The Sega Saturn Mega Thread

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Exactly what I was going to say Tiger. I'd rather have 60fps High Res graphics than 30 fps low res graphics with lighting and gouraud shading. I feel that Saturn Dead or Alive is better than PS1 Dead Or Alive just because it looks cleaner and you can see the entire stage at any time. On PS1 we may have fancier effects but it comes at the cost of resolution, framerate, and draw distance as Dead or Alive shows us.

[sheath]

Kool Kitty, on the PS1 being better suited for Model 2 games than the Saturn. I really don't know where you are coming from. Even the Arcade boards that used PS1 hardware never came anywhere near to Model 2 level, not even with RAM and speed increases. If the PS1 could do Model 2 games, Tekken 1 & 2 and Soul Blade would have looked like Model 2 games in the Arcades.

Meanwhile, to the untrained eye, Saturn games like Sega Rally, Virtual Cop and Virtua Fighter 2 looked so close to their Arcade equivalents even the magazines were amazed.

[kool kitty89]

Apparently not while launching in 1994 and thereby giving the Playstation a run for its money in Japan. I can turn this hardware discussion on the Playstation with the same logic. Sony just needed to have more Video RAM and it would have been better than the Saturn in every way but sound. Sony should have waited and put a 60Mhz CPU in the Playstation and it would have been better than the Model 2 tech without 3D acceleration. Sony should have focused on a hardware accelerated 3D GPU so it would have had so much trouble with polygon tearing and texture warping.

The PSX's "GPU" is very well 3D oriented for the time. There wasn't much issue at all with Z-tearing and perspective issues were addressed by better programming efforts.

The "tearing" you usually bring up is the seaming issues caused by improper rounding of the GTE coordinates. That wouldn't have been solved by a full GPU either, though having an FPU instead of the fixed-point GTE would have solved it. (or a fixed-point matrix coprocessor that handled things a little differently -as it is, you can fix it on the software end by properly managing rounding iirc)

Affine texture rendering was the best option for the time, so it made a lot of sense to push that. (maybe adding a feature that allowed line segmentation like Quake does for better perspective correction -breaking up lines at regular intervals rather than just between polygon end-points; that would have been much less intensive than perspective-correct rendering, but would have greatly reduced distortion issues)



A 60 MHz CPU wouldn't have made it better than the Model 2 either . . . you still have memory limits, fill-rate, floating point performance, etc, etc. (that's talking raw performance and not ease of use though)

Nobody considers these things for one reason, the Playstation ended up dominating after 1997. That actually happened because of exclusive third party software and Sony overmarketing the platform, swallowing losses on each console sold, etc. The Saturn having a 60Mhz CPU instead of two SH-2s, which actually were better than the PS1's CPU even if they "only" managed 1.5x the processing ability of one SH-2, would not have changed the massive financial advantage Sony had.

Once again, the Saturn's CPU was NOT one of its major faults. It wasn't ideal, but there were much bigger areas where it fell short. (I already detailed this in another recent thread, but I think it may have been lost from the backup gap)

FMV games I can recognise are Double Switch, Corpse Killer, Quarterback Attack, D, and Mansion of Hidden Souls, not sure if thats all of them though, I'm not really an expert on FMV games.

FMV games aren't a bad thing. Multimedia is a big part of what made the PSX what it was. (including some true FMV games -ie games where multimedia/streaming video is integrated into primary gameplay)
Contuing to push lower-quality/dated FMV games would be an issue though. (only a couple of those on the list fall into that category though)

I don't know if I'd call Mansion of Hidden Souls an FMV game. It's an adventure/puzzle game that happens to have a lot of CG animation. More like The 7th Guest than Night Trap.

It's an FMV game, just a good one. I consider Myst an FMV game too, among others.

D is a detective game like Myst. It just happens to be done with pre-rendered CGI.

Detective??? WTF, Myst is an action adventure game as much as Monkey Island or Grimm Fandango.
You could have a detective themed adventure, but I certainly wouldn't classify Myst as such.

I think you've gone a little overboard there. Antibiotics have been abused so long that the medical industry has stopped prescribing them to keep them effective. Using the Saturn too much only results in finding more good Saturn games.

