Dreamcast Vs. PlayStation 2

[nakamura]

There were millions of crisp and stunning games on PS2, more that ran at 60fps than most other consoles.

When talking about frame rates, the DC is not a console I would mention.

The PS2 did well because it was supported with amazing software. Games like Devil May Cry, Onimusha 1-2, WRC, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Ratchet and Clank, Ace Combat 4, The Thing, Gran Turismo 3, Timesplitters 2, Winning Eleven and god knows how many more all feature vibrant visual, distinct lack of jaggies and 60fps.

The machine is not at all widely know for anything. Only the most staunch haters ignore the machines qualities. Play on a properly setup console and it looks and play great. Granted the DC does have a better display image and more friendly anti aliasing support.

And the DC does have the wonderful Sega arcade feel.

[Rogue Trooper]

There were millions of crisp and stunning games on PS2, more that ran at 60fps than most other consoles.

When talking about frame rates, the DC is not a console I would mention.

The PS2 did well because it was supported with amazing software. Games like Devil May Cry, Onimusha 1-2, WRC, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Ratchet and Clank, Ace Combat 4, The Thing, Gran Turismo 3, Timesplitters 2, Winning Eleven and god knows how many more all feature vibrant visual, distinct lack of jaggies and 60fps.

The machine is not at all widely know for anything. Only the most staunch haters ignore the machines qualities. Play on a properly setup console and it looks and play great. Granted the DC does have a better display image and more friendly anti aliasing support.

And the DC does have the wonderful Sega arcade feel.

Why not mention the DC and frame rates? Gunlord, Hydro Thunder (who's vibrant looks i much prefer to the 360 game), DOA, Alien Front Line, Sonic Adventure 2, Soul Caliber, Vanishing Point, 4 Wheel Thunder, Super Magnetic Neo, Outtrigger, Rayman 2, Daytona USA etc) DC has nothing to hide, plus games like MDK 2 coded for the DC GPU has better colour, higher res textures etc than the PS2 version, commented on PS2 Makken vs DC Makken other day on here.

Gran Turismo been a graphical show case for PS2 but at expense of A.I, which is awful on A.I drivers.

But on flip side, you'd never see anything as good as the Burnout series, God Of War 1+2 (2 esp.which could pass for a 1st gen 360 game!), Black, Shadow Of The Col,MGS2, MGS3, GTA 3, V.C+S.A etc on Dreamcast as they've been made with the advantages PS2 has over DC.

Sega went it's route:Online, easy to code for, great video output, rich texture memory compression etc, Sony went it's:DVD, very powerful raw power, great if you want to 'code to the metal'.It's a common myth PS2 does'nt support A.A (brought that up in the fact or fiction thread myself), think Stuntman was 1 of the 1st to do full screen A.A.Sony did over claim on things like 5.1 sound though, that left to things like cut scenes, not in-game per say.

We sadly never quite saw just what extra could have been pushed out from the Dreamcast, but we did see the PS2 maxxed out with say God Of war 2.

But even then there were games that were really beyond it (NO:Far Cry, Doom 3 or HL2, only Xbox managed those) and things like Just Cause, which ALL versions were done by same developer and whilst PS2 ver has quicker loading than say 360, it really looks poor on PS2 compared to Xbox.

A well optimised Dreamcast game will always look better than a poorly optimised PS2 game and vice versa.Middleware helped PS2 out a lot.

I've used my PS2 on Scart, awful and now component on an LCD HDTV, results are ok, but the DC's crisp, clean TV output via SCART knows the upscaled PS2 image into a hat, let alone VGA support on DC.

Sony did cut corners on this aspect of the hardware, DC output is cleaner, developers will tell you that from the off as anyone who's read Edges requiem for the DC feature will know.

[Rogue Trooper]

:-)

Not going to start a seperate thread for this, but the whole 'Question of  which was more powerful'? has never gone away since the 8 Bit days and with new range of consoles awaiting, it's back on again.

Mentioned in my earlier post the different approaches Sony and Sega took with PS2 and DC, somewhat ironic that after the PS1/Saturn, it was Sony who went the difficult to code for, but worth it approach with PS2 and Sega having seen 3rd parties leave the Saturn as it was so difficult to code for, go for off the shelf parts, ease of use for coding etc.

