mind was blown at the time, I was so happy!
 
Its thanks to that twat SOA was in the mess it was, pushing for a upgrade and trying to hang on to a 16 bit market in decline and vastly oversaturated and his silly believe that people didn't have money for a true next gen system.

Oh absolutely.

As a kid at the time as soon as it was announced I wrote it off. Why would anyone want this when Saturn and Ultra 64 are just around the corner.

A couple more SVP chip games like Virtua Racing would have been a better way of extending the life of the MegaDrive by an extra year with the rest of the company focusing entirely on Saturn.
 
The birth of the goat. I'm more of a Sega guy before with my Sega master system which I enjoyed and impress with Megadrive games library. Saturn was attractive to me at first because it looks slick and powerful, but they focus to much on 2D games. PSX looks so clean and has many games especially on 3D. And PSX have FF7 and MGS1

PS1 was clean only in relative terms. It still had jag-tastic 3d.

Saturn too focused on 2d? Perhaps. But the landscape needed a sprite pusher, and the Saturn still holds up in that regard.
 
PS1 was clean only in relative terms. It still had jag-tastic 3d.

Saturn too focused on 2d? Perhaps. But the landscape needed a sprite pusher, and the Saturn still holds up in that regard.

I think by clean he's referring to the design.

3DO, Jaguar, Saturn and N64 all complimented late 80s/early 90s TV sets and electronics.

Where as PlayStation had that "Y2K aesthetic" which kept it looking modern well into the 2000s.



ge12sGn.jpeg
 
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Its thanks to that twat SOA was in the mess it was, pushing for a upgrade and trying to hang on to a 16 bit market in decline and vastly oversaturated and his silly believe that people didn't have money for a true next gen system.
But then there is the flip side, he knew that the Saturn wasn't ready for the early launch in May 95 that Sega Japan were pushing for, he could see it even though Sega Japan couldn't....also he was in favour of the tech that would eventually power the N64, which had a hell of a lot better 3d capabilities than the Saturn ever had, again SOJ rejected the tech.....yet Nintendo didn't fair too badly in adopting what Sega rejected..
 
Nobody expected the Playstation to be such a massive success. Most thought it would be a similar case as the Philips CDI or Panasonic 3DO. Sony was just a similar electronic appliances company after all.

And with the N64 being delayed, it looked like an easy road for the Sega Saturn, the only proper 5th gen console made by a video game company.
 
Nobody expected the Playstation to be such a massive success. Most thought it would be a similar case as the Philips CDI or Panasonic 3DO. Sony was just a similar electronic appliances company after all.

And with the N64 being delayed, it looked like an easy road for the Sega Saturn, the only proper 5th gen console made by a video game company.

Exactly what I expected at the time.

For me it was a toss up between Saturn and N64 and after yet another delay in the UK I thought it wasn't worth waiting just for N64 so I went with the Saturn.

Returning to school in 1997 and half the class had gotten PlayStations for Christmas. Everyone was talking about the dog jump scare in Resident Evil and the bridge level in Crash Bandicoot, no one had even heard of Panzer Dragoon.

Fair play though, Sony did so much right and after being stunned when I first saw WipEout running on the thing I should have seen it coming.
 
I got a Nintendo 64 for Christmas in 1997. I got a used PS1 much later for $50 around 2000 from some kid who decided he didn't need it anymore after he got a PS2.

I never got a Saturn but I always wanted one, I only knew one person with it and would go over to his house to play things like Albert Odyssey, Sega Rally and Fighters Megamix on it. I am still waiting to play Shining Force 3 and Panzer Dragoon Saga to this day.
 
But then there is the flip side, he knew that the Saturn wasn't ready for the early launch in May 95 that Sega Japan were pushing for, he could see it even though Sega Japan couldn't....also he was in favour of the tech that would eventually power the N64, which had a hell of a lot better 3d capabilities than the Saturn ever had, again SOJ rejected the tech.....yet Nintendo didn't fair too badly in adopting what Sega rejected..

That's just bullshit from TOM. The early launch was SOA idea, after the poor wave of 2nd gen 32 software and sales . Without the 32X Saturn would have had a much better launch not that launch software even makes that much of a impact on if a system sells millions and millions

SOJ was right to reject the N64 chipset it was overpriced and delayed for years. Mega Drive was 88 tech and SEGA needed to go In 94. Not that the N64 gfx was that good it's was a massive letdown of a system for Frame rates , screen resolution byand quality music.
 
1997 felt like a bit of a lull for Sega's first party.

Die Hard Arcade - good, not great
Manx TT - rip off
Fighters Megamix - very little originality
Last Bronx - great graphics, average fighter
Sonic R - looked great but played poorly
Sega Touring Car - abysmal
Worldwide Soccer 98 - nothing new

Bomberman and Labotomy's Quake and Duke Nukem ports were the only great titles we got that year.

1998 was actually better despite being only half a year

Panzer Dragoon Saga - masterpiece
Burning Rangers - good, but aged badly
Shining Force 3 - great, if unfinished
Deep Fear - good Resi clone
House of the Dead - looks ugly, plays great
Winter Heat - great Athlete Kings sequel
NBA Action 98 - great NBA2K precursor

Apart from PD Saga though nothing lived up to the likes of Sega Rally, Virtua Cop, Virtua Fighter 2, PD Zwei and NiGHTS after 1996.
Man, just looking at these games and wondering wtf they are doing sitting on them all going to waste.

Except that HotD port, they can keep that :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 
Saturn was the console of my dreams. It delivered on being the exact continuation of the awesomeness that was the 16 bits generation. Same creativity in games, but with the 3D added on top. It was like getting all these amazing 16 bits games, but even more impressive, and new stuff impossible before. The spirit and passion of what made gaming great was intact.

While SEGA were still riding this wave, Sony paved the way to a strongly "business oriented" activity, which lead to the output we got on PS1, attracted the new public to it (using $$$), and greatly shifted the market. It was not about taking risks anymore, it was about generating that shit ton of money by investing $$ and getting $$$. Sadly, SEGA only had $ compared to them. PS1 is the moment when this industry changed for the worse. Yes, there were still some pretty great third party games on PS1, but these niche games from back then aren't exactly topping the charts nowadays. They were never part of the business strategy anyway.

Dreamcast was simply the end of that wave SEGA were riding, the market had shifted anyway. It was never going to compete against the much larger public that Sony had attracted. We got some nice stuff, like Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio or Skies of Arcadia to name a few. And that was the end. Nowadays, major releases aren't called Jet Set Radio, Skies of Arcadia or Crazy Taxi nope. At least we were lucky to get a couple decently ambitious Valkyria Chronicles games.
 
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Sony being a serious entertainment and technology company pushed consoles further. That is how they managed to take on both Nintendo and Sega.
 
Traded many things in for a Japanese Saturn then when it came out in the uk. The shop I bought it off didn't want to touch it lol.
 
Sony being a serious entertainment and technology company pushed consoles further. That is how they managed to take on both Nintendo and Sega.

Apart from game development, which took some time, they nailed every aspect of developing, marketing, launching and supporting a console at their very first attempt.

