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[RetroGamingUK]

Yeah Tomb Raider had a lot of complex geometry and Saturn was never going to run it smoothly, same with Quake.

Saturn did have a few wins in the early generation though. Virtua Fighter 2 for example used VDP2 background layer parallax and warping leaving VDP1 to render just the character and, apart from the ring appearing to float in the air, the end result looked great.




Athlete Kings does the same



Another example is NiGHTS. The main game looked very ugly with lots of pop in and pixelated 2D assets, but the boss stages had flat VDP2 floors leaving NiGHTs, the boss and assets to be rendered in 3D with some nice lighting/shading effects

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

You guys always argue graphics but that had little to do with it. Sega didn't carry over any of their big series that were popular on the genesis / mega drive.

some of us, because the point of this thread is precisely to show that if there was a game that people wanted to play, they would buy the Sega Saturn, it is the games that matter for the success or failure of a console.

 

[nkarafo]

What bugs me about VF2 is the lack of shading/lighting. The models and animation are great, but it looks so flat... I prefer Tekken 3 visually or other Saturn fighters like Fighter's Megamix.

 

[RoboFu]

What bugs me about VF2 is the lack of shading/lighting. The models and animation are great, but it looks so flat... I prefer Tekken 3 visually or other Saturn fighters like Fighter's Megamix.

this is a weird statement because tekken 3 came out MUCH LATER than VF2 and FMM had shading. Its cool that you like Tekken 3 more.. I did as well but that statement is like saying. " What bugs me about a CRT 'S in the 80s is that the screen was noisy.. I prefer newer OLEDs visually over other tv types like 90s LCDs.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

What bugs me about VF2 is the lack of shading/lighting. The models and animation are great, but it looks so flat... I prefer Tekken 3 visually or other Saturn fighters like Fighter's Megamix.

Fighters Megamix butchered the character detail, big downgrade in my eyes.

Yeah Tekken 3 has lovely lighting and polygonal diaramic backgrounds. The only reason Tekken 2 didn't look great was that the arcade version was visually unambiguous to begin with

 

[NeverYouMind]

What bugs me about VF2 is the lack of shading/lighting. The models and animation are great, but it looks so flat... I prefer Tekken 3 visually or other Saturn fighters like Fighter's Megamix.

Fighters Megamix is almost a port of Virtua Fighter 3 into Fighting Vipers on Saturn so it is no wonder that it has more advanced features relative to Virtua Fighter 2. Is it better than Tekken 3? That is debatable. I could go either way based on mood.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Fighters Megamix is almost a port of Virtua Fighter 3 into Fighting Vipers on Saturn so it is no wonder that it has more advanced features relative to Virtua Fighter 2. Is it better than Tekken 3? That is debatable. I could go either way based on mood.

Poppycock!

It has a few moves and sidestepping from VF3 and that's it, completely lacks the undulating stages that make VF3 VF3

The graphics were downgraded to encompass Fighting Vipers' walls, the music resets every round because reasons and the additional characters were trash.

 

[NeverYouMind]

It has a few moves and sidestepping from VF3 and that's it, completely lacks the undulating stages that make VF3 VF3

The graphics were downgraded to encompass Fighting Vipers' walls, the music resets every round because reasons and the additional characters were trash.

Most VF players dislike the uneven stages of VF3. The walls and ring outs give it an edge over Tekken 3. Siba, Janet, and Rent-A-Hero were amazing additions to the roster. The rest are all better than Gon in Tekken 3. Fighting Gon is a nightmare and he isn't even fun to play.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Most VF players dislike the uneven stages of VF3. Siba, Janet, and Rent-A-Hero were amazing additions to the roster. The rest are all better than Gon in Tekken 3. Fighting Gon is a nightmare and he isn't even fun to play.

Irrelevant, you said FM is almost a port of VF3 despite leaving out its biggest feature. Who cares if people liked it or not.

Back to FM, Sega could have included characters like Sonic, Tails, Axel Stone, Joe Musashi… instead we got a bunch of weird niche characters from games nobody cared about.

 

[NeverYouMind]

Irrelevant, you said FM is almost a port of VF3 despite leaving out its biggest feature. Who cares if people liked it or not.

Back to FM, Sega could have included characters like Sonic, Tails, Axel Stone, Joe Musashi… instead we got a bunch of weird niche characters from games nobody cared about.

