Saturn article on 1UP

[Melf]

MGS3 looks better than alot of Xbox games and Capcom's apparently working miracles with the RE4 port but I'm not going argue that the PS2 is just as powerful as Xbox or Gamecube.

I don't think the differences in hardware were as drastic as that. The Saturn's 3D looked like ass not because the hardware was incapable, but because you had to make it jump through too many hoops to get the desired results. Tomb Raider is a good example of this. The game could have looked much better, but would have taken much longer and been much harder to do to get it to look like the PS version. The fact that Sega wouldn't share its development libraries with 3rd parties only made this more apparent. There's a reason why AM2's stuff looked so much better, especially the big Christmas releases (VF2 and Sega Rally).

[supermario]

Hmm, this sounds awfully familiar.

Hmmmmmm......think again.

[Jeremy]

Nintendo's rapidly falling market share disagrees with you.

[outRider]

The Saturn was, in some ways, way way ahead of it's time. Unfortunately that was probably by accident and because Sony 1-up'd them with the PSX at the last minute. It was a disfunctional combination of a few great hardware ideas completely overshadowed by too many underpowered and poorely designed parts. Programming on that thing was nothing but a chore.

The PSX on the other hand, was the right combination of forward thinking and practicality.

[Tsubaki]

Ignoring the petty squabling going on here, the original article referenced is a decent read, but it's not perfect.

As someone mentioned, the anti-Bernie Stolar comments were pretty one-sided. While I'm sure Bernie did harm the US Saturn's chances, there is not enough information to conjecture why. I mean, if the previous president was a puppet for SoJ, then who is to say that Bernie killing US support was solely his sadistic decision? And even if it was his choice, was the US market viable to merit releasing games such as Grandia? The fact that Burning Rangers, Shining Force III, and Panzer Dragoon Saga came out at all is something to be celebrated. These games were translated and released -after- the US SS was dead.

The article is also pretty inaccurate IMO as far as 3rd party support goes. While the US SS library is limited, it did not stop many Japanese 3rd parties from developing. I love the Saturn and have come to appreciate it as the best system ever because of the sheer variety of games that came out for it. It had tons of gems - some very well known, others not so much. The 2D games are superb (Thunderforce series, Capcom 4MB fighters, etc). It had some unique takes on 3D (Gun Griffon, etc... though this is mostly where 1st party games shined). And an assortment of great adventure/RPG/strategy games (Langrisser, Grandia, Chaos Seed, Tactics Ogre etc). As far as Japanese style gaming is concerned, they didn't hold back.

If you look at the SS vs DC, where Sega went wrong is in the censorship. Laugh if you must, but I feel that the SS gained a faithful following because it was the one system at the time that allowed H games. And because of the H, many people flocked to it and thus companies could release regular games... good games... because the installed base warranted it. Sega went clean with the DC and it never took off in Japan despite Sega's brilliance as a 1st party developer for it. It is the DC that didn't get the Jp 3rd party support. It might have been a temporary success in the states, but Japan never shared that enthusiasm. I believe the lack of H had a lot to do with that. After the DC went boom, a few CERO18 games were released for the system but by then it was a bit too late.

[1CCOSA]

So who's fault was Sega's shitty stock performance in Japan? Im sure a lot of Sega fanboys will say Sony, but get real: Sega mismanaged the whole deal and fucked up. The system barely sold in Japan and its US performance, while an improvement over the Saturn, wasnt all that great, and game sales were dismal.

Thanks for proving my point which was simply that Sega's situation back in Japan is mainly what killed it. I just love how it's a pre-requisite here that some folks need to refer back to previous posts.

[RoleTroll]

The Saturn was, in some ways, way way ahead of it's time. Unfortunately that was probably by accident and because Sony 1-up'd them with the PSX at the last minute. It was a disfunctional combination of a few great hardware ideas completely overshadowed by too many underpowered and poorely designed parts. Programming on that thing was nothing but a chore.

The PSX on the other hand, was the right combination of forward thinking and practicality.

I'd say the Saturn was a great 2D system with a mediocre 3D system slapped on. Sega miscalculated the speed that 2D would kill 3D, much like Nintendo with cartridges. All that mattered was which system had the best 3D, so the Saturn's 2D power went to waste.

I don't think the differences in hardware were as drastic as that. The Saturn's 3D looked like ass not because the hardware was incapable, but because you had to make it jump through too many hoops to get the desired results.

I agree. It's like how the SNES was faster than the Genesis, but many SNES games (especially early ones) were plagued with slowdown. A fist full of weaker processors may be better than a single superior processor, but most developers won't spend the time to do it right.

[mollipen]

Why do they keep letting Vic speak in public? I mean, when you read the fact that they dropped all Saturn support because Sega dissed them, that couldn't sound more childish. Hey, let's scrap all of the work we put into these games, and piss off our fans, because SOA was mean to us!

And by far, Lobotomy's stuff was the best 3D on the Saturn. They were doing things with that machine that even Sega couldn't do. Because their games, I can't really think of much 3D stuff on the Saturn even worth mentioning. It was a 2D fighter and shooter machine, and not much else. But it indeed made a handy pseudo-NeoGeo CD.

Edit: Oh, and anybody that would put the Saturn above the DC is crazy.

[JefmcC]

I agree. It's like how the SNES was faster than the Genesis, but many SNES games (especially early ones) were plagued with slowdown.

Fix that please.

[outRider]

I don't think the differences in hardware were as drastic as that. The Saturn's 3D looked like ass not because the hardware was incapable, but because you had to make it jump through too many hoops to get the desired results.

I agree. It's like how the SNES was faster than the Genesis, but many SNES games (especially early ones) were plagued with slowdown. A fist full of weaker processors may be better than a single superior processor, but most developers won't spend the time to do it right.

The differences were drastic as far as 3D was concerned, and it wasn't pretty . Instead of using a custom vertex processor and an adequate GPU they simply threw a 2nd CPU in there and kept the lame VDPs because there was no time to design custom chips. The 2nd SH2 couldn't transform vertices faster than a dedicated unit, and the VDP1 far more suited to 2D than 3D. You really had to take a lot of shortcuts to get anything approaching full screen 3D at 30+ frames, and in the end it wasn't worth the effort to put work into it and still get results that looked like ass next to a PSX build. Whatever miscalculations Sega made on the business end, their hardware engineers missed the boat on the hardware.

Anyways, those were the good old days. These days everyone goes to ATI and Nvidia to get decent parts.