The Sega Saturn Thread

[dcultrapro]

thought I'd awaken this thread again and share this AWESOME video on youtube about the Saturn I found. I fear its reawakened my love of the system once again to the point where I am tempted to buy a bunch of the games featured. In particular there are soo many obscure awesome looking games I have NEVER seen or heard of before that just look incredible. If any of you out there can recommend some good ones from the vid to help make my search easier that'd be awesome. Apart from the obvious ones of course lol

check it out, its sick

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcDAHVvDLuA

[DreamcastRIP]

Decent vid!

Nice to see folk on Youtube knowing the Saturn could in fact 'do' transparency effects. I thought it cool that they showed the difference in animation frames on a fighting game with and without a RAM expansion cartridge. There were also a couple of decent-looking shmups on show that I'd not seen in motion before which I may look in to picking up now.
 
Oh, and what it is it with people being happy to call themself a 'fanboy'? I just don't "get" that at all! In this case the guy on the right side of screen identifying himself as a 'Nintendo fanboy'. Either the term 'fanboy' means something else in the minds of such people or they have no sense of shame or self-respect. Whatever!

[dcultrapro]

cheers bud... yeah I loved this vid I was really impressed with the diversity of the games they picked. here are a couple I have earmarked for purchase:

Titan Wars
Astal
Bulk Slash
Night Striker S

yeah its a strange thing to admit to being a nintendo fanboy, though I freely admit I'm a sega fanboy maybe it is just a crazy thing to admit to but meh... I'm proud of my Sega obsession, though why you would be a grown man and proud of liking Mario is beyond me 

[TL]

I just fixed that link for you so the video shows up, I will watch it later on as I am too busy right now and have to go out.

[dcultrapro]

thanks bud!! I did wonder why it wasn't showing up properly. It used to be that I could just paste the direct link in with no tweaking but for some reason everytime now it just doesn't work properly, what did you do differently if you don't mind me asking? So I can do it properly myself next time

thanks!

regarding those 4 games I mentioned has anyone played them and if so can you give me an idea of quality? in the main they seem to review positively though I would prefer to go by someones first hand experience if possible

[TL]

thanks bud!! I did wonder why it wasn't showing up properly. It used to be that I could just paste the direct link in with no tweaking but for some reason everytime now it just doesn't work properly, what did you do differently if you don't mind me asking? So I can do it properly myself next time

If it says "https" in the URL then it won't embed, just remove the "s" and you are fine.

[dcultrapro]

ah hah!! lovely thanks mate I did wonder what it might be, typical shit lol

so have you seen or tried any of the games I mentioned at all? I know your prob out like you said so its no rush. I'm also interested in Need For Speed and Road Rash on the Saturn as well though I don't know if or when I will buy them as yet

[Rogue Trooper]

Decent vid!

Nice to see folk on Youtube knowing the Saturn could in fact 'do' transparency effects. I thought it cool that they showed the difference in animation frames on a fighting game with and without a RAM expansion cartridge. There were also a couple of decent-looking shmups on show that I'd not seen in motion before which I may look in to picking up now.
 
Oh, and what it is it with people being happy to call themself a 'fanboy'? I just don't "get" that at all! In this case the guy on the right side of screen identifying himself as a 'Nintendo fanboy'. Either the term 'fanboy' means something else in the minds of such people or they have no sense of shame or self-respect. Whatever!

Would have hoped that with all the developer interviews out there that by now people would have grasped the differences between cannot do and required coding for Saturn specific hardware, be it transparent effects or 3D, but in the days since Saturns demise, on numerous forums etc i've read, it's like the days of PS1 VS Saturn are still with us.


Comments such as Saturn was shit at 3D, could'nt even do transparent effects etc still seem to crop up, sadly.

I mean if joe public is'nt convinced of Saturns Potential by likes of Last Bronx, VF2, Sega Rally, Panzer Dragoon Series, Sonic R etc, then something seriousily amiss.

I mean what was VF2 doing? processing 2 3D characters, with texture mapping in Saturns High Res.Mode at 60 FPS?.

Plus Saturn had better ports of Duke Nukem 3D and Hexen over PS1 at the time,also Quake at a time 7 developers had tried and failed to get decent conversion on PS1 (was'nt till Hammer Head ported Quake 2 to PS1 it had a Quake game) and yet still it was called inferior.

Saturn might have been a mess, innards wise, nightmare to program for and the like, but there was (some) method to Sega's madness in using Quads (when everyone else was using polys) as it did'nt suffer the warping of polygon edges PS hardware did.

[TL]

Yeah it's not a bad video, better than the shitty Jaguar one I seen to remember them doing. I don't like the 2 guys much, they always seem to be very wooden and uncomfortable on camera.

They also made a few errors in the video like saying Die Hard Arcade was Dynamite Deka in Europe and Japan, when it was just called that in Japan and also I have a 4mb RAM cart and my KOF '96 works perfectly.

Two other things that annoyed me were their constant mentions of 32-bit 3D looking shit nowadays, utter bollocks, how can anyone say the Panzer Dragoon games are ugly for example. The second point was that they criticised Guardian Heroes' graphics saying it looked blocky when stuff was close up, erm have you ever heard of sprite scaling?

And finally Pebble Beach Golf is utter shit. Best golf game on the Saturn? Yeah right! Worst more like, it has one course and is pretty broken too. Actua Golf and Virtual Golf are far superior in every way.