The Saturn used Quads at a time PS1 etc were using Polygons, PS1 was a 3D pushing beast, Saturn more balanced, as i've posted before on here, things like Sonic R or VF2 would have to be very different if converted to PS1 as it's written for the Saturn hardware, on flipside, PS1-Saturn conversions always suffered to a degree on the Saturn as they were coded for Playstation specific hardware.

The Jaguar, so often gets mocked online, ignoring the 'No decent games' crap, it's strength seemed to lie in areas like 24 Bit, true Colour (65,000 colours etc) something niether Saturn nor PS1 could match, also (and i'm sure The Laird can confirm or correct this), it does 'cleaner' textures, Hoverstrike CD being a prime example of this, yes or no Laird?.Plus sure i've read it's raw processing power made it idea for link-up games and A.I routines in games (seem to recal Battlesphere coder saying it was unmatched in this dept and was'nt until PS2 it was beaten).


The Playstation, could on paper render more plain polygons a second than the N64, BOTH Sony+Sega quoted on paper polys per sec figures for DC+PS2, meaningless when you start factoring in A.I routines, light sources, lighting effects etc.Soon as you had optical drives on consoles, games were streaming in assests, be it Soul Reaver on PS1 (No loading times), or likes of Primal on PS2 (Features a higher polygon count than 'normal' PS2 games as it uses a custom streaming method to load assests in.

The Resident Evil+Onimusha games looked great, but used pre-rendered backdrops, not real time.

Plus lot of the flagship games on consoles started elsewhere:Onimusha+DMC were once PS1 games as was The Getaway and Too Human, Res.Evil 0+Eternal Darkness were both N64 titles, Loaded started out on the SNES, Tomb Raider originally a Jag CD game, Alien trilogy a MCD game etc.so in a lot of cases it was'nt as if ONLY console X made it possible.

Good few launch titles have been games that switched formats somewhere along the line as by time they'd have been done, console or computer they were originally planned for was on it's last legs.

I think chances of say The Last Guardian appearing on PS3 now are non-existant, it'll be a PS4 title.

Any hardware is ONLY as good as the support it recieves.Sure the Wii U is capable of a lot better ports from PS3/360 than what it's had so far, but unless people code for the GPU, it's just NOT going to hapen.

[dcultrapro]

There were millions of crisp and stunning games on PS2, more that ran at 60fps than most other consoles.

When talking about frame rates, the DC is not a console I would mention.

The PS2 did well because it was supported with amazing software. Games like Devil May Cry, Onimusha 1-2, WRC, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Ratchet and Clank, Ace Combat 4, The Thing, Gran Turismo 3, Timesplitters 2, Winning Eleven and god knows how many more all feature vibrant visual, distinct lack of jaggies and 60fps.

The machine is not at all widely know for anything. Only the most staunch haters ignore the machines qualities. Play on a properly setup console and it looks and play great. Granted the DC does have a better display image and more friendly anti aliasing support.

And the DC does have the wonderful Sega arcade feel. Remind me to buy some of what you is smoking

Rogue has made my point for me about the dreamcasts incredible picture output. Put a DC next a ps2 with the DC running at 60hz via VGA and it will hammer any PS2 game based purely on the clarity of the picture, not saying that there are NO games on the ps2 that have colour but it is notorious for having lots of dull looking games which is to be expected when you have a 2000+ game library.

[Rogue Trooper]

:-)

I sooo don't want to get into a PS2 VS DC debate (Own+use both) but some of the PS2 KEY games, written purely for the hardware by it's best coders:

ICO, runs at 512X224 NTSC/ 512X256 PAL at....25 FPS and even then it 'forced' PS2 hardware itno doing away with the normal interlaced video output in favor of a low res, progressive scan.

MGS3:Snake Eater ran at 512X448 which the PS2 hardware then UPSCALED to 640X448 for TV output (so it's technically cheating) and that ran at 30 FPS.

So BOTH THE DC+PS2 HAD COMPRIMISES MADE TO GET GAMES DEVELOPERS WANTED RUNNING ON THEM.THE END.


 

[Rogue Trooper]

Lol yoir such a joker rogue I  like how your normally like the number 1 culprit when it comes to raging into a debate.. but nevermind! Best to skip that subject completely

Any other good line ups i dont know about? Nice line up laird, bit small but what year did it come oit?