No other company has come close.
 
Although Sega had by far the superior first-party lineup (which wasn't that hard to pull off, tbh). Sony won by getting all the big third parties onto Playstation. I mean, Squaresoft, Konami and Capcom carried the Playstation to victory.
 
Picked up Saturn at launch with VF, Daytona, and Clockwork Knight. I had immediate buyers remorse thanks to the expensive price and sub-par quality of the VF and Daytona ports, and I returned everything for a refund within the week. Saturn launch in the US was dreadful. Years later I purchased a used Saturn + Action Replay and really enjoyed going through most of the big games and imports. By the end Saturn had a great library but the first impression was terrible.

I wasn't too interested in Playstation leading up to launch. Sony was the newcomer and I was very happy with Sega and Nintendo. I got to try an import Playstation + Ridge Racer at a Die Hard Gamefan store and was very impressed with the graphics, but still decided to stick with Sega & Nintendo. Even after the Saturn disappointment I planned to wait for Ultra 64, and besides that SNES had some great games in '95. Resident Evil and the announcement of FF7 finally convinced me to buy one in '96.
 
Well, it technically does have a 2D rendering pipeline of some kind built into the graphics processor. But yeah, it doesn't use raster based sprites like the Saturn. From what I understand the 2D rendering engine is an extension of the systems polygon capabilities, and everything is UV mapped onto flat rectangles that are made out of two polygons each with the z-axis disabled. As you have described. The system was designed to replicate the 2D capabilities of the SNES with additional horsepower behind it and the ability to mix layers with the Playstation's polygon pipeline. The "2D engine" was also there for menus and such.

Yeah, that's basically the gist of how PS1 did 2D. By a genuine 2D pipeline tho I was thinking more along the lines of it not having specific hardware that explicitly works with sprites in the way other systems like SNES and Genesis (and, well, the Saturn) do, so if 2D PS1 games (I'm just guessing here at this juncture) wanted to move a "sprite", you'd basically just rewrite all the pixels comprising that sprite-like graphic in a new framebuffer image. Does the PS1 have blitting functions by chance?

Meanwhile systems like Saturn can explicitly move & operate on sprites as object instances, it has more layers for 2D elements, and the VDP2 does on-the-fly scanline rendering like 4th-gen 2D console systems did (as an option; I know it also does "modern" rendering of the image as a framebuffer using DMA like other 5th-gen systems too, since the VDP1 doesn't actually render anything directly to the display).

So that's basically what I meant when saying Saturn has a 'real' 2D engine but PS1 doesn't. Even so, PS1 obviously can do 2D, and I don't think it's that far behind Saturn in that aspect. If anything really does hold it back for 2D, it's the smaller pool of VRAM and general RAM compared to Saturn (stock); that difference only grows when it's a Saturn using a 1 MB RAM or ROM cart, or a 4 MB RAM cart. Also I guess the 512 KB buffer for CD data might've given Saturn additional advantages for 2D, especially since the SCU DSP could technically work on fetched texture data prior to sending it through to other parts of the system for further processing (not that the SCU DSP was that easy to work with, tho).

Although Sega had by far the superior first-party lineup (which wasn't that hard to pull off, tbh). Sony won by getting all the big third parties onto Playstation. I mean, Squaresoft, Konami and Capcom carried the Playstation to victory.

Well early on that was true, yes. But SCEJ and SCEA didn't lack off for long. Parappa the Rapper, Wipeout, Gran Turismo...you simply either didn't get experiences like those from SEGA on the Saturn (or 3P on Saturn for that matter), or if you did they were inferior games inspired by them (or inferior ports, in the case of Wipeout). And even on PS, stuff like Parappa, Wipeout & GT were the best of their style there whether 1P or 3P, or at least for a while in Parappa's case before games like DDR and Beatmania came around (though those are different enough to argue if they're quite the same as Parappa).

So it wasn't completely 3P doing all the heavy lifting for PS1, at least going by stuff past mid-1996, or late 1996 at most (can't forget Crash in that mix). 1994 & 1995 tho? Yeah, that was almost all 3P boosting PS1, and Sony's 1P wasn't on the same level as SEGA's (for games in the same genres, anyhow...outside of arguably JRPGs).
 
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"with virtually no experience in gaming" was a nice lie considering that SMEJ -which controlled 50% of SCEI until 2004- had a steady gaming business for over 5 years by that point. Though I can acknowledge that this was likely hard to research back in the day.
Edit: oh fuck it, totally forgot about Sony Imagesoft and Sony Electronic Publishing. Yeah, these people were full of shit.
 
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Ahh yeah, one of those who bought both of them, well I didn't buy a PS until my brothers launch one started fading with reading because of the laser, no matter what position it was placed in. But the Saturn was always special to me as it was the "first" console I bought for myself. I had bought an Atari Jaguar not too long before it was I think April or May of the Saturns launch year. And as I noted on the back of the Babbages receipt the return policy said if I wasn't happy I could return the system. So I was taking my Jaguar back after a few months of playing Doom and AvP to exchange and upgrade to a 3DO, but fate would intervene that day, as I lived in Phoenix AZ at the time it was a big test market city for new products and lo and behold... They just happened to have the Saturn there that day for purchase. The manger of said Babbages wasn't I happy I was returning the Jaguar so late in her mind, but eff her, I was spending a lot more that day to get the Saturn an extra gamepad and Daytona and Panzer Dragoon. The following month I grabbed all 6 games that came out there before the official launch. Good times indeed.
 
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Both are incredible consoles still worth owning today if you're into retro gaming. Gotta give the edge to the PS1 of course, but I have a lot of fondness for the Saturn.
 
So it wasn't completely 3P doing all the heavy lifting for PS1, at least going by stuff past mid-1996, or late 1996 at most (can't forget Crash in that mix). 1994 & 1995 tho? Yeah, that was almost all 3P boosting PS1, and Sony's 1P wasn't on the same level as SEGA's (for games in the same genres, anyhow...outside of arguably JRPGs).
I would argue that third-parties never ceased to do the heavy lifting, especially in the later years. First-party might have gotten better, yes, but the heavy weights were always the third-parties. I think it was with PS2 where first-party Sony was starting to match what third-parties were putting onto the platform.
 
Oh absolutely.

As a kid at the time as soon as it was announced I wrote it off. Why would anyone want this when Saturn and Ultra 64 are just around the corner.

A couple more SVP chip games like Virtua Racing would have been a better way of extending the life of the MegaDrive by an extra year with the rest of the company focusing entirely on Saturn.
The SVP made more sense, but there comes a time to move on. It was ridiculous to expect SEGA to support the Arcade, MD, Master System, GG, 32X and Saturn. SEGA should have moved all Mega Drive support to the Saturn in 1994 and just had focused on Saturn and Arcade and left the older systems to 3rd parties to support. People forget the Mega Drive came out 2 years before the SNES and had been on the market for over 6 years, even SONY looked on the move on from the PS1 after 6 years and it would have been even less for the PS2 (which is still the best-selling console ever) had the PS3 not been delayed by a year

What Tom didn't factor in was that many people were getting bored of the same style of gameplay in 16 bit games and more importantly, many people who had started their gaming life on NES/MasterSystem/8 bit Micros and moved on to the Mega Drive/Snes were becoming youn adults in full-time employment with plenty of cash on the hip and who were more than ready to splash the cash to ditch the old consoles and move on the 32Bit gen. People like me, who started gaming on the ZX Spectrum and by the time of the Saturn I was working full time and only paying mum like £5 a week lodge, had no worries or major outgoings and just had enough of the same style right-to-left scrolling games.