[Rogue Trooper]

Mas Destruction came up on the chat box earlier, developers used what they called 'Sprolygon' (Sprite+polygon) tech. to try and create the seamless intergration of 2D+3D objects on screen to provide a sense of depth+clarity.

As for Saturn not being able to do transparency effects:

Pure Entertainment (converted Wipeout+3D Lemmings to Saturn from PS1), Saturn Wipeout COULD have had transparency effects, but game would have run slower, as at that point in their development cycle with Saturn, they found a transparent sprite took 9 times longer to process than a normal one.-but their coders were already working on pushing deeper into Saturn development and they said as thier expertise grew, expect to see more transparency on the Saturn, as it was a difficult machine to code for and demmanded extra work on 3D games.

Also they the mesh effect on the spinning 3D logo on Saturn 3D Lemmings was a deliberate move.

Loaded, which ironically started out as a SNES game, under name of Killers For Hire, on Saturn, well the translucent fog (smoky explosions) proved difficult on Saturn, early attempts resulting in a cross-hatched look, which developers improved on by using a finer filter.

Bullfrog said Saturn was auctually easier o convert thier PC games to, than PS, as it relied less on custom hardware effects than the PS1, but 1st attempt to convert Magic Carpet to Saturn resulted in frame rate of 3 FPS, it was only by looking at the Saturn hardware and re-doing code so it was'nt so CPU intensive and was'nt trying to draw stuff that was'nt needed, they'd got frame rate between 12-20 FPS (depended on just how much was happening on screen).

Dave Perry (EWJ fame) said Saturn was a very flexible machine, you just had to dive into it's guts and dig around to make it sing.

So, yes, it was a time consuming machine to write for and developers had to plan coding and optimise for the Saturn specifically, which often meant 1st attempts did'nt pan out too well, as coders inexperinced with hardware, but for so many to still right it off as POOR, just saddens me.

[TL]

So, yes, it was a time consuming machine to write for and developers had to plan coding and optimise for the Saturn specifically, which often meant 1st attempts didn't pan out too well, as coders inexperienced with hardware, but for so many to still right it off as POOR, just saddens me.

Could not agree more mate!

Incidently I just just added a load more Sega Saturn reviews to the review guide! 

[Rogue Trooper]

Thing that bugs me, as a Playstation owner, i watched the hardware recive some very poor PC conversions:Duke Nukem 3D and Hexen to name but 2, salt was rubbed further into the wound by knowing that Saturn versions were far superior, but i did'nt see the press and public saying OMG Playstation is poor, nor did i when it was annouced that Quake just was'nt coming out on PS (yet was on Saturn) as no less than 7 developers had tried to get a decent version running and failed.


Yet Saturn gets some poor conversions, be it from Sega themselves with Daytona, or 3rd parties porting PS games that relied heavily on PS custom hardware, or were just straight ports (ie DOOM-Saturn coder interviewed in Gamestm, say's he was told, just port PS code over best you can, hence PS Pass codes work on Saturn Version) and OMG! Saturn=Rubbish time.

Hell you can remove Doom from the whole Saturn=Rubbish MYTH as look at the Jap version compared to the Pal version.Different coders, far better version.So, CLEARLY not hardware at fault.

[Rogue Trooper]

Also 3D wise, look at what Scavenger got out of Saturn with Amok and Scorcher.

Developer interviews threw up more interesting comments:

Warp said a PS version of Enemy Zero would require 7 CD's! (Saturn ver.came in at 4).

Syndicate Wars programmer had game engine running easily enough on Saturn, but the fact PC version (from which he had to convert code from, to Saturn) was running so far behind, meant PC code was constantly being updated/changed, so things could take upto 5 times longer to convert and by time game got near completition, Saturn had floundered too much in market to make it comercially viable, it WAS'NT a case of Saturn could'nt handle it.

Soviet Strike developers said of Saturn-It's often viewed as the 'weak Sister' by developers...but we DON'T take that point of view, we did'nt have the resources to do game in-house, so we took it to our top coders to write.

They also described graphics in Panzer Dragoon 2 as mind blowing.

Mev Dinc (Street Racer) said he and his team spent nearly 3 months studying Saturn hardware, in order to get the best from it and decided NOT to code in C, instead opting for Machine Code (sounds similar to the Baldies coder on Jaguar's comments about writing for Jag.) as this was crucial for games speed (60 FPS).

[Rogue Trooper]

Started looking at Saturn reviews on here, fantastic to see the love for:

A.Kings, DOA2, Baku Baku, Last Bronx and Dungeons+Dragons.

The ChaosControl score was..interesting :-) as was Daytona USA, personally found the pop-up awful and really do feel it damaged the Saturns reputation and is a reason so many buy into this MYTH Saturn was poor at 3D.

Crying shame Galaxy Force 2 never made it to these shores, espically after likes of C64/Amiga/ST/MD+MS had versions.

Krazy Ivan;IS it as easy as PS1 version? If so, don't think it warrants such a high score.

Resident Evil on Saturn:Lower polygon counts on character models, but..higher Res.pre-rendered back drops.

[Vyothric]

Since I was posting in the other threads, I just thought I'd share my Saturn history (what little there is)  )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7p2i1U8NOI