sixteen-bit
Member
Wonder if it's possible to make reproduction ones
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Sega Saturn Appreciation and Emulation Thread
- Thread starter Seik
- Start date
sixteen-bit
Member
Yeah, probably not a viable investment anyway. Guaranteed to lose money.
Sapiens
Member
There are three types of PS1 longboxes that I am aware of. The Saturn type ones that look and function just like larger jewel boxes (those were purchased by Sony from Sega in bulk and should work just fine). I think games like OG Ridge Race and Toshinden came in these. These are your best bet.
Then there are the black plastic long boxes that some games used which would not work at all because they use stickers for the front and back art and do not operate like a jewel case. I didn't have a lot of these.
There are also black cardboard longboxes. I think capcom games mostly used these (think Resident Evil or Alpha 1, but not 100% sure).
Then there are the black plastic long boxes that some games used which would not work at all because they use stickers for the front and back art and do not operate like a jewel case. I didn't have a lot of these.
There are also black cardboard longboxes. I think capcom games mostly used these (think Resident Evil or Alpha 1, but not 100% sure).
Do this. If you keep an eye on it, Sega CD and Saturn sports games will frequently pop up on eBay for $8-$12. At that point all you have to do is hope the seller packs it well because these twenty year old pieces of plastic break extremely easily.
Sega CD, Saturn, and some early PlayStation game cases are (I'm pretty sure!) identical.
There were three different types of PlayStation cases; the nice, plastic boxes Sony probably intended to make the standard (Assault Rigs), the clear plastic cases Sony bought from Sega (Novastorm), and cheap cardboard printed boxes (Philosoma). A bunch of games (like Twisted Metal) shipped in more than one format.
Hope this helps!
Tell me about it, the plastic in those cases is very brittle. I bought a game on Amazon in great condition then the seller failed to package it properly so of course it broke in transit. I had to go to the local game store, and buy some inexpensive baseball game for the Saturn that was in inexplicably great shape.
sixteen-bit
Member
prolly cuz no one wanted to touch it, lol
GurgleBot20
Member
I suppose I'll go with the cheap game route. Had no idea that the PS1 long cases were the same. Maybe one of these cheap games will secretly be a masterpiece.
IrishNinja
Member
yeah, found this out the hard way years back replacing some cases - you really do assume they're just leftover Sega-CD stock when eyeballing them though
Laevateinn
Member
Sega of America, what are you doing?
They wanted shelf space/visibility in retailers.
GurgleBot20
Member
Then maybe they should have told retailers they were selling the thing.
IrishNinja
Member
they told some
socksfelloff
Member
The most incredible part of that whole debacle is how hard SoA had to work to get retailers to even notice them and then they were forced to throw it all away with that saturn launch(among other things)
After reading console wars it makes the whole thing feel even worse. SoA did so many things right and SoJ was dead set on flushing it all down the toilet.
ResidentDante
Member
I know. You'd literally have a complete different timeline if SoJ let SoA run the ship. 32X would never have seen light outside SoJ R&D labs and the Sega PlayStation would have been a reality most likely.
sixteen-bit
Member
Does Console Wars even have any primary sources from SoJ? That's probably why it's so one-sided (not that SoJ wasn't fucking up)
socksfelloff
Member
It's a whole lot of what ifs. If it wasn't for Nakayama over at SoJ, SoA wouldn't have been able to do anything they did. So much of the stuff SoA pulled was turned down/rejected by SoJ but Nakayama would say "go ahead and do it anyways Tom"
On the flip side SoA was able to gain traction against NoA because NoJ refused to let them take action.
Both SEGA and Nintendo have a similar story in regards to their downfall.
On the flip side SoA was able to gain traction against NoA because NoJ refused to let them take action.
Both SEGA and Nintendo have a similar story in regards to their downfall.
BlazeHedgehog
Member
Even if Console Wars doesn't have much from the SOJ side of things, I always found it interesting that Segagaga apparently riffs on the Kalinske era (with a character called Task Force Director Cool) and tells it like he almost destroyed Sega because he was too focused on profit and suppressed their creativity (elements that do come through in Console Wars, though viewed from the other side as the Japanese being stubborn).
That adversarial nature might be what really elevated Sega more than any one side being better than the other.
socksfelloff
Member
Oh yeah Sega of Japan has created some of the all time greats in the home console space and the Arcades theres no doubt about it. They may not have understood the core western market but their games are some of my all time fave.