Virtua Cop and Rent-A-Hero additions were solid. Sonic sucks outside of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 which was mid. Nobody really gives a shit about Shinobi. Lack of Streets of Rage and Golden Axe characters is disappointing but expected as this game recycled assets from other projects of the time. Most casuals that play the game pick Hornet (the car) or Candy (Fighting Vipers) so it doesn't really matter.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

at least in the US, to me and everyone i knew, saturn failed because it lost to the playstation

playstation was...

• cheaper for consumers
• cheaper for publishers
• easier for developers
• more performant in 3d
• still solid for 2d

and games.
PS had big boys like MGS, FF7, etc
sega couldnt even make a decent sonic game for the saturn.

plus sony was seen primarily as a high end electronics manufacturer back then.
sega made toys.
easy choice for casuals/normies.

saturn was never going to win against the n64 (again, just talking about the US).
maybe if n64 stuck to the ultra64 specs and was super expensive, and playstation was never born.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

sega couldnt even make a decent sonic game for the saturn.

Fucking up Sonic was huge.

I'd been weighing up getting a Saturn or an N64 through 1996, when the latter was delayed into 1997 and I saw the below in a magazine I instantly committed to Saturn.

After all it was a Sonic game by the same STI who made the MegaDrive games (little did I know all the Japanese talent had left), what could go wrong.

Just before the big Christmas period release it was cancelled and chances of Saturn being anything other than a commercial disaster were eviscerated.

 

[diffusionx]

Yeah Tomb Raider had a lot of complex geometry and Saturn was never going to run it smoothly, same with Quake.

Saturn did have a few wins in the early generation though. Virtua Fighter 2 for example used VDP2 background layer parallax and warping leaving VDP1 to render just the character and, apart from the ring appearing to float in the air, the end result looked great.




Athlete Kings does the same



Another example is NiGHTS. The main game looked very ugly with lots of pop in and pixelated 2D assets, but the boss stages had flat VDP2 floors leaving NiGHTs, the boss and assets to be rendered in 3D with some nice lighting/shading effects

Nobody doubts the Saturn had some great looking games. I played the Switch port of Radiant Silvergun and just remembered how good that game looked on Saturn. That game wasn't really doable on PSX without major cuts.

But, you know, on PSX, you got a cheaper system with lots of good looking games, and the best games, and every dev was making games for it, even if Decathlete looked better than a lot of games on Sony's system, this didn't move the needle.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

at least in the US, to me and everyone i knew, saturn failed because it lost to the playstation

playstation was...

• cheaper for consumers
• cheaper for publishers
• easier for developers
• more performant in 3d
• still solid for 2d

and games.
PS had big boys like MGS, FF7, etc
sega couldnt even make a decent sonic game for the saturn.

The Sega Saturn died in the west within 12 months, from E3 1995 to E3 1996.

There was no need for Final Fantasy. I mean, Crash Bandicoot was better than any game Sega made back then, not graphics. Unfortunately, Sega had limited human resources, and people with low intellect were making games. Want proof? Sega said it was impossible to make a mascot game filmed behind . ND proved it was possible. This wasn't due to a lack of money, but rather a lack of intellect.
Sega changed their hardware because of the PS1 and they managed to make worse hardware, that's sad. Sega thought that $399 and some blocky games would attract consumers like bees to honey, they were naive. I hope Sega gets back on their feet one day and tries to make better products.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

The Sega Saturn died in the west within 12 months, from E3 1995 to E3 1996.

There was no need for Final Fantasy. I mean, Crash Bandicoot was better than any game Sega made back then, not graphics. Unfortunately, Sega had limited human resources, and people with low intellect were making games. Want proof? Sega said it was impossible to make a mascot game filmed behind . ND proved it was possible. This wasn't due to a lack of money, but rather a lack of intellect.
Sega changed their hardware because of the PS1 and they managed to make worse hardware, that's sad. Sega thought that $399 and some blocky games would attract consumers like bees to honey, they were naive. I hope Sega gets back on their feet one day and tries to make better products.

Crash Bandicoot was gorgeous and for many the first 3D platformer they ever played. Meanwhile Sega was offering Clockwork Knight and Bug!



