Comparison of 5th generation ("32/64-bit") game console hardware

[Team Andromeda]

The N64 should have handled a game like that fine and a decent PSX conversion should also have been possible (though it probably would fall short of the Saturn version given how that game plays to the Saturn's strengths in BG generation), at least if pushed by a developer as skilled with the N64 (or PSX) as with the Saturn example.

Looking over the rumoured PS version was drooped due to not being able to handle a port , every Saturn game that made proper use of the VDP II and was ported to the PS looked utterly horrible in comparison even when skilled developers like Technosoft, RAIZING, Treasure handle the ported them self's to the PS. The VDP II effects in the PS version of Thunder Force V (Stage III) are and utter complete joke , as are the VDP II water effects in the PS version of Grandia (the PS version even can't scale the bitmap map in as smoothly) and even the VDP II backrounds in the PS vers of Silhouette mirage are missing details . So Given that RSG makes the best use of VDP II one will ever see, with at times not just one VDP II plane being spun around, but 2 along with transparent plans The PS would have had a nightmare trying to handle that and then handle all the sprites and polygons being thrown around in addistion to the VDP II backrounds .The fact that Treasure never ever ported it to the PS should tell you all you need to know, more when its was an ESP published game , same goes for RAIZING not even trying to port Battle Garraga

When it came to 2D the Saturn was in a class of own @ the time why you try and continue to make out otherwise is quite beyond me. Its like people trying to knock the PS 3D , When at the time it was better than anything around console wise

[saturndual32]

Whats up with one of the members of Traveler Tales saying that Saturn is better at gouraud shadding than PS1, and that if they tried to run Sonic R on Playstation, it would run at 3 frames per second. Where they anti Sony at the time?. After all, their game Toy Story 2 for PS1 is one of the most impressive games for that console, in my opinion.
And i agree with Team Andromeda, i dont see any console before the Dreamcast, doing a close port of Radiant Silvergun. Sure, they could improve the polygon stuff a bit, but the VDP2 stuff is way too impressive. As Team Andromeda mentioned, Thunder Force V is a great example of the PS1 struggling to do VDP2 type stuff, and in comparison, RSG is way more impessive than TFV.

[kool kitty89]

Looking over the rumoured PS version was drooped due to not being able to handle a port , every Saturn game that made proper use of the VDP II and was ported to the PS looked utterly horrible in comparison even when skilled developers like Technosoft, RAIZING, Treasure handle the ported them self's to the PS. The VDP II effects in the PS version of Thunder Force V (Stage III) are and utter complete joke , as are the VDP II water effects in the PS version of Grandia (the PS version even can't scale the bitmap map in as smoothly) and even the VDP II backrounds in the PS vers of Silhouette mirage are missing details . So Given that RSG makes the best use of VDP II one will ever see, with at times not just one VDP II plane being spun around, but 2 along with transparent plans The PS would have had a nightmare trying to handle that and then handle all the sprites and polygons being thrown around in addistion to the VDP II backrounds .The fact that Treasure never ever ported it to the PS should tell you all you need to know, more when its was an ESP published game , same goes for RAIZING not even trying to port Battle Garraga

When it came to 2D the Saturn was in a class of own @ the time why you try and continue to make out otherwise is quite beyond me. Its like people trying to knock the PS 3D , When at the time it was better than anything around console wise

The context was the N64, not the PSX . . . the PSX is indeed at a disadvantage for any game with heavy VDP2 effects on the Saturn.

The N64 is another matter though . . . it has far more bandwidth to work with than the PSX by a wide margin, and that advantage would be especially significant for 2D games where little CPU resource would be needed. (thus meaning little contention on the bus by the CPU and most of that bandwidth going to graphics)


The problem, of course, is that there was simply little interest in developing those sorts of games on the N64, and similarly limited interest by Nintendo/SGI in encouraging those sorts of games. (after all, 3D was the big seller, so it was in their best interests to push for that)
On top of that, the N64 came out later and had most of its better games developed later than the PSX's (and especially Saturn's) peak, thus even further skewing the bias towards 3D games.