That said SoAs in your face 90s attitude totally won a young me over. I didn't want no kiddy console I was a tough, and cool, kid damnit! The Nintendo was toy for babies.
I Recieved a model 2 for Xmas and I cried the rest day because it came with columns instead of sonic.
sixteen-bit
Member
I just realized this thread has over 1.2 million views. Congrats Seik.
Shadow Hog
Member
I swear I heard it started in Japan, and SoA had no idea how they were expected to sell it.
Sapiens
Member
It was a collaboration - but the directive came from SoJ as far as I recall. SoJ saw the MD still had legs in western markets and wanted to keep it going against the possible threats of new systems like the Jag and 3DO.
And with the hardware being related to the Saturn, the majority of the engineering likely happened with SoJ as well.
A Black Falcon
Member
(Remember, Sega liked releasing new systems every few years; Nintendo liked addon chips, while Sega preferred to sell you a new, enhanced version of their previous system. Good background to remember.)
If I remember correctly, first Sega of Japan wanted to make a new Genesis model that would be able to display more colors on screen. This would have been a new system, not an addon, and would not have been nearly as much enhanced as the 32X is.
Sega of America heard about it and argued against a new model, saying that a more powerful addon would be a better idea instead (presuming that the Genesis actually needed another expansion). Hayao Nakayama liked that idea so they went with the addon.
Then some people from Sega of America and Sega of Japan worked together to design the 32X, which really was a collaborative project.
Then it released at about the same time on the Saturn and sold quite well its first ('94) holiday season in the US, particularly thanks to Star Wars Arcade and Doom.
Then it was mostly abandoned about six months later, was killed off completely barely a year after its release, and dealt a major blow to Sega's reputation among gamers that I think they never entirely came back from.
So whose fault is it? Both sides really, since neither branch realized how bad of an idea another addon was. Sega of Japan deserves more blame, though, since the idea for a second Genesis addon/enhancement was originally theirs, and as the home office they were in charge and have ultimate authority over decisions. Sega of Japan also deserves a lot of blame for how quickly they abandoned the system after its release; up to that point it was selling in the US, and had they stuck to the original plan of supporting the system for a couple of years maybe the idea could have been vaguely defensible, though even there it still would have been better to not release the thing, and just do a couple more SVP games instead (such as Star Wars Arcade and Virtua Fighter).
Sega of America deserves blame as well of course, for not realizing that it was a bad idea and for thinking that the Genesis needed an addon that would release at the same time the Saturn and Playstation were launching in Japan (instead of just saying 'no more Genesis remodels or addons at all!'), mostly. They did also abandon it early, giving up in January '96, and there are a few more games they could have finished and released (X-Men and Virtua Hamster, most obviously), but I doubt they would have mattered, the system was doomed from the start pretty much, and was finished off by Sega of Japan changing their minds in mid 1995 and ending support for all platforms that were not the Saturn as a failed attempt to push Western markets towards that struggling platform. And yes, that last mistake is often mentioned as one of Sega's biggest bad decisions, and for good reason, but that's kind of a different issue.
And we're the top posters!
I've said this before, but I have a strange soft spot for the 32X. I would've loved to see what could've been squeezed out of it, had it been given a longer life. (Primarily the X-Men game, the Darkstalkers and Alien vs Predator ports, and Castlevania.)
In a related question: if the Sega CD had sprite-scaling ability baked into the hardware, would it's unique functionality be able to stack with whatever the 32X was bringing to the table? (SVP I guess?) That entire setup remains a bit of a mystery to me...
In a related question: if the Sega CD had sprite-scaling ability baked into the hardware, would it's unique functionality be able to stack with whatever the 32X was bringing to the table? (SVP I guess?) That entire setup remains a bit of a mystery to me...
Laevateinn
Member
The Sega CD offered a faster 68k and more memory but the data still needed to be transferred over the cartridge bus. The 32x also shared a data bus through the cartridge slot but I imagine it was mainly for the purposes of synchronization between the processors since the two computers would multiplex their display data on top of each other.
I imagine that if the Sega CD had some sort of video output capability like the 32x it would have been a lot more impressive.
My Genesis programming experience is limited to small demos on the Genesis only and nothing with the add ons so this might be wrong.
I imagine that if the Sega CD had some sort of video output capability like the 32x it would have been a lot more impressive.
My Genesis programming experience is limited to small demos on the Genesis only and nothing with the add ons so this might be wrong.
SkyMasterson
Member
If AvP had been released, I would have been so fucking happy. Like, just playing a few quick dirty ports and you see how powerful the 32x was. Really is a shame it didn't last at least one more year.
