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Sega Saturn Appreciation and Emulation Thread

Conezays

Member
I'd pick it up immediately. Missed out on the PC/PS2 controllers when they were out now they're really pricey. I like the ps2 iteration the best overall but if I put some silicon grease on the others' dpads maybe they'll feel better.

Not really, you found one for a good price. These usually go for a few dollars more at least, online.

Works for me :p Interestingly, everything from Japan has shipped *much* faster to me in Canada versus anything from the US (plus customs charges). Paid about double for the black NA controller.
 
I agree with oneida, it just seems 3D Fighters aren't your thing ABF.
I like 3d fighting games quite a bit! I've played many hours of Soulcalibur and Dead or Alive games, particularly. Both of those are great series. I also quite like Project Justice and The King of Fighters 2006, aka KOF Maximum Impact 2, among others. And on the N64 Fighter's Destiny is probably the best 3d fighter, while for that generation overall of course what I like most is the very unique Evil Zone for PS1.

You probably should be saying something about different kinds of 3d fighters, not incorrectly saying that I don't like the genre. I mean, sure, I definitely think 2d fighting games are better than 3d ones, but there are some good 3d fighters too, even if the best don't match up to the best 2d fighting games.

ABF I can tell you appreciate these games on a casual level so I don't really know how to respond to you anymore. I'm sorry if 3D fighters don't appeal to you but to imply they require less skill due to higher damage levels is absolutely hilarious.
I don't think many people would argue against the fact that it is much easier to win at, say, Soul Calibur II than it is at Capcom vs SNK 2. Those are both games I played a lot of in the '00s on the Gamecube, and SCII is much easier to be okay at. Or for another example of more recent fighting games I like, that it's easier to win at Dead or Alive 5 than it is at King of Fighters XIII. Etc. Sure, people always talk about the Virtua Fighter series as the exception to that general rule, that it is the 3d fighting series that is right up there with the 2d games, but in general that is usually true.

For example, back in college, I played some CvS2 against people who were decent at the game a few times. I didn't do great, as much as I loved the game -- and I liked CvS2 a lot, it's one of my most-played GC games. I also played Soulcalibur III (or maybe it was IV, I forget) this once... and even though it was the first time I'd ever played the game (though I did have the second game for GC), against people who actually had it, I won like 15 or more times in a row right off. And I only lost when they did a 'you only take damage from knockdowns' match without telling me. Heh. That didn't happen because I'm so good at Soul Calibur or that they were awful, it's just not as hard a game to be okay at as a CvS2 is.

Do you criticise Tetris for lacking a story mode too?
No. Genre expectations do matter here, and you don't expect story from puzzle games. But anyway, that was just an additional issue, not one of the more important ones. If I like the gameplay, it doesn't matter much if the story is minimal -- DoA2 is a fantastic game even though the ingame story is quite short, for example. And of course I like Nintendo a lot, and Zelda is my favorite series and certainly not for the storytelling. The problem with VF is that I don't like the gameplay much either -- this is why I like Fighting Vipers more, I find it more fun to play. Gameplay matters the most by far, in videogames.

And for the record, the quest mode you describe from VF4 and VF5 is not a story mode. The characters in VF are "real" in that they exist in the game's universe and the story for the characters has existed since VF1, in the same place you find the story for every Street Fighter before IV: the instruction manual. There's no story mode as the games are simply ports of arcade games - its there if you want to know about it but otherwise the series isnt really interested in telling a story.
Okay, most of what you say here is quite reasonable, though you are a bit off about Street Fighter -- SF games before IV have endings, which tell you something about each character. No VF game has anything like that, so VF4/5's style is not entirely comparable to SF 1 to 3. Sure though, both do have the backstory in the manual.

Also, the quest modes do matter. They are the new major console-exclusive modes, like the various quest modes in Soulcalibur games... and they are just single-player versions of going to an arcade and ranking up. In the 'quest' mode, the main single player mode in both games, the characters of the game aren't real; it's just a videogame in a videogame. It's kind of meta, and trying to rank up can be fun, but it'd have been nice to see Sega make some kind of attempt at any sort of story. Ah well.
 