Finally, there's the issue of both cartridges and Nintendo's costly/restricting licensing and manufacturing contracts that further limited software on the system (and the more limited market share than the PSX -and Saturn in Japan, until '98), making it a bigger risk to develop/publish for in general in many respects . . . especially for smaller developers or for niche games. (ie anything 2D)

Whats up with one of the members of Traveler Tales saying that Saturn is better at gouraud shadding than PS1, and that if they tried to run Sonic R on Playstation, it would run at 3 frames per second. Where they anti Sony at the time?. After all, their game Toy Story 2 for PS1 is one of the most impressive games for that console, in my opinion.
And i agree with Team Andromeda, i dont see any console before the Dreamcast, doing a close port of Radiant Silvergun. Sure, they could improve the polygon stuff a bit, but the VDP2 stuff is way too impressive. As Team Andromeda mentioned, Thunder Force V is a great example of the PS1 struggling to do VDP2 type stuff, and in comparison, RSG is way more impessive than TFV.

The PSX shouldn't be slower at g-shading than the Saturn . . . at least not by a significant margin. However, the PSX is moderately slower at gouraud shading than texture mapping (and much slower compared to cached texture mapping), but it should be very close to the Saturn's fillrate in any case. (both are much slower than the Jaguar at gouraud shading though -albeit that's just fillrate, not actual rendering/rasterization performance)

[kool kitty89]

Oh and another note on something that was brought up earlier:
I opened up my early model (SCPH-1001) PS1 and found out main RAM is 60 ns EDO DRAM (so similar to what most mid-range PCs were using at the time), so that answers that question.
(specifically, I found 4 Samsung KM48V514BJ-6 chips )

I also noted that the SGRAM used for video was KM4132G271Q-12, so rated for 12 ns burst/page-mode cycle times . . . and potentially set-up to run at 2x the speed of the GPU. (ie, it may be configured to allow effective dual-port operation via dual-bank interleaving and a latch/buffer to allow the GPU to make 2 accesses per clock -1 in each bank- . . . though obviously limited to operations supporting that sort of speed)
It would also mean that the peak bandwidth of the PSX's video bus could technically be 266 MB/s. (technically, that RAM is rated for 83 MHz operation, but 3x the GPU speed would exceed that so 2x would be the max practical)

[Team Andromeda]

The context was the N64, not the PSX . . . the PSX is indeed at a disadvantage for any game with heavy VDP2 effects on the Saturn

I'm sorry you brought in the PS and any time the PS had to emu a the VDP II it came up a massive 2nd best and given RSG used more or less used all the VDP II planes with 2 scrolling rotating/twisting all over the place , there no way the PS version would have have looked half as good - Yes it goes with out saying a port could have been done, but that goes for any game on different systems, has for the N64 - Yeah sure you would have got a decent port though how well it would have handled the Backrounds is anyone's guess. All we do know its the crisp sharp super clear display would have died a death and I doubt it would have sounded half as good . And before you jump in . Yes I own all of Treasure N64 games and they lack the clean crisp display of the Saturn (S&N is horribly blurry and washed out) and the music in both games doesn't come close , not even in quality

Whats up with one of the members of Traveler Tales saying that Saturn is better at gouraud shadding than PS1, and that if they tried to run Sonic R on Playstation, it would run at 3 frames per second. Where they anti Sony at the time?. After all, their game Toy Story 2 for PS1 is one of the most impressive games for that console, in my opinion

Lets bare a few things in mind. Jon was a massive fun of the Saturn hardware and it was a interview in the SEGA mag, So of course TT would sing up the Saturn praises and have a little dig at the PS and remember Sonic R was built around the Saturn hardware and using the VDP II (where the PS would have a massive hard time handling) In much the same way the Saturn would have a hard time trying to emu the lighting and other effects in Rascal

[Da_Shocker]

Treasure did an interview with Gamer's Republican back in 98 if they were going to port RSG to the PSx and they basically said the PSx could'nt do a worthwhile port.

[saturndual32]

Team Andromeda, you say you have every Treasure N64 game. How is Bangaioh in the N64?, is it doing impressive 2d compared to the stuff seen on the Saturn? I have played it on Dreamcast, but obviously the N64 must be quiet inferior in terms of sprite action, i would guess.

[Team Andromeda]

Team Andromeda, you say you have every Treasure N64 game. How is Bangaioh in the N64?, is it doing impressive 2d compared to the stuff seen on the Saturn? I have played it on Dreamcast, but obviously the N64 must be quiet inferior in terms of sprite action, i would guess.

