PSY Q was also out for the Saturn in 1994 mate and also the 32X
I agree, but Star Wars would have been even better on the more powerful Saturn hardware, and you would have also got such better music and sound effectsI really wish Phantasy Star got the same respect and treatment as FF7. I thought Shining force was really good too.
Fully agree with the 32X split of resources. But I did really enjoy my 32X for Star Wars and the best versions of Midway titles and primal rage. Virtua Fighter was good too.
Loosing the UK was a pretty impressive achievement
I agree, but Star Wars would have been even better on the more powerful Saturn hardware, and you would have also got such better music and sound effects
Losing to SONY wasn't an issue but losing to Nintendo in the UK was a joke, given how much SEGA had outsold Nintendo for the NES and SNES and the same was true in most of Europe too, bar those Cheese-eating surrender monkeys
A lot of people here don't realise that Sega were more popular than Nintendo in the late 80s and early 90s in Europe.
Mario Bros 3 on the NES didn't release until after Sonic 1 on the MegaDrive, and Alex Kidd was bigger than Mario here too.
Sega seemed to invest far more in marketing with events and football/F1 sponsorships. Nintendo didn't start to gain a foothold here until Street Fighter 2.
I've always said SEGA Europe did so much to appeal to the older gamer and did it long before SONY & wipeout and people also look over just how much SEGA outsold Nintendo in the UK and for most of Europe, bar France.
You could see just how big the Mega Drive was in UK, but the sheer number of Mega Drive gaming mags that were out at the time, it was ridiculous with like 7 dedicated Mega Drive mags
SEGA's Europe Simon Morris deservers so much credit. A man ahead of his time, that was a massive loss to SEGA PR when he moved to SKY TV
France was one of the places where I read from Nick Alexander Nintendo did better, even in the heyday of the Mega Drive, while SEGA did so much better in Spain and Germany In the UK it was a total non contest SEGA just killed Nintendo at every level for sales and PR.
I strongly doubt that Nintendo did better. I would be very curious to see the details about this. The Master System for example simply destroyed the NES, at least that's what I saw as a kid. It was a budget console and all the kids had a Master System, I knew barely any with the NES.
Pal gaming sucked even for Nintendo and Sony fans, especially Nintendo who treat Pal gamers like shit, even now. You spot on about the game cases too and it such a shame as with the Pal Mega-CD game cases SEGA Europe had the best game cases I've ever experienced in gaming and even included spine cards too
I would image that Nick had some metric data to back up what he was saying about France, but the Mega Drive was killing sales of the Snes in Europe and in the UK it wasn't even a contest with SEGA having over double the user base, hell even the Amiga and ZX Spectrum sold better in the UK, than either the Snes or NES.
The cardboard cases sucked for sure, but the plastic ones are my favorites. They are slightly taller and thinner than DVD, and of great quality. They look very good and stand the test of time.
I loved the Pal Mega-CD and 3DO Pal cases the best. They were sturdy, looked great and were easy to stand thanks to the double case.
No you look over what Xbox did..
The USA had the best Dreamcast cases IMO. The Pal ones were a joke and would break so easily, even when the Postman was delivering my games from Gameplay; Gameplay were awesome back then, so cheap and would always send games out early, along with some of the best customer service around. A shame GAME bough them and killed the Corp
A lot of people here don't realise that Sega were more popular than Nintendo in the late 80s and early 90s in Europe.
Mario Bros 3 on the NES didn't release until after Sonic 1 on the MegaDrive, and Alex Kidd was bigger than Mario here too.
Sega seemed to invest far more in marketing with events and football/F1 sponsorships. Nintendo didn't start to gain a foothold here until Street Fighter 2.
No, that's not essential and you know it. Nobody took the technological difference between the PS1 and the Saturn seriously, even with some magazines saying no one perceived the Saturn as being less capable, vf2, panzer dragoon zwei etc It was only at the end of 1996 that it became clear that no rabbit would come out of the Saturn's hat. But again, in June 1996, the Dreamcast project began.
