The Sega Saturn Mega Thread

[j_factor]

I think we can all agree on this one...

[Black_Tiger]

What, no poll?

[djshok]

[Baloo]

You know I can agree with this one J_Factor.

See:

Definition of Sex: Something most of us aren't getting, unless you're Baloo and your Sega Saturn has a pleasure hole.

But in all seriousness, sorry Playstation but I've gotta admit, Sega Saturn is the greatest system of all time. OF ALL TIME!

[kool kitty89]

I was going to start a long post regarding what the context of "best" in this case would be. (obviously, in some respects, the Saturn was the absolute worst thing to ever happen to Sega as a company/business -regardless of it having lots of "good" games or not, for the time or from a retro perspective today)

However, I decided this was more appropriate to the thread's tone:
No!

[Nuxius]

But in all seriousness, sorry Playstation but I've gotta admit, Sega Saturn is the greatest system of all time. OF ALL TIME!

[Thenewguy]

Nope, it was a crappy design which cost more to manufacture than Playstation, but had worse graphical results than Playstation 90% of the time, was too difficult to make games for, was released at a retarded time, half of its games were outdated, and many were extremely overrated, and it effectively ended Sega as a force in the videogame market.

I think the following excerpts make that point rather obvious, but message boards exist for disagreement, so, we'll see:

The possibility that its next-gen hardware would face competition simply hadn't figured in Sega's calculations. So when news broke in November 1993 that Sony was developing a system capable of revolutionary performance, all hell broke loose. Those who had seen the machine working claimed that it was far more powerful than anything Sega had planned. Most threatening was the disclosure that it was to be released in late 1994 - the same time was Saturn. To Sega's dismay, a powerful new rival had arisen overnight.
Sega's president, the feared Hayao Nakayama, was among the first to be informed. His reaction was typical. He immediately marched down to his consumer research and development division and proceeded to ridicule the sum of his team's achievements over the previous year.

[...]

Sega's kneejerk reaction was to delay its Saturn development programme by a few months to incorporate a new video processor into the system. Not only would this boost its 2D abilities considerably (something Sony's machine was less proficient at); but it would also provide better texture mapping for 3D. Unfortunately, this played havoc with the Saturn's carefully worked out schedule, to the extent that many pundits thought that Sega wouldn't make it to market in 1994. Some peopel even expected Sega to cancel the Saturn project and concentrate its efforts on something more powerful for 1996..
One prominent developer who visited Sega Of Japan's Saturn division told Edge: 'there's simply no way that Sega will be releasing Saturn this year. They're behind on hardware, they're behind on software, and it's very hard to see how they can do it.'
But, contrary to expectations, Sega has done it. The reality is that its 32bit machine has now been launched in Japan, and the same system is on its way to the US and UK later next year.

It was originally planned that the Saturn would be released in two forms: a CD-ROM-based console, and a cart-only console, developed under the project name Jupiter.

[...]

At around the same time, Sega made another important decision. It recognised that its most important market was America, and that it needed to retain the enormous userbase it had built up with the Genesis. The answer was the Mars project, which resulted in the system we now know as the 32X.
Essentially, Jupiter became Mars.

[...]

EDGE #16, January 1995

Unlike the Playstation, the Saturn does not contain a dedicated geometry engine for calculating polygons - instead, the twin CPUs handle all the calculation, and the VDP1 chip, in conjunction with the frame buffer, draws 3D objects to the screen as distorted sprites.

[...]

"The SH-2 was chosen for reasons of cost and efficiency," claims Kazuhiro Hamada, section chief of Saturn development at the time of the system's conception. "The chip has got a calculation system similar to DSP but we realised that a single CPU wouldn't be fast enough to calculate a 3D world."

[...]

'To be honest, VDP1 is not powerful enough to replicate the latest polygon arcade games,' concedes Hamada, 'but for sprite and scrolling games it's fine.'

[...]

