Dr.D00p
Member
Because the Saturn was using large numbers of texture mapped sprites for 3D, it wasn't a true 3D polygon shifter. So you are basically upscaling 2D geometry with Saturn emulation, rather than true, aliased 3D polygons on the PS2.
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Was the Dreamcast actually powerful at launch? Or the beneficiary of no competition?
- Thread starter Romulus
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Because the Saturn was using large numbers of texture mapped sprites for 3D, it wasn't a true 3D polygon shifter. So you are basically upscaling 2D geometry with Saturn emulation, rather than true, aliased 3D polygons on the PS2.
Alexios
Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
I don't get it, the geometry can be parsed in either case, on Saturn as quads (though probably converted to triangles to work on PC? I dunno) and on other systems as triangles. It would have been nice to get a sharp look out of PS2 games like that.
I'm hoping for Yakuza 6 or Judgement to come to PC to finally get sharp post-VF3 VF, I tried dabbling with Naomi emulation for 4 but couldn't get it working so, 5 will hopefully do. But okay, I'm not a programmer and this is off topic so, ignore me.
I'm hoping for Yakuza 6 or Judgement to come to PC to finally get sharp post-VF3 VF, I tried dabbling with Naomi emulation for 4 but couldn't get it working so, 5 will hopefully do. But okay, I'm not a programmer and this is off topic so, ignore me.
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3 years gave us slightly more than 2.3x this gen... there's definitely been a slow down in hw progression.
When you're using resolution hacks its entirely the fault of emulator, its not like 1440i is in any way original hardware thing. And pcsx2 doesn't handle full res games right in many cases either.
Komatsu
Member
I did a deep dive into the old white wonder's tech specs in the 20th Anniversary OT. Always happy to revisit:
People here have mentioned the PS2 - I had the console as well and it might have been one of my fondest memories in gaming, but the PS2 launch campaign was a prime example of a marketing push choke full of astonishing bad faith and false promises. Some of the specs and feats ventilated in 1999 were above and beyond anything Sony could deliver and the PS2, though still the bestselling system of all time, was actually pretty underwhelming in a lot of ways. Though it had, for example, almost four times the raw computing power of the DC, the Dreamcast actually fares pretty well in all multiplat comparisons. Developing for the PS2 involved some vodoo in getting the shader pipelines in place, handling the ten specific processors (IOP, SPU1&2, MDEC, R5900, VU0&1, GIF, VIF, GS) and all six different memory spaces (IOP, SPU, CPU, GS, VU0&1), etc. etc.
The Dreamcast's SDK Katana (see picture below) was great and very easy to use! And for those who didn't want to go down that route, the Windows CE Toolkit rovided a full-featured development environment including optimized DirectX libraries (Direct3D, etc.) , sound and input, as well as in-built support for networking.
Here's a quick comparison between two multiplat titles - our favorite anime waifu simulator Dead or Alive 2 and Ferrari F355 challenge. The images were captured straight from the console, courtesy of the great Brazilian minds of the VCDECIDE channel (all their comparisons are great, BTW). The PS2 looks muddier since it was outputting video in dirty interlaced composited, whereas the Dreamcast feed is on 480p through VGA.
The PS2 ports usually handle geometry better - DOA2 for the PS2 has stages with bigger craters, better angular geography, etc. However, reflections, lighting and transparency (look at that Ferrari's windshield) looked amazing in the Dreamcast, thanks to the PowerVR2's Order-indepedent Transparency, which does not require the console to sort out rendering orders for any kind of alpha compositing. There are many ways of handling transparency here, some of which were documented in the dev docs for the Windos CE kit. Krejlooc, from ResetEra, also had an interesting post about the subject (I hope the mods don't mind the link - I'm not a RE user but gfx programming is my jam).
Here's another round of comparisons, folks!
This time we include comparisons with the OG Xbox and GameCube as well.
Images were extracted directly from the console - but not by me. They were taken from a myriad of sources (Youtube channels [Archade Games], The Cutting Room Floor, etc.).
Again, the DC fares pretty well in the transparency department. The PS2's advantage in geometry can be seen clearly in the image on the top right - notice how the steering wheel is rounder. However, the Dreamcasts overwhelming advantage in the alpha-mapping department shows when it comes to the NGC port of Sonic Adventure - all transparencies in the NGC port are awful and SEGA had to extensively retool a bunch of stuff.