As to why it succeeded in Japan and not the west, despite Sega winning the 3rd and 4th console generations in Europe…
- Almost no price difference, ¥39,800 for PlayStation, ¥44,800 for Saturn
- Virtua Fighter was huge in Japan while the west was gripped by Mortal Kombat fever
- Japan didn't care as much for Sonic, so his absence was felt more in the west
- JRPGs were successful on Saturn, they almost never released in Europe due to requiring multiple translations (we never got the Square SNES games). For many in Europe FF7 was their introduction
- 2D shmups were huge in Japanese arcades, most never saw the light of day in the west
- Many of Saturn's big games were arcade ports, the decline of the arcades started earlier in the west than Japan
- Japan got a controller with the GOAT d-pad, the west got the below piece of shit
Iv been enjoying playing tomb raider with this controller tbh. It's not that bad. The model 2/jp style is better don't get me wrong.
I don't know about that. I remember a lot of people had the original ridge racer with their PlayStations. And ridge racer type 4 was a pretty big deal. Gran Turismo by this time became THE de facto racing game though. Because it appealed to casuals and hardcore gamers. Ridge racer type 4 was never going to compete with GT. I remember namco advertised heavily the fact that RR4 had over a thousand cars compared to whatever GT had.
Yea the shoulder buttons aren't great. You sort of need to almost rotate them diagonally down. As opposed to just press down vertically. The dpad is pretty horrendous as well. Considering they already had the GOAT dpad to work with
Yea the shoulder buttons aren't great. You sort of need to almost rotate them diagonally down. As opposed to just press down vertically. The dpad is pretty horrendous as well. Considering they already had the GOAT dpad to work with
You surely remember a very different 90s TL than I do, mate.
That D Pad is so much better than everyone else's that allowed me to finish the rapier class on WipEout!!Yea the shoulder buttons aren't great. You sort of need to almost rotate them diagonally down. As opposed to just press down vertically. The dpad is pretty horrendous as well. Considering they already had the GOAT dpad to work with
Again you're overlooking the point, I made.
Yu Suzuki didn't criticise Saturn and he hit back at that assertion in an interview with Next Gen. All Yu said was one CPU would have been preferable
I have the virtua gun. Well the Japanese black model one. Not as accurate as the gcon but one less cable to faff around with as you say. Haven't got the virtua stick or the arcade wheel. I had considered getting the arcade wheel but maybe not.Aesthetically I really liked all the Saturn accessories, they always looked nice in the boxes which again I like the style of (PAL anyway)
They weren't great though
Virtua Stick felt mushy and the Arcade Racer had a terrible yoke design with no foot pedal support.
Virtua Gun was great though, didn't need awkward TV cables like the PlayStation equivalent.
as I said
Just like the Wii U, it was too little, too late. The system was already dead and customers had noticed it was dead and moved on.
Plus, it also didn't help the Saturn itself was a confusing machine for developers. John Linneman at DF did an episode on it for DF Retro and did a deep dive. It was made more as a machine that could do 2D games really well, but it made it difficult to make 3D games for it, which is where the industry was headed once N64/ Mario 64 hit and it was clear 3D was the new thing. But the system was rushed and they weren't forward thinking enough to see how important 3D would be. So, that didn't help! Also the controller was just a bummer and nothing special.
3D rendering wise PS2 was an extremely forward looking architecture. A bit hard to use, but taming it was going in the right direction with how 3D rendering was at the time (aside from fragment shaders being the next paradigm going, but the flexible fixed function pipeline was not a weird offshoot dead end and not mainstream… arguably combiners like TEV are a bit more of a offshoot branch history pruned out).
I do not understand what was so special about Burning Rangers. Did it stand out among Saturn's games or was it relevant across all platforms? I'm sure the PSX and N64 had better-looking games and nobody cared.
I mean was a game like this impossible on the PSX and N64? Or was Burning Rangers just a technical marvel by Saturn's standards of quality?
Ahh the 6 button sega pad...
Iv been enjoying playing tomb raider with this controller tbh. It's not that bad. The model 2/jp style is better don't get me wrong.
Burning Ranger uses the Sega Saturn's memory, CPU, and polygon count to its fullest. The most advanced Sega Saturn games are Sonic R, Duke Nukem 3D, Burning Rangers, Last Bronx, and Nights.
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
I remember reading about all of this in magazines. In particular, Nintendo magazine were absolutely delighted to have gotten those exclusive titles back in the day.
-Virtua Fighter had popping while looking more dated than Toshiden.
No bro, what I said is that whoever saw Panzer Dragoon, the launch game in Japan, contemporary to Toshinden, knew that Toshinden had better graphics than Virtua Fighter but still harbored the idea that both consoles had the same capacity. But after 14 months it became evident that Sega Saturn couldn't make 3D Tomb Raider-like games with the same quality as the PS1.