No, no, the CACHE, you wear out the CACHE, it's almost as bad as the Dreamcast in that respect.

Hmm, I should post my backup of the Legend of Zoltor thread.

There's no doubt it's worth owning. There's no doubt it had some of the best software of its generation.

The problem is the cost to Sega, the loss of the consumer, the losses for the consumer, the inelegant board design -- likely due to the original design being too underpowered to compete with PS1 -- and the terrible spot this put dev teams in.

Add all that up, and Saturn was a massive mistake from a corporate standpoint.

I love the machine, as a gamer. As a Sega fan? I think it was a pretty awful release.

Another good summary and I don't think I need to say much given what I already have at various points. (though a chunk of that is missing from the 2 month gap . . . )

I know we disagree on some of the details, but overall there's a lot of common ground. (ie underpowered would be OK if it was cheap and/or easy to develop for, though it was largely underpowered due to being difficult to develop for and also very cost ineffective on top of that)

Seriously, this is uncalled for. You are very lucky I'm not that deep into religion because someone who was could take great offense to that. Your personal attacks are getting more and more annoying. But I guess that's what you do when you have no real argument and only quote old opinions from magazines.

This thread was obviously made as a joke to make fun of YOU and the countless threads you made on this subject before the forums went down. If you want to continue to make an ass of yourself go ahead, but I don't think anyone in this thread is taking you seriously anymore.

He was just using an analogy, just the the WWII naval one he made a while back in context of the battle of midway. (though I suggested the destruction of the Yamato was more appropriate)

Don't take it at face value, look at it in perspective to it being a figure of speech . . .

Though I don't find it especially applicable given that you and Baloo don't have drastically different opinions on most topic AFIK.

16bitter,were you or someone close to you hurt by the saturn.You seem to have a personal grudge with the system.

No, he's obviously stated that he likes many aspects personally as a GAMER, but he's not so foolish as to ignore the massive problems that surrounded it and basically ruined Sega. (though technically the Saturn itself is symbolic of the far larger and deeper wealth of problems, some of which were related to the hardware design specifically, but many others in addition to that)

He's speaking from a logical historical perspective, and while I disagree on certain points, I certainly agree with the summary of it all.

Well, too bad Sega had killer 3D hardware in the arcades, only to design a system that was meant for 2D at home.

Nah, that arcade hardware was part of the problem too, very costly (hurt them in the arcade market and thus put them in a worse position at home), and emphasizing some of the features that weakened the Saturn. (including quad based rendering)

That at least held true for the model 1 and 2, the model 3 had the same cost issues, but was very much in-line with common market standards otherwise. (Sega didn't use it that way though, at least given the vast majority of quad-specific games)

It certainly could have made sense to collaborate with Lockheed Martin on a low-cost emphasized 3D machine in general. (2D performance would generally come along with that due to 3D being heavily reliant on 2D drawing performance . . . if you're talking blitter performance and not 2D specific tile logic like the Saturn's VDP2)

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.

Rather ironic that SoJ supposedly recognized that North America was #1 in importance, but totally f*cked up Saturn support relative to that and compromised SoA's management in 1995.

That and I wonder what SoA had to say on Jupiter and whether they'd have preferred it over Mars. (at least had they known how SoJ would be pushing the Saturn so rapidly)

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.

That's incorrect, the Saturn also has a somewhat flexible DSP coprocessor intended for 3D math. The reason the CPU was used often instead was due to poor development tool suport and the difficulties of using fixed-point math with quads. (the SH2s could do floating point in software fairly adequately, but I don't think the DSP could help with that)

The "distorted sprites" are just quadrlateral primitives being rendered. Distorted quads rather than distorted trips as the PSX and PC (and most 3D renderers save Sega's arcade, 3DO, Saturn, and Nvidia's ill-fated NV1).

"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."[/B]

They added a pretty fast DSP too, so that's obviously not the whole story. (more general purpose CPU resource is good in any case and dual CPUs could have been the only realistic option for the time . . . but there's a lot of other trade-offs to consider)

Yup, Edge #16 is at fault for the rumor of Sega adding the second SH2 and the VDP1 to the Saturn after the Playstation announcement in 1993. Did they cite anything but themselves in this assertion? No. Were they there during any of the Saturn's design meetings? Nope. Did 16bitter ever show evidence that suggests Edge was a fair and unbiased magazine in the previous threads he created to bash the Saturn? Nope.