So many people I knew felt the same and it was also reflected in gaming reviews and gaming shows at the time. That was the fatal mistake by Tom with his worries over price and trying to hold on to a 16bit market fast in decline, it cost SEGA dear. A SEGA just behind the Saturn could have won 2nd place and beat Nintendo IMO
 
What Tom didn't factor in was that many people were getting bored of the same style of gameplay in 16 bit games and more importantly, many people who had started their gaming life on NES/MasterSystem/8 bit Micros and moved on to the Mega Drive/Snes were becoming youn adults in full-time employment with plenty of cash on the hip and who were more than ready to splash the cash to ditch the old consoles and move on the 32Bit gen. People like me, who started gaming on the ZX Spectrum and by the time of the Saturn I was working full time and only paying mum like £5 a week lodge, had no worries or major outgoings and just had enough of the same style right-to-left scrolling games.

You're spot on there.

You can see it in the change of gaming media at the time.

On TV we lost Bad Influence on Children's ITV and got Bits on 4Later.

Magazines went from having brightly coloured pages with cartoon characters doing reviews and Q&A to resembling lad's mags, I even remember asking my mum what "twat" meant after first encountering the word in Official PlayStation Magazine.

True, 16-bit had Mortal Kombat, but it felt like once 32-bit got going the whole vibe of gaming changed to a more adult tone.


16-bit
D5mVTZC.jpeg



32-bit
Kxt0LKI.jpeg
 
You're spot on there.

You can see it in the change of gaming media at the time.

On TV we lost Bad Influence on Children's ITV and got Bits on 4Later.

Magazines went from having brightly coloured pages with cartoon characters doing reviews and Q&A to resembling lad's mags, I even remember asking my mum what "twat" meant after first encountering the word in Official PlayStation Magazine.

True, 16-bit had Mortal Kombat, but it felt like once 32-bit got going the whole vibe of gaming changed to a more adult tone.


16-bit



32-bit

Many gamers were growing up and some even having their own kids, by the time of the launch of the Saturn and PS1.

I used to go to the import and gaming shops all the time back then and we were all getting bored to death of the same old right to left scrolling platform or action game and would see in Game Master and Games World TV shows where the reviews staff were just utterly bored of yet another basic platform game and why can't we have anything new and it was the same in gaming press bar the odd game

So many gamers were ready to move on and also move to polygons and what Tom didn't grasp was that many of them were young adults, working with cash in their pockets and were ready to spend over £300 to make the jump and its always the hardcore that will buy a system at launch anyway, while the casuals buy them latter when the price cuts kick in (back then)

No way was SEGA going to beat SONY in the west, but a SEGA just behind a Saturn with a united gaming development/advising budget would have taken the N64 in the west IMO
 
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Many gamers were growing up and some even having their own kids, by the time of the launch of the Saturn and PS1.

I used to go to the import and gaming shops all the time back then and we were all getting bored to death of the same old right to left scrolling platform or action game and would see in Game Master and Games World TV shows where the reviews staff were just utterly bored of yet another basic platform game and why can't we have anything new and it was the same in gaming press bar the odd game

So many gamers were ready to move on and also move to polygons and what Tom didn't grasp was that many of them were young adults, working with cash in their pockets and were ready to spend over £300 to make the jump and its always the hardcore that will buy a system at launch anyway, while the casuals buy them latter when the price cuts kick in (back then)

No way was SEGA going to beat SONY in the west, but a SEGA just behind a Saturn with a united gaming development/advising budget would have taken the N64 in the west IMO

Genesis was doing better in America than MegaDrive in Japan, I'm surprised that PC Engine sold more in Japan.

Agreed about the 2D mascot platformer trend during 16-but, everyone wanted to make the next Mario or Sonic and the genre dominated that generation. You could argue that fighters were a dominant generation during 32-bit, especially on Saturn in the west.

What I find odd about Tom's decisions is that in the UK Sega were THE console brand for a time and their marketing towards teens, which really showed in the early 90s, compared to Nintendo's focus on children. So you'd think Sega would be at the forefront of the new adult gaming audience with their disposable income, but instead they left that to Sony.

Shame how it all played out, as great as PlayStation's library was with countless Konami, Capcom and Namco classics it was still Sega who made the best games for me and so many people missed out.
 
Didn't get a PS until FFVII, and I only kept it initially because of Persona, and I picked up a saturn later for all the fighters when the pro action replay cart made importing easy. N64 was the only one I got at launch.
 
I think by clean he's referring to the design.

3DO, Jaguar, Saturn and N64 all complimented late 80s/early 90s TV sets and electronics.

Where as PlayStation had that "Y2K aesthetic" which kept it looking modern well into the 2000s.



ge12sGn.jpeg


Were they talking about the console aesthetic? I thought they were talking about the games themselves. I mean in terms of the former, I can see it. The latter? I think that's just more due to PS1 being such a big platform by the end of the '90s, game devs being influenced by Y2K aesthetics and them reflecting that in games they released in the late PS1 years.

Nobody expected the Playstation to be such a massive success. Most thought it would be a similar case as the Philips CDI or Panasonic 3DO. Sony was just a similar electronic appliances company after all.

And with the N64 being delayed, it looked like an easy road for the Sega Saturn, the only proper 5th gen console made by a video game company.

Yeah 5th-gen should've been SEGA's gen, easy. NEC/Hudson screwed up royally with PC-FX, and Nintendo were both late (again) with N64 and also sticking with cartridges. If SEGA weren't tearing itself apart, they would've delayed the Saturn to 1995 and waited for the SH3, improved the VDP1 & 2 while also integrating them into a single ASIC. From what I've looked up, some SH3 variants like the SH7702 & SH7708 were available by March 1995, so a Japanese launch for June 1995 would've been possible, with an American launch in November in time for the holidays.

So literally, still in time to meet PS1 on the market in the West, but with much better specs and more polished first round of games. They wouldn't have even needed to change much in terms of RAM, except maybe they could've gone with 2 MB SDRAM instead of the split 1 MB SDRAM/1 MB DRAM, and had a unified framebuffer for the now-unified graphics processor. Same 2x CD-ROM drive, likely remove the 68K and reduce the CD buffer to 256K (the SH3 would've been able to handle CD data fetching in addition to game code execution tasks anyway), and significantly simplify the SCU (such as removing the DSP or up the clock while providing much better documentation & SDK tools for it).

All of that would've been possible if they had just decided on a delay to H2 1995 for a global Saturn launch, back in early 1994. But the infighting, distractions like 32X (which were reactionary to stuff like Jaguar anyway), and panic about Sony (and to a lesser extent, Nintendo) blinded SEGA from what feel like would've been sensible decisions.