Even the XBox - which was vastly more powerful than the DC - suffered a bit in that department. SEGA AM2 got rid of a bunch of chain fences, etc., in the Xbox port as they couldn't just "punch through" transparencies as they did in the DC, as Takeshi Hirai, Shenmue's Lead Programmer, said in a recent testimonial.
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bumleforce
Member
The Dreamcast was way more powerful than ps however I forgot when it happened but not long before it launched or got announced Sony showed tech demos of ps2 that didn’t actually represent gameplay but got people hyped and Dreamcast was fighting a losing battle from that day onward. Great system
theclaw135
Banned
Mark my words, emulation makes history murky. One day emu enhancements and inaccuracies will be the generally accepted belief of a console's capabilities.
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D.Final
Banned
True
Grand Theft Scratchy
Banned
Starlancer was another impressive looking Dreamcast game.
theclaw135
Banned
Doesn't the SNES outperform the Saturn in transparencies?
D.Final
Banned
Good question
cireza
Member
SNES is a 2D console, its architecture is much simpler than Saturn which was designed for both 2D and 3D, a choice that no other manufacturer made back then (PS1 and N64 being 3D only).
So it is simpler to achieve results on SNES that's for sure. You cannot easily do transparency on both sprites and background at the same time as sprites are drawn by VDP1 and backgrounds by VDP2. Each can only apply transparency to what it actually draws.
Transparency is not the be-all end-all of graphics of course, but this is still a big weakness of the hardware. It should have been architecture so that VDP2 would pass the picture to VDP1 and then VDP1 would send it for display (with the possibility to apply transparencies before), rather than having each VDP writing its own elements separately to be then displayed.
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captainraincoat
Banned
I would say it was
Dreamcast was a very well made machine but Sega shit the bed with its Mega cd/32x and Saturn and the money required to support the console and fend off sony just was not there
so they got pretty much a free pass as the other main competitor the n64 was a popular console the cds are where it was at and they had a shitload more money to spend on demos...marketing and sega put up the white flag
If Sega had the cash to spend on supporting the console longer im pretty sure today's landscape would probably still have a sega console as they are still sitting on a shitload of unused first party IP
These guys had the ips/games to go toe to toe with the best console of all time ...the SNES
Dreamcast was a very well made machine but Sega shit the bed with its Mega cd/32x and Saturn and the money required to support the console and fend off sony just was not there
so they got pretty much a free pass as the other main competitor the n64 was a popular console the cds are where it was at and they had a shitload more money to spend on demos...marketing and sega put up the white flag
If Sega had the cash to spend on supporting the console longer im pretty sure today's landscape would probably still have a sega console as they are still sitting on a shitload of unused first party IP
These guys had the ips/games to go toe to toe with the best console of all time ...the SNES
K1Expwy
Member
DC's port of Virtual On OT was incredible, it could qualify as a remaster of the original at the arcades. But the other Model 3 ports didn't fare as well for various reasons
D.Final
Banned
True
Komatsu
Member
marquimvfs
Member
Crushed blacks hays hello...
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Alexios
Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
I don't see the difference you guys are talking about. A great port for sure and a great game. I've not spent too much time with it (too damn hard) but seeing media of the arcade version I don't see anything vastly inferior? Are you sure you're not comparing to the model 2 original?Yes, an amazing port, leaps and bounds better than the arcade original.
Or maybe you're comparing the first version with the later revision that was ported to DC (then again that seems to mostly be balance changes and what not).
Or I just need a side by side or something to see the differences. They do mention version 5.66 was on Naomi instead of Model 3 and did improve visuals a lot but that also just looks like the DC game to me in brief footage.
Obvs ignore player skill/emulator enhancements or potential glitches and slowdown and just look at the assets and stuff, it looks close to me. Maybe more flat lighting/shading on Model 3? I dunno. Definitely not some crazy difference like SoulCalibur.
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Journey
Banned
When I saw Toshinden running for the first time on the PSX
When I saw Mario 64 for first time on the N64
When I saw Soul Calibur for the first time on the Dreamcast
Those were amazing gaming moments. I didn't feel that with anything that launched on the PS2, that says a LOT.
K1Expwy
Member
I don't see the difference you guys are talking about. A great port for sure and a great game. I've not spent too much time with it (too damn hard) but seeing media of the arcade version I don't see anything vastly inferior? Are you sure you're not comparing to the model 2 original?