Sixfortyfive

He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
I don't think many people would argue against the fact that it is much easier to win at, say, Soul Calibur II than it is at Capcom vs SNK 2. Those are both games I played a lot of in the '00s on the Gamecube, and SCII is much easier to be okay at. Or for another example of more recent fighting games I like, that it's easier to win at Dead or Alive 5 than it is at King of Fighters XIII. Etc. Sure, people always talk about the Virtua Fighter series as the exception to that general rule, that it is the 3d fighting series that is right up there with the 2d games, but in general that is usually true.

..........

The difficulty of a competitive game is determined by the opponent, not by the game.

EDIT: This quote gets worse every time I re-read it. Scrubquotes tier. You shouldn't try to speak from authority on concepts you clearly do not understand. No matter how many words you spend on it, it still comes across as nonsense.
 
..........

The difficulty of a competitive game is determined by the opponent, not by the game.
This is fairly obviously wrong. Both the opponent AND the game determine how difficult a game is, and the game is probably more important than the opponent, overall.

I mean, it doesn't matter how good someone is at Mario Kart, they are going to lose sometimes because of the random nonsense that series specializes in. What game you are playing matters a lot.
 

MikeMyers

Member
I agree with sixfortyfive, I would say opponents matter more considering fighting games are competitive.

Don't really get the Mario Kart comparison either. In a VF2 match between two skilled players, the only way to win is to be the more skilled player, not win via some cheap mechanic.
 
I agree with sixfortyfive, I would say opponents matter more considering fighting games are competitive.

Don't really get the Mario Kart comparison either. In a VF2 match between two skilled players, the only way to win is to be the more skilled player, not win via some cheap mechanic.
You're missing the point. I wasn't talking about either Virtua Fighter there, ore necessarily matches between two equally skilled players. The point is to compare how hard it is to win at 2d fighting games versus non-VF 3d fighting games, either for two players of similar skill level, or for two players of unequal skill matched up against eachother. And I've always thought that 3d fighters are usually easier to do okay at than 2d ones. But first, again note how I specifically excluded Virtua Fighter; back in the '00s whenever someone would say this about 3d fighters, the counter someone had was always "but VF is as challenging to be good at as a 2d fighter!", so I excluded it.

Anyway, the point of the Mario Kart comparison is, in Mario Kart, because of the design of the game, the result of any race is much more uncertain than it would be in, say, Gran Turismo or something like that. MK is a game anyone can win at, with some luck. The difference between 2d and 3d fighting games is not that extreme, certainly, but the idea is that 2d fighters require more skill, while 3d ones are more approachable.

The key question is, if you take two players, one better and one not as good, and have them play some top 2d and 3d fighting games, which kind of game do you think the not as good player would have more success at? I think it'd be the 3d ones, more likely than not.
 

MikeMyers

Member
The key question is, if you take two players, one better and one not as good, and have them play some top 2d and 3d fighting games, which kind of game do you think the not as good player would have more success at?

I would say it depends on the game, rather than the genre. Even Street Fighter, the most well known 2D Fighting game series, has mainline entries in it that are notoriously broken.
 

StevieWhite

Member
I have a Pseudo Saturn. Have for a year. It works perfectly. As far as I know, they still haven't found a way to enable memory card functionality, but mine works as RAM cart. Also the problems with multidisc games persist.
 
I would say it depends on the game, rather than the genre. Even Street Fighter, the most well known 2D Fighting game series, has mainline entries in it that are notoriously broken.
You're dodging the question, you know. Presume that it's many of the more popular games of both styles.

Your own expectations of the genre matters to yourself. What this thread has shown is that you have vastly different expectations from games than the vast majority of players.
If you're talking about 2d vs. 3d fighting games, then you're entirely backwards here -- what I want out of a fighting game is pretty much exactly what developers today are making, gameplay-wise. Of course I wish KoF 14 was 2d instead of 2.5d, but otherwise things are pretty good for fighting games, now. Mortal Kombat abandoned 3d in favor of flat-plane 2.5d, or why Street Fighter, Samurai Shodown, and The King of Fighters all have done the same after some 3d experiments in side games, and more. 2d and 2.5d are the more popular styles now, much more so than 3d. Sure, there's still Tekken and Dead or Alive, and maybe sometime Soul Calibur will make more of a comeback, but most of the more popular fighting games in recent years are 2.5d, not 3d. People, including me, like the style of 2d/2.5d fighters, with their special moves, supers, super meters, and such; often over-the-top styles in both moves, graphics, story, what have you; and all the rest over 3d fighting games and their often more punch-and-kick-combos-centric gameplay. Most of the major 2d fighting game franchises did not abandon 3d for no reason, they did so because 2d plays and sells better. I like that they're sticking with side-scrolling games. There is a place for both kinds of fighting games, but I definitely like 2d or 2.5d ones more.