For the most part, the Saturn's complex design has done it few favors. With seven independent processors, getting the whole architecture to operate efficiently is not easy.

[...]

Developer Scavenger [...] recognises the Saturn's strengths, although it had to develop its own set of libraries to exploit the hardware efficiently.
'The Saturn is very fast at drawing pixels using its processor, while the Playstation has to go through its polygon engine,' explained the company's lead Saturn programmer. That gives the Saturn programmer more flexibility. However, the Saturn does have a tendency to draw polygons that are not seen. Overall, though, it has more calculating power than the Playstation.'
CPU throughput is indeed one major are in which Saturn can boast superiority over the Playstation. Granted, the Sony machine is able to calculate more geometry and display more polygons, but in terms of computational power the Saturn definitely has the edge.

Edge #23, August 1995

Saturn was never really cut out for its competition. Originally planned as the ultimate 2D system - a replacement for the aging Genesis towards the end of the 16-bit era - 3D support was added at high cost after the company learned of Sony's plans. Launched early in the U.S., in what was correctly seen as a panicked response to the impending release of Playstayion, with a discouraging price tag of $400 and a limited librabry of solid titles, the machine's head start in the 32-bit race proved ineffective against Sony.

[...]

Second place status and difficulty in programming the Saturn's dual-processor system also hurt third-party support drastically.

[...]

In many ways, the Saturn was doomed from the start - too expensive, too difficult to program for, and launched amid a clearly illogical, if not outright insane, strategy by Sega to market Genesis, Sega CD, 32X and Saturn simultaneously.

Next Gen #36, December 1997

Next Generation #24

Certainly, I think, the machine appears to be 2D-centric, as easy and high-powered results could be provided in that sector, whereas the machine was -- according to source after source, and developer after developer -- a very difficult and abstruse design environment for 3D.

[...]

Edge: How then was Sega able to roll out yje Saturn so quickly in the US, seemingly out of nowhere?
Lincoln: I'm certain that Sega has been working on this introductory launch for a number of months -- this didn't just happen out of the blue. And because they were only working with a limited number of dealers - they were not making this available to all their dealers - they could do it with a certain degree of confidence that it would not leak out.

Edge: What parallels can be drawn between what we're seeing now with the launch of Saturn and U64, and the launch of the Genesis and SNES?
HL: Well, if there were any mistakes made in the launch of the Super NES, the timing - a year and a half after the Genesis - wasn't one of them. By the end of 1991 our installed base in the US 16bit market was greater than Sega's, even though Sega had been there since 1989. It was after that that Sega did very well, in terms of pricing games like Sonic and in terms of marketing - television advertising and whatnot. I think the only parallel is that in addition to the necessity of having a powerful game platform, you have to have good games. It's got to be priced right and it's got to be marketed right.
[b]One major advantage we have over Sega - other than the fact that on a worldwide basis our market share is much greater - is our financial condition. And that financial condition is only going to improve, given the fact that Sega - and, for that matter, Sony - are selling these new hardware platforms under cost, and that they are willing to lose a considerable amount of money. Presumably, they intend to pick it up or get even on the software,[b] and that's a risky strategy because it involves millions and millions of dollars of losses that they will incur in 1995 in the US market.

Edge: Surely the business model that you've just described is the traditional one in the videogame industry?
HL: I don't think it's traditional in our industry - at least, it's not Nintendo's tradition. The tradition is to sell at a smaller profit margin than the profit margin for software. But would Nintendo introduce a hardware product knowing that in the US market it is going to lose 50-100$ per unit? [...] It's clear from the feedback we've obtained and what we've heard from dealers that Saturn is incurring a loss.

EDGE23, August 1995

Edge: Tell us about Titan.
Yu Suzuki: Titan is a new arcade board that's very similar to Saturn, only with a bigger memory and a good serial I/O.

