I've found real CRT footage to show it's not the shader/emulator overcompensating or modifying anything to fix it. Sadly other footage he has for games like
Sega Rally is much older so it's not as
nice quality, but you can still see this. Check them cop car windows:
It's true other connection types wouldn't do this, devs kept that in mind hence things like the intro missing a windshield before the bullets fly to show characters in the car clear to all players. The notorious Tunnel B1, not as nice footage but it sure beats raw pixels:
A
screenshot for those who don't wanna watch a video looking for transparency, the mesh is 100% invisible (mind the
Model 2 also only had (fine) mesh transparency and did some things different, like the missing windshield it's only a frame on the door window):
PS: VF/Daytona as
the face of Saturn (still for hardcore haters, never mind then) after VC/2, Sega Rally, VF Remix/2 (or random ok stuff like Hang On) vs weaker board PS ports is another (Sony) marketing success (gaming/mainstream media covered it & little after).
Will say, that you can't separate 5th-gen 3D games from their CRTs. The CRT is basically part of their art style.
In many ways the games that were popular back then are still popular today.
The appeal was newly immersive worlds to escape into and that's why the likes of 3D Mario, Zelda, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy and Harry Potter were huge during the 5th gen and are huge today.
People would have you believe that if Bernie Stolar had allowed porting of 2D shmups that it would be a different story, people didn't want them then just like they don't want them today.
Thing tho is Bernie didn't just shut out 2D shmups. He rejected most JRPGs too, and that genre was finally seeing big growth in the West thanks to Final Fantasy VII. Deep Fear never got an American release despite survival-horror also being big there by that time.
Yeah that's the best starting point, hardware is set in stone, Saturn is Saturn.
In order of priority
1. Investment in dev tools, they're way behind Sony in this regard, something like SGL needs to be available by end of 1993, not 1995
2. Yuji Naka, you're making a 3D Sonic whether you like it or not. Console needs to launch with Sonic Jam, and a game with several levels based off Sonic Jam's Sonic World engine needs to be ready by Christmas 1996
3. Instead of 32X fob Calinske off with a couple more SVP games (Star Wars being one).
4. Launch western Saturn in September as originally planned
5. Yu Suzuki, after Virtua Fighter 2 no more derivative cash-ins (Kids/Fighting Vipers/Megamix), move straight onto Project Berkely, Saturn needs a fully 3D adventure exclusive by Christmas 1997 (otherwise RetroGamingUK is trading his in for a PlayStation with Tomb Raider II)
6. Tetsuya Mizuguchi, after Sega Rally no more arcade racers, I want you to make a big driving game with a career mode based on the Sega Rally engine, it needs to release before Gran Turismo.
Result: 30 million units sold as of 2000
1: Agreed, but SGL wouldn't have been ready by EOY 1993 because that's when SEGA went into panic mode to redesign parts of the Saturn. From all accounts, part of this was adding the 2nd SH2, and another part was in adding/retuning the VDP2. Unfortunately development on the SCU DSP basically slowed to a stop during that period (it was never really finished).
SGL by EOY 1994 seems more likely
2: Yeah, Yuji Naka was on an ego trip back then. If SEGA had kept the Japanese Sonic Team in better communication with SEGA Technical Institute from the beginning, though, they probably wouldn't have put Naka in a situation of being surprised his engine was being used without his blessing near the 11th hour. That way, even if STI were still forced to ditch that engine, they'd of had a lot more time to adjust, and crew members wouldn't have fallen ill with life-threatening pneumonia due to absolutely extreme crunch conditions.
3: 32X should've 100% been ditched as a concept, and they should've gone with a SVP-only cartridge instead. The DSP was still capable enough, even if not quite on the level of 2x SH2s.
4: Yep
5: Also agreed.
6: Well, SEGA Touring Car Championship was somewhat a shift into that direction, although still leaned very arcade-like. I'm not 100% sure if SEGA needed or could've done a GT-style game; those car licenses aren't cheap and SEGA didn't have Sony's level of capital. Also the N64 did very well in America without having a GT-style racer.
Maybe what SEGA could've done, was make something spiritually in that style but sticking with their original IP. Maybe something like an Outrun spin-off, with just a single car manufacturer (to keep dev costs down), or go with a completely non-licensed approached i.e Outrunners.
Fighting Vipers/Megamix are more innovative and directed by Hiroshi Takaoka. Tomb Raider II was polarizing and far from an ideal sequel.