Or maybe you're comparing the first version with the later revision that was ported to DC (then again that seems to mostly be balance changes and what not).
Or I just need a side by side or something to see the differences. They do mention version 5.66 was on Naomi instead of Model 3 and did improve visuals a lot but that also just looks like the DC game to me in brief footage.
Obvs ignore player skill/emulator enhancements or potential glitches and slowdown and just look at the assets and stuff, it looks close to me. Maybe more flat lighting/shading on Model 3? I dunno. Definitely not some crazy difference like SoulCalibur.
The output resolution on a physical Model 3 cabinet was low, 496x384 I believe, compared to DC's 720x480 with VGA support. Model 3 games at arcades had a fuzzy compressed look, that made the games look like realtime low-res FMV.
With a Model 3 emulator, VOOT arcade looks the same as the DC port, which is already impressive after the ports for Sega Rally 2 and VF3tb kind of missed the mark. But compared to the arcade cabinet, the port was an improvement at the time (early 2000s, when Model 3 wasn't close to being emulated)
Alexios
Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Okay that makes sense so, same game more or less but a default lower resolution output and screen. But wouldn't that also be the case for VF3tb and why was that put down over the asset complexity reduction for DC but not praised for the higher resolution? Or held as equal overall?
The Sega Retro specs list that model 3 is capable of using up to 640x480 but I can't find any solid information online. Could it be that the hardware could run that but the common monitors on arcade systems were less so it downscaled internally or something?
segaretro.org
There's some discussion about it on this forum but nobody managed to get it to work after that and those that did claim to have made it work in the past to at least connect it to a normal monitor didn't know/care to see if the games actually ran at that resolution or just upscaled.
The Sega Retro specs list that model 3 is capable of using up to 640x480 but I can't find any solid information online. Could it be that the hardware could run that but the common monitors on arcade systems were less so it downscaled internally or something?
Sega Model 3 - Sega Retro
segaretro.org
There's some discussion about it on this forum but nobody managed to get it to work after that and those that did claim to have made it work in the past to at least connect it to a normal monitor didn't know/care to see if the games actually ran at that resolution or just upscaled.
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Xplainin
Banned
The Dreamcast was a generation ahead of the PS1 and N64.
The console was good, the games were good, but three things killed it.
Sega ran out of money
DCs copy protection was cracked so easy, and you could download games easy as.
EA not making games for it, in the era where Madden was king also killed it.
The console was good, the games were good, but three things killed it.
Sega ran out of money
DCs copy protection was cracked so easy, and you could download games easy as.
EA not making games for it, in the era where Madden was king also killed it.
K1Expwy
Member
I only caught VF3 once in arcades so I'm not a good judge. The main complaint for the DC port seems to be a drop in lighting quality.Okay that makes sense so, same game more or less but a default lower resolution output and screen. But wouldn't that also be the case for VF3tb and why was that put down over the asset complexity reduction for DC but not praised for the higher resolution? Or least held as equal overall?
The Sega Retro specs list that model 3 is capable of using up to 640x480 but I can't find any solid information online. Could it be that the hardware could run that but the common monitors on arcade systems were less so it downscaled internally or something?
Sega Model 3 - Sega Retro
There's some discussion about it on this forum but nobody managed to get it to work after that and those that did claim to have made it work in the past to at least connect it to a normal monitor didn't know/care to see if the games actually ran at that resolution or just upscaled.
I remember playing Sega Rally 2, Daytona 2, SCUD Race, VOOT, SpikeOut, Star Wars Trilogy, and the Harley Davidson game. Every Model 3 game appeared the same, I don't recall those games using hi-res modes, even on deluxe cabs.
SR2's port was bad, but VF3 was close enough, although not a graphic showcase. I just think Sega fans at the time were upset that high profile arcade ports were less than perfect on DC, and they didn't leave a strong impression during the all-important console war debate
Alexios
Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
I never said I consider the VF3tb port bad, you can look where I posted that same video on a previous page. That's not what I was discussing there. SR2 is pretty bad though, given the performance (and the fabled less-graphics-more-fps cheat mode is far from good too).
It just seems weird nobody back then stressed the resolution difference there or that people were even be able to notice the drop in quality in VF if the model 3 really output like, something over half the resolution (tbh the games were 640x480 + overscan on DC, not full 720x480).
It just seems weird nobody back then stressed the resolution difference there or that people were even be able to notice the drop in quality in VF if the model 3 really output like, something over half the resolution (tbh the games were 640x480 + overscan on DC, not full 720x480).