Edge: So Titan is more powerful than Saturn? Is it also more powerful than Model 2?
Yu Suzuki: Yes, the system's more powerful than Saturn, but the performance isn't comparable to Model 2. Model 2 is a pure 3D graphics engine with very high-technology hardware [...] Also, Titan is based on 2D technology hardware.

EDGE9, June 1994

One of Saturn's potential problems is price. [...] It's no secret that the addition of twin Hitachi 32-bit RISC processors, late in Saturn's development, was an expensive (albeit essential) response to the power of Playstation, leaving Sega now facing the highest manufacturing costs of the big three.

Next Generation, May 1995

"If you take a look at the architecture of Saturn, you can see they went around with a shopping cart and basically chose components. Then, having seen the Sony product (if we believe what we read) they re-engineered, got back out their shopping cart, and picked up a variety of Hitachi chips that theyre now using. And these chips are well down the learning curve, there's millions of them made, they're using them in vacuums, pressure cookers and all sorts of things. So they're not as susceptible to the learning curve as our chip set - there's not as much to discover about them."
Steve Race, CEO Sony Computer Entertainment

"Sega is my friend, but I'd still have to say that the Saturn is a pooch. It's a mess inside, and no one in the industry is impressed with the technology of the Saturn."
Sam Tramiel, President & CEO, Atari Corp

"Saturn uses the most powerful processor in the Hitachi family - it's a brand new part, and because it's not a particularly high performance chip, they had to put two in. This creates a strange architecture that has segmented memory for all the different processors, and the coprocessers are from different companies, and so it's not very well integrated. Developers have raised many complaints about Saturn's design."
Trip Hawkins, President & CEO, The 3DO Company

[...]

What is clear is that the new systems can be ranked in order of "overall system power." Sega Saturn falls a little behind Sony Playstation and considerably behind Ultra 64 on all-around performance, especially in the discipline of creating 3D environments.

[...]

It's estimated that it costs Sega roughly $380 to manufacture a Saturn - the parts it uses are expensive, and unlikely to significantly drop in cost in the near future. While this may appear to leave it vulnerable to price undercutting by Sony (it's estimated that the Playstation costs $300 per unit on manufacturing), Sega does have a library of home-produced games, ready for inclusion "free" with the Saturn hardware - increasing the machine's percieved value. This weapon, and the fact that both companies have expressed their readiness to take a loss on hardware sales, with a view to making profit on software sales, will ensure that the pricing of Playstation and Saturn will remain volatile and subject to fluctuation.

Next Generation, August 1995

NG: The problem is that Sega is doing all the hard work of making Saturn, selling it into a very tough market for less than it costs to make it.

[...]

NG: When you talked last year, the focus was on 32X. And at that time you were very keen to stress the importance of price in fighting a hardware war. In defending 32X you said that "the US has always been very, very, very price driven" and that "to sell huge units of anything - it doesn't matter what it is - the price has to be right." It's obviously a philosophy you believe very strongly in, so it must have been heartbreaking for you to release the Saturn at $400.
Kalinske: I've been very vocal that I wanted it at $299 but initially we couldn't do it. Every week I had been arguing for a lower price on Saturn but the manufacturing and production guys couldn't get the price down. In truth, I didn't think we were going to get it till January, I really didn't. I thought I'll keep arguing because I need to and hopefully we'll get it as soon as we can. I thought it would be January and I was quite surprised that we were able to get it down to $299 now. Obviously the competitive pressure didn't hurt. The other thing that didn't hurt was the yen went up to 103. If the yen had stayed at 85 it would have been impossible.

NG: But someone somewhere in a Sega accounting department is having to bite the bullet on the $299 price - you're losing a lot of money selling it that low.
Kalinske: Oh yes.

Next Generation, January 1996

[sheath]

And, here, we, go!

February 1995:
"Never before has a hardware launch been so...right. Everything from the casing to the sexy black CDs to the brilliantly designed memory cards to the sheer power of the beast. Sony hasn't overlooked a single thing - it has delivered, just like Edge always said it would."