No, it wasn't edge, it was an inside source of some sort separate from edge and the rumor had been spreading separately inside the industry prior to the edge publication. (Chilly Willy has a personal anecdote about rumors coming from Sony staff back in '94 in terms of the SH1, less RAM, etc being upgraded at the last minute)

I think went over this in detail recently, but it's probably been lost . . . (maybe I can dig it up from google)

That included my musings on how any 1993 Saturn redesign would have been more likely fueled by the 3DO and Jaguar pissing on the early Saturn's specs than the PSX being a factor.

In any case, having the dual SH2s by January of 1994 doesn't change anything either really, and doesn't even counter EDGE's claims. (or did they specifically claim that Sega added it in mid 1994 -ie a totally infeasible time given the Saturn's release date . . . the hardware would have likely been frozen for production by spring of 1994)

Either you're confused, or just trying to confuse others.

The schedule you lay out does not contradict the story from EDGE as to the Saturn's rushed redesign, instead it arguably confirms it.

Yes, though it doesn't confirm WHY such a redesign took place. (ie jaguar and 3DO -and PCs- vs PSX being the prime factor)

When do you think system specs are finalized, days before they start rolling off the assembly-line? The PSX was ready -- finished -- as a production model, mainline boardwork here, in November of 1993, the same time Nakayama supposedly had his fit.

I doubt the PSX was solidified for production that early. The documentation was probably solidified and the development systems were probably ready, but the final consumer hardware was probably being tweaked until spring of 1994. (ie any minor bug fixes, final configuration of the motherboard/RAM/chips/case/external ports/etc -the custom chips were probably all solidified by the end of 1993 though, or at least the final revisions should have been taped out and being implemented in silicon)

And yet, as EDGE noted, the Saturn was redesigned as a response to the Playstation's polygon power, which the SH2 argument and timeline seems to match up with.

Again, I think the 3DO and jaguar (and PCs) could have been bigger inflences given how late the PSX came in. (chucking in a 2nd SH2 could have been done, but the more substantial modifications that the full rumor in the tech industry claims would have pre-existed that -ie the claim that the Saturn was using an SH1 as the main CPU with less RAM and no VDP1 -or a weaker VDP1 missing the 3D drawing modes)

[b]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.

The Titan really isn't more powerful than the Saturn either, it's pretty much identical across the board from all information I've seen. (other than removing the CD-ROM drive)

Either you're confused, or just trying to confuse others.

The schedule you lay out does not contradict the story from EDGE as to the Saturn's rushed redesign, instead it arguably confirms it.

Yes, though it doesn't confirm WHY such a redesign took place. (ie jaguar and 3DO -and PCs- vs PSX being the prime factor)

When do you think system specs are finalized, days before they start rolling off the assembly-line? The PSX was ready -- finished -- as a production model, mainline boardwork here, in November of 1993, the same time Nakayama supposedly had his fit.

I doubt the PSX was solidified for production that early. The documentation was probably solidified and the development systems were probably ready, but the final consumer hardware was probably being tweaked until spring of 1994. (ie any minor bug fixes, final configuration of the motherboard/RAM/chips/case/external ports/etc -the custom chips were probably all solidified by the end of 1993 though, or at least the final revisions should have been taped out and being implemented in silicon)

And yet, as EDGE noted, the Saturn was redesigned as a response to the Playstation's polygon power, which the SH2 argument and timeline seems to match up with.

Again, I think the 3DO and jaguar (and PCs) could have been bigger inflences given how late the PSX came in. (chucking in a 2nd SH2 could have been done, but the more substantial modifications that the full rumor in the tech industry claims would have pre-existed that -ie the claim that the Saturn was using an SH1 as the main CPU with less RAM and no VDP1 -or a weaker VDP1 missing the 3D drawing modes)

[b]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.

The Titan really isn't more powerful than the Saturn either, it's pretty much identical across the board from all information I've seen. (other than removing the CD-ROM drive)

We all know it wasn't the best designed system and wasn't marketed well. No one is saying otherwise here. We are however saying it's not as bad as some people have claimed.