Yeah no contest

 

[Panajev2001a]

Many developers had a hard time working on the system and many said the DC or more so the Game Cube was easier to work with, not that made any difference to developers when the market share was so good

Even Shinji Mikami had to work on the PS2 after calling the hardware crap and how he wouldn't work on it.

I am not saying the HW was not easy to bruteforce like Xbox and that the GCN was not nice to work with, but PS2 was far from crap nor an odd offshoot branch of 3D rendering. It was a mix of turbo charging the old approach (see the GPU / rasteriser side of things) and very forward looking and flexible paradigms (see the VUs).

Saturn's bet on quads and forward texturing was neither super practical nor forward looking. Still I like the HW .

 

[RetroGamingUK]

For a while, and a very brief while at that, it felt like Sega might have had a chance…

 

[Griffon]

A good console is a combination of good sensible hardware and a lot of good popular games.
The Saturn was neither of those things.

In fact it was so bad that the shadow of the Saturn was enough to kill the Dreamcast, no matter how much better it was.

 

[Randall365]

Not sure how it was in the US, but in the UK games shops like EB, Virgin and HMV played a huge part in determining what was seen as 'cool'.

The Mega CD and 32X must have burned the shops to some extent, as they seemed to favour Sony from the start. I recall for ages at HMV they had a Saturn with Streetfighter the Movie and a PS with Tekken - with the Saturn's shitty spongey controller next to the precise PS's one.

EB had videos of gameplay on the PS of Resident Evil abd F1 for ages too - and didn't bother with Sega exclusives.

I got a PS and clearly it won out pretty quickly, but the Saturn was doomed from the start - which then in turn doomed the Dreamcast.

 

[delirium trigger]

My cousin asked for a Sega Saturn for Christmas that year and my uncle bought him a N64 as well because he didn't want him to be disappointed.

 

[RoboFu]

Not sure how it was in the US, but in the UK games shops like EB, Virgin and HMV played a huge part in determining what was seen as 'cool'.

The Mega CD and 32X must have burned the shops to some extent, as they seemed to favour Sony from the start. I recall for ages at HMV they had a Saturn with Streetfighter the Movie and a PS with Tekken - with the Saturn's shitty spongey controller next to the precise PS's one.

EB had videos of gameplay on the PS of Resident Evil abd F1 for ages too - and didn't bother with Sega exclusives.

I got a PS and clearly it won out pretty quickly, but the Saturn was doomed from the start - which then in turn doomed the Dreamcast.

The problem where i lived is it was hard to find new saturn games. Walmart never had them in stock. They got like 5 copies of new games every time. Some (at the time) major game outlets like KB toys never carried saturn games because Sega didn't give them any launch consoles or games and they held a gruge. Babbages / Electronic Boutique was the only reliable place near me to get saturn games.

 

[Komatsu]

Unfortunately the disastrous launch in the US handicapped the Saturn from the start - absolutely incredible that no one around Nakayama advised him to clip Bernie Stolar's wings. As a matter of fact, getting rid of Kalinske, Nielsen and the legacy-defining Genesis team was a bad idea. If it had survived into 1998, some of the great JP games would have come over.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

at least in the US, to me and everyone i knew, saturn failed because it lost to the playstation

playstation was...

• cheaper for consumers
• cheaper for publishers
• easier for developers
• more performant in 3d
• still solid for 2d

and games.
PS had big boys like MGS, FF7, etc
sega couldnt even make a decent sonic game for the saturn.

plus sony was seen primarily as a high end electronics manufacturer back then.
sega made toys.
easy choice for casuals/normies.

saturn was never going to win against the n64 (again, just talking about the US).
maybe if n64 stuck to the ultra64 specs and was super expensive, and playstation was never born.

Yeah, SEGA had no chance against Sony as the PlayStation had everything going for it. Sony hit essentially every nail square on the head.

We also can't discount the fact that SEGA was poorly run and made poor decisions though. I've seen a lot of people (not you) place the blame solely on Sony for the downfall of SEGA but some of it does come down to plain dumb decision making.

 

[Ozzie666]

Yeah, SEGA had no chance against Sony as the PlayStation had everything going for it. Sony hit essentially every nail square on the head.

We also can't discount the fact that SEGA was poorly run and made poor decisions though. I've seen a lot of people (not you) place the blame solely on Sony for the downfall of SEGA but some of it does come down to plain dumb decision making.