"Even Sega's Saturn, which so impressed everyone when it arrived just a few weeks ago, now faces the most daunting of battles with limited supply of worthy software."

pg7
"Now that Edge has had time to get to grips with the finished system, it's no exaggeration to say that Sony's first games console is a tremendous piece of kit. Even switching on the system is an experience: a sonorous tone booms out as the Sony Computer Entertainment logo fades in onscreen."

"Sony has delivered an astonishing piece of hardware, and a range of spectacular titles is on the way. Only those UK gamers with exceptional willpower will be able to hold out until the official launch next September..."

pg9
"Loading times are short. The spectacular boot sequence (in which the Sega Saturn logo coalesces from spinning polygon shards) takes five seconds, and you can expect Virtua Fighter to be up and running in another six or seven. This has confounded critics who said that even double-speed CD drives couldn't compete with carts. Sega (and Sony) have proved that with dedicated processors handling the drive (the SH-1 in the Saturn's case), negligible access times are possible."

"Unfortunately, the only reason to buy the Saturn so far is Virtua Fighter. It is indeed a stunningly playable game - although its slightly glitchy visuals imply that the Saturn does have a hard time when asked to shift a load of polygons - but the other software available fails to do justice to the machine."

June 1995
"Five months ago, its strong Japanese design, fast-paced action and cult arcade status would have clinched it for the Saturn. But unfortunately for Sega, Namco pipped it to the post, and Daytona now has a formidable adversary to contend with."

"In an effort to keep up with its arch-rival, Sega has rightly concentrated on maintaining a high level of graphical detail. But Daytona's visuals fall well-short of Ridge Racer's. By any other standards, they're exemplary, but the low resolution, relative lack of colours and less-than-silky update ruins any chance of an overwhelming first impression.
The game;s rough-and-ready looks (the classic symptoms of a rush job rather than evidence of the Saturn's innate technical inferiority) would be acceptable if the track and scenery were drawn to the horizon, but the crucial graphical weakness of AM2's conversion is that it blocks in huge chunks of scenery disturbingly late."

p75, "Although AM2 has managed to replicate the coin-op tolerably well, Saturn Daytona fails to capture the arcade experience that Playstation Ridge Racer so convincingly delivers. Although there's no single factor that cripples it, the game suffers from an accumulation of niggles which ensures that it never quite manages to fulfill its enormous potential."


Answering Tristram Clark about whether Jaguar would get Daytona p97. "Atari does not have carte blanche to copy Sega's titles, but there is an agreement that certain titles can be ported after a set period - usually six months. Were Daytona to appear on the Jaguar it's highly unlikely that it would match the graphical flair of the Saturn game. The Jag is a fast machine but texture mapping eats heavily into processor time."

Next Generation August 1995 p 27
"So why the surprise early launch? Is Sega scared? is Sega over-confident? And just how good is Saturn anyway? The NEXT Generation office has been swamped with these questions and more from perplexed gamers keen to cut through the hype of Sega's $50 million advertising campaign and get to the facts."

p29 "What is clear is that the new systems can be ranked in order of "overall system power." Sega Saturn falls a little behind Sony Playstation and considerably behind Ultra 64 on all-round performance, especially in the discipline of creating 3D environments."

p30 "Anxious about the lack of confidence in its system, Sega set about rebuilding the Saturn's credibility. At the Sega DevCon in the US earlier this year, it showed off its Sega Graphics Library ... "

p32 "Sega knows (although it would never admit it publicly) that of the 'big three' (Saturn, PlayStation, and Ultra 64), Saturn is the weakest machine -- in terms of system power, at least."

I'll repost the articles upon request.

