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[Beechos]

Nothing new here Saturn was more powerful in 2d and psx was better with 3d.

 

[Alexios]

it's not limited by RAM and can have as many animation frames as the developer is willing to draw.

Well, it's still limited by the 89something maximum MB size of a full game (which thanks to CD is another thing Saturn excels at as content amount, stages, audio, whatever else, obviously matters too). Hence the few excellently animated fighters of Garou: MotW vs KoF98's lower frame huge roster. Of course Neo Geo CD was a thing as mentioned but it only has a couple of games that take advantage of that for things beyond extra artwork galleries or whatever, like the recently translated Samurai Shodown RPG (which of course doesn't do much animation wise and got ported fine, it would be prohibitively expensive to animate such an RPG with fighting game level visuals, lol). Conversely, Neo Geo CD is limited by the ram too, if a bit less than Saturn, but most games wouldn't use the theoretical potential of Neo Geo anyway. Still, Neo Geo CD doesn't (couldn't?) have Metal Slug 3/MotW!

 

[Sooner]

Well, it has triple the blast processing of the Sega Genesis.

 

[lestar]

Can of worms. There's more than one way to do transparency. VDP1 can do it, but it's limited, slow, and it's glitchy if the transparent quads are distorted. That's why meshes were used most of the time. VDP2's 2D background planes can be blended/made translucent, and VDP2 can treat pixels from VDP1 as transparent over VDP2 layers, but that can cause VDP1 objects to seemingly disappear if one passes behind another. See, the objects themselves aren't actually made transparent, pixels from VDP1's framebuffer are. It's like printing a photo onto a transparency and placing it over a background.

A few other games, notably Burning Rangers, did some more complicated trickery, but that had its own issues.

Tomb raider is an example of that, it uses sprites for quads texturing and the transparencies are clearly bugged

 

[nkarafo]

Well, it's still limited by the 89something maximum MB size of a full game (which thanks to CD is another thing Saturn excels at as content amount, stages, audio, whatever else, obviously matters too). Hence the few excellently animated fighters of Garou: MOTW vs KOF98's lower frame huge roster. Of course Neo Geo CD was a thing as mentioned but it only has a couple of games that take advantage of that for things beyond extra artwork galleries or whatever, like the recently translated Samurai Shodown RPG (which of course doesn't do much animation wise and got ported fine, it would be prohibitively expensive to animate such an RPG with fighting game level visuals, lol).

The discussion is about 2D visual capabilities though, not amount of content or sound.

Yes, you can have 100 fighters in a Saturn game and CD audio but what matters in this discussion is that the two fighters that are shown at the same time have all the animations they need.

Having said that, the Saturn didn't have issues with most 2D fighters, but only as long as the RAM packs were used.

I don't think the available RAM packs were big enough for Metal Slug X / Metal Slug 3 though. But we will never know for sure until a port is made.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Nothing new here Saturn was more powerful in 2d and psx was better with 3d.

except no one cares about the ps1's lack of animation in the background in silhouette mirage , but everyone saw the 3d superiority of the ps1 compared to the Saturn. That's what we're talking about here. No one who played Saga Frontier 2, Legend of Mana and Sotn feels like they're missing out on anything compared to what the Saturn has to offer technically.

 

[s_mirage]

Tomb raider is an example of that, it uses sprites for quads texturing and the transparencies are clearly bugged

I think that's a different thing to what I'm thinking of, but it's interesting. By the look of it, it's faking translucent water though clever use of colour cycling, wobbling the pool geometry, and putting a animated layer of foam sprites on top of the pool (transparent parts of sprites aren't a problem, translucent parts are). It doesn't require any hardware blending/translucency but gives a decent, if slightly janky, effect.

 

[Parazels]

Saturn didn't suffer from texture warping at least.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

And the Neo-Geo had games that could never been done on the Saturn.

Depends on the graphical style and the animations. The Saturn can have more impressive stuff as long as they fit into the limited RAM. The Neo-Geo can't do the same high-res assets as the Saturn but with its carts it's not limited by RAM and can have as many animation frames as the developer is willing to draw.

Saturn has significantly better looking 2D games than Neo-Geo because it's more powerful.

 

[nkarafo]

Saturn has significantly better looking 2D games than Neo-Geo because it's more powerful.

Nah, Metal Slug 3 is the best looking 2D game of that era IMO.

 

[Ozzie666]

Nah, Metal Slug 3 is the best looking 2D game of that era IMO.