Objection! Shurely shome Mishtake M'laud. :-)

Just trying to offer balance, as i have with the saturn thread, did Jaguar get unfair reviews etc, i've yet to buy a console (on launch or otherwise) that has delivered exactly what was claimed by it it's makers.

Sorry for any de-rail.

[dcultrapro]

lol its cool I was only messin, you do always offer a good arguement for whatever you talk about so fair play to ya, I am probably to blame for derailing this one and I apologise lol

yeah the ps2 launch was pretty awful, that was one of the reasons why I didn't understand how it did so well, was just the hype and popularity of the original that floated it until the good games started coming, and there were some very good games!

I like the God of War games, Armored Core, Transformers (armada that was only on the ps2) Kill Zone, Shadow Of The Colossus was amazing and Chaos Legion was an awesome alternative to (IMHO) the slightly over hyped DMC. And even odd games like Crimson Tears were excellent. It took a while but it pulled it together

[Rogue Trooper]

lol its cool I was only messin, you do always offer a good arguement for whatever you talk about so fair play to ya, I am probably to blame for derailing this one and I apologise lol

yeah the ps2 launch was pretty awful, that was one of the reasons why I didn't understand how it did so well, was just the hype and popularity of the original that floated it until the good games started coming, and there were some very good games!

I like the God of War games, Armored Core, Transformers (armada that was only on the ps2) Kill Zone, Shadow Of The Colossus was amazing and Chaos Legion was an awesome alternative to (IMHO) the slightly over hyped DMC. And even odd games like Crimson Tears were excellent. It took a while but it pulled it together

:-) Cheers.I do try and be 'as factual' as i possibly can when going into any debate and they'll be based on machines i have owned or currently do own.Every machine that has come out after another has had to strike a balance between power and price and where it's stronger than it's rival's in 1 dept, it'll be weaker in others, ie SNES had more colours, better sound, custom chips for sprite work, it had a far slower CPU than the MD or, looking at the  3DO whilst far more powerful than SNES overall, was lot weaker when it came to 2D.PS2 out did DC in terms of raw Polygon pushing power and lighting effects (DC lacked hardware lighting routines so only supported Vertex Lighting where as PS2 could do prettier lightmaps etc), the gulf between claimed power and auctual game related was no-where near as bad on DC as PS2:

Sega claiming anything like 3 Million Polys per sec+, developers said more like 1.5 Million.

PS2:Sony claimed 75 Million Polys a sec, developers went hmmnn, we'd guess closer to 66 Million, started working on hardware and said auctually it's 20 Million and that's before you start throwing in A.I, lighting etc. (Also i had to laugh when Sony talked of EMOTION Engine and Graphis synethesis etc, all techno bollox, what they did'nt say so much on was fact the Sound Chip in PS2 was essentially 2X Playstation 1 soundchips joined together :-) ).

[nakamura]

General reply here.

Sorry not my intention to make it a vs topic and those that pointed out DC games with high frame rates were right too.

Just on the flip side though, many early DC games like PS2 games suffered from ropey development. Sonic Adventure was a mess, Sega Rally was a frame rate nightmare, Blue Stinger just looked shit and many others. There were stunners of course. But the machine was on the market a year before so it had time under its belt for devs.

Also comparing VGA with RGB is just not fair. Yes credit to the machine for doing VGA, man it was incredible. But so few people had VGA. When you compare machines via RGB it is much close though the DC still has the edge.

Doing back to the PS2 launch. It had better games than many think. Timesplitters was huge and rightly so as it was just a smooth Goldeneye. SSX was utterly massive though I was never a fan. Fifa carried weight, would have taken them about 10 mins to port it to DC though! Tekken also had quite a following.
It wasn't a brilliant launch but far from a terrible one in terms of content. My personal bugbear with the launch was the shitty 50hz displays used. This hurt the machine in the hardcore area to start with. The borders on Ridge V were disgusting.

[nakamura]

The PS2 did well because it was supported with amazing software

ROFLCOPTR!!!! Seriously? wow, um ok... I'll just let that one fall flat on the floor where it belongs 

To ignore this is hilarious by the way. It had ever genre covered, usually with extremely high quality. Not perhaps always the best version of a game and there are plenty of shite ports but the software library is immense. It's also full of a load of crap showelware, but that is the nature of success.