Why not both? Sony's plans and hardware were nearly perfect combined with massive bungles by both Sega and Nintendo and if you want to count Atari too. Shit shows across the board. Sony has been a very opportunistic company in the console space. Sony was hungry and brought serious muscle and serious attitude.Nintendo and Sega were both pretty comfortable and thought they could do no wrong with the loyal market they had ruled over.

Sony played to the abused third-parties under Nintendo's grip. Konami, Square and Namco couldn't wait to get out of that terror. Perfect Storm.

The irony is Nintendo created their own version of the Joker by stabbing Sony in the back. This is fiction you can't write. So entertaining.

Years later, Sony would again take advantage of Microsoft's bungles with the Xbox One. What I find telling, is even when Sony fucked up with the PS3, they still managed to turn it around. For the most part Sony has been really good (up until this generation) reading the market.

I've never seen a company like Sega self imploded like they did around the time of the Saturn. Their production confusion just boggles the mind. What the hell were they thinking.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

Why not both? Sony's plans and hardware were nearly perfect combined with massive bungles by both Sega and Nintendo and if you want to count Atari too. Shit shows across the board. Sony has been a very opportunistic company in the console space. Sony was hungry and brought serious muscle and serious attitude.Nintendo and Sega were both pretty comfortable and thought they could do no wrong with the loyal market they had ruled over.

Sony played to the abused third-parties under Nintendo's grip. Konami, Square and Namco couldn't wait to get out of that terror. Perfect Storm.

The irony is Nintendo created their own version of the Joker by stabbing Sony in the back. This is fiction you can't write. So entertaining.

Years later, Sony would again take advantage of Microsoft's bungles with the Xbox One. What I find telling, is even when Sony fucked up with the PS3, they still managed to turn it around. For the most part Sony has been really good (up until this generation) reading the market.

I've never seen a company like Sega self imploded like they did around the time of the Saturn. Their production confusion just boggles the mind. What the hell were they thinking.

No, that's what I was getting at. It was more aimed at the people who act like SEGA wasn't also to blame.

It was 100% a combo.

 

[Team Andromeda]

I am not saying the HW was not easy to bruteforce like Xbox and that the GCN was not nice to work with, but PS2 was far from crap nor an odd offshoot branch of 3D rendering. It was a mix of turbo charging the old approach (see the GPU / rasteriser side of things) and very forward looking and flexible paradigms (see the VUs).

Saturn's bet on quads and forward texturing was neither super practical nor forward looking. Still I like the HW .

I'm not on about forward thinking, because to me the N64 takes a lot of that, especially with its use of unified memory and well the Xbox set the way forward for consoels of today with its X86 and PC tech in a box. SEGA had to go with quads as that was the only way to get 100,000 polygons at a price point SEGA could afford.

I'm on about how not many developers praised the PS2 for its tools or a system that was easy to work on and how even the DC was said to be far easier to work on. It's all about market share at the end of the day. Lots of developers used to tell the likes of EDGE they could get something up on screen on the Xbox or GameCube in a day or two, but on the PS2 it took them weeks, and development on the system was totally alien to how graphics were being done on the PC.

Developers don't care if a system is a nightmare to work on, if the system is selling millions of units. If it was all about power, forward thinking and ease of use. The OG Xbox would have been the best selling console ever LOL

 

[kevboard]

Lots of developers used to tell the likes of EDGE they could get something up on screen on the Xbox or GameCube in a day or two, but on the PS2 it took them weeks, and development on the system was totally alien to how graphics were being done on the PC.

yup, the PS2 was lucky it was the market leader, because a hardware like that would have been tossed to the side if it were in the same situation as the GC or Xbox were at the time.

Oddworld Munch's Odyssey was originally planned as a PS2 game, but ultimately became an Xbox exclusive.
Why? well, not because of Microsoft paying them to do so (not initially anyway), but because the PS2 was a nightmare for them.
while getting the game up and running on Xbox was a piece of cake apparently, and they could massively increase the scope of the game as well due to the jump in hardware power.

Microsoft did eventually make a publishing deal with them for the next few Oddworld gamss after they saw their in-development version of Munch's Odyssey, which is how Oddworld Stranger became an Xbox exclusive as well.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

No, that's what I was getting at. It was more aimed at the people who act like SEGA wasn't also to blame.

It was 100% a combo.