No there's more slow down in the N64 version, but I can't remember there being that much difference at all ( I haven't played the DC port in years mind) . In of some spot effects and the sheer amount happing on screen its impressive and I bet both the Saturn and PS would have a hard time. But the sprites are basic and small and the backgrounds and scrolling wouldn't trouble the Mega Drive , let alone the Saturn

[kool kitty89]

Actually, in terms of raw rendering bandwidth, the Dreamcast isn't that much better than the N64 (800 MB/s peak vs 500 MB/s -technically 562.5 MB/s), and if you compare the Dreamcast at 24-bit graphics (which it usually used) to the N64's usual 16 (or 18) bits, that could make things more favorable for the N64 too (in terms of fillrate).
The Dreamcast has a dedicated video bus to the N64's shared bus, but for 2D games (relatively CPU-bandwidth light), that would be only a moderate issue as well. (the bigger real-world issue would be comparing the RDP to the Dreamcast GPU in terms of ability to actually make use of that bandwidth for 2D rendering)

Of course, the Dreamcast also has more RAM to work with, so you'd almost certainly have more/better animation (and/or larger/more detailed objects), even if the N64 had the expansion pak (since you could have extra animation stored in main RAM on the DC) . . . that is unless you used huge ROMs to make up the difference. (and, for a realistic home console release, the limited cart sizes would be another practical disadvantage in general)







Oh, and another interesting note on the N64:
I was looking at some N64 games again with a bit more scrutiny than usual and noticed that many N64 games DO make heavy use of dithering (similar to the PSX and many PC video cards) . . . and as I noted in some PC games previously, it becomes even more important/useful when added effects (like complex alpha blending and filtered textures) are used since the smoothness is that much more important and the graininess is a more worthwhile trade-off (even at 320x240).

I need to take a closer look, but I think this may be why I noticed the posterized shading much more in some gamecube versions of N64 games (especially the Zelda games -definitely undithered and 15/16-bit color by the heavy color banding, though also 640x480 to the N64's 320x240)

[TVC 15]

Whats up with one of the members of Traveler Tales saying that Saturn is better at gouraud shadding than PS1, and that if they tried to run Sonic R on Playstation, it would run at 3 frames per second. Where they anti Sony at the time?. After all, their game Toy Story 2 for PS1 is one of the most impressive games for that console, in my opinion.
And i agree with Team Andromeda, i dont see any console before the Dreamcast, doing a close port of Radiant Silvergun. Sure, they could improve the polygon stuff a bit, but the VDP2 stuff is way too impressive. As Team Andromeda mentioned, Thunder Force V is a great example of the PS1 struggling to do VDP2 type stuff, and in comparison, RSG is way more impessive than TFV.

I don't doubt that Travellers Tales are excellent programmers (Sonic R was also coded with the help of tech docs from Sonic Team), but it does sound that there being a bit bullish about the Saturn, I can't quite imagine the Saturn out performing the Playstation with gouraud Shading, I will say however that I've seen more games use Gouraud Shading from an earlier time frame than the Playstation. Nights and Fighting Vipers (1996) use gouraud Shading, whereas apparently Ridge Racer 4 (1998) was the first title to use gourard shading heavily on the PSX. I'am however not an expert on the PSX and I'm sure there must be titles earlier than that which use G-Shading, the battles scenes in the Final Fantasy series clearly look G-Shaded, which predates RR4 by a year.

Sonic R is really a showcase for the Saturn because it takes specific advantage of the Saturns strengths with its playfield (VDP2) hardware to draw the Mode 7 style floor and also using a variety of blending effects with the VDP2's colour calculation and layering.

I found this if it helps in the Sega DevCon DT's files;

Q:What is the performance penalty for using the VDP1 Gouraud shading Hardware?

A: A measurement of the time re-quired to draw several hundred non-textured polygons with and without Gouraud Shading indicated that using Gouraud Shading slows down the VDP1 by about a third. it is not clear if the penalty is any different when using textures. Note that if all you want is a cheap, flat-shaded lighting model you can do it without incurring a performance hit by making your sprites paletted and enabling colour calculations between the sprites and the line screen. Each paletted sprite can select its own colour calculation ration, giving up to eight levels of brightness or dimness.