If this is truly what your stance is then why are you arguing about how much it sucks at doing 3D and how it had no good software?

He's taking the history buff perspective . . . the machine was a mess from almost every angle and more so from the events surrounding it.

Saying it "wasn't the best designed system" is a massive understatement. Saying the MD wasn't the best designed system wouldn't be untrue as most systems are flawed (sometimes with quite odd decisions), but the Saturn is just so wrong for a console of the time on some many areas it's sad.

The software support was also wrong: quality games don't mean anything if they don't cater to the mass-market audience.


If hardware had been the only/main mistake made with the Saturn, it wouldn't have been so bad, but they botched it in so many other was, especially in the way they tore down the hard-earned US market and SoA's infrastructure.

[Thenewguy]

And as for Panzer Dragoon being a "never-ending story level of gayness", that's a pretty bold statement to make coming from a person that puts Jumping Flash, a PS1 game where you play as a white bunny hopping through candy land, on a freaking pedestal.

LMAO, this was awesome.

Still I was merely repeating what I heard people saying about Panzer at the time, I didn't hate the theme personally, and the big difference here is that Panzer was a major in-the-public-eye game that Sega was pushing, whilst Jumping Flash was just fun Japanese weirdness that most people ignored, but many critics, and gamers liked (bar the fact that it was another game which was too bloody short, albeit pushing new boundaries like the other 3D games of the time), and they counted as another good game in the PS1's repertoire.

[kool kitty89]

Exactly what I was going to say Tiger. I'd rather have 60fps High Res graphics than 30 fps low res graphics with lighting and gouraud shading. I feel that Saturn Dead or Alive is better than PS1 Dead Or Alive just because it looks cleaner and you can see the entire stage at any time. On PS1 we may have fancier effects but it comes at the cost of resolution, framerate, and draw distance as Dead or Alive shows us.

No, the framerate should be higher on the PSX.

The only trade-off is the color depth vs screen res. (and DoA on PSX doesn't run at 320x480 AFIK, though that would practically limit it to 30 FPS)

Actually, you can't have 60 FPS on the Saturn either, it's interlaced in high-res mode so you'd be stuck with a nominal 30 FPS max.

Kool Kitty, on the PS1 being better suited for Model 2 games than the Saturn. I really don't know where you are coming from. Even the Arcade boards that used PS1 hardware never came anywhere near to Model 2 level, not even with RAM and speed increases. If the PS1 could do Model 2 games, Tekken 1 & 2 and Soul Blade would have looked like Model 2 games in the Arcades.

I didn't say the PSX hardware was performance competitive with the Model 2 hardware, I said it could be better suited to porting model 2 games than the Saturn.

The Saturn got support from amazing developers with the better converted arcade games, that says nothing about the relative hardware performance unless you have equally skilled and experienced developers pushing on the PSX.

The PSX has a much higher fillrate, better geometry performance, nominally more texture memory (can dig into CPU RAM too), etc.
The fillrate and geometry performance are the main factors in this case.







Also, this is a little off topic, but I think it ties into the overall discussion:
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/show...82#post1810982

Combine that with Yu Suzuki describing Nakayama as the type of guy who would ship a game if he saw moving pictures on the screen, so he always kept glitched code handy to put on his screen when the boss walked his direction. That was in the recent 1up interview. I think Nakayama might be to blame for Sega's downfall in the West more than any other single factor. It is amazing that the Saturn, complete with its lack of development kits and being "hard to program," is Sega's only successful console in Japan.



I completely disagree with Stolar's impression of Okawa and I think he was just blabbing about superficial facts he knew about the man. All I know about Okawa is that he used hundreds of millions of his personal money to keep Sega afloat in late 2001 and he died of a heart attack a couple of weeks after the Dreamcast's discontinuation.



The Dreamcast supposedly languished on shelves at half and then one third the price of the PS2 during Christmas 2000 in the US. That was printed by magazines that had notoriously predicted its demise for its entire lifecycle though, so that information is suspect until proven.

The sheer volume of people who I heard talking in 2000 about how great the PS2 was going to be, especially retail/rental clerks, tells me that there was definitely massive demand for the PS2. Also, I remember hearing numerous parents asking for the "Sony Dreamcast," and immediately noticed how closely one had to inspect Dreamcast jewel cases to distinguish them from PS1 games.