That's just bullshit from TOM. The early launch was SOA idea, after the poor wave of 2nd gen 32 software and sales . Without the 32X Saturn would have had a much better launch not that launch software even makes that much of a impact on if a system sells millions and millions

Are you sure Saturn's early launch was a SOA idea? Because I'm pretty sure that was SOJ. They were worried about PS1 momentum in America, and wanted to repeat the launch success they had in Japan by launching ahead of Sony. So they chose May as the time of release. SOA, as far as I remember, had no say in the matter.

But yes, no 32X would have made for a better Saturn. I know SEGA thought 32X could've been a training grounds of sorts for the Saturn due to the dual SH2s, but the use-case wasn't even the same. The 32X had no hardware 3D so the 2nd SH2 was used for software 3D. The Saturn had hardware 3D through VDP1, so I don't know what they were thinking there.

SOJ was right to reject the N64 chipset it was overpriced and delayed for years. Mega Drive was 88 tech and SEGA needed to go In 94. Not that the N64 gfx was that good it's was a massive letdown of a system for Frame rates , screen resolution byand quality music.

The N64 chipset was great actually; it's not SGI's fault Nintendo picked high-latency RDRAM, used cartridges, and forewent a dedicated audio processor. A Saturn with the N64 chipset would have been an all-around better system simply because I think SEGA would've been smarter with choice of RAM and paired an actual audio processor in there. But it also would've probably been prohibitively expensive with a CD drive, even more so if it launched in 1995 (in Japan; forget a late '94 release).

They would've had to use cartridges to offset that, which would have eventually held them back throughout the gen, same way it did the N64. Or, would have needed a late '95 release in Japan and mid '96 (or late '96) Western release to get a CD-based version out for somewhat cheaper (~ $350, maybe $300 if SEGA wanted to lose money on the hardware more aggressively). Which by then would've meant going up against a $199 PS1 with an even more impressive library of games.

Saturn was the console of my dreams. It delivered on being the exact continuation of the awesomeness that was the 16 bits generation. Same creativity in games, but with the 3D added on top. It was like getting all these amazing 16 bits games, but even more impressive, and new stuff impossible before. The spirit and passion of what made gaming great was intact.

While SEGA were still riding this wave, Sony paved the way to a strongly "business oriented" activity, which lead to the output we got on PS1, attracted the new public to it (using $$$), and greatly shifted the market. It was not about taking risks anymore, it was about generating that shit ton of money by investing $$ and getting $$$. Sadly, SEGA only had $ compared to them. PS1 is the moment when this industry changed for the worse. Yes, there were still some pretty great third party games on PS1, but these niche games from back then aren't exactly topping the charts nowadays. They were never part of the business strategy anyway.

PS1 saved the industry from a regression, and if anything helped embolden many smaller 3P independents, some of whom have gone on to define parts of gaming today, like From Software. I think you're seriously discrediting the good PS1 and Sony did for the industry at the time, in providing a 3D gaming platform that was easy & straightforward for many studios new to 3D that gen, to work with. That was the key to their success.

Meanwhile SEGA made a 32-bit console that only its arcade studios really knew how to work for the longest time, because they spent 10 years prior working on multi-processor architectures (System X & Y boards, for example). They also had lackluster SDKs. Nintendo made a 64-bit system that was in ways even harder to program for than Saturn, and gloated about the dev challenge for 3P to overcome, not to mention stuck with very expensive cartridges. Compared to them (and failures like Atari & 3DO), Sony looked like a savior for many because in most ways...they were.

And hilarious you think no risks were taken with PS1, when it has arguably the most eclectic library of games of that gen from any of the consoles*. You can focus on stuff like Resident Evil & Tekken if you want, but there was no rhythm game like Parappa until Parappa came out. There's still nothing quite like Mizzurne Falls or Planet Laika, certainly not on Saturn or N64, or most consoles afterwards. And while systems like Genesis & SNES had experimental games too, those weren't chart-toppers either most of the time, so why use that against PlayStation? In fact, even with the Saturn, usually the top-sellers were the most mainstream and "safest" games like Virtua Fighter 1 & 2, or SEGA Rally.

*Or at least, is easily tied with them. Maybe only the 3DO has a more eclectic library of outright batshit-insane games. TBH Saturn's library doesn't have quite the weirdness to it of 3DO's or PlayStation's, even if you look at the most niche stuff, though it definitely has a more experimental library than the N64.

Dreamcast was simply the end of that wave SEGA were riding, the market had shifted anyway. It was never going to compete against the much larger public that Sony had attracted. We got some nice stuff, like Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio or Skies of Arcadia to name a few. And that was the end. Nowadays, major releases aren't called Jet Set Radio, Skies of Arcadia or Crazy Taxi nope. At least we were lucky to get a couple decently ambitious Valkyria Chronicles games.

Well at least SEGA are reviving JSR and Crazy Taxi, so things are good again on that note.

"with virtually no experience in gaming" was a nice lie considering that SMEJ -which controlled 50% of SCEI until 2004- had a steady gaming business for over 5 years by that point. Though I can acknowledge that this was likely hard to research back in the day.
Edit: oh fuck it, totally forgot about Sony Imagesoft and Sony Electronic Publishing. Yeah, these people were full of shit.

TBF, none of those venues were wildly successful for Sony in gaming. Sony ImageSoft was mostly seen as a joke for licensed game slop (this is when licensed games were still usually crap or mediocre at best), and they became a big SEGA CD supporter with FMV titles.

So, they did have experience in the industry well prior to PS1 (IIRC they also made a version of the MSX and probably published some games on it too), but it was nowhere to the level of what SEGA or Nintendo had accumulated over the same time frame, again prior to PS1. So relatively speaking, it looked like Sony had no experience in the industry, especially as a platform holder.
 
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I would argue that third-parties never ceased to do the heavy lifting, especially in the later years. First-party might have gotten better, yes, but the heavy weights were always the third-parties. I think it was with PS2 where first-party Sony was starting to match what third-parties were putting onto the platform.

Well sure, 3P didn't stop supporting PS1 in the late years, they had no reason to. I'm just saying, Sony's own 1P efforts became comparable later on, at least in terms of quality and in some cases in terms of sales, too.

3P would've still contributed more, because there were a lot more of them vs. Sony's 1P teams (or co-development with independent 3P studios with Sony publishing the games).

The SVP made more sense, but there comes a time to move on. It was ridiculous to expect SEGA to support the Arcade, MD, Master System, GG, 32X and Saturn. SEGA should have moved all Mega Drive support to the Saturn in 1994 and just had focused on Saturn and Arcade and left the older systems to 3rd parties to support. People forget the Mega Drive came out 2 years before the SNES and had been on the market for over 6 years, even SONY looked on the move on from the PS1 after 6 years and it would have been even less for the PS2 (which is still the best-selling console ever) had the PS3 not been delayed by a year

Yeah, the SVP was the better way to go for enhancing Genesis late in its life, but some SOA engineers (well, marketing gurus more like) got too ambitious. A dedicated SVP chip cartridge would've been cheaper, no more than $50, and simpler to use than the 32X (which was a nightmare in ways to set up with Model 1 MegaDrive/Genesis units).