Both Saturn and N64 would have sold a lot more in PlayStation's absense, but would it have been a case of N64 outselling Saturn over 3:1, or would Saturn have benefitted more without a CD based competitor.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Not sure how it was in the US, but in the UK games shops like EB, Virgin and HMV played a huge part in determining what was seen as 'cool'.

The Mega CD and 32X must have burned the shops to some extent, as they seemed to favour Sony from the start. I recall for ages at HMV they had a Saturn with Streetfighter the Movie and a PS with Tekken - with the Saturn's shitty spongey controller next to the precise PS's one.

EB had videos of gameplay on the PS of Resident Evil abd F1 for ages too - and didn't bother with Sega exclusives.

I got a PS and clearly it won out pretty quickly, but the Saturn was doomed from the start - which then in turn doomed the Dreamcast.

That's mostly because Sony's PR and marketing campaign for the original PS in Europe, not only UK, was massive, cynical, aggressive and striking like no other effort ever made in the history of gaming. They covered every surface they could with PS in mags, billboards, and on TV. In comparison, Sega did less than fart in the wind, and Nintendo thought that simply showing Mario would be enough to win a continent where Sega and home computers had barely registered its existence before.

Sony bought everything they could, and it's not malicious to think that they brute-forced their presence in every store they could as well.
More-or-less official PlayStation-only mags sprouted like mushrooms in the span of a year. It was impossible to not know about the PS. Sega, on their part, didn't have a plan. They had arcade ports in an age when arcade in Europe was already fading fast.

The irony is that the independent press was all about the Saturn in the beginning. Home Virtua Fighter was hailed as the second coming. I'll always remember EDGE closing their VF review with "Over to you, Sony". How the turntables…

 

[RetroGamingUK]

The irony is that the independent press was all about the Saturn in the beginning. Home Virtua Fighter was hailed as the second coming. I'll always remember EDGE closing their VF review with "Over to you, Sony". How the turntables…

The irony is that it took PlayStation over 3 years to catch up.

 

[RAIDEN1]

That video I posted from Sega Lord X, basically tells you that even a "BIG" player like Konami just wasn't putting out on the Saturn the kind of quality titles you were getting on the Playstation, that WHOLE generation the Saturn was playing catch up to the N64 and PSX....everything that could go wrong did go wrong for the Saturn, from struggling to get a Mario 64 competitor out the door, to disunity in the company as a whole...

 

[cireza]

Sony bought everything they could, and it's not malicious to think that they brute-forced their presence in every store they could as well.

Precisely what I remember happened.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

This thread wouldn't be the same without some input from Sega Lord X, so here it is:

The Sega Lord X has been the central pillar of this thread since the op

That video I posted from Sega Lord X, basically tells you that even a "BIG" player like Konami just wasn't putting out on the Saturn the kind of quality titles you were getting on the Playstation, that WHOLE generation the Saturn was playing catch up to the N64 and PSX....everything that could go wrong did go wrong for the Saturn, from struggling to get a Mario 64 competitor out the door, to disunity in the company as a whole...

Sega Lord X in this video only said nonsense,
Konami was a big company still is, but their way of managing their business requires that a hardware have an installed base, so these shmup games were just an appetizer until they made the big 3D games. However, as I said, the death of the Sega Saturn happened in 14 months. Think about the original Xbox, which sold 24 million units, without Halo at launch. Yes, MS wouldn't let the console die, but it's unlikely that the Xbox would surpass 18 million units. Before a company enters the market, they need a killer app. A killer app game is important; it can't be something low-budget like Pebble Beach Golf, Bug!, or Virtual Hydlide.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Sony bought everything they could

Now I understand, it's Sony's fault! Those bastards bought everything under the table, yes they bought Hideki Sato to design a $399 console, damn Sony they bought devs inside Sega to make bland games, I get it. Please no, okay.

 

[diffusionx]

That's mostly because Sony's PR and marketing campaign for the original PS in Europe, not only UK, was massive, cynical, aggressive and striking like no other effort ever made in the history of gaming. They covered every surface they could with PS in mags, billboards, and on TV. In comparison, Sega did less than fart in the wind, and Nintendo thought that simply showing Mario would be enough to win a continent where Sega and home computers had barely registered its existence before.