This man speaks the truth. Neo Geo, Cartridges had so many advantages over Saturn. Metal Slug 3 was so taxing, the entire series still had some slow down even without ram limitations and cd loading. I'd be curious to see how the Saturn would have handled something like Mark of the Wolves. The Ram cart did help alot, but still. The animations and level of detail would be muted on Saturn.

1990 hardware vs Saturn 1994. The only thing I can say is the Neo Geo was pushed absolutely to the max. The Saturn was such a disaster it was never pushed to the theoretical potential people claim.

 

[CLW]

Lemme guess this guy works at Xbox now?

 

[Sorcerer]

edit

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Sure, Saturn has more raw power than the PS1. But that doesn't mean very much in the end.

Saturn's problem was that not only was the power very hard to extract from the system, but major parts of the architecture inhibited that potential to varying degrees. The system bus wasn't widened to accommodate for a dual-CPU setup, so one CPU would always lag behind waiting to transfer or access data. The DSP was very powerful, but could only work with data in its internal cache and results still had to be passed back to the CPUs for anything meaningful to be performed, so that required more cycles overall.

The Saturn could do MPEG decompression in software, but that relied on developer solutions that could vary wildly in efficiency. You could extract tons of performance if you hard-coded things to assembly, but Sony provided many libraries for PS1 that were basically pre-programmed solutions developers could take and then modify as needed, while still having the option for hand-written assembly when needed.

Power is only as good as it is efficient and accessible. Saturn had a lot of capability for 3D games, but a lot was obfuscated behind constraining architecture choices/compromises and lack of foresight in providing easy-to-use 3D tools & libraries for a new age of game programming. Sony struck the perfect balance of power & ease of use, and the market rewarded them for it. As well, for as much untapped potential the Saturn had, and while I do think it's the 32-bit system with the most untapped potential (at least tied with 3DO in that respect, and arguably the Jaguar tho I doubt Jaguar had much in the way for 3D regardless), the PS1 and even N64 weren't necessarily fully tapped, themselves.

I'd say of the Big 3, the N64 probably had 15% untapped potential and the PS1 closer to 10% untapped, while the Saturn probably has something closer to 30%. But, even if you threw the best skill & resources at a 3D game for Saturn, it'd probably still come up a bit short to the best 3D game you could throw on a PlayStation. There are just differences between the two at the root level where PS1 has a natural advantage for 3D.

It'd probably be more interesting pushing the best respective 3D/2D game at both however; that could be an area (in theory) where the Saturn would come out on top, if you threw the best at it and the best at PlayStation. VDP2 was a monster for sprites in its time.

 

[SweetTooth]

Ok Sega peeps, take this info on your next trip to Saturn and Dreamcast graves

Oh dear, you were more powerful

 

[Esppiral]

Certainly not in 3D department, quite the contrary. But every not so successful Sega console tend to become more powerful with each year passing, legendary stuff. That is unique to Sega.

What a stupid take, maybe sega consoles have been underrated by most "fans" over the years, also the info comes from a developer, and it is not the first one to say so, also has anyone watched the video or people just reply based on the thread title?

 

[The Pleasure]

my car can go 300mph

but it has 3 steering wheels, 4 manual transmissions, no seats, and requires a blood alcohol level above 0.4

Isn't that what Camacho drives?

 

[Madserb2023]

Maybe. It could have been theoretically more powerful. The PS3 was similar in that most games ran and looked better on the Xbox 360. Some games had double the frame rate like Bayonetta and a higher resolution on the Xbox 360 but I think people here would say the PS3 was more powerful. For one reason, because the PS3 did have some games that were as good if not better than anything on the Xbox 360. Can't say the same for the Saturn though.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I thought the issue with Saturn was it had like 8 different processors and was very difficult to program for if you wanted to get the full power

Meanwhile you could just shit out some random code and it would just work on PS1

 

[cireza]

Could it run Radiant Silvergun without cutbacks?

It can't run any VDP2 heavy game without compromise for sure.

 

[kikonawa]

No it wasnt. It used a mode 7 like snes which was faster yes.