A Black Falcon
Member
I don't actually know how the 32X CD titles do what they do. I mean, normally, the Genesis outputs one visual layer that is limited by its hardware, while the 32X outputs a second. Then the Genesis-to-32X cable brings the Genesis image into the 32X, then 32X outputs both images on top of eachother to the TV to make them look like one picture. In emulators you can turn off the layers to see which system is outputting which part of the image, which is interesting -- one is often doing the background and the other the sprites, for instance, in platformers. Some 3d games are almost entirely rendered by the 32X though. But, a 32X CD game is a more complex thing I'd think, as it also needs to deal with the limited SCD-to-Genesis bus, and somehow use the 32X to improve the color depth of a Sega CD game... how DOES that work, anyway? I have four of the 32XCD games and it very much works, they look far better than regular SCD games, but I'm not sure how offhand.
The 32X was a big mistake and never should have been released, but if they were going to release it they HAD to support it for a minimum of two years. Two years is a disappointingly short life for a videogame console -- I remember being upset when Nintendo killed off the GBC in favor of the GBA after only 2 1/2 years, for example -- but at least that'd be a somewhat half-decent lifespan for a late-generation addon. If it wasn't going to get two years of support it shouldn't have been released.
Considering that the 32X and Genesis each usually output separate video layers, I would think that the answer usually would be no, the SCD's hardware couldn't help the 32X part of the image. As for the Genesis part, though... good question. Maybe?
However, could someone make a Genesis or 32X game, on cart, that requires you have a SCD attached and uses that added hardware? I know that the Genesis-to-SCD bus is of limited width, which causes issues in many Sega CD games, but still if that is possible that could be interesting.
(And that would be a lot more practical in terms of 'how many people would actually be able to play this' than the TG16/PCE community's joke setup, the idea of a Supergrafx Arcade CD title... heh.)BlazeHedgehog
Member
A Black Falcon
Member
Yes. The famous 32X tech-demo video was made by Scavenger in 1995, mostly their Zyrinx team, but also a bit from Lemon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOWZbydnlZE
That video is right up there with Red Zone as the most impressive things done by Scavenger, I think, and (short draw distances aside) really shows how much more 3d power the 32X had than you see in its released games. It's too bad the 32X didn't last long enough for them to release a game for it... Amok was probably originally supposed to be a 32X game, but it was moved over to Saturn during development. It's not the most impressive-looking Saturn game, but on 32X would have looked great.
ResidentDante
Member
I'd love to have seen what the 32X Daytona USA would have looked like. Hell they could have done a few tricks to make it more like a fifth gen game too:
Let the:
-32X handle all 3D
-Mega Drive/Mega CD do the HUD and menues
-Mega CD play CD music with a soundtrack CD inside the game case alongside the 32X cartridge.
Seriously cut back textures, maybe even leave some of the 3D be textureless for example.
Let the:
-32X handle all 3D
-Mega Drive/Mega CD do the HUD and menues
-Mega CD play CD music with a soundtrack CD inside the game case alongside the 32X cartridge.
Seriously cut back textures, maybe even leave some of the 3D be textureless for example.
I still don't understand why they didn't port AvP on the Saturn.
Thanks, but I meant something more recent, the sort you would find on pouet for example. I mean this is impressive already, but I'm sure you could squeeze a lot more out of it with modern tools and knowledge.
sixteen-bit
Member
I wish it was ported to any home console
Turned on my launch Saturn last night to test out some games I got and nothing but black screen and no activity. Power light comes on, but nothing happens. Took it all apart to see if there was anything obviously wrong, but there were no loose ribbon cables or bulging caps. Sad times, going to have to get another. Anything else i can try? I'm not even getting the clock set screen.
Laevateinn
Member
Do you own a multimeter? It might be getting power but not enough. My broken Saturn doesn't even turn a light on. It's probably not a drive issue if you don't even get to the bios.
This would've been very interesting. Considering Daytona had a lower polygon count than VR (although they were textured) this could've been surprisingly playable!
I can probably borrow one, just need to google the order and voltage of the 5 pins then. I'm going to be out if my depth quickly
ResidentDante
Member
Sixteen-bit: Thanks to your instagram I just had to order Layer Section, the first game only for now though. The second game goes for a much steeper price sadly.
This is retro game porn at its finest, this.
sixteen-bit
Member
I would just get Raystorm on Playstation over Layer Section II on Saturn, fwiw.
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