Sony bought everything they could, and it's not malicious to think that they brute-forced their presence in every store they could as well.
More-or-less official PlayStation-only mags sprouted like mushrooms in the span of a year. It was impossible to not know about the PS. Sega, on their part, didn't have a plan. They had arcade ports in an age when arcade in Europe was already fading fast.

The irony is that the independent press was all about the Saturn in the beginning. Home Virtua Fighter was hailed as the second coming. I'll always remember EDGE closing their VF review with "Over to you, Sony". How the turntables…

and yet somehow Microsoft tried to do the same thing a few years later and utterly flopped.

 

[cireza]

Now I understand, it's Sony's fault! Those bastards bought everything under the table, yes they bought Hideki Sato to design a $399 console, damn Sony they bought devs inside Sega to make bland games, I get it. Please no, okay.

Don't be simple minded like this.

It's not like the Saturn and PS1 were worlds apart bro. Anyone can make a pretty convincing argument of the Saturn being just as good as PS1 during the years they shared on the market technically speaking.

Sony had the money to undercut SEGA if they wanted anyway, which they did with their console. They designed a 100% 3D machine, which meant it was also less expensive to produce. Then proceeded to ridicule 2D because their console was not made for it. They bought games from third parties with unbeatable marketing exposure, even blocked entirely some games with exclusivity deals. And finally flooded the world with ads. All of this costs a ton of money, which they could leverage, as they were a gigantic corp compared to SEGA or Nintendo.

They made good decisions, no one is saying the contrary, but they had the money to backup these decisions.

 

[roosnam1980]

ps1 had the first ever true 3d platformer , mindblowing for 1995

 

[Team Andromeda]

Nobody doubts the Saturn had some great looking games. I played the Switch port of Radiant Silvergun and just remembered how good that game looked on Saturn. That game wasn't really doable on PSX without major cuts.

It wasn't doable at all LOL, after all, Treasure stopped work on the PS1 port after 2 months, because it couldn't meet their standards

Fighters Megamix is almost a port of Virtua Fighter 3 into Fighting Vipers on Saturn so it is no wonder that it has more advanced features relative to Virtua Fighter 2. Is it better than Tekken 3? That is debatable. I could go either way based on mood.

Spot on, for me it's also why the VF3 and Sonic Fighters port was dropped on the Saturn.

Yeah Tomb Raider had a lot of complex geometry and Saturn was never going to run it smoothly, same with Quake.

Don't do the Tomb Raider crap again, you know full well the Saturn version was rushed out due to a last-minute deal with Sega Europe

 

[RoboFu]

Its also needs to be noted that Mortal Kombat 3 came out on playstation only shortly after launch and it was a VERY BIG DEAL in the states at the time which Sony bought as an exclusive.. released in October 1995.
Ultimate MK3 on Saturn which was a great port didn't come out until a year later.
After that a much inferior MK trilogy port later proved how little publishers cared to put any effort into Saturn ports near the end.

 

[dave_d]

Its also needs to be noted that Mortal Kombat 3 came out on playstation only shortly after launch and it was a VERY BIG DEAL in the states at the time which Sony bought as an exclusive.. released in October 1995.
Ultimate MK3 on Saturn which was a great port didn't come out until a year later.
After that a much inferior MK trilogy port later proved how little publishers cared to put any effort into Saturn ports near the end.

And of course it should be pointed out UMK3 was announced as a Saturn exclusive. However before it even came out Mortal Kombat Trilogy was announced for the PS and N64 and would come out in a few months. (I think it was June for UMK3 and October for MKT) I always wonder how many people just waited MKT over it.

 

[diffusionx]

It wasn't doable at all LOL, after all, Treasure stopped work on the PS1 port after 2 months, because it couldn't meet their standards

Spot on, for me it's also why the VF3 and Sonic Fighters port was dropped on the Saturn.