About software support tho..thing is, SEGA of Japan DID move all their teams to Saturn by 1994. None of the Japanese studios were making MegaDrive/Genesis (or Mega CD or 32X) games by that point, they were all-in on Saturn. It was just the SOA teams like SEGA Technical Institute who were pumping out Genesis titles, but considering SOJ weren't really sharing much about Saturn with them, I can understand to a degree why.

The bigger mistake was SOJ cancelling sequels to many titles popular in the West. No Saturn Streets of Rage, Vectorman, or Eternal Champions for the dumbest of reasons. SOJ wanting to push Virtua Fighter in the West and not wanting "internal competition" with Eternal Champions, even when Sony got a timed exclusive of MK3 (and MK was still big at the time). Extremely dumb decisions, even at the time.

What Tom didn't factor in was that many people were getting bored of the same style of gameplay in 16 bit games and more importantly, many people who had started their gaming life on NES/MasterSystem/8 bit Micros and moved on to the Mega Drive/Snes were becoming youn adults in full-time employment with plenty of cash on the hip and who were more than ready to splash the cash to ditch the old consoles and move on the 32Bit gen. People like me, who started gaming on the ZX Spectrum and by the time of the Saturn I was working full time and only paying mum like £5 a week lodge, had no worries or major outgoings and just had enough of the same style right-to-left scrolling games.

So many people I knew felt the same and it was also reflected in gaming reviews and gaming shows at the time. That was the fatal mistake by Tom with his worries over price and trying to hold on to a 16bit market fast in decline, it cost SEGA dear. A SEGA just behind the Saturn could have won 2nd place and beat Nintendo IMO

One thing I wanted to mention is that while in the West, gamers were ready to move on to 3D, I think that was in part due to a lot of Western events like 3D CG films (Toy Story), growing amounts of 3D animations in general (with TV shows like Reboot), and growing prevalence of 3D games on PC.

In Japan, they were obviously interested in 3D, but not to the extent of disregarding 2D anywhere near the level the West did that generation. I think in part, because most 3D games Japanese gamers played were in arcades, so they hadn't become conditioned to expecting that type of access readily in a home environment, the way Western gamers were starting to. That made Japanese gamers treat 3D as more of a luxury, and they were already generally more willing to travel out for gaming entertainment since arcades were more popular over there (and this is even before the big decline started happening in America & Europe).

Also probably worth saying, Western games media of the time did a lot to drum favor against 2D games. As much as I like Next Generation & Edge Magazine, they definitely "talked down" on a lot of 2D games during 5th gen, and saw them as inferior to 3D games. I think EGM were a bit more forgiving, but only magazines like GameFan were super-into 2D games by that point still.

Genesis was doing better in America than MegaDrive in Japan, I'm surprised that PC Engine sold more in Japan.

I do wonder now just how much better Genesis was doing in America than MegaDrive in Japan. Remember the FY '97 leaks from last year? We saw the massive inventories SOA were piling up in the last years of Genesis, and also got insight into how they'd have to pump the channels with stock during Christmas at the big box retailers, who then forced SEGA to buy all unsold stock the following new year. That's why SOA would always have record revenues during the holidays but then have big losses following that.

Also, that SEGA had unconsolidated accounting until 1996, so the branches didn't really know how the other was doing financially, that was a recipe for disaster.

Agreed about the 2D mascot platformer trend during 16-but, everyone wanted to make the next Mario or Sonic and the genre dominated that generation. You could argue that fighters were a dominant generation during 32-bit, especially on Saturn in the west.

I don't think fighters were that dominant on the Saturn in the West, actually. 2D fighters in general were waning by then, and 3D fighters were taking over. But, Virtua Fighter was simply not popular in the West at that time, even in arcades, so certainly not on Saturn. And the other games like Fighting Vipers & Megamix were even less popular.

All the popular 3D fighters that gen, I mean all of them, if they were on console they were on PS1. Tekken, Toshinden, Bloody Roar, Soul Edge...PS1 was the "fighter's system" in the West for basically the entire generation. But if you mean in terms of fighters measured more on technical prowess and gameplay, I could say Saturn was certainly up there. It did get a lot of really good fighting games.

It's just that, a lot of the best ones were Japan-only, and virtually all of those were 2D, like KOF '97 or SF Zero 3. So if you were in the West and weren't importing, you weren't playing those games.

What I find odd about Tom's decisions is that in the UK Sega were THE console brand for a time and their marketing towards teens, which really showed in the early 90s, compared to Nintendo's focus on children. So you'd think Sega would be at the forefront of the new adult gaming audience with their disposable income, but instead they left that to Sony.

Shame how it all played out, as great as PlayStation's library was with countless Konami, Capcom and Namco classics it was still Sega who made the best games for me and so many people missed out.

I guess SEGA wanted a clear break from Genesis/MegaDrive marketing wise, which is why they retired the SEGA Scream and Pirate TV stuff. Although they did bring them back near the end of the gen, it was way too late.

Marketing is definitely an area where Sony's experience in music, television & film came in handy. They were able to see some of the crossover between those audiences and gaming, and tapped into them for PS1 advertising. The whole thing with putting Wipeout demos in UK rave clubs was genius, considering the vibes of that game meshing really well with '90s dance/rave culture.
 

Yeah, the SVP was the better way to go for enhancing Genesis late in its life, but some SOA engineers (well, marketing gurus more like) got too ambitious. A dedicated SVP chip cartridge would've been cheaper, no more than $50, and simpler to use than the 32X (which was a nightmare in ways to set up with Model 1 MegaDrive/Genesis units).

About software support tho..thing is, SEGA of Japan DID move all their teams to Saturn by 1994. None of the Japanese studios were making MegaDrive/Genesis (or Mega CD or 32X) games by that point, they were all-in on Saturn. It was just the SOA teams like SEGA Technical Institute who were pumping out Genesis titles, but considering SOJ weren't really sharing much about Saturn with them, I can understand to a degree why.

The bigger mistake was SOJ cancelling sequels to many titles popular in the West. No Saturn Streets of Rage, Vectorman, or Eternal Champions for the dumbest of reasons. SOJ wanting to push Virtua Fighter in the West and not wanting "internal competition" with Eternal Champions, even when Sony got a timed exclusive of MK3 (and MK was still big at the time). Extremely dumb decisions, even at the time.

Not true at all. You still have SOJ making the likes of Ristar, Art Of Fighting in 1994 and also having the SEGA CS Japan teams make Virtua Racing Deluxe, Chaotix, Stellar Assault, and Virtual Fighter for the 32X and to make out SOJ weren't sharing Saturn's specs or data is for the birds and we learnt with various interviews how SOA didn't want Saturn to go with the Hitachi and the SH2 chips but stick with Motorola and lets remember it was SOA who were the 1st to show off the Saturn with games running at the CES Show

And anyone who thinks Eternal Champions was going to be able to take on the might of VF and Tekken is having a laugh. It wasn't like the game was massive on the Mega Drive and the Mega CD version utterly flopped.

