Support NeoGAF

[Geometric-Crusher]

In 1995 it was. Barely anyone bought Parodius at PSX launch.

However, more than 1 million bought Arc the Lad and Namco Museum in the following months. Please don't resist. We need to be realistic here: the Saturn's 2D games just aren't that good. Shinobi Legions isn't better than Shinobi 3, you know. Think about it, if the Saturn were Nintendo's, they would make a Super Mario using Astal's technology or a Metroid using Golden Axe The Duel's technology, and both games would sell more than any Sega Saturn game like Yoshi Story did.

 

[SkylineRKR]

However, more than 1 million bought Arc the Lad and Namco Museum in the following months. Please don't resist. We need to be realistic here: the Saturn's 2D games just aren't that good. Shinobi Legions isn't better than Shinobi 3, you know. Think about it, if the Saturn were Nintendo's, they would make a Super Mario using Astal's technology or a Metroid using Golden Axe The Duel's technology, and both games would sell more than any Sega Saturn game like Yoshi Story did.

Arc the Lad sold in Japan, where 2D games continued to be widely adopted.

Namco museum was a success. Vol 1 was carried by Pac Man. Vol 3 did well too, which had Ms Pac Man. The others without Pac Man didn't sell that great.

But many 2D games sold mediocre or were simply ignored at the time. I can't think of a truly succesful 2D game on Saturn and PSX in the west. A great game with rave reviews such as SotN sort of bombed, gained traction later and became expensive. Trash like Nightmare Creatures vastly outsold it.

Perhaps SF Alpha was the most succesful, I believe SFA1 and 2 sold about a million combined, and SFA3 sold 1 mil on PSX alone. Which was ofcourse a far cry from SF2 on 16-bit. But generally I wouldn't put my money on 2D in that era.

 

[ReBurn]

I played my PS1 more. Well, to death actually. I think it was the much better console experience, which had little to do with specs. It just had so many awesome games. But I love my Saturn. It's on my Sega shelf with my Genesis and Dreamcast. I'm always going to be a Sega console fan at heart. I had to stop myself from picking up a super clean, super complete tower of power at my local indie shop the other day. It was so nice but I didn't need to waste that many hundreds on a toy.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

This is my guess based off experience and stuff I read on the net.

I never bothered with a Saturn though I was a big Genesis gamer (and SNES combo). I got a PS1 a year after it launched here (used to save a few bucks) because it was cheaper and had better sports. I think I got it around fall 1996 or early 1997. The Saturn sports seemed like junk some reason coming off awesome Sega Sports on Genesis.

I didnt really notice or care at the time about PS1 being better at 3D so much because it seemed similar enough in those early days. Later on the gap got bigger which I noticed at game store demos and reading mags where Sony's polygon 989 sports games were very good compared to Saturn junk. Although World Series 98 was supposed to be god tier console baseball game. But I had MLB 98 which was rock solid anyway.

I dont care about JRPGs, so whatever Saturn and PS had was zero effect for me.

But rounding out my game library I picked up games I never played before like Tekken 2, Ace Combat 2, Destruction Derby 2 etc... Never played their first games. My system came with a sampler disc too that had Tekken 2 and F1 demos, so I also got F1 which was awesome. Never knew it was out for PS at the time.

Other things about PS1 made no difference to me like aesthetics (I preferred Saturn as I like how Sega would make nice looking black systems), the memory card way of doing things, etc...

I dont know how rock solid Saturn systems were, but my PS1 eventually failed like many. Upside down trick only worked for maybe half a year. Eventually it got to a point it would never read a disc unless I kept trying for 15 minutes and maybe it'd finally catch. The system would boot up but just stall at the logo and I'd give up most of the time. At that point I gave it all away to a coworker.

What probably killed Saturn too (which I didnt know until the net) was Sega got grilled by retailers who hated they launched first at certain stores. So they boycotted carrying it or perhaps delayed carrying it. I remember Walmart being one of them. You never grill points of distribution. Especially mainstream stuff like a game system which historically is sold at all major places at once. Some might have more stock than others, but at least they all start at the same time. What Sega was thinking was crazy.