That would indicate a loss from 28 Mpx (peak) to about 20 Mpx (Roughly a third) drawing rates, wether theres ways to get round that, or the later Dev tools helped I'm not sure, that seems a hardware limit rather than software. So I'm not sure how the Saturn would be better than the PSX in that case, unless the "quality" of its Gouraud Shaded Polys was better.

[Team Andromeda]

I don't doubt that Travellers Tales are excellent programmers (Sonic R was also coded with the help of tech docs from Sonic Team), but it does sound that there being a bit bullish about the Saturn, I can't quite imagine the Saturn out performing the Playstation with gouraud Shading

Yeah I can't even but like a said it was a SEGA mag interview I would expect them to talk up the Saturn and don't doubt the VDP II playfield and reflections would bee a nighmare to do on the PS . BTW Sonic Team had no input or gave no help to Sonic R engine or programming team

Here's the full interview

Sega Saturn Magazine: Firstly, can you tell us your position in relation to Sonic R?

Jon Burton: I designed and programmed the 3D engine, special effects and game logic.


Sega Saturn Magazine: Can you tell us a little of the history of Travellers Tales?

Jon Burton: Travellers Tales was set up about seven years ago and we have always tried to produce technically good games. Our first game, Leander, was published by Psygnosis on the Amiga.


Sega Saturn Magazine: More specifically, what projects have you been involved with?

Jon Burton: I designed and programmed Puggsy, Mickey Mania, Toy Story, and Sonic 3D, all on the Sega Mega Drive, as well as Leander on the Amiga.


Sega Saturn Magazine: How many people are currently working on Sonic R?

Jon Burton: There are three programmers and three artists working on Sonic R. (That's the Travellers Tales staff, there also Sega staff involved).


Sega Saturn Magazine: The version of the game shown at E3 was very early indeed. When did the team begin the project and what specifically was missing from the first track demo?

Jon Burton: We started in February '97. The first track demo had no AI for the opponents and limited animation and special effects.


Sega Saturn Magazine: How much input are Travellers Tales recieving from the Sonic Team?

Jon Burton: Sonic Team send us course layouts and game design/flow documents.


Sega Saturn Magazine: What is it like working with this legendary team?

Jon Burton: The game design documents are very good with some great design features. They know what makes a playable game, making out job very much easier.


Sega Saturn Magazine: At what stage was it decided that Sonic R would be a racing game?

Jon Burton: We had just started programming a racing engine on the Saturn at the time we were approached by Sega to produce the next Sonic game. It made sense to use the engine we were writing. (Coincidentally, Sonic Team did specifically ask for a racing game).


Sega Saturn Magazine: Were the team influenced at all by the success of Mario Kart 64?

Jon Burton: I was disappointed by Mario Kart

64. There are probably loads of hidden features and

tracks, but I couldn't find any. Considering the power of

the N64, I felt the game was graphically weak.


Sega Saturn Magazine: At what point was it decided to allow players more freedom than is offered by other racing games?

Jon Burton: The Sonic Team wanted to expand the race game into a cross between a race game and a platform adventure game. We developed the 3D engine to allow the players to roam freely and ended up with a engine that would happily support a platform game such as Mario 64, if needed.


Sega Saturn Magazine: There's a lot of freedom in the courses compared to other racing games - why is this important to Sonic R? Is there actually any chance of the player getting lost?

Jon Burton: Sonic is traditionally a platform adventure so we needed to include exploration and secret areas to keep the Sonic tradition, even though it's a racing game. There will be an onscreen map to help players find their way around.


Sega Saturn Magazine: Are the planned five circuits modelled on levels from previous Sonic games, or are the courses entirely original?

Jon Burton: The courses are entirely original, although the art direction is losely based on the Green Hill, Casino Night, Chemical Factory, etcetera zones.


Sega Saturn Magazine: Aside from Sonic himself, what other characters are slated to make an appearance in Sonic R? What are the differences between them aside from appearance?

Jon Burton: Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Robotnik appear as well as many hidden characters. Knuckles can glide, Tails can fly, Amy drives a car etcetera.