I f you're talking about story though, then you are misinterpreting what I said. I'm a Nintendo fan. Gameplay comes first and is the only significant factor in why I think a game is good or bad. Story, like visuals, music, etc., is a secondary thing which does matter, but far less than the gameplay does.
 

MikeMyers

Member
I'm not dodging the question. You asked me wherever I think a lesser skilled player would have a better chance in a 2d or 3d fighter. I said it depends on the game. I played fighting games competitively during the mid 2000s. The ones I saw the most were 3rd Strike, Marvel vs Capcom 2, and Tekken 5 (later Tekken 5 DR). Out of those, I'd say the one that Mvc2, a 2s game, is probably the one they would have best chance in.
 
I'm not dodging the question. You asked me wherever I think a lesser skilled player would have a better chance in a 2d or 3d fighter. I said it depends on the game. I played fighting games competitively during the mid 2000s. The ones I saw the most were 3rd Strike, Marvel vs Capcom 2, and Tekken 5 (later Tekken 5 DR). Out of those, I'd say the one that Mvc2, a 2s game, is probably the one they would have best chance in.
Okay, I see. Impressive, being a competitive fighting game player requires a lot of skill...

But it's ironic that you mention MvC, because I'm horrible at that series. I've never managed to beat the boss of MvC1, for example. Somehow, even though they are designed to be more approachable games, I find them harder than those games. For me they are less fun and harder to figure out than 'traditional' 2d fighters in the Street Fighter or SNK schools. Part of it is probably that I haven't spent much time trying to get better at them, I'd rather play games I like more instead. But also I think I like the slower and more deliberate pacing of a KOF or Last Blade more than the fast-and-flashy Marvel Vs. games. I know it's just me, but I think of the Marvel Vs. games as confusing and hard unless you get used to their fast and combo-heavy style, and I don't really want to do that. I'd rather play something I enjoy playing, instead.

But sure, I was thinking of games aimed at relatively equivalent audiences. Part of the idea of playing a bunch of games of each type would be to cover all the categories, hopefully accounting for the variation within. Something like MvC which is supposed to be more approachable should be compared to a 3d fighter similarly designed for approachability, and not Tekken.

LOL, this thread now looks exactly like a Sega-16 Black Falcon Thread.
Not at all. There's no insulting trolling going on here, thankfully. I quite like that NeoGAF doesn't allow that kind of thing. This is just a reasonable discussion.
 
Not at all. There's no insulting trolling going on here, thankfully. I quite like that NeoGAF doesn't allow that kind of thing. This is just a reasonable discussion.

I mean the huge walls of QUOTE tags interspersed with responses are pretty similar! That's what I mean, at any rate.

But yeah, GAF doesn't allow quite the same level of anarchy as S16 does it? Good times.
 

MikeMyers

Member
Well I will say that, 2D Fighters are usually harder to play against the AI. Those do seem to go out of their way to be harder, especially boss battles. So I can one struggling more in those than other fighters.
 
I found these four for 400 yen. Not bad!



Decathlete seems kinda shitty, and that racing game (not Sega Rally) sucks, but I can't argue with the price.
 

Khaz

Member
Decathlete is cool, I spent a lot of time button-mashing it in the Arcade. It's much better with a friend, and in short sessions though.
 

Conezays

Member
Been enjoying Vampire Savior quite a bit; looks and plays great! One thing though, has anyone noticed any visual glitches while playing the game? It runs well for the most part, but then I'll see the characters have some odd visual glitches like looking blocky while doing animations. Wondering if this is issue on my end or just happens when the action is getting particularly hectic.

Lol, and as I just wrote this the game fully froze after doing one of Gallon's fireballs.
 
Been enjoying Vampire Savior quite a bit; looks and plays great! One thing though, has anyone noticed any visual glitches while playing the game? It runs well for the most part, but then I'll see the characters have some odd visual glitches like looking blocky while doing animations. Wondering if this is issue on my end or just happens when the action is getting particularly hectic.

Lol, and as I just wrote this the game fully froze after doing one of Gallon's fireballs.