[Thenewguy]

Probably true, but I'm just not sure if there could've been a resurgence in popularity after the PS2 hype died down, I mean lets be fair here library wise the Dreamcast was the best console on the market until maybe even as late as 2003, Dreamcast did actually seem to make a big comeback in popularity a few years after it died anyway, there's a lot of good feeling towards it these days.

and there was still Shenmue 2, Rez, Half Life, and (if they could manage it) Headhunter all finished and ready to release in the US, it would've also been very cheap to keep supporting it with simple Naomi ports, they would've needed to have the hardware price around the actual worth or the hardware as well though to stabilise it, which would probably end with it being niche.

To be fair they probably did do the wisest thing though, they were in now state to continue taking risks at that stage.

[sheath]

I would say that the Dreamcast was better than the PS2, library wise, well into 2004, but the mass market ate up every game released on PS2. It is odd that the Dreamcast's popularity soared after 2004, because at the same time Sega's third party titles were flopping across the board except for Sonic games and the 2K series (which EA and the NFL would shortly kill). I think the Dreamcast could have left Sega in a great PR position for a next generation console in the US only. But Sega's games were never going to be popular again, no matter what console and no matter how much marketing they received.

[Thenewguy]

Even Sega's Saturn, which so impressed everyone when it arrived just a few weeks ago, now faces the most daunting of battles with limited supply of worthy software

They've got that right, a terrible port of Virtua Fighter and worthless junk like Clockwork Knight that can be completed in a matter of hours.

Unfortunately, the only reason to buy the Saturn so far is Virtua Fighter. It is indeed a stunningly playable game - although its slightly glitchy visuals imply that the Saturn does have a hard time when asked to shift a load of polygons - but the other software available fails to do justice to the machine."

Dated Feb 1995, yep, this is right on the money too, Virtua Fighter was indeed the only game worth buying at that stage, and yes it was glitchy and unfinished feeling.

Although AM2 has managed to replicate the coin-op tolerably well, Saturn Daytona fails to capture the arcade experience that Playstation Ridge Racer so convincingly delivers. Although there's no single factor that cripples it, the game suffers from an accumulation of niggles which ensures that it never quite manages to fulfil its enormous potential.

and yet again EDGE are right on the money, Ridge Racer was an excellent port of the arcade game, Daytona on Saturn was very disappointing.

p29 "What is clear is that the new systems can be ranked in order of "overall system power." Sega Saturn falls a little behind Sony Playstation and considerably behind Ultra 64 on all-round performance, especially in the discipline of creating 3D environments."

This is probably incorrect, but EDGE made the assumption in August 1995 based on the games that they had played up until that point, and what developers had told them in interviews, based on the glitchy graphics of both Daytona and Virtua Fighter, I think that at that stage it would be a very realistic assumption that the Saturn was much weaker than the PS1 simply based on results.

It would be interesting to see what EDGE says a few months later at the release of Sega Rally/Virtua Fighter 2/Virtua Cop.

p30 "Anxious about the lack of confidence in its system, Sega set about rebuilding the Saturn's credibility. At the Sega DevCon in the US earlier this year, it showed off its Sega Graphics Library

This is also probably true, there was lack of confidence coming from most publications, and when looking at interviews there's certainly lack of confidence (and criticism) coming from many (though not all) developers.

[Kamahl]

PowerVR was the better choice, actually making it seem like they wanted the alternative and then scrapping that was not a good idea.
I also totally agree with Thenewguy

[sheath]

Yeah, looking at Ridge Racer, Edge saw that the Saturn was "innately inferior" in February of 1995. Talking to unnamed developers, one of which was definitely EA, Edge just managed to predict that the Saturn was the weakest hardware. It had nothing to do with the temporary paradigm shift to high level development kits right? Edge obviously had all the business in the world promoting the Playstation as uniformly perfect from January 1995 until its western launch in the Fall right? Edge was just being honest with all of these subjective statements about the Saturn before its western launches right?

Daytona:

[Black_Tiger]

Nope, it was a crappy design which cost more to manufacture than Playstation, but had worse graphical results than Playstation 90% of the time, was too difficult to make games for, was released at a retarded time, half of its games were outdated, and many were extremely overrated, and it effectively ended Sega as a force in the videogame market.