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/show...84#post1811184

I wonder if he had also hindered the Master System's success in the US. (or whether that was more an issue with SoA staff at the time -he seemed pretty open to Katz's plans to built-up SoA, so maybe it was just a matter of getting the right people there in the first place to spark that expansion -or they could have delegated things to a capable 3rd party marketing firm in the US instead, they had the budget -initially more marketing budget than Nintendo- but seemed to largely squander it)

I've seen claims of Nakayma being "out of touch" with the home console market compared to the arcade (trying to apply arcade type market strategies to the consumer market -there's some references to the 32x/Mars project stemming from that logic), but if that Yu Suzuki comment was inclusive of his arcade projects, it seems Nakayma wasn't especially good at that side of things either. (maybe he was better at pushing arcade hardware market positioning than software or the home market in general)

Others have implied that Nakayma was "forced" to take actions contrary to SoA's wishes by pressure from "other" upper management (partially induced by Nakayma constantly pounding on how the MD wasn't as successful as the Genesis), but it seems possible that Nakayma alone was the bigger problem. (other anecdotes and quotes point to some of the other Japanese management actually disagreeing with many of Nakayma's decisions too, but not related to SoA either way -albeit some JP managment seemed to disagree with many of the same decisions SoA disagreed with, but often for different reasons)


It was more of a flash in the pan hit though, once Sony got Square, the Saturn declined rapidly (and fell behind the N64's market share by 1998 -not aggregate sales, mind you).

And it really depends how you define "success" . . . I think the SG-1000 and MkIII/SMS had been profitable at least, and the MD was definitely a market success for them.

Actually, I think the MD may have done about as well as the Saturn overall. (comparing net hardware sales of the PCE, MD, SFC vs PSX, Saturn, N64)


I think Okawa may have been the best overall president/CEO that SoJ ever had. (it makes you wonder how he might have handled things back in 1994/95 or such)

[sheath]

Kool Kitty, I was not under the impression that you thought the PS1 was on the level with Model 2. My point was that the best System 11 games look nowhere near as advanced as Model 2 games, and yet 1995 Saturn games are so close that even critical magazines were astonished. The Dead or Alive on PS1 analogy is apt as well.

Some of what you are stating as fact about the PS1 is absolutely the position of Sony fan groups about the system. The GTE having a better fillrate is probably true, but if that really matters why did the Saturn hit 480 resolutions before and more often than the Playstation? Why was Virtua Fighter 2 60FPS when only the much later released Tekken 3 achieved the same (with much lower character animation)?

Why is it that the Saturn can be said to have more overall processing power than the PS1, but still be inferior at 3D to the PS1? By my estimation we are blending too many topics and that is why some statements about the Saturn are being twisted to apply to the Saturn-PS1 discussion. "True 3D" is one topic, "Good 3D for the time" is another topic, what makes a successful platform is a completely different topic. Then there is how the Playstation, Saturn and even the Model 2 approached 3D individually to discuss and compare.

It seems to me that somehow the Playstation's approach was unilaterally declared "best" and everything else was compared to it as the standard. Well, even the top Playstation games make me question it as a standard to meet for quality 3D gaming.

[gamevet]

The PSX's "GPU" is very well 3D oriented for the time. There wasn't much issue at all with Z-tearing and perspective issues were addressed by better programming efforts.

The "tearing" you usually bring up is the seaming issues caused by improper rounding of the GTE coordinates. That wouldn't have been solved by a full GPU either, though having an FPU instead of the fixed-point GTE would have solved it. (or a fixed-point matrix coprocessor that handled things a little differently -as it is, you can fix it on the software end by properly managing rounding iirc)

Affine texture rendering was the best option for the time, so it made a lot of sense to push that. (maybe adding a feature that allowed line segmentation like Quake does for better perspective correction -breaking up lines at regular intervals rather than just between polygon end-points; that would have been much less intensive than perspective-correct rendering, but would have greatly reduced distortion issues)



A 60 MHz CPU wouldn't have made it better than the Model 2 either . . . you still have memory limits, fill-rate, floating point performance, etc, etc. (that's talking raw performance and not ease of use though)

If it could be corrected so easily through software, then why did we see titles published by Sony, that still had these tearing issues? Cool Borders 2 was released in 1997, yet it had horrible tearing. Cool Borders 3 appears to have corrected that issue, but it was way later in the Playstation's lineup.



