Sega Saturn?

[Mel]

Well, I finally got a hold of a sega saturn a few months ago. I've only played a couple of games, but its clear that some of the developers must have been smoking something bad. (NiGHTS).

I think if Sega would have skipped the saturn entirely and held the Genesis until the dreamcast they would have been much better off.

[Melf]

I think they should have concentrated on more 2D and 2.5D games, which was where the Saturn's strength was. They could have brought over more games to beef up its domestic library too. Some decisions were just stupid, like passing up Thunder Force V (wtf?) and Deep Fear (it was already in English!).

[Mel]

Hindsight is 2020.

Genesis could've easily survived to the late 90's, the same way PSone survived until just recently, and snes survived until late 90's

Sega shouldn't have given up on it so quickly.

<sigh>

[Genesis Knight]

I would snag a Saturn, but I'm not about to wade into that market. Faaaaaaaar too pricey for this gamer.

[Melf]

Most domestic titles are cheap, with the exception of the final three or four releases (Burning Rangers, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Shining Force III, House of the Dead, etc). Most imports are cheap too.

Of course, Radiant and things of that nature will cost you a kidney....and your first born child.

[Mel]

I was very impressed with Street Figher Alpha 2, but not so impressed with Nights. Nights was fun and fast, but it was no sonic.

Don't know if it was worth the money i spent on it.

But its more sega stuff I didn't have before =)

[Dartagnan1083]

Well maybe you shouldn't try to play NiGHTS like Sonic
Because quite frankly, SFA2 only entertained me in Multiplayer.

In any case, NiGHTS was created to reflect the readings the team did on Dream research and philosophy. So it more or less reflects the mind of some old European author.

But then again, Naka did come up with Billy Hatcher...
Now there's a sugar coated acid-shroom for ya
La La lala LA lalala LA LA LALA LAA -do do doot doo-


Also (3D wise), the Saturn was designed to work with 'quads' rather than polygons. Which gives the Saturn the graphical edge over the PSX when compitent 3D programers are involved. Since many western developers sucked at the time, they didn't know how to work with quads. The Saturn COULD technecally do normal pollygons, but it somehow took extra effort to get it to work that way...to a lesser extent even.

In any case I love my Saturn...and find it to be 8x the console the DC ever was.

[Hokkus]

I think the biggest mistake Sega did with Saturn was that they didn't do enough sequels to Genesis hits. We didn't get new Sonic, Streets of Rage 4 or Phantasy Star 5. Personally, I don't care. Instead we got Nights, Burning Rangers, Guardian Heroes, Panzer Dragoon Saga and many other great games. The majority of gamers didn't understand the greatness of these games, because there wasn't a number after title of the game. Their loss, not mine.

Altough I started my gaming career with Mega Drive, Saturn is my favorite console. Only drawback is that you have to buy import games, or you miss many gems. And many games are ridiculously overpriced.

[Mel]

The system was also overpriced when it was released, making it easier for the other companies to take over the marketshare.

[j_factor]

Saturn's real problem is that it was marred by stupid politics within Sega. Sega Europe had proven themselves capable of handling their own affairs by managing two great successes in a row, and SoA's Tom Kalinske had proven himself a competent decision maker, but SoJ decided to seize more control for itself and overrode certain business decisions. SoJ proceeded to make worldwide decisions based solely on Japan. Naka's threatening to leave the company certainly didn't help, nor did the company's unwillingness to get decent dev kits out in a timely manner (A few third parties actually created their own dev kits from scratch because it was easier to do that than work with Sega's!).

In any case, it's a great system with plenty of great games.

[Drixxel]

I was just recently reading over a discussion on the ins and outs of developing for the Saturn, and apparantly it's one hell of a tricky beast to get the most out of. What I didn't previously know was that Sega designed the Saturn hardware to be nearly 2D gaming exclusive. It wasn't until Sega realized the sudden surge in the popularity of 3D that they decided to make changes to the Saturn hardware near the end of its development to allow for significantly stronger 3D capabilities. Whoopsie.

I've wanted a Saturn since first playing a demo of Panzer Dragoon at a Blockbuster years and years ago, but have never got around to owning one. After reading through a bunch of mid-nineties Gamefans, the Saturn has once again peaked my immediate interest.. once some more disposable income becomes available, I think I'll buy'er proper. Panzer Dragoon, 'tis been so long..

[Mel]

heh, if it wasn't for the two extra 3d processors it'd be a lot closer to the 32x than they would ever like to admit.

Pity, the 32x had potential.

[j_factor]

What I didn't previously know was that Sega designed the Saturn hardware to be nearly 2D gaming exclusive. It wasn't until Sega realized the sudden surge in the popularity of 3D that they decided to make changes to the Saturn hardware near the end of its development to allow for significantly stronger 3D capabilities.

That's just a common misconception; it's not accurate. The original design was based around doing two things, the foremost being arcade ports for both the System 32 (2d) and Model 1 (3d) boards. It just so happens that both System 32 and Model 1 are based around the same chipset, even though one is designed for 2d games and one for 3d. The latter of the "two things" is that Sega was looking to better the 3DO in every aspect, and 3DO was the first console designed with any 3d graphics capabilities in mind.

What is accurate, however, is that the old design was based around one central processor, with the design changed in order to beef up its capabilities without going completely back to the drawing board.

It's inaccurate to imply that Sega just happened to "realize" the sudden surge in popularity of 3d -- their Model 1 hardware debuted in 1992.

[Drixxel]

Thus concludes another lesson in "Don't believe everything you read on the intraweb."

Sorry to spew out falsified info. There were two people claiming to be Saturn developers talking to each other in that discussion I was reading over, I assumed they knew their shit. It would seem theirs was untrue shit.

[j_factor]

Thus concludes another lesson in "Don't believe everything you read on the intraweb."

Sorry to spew out falsified info. There were two people claiming to be Saturn developers talking to each other in that discussion I was reading over, I assumed they knew their shit. It would seem theirs was untrue shit.

No apologies necessary, I've heard much worse. :P

People tend to jump to the conclusion that designing hardware for 2d and designing it for 3d are two mutually exclusive things. It's not really the case.

I remember reading an interview with someone from Realtime Associates who said that the early dev kits were made in such a way that you basically had to use 2d programming techniques for 3d games. The hardware design had been tweaked pretty late and the dev kits were rushed, and Sega anticipated that developers would continue to focus on 2d games until they made a slow transition to 3d. He explained that as the reason Bug!, being a 3d game, used sprites and scaling.