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diffusionx
Gold Member
VF3tb was good on Dreamcast but they should never have let Sega Rally 2 out the door in that shape, it was really bad and a major disappointment considering how good the first was on Saturn.
Trimesh
Banned
The biggest problem that Sega Rally 2 had was that it was running on Windows CE, which - especially at the 2.x revision that was available when the DC was produced - was really a rather poor platform for games. Especially when you compared it with the designed for the hardware and designed for games Katana SDK that the other first-party games were using.
The reason they were using CE is political - early on in the DC development cycle there were two parallel development trains - one, led by SoJ, used the SH4, NEC Power VR graphics and the in-house Katana SDK. The other, led by SoA, used the same SH4 CPU but paired with a 3D chipset from 3DFX and Windows CE.
After the SoJ hardware design was chosen as the final one for the production DC it emerged that SoA had made an agreement with Microsoft that (1) Sega's next generation console would support Windows CE and (2) At least one of the first party games for it would be running on CE. Sega Rally ended up being that game. Allegedly there was at one point a Katana based version that had better performance, but it was never released.
MetalAlien
Banned
This was done to death back at the dawn of gaming-age.com with
ManaByte
and Mr Angryface and the whole gang...
The Dreamcast had a clear advantage over the PS2 in some areas. All of which was pretty much gone by the end of the first or 2nd year of the PS2. By the time Gran Turismo 3 came out no one thought the Dreamcast was the match of the PS2.
ManaByte
and Mr Angryface and the whole gang...The Dreamcast had a clear advantage over the PS2 in some areas. All of which was pretty much gone by the end of the first or 2nd year of the PS2. By the time Gran Turismo 3 came out no one thought the Dreamcast was the match of the PS2.
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EverythingsOverrated
Member
Wow that's insane.
It never made sense to me why Sega Rally 2 would be running on CE and this explains that.
Too bad. It seems like the CE idea was good for the less demanding games like Armada, but I remember this game where you controlled a mech in a city....I can't remember what it was called. Anyway that game ran like complete dog shit
Trimesh
Banned
The other thing is that the Dreamcast wasn't supposed to be using CE 2.x - MS were well aware that it had some performance issues and were already working on CE 3.0 - which had much better performance and was originally scheduled to be available in time for the console release.
The original proposed version of CE 3.0 didn't have any timing guarantees - this really isn't a problem for gaming (as long as it's "fast enough") - but at the time MS were looking into positioning CE as an OS for telephony devices and was a considerable competitive disadvantage against systems like Symbian which had good enough real-time performance that you could safely run radio tasks on the application CPU. So they embarked on a major development project to make the real-time behavior of CE3.0 at least as good as Symbian.
This was successful - but since at this point it was clear that CE3.0 wasn't going to be ready in time for the Dreamcast launch they ran with 2.x instead. It also ended up not really mattering since by the time 3.0 was ready for release the market was moving towards multi-CPU SoCs anyway and needing separate radio and application CPUs was no longer regarded as a major cost driver.
Alexios
Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Windows CE was a good inclusion for low end ports or whatever didn't need "to the metal" programming to squeeze every bit of power. Starlancer is a pretty good game using it and so is Virtua Cop 2 and all the Tomb Raider ports and Resident Evil 2. But I guess nothing truly impressive used it.
But if there was a "first party game" requirement on it, they could have left it at Virtua Cop 2
It's quite a good effort, obviously Model 2 is far inferior to Dreamcast but it's decently enhanced with new textures, models and effects too. Although not as enhanced as the later PS2 release one could say Dreamcast is improved yet more faithful to the original look.
But if there was a "first party game" requirement on it, they could have left it at Virtua Cop 2
It's quite a good effort, obviously Model 2 is far inferior to Dreamcast but it's decently enhanced with new textures, models and effects too. Although not as enhanced as the later PS2 release one could say Dreamcast is improved yet more faithful to the original look.
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K1Expwy
Member
Possibly, only guessing, because SDTV and EDTV were the most common displays for DC when the console was active in 1998-2001. Some fans must have sought after a VGA box for their PC monitor, or early and expensive HDTV. But hobbyists in need of a VGA box probably increased when HDTV adoption expanded toward the mid-2000s, after Sega went 3rd party. The flaws in SR2 and VF3 were still noticeable without a VGA box, VF less so
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Komatsu
Member
DC's 480p output was probably the cleanest video feed any home entertainment device could provide and would blow most arcade monitors out of the water.