Definitely sounds like an issue with your RAM cartridge. Make sure the pins are clean and it's seated securely.
 

oneida

Cock Strain, Lifetime Warranty
The key question is, if you take two players, one better and one not as good, and have them play some top 2d and 3d fighting games, which kind of game do you think the not as good player would have more success at? I think it'd be the 3d ones, more likely than not.

But why do you think that? In either case the better player would win. You're talking about barriers of entry like they're some metric of quality. Mashing out a combo in Soul Calibur is not the same as playing the game correctly, and can get you lit up just as easily if not more easily than in a 2D fighter.
 

Conezays

Member
Definitely sounds like an issue with your RAM cartridge. Make sure the pins are clean and it's seated securely.

Hmm, well it's new and I only got it this past week; I've kept it in the cartridge slot since getting it. :(

Upon resetting the game and playing a few rounds I see no glitches though; it's not consistent. On the last round it started glitching again, but everything else before was fine. I've had zero issues with any memory-saving related issues and this is my first game to use the 4MB for playing the game itself. Bah. The version of the Action replay says 2.2 in the menu if that's of any help; I've seen elsewhere mention that earlier versions of the cart had issues on certain games, including VS.
 
But why do you think that? In either case the better player would win.
If you play, say, 10 matches of each game, are you saying that you think that the margin of victory and number of wins would be, on average, exactly the same in all fighting games? I don't think it would be; some games are easier to win at or have a larger luck component, regardless of the skill of each player.

You're talking about barriers of entry like they're some metric of quality. Mashing out a combo in Soul Calibur is not the same as playing the game correctly, and can get you lit up just as easily if not more easily than in a 2D fighter.
Most people don't care about whether they are playing a game "correctly" by whatever metric you are using, they care about whether they win or not. Trying to learn how to play a game better is nice too and certainly can be worthwhile, but it probably doesn't come first.

Well I will say that, 2D Fighters are usually harder to play against the AI. Those do seem to go out of their way to be harder, especially boss battles. So I can one struggling more in those than other fighters.
Yes, this is certainly a major part of why I think of 2d fighting games as being harder. I mostly play fighting games against the AI, not other people, and 2d games are harder to win against the AI at, most of the time; there are exceptions, of course, but in general it's true.

I mean the huge walls of QUOTE tags interspersed with responses are pretty similar! That's what I mean, at any rate.

But yeah, GAF doesn't allow quite the same level of anarchy as S16 does it? Good times.
Oh, that. I like quote-response debates, I've done that a lot on GAF over the years for sure.
 

IrishNinja

Member
play fighting games for story brehs


wait what does SOTN do with the clock?

the Holy Trinity


oh man, want!

No Master System?

BOO!

Most underrated Sega system.

+1 so hard

No matter how many words you spend on it, it still comes across as nonsense.

tag-worthy line here

LOL, this thread now looks exactly like a Sega-16 Black Falcon Thread.

...someone had to say it

I found these four for 400 yen. Not bad!



Decathlete seems kinda shitty, and that racing game (not Sega Rally) sucks, but I can't argue with the price.

nah, you got 4 saturn games for peanuts, man!
 

jerry1594

Member
Most people don't care about whether they are playing a game "correctly" by whatever metric you are using, they care about whether they win or not. Trying to learn how to play a game better is nice too and certainly can be worthwhile, but it probably doesn't come first.


Yes, this is certainly a major part of why I think of 2d fighting games as being harder. I mostly play fighting games against the AI, not other people, and 2d games are harder to win against the AI at, most of the time; there are exceptions, of course, but in general it's true.
1) playing the game correctly, is playing to win. At lower skill levels this may not apply as much, but in a fighting game the one who plays the game more correctly will win.

2) cheap bosses programmed to steal coins doesn't have a bearing in the actual difficult part of a game, which is playing against another person.
 

IrishNinja

Member
1) playing the game correctly, is playing to win. At lower skill levels this may not apply as much, but in a fighting game the one who plays the game more correctly will win.

and that's a competitive genre - in solo stuff, i think it's even worse. why bother listening to someone's thoughts about a game if they didn't even think it worth their time/effort to learn to play it right?

if i posted a thread in gaming side about why i tried to play the next Dark Souls like a DOOM game & i think it's shit, it'd be a locked-down pile-on pretty quick, and for good reason.
 