One thing I wanted to mention is that while in the West, gamers were ready to move on to 3D, I think that was in part due to a lot of Western events like 3D CG films (Toy Story), growing amounts of 3D animations in general (with TV shows like Reboot), and growing prevalence of 3D games on PC.

Japan was behind the west for 3D and you could see that with how NCL had to look to the UK to make Star Fox, but when Namco brought out Star Blade for me the direction of travel was clear and then of course SEGA brought out VR
 
Genesis was doing better in America than MegaDrive in Japan, I'm surprised that PC Engine sold more in Japan.

Agreed about the 2D mascot platformer trend during 16-but, everyone wanted to make the next Mario or Sonic and the genre dominated that generation. You could argue that fighters were a dominant generation during 32-bit, especially on Saturn in the west.

What I find odd about Tom's decisions is that in the UK Sega were THE console brand for a time and their marketing towards teens, which really showed in the early 90s, compared to Nintendo's focus on children. So you'd think Sega would be at the forefront of the new adult gaming audience with their disposable income, but instead they left that to Sony.

Shame how it all played out, as great as PlayStation's library was with countless Konami, Capcom and Namco classics it was still Sega who made the best games for me and so many people missed out.
The Mega Drive did the best in the UK where it completely outsold the SNES, unlike in the USA where sales were much closer.

I've always given credit to SEGA Europe and the likes of SEGA's Simon Morris looking to push the Mega Drive to older gamers and one saw that every early in with Sega Eurpe being on the James Whale TV Radio show and then of course you had the Cyber Razor cut TV ads and latter on, big pushes into sporting advertising and various TV/Music/ Sporting celebrities seen playing SEGA games and consoles.

I'm glad you talked about teens, and that's my point as by the time of the Saturn, those teens were becoming young adults with plenty of disposable income. That's what Tom failed to grasp, along with how stagnated the 16 bit market was becoming and how so many were ready to make the jump to the next gen. I would have far more respect for Tom if he just came out and admitted he made a bad call rather than tell lies about being able to work with SONY or how SEGA Japan were horrible to him and SOA.
 
And anyone who thinks Eternal Champions was going to be able to take on the might of VF and Tekken is having a laugh. It wasn't like the game was massive on the Mega Drive and the Mega CD version utterly flopped.

Just imagine a world without Virtua Fighter, would the likes of Tekken and Dead or Alive had ended up just being yet more Street Fighter clones?

While I love Tekken 3 and Soul Calibur 1 nothing quite beats Virtua Fighter for me.

In that regard, I'm glad Eternal Champions was a flop.
 
Parappa until Parappa came out. There's still nothing quite like Mizzurne Falls or Planet Laika
So you cite niche games that are non-existent today, which is exactly what I was saying. And you cite games like Tekken, Resident Evil and MGS (or whatever) which was the norm Sony built. So you basically say the exact same thing as me, thank you for agreeing. Sony shifted the market towards this population, who wanted to play realistic games, and succeeded. The main difference between us is that you consider this a good thing while I consider that it largely suck, and paved the way for the modern video-game market. Also Sony is totally irrelevant to From Software's success lol. According From's merit to Sony is a complete joke. They have always been a multiplatform developer and succeeded on their own merit.

Yeah, the SVP was the better way to go for enhancing Genesis late in its life, but some SOA engineers (well, marketing gurus more like) got too ambitious. A dedicated SVP chip cartridge would've been cheaper, no more than $50, and simpler to use than the 32X (which was a nightmare in ways to set up with Model 1 MegaDrive/Genesis units).
Anyone comparing the SVP to the 32X, and expecting similar or close results, has absolutely no clue on how the SVP works and its limitations. Skipping the 32X was a possibility, for sure, but the SVP would have never taken its place. The 32X works perfectly with Model 1 MegaDrive, what are you smoking ?
 
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So you cite niche games that are non-existent today, which is exactly what I was saying. And you cite games like Tekken, Resident Evil and MGS (or whatever) which was the norm Sony built. So you basically say the exact same thing as me, thank you for agreeing. Sony shifted the market towards this population, who wanted to play realistic games, and succeeded. The main difference between us is that you consider this a good thing while I consider that it largely suck, and paved the way for the modern video-game market. Also Sony is totally irrelevant to From Software's success lol. According From's merit to Sony is a complete joke. They have always been a multiplatform developer and succeeded on their own merit.


Anyone comparing the SVP to the 32X, and expecting similar or close results, has absolutely no clue on how the SVP works and its limitations. Skipping the 32X was a possibility, for sure, but the SVP would have never taken its place. The 32X works perfectly with Model 1 MegaDrive, what are you smoking ?

The benefit of SVP was that consumers were just buying another MegaDrive game (albeit a pricey 3D one).

32X was another platform at a time when they really didn't need one.

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when Sega approved the thing thinking it would end up as anything but landfill.
 
The benefit of SVP was that consumers were just buying another MegaDrive game (albeit a pricey 3D one).

32X was another platform at a time when they really didn't need one.
Then simply skip the 32X. But the SVP would have not helped making all those 32X games, that's for sure. There is only so much you can do in a single 16 colors palette. Virtua Racing is already ugly enough with all the dithering, and the same problem affects every 3D SNES game by the way. Maybe we could have gotten a Doom port, but what's the point ? Virtua Fighter would have been ugly as sin. Anything with texture would have never happened. The SVP was ultra limited because it ran on the MegaDrive's VDP.

SEGA should have supported better the SEGA-CD. There was more that could have been done on this support. Don't introduce the 32X, better support the SEGA-CD and then move on to the Saturn. Still running on the MegaDrive's VDP, sure, but Redbook Audio, or even much high quality compressed audio, and a very large ROM size. Many 2D games could run thanks to the SEGA-CD, for example the PCE Castlevania, and why not, SOTN. Lunar Eternal Blue looks and sounds like a 32 bits game.
 
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Then simply skip the 32X. But the SVP would have not helped making all those 32X games, that's for sure. There is only so much you can do in a single 16 colors palette. Virtua Racing is already ugly enough with all the dithering, and the same problem affects every 3D SNES game by the way. Maybe we could have gotten a Doom port, but what's the point ? Virtua Fighter would have been ugly as sin. Anything with texture would have never happened. The SVP was ultra limited because it ran on the MegaDrive's VDP.

SEGA should have supported better the SEGA-CD. There was more that could have been done on this support. Don't introduce the 32X, better support the SEGA-CD and then move on to the Saturn. Still running on the MegaDrive's VDP, sure, but Redbook Audio, or even much high quality compressed audio, and a very large ROM size. Many 2D games could run thanks to the SEGA-CD, for example the PCE Castlevania, and why not, SOTN. Lunar Eternal Blue looks and sounds like a 32 bits game.

SVP for Star Wars Arcade and Doom on MegaDrive possibly could have worked.

If they wanted to extend the life of the MegaDrive this surely would have been better

Worth remembering all this was down to Sega America being scared of the Atari Jaguar 😆
 
SVP for Star Wars Arcade and Doom on MegaDrive possibly could have worked.