Yup, the famous dispute between the Dural (later Katana) and Black Belt development streams. Hideko Sato -SEGA's famed head of engineering - was leading Katana whereas Black Belt basically became Bernie Stolar's brainchild. Kalinske and some of the SOA guys love to complain about how SOA's input was completely disregarded when it came to designing the Saturn but when it comes to the DC, Sato's team had the better product and won the "competition" fairly.
Komatsu
Member
Apologies for the double post, but I thought perhaps another round of comparisons would do us good.
Here's Le Mans 24h, on both the PS2 and our little white wonder:
And with 200% zoom:
Bear in mind - at all times - that the Dreamcast started development 3 years before the PS2, with the Dural/Katana project reaching maturity at SEGA in mid-1997. Even with this gap in mind, the DC can do things the PS2 simply couldn't. It had 8MB of VRAM and with larger VRAM and tiled rendering, the DC can render a larger and with very, very robust texture compression, it could handle up to 60 (!!) MB of texture in its VRAM, whereas the PS2 had to stick with its 4 megs.
Look at Le Mans (caps courtesy of that Brazilian "VCDECIDE" channel) - the image is cleaner, it had better shadows (the DC's expert handling of transparencies comes to help here) and though it couldn't handle the same amount of polygonal complexity, it could try to compensate with texture quality.
I can't stress enough how much of a beast the DC's GPU was. Remember how everybody complained that the Saturn "forced" devs to draw polygons with quads? Well, the PowerVR could switch between triangles, squares and other basic geometric forms for its polygonal structure. Issues with devkits or with stupid compiler and API tools? No worries, it could handle DirectX as well as OpenGL. Porting PC titles like Silver and Unreal Tournament were a breeze.
Here's Le Mans 24h, on both the PS2 and our little white wonder:
And with 200% zoom:
Bear in mind - at all times - that the Dreamcast started development 3 years before the PS2, with the Dural/Katana project reaching maturity at SEGA in mid-1997. Even with this gap in mind, the DC can do things the PS2 simply couldn't. It had 8MB of VRAM and with larger VRAM and tiled rendering, the DC can render a larger and with very, very robust texture compression, it could handle up to 60 (!!) MB of texture in its VRAM, whereas the PS2 had to stick with its 4 megs.
Look at Le Mans (caps courtesy of that Brazilian "VCDECIDE" channel) - the image is cleaner, it had better shadows (the DC's expert handling of transparencies comes to help here) and though it couldn't handle the same amount of polygonal complexity, it could try to compensate with texture quality.
I can't stress enough how much of a beast the DC's GPU was. Remember how everybody complained that the Saturn "forced" devs to draw polygons with quads? Well, the PowerVR could switch between triangles, squares and other basic geometric forms for its polygonal structure. Issues with devkits or with stupid compiler and API tools? No worries, it could handle DirectX as well as OpenGL. Porting PC titles like Silver and Unreal Tournament were a breeze.
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I Love Rock 'n' Roll
Member
It was.
It cool run Quake III with no problem. I could not with my Pentium 400 make it run like that. It was said to be somewhere between middle high to high entry level. Dreamcast was doing lots of things better than the more powerfull PS2. No PC could run SoulCalibur, Sonic Adventure or Shenmue. There was nothing like that.
It cool run Quake III with no problem. I could not with my Pentium 400 make it run like that. It was said to be somewhere between middle high to high entry level. Dreamcast was doing lots of things better than the more powerfull PS2. No PC could run SoulCalibur, Sonic Adventure or Shenmue. There was nothing like that.
Not_a_Sony_pony
Banned
I think if the n64 had a few of its bottlenecks addressed there would be far less praise of the Dreamcast. In the best looking n64 titles compared to DC, the jump was visible but I wouldn’t call it generational by any stretch.
it was more so frame rates and resolution. If n64 had a sound chip, and lower latency memory plus a tad more bandwidth, it would have either had substantially superior frame rates or noticeably better visuals than what n64 games displayed.
For what it’s worth, DC was a very well rounded system but I feel like the visual leap from DC to GameCube was just as much as n64 to DC.
it was more so frame rates and resolution. If n64 had a sound chip, and lower latency memory plus a tad more bandwidth, it would have either had substantially superior frame rates or noticeably better visuals than what n64 games displayed.