Saturn was great at 3D when it came to games featuring large flat surfaces

VDP2 could be used similar to Mode 7 on SNES leaving VDP1 to focus all its polygon power. Great examples of this are…

- Panzer Dragoon series
- Virtua Cop series
- Virtua Fighter 2
- Laat Bronx
- Virtual On

However, games that were fully 3D where characters, enemies and entire levels comprised of quads (similar to polygons) just didn’t run well compared to their PlayStation counterparts…

- Tomb Raider
- Burning Rangers
- Quake (compared to Quake 2)

Apart from Sega Rally, Daytona CCE and Manx TT racing games ran like shit on the console too

 

[Mahnmut]

I'm a huge fan of saturn but this cope has been going on far too long. It's a good system. It more or less kept up while it was alive. It's reasonable to assume it would have more or less kept up as ps games got more sophisticated. But "exceptionally more powerful"? C'mon.

Totally agree. I’m a huge Saturn fan but come on. If you look at the exclusive 3D games on the system (Sega Rally, Burning rangers..), while impressive they don’t blow PS1 3D games out of the water as they should if we follow his logic.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Nah, Metal Slug 3 is the best looking 2D game of that era IMO.

That's a terrible opinion IMO.

Sorry

 

[Panajev2001a]

It had near/90% arcade perfect CPS2 ports before the 4MB/1MB carts like SFA2 Gold and Vampire Savior (and many that aren't arcade ports like Silhouette Mirage, Street Racer or games cited for great use of VDP2 alongside sprites and polygons like Radiant Silvergun or the also better on Saturn Thunder Force V). Since it got the carts there was 0 reason to not go for it & do even better (at least once Capcom figured out how to properly use them). Of course the differences don't show well in screenshots so if you're blind to attack animation frames like some folks you claim such bs

So efficient, to make the 2D intro a FMV instead of moving sprites/bgs etc. and suddenly graphics/backgrounds/animation frames, essentially 2D graphics eye candy, is cut because it's also efficient, it's only a problem if cuts are in Saturn versions of games or 3D games, also one shit 2D game having a shittier port on Saturn means Saturn wasn't better or had any advantage in 2D so I guess we can cite one or more 3D games Saturn did better to also equally prove PS wasn't better in that 3D stuff either, am I right? I'll start with Need for Speed & Mass Destruction I guess, solid games even

Primitive Bonus:
​

What evil possessed you to make a centre aligned post? Now, warring between PS1 and Saturn in anger I can understand if any of us did it, but centre aligned text is just taking it toooooo faaaaar!

 

[Panajev2001a]

Now, I'm more likely to trust Ezra Dreisbach, who was writing closer to the actual time and coded the Saturn versions of PowerSlave (Exhumed), Duke Nukem 3D, and Quake, than Jez San, who as far as I know coded nothing on the Saturn.

Not only that, his team pushed the Saturn quite hard and are still seen as one of the better Saturn devs… not people who could not hack it with the Saturn and praised PSX because it was easier to use…

 

[MrCunningham]

Tomb raider is an example of that, it uses sprites for quads texturing and the transparencies are clearly bugged

This is common for every 3D game on the Saturn. It's actually really cool to see how it just lays out square sprites in 3D. The technical designer mentioned how he didn't know how to design a machine that could render polygons. The 3D capabilities were an extension of its 2D capabilities and has some similarities to the Sega CD's ASIC chip that could do sprite scaling and display multiple 'Mode 7 like' 3D playfields.



The Saturn can assign sprites to be rendered as 'quads'. It's like each sprite being stretched into a four sided polygon. The system doesn't have UV mapping like the triangle based PS1. It does add a unique look for 3D games for the Saturn. The 3DO renders quads as well. But uses a different method. So did Nvida's first graphics card. Ultimately triangle based 3D rendering became the dominant polygon rendering technology. Maybe that will change again?

It was also hard to port PS1 games to the Saturn, because the models had to be reconstructed in quads. Saturn ports like Wipeout 2097/ XL, showed that the system was quite capable if developers leaned how to code for the hardware. But devs would still struggle to hit 30fps framerates. ETC.



Tomb Raider on the Saturn was the first version of the game I ever owned. Playing it on real Saturn hardware, the game looked extra chunky up against the PS1 or even PC versions (I knew people who had the DOS game) and ran at 20fps on average. Lower resolution too. But it was still oddly impressive for the console. Just seeing the Saturn handle a game of that scope.

 

[Randall365]

At what stage does Sega worship become a religion?

People clutching those shitty little tamagochis that were stuck to the Dreamcast controlllers whilst chanting ‘Seeeyyygaaaarrr!!!’ over and over.

Worrying stuff.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Just as Lynx was the PSP of its gen.