[dcultrapro]

Hey I think we had all moved on from that subject but hey ho, your choice!

well no... because you said "the ps2 did well because..." meaning your attempting to state it as a fact, when everyone knows that the console was only as successful as it was because it was heavily plugged by Sony to an infamous level and the majority of owners in the first year just bought it as a cheap dvd player didn't actually buy much software for it, it was a proven fact that, at the time the Dreamcast was outselling the PS2 in terms of software quite heavily.

I knew a lot of PS2 horn blowers then as everyone was telling me it was better than DC but when asked most of the time the only reason people could give was "its got a dvd player"

no no... It DID WELL because eventually when good games started to come out for it they had already gotten a massive owner base due to the popularity of the brand and the DVD player hook.

[nakamura]

Ok.

[AmigaJay]

I always feel its a unfair as Sega pulled support for the platform in 2002 I think it was, so to compare would be the first 2-3 years of the PS2, and for me there were loads more games on the DC than on the PS2 upto that point that I wanted to play.
Plus I to this day hate the ps2 menu system!

[davyk]

The PS2 is a great old workhorse with a brilliant catalogue - I got one to play RType Final and Gradius V and ended up getting loads of games for it. I'm very fond of my old phat PS2 and I wouldn't be without one - but it just doesn't really invoke the same sense of affection that the DC does...

[Rogue Trooper]

Did'nt expect to come home to find a full blown thread but ok...

yep, Sega Rally and VF3 were poor launch games in terms of not really being optimised for DC, Blue Stinger just looked like a High Res  N64 game and the swimming controls, man alive, horrendous, also as shallow as they were i loved and still play both Incoming and Expendable.

PS2 and i had mine on day 1, all i can recal is even the likes of Playstation plus talking about Jaggies and PS1.5 textures.MGS 2 looked amazing but was a way off, i ended up in the early PS2 days playing Extermination, looked rough, but i enjoyed, Ring Of Red, again, no looker bu superb to play.Was'nt until Silent Hill 2 (AMAZING) and GTA 3 (ditto) i started to see the power of PS2.1st Time Splitters i had, completed, but it too was'nt a great looker, Free Radical admitted it was rushed for PS2 launch, luckily the 2 following games were superb.

Herdy Gerdy was another PS2 title the mags tore into, claiming it looked like a high res N64 game, so it at least had that in common with the DC, lol.

You don't need to compare VGA to RGB on PS2, as DC video output (640X480P, flicker-free etc) is far cleaner than the PS2's video out and already given 2 examples of the graphically trickery PS2 had to pull of in games like Ico+MGS3 and thes by developers with the resources to code specifically for PS2 hardware, rather than use middleware to the degree others did.

Taken on it's own merits the PS2 was a great system, very flexible (Vertex shaders more flexible than those of the Xbox), better lighting than the DC, but Sony just went far too overboard hyping it up, you really should'nt be claiming 75 Million Pols, Emotion in games, Toy Story like visuals, when developers are shouting out about just how much in terms of resources are needed to get the best from it, it's just not good P.R-I can see WHY they did it (destroy Dreamcast specs, make your console look like it'll be worth holding on the extra year for), but it really did bite them in the arse at the start.

Hideo K.went on record to say how dissapointed he was to see PS2 did'nt match upto what Sony had promised and he+staff dreaded going to work each day whilst doing MGS 2, Oddworld creator, up and jumped ship to Xbox etc.

Thanks to improved development tools, middleware,PS2 performance analyser etc, developers soon learnt how to work with the PS2 hardware and we saw what it was capable of, but it never really delivered the huge leap in performance over the DC Sony's inital claims would have had you believe.

Things like Gran Turismo on PS2 for example, whilst stunning to look at, had the same A.I routines as the PS1 series, Rez, whilst running at twice the frame rate of the DC version (60 FPS as opposed to 30) had more Jaggies than DC version, so it was always a trade off it seemed.

The one thing Sony had was the developer support Sega could only dream of and a LOT of that was down to Sega's own failings, no-one elses.But i could fill an entire thread on that subject alone.