 

[AGRacing]

For me it's very simple.

This generation of console would make textured 3D graphics the norm. So the performance and look of those 3D graphics was very important. Basically, the console that has the best 3D graphics would win.

The early games pretty much showed the world the PS1 will have better graphics. Tekken/Toshinden looked better than Virtua Fighter. And Ridge Racer looked better than Daytona. Doesn't matter if Saturn could do better, doesn't matter if the games were rushed. People didn't know that stuff back then.

So there you have it. Once the rumor the PS1 has better 3D graphics took off via word of mouth or magazines, it was over for the Saturn.

As a 15 year old kid I entered a Electronics Boutique in 1995 to BUY a Saturn and had a sick feeling in my stomach when I discovered Ridge Racer and Toshinden and saw a video of Destruction Derby. My father thought his kid was about to make a bad decision with the first big purchase he ever made with his own earned money and stopped me. He bought me the buying guide for PlayStation magazine that EGM made (I still have it!). A week later we came back and I bought a PlayStation and Ridge Racer. Sega never recovered from a terrible launch with rushed software in the US.

At points later (namely the 3 game bundle period a year later) Sega looked much better. But Sony had its own second wave of titles. It was too late.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

the important is 1995, Arc the Lad and Namco Museum Vol. 1, Rayman and MK3 are games from 1995 as well as Astal, Golden Axe The Duel and Shinobi X. Do you realize that if Namco Museum Vol. 1 and Arc the Lad sold more than 1 million copies, would it be too much to ask for Sega's 2D games to also sell 1 million copies? On the Sega Saturn, only three games (Sega Rally, Daytona, and VF2) outsold Sonic 3D Blast, a game that sold 700,000 copies.

Sega needed a big 3D Sonic game to go up against Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot for Christmas 96. Expecting Sega to have something ready for late 95 after delivering Sonic & Knuckles a year prior is unreasonable.

I loved Nights, but I can see why most people didn't get it.

Sonic Xtreme's failure to launch was the straw that broke the camel's back. Saturn was a dead console walking in the west after that.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

If you had just bought a new $249-$699 32-bit console, you wanted to see it work and that meant 3D games.

I was 13 or 14. I still wanted and needed yoshi's island. I saw that as an exceptional late 16bit game worth as much or more than anything on ps1. But in general, I was over 2d games.

In fact, I considered something like panzer dragoon to be more 2d than 3d. It played too closely to space harrier for me. It wasn't just about graphics. I wanted to play games in 3d space.

I see things differently, I played in the arcades and was very used to SFA2 when I finally played the SNES version, I told my friend let's play Metroid because this is not SFA2. I don't agree with the suggestion that a 5th gen 2D game is like 4th gen 2D.

 

[simpatico]

Saturn would have needed truly perfect execution to beat Sony in the US. When PSX launched, Sony had this amazing brand impression in the minds of Americans. Think of Apple in their prime, but cool, and existing in the realm of HiFi gear and general consumer electronics. But always "cool". PSX nailed this branding and bolstered it. Force of nature. It had the opposite quality requirements. There was room for a few fuck ups since the brand was so strong. Plus, SEGA was a game company, and games were for kids. Another piece of baggage Sony didn't have to carry.

 

[Ozzie666]

The Saturn exposed Sega and mostly Sega of America for the house of cards it was with the genesis. Manager and subpar second party developers. No longer protected by the clever accounting and smoke and mirrors to inflate the genesis success.

Even Sega of Japan had no idea. They weren't doing as well as they believed.

Sonic had become an American project that was not skilled enough for 3D. Cerny had left too. Naka back to Japan.

 

[Crayon]

I see things differently, I played in the arcades and was very used to SFA2 when I finally played the SNES version, I told my friend let's play Metroid because this is not SFA2. I don't agree with the suggestion that a 5th gen 2D game is like 4th gen 2D.

I guess if game development shifted majorly to super-scaler style psuedo-3d games, then yeah. But It seems like a whole lot of games would have had to adhere to standard 2d-templates and just pumped up the graphics/spectacle. For example, scaling-sprite racing games where you can't turn backwards on the track. Someone could put in a lot of effort to make that work... just to be able to look backwards down the track. Where in polygonal 3d, the ability to turn backwards on the track just naturally follows.