Surely that would be the GameGear.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Tomb raider is an example of that, it uses sprites for quads texturing and the transparencies are clearly bugged

That’s exactly how VDP1 did 3D

It wasn’t polygons at all, the “quads” were basically square sprites that were warped to form 3D shapes.

In this example the emulator has returned everything but Lara’s model back to unwarped sprites…

…Saturn could theoretically turn these into triangles to match PlayStation’s polygons, but that means the last 2 corner coordinates are the same for each sprite, resulting in more code to process.

 

[winjer]

 

[Team Andromeda]

I think it depends on the game . All that said the Saturn wasn't that far behind the PS total polygons and when you used the VDP 1 and the VDP2 to their max it was a combination the PS 1 could at times find hard to match .

CORE Design told EDGE they thought the Saturn had more power than the PS1 back in the day too

Sadly we had SEGA west to thank for dreadful market share which killed the Saturn being used to it's fullest my most 3rd parties

 

[Parazels]

On 2D and Audio hardware (like MIDI), yes the Saturn was better.
Otherwise, lightning, texturing, shadow, alpha texture, polygonal 3D (Saturn can't do polygonal) PS1 was better and more efficient.

Texture warping (PS) vs no texture warping (Saturn)

 

[Team Andromeda]

??? How can it have better texture mapping when it's not even capable of UV mapping? The hardware is literally incapable of mapping a texture onto a model. It's stitching distorted sprites together. Also, as far as I can see, some of the fillrate numbers claimed use highly questionable methodology regarding VDP2. Bear in mind, VDP2 is a 2D plane processor. If a 3D game has no perfectly flat 2D planes, its use is limited to stuff like skybox and UI rendering.

I would avoid using Segaretro as a source, by the way; I've seen their comparison table rubbished years ago.

Here's what Ezra Dreisbach of Lobotomy software said about the relative speed of the hardware:

Interview: Ezra Dreisbach. saturn + ps1 and stuff

Back when the Saturn had reached its apex in the US market, I had just obtained a used one and several games and had done some research on USENET for which games I should investigate. Among the games that seemed to be highly acclaimed were three by the company Lobotomy Software. Those titles...

forum.beyond3d.com

Now, I'm more likely to trust Ezra Dreisbach, who was writing closer to the actual time and coded the Saturn versions of PowerSlave (Exhumed), Duke Nukem 3D, and Quake, than Jez San, who as far as I know coded nothing on the Saturn.

We can all cherry pick interviews. I seem to remember Namco Soul Edge Arcade team saying the ST-V had the advantage for textures over system 11



When used right the Saturn was a hugely powerful system .

 

[Team Andromeda]

the ps1 version aims for 60fps, better lighting and transparency.

It does not have better lighting . Saturn version has dynamic lighting.

The console versions was made for the 1st for Saturn and that made the difference IMO.

Also you get better looking transparency effects on the Saturn even compared to the PS 1 depending on the skill of the developer and also the game genre.

Saturn big issue was when the transparent effect needs to 3D warped around polygons LOL

 

[PeteBull]

About saturn being more powerful vs psx, it was, but not by big margin, and in 2d only, the problem is, ppl had access and saw some of playstation games ported to saturn and they were looking visibly worse, to the point casual could notice it at first sign, w/o digital foundry/comparing screenshots etc, it made to the mainstream and msg was clear- saturn games looked like a mess.

there were many more bad saturn ports too, destruction derby, n4s, tomb raider etc, those games all ran and looked much better on psx, so very quickly players had it engraved in their mind that saturn sux =/

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

It does not have better lighting . Saturn version has dynamic lighting.

both have it, the ps1 version is less pronounceable again ps1 is pushing 2x fps

 

[lestar]

That’s exactly how VDP1 did 3D

It wasn’t polygons at all, the “quads” were basically square sprites that were warped to form 3D shapes.

In this example the emulator has returned everything but Lara’s model back to unwarped sprites…

…Saturn could theoretically turn these into triangles to match PlayStation’s polygons, but that means the last 2 corner coordinates are the same for each sprite, resulting in more code to process.

so the saturn did a primitive uv texture mapping using sprites

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

I'd say of the Big 3, the N64 probably had 15% untapped potential and the PS1 closer to 10% untapped, while the Saturn probably has something closer to 30%.