Victor/Core's Steep Slope Sliders had no tearing and was smooth as butter in comparison.

[Baloo]

I don't agree that Ridge Racer is an excellent game, but it was popular.

Daytona USA isn't nearly so dated as it continues to make money as an arcade machine, even while arcade games in general have almost completely died out.

Daytona is a classic like Doom and Super Mario games. Ridge Racer was more of a tech demo for the Playstation. Personally, I prefer good art and style like Daytona has over technical achievements and Ridge Racer has always looked bland and boring to me. But I know that my tastes weren't popular during that generation.

The way that I see it, even if the difference in graphics is as huge as some claim, the Saturn had some of the greatest games of all time early on while the Playstation had a bunch of mediocre stuff. Although Doom seemed kinda dated to me at the time, I do think that it was by far the Playstation's best game early on. These 'match the games' comparisons don't really count for much to me, since it's all a bunch of 'just okay' or 'not so great' games on both sides, with some classics that have stood the test of time on the Saturn's side.

The Playstation's early library was like the Jaguar, where there are many games in the same category as some classics for various platforms, but having a game in the same genre as a classic doesn't cancel out. Not even close.


It's like a match up like this-

Console A > Console B

Plok = Sonic 3
War 2410 = Shining Force II
Gunforce = Gunstar Heroes
Syvalion = Thunder Force IV
Final Fantasy Legend = Phantasy Star IV
Brawl Brothers = Streets of Rage 2
Fighter's History = Super Street Fighter II
Super Pinball
Q-Bert 3
Aerobiz
Super Bowling


As you can see, Console A has a similar game for everything Console B has, plus a few extra games. So clearly Console B has the superior library.


Sure the Playstation and its library was marketed better and was more popular, but Sega's mistake of giving us quality over quantity is still our win to this day.

As for game magazines being corrupt, biased, or simply incompetent, all you have to do is judge them by how they followed through on their duty to steer the consumer clear of garbage. Toshinden is completely worthless, just as many fmv games were early on. Did any magazines not praise Toshinden as the greatest fighter ever that will stand the test of time? It doesn't matter which of the possible reasons are behind their incorrect coverage in cases like this. It just goes to show that you can't use game mags as a way of measuring the quality of games for their time. Metacritic scoring is broken today, there's no reason to apply a flawed formula to flawed data from the past.

You can say that the Sony lineup was smarter from a marketing standpoint, but it wasn't the best for a consumer who appreciated good games.

This right here. Why the fuck does it matter who won the console war and who had the same types on games on which systems when they launched and longevity and different developers and shit today? All that really matters is the games, and I sure as hell don't see people raving about mediocre nonsense like Ridge Racer, Toshiniden, Jumping Flash or the first Tekken, and yet games like Sega Rally, Virtua Fighter 2, and Panzer Dragoon are still regarded as classics today in their respective genres.

What it all comes down to is that PS1s library is old and dated. Saturn's library may not have nearly as many games, but they're a hell of a lot more fun. And that's all that really matters for gamers. Why argue about who won and who lost when you can play the games and decide for yourself? Like the Playstation more, that's fine. But don't go bash the other system for being terrible when it didn't garner as many sales due to SEGA's shitty marketing plan 15 years ago.

[Team Andromeda]

Better question: where is Sega now?

Not in the home console business. But to be fair, the clusterfuck that was Saturn gets a great deal of credit for that.

Still going and one of the few gaming companies to record a profit for the past year , why ?. Remind us again were 3DFX are now ?. Oh and aren't Power VR powering the new SONY NGP too (its almost enough to make you proud to be British) ?

[Team Andromeda]

I agree, with the exception of Sega of America in the early/mid 90s, they didn't understand the importance of milking franchises and pushing shovelware

Now you're just being silly , You really going to sit there and tell me that SEGA didn't milk Sukura Wars, Sonic, Virtual Fighter and host of other IP. You'll only milk IP that sells well and SOR III didn't sell great at all, Ecco was a flop on the Dreamcast and the PS2. Capcom are masters at milking IP , but even they don't make sequels to everyone of its IP's.