If they wanted to extend the life of the MegaDrive this surely would have been better

Worth remembering all this was down to Sega America being scared of the Atari Jaguar 😆
To be fair SOJ was also worried about the Jaguar and 3DO and when the talk of Jaguar 1st started it was a powerful machine meant to come in at the same price point of a Mega Drive.

I wished SEGA Japan had stuck with its original plan of Saturn and the Jupiter which for me made more sense. And I would have moved all Mega Drive titles in production to Saturn in 1994. We could have a 24 bit colour version of Comix Zone with CD sound and maybe even a 2 player mode. Let's also remember how SOA totally messed up 32bit Sonic, not that they should have ever been given the task of making the most important Sonic game at that time
 
To be fair SOJ was also worried about the Jaguar and 3DO and when the talk of Jaguar 1st started it was a powerful machine meant to come in at the same price point of a Mega Drive.

I wished SEGA Japan had stuck with its original plan of Saturn and the Jupiter which for me made more sense. And I would have moved all Mega Drive titles in production to Saturn in 1994. We could have a 24 bit colour version of Comix Zone with CD sound and maybe even a 2 player mode. Let's also remember how SOA totally messed up 32bit Sonic, not that they should have ever been given the task of making the most important Sonic game at that time

Surely Jupiter (which I understand to be a cartridge based system with Saturn specs) would have split the consumer base again?

As for the potentially additional Saturn games you mentioned, Sonic Mars for 32X was yet another distraction that STI didn't need, they should have started Saturn development as soon as Sonic & Knuckles was finished.
 
Surely Jupiter (which I understand to be a cartridge based system with Saturn specs) would have split the consumer base again?

As for the potentially additional Saturn games you mentioned, Sonic Mars for 32X was yet another distraction that STI didn't need, they should have started Saturn development as soon as Sonic & Knuckles was finished.
Not really, since it was just a Saturn minus the CD-ROM, which SEGA would bring out later, it wasn't like early Saturn games made full use of CD storage. That to me made more sense than having a 32X, which split the development pipeline, at least with Jupiter the tech specs and development environment used the same chainset. STI or SOA should have never been given the task of making a 32bit Sonic and that should have been SOJ and the Sonic Team.

SOA were also clueless not to get a Joe Montana game early on the Saturn, even if it was little more than a Mega Drive game with massive sprites and proper scaling . I see to remember Mr Montana taking SEGA to court of the lack of new title.

SEGA America were beyond clueless under Tom Kalinske , he's far from a SEGA hero and just a lying tosser who didn't look to get SEGA America 32bit pipelines up to scratch and couldn't see how the 32X should have been dropped midway through
 
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PlayStation.

I didn't get it at launch. I got it for Christmas 1998 with Wild 9 and Resident Evil. Best Christmas of my childhood.

PS1.

Fond memories with so many great games and a lot of forgotten gems such as:

G-Police
Soviet Strike
Nuclear Strike
Colony Wars
Destruction Derby
Pandemonium
Alundra

Colony Wars is a series that should make a comeback. Fantastic series back in the day.
 
Not true at all. You still have SOJ making the likes of Ristar, Art Of Fighting in 1994 and also having the SEGA CS Japan teams make Virtua Racing Deluxe, Chaotix, Stellar Assault, and Virtual Fighter for the 32X and to make out SOJ weren't sharing Saturn's specs or data is for the birds and we learnt with various interviews how SOA didn't want Saturn to go with the Hitachi and the SH2 chips but stick with Motorola and lets remember it was SOA who were the 1st to show off the Saturn with games running at the CES Show

Art of Fighting is a SNK IP; SOJ just got a license to reprogram it for the Genesis/MegaDrive and handle publishing on the platform. I'd figure costs-wise that was much cheaper than making in-house titles from scratch, and they had already been doing that since the system's launch in a way (like with Strider). I wouldn't use that as an example of them committing extensive resources to Genesis/MegaDrive when they could've/should've been shifting over to the Saturn. Tho Ristar, OTOH, I agree is an example of that (love that game tho).

As for why SOA might've wanted Motorola, TBH SOJ were right to ignore them on that choice. SOA had little to no substantive technical background on actual console engineering; that was all SOJ. And SOA already showed their "genius" with the 32X...not a great track record on their part. The only suitable Motorola CPUs that would've been economically viable for Saturn in a '94//95 timeframe were the 68040 and 68060, as SEGA would've been interested in one with the FPU integrated into the chip. The 68060 came out April 1994 from what Wikipedia says.

68060 had great performance, but the issue with choosing it probably would've been combination of power consumption and Motorola basically moving on to Power PC not long after. What sense would it have made for SEGA to choose a CISC processor for Saturn from a provider who themselves were dropping CISC in favor of RISC designs going forward? Plus, equivalent RISC chips (in performance) would've costed less, something SEGA would've prioritized.

SOA probably also just favored an American chip designer for Saturn, I mean they preferred 3DFX's Blackbelt design for some of the same reasons (and to appease EA, who seemingly had shares in 3DFX). On paper the 68060 would've made a good choice and also enabled Genesis/MegaDrive BC, but I think Motorola's own product catalog shifting to RISC, and benefits of power supply & customization options for non-CISC chip designs were more appealing to SOJ, and they made the right choice.

Well, kinda. They really should've waited until the SH3 was available, but that would've required a delay for Saturn until '95. Would've been worth it IMHO.

And anyone who thinks Eternal Champions was going to be able to take on the might of VF and Tekken is having a laugh. It wasn't like the game was massive on the Mega Drive and the Mega CD version utterly flopped.

Well the MegaCD didn't sell like the Genesis did so of course games exclusive to it didn't sell in high volume, either. Point is, EC had a fanbase, it was growing, and it would've ultimately benefited the Saturn in Western markets.

Especially at launch, where again, MK was still big and MK3's first next-gen home port was a PS1 timed exclusive for 6 months. Would've only helped the Saturn's meager early Western library to have another fighter more appealing to Western tastes and also give Saturn owners their MK fix without feeling they needed to turn to PlayStation for it.

Japan was behind the west for 3D and you could see that with how NCL had to look to the UK to make Star Fox, but when Namco brought out Star Blade for me the direction of travel was clear and then of course SEGA brought out VR

Are we talking in terms of gaming? Or in general? Because if in general then yeah, I'd agree. Gaming wise, though? No, Japan was definitely at least on par with Western game studios and I'd argue ahead of them by the late '80s/early '90s for 3D.

What Western games on console, microcomputer, PC or arcade were on the level of Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter when those came out? Ridge Racer & Daytona USA in 1993? Tekken in 1994? I mean on a purely technical level, of course. I can think of some impressive pseudo-3D PC/DOS games during that period like Ultima Underworld and System Shock (and DOOM), and in terms of game design & scale those games were incredible for what they did. But on a technical level, they couldn't touch the top Japanese 3D games of that time period. They were just tiers apart.

The Mega Drive did the best in the UK where it completely outsold the SNES, unlike in the USA where sales were much closer.