Saturn was maxed out in the first games with virtua fighter remix and other games that I won't name to avoid unnecessary debates

 

[ReyBrujo]

ppl had access and saw some of playstation games ported to saturn and they were looking visibly worse, to the point casual could notice it at first sign, w/o digital foundry/comparing screenshots etc, it made to the mainstream and msg was clear- saturn games looked like a mess

Same as Wii ports of Xbox360/PS3 games, or Switch ports of PS3/4/5/360/One/XSS ones yet both consoles obliterated their competition. Mainstream talked with what they knew: money. The Saturn was more expensive and not as readily available. And developers just did what they always do: focus on profitability just as they did when Dreamcast arrived.

And not even talking about the disastrous Japan/US relationship with SegaCD/32x/Neptune/Saturn.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

so the saturn did a primitive uv texture mapping using sprites

That’s pretty much it

It was a sprite machine, and quite a powerful one at that for its time.

How the likes of Sonic Team, AM2 and TeamAndromeda got amazing 3D graphics out of it is to be commended. Sorcery.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Saturn was maxed out in the first games with virtua fighter remix and other games that I won't name to avoid unnecessary debates

Hyperbole

Virtua Fighter 2 and Last Bronx were way more advanced.

 

[Team Andromeda]

both have it, the ps1 version is less pronounceable again ps1 is pushing 2x fps

It's not even close . Exhumed dynamic colour lighting is so amazing on the Saturn, . The PS version is better for transparency effects.

Still to this day Exhumed is the best FPS around IMO

 

[Lysandros]

In other words, it was basically the PS3 of that gen lol

Not really a working analogy. PS3 was truly more powerful than X360 albeit more complex/problematic architecturally. Saturn was objectively not as powerful as PS1 (in the context of 3D graphics).

 

[Spiral1407]

Not really a working analogy. PS3 was truly more powerful than X360 albeit more complex/problematic architecturally. Saturn was objectively not as powerful as PS1 (in the context of 3D graphics).

Oh it's actually very similar considering the PS3 had a weaker GPU and less efficient RAM configuration.

 

[Lysandros]

Another myth is that Saturn is better in 2D

Playstation has incredible 2D games without having to use a memory expansion.This is called efficiency.
I've never seen anything on Sega Saturn like Legend of Mana, Valkyrie Profile, Guilty Gear and Saga Frontier 2

Capcom vs Snk Pro even Street Fighter Alpha 3 doesn't owe much to the Saturn version, no matter how excited fans say it does.
the Sega Saturn's 2D advantages are insufficient.

Indeed. PS1 was no slouch in the matter of 2D, in fact it could draw sprites faster than Saturn. Saturn's main advantage over PS1 in this area was the RAM pack like you mentioned which was required for closer to original NeoGeo conversions like King of Fighters which enabled mores animations to be stocked for smoother gameplay. PS1 has its own share of beautiful 2D games like Saga Frontier 2 and Legend of Mana.

 

[Lysandros]

Saturn didn't suffer from texture warping at least.

It did.

 

[ReBurn]

At what stage does Sega worship become a religion?

People clutching those shitty little tamagochis that were stuck to the Dreamcast controlllers whilst chanting ‘Seeeyyygaaaarrr!!!’ over and over.

Worrying stuff.

Gaming has always been a team sport. Every team has its megafans.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Indeed. PS1 was no slouch in the matter of 2D, in fact it could draw sprites faster than Saturn. Saturn's main advantage over PS1 in this area was the RAM pack like you mentioned which was required for closer to original NeoGeo conversions like King of Fighters which enabled mores animations to be stocked for smoother gameplay. PS1 has its own share of beautiful 2D games like Saga Frontier 2 and Legend of Mana.

I don't understand 2d but I realize that even without the cartridge the Sega Saturn can get animated backgrounds and vdp2 effects like 2d fog. I believe that the second sh2 influences or perhaps it is the ps1's limitation of making 4,096 sprites through triangles and storing it in the 1mb vram, the Saturn can access an additional 0.5mb of vdp2's vram.

PS1 has its own strength in 2d, its texturing capabilities, lighting and other effects associated with 3D are extra strength over Saturn in this requirement.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 is the best of both, as much as Sega Saturn fans insist on denying it, the PlayStation version is efficient while Saturn's 3d does not . that's the difference.

 

[Lysandros]

I thought the consensus was that it was more powerful on paper.

There never was a such a concesus. It couldn't be, since PS1 was convincingly faster at 3D. The majority of developers which had experience with both systems like Ezra Dreisbach attested for this fact.

 

[SportsFan581]

"At some obscure metric that under the right planetary alignment, could give the machine an edge".