I really need to look into getting Virtua Cop 2 at some point. Have fond memories of the first one, but never got around to the sequel.

It sucks VC3 never got a home port ever. Not even XBLA.
Didn't it get a Japan-only PS2 port?

EDIT: No. No it didn't. Weird, I swore it did, but research confirms otherwise.
 
Good arcade-only games are the worst, if you want to play them you're basically forced into hoping they get emulated... make home ports of arcade games so that people can play them, developers! Sega has released a lot of good arcade-only games, sadly, over the years.

1) playing the game correctly, is playing to win. At lower skill levels this may not apply as much, but in a fighting game the one who plays the game more correctly will win.
Yes, certainly, playing to win is everyone's goal I'm sure. But first, you shouldn't assume that all players are at a high skill level. Most aren't, so as you say playing 'correctly', whatever that means in any individual case, may not apply.

And second, every game is different. In some games you can win with button mashing and it'll do you just fine through many skill levels. In others it's useless, you've got to learn the moves. Playing 'correctly' is not as important in the former games as it is the latter ones.

2) cheap bosses programmed to steal coins doesn't have a bearing in the actual difficult part of a game, which is playing against another person.
I strongly disagree here; playing against the CPU is every bit as much of the "actual game" as playing against another person is. The single player game against those hard bosses is not some unimportant side mode, it's equally important to the multiplayer. And for someone like me who has played these games single player like ten times more than multiplayer, it usually feels more important than multiplayer does. Objectively though both should be considered equal.

and that's a competitive genre - in solo stuff, i think it's even worse. why bother listening to someone's thoughts about a game if they didn't even think it worth their time/effort to learn to play it right?

if i posted a thread in gaming side about why i tried to play the next Dark Souls like a DOOM game & i think it's shit, it'd be a locked-down pile-on pretty quick, and for good reason.
This is sometimes true, but some games have multiple ways to play them and succeed. Someone who chooses to play Metal Gear Solid V as an action game instead of a stealth game is not playing it "wrong", for example, they're just playing it a different, valid way. If a game was designed to allow for button-mashing, that was probably an intentional choice put there to let people play that way. If people who start out playing that way like the game and want to get better eventually they probably will move up to trying to learn the moves, after all.
 

Mzo

Member
I think fighting against the CPU is completely worthless in fighting games and I resent having unlocks trapped behind boring CPU fights.

All it does is teach you how to play better against the CPU, which doesn't translate at all to playing well against a human opponent.
 

D.Lo

Member
I found these four for 400 yen. Not bad!



Decathlete seems kinda shitty, and that racing game (not Sega Rally) sucks, but I can't argue with the price.
That racing game is made by Cave!

It's more an 'engine tweaking' sim, from the original explosion of mountain drift racing in Japan.
 

UMGAWA

Member
The version of the Action replay says 2.2 in the menu if that's of any help; I've seen elsewhere mention that earlier versions of the cart had issues on certain games, including VS.

It could well be your cart or slot. I played VS recently with the official 4mb cart and it was super smooth.
 

Conezays

Member
It could well be your cart or slot. I played VS recently with the official 4mb cart and it was super smooth.

Hmm, that's disheartening. I played through the game a couple times again without issues, yet also had times where the animation would totally glitch out, opponent fully disappeared preventing a match from finishing, as well as fully freezing. Can't really see anyone else mentioning anything similar online. There's a Saturn and Arcade mode in the "Screen Options" menu; that can't have anything to do with this can it?
 

MikeMyers

Member
Yeah, sometimes my RAM Cart wont load at the start-up screen, and sometimes it will crash during X-Men Vs. SF. Usually I just turn the system off, pull the cart out and put it back in, and it works again. Probably not the best way to go about it, though.

+1 so hard

You know, I was thinking. The Saturn kinda feels more like the Master System successor to me, while Dreamcast was the Genesis successor. For example, Genesis popular games were Sonic, Mortal Kombat, and sports games while Dreamcast popular games were Sonic, Soul Calibur, and sport games.
 

UMGAWA

Member
Hmm, that's disheartening. There's a Saturn and Arcade mode in the "Screen Options" menu; that can't have anything to do with this can it?

Yeah that's pretty bad, definitely not how it's meant to be.
Relatively cheapest option is to get your hands on a official 4mb cart and test. Though I assume you use the ar for imports... Hmmm.

No those options aren't your problem.
 
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