For what it’s worth, DC was a very well rounded system but I feel like the visual leap from DC to GameCube was just as much as n64 to DC.
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Not_a_Sony_pony
Banned
That is beautiful
DigitalScrap
Member
Dreamcast wad definitely powerful at release. The things that were being pulled off at the time with the PowerVR was truly groundbreaking - not just for consoles either. It was beyond 3Dfx at the time.
There was a forum I used to live on - (the forum that I posted on more than any forum in my life, gaming or otherwise) DCTP where we would do deep dives into the technical details of PowerVR. Ah, good days. And since we were this little weird niche of tech nerds, we didn't have any fanboys posting idiocy. It was great.
But back to PowerVR. It had automatic translucency sorting, 2Bit/pixel texture compression, modifier volumes, 32 bit color rendering, and FSAA. It really was quite advanced at the time (quickly to be surpassed, but when it released, it was impressive).
There was a forum I used to live on - (the forum that I posted on more than any forum in my life, gaming or otherwise) DCTP where we would do deep dives into the technical details of PowerVR. Ah, good days. And since we were this little weird niche of tech nerds, we didn't have any fanboys posting idiocy. It was great.
But back to PowerVR. It had automatic translucency sorting, 2Bit/pixel texture compression, modifier volumes, 32 bit color rendering, and FSAA. It really was quite advanced at the time (quickly to be surpassed, but when it released, it was impressive).
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Kazza
Member
I don't know, if the N64 - DC wasn't a generational leap, then I don't know what is:
OoT and Shenmue were only released a year apart and were both big budget first party titles, so I think it's a fair comparison. You could argue that OoT is going for a more "cartoony" art style, but if anything that should help it as more realistic graphical styles are the ones that tend to age the worst. The lack of blury textures, 50% higher gramerate and much more detailed character models and environments (not to mention the full voice acting...such as it was) makes Shenmue stand out as a generation above OoT.
With regards to the Gamecube, there was definitely a marked improvement, but I don't think it was anywhere near the N64 - DC leap. RE4 looks great, but it did come over 6 years after the original Shenmue:
Perhaps Eternal Darkness is a fairer comparison, as it was an earlier title:
Mario Sunshine is definitely a much better looking game than Sonic Adventure, but I don't think it's nearly a big a jump as the Sonic game was from Mario 64:
RetroAV
Member
One thing I will say (that can't really be emphasized enough through these videos/screenshots of games running through emulators and whatnot), is how much clearer and cleaner real Dreamcast hardware image quality was than real N64 hardware. In no way was the jump from DC to GC as much of a jump as N64 to DC. You're going from 240p with scanlines, to 480p with no scanlines. Even if you bump up the resolution of an N64 to 480p, you're still missing x amount of textures and techniques, x amount of effects, x amounts of polys, etc. The difference was night and day! In fact, the Dreamcast's visual image clarity wouldn't definitively be rivaled or topped till 2001 with the arrival of the OG Xbox and Gamecube.
Sw0pDiller
Member
such nice memories, playing sonic for the first time and be running from that killerwhale at breakneck speed in glorious 3d. I remebered owning crazy taxi, sonic en some game where you would fly as a miniature aircraft through a kitchen or something. I dont know where i left mine but i must have sold it or something. It was the last console that i sold cous i kept all of them in the attic after that. Still regret selling that thing. But i've heard that some internal hardware was low low quality so most console are broken to some degree by now.
i'm considering buying one again from ebay or something...
i'm considering buying one again from ebay or something...
HE1NZ
Banned
Dreamcast is a nice and powerful machine, but it wouldn't have been able to share multiplats with Xbox and GC the way PS2 did. Even PS2 can barely keep up, massive frame drops in every game. DC was a little to early. Calling it mid generational upgrade is fair since most of it's library is improved N64, PS1 ports.
Komatsu
Member
The NGC was released in November, 2001 so it and the Dreamcast never actually "overlapped". As such, direct comparisons are tricky.
In fact, Nintendo started active development on the NGC the same year in which the Dreamcast was released. Unsurprisingly, it some inspiration from SEGA's Katana design. Unlike the PS2, the Gamecube had a on-chip Z buffer...
That being said, almost without exception, all DC-to-NGC ports looked like garbage. Sonic Adventure DX is actually a step down from the original, and so was Crazy Taxi. One can blame SEGA, of course, but the same people did not have much trouble putting out much better efforts on the XB and the PS2.
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