Actually, SNES did very well in the UK. In UK & Europe in general, SNES was closer to MegaDrive than NES was to Master System. Nintendo had closed a big chunk of the Europe gap during the 16-bit gen, though yes MegaDrive still won overall, just by a slimmer lead.

The US side of things are more murky these days because we have those leaked fiscal documents from SEGA showing they had huge inventories of unsold Genesis games & hardware during the late years of Genesis. If you look back on some of the (very hard-to-find) sales charts from that era you'll usually see SNES games more consistently in the Top 10s, but periods where Genesis games were the top sellers instead.

I've since had some doubt about Genesis having 65% of American market share in 1993 for example, because that might've been via sold-in metrics, and SEGA had some lucrative deals with big box retailers to keep their stock levels filled during holidays, but SEGA having to buy back unsold stock the following quarter. But I guess it really doesn't matter that much now; the main point is Genesis was competitive with SNES in the West, and broke Nintendo's stranglehold on the console market outside of Japan.

So you cite niche games that are non-existent today, which is exactly what I was saying. And you cite games like Tekken, Resident Evil and MGS (or whatever) which was the norm Sony built.

You just named three 3P titles which were developed wholly independent of SCEJ or SCEA, and then try blaming Sony for "setting industry norms" with those games?

So you basically say the exact same thing as me, thank you for agreeing. Sony shifted the market towards this population, who wanted to play realistic games, and succeeded.

The market was already shifting, buddy. On PC for example, gaming tastes were shifting to more mature story-driven titles thanks to adventure games and FMV adventure games like Phantasmaphoria, Myst, and 3D games like Alone in the Dark & System Shock. SEGA were doing that with their sports titles and pushing more mature games like Mortal Kombat & Night Trap.

More & more gamers were already trending that way since the kids who played NES, SNES & Genesis were growing up by the time PlayStation came out. Sony just capitalized on a naturally-occurring thing. And, even Saturn was appealing more to that demographic with early games like D and Lunacy (great game, I need to play it again soon).

The main difference between us is that you consider this a good thing while I consider that it largely suck, and paved the way for the modern video-game market. Also Sony is totally irrelevant to From Software's success lol. According From's merit to Sony is a complete joke. They have always been a multiplatform developer and succeeded on their own merit.

You couldn't be more wrong. PS1 was the system From Software cut their game dev teeth on, and it's where they refined their style. Also during that gen they were 100% exclusive to PlayStation for their games, this isn't even that hard to look up!

Trying to discredit that and claim they were always multiplat, that Sony and PlayStation had no involvement in their growth & success just reeks of cope from a fanboy who hasn't gotten over a 30-year grudge against the wrong company which they keep blaming for the death of SEGA consoles.

Anyone comparing the SVP to the 32X, and expecting similar or close results, has absolutely no clue on how the SVP works and its limitations. Skipping the 32X was a possibility, for sure, but the SVP would have never taken its place. The 32X works perfectly with Model 1 MegaDrive, what are you smoking ?

Uh, no the 32X definitely had some connection issues with certain MegaDrive/Genesis units. I think Model 1 systems were the culprit; basically there was a metal thingy you needed to put between the MegaDrive/Genesis cartridge slot and the 32X to negate some static interference, but some launch models were defective anyway when doing this so it didn't work. There are videos on Youtube which talk about it, you can look it up.

As for SVP vs 32X, the thing is 32X was overkill for what only needed to be a modest boost of Genesis performance for select titles. Asking Genesis owners who were looking to save up to jump over to 5th gen, $169 for an add-on that was dead six months later, was just stupid business all the way through. If they had put out a SVP cart for $50 and the same thing happened, a lot of Genesis owners wouldn't have felt as burned, and therefore may've given Saturn a chance.

Plus, the 32X just reinforced SEGA's decision to use dual SH2s for the Saturn. In a world where 32X didn't happen, maybe SEGA would've been more inclined to delay Saturn and upgrade from a dual SH2 setup to a more economical & easier-to-implement single SH3 instead. Or at the very least, they could've maybe reworked other parts of the Saturn like the system bus (to remove contention between both SH2s sharing the same bus), or VDP1 & VDP2 chips (integrate into a single ASIC and fix the alpha transparency problems).
 
Art of Fighting is a SNK IP; SOJ just got a license to reprogram it for the Genesis/MegaDrive and handle publishing on the platform. I'd figure costs-wise that was much cheaper than making in-house titles from scratch, and they had already been doing that since the system's launch in a way (like with Strider). I wouldn't use that as an example of them committing extensive resources to Genesis/MegaDrive when they could've/should've been shifting over to the Saturn. Tho Ristar, OTOH, I agree is an example of that (love that game tho).

The point was SOJ was still making games for the Mega Drive in 1994 and way into 1995 if one includes the 32X . Let's be honest here, most of the better 32X games came from SOJ. It would have been so much better if those games were moved up to Saturn

As for why SOA might've wanted Motorola, TBH SOJ were right to ignore them on that choice. SOA had little to no substantive technical background on actual console engineering; that was all SOJ. And SOA already showed their "genius" with the 32X...not a great track record on their part.


SOA wanted to go with MC 68020 chip and one can make merits for both sides. What it proves is SOA knew of Saturn development before its main CPU was even finalised, so the Saturn wasn't hidden at all from SOA
That's to overlook how in 1993 SEGA America set up the Away team for Saturn development. I had this silly battle for years on System 16, but the Saturn wasn't hidden from SEGA America , that would have been the Mega-CD



Well the MegaCD didn't sell like the Genesis did so of course games exclusive to it didn't sell in high volume, either


You overlook the point of how Eternal Champions sold terribly on the Mega-CD while other Mega-CD games sold in ok numbers. So this massive fanbase for EC just wasn't there, and if truth was told, many bought the game based on the hype of an SF2 killer and were disappointed with the result. I was against the cancellation of the Saturn game myself, but the game was never going to take on the might of SEGA and Capcom on the Saturn IMO. What would have helped with sales in the USA was if SEGA America had made a Joe Montana game early in

Are we talking in terms of gaming? Or in general? Because if in general then yeah, I'd agree

Both for the consumer side. Europe had a massive head start with 3D polygons thanks to the Amiga and ST and were way ahead of the Japanese consumer teams for 3D graphics and tools. In the Arcade's it was Atari who were pushing Polygons until Namco made System 21

Actually, SNES did very well in the UK. In UK & Europe in general, SNES was closer to MegaDrive than NES was to Master System

It did not sell close to the Mega Drive at all. SEGA UK had double the user base of Mega Drive owners to SNES owners, far from a flop but way behind the MD
I believe it was France where Snes and Mega Drive hardware sales were very close if not where the SNES did better.
 
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The point was SOJ was still making games for the Mega Drive in 1994 and way into 1995 if one includes the 32X . Let's be honest here, most of the better 32X games came from SOJ. It would have been so much better if those games were moved up to Saturn

To be fair most of what Sega of America produced across all platforms was trash.

Outside of STI's Sonic games (which were largely produced by Japanese staff) I really struggle to think of anything they produced that I'd define as great.

It's even more surprising that the best 32X games came from Sega's AM teams which should have been entirely focused on Saturn and Model 2 development.
 
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