Sega Saturn Magazine: Secret routes and stages are a main feature of previous Sonic games. Are the team planning to incorporate such features into Sonic R?

Jon Burton: Yes. Each course has a large number of different ways to complete a lap. There are many short cuts, hidden routes and characters and, of course, chaos emeralds to find.


Sega Saturn Magazine: Are the team confident of being able to sustain the 30 frames per second frame rate?

Jon Burton: Yep.


Sega Saturn Magazine: What sort of gameplay variations are the team planning to incorporate into the finished Sonic R, specifically multi-player options?

Jon Burton: There will be a two-player mode (including Race and Battle modes hopefully) as well as Time Trial, Tag and possibly Relay modes.


Sega Saturn Magazine: What style of music are the team planning to add to the racing action?

Jon Burton: Sonic team want the usual Sonic style music and I think they also want singing on all the in-game music.


Sega Saturn Magazine: The character of Sonic the Hedgehog is a worldwide phenomenon. Does this put any undue pressure on the team?

Jon Burton: Not really. We've done a Sonic game before and Sega approaches us to do the Sonic projects so they must feel we can deliver the games.


Sega Saturn Magazine: The game engine is clearly excellent. Are the team planning to put this to any further use? Another Saturn game perhaps?

Jon Burton: We write each game from scratch and will usually only use the best ideas and techniques from our previous games rather than use the same code or engine.


Sega Saturn Magazine: What special effects and techniques are you most proud of in the Sonic R engine and why?

Jon Burton: The cross fading "misting" effect, the reflective water, and the compression technique used to calculate visible polygons.


Sega Saturn Magazine: You appear to have an almost Nintendo 64 style of "misting in" scenery as opposed to the usual popup. How was this achieved?

Jon Burton: Pixie Dust.


Sega Saturn Magazine: Okay... Is this engine 100% Travellers Tales' work or did you receive technical assistance from Sega or the Sonic Team?

Jon Burton: Everything we program is 100% original code. We are hopelessly arrogant and always think we can do it better than everyone else.


Sega Saturn Magazine: Travellers Tales are working on both Playstation and Saturn - what are the key advantages and disadvantages between the two systems?

Jon Burton: The Playstation is easy to get started on but you quickly reach the limits of the polygon performance and there are few tricks you can do to improve the graphical look of the game. The Saturn is more complicated to get to grips with but it has Playfield hardware, Slave and DSP processors and nice transparency effects which all improve the speed and look of a game when all used together correctly.


Sega Saturn Magazine: Could Sonic R be replicated perfectly on the Sony PlayStation?

Jon Burton: The "misting" technique would drop the frame rate to about 10 frames a second or less on the Playstation, the reflective water would be virtually impossible to achieve, and the Saturn has better gouraud shading giving much smoother lighting.


Sega Saturn Magazine: Do you think the Saturn has been pushed to its limits with Sonic R - after all, there's not really much in 3D that can touch Sonic R...

Jon Burton: We like to think so but it would be silly to claim that the limit has been reached already. Sega Rally pushed the Saturn on a level and we hope that Sonic R will do the same.

[Chilly Willy]

I don't doubt that Travellers Tales are excellent programmers (Sonic R was also coded with the help of tech docs from Sonic Team), but it does sound that there being a bit bullish about the Saturn, I can't quite imagine the Saturn out performing the Playstation with gouraud Shading, I will say however that I've seen more games use Gouraud Shading from an earlier time frame than the Playstation. Nights and Fighting Vipers (1996) use gouraud Shading, whereas apparently Ridge Racer 4 (1998) was the first title to use gourard shading heavily on the PSX. I'am however not an expert on the PSX and I'm sure there must be titles earlier than that which use G-Shading, the battles scenes in the Final Fantasy series clearly look G-Shaded, which predates RR4 by a year.

I've seen that quoted everywhere (that R4 was one of the first PSX games to use gouraud shading)... without citation, of course. It's complete bull, of course. PSX games have used gouraud shading since the very beginning. Warhawk is notable for its use of gouraud shading, and it's practically a launch title! Every article on the Tekken series likes to point out that number 1 used gouraud shading, number 2 dropped it in favor of straight texture mapping, then number 3 went back to gouraud shading, and all three came out before R4.