Don't do the Tomb Raider crap again, you know full well the Saturn version was rushed out due to a last-minute deal with Sega Europe

Here's the guy fighting the power war that ended 30 years ago lol, never fails

Even if the Saturn was more powerful in some specific applications, overall the PSX was more than capable, more powerful in many other applications, and had the games to match it. E.g. - WipeOut was one of the biggest games of 1995 and the Saturn version was both late and not very good. And then WipeOut XL came out a year later and blew away the original.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Tomb Raider is at the limit of the Sega Saturn, 2 years later Burning Ranges only improved a hair, using a better engine and tools.
There was no juice in the Sega Saturn, that's a fact. But being weak wasn't the problem, it was the inability of Sega employees to produce better game

 

[cireza]

Tomb Raider is at the limit of the Sega Saturn

The limit of the Saturn was not reached. In the latest games we saw great improvements and features become more frequent, like proper fade-in of 3D scenery, excellent FMV quality, more stable framerates, more elaborated 3D models. The later sports game published by SEGA are super smooth, clean and have excellent gameplay to name only those. Riven has fantastic FMV quality (full screen I think ?).

Tomb Raider was not the limit, the second game was in development and it would have improved the engine. Shenmue was in development. Virtua Fighter 3. Skies of Arcadia. Sonic Adventure. The potential was not fully tapped.

The Sonic R engine alone demonstrates that there was potential to do better. And Core Design were awesome devs, they would have found a way.

Some techniques would have become standard and would have been better documented and shared. Making 3D games was actually much easier later in the life of the console as the tools and libraries had evolved.

I doubt that what Burning Rangers did would have ever become a standard. It was an interesting experiment but it didn't lead to very stable visuals. And Nights was largely the same.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Here's the guy fighting the power war that ended 30 years ago lol, never fails

Even if the Saturn was more powerful in some specific applications, overall the PSX was more than capable, more powerful in many other applications, and had the games to match it. E.g. - WipeOut was one of the biggest games of 1995 and the Saturn version was both late and not very good. And then WipeOut XL came out a year later and blew away the original.

Here you now stand, to type that even after 30 years, a true test of legends... But spare us the irony of one who proclaims to leave it go... only to appear in every thread like this , when comes to your beloved N64 or PS vs the Saturn

And a game built around hardware, won't always be better, when ported to a different system, even ones apparently more powerful ... Does Grandia look better on the Saturn or PS1? or what about Grandia 2... does that look better on the Dreamcast or PS2 and if it makes you feel better, does Silent Hill 2 look better on the PS2 or the Xbox.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Now I understand, it's Sony's fault! Those bastards bought everything under the table, yes they bought Hideki Sato to design a $399 console, damn Sony they bought devs inside Sega to make bland games, I get it. Please no, okay.

How hard was it to register that I was talking about how Sony took Europe by storm?
Europe, dude.
But no, here you come with your $399 mention that shows you don't care to read.

And do you really think that a company like Sony would hesitate to grease some wheels when Nintendo was notoriously even more ruthless with US retailers in the 80s?

and yet somehow Microsoft tried to do the same thing a few years later and utterly flopped.

I'm sorry, didn't we all agree a long time ago that not even a system designed by God himself and advertised by Christ reborn could make a dent in the PS2's complete domination? Because that's not opinion, that's history.

And if we're talking about Europe, like I was in my previous post, know that the Xbox launched at fucking €479 in Europe. In a continent that practically discovered adults could play video games thanks to the OG PS and that barely registered that you could buy other gaming boxes that weren't the PS2 after the year 2001. At that price, MS may have sold a couple more Xboxes if the console came with a chance to find a golden ticket to spend a night in bed with Jessica Alba. But no more than that.

America was a different battlefield, and I'm not talking about that.

 

[cireza]

How hard was it to register that I was talking about how Sony took Europe by storm?
Europe, dude.
But no, here you come with your $399 mention that shows you don't care to read.

And do you really think that a company like Sony would hesitate to grease some wheels when Nintendo was notoriously even more ruthless with US retailers in the 80s?



I'm sorry, didn't we all agree a long time ago that not even a system designed by God himself and advertised by Christ reborn could make a dent in the PS2's complete domination? Because that's not opinion, that's history.

And if we're talking about Europe, like I was in my previous post, know that the Xbox launched at fucking €479 in Europe. In a continent that practically discovered adults could play video games thanks to the OG PS and that barely registered that you could buy other gaming boxes that weren't the PS2 after the year 2001. At that price, MS may have sold a couple more Xboxes if the console came with a chance to find a golden ticket to spend a night in bed with Jessica Alba. But no more than that.

America was a different battlefield, and I'm not talking about that.