The blackbelt was initially to use a Power PC 603e iirc. SoJ compelled them to switch to the SH4 soon after though, so both projects were using the same CPU.

And your source of this is ?

Besides that, even if you know you can't get the top market share, you can plan to be profitable in a minor market share

Yes in the 8 and 16 but days, but in the 3D and 32 Bit age of Big teams, CD Rom and expensive productions no, That' why Atari , Commodore , NEC, SNK, 3DO all went by by to the console dream.

I wasn't talking about the modem being sold at a loss, but the service (and overall R&D/marketing investment) bleeding cache when they couldn't afford it.

Given it was not a lot more than just adding what is in effect Link up Code to a game that's already been produced I would think developments costs were minimal , and really don't remember SOA or SOJ pushing the next-link hard, compared to the cash SEGA 'Bled;' into the Ativator, those 3D glasses , sega menacer and a host of other utterly pointless MD add on's it would have been minimal.

They had a lot of major talent leave well before the MS takeover -of course Nintendo had been influencing things since the mid 90s.

Ahhh.. So NCL are to blame too. Lets get real here all talent leaves BIG groups to set up their own Teams, be that EA, Lionhead, Sony, SEGA, NCL, Capcom, BUNGiE, Activsion . It has and will always happen.

The DC SHOULDN'T have been sitting on shelves at $150 . . . it should have been left at $200 and started selling for profit sooner

Sorry to kill a dream, sales were dropping and SEGA were forced to slash the price of the DC, Funnilly enough MS were forced to slash the price of the X-Box after getting hammered by CUBE sales at the start, and even said sorry for the High Price of the
European launch

All Sony had to do was build on the best aspects of the PSX, but that didn't happen

That's what happens when you don't start with a clean slate

What mattered was the hardware at the time and how it compared in performance, cost, and library/programming suppor

Well one look at a most DC games would give you that answer ? Textures and graphics that could hold up well,even with some X-Box games . SEGA made the right choice, but its so sad you can't just come out and say it .

Exactly, Sega needed to play it smart to hang onto the market and be successful, but that obviously didn't happen

So NCL are wrong to be lauching the Wii II, and MS were wrong to drop the X-Box stone dead. What next SONY should hang on to the PSP and not bother with the NGP. Jesus Christ, given me a break !

[djtwok]

No ROM beggging, please! - Melf

[sheath]

www.emuasylum.com has it.

[Olls]

All that really matters is the games, and I sure as hell don't see people raving about mediocre nonsense like Ridge Racer, Toshiniden, Jumping Flash or the first Tekken, and yet games like Sega Rally, Virtua Fighter 2, and Panzer Dragoon are still regarded as classics today in their respective genres.

And you know why? Because Playstation games got better as time went on, while the Saturn sat still. With classics like Tekken 2 and 3, Soul Blade, Gran Turismo 1 and 2 who is going to remember mediocre racing and fighting games such as Ridge Racer and Toshinden? Exactly.

What it all comes down to is that PS1s library is old and dated. Saturn's library may not have nearly as many games, but they're a hell of a lot more fun. And that's all that really matters for gamers. Why argue about who won and who lost when you can play the games and decide for yourself? Like the Playstation more, that's fine. But don't go bash the other system for being terrible when it didn't garner as many sales due to SEGA's shitty marketing plan 15 years ago.

You made a complete ass out of yourself right here.

[lumclaw]

Come on. We all hate to admit the existence of topics such as this all trace their roots back to one game - Street Fighter II.

Without Capcom fighters, Saturn fanboyism wouldn't have become a shred of what it is today. Not that I can't blame them. I mean games like Street Fighter Alpha 2 for sure ARE dang impressive hardware feats.

[Thenewguy]

LOL, Next you'll be demanding sequels to Jet Set Willy and Dizzy and countless UK and much loved classics from the past.

Dizzy is caught up in licensing issues between Codemasters and the Oliver Twins, the Oliver Twins have said many times in the past that they would've brought the Dizzy series back many years ago if they'd been able to, and Matthew Smith has been mentally Ill since the 80s.