EDIT: As far as the interview goes, this is probably the key part:

Sega Saturn Magazine: Could Sonic R be replicated perfectly on the Sony PlayStation?

Jon Burton: The "misting" technique would drop the frame rate to about 10 frames a second or less on the Playstation, the reflective water would be virtually impossible to achieve, and the Saturn has better gouraud shading giving much smoother lighting.

Note the "replicate perfectly" - they used particular techniques on the Saturn that relied on Saturn hardware that doesn't exist in other platforms. To duplicate it exactly would certainly slow things down. You would want to redo those things to take advantage of what the platform has, not what it doesn't have.

I'm not sure what he meant about the reflections being virtually impossible as reflections are actually pretty easy to do on the PSX. Maybe he again meant impossible to do the SAME WAY they did it on the Saturn.

As for gouraud shading, note that he said the Saturn has BETTER gouraud shading, not FASTER. There are two factors in gouraud shading on the Saturn and the PSX: the first is that the Saturn used additive lighting for gouraud shading, while the PSX used multiplicative lighting. MOST people think multiplicative lighting is better since it's less susceptible to blooming or other issues that additive lighting has, but it can be a matter of preference - there are people who prefer additive to multiplicative lighting. The second is that the first revision PSX hardware only used sixteen levels for gouraud shading. That makes sense given that the normal game used 15 bit RGB mode since that was what the hardware rendered at. While that is 32768 "colors", it's 5 bits per color gun - 5 bits each for red, green, and blue. The most "shades" you can have per fixed color (say white or blue or red) is 32 because that's what 5 bits yields. So changing over 16 levels the shade of colors that can only have 32 shades max was a good compromise. Later hardware revisions increased that, but Burton may have also been referring to that as well in the interview.

[Team Andromeda]

Note the "replicate perfectly" - they used particular techniques on the Saturn that relied on Saturn hardware that doesn't exist in other platforms. To duplicate it exactly would certainly slow things down. You would want to redo those things to take advantage of what the platform has, not what it doesn't have.

Well that is just it and what all systems have to put up with . Just look at poor Mega Drive to SNES conversions were like for EA sports games , but when developers used the hardware features of the SNES you saw a big upturn

I'm not sure what he meant about the reflections being virtually impossible as reflections are actually pretty easy to do on the PSX. Maybe he again meant impossible to do the SAME WAY they did it on the Saturn.

I think he means the size of the reflctions being used ECT. I never saw any PS game that offered refections all on all screen once like Sonic R is doing thanks the VDP II and if one plays Street Racer on both systems the VDP II cloud refection is totally missing in the PS version so is the Mode 7 style effects on the clouds . If they were put into the PS version I bet the framerate would have taken a massive hit

[sheath]

Sega Saturn Magazine: What special effects and techniques are you most proud of in the Sonic R engine and why?

Jon Burton: The cross fading "misting" effect, the reflective water, and the compression technique used to calculate visible polygons.

Sega Saturn Magazine: You appear to have an almost Nintendo 64 style of "misting in" scenery as opposed to the usual popup. How was this achieved?

Jon Burton: Pixie Dust.

Dude, is this the comment that caused you to believe there was no transparency in Sonic R? Burton was obviously joking. This entire segment is also talking about the alpha blending for the background fade in and not transparent objects or the Emerald level at all.

Sega Saturn Magazine: Travellers Tales are working on both Playstation and Saturn - what are the key advantages and disadvantages between the two systems?

Jon Burton: The Playstation is easy to get started on but you quickly reach the limits of the polygon performance and there are few tricks you can do to improve the graphical look of the game. The Saturn is more complicated to get to grips with but it has Playfield hardware, Slave and DSP processors and nice transparency effects which all improve the speed and look of a game when all used together correctly.

This is just one of many developer comments to the same effect. It mirrors what Sony always claimed about the PS2 and PS3 perfectly as well.

[Team Andromeda]

Dude, is this the comment that caused you to believe there was no transparency in Sonic R? Burton was obviously joking.

No playing the game does it and there is no 3D transparent effect that's quite telling on the shadows for starters , but playing the game in RGB with its pin sharp display shows that the Transparent stage in Sonic R is using a very fine mesh effect or something very similar, speaking of which a very similuar effect was used on the heads in Funky Head boxers