How is that possible when TR2 sold more than the original?
I think you're using a modern POV and hindsight to judge the game outside of the context of the time it was released. Most TR fans LOVED Tomb Raider 2; even today the vast majority of diehards consider it a very worthy sequel or superior to the original.
The only way that SEGA could have been helped, is by finding a way to prevent Sony from buying the entirety of the good third party games.
It's not like SEGA had a shitty product and shitty games, far from it. A ton of Saturn games reviewed extremely well, just as well as PS1 games. And the consoles were close enough. You can have few missteps, it is not going to turn a good product with good games in a complete disaster (see PS3 for this).
However, if your main competitor starts buying all the third party games that could drive your sales, you are fucked.
Going into 1996 the MegaDrive and Game Gear were still relevant. They could have kept these two going to make some easy money.
Sony didn't buy most of the good 3P games tho. Most of those devs just decided the PS1 was better serving them than the Saturn, especially outside of Japan. So, they chose to focus their releases there. Simple as that.
I think the issue with looking at only review scores, is that this gen we've seen a lot of Xbox games like, say, Pentiment, review strongly, yet they did nothing in sales or bringing people over to the platform. A lot of the glowing reviews for Saturn exclusives back in the day either came from SEGA-biased magazines, or multiplat magazines that leaned heavily SEGA (i.e GameFan), or from neutral magazines that focused more on the technical aspects of things vs, say, breadth of content. Next Generation was something like that in their focus on Saturn reviews, for example.
Saturn & PS1 may've been close enough on paper, but on practice they weren't. For most 3P devs, if you could get a PS1 game to 100% in, say, 10 months start to finish, working at the exact same pace you were probably lucky to get a Saturn game to 70% in that same time frame. The amount of effort and dollars required to get results on Saturn on par with PS1 was just not worth it as the gen went on, for a growing number of 3P (especially those in the West).
Sony didn't really start locking up bigger 3P exclusives through deals until 1997. Prior to that, it was very light (3P timed exclusives/exclusivity deals) and SEGA did some of that themselves i.e Tomb Raider launching first on Saturn as a timed exclusivity deal. Once SEGA basically killed the Saturn in 1997, massive numbers of 3P devs started cancelling projects or started converting focus over to the PS1, including longtime SEGA supporters like Working Designs. Sony locked up certain number of exclusives like Tomb Raider 2/3, RE2/3 etc. but that was probably less due to Saturn and more due to N64 and the possibility of an early 6th-gen SEGA console i.e Dreamcast (which did happen, with its 1998 launch in Japan).
Otherwise, they were just getting defacto exclusives because most 3P felt they didn't need anything else besides PlayStation to be financially successful. Also, no, MegaDrive & Game Gear were more than dead by 1996. Have you read the leaked FY '97 SEGA of America documents? Have you seen just how stacked their warehouses were with unsold Genesis, 32X, Game Gear etc. inventory even in 1995? Both for hardware and games?
This was a very common complaint about many many otherwise good games at the time. Like everyone was very impressed with jumping flash, but oof it was over so fast. Ridge racer sorta had 1.5 tracks. Destruction derby was just a continuous loop of a dead simple gran prix. It happened a lot. Something like warhawk was considered a properly full game at that time and it was like 6 levels iirc.
I'm not necessarily sure just how common a complaint that was; partly because I was a kid back then and didn't pay attention to that stuff (guess most of those arguments were online and we didn't have a computer at the time). But also because from the magazines I read, that didn't necessary come off as a complaint to the point of being derisive or causing reviewers to knock off points (in most cases).
Also gotta remember, most people were coming off a 4th gen where most of the games they played were also pretty short...once you started to master the game mechanics and learned the game. Otherwise, you were taking a lot more time to finish them until your skills got better, and a lot of early 5th gen was a transitionary period where gamers still played games that way. Would also say, people were just very lenient on length of most games because 3D was just so new for the time.
The problem with SEGA was, their Saturn ports back then were short and light on content even by standards
of the time. And since some of them were very prolific arcade games, then home players had already played those games (sometimes to point of exhaustion) in local arcades, so the home ports usually didn't offer anything new to play or master outside of the content they already played (and likely mastered) in the arcade, only now with arcade-accurate graphics (or in case of Model 2 ports, worst graphics in the Saturn version).