So what I'm saying is that 3d gameplay enabled by 3d graphics was a giant leap.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Sega needed a big 3D Sonic game to go up against Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot for Christmas 96.

Sega Saturn died for consumers when Resident Evil was released on the Playstation early 1996, Sega themselves and consumers who bought magazines already knew that the Sega Saturn had lost the race and was not worth it, because the set of games for PS1 exceeded in quality the options present on Saturn, this paved the way for the PS1 x N64 polarization, so obviously there would not be a Sonic to compete with Mario because the decision had already been made when they chose to make the 1995 games that you know.

I loved Nights, but I can see why most people didn't get it.

Sonic Xtreme's failure to launch was the straw that broke the camel's back. Saturn was a dead console walking in the west after that.

I agree.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

What also might had hurt Saturn was that was the time for CD cinematics and cut scene galore.

For me, dont really care as I skip them most of the time.

But if you were a gamer who followed gaming and like that stuff, PS1's FMV clips were much smoother looking than Saturn which had a shitty grainy look to them. I think it had to do with codec differences. So Saturn couldnt even get that right.

 

[diffusionx]

What also might had hurt Saturn was that was the time for CD cinematics and cut scene galore.

For me, dont really care as I skip them most of the time.

But if you were a gamer who followed gaming and like that stuff, PS1's FMV clips were much smoother looking than Saturn which had a shitty grainy look to them. I think it had to do with codec differences. So Saturn couldnt even get that right.

PSX had built in hardware on the CPU to decode FMV. I don't think Saturn did. The PSX was a very forward looking device while the Saturn was far less so.

If you had just bought a new $249-$699 32-bit console, you wanted to see it work and that meant 3D games.

I was 13 or 14. I still wanted and needed yoshi's island. I saw that as an exceptional late 16bit game worth as much or more than anything on ps1. But in general, I was over 2d games.

In fact, I considered something like panzer dragoon to be more 2d than 3d. It played too closely to space harrier for me. It wasn't just about graphics. I wanted to play games in 3d space.

this is not talked about enough in vintage game discussion. They see the Saturn running SFA3 flawlessly and are confused at why people didn't go ape shit over this or why people didn't care as much about Saturns 2d. Well that wasn't where people were at in 1996. People were ready for something new. They wanted 3D and Sony was wise to focus on it. Nowadays people play the same shit they were playing 10 years ago and pretend that slightly shinier reflections are some groundbreaking feature, but back then the technology was moving fast and people wanted to be part of it.

 

[Radical_3d]

LOL sega resistance trying to retcon that Saturn had similar power to PlayStation. Man. I had a Saturn in those days and it was rough.

 

[Red Crayon Aristocrat]

It's simple, once FF7 dropped it was OVER.

I heard the N64 never really sold that great in Japan either, what was it missing? FF7.

 

[coffinbirth]

the important is 1995, Arc the Lad and Namco Museum Vol. 1, Rayman and MK3 are games from 1995 as well as Astal, Golden Axe The Duel and Shinobi X. Do you realize that if Namco Museum Vol. 1 and Arc the Lad sold more than 1 million copies, would it be too much to ask for Sega's 2D games to also sell 1 million copies? On the Sega Saturn, only three games (Sega Rally, Daytona, and VF2) outsold Sonic 3D Blast, a game that sold 700,000 copies.

Namco Museum Vol. 1 was one of PlayStation's secret console sellers. First proper home console port of Pac-Man was a big deal for those middle-aged divorced dads. My dad did this. He also bought Vol.3 for Ms. Pac-Man, haha.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

For those of you who chose PS1 over Saturn, I remember some pointers people brought up as better than Saturn. And they had nothing really to do with 3D trends. Did any of these influence your purchase as major factors?

- System was smaller
- Gamepad feel was newer with a better d-pad
- Memory card system system was better than Saturn's limited internal storage. More PS save cards were cheap, while Saturn you had to buy more pricier save carts
- Any other things that added to it