Oh and No SEGA did not own the Disney licence at all... because Capcom and Co also brought out Disney games for both the NES and Snes and even Mega Drive.

As usual this is entirely irrelevant, Sega brought out Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck games, therefore they must have had some kind of agreement with Disney, therefore they actively aimed to bring out family friendly games on top of their other offerings, therefore they had an open stance to content.

Owing the name and IP means nothing with out the Team to make it. SEGA still owns the IP to MSR, but Bizzare Creations were able to fly the nest and make the PGR series for MS and the X-Box.

IMO Sega had the talent to continue the series to a high quality themselves, hell Hudson managed to do a pretty good job with the sequels to Adventure Island.

'Was'. It never came out and all the fans are still waiting for a direct sequel to appear on a NCL home console , at least PS fans got a sequel and even a story mode in PSU (even if it was crap)

How does this help your case?!?! Nintendo intended to release more Mother games, they didn't dump the IP, unfortunate circumstances happened, and yet again they made sure the character was kept in the public eye with Smash Bros in case they changed their stance later, they also released the sequel on the GBA as I mentioned earlier.

LOL what is this ?. Next you'll be counting Sonic R as a full Sonic title on saturn, even thought it plays nothing like a Sonic game. And play Shenmue you'll see Alex Kid and a host of other SEGA characters make some sort of appearance, does that count too ?. No need to make a sequel to Skies SEGA, a cameo in Valkyria is enough lol

You have zero understanding of what we're actually discussing don't you? the point is that Nintendo keep all their characters in the public eye, they manage their IPs properly, and carefully, they know what their fans want, and they provide it.

I just making the point that NCL has allowed 3rd parties to work on its IP, even British ones. So lets not have a pop at SEGA for doing just the same as NCL please.

Sega don't do the same thing, giving licenses to crap companies and forgetting about them is not the same as working closely with up and coming and respected companies.

And just to clarify I'm not talking about Sumo, who have done a perfectly respectable, and sometimes very good job on Sega games, I pointed them out earlier simply to say that the biggest fanservice games coming from Sega (Sega Superstar Racing, and Superstar Tennis) were from a British (where Sega's heritage was well loved) company, and not Sega themselves, who probably don't even understand the popularity and heritage they had built in other countries.

I have every idea was I was taking about since I imported my CUBE. Now lets go on domestic launch software and consoles like the Mega Drive, Snes, N64, Cube, DC, Saturn, PS were all lacking in the number of games ready for launch,and I do love the irony of you highlighting a SEGA game has a good launch game.

Yep Japanese launches are awful, with only 1 or 2 good games ever available at best, you can easily release machines with very little at launch there because there's no competition at all and everyone is in the same boat.

Its interesting to see that none of the console you listed actually had games which made the hardware look bad, Virtua Fighter, good game that it was, made the hardware look like it couldn't keep up, Mario 64 did the opposite

And there is no irony, I'm a huge Sega fan, if they do something right then I point it out, the Dreamcast had one of the best western launch line-ups of all time.

The same MS that cancelled Kameo II and PDZ II in order for RARE to focus on Natal ?. Not the same MS that killed off Studios like Fasa, Diigital Avil, Nidie Built , Ensemble.

RARE's results with the 360 didn't live up to expectation unfortunately, they had their chance though, and they had some unlucky breaks too, but I wouldn't blame their current status solely on Microsoft

Keep it coming

I can keep it coming, but I'd rather you didn't being that there's very little focus and a lot of repetition in your argument, you've partially swayed me on the "milking IPs" area, but I stick to the crux of my initial argument, they do throw away and forget about viable IPs (especially during the Saturn era), and they don't understand the power of fanservice and cross pollinisation, but more than anything else they just mismanage their IPs in general, Sega had little qualms about dumping a popular character into a bad game just to sell it (Alex Kid), and they were not passed giving a popular series less and less development budget and allowing it to stagnate (Golden Axe), or paying a cheap company to churn out a quick sequel (Shinobi).

Nintendo are careful with their IPs, they keep track of them all and their heritage, they try to build and strengthen their licences over time, Sega tend to weaken, water down, and forget about their IPs, they look at them simply in the short term, and don't understand how to build and nurture (and control) the fanbase.