Well, it may have been the first console to have some "outdated" and/or overrated games, but at least it's the only one.

Why don't you tell us some good things about the Saturn and its games?

[Thenewguy]

Yeah, looking at Ridge Racer, Edge saw that the Saturn was "innately inferior" in February of 1995.

Your quote about the Saturn hardware being inferior was from August of 1995, in fact, in your June quote they say -

The game;s rough-and-ready looks (the classic symptons of a rush job rather than evidence of the Saturn's innate technical inferiority) would be acceptable if the track and scenary were drawn to the horizon, but the crucial graphical weakness of AM2's conversion is that it blocks in huge chunks of scenery distrubingly late."

So they were still giving the benefit of the doubt.

In August 1995 they would be mainly looking at Virtua Fighter, which looked like crap compared to Toshindon, and Daytona, which looked like crap compared to Wipeout and Ridge Racer, the only game which even looked marginally decent on Saturn at that time was Panzer Dragoon and that was delayed in Britain until August 30th anyway.

Talking to unnamed developers, one of which was definitely EA, Edge just managed to predict that the Saturn was the weakest hardware.

They talk to many named developers, its just a question of me remembering stuff from bloody years ago or downloading and re-reading masses of magazines, and anyway some of Sega's own well known staff like Yu Suzuki criticised the hardware themselves which is stupidity of the highest degree.

Adeline - In the end, we felt Playstation was the better bet, it has a very clean hardware design, so its very straightforward to program. Saturn is a very good machine, but it seems like a rush job.

Edge obviously had all the business in the world promoting the Playstation as uniformly perfect from January 1995 until its western launch in the Fall right?

They were impressed, enthusiastic, and felt that the system delivered exactly what they wanted it to, I'm not sure why you expect writers to act like robots, video game writers always get carried away and take a long time to change their tune after making initial judgements.

Edge was just being honest with all of these subjective statements about the Saturn before its western launches right?

If you read through EDGE you'd know that they went to Japan for both launches in 1994, writing long articles on their experiences with the two machines. Writing for a videogame magazine is pretty much nothing but subjective statements anyway, their job is to make judgements, compare, and recommend to the readership, and as far as I'm concerned they reasonably explained their reasons for prefering PS1.

-------------------------------------------

Here's some more EDGE quotes in regards to the Saturn -

Visually Virtua Fighter 2 has no equal. Using the Saturn's highest screen resolution, and running at the same speed and elegance as the coin op it is, quite simply a staggering achievement. It captures the graphical finesse of the state-of-the-art coin-op with few compromises. In fact, those familiar with the original Saturn game could be forgiven for thinking this was running on an entirely different machine......in terms of faithfulness to the arcade original, VF2 gets closer than Daytona, Ridge Racer, or just about anything else......In many ways Virtua Fighter 2 is the ultimate technical showcase

EDGE - Why do you think the Playstation did so much better than the Saturn in 1995?

Shiny Entertainment - The initial games on the Saturn were disappointing. Ridge Racer was impressive, Magazines, Playground chatter, and the internet quickly spread the news

Why don't you tell us some good things about the Saturn and its games?

Hmmm, lets see.

The 3D fighters tended to be the best designed, deepest and most graphically impressive fighters for their times.

Panzer Dragoon Saga is a very ambitious game, the world is very imaginative, the battle system is great, and it has a lot of atmosphere.

The 6 button 2nd revision Saturn controller is one of the best controller's for 2D games I've ever used.

Exhumed was a very fast and impressive game for its time, the level design is clever and interesting, the other Lobotomy ports were also very respectable and competitive for their times.

Panzer Dragoon Zwei was very cool, I like the game but not the graphics very much.

I like the fact that they used a 6-player adaptor instead of a 4-player adaptor

I think thats everything.