People from the US don't realize the huge gap there was back then, and still exists to some extent, between the average wage in the US and in Europe. If the Master System was such a huge success in Europe, it is certainly not because people thought that the console was better than the MegaDrive... We just couldn't afford such expensive consoles.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

It's not like the Saturn and PS1 were worlds apart bro. Anyone can make a pretty convincing argument of the Saturn being just as good as PS1 during the years they shared on the market technically speaking.

Technically speaking? No way

Sony had the money to undercut SEGA if they wanted anyway, which they did with their console. They designed a 100% 3D machine, which meant it was also less expensive to produce.

wrong, both Sega Saturn and PS1 had the same budget despite data suggesting that the Sega Saturn project cost 20% more.
I explained the difference: Playstation games sold millions of units, and Sony reinvested the money while Sega bled money because people didn't want their games except for VF and only in Japan. You need to think about it; how many Bugs! can Sega put on the market just for philanthropy? As the saying goes, if McDonald's doesn't sell burgers, they go bankrupt, and if Tesla doesn't sell cars, they go bankrupt. It's that simple.

Then proceeded to ridicule 2D because their console was not made for it.

ps1 2d games sold more than the 2d games on the Sega Saturn, ridiculing 2D is part of the game, it was up to Sega to prove Sony wrong.

They bought games from third parties with unbeatable marketing exposure, even blocked entirely some games with exclusivity deals.

Sega did the same, no third party released an exclusive game for the Saturn for charity.

And finally flooded the world with ads. All of this costs a ton of money, which they could leverage, as they were a gigantic corp compared to SEGA or Nintendo.

Sony's marketing budget was the same as Sega's, any additional spending on Sony's part is a result of the profit gained from selling games in 1995, a period in which Sega sold more Saturn than Sony sold PlayStation.

They made good decisions, no one is saying the contrary, but they had the money to backup these decisions.

MS also has money, more than the GDP of some countries and that didn't save the Xbox.
cireza, your narrative made sense in the 2000s. Today, the data and interviews prove that Sega didn't have a killer app for the Western market, which is why Saturn wasn't viable.

 

[cartman414]

The irony is Nintendo created their own version of the Joker by stabbing Sony in the back. This is fiction you can't write. So entertaining.

Totally biased usual narrative. Sony tried pulling a Daniel Plainview on them first.

The Weird History Of The Super NES CD-ROM, Nintendo's Most Notorious Vaporware - Kotaku

Nintendo never released a CD-ROM gaming system. But for a while in the early 1990s, it flirted with the idea. That protracted will-they-won’t-they romance

kotaku.com

Sony might have had no Nintendo to contend with. No Switch, all we have left are super spendy console boxes, hooray.

 

[cartman414]

Don't be simple minded like this.

It's not like the Saturn and PS1 were worlds apart bro. Anyone can make a pretty convincing argument of the Saturn being just as good as PS1 during the years they shared on the market technically speaking.

Sony had the money to undercut SEGA if they wanted anyway, which they did with their console. They designed a 100% 3D machine, which meant it was also less expensive to produce. Then proceeded to ridicule 2D because their console was not made for it. They bought games from third parties with unbeatable marketing exposure, even blocked entirely some games with exclusivity deals. And finally flooded the world with ads. All of this costs a ton of money, which they could leverage, as they were a gigantic corp compared to SEGA or Nintendo.

They made good decisions, no one is saying the contrary, but they had the money to backup these decisions.

Very true. Unlike the other two, Sony was a more vertical company that could produce their own hardware, not just limited to their CD-ROM drives. It only made any mistakes the other two made more costly. Nintendo was fortunate enough for Pokemon to hit mega paydirt, among other million sellers.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

The limit of the Saturn was not reached.

Tomb Raider was not the limit, the second game was in development and it would have improved the engine. Shenmue was in development. Virtua Fighter 3. Skies of Arcadia. Sonic Adventure. The potential was not fully tapped.

The Sonic R engine alone demonstrates that there was potential to do better. And Core Design were awesome devs, they would have found a way.

Some techniques would have become standard and would have been better documented and shared. Making 3D games was actually much easier later in the life of the console as the tools and libraries had evolved.

I doubt that what Burning Rangers did would have ever become a standard. It was an interesting experiment but it didn't lead to very stable visuals. And Nights was largely the same.

It's a free world, if you want to believe that, believe it, I have technical arguments but I prefer not to share, the Saturn was at its limit since 1995, any later game that is pleasing to the eyes is just art,