SEGAbits Forums
Gaming => General Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Kevin-N on May 06, 2013, 09:25:27 am
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I wish if some developer could make a new Saturn game in the future. I think the console could done more than whe have seen. When you see the Shenmue version of the saturn, it was amazing. Don't get me wrong, i like it also when they release a Dreamcast or even a Mega drive game ( Pier Solar). But the thing is also their never use the full power of the DC anymore, with Pier solar it was something different. That was the full power for the MD. But i always think that there is more than whe have seen of the Saturn. With the technology of today, it's a must. And i hope for a new game in the future.
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Problem is that the Saturn hardware is extremely complicated, there is little documentation on it, and the percentage of users that can run homebrew code on it is extremely low when compared to the DC.
It would be insanely cool. But even the DC releases hardly use 30% of it's power on 2D games, let alone great 3D experiences..
The MD has a pretty well known processor and architecture, which allows enthusiasts to explore it's power.
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According to the late Kenji Eno, the Saturn wasn't that different from PlayStation. Sure, from what I've read it's far from a walk in the park, but I'm sure it's doable.
Personally, I would love to see a new game on the Saturn since it's my favorite SEGA console - if my absolute favorite console; period - and I do feel there's a lot of untapped potential.
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... I would love to see a new game on the Saturn since it's my favorite SEGA console - if my absolute favorite console; period
wow, that's probably the first time I see someone saying that.
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Of all my consoles, and I have many, I play it the most. It has some of my favorite ports (Bio Hazard, Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight and Quake), exclusives (Panzer Dragoon Saga, Deep Fear, Groove on Fight: Gouketsuji Ichizoku 3) and arcade ports (Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Cop and Virtua Cop 2, SEGA Rally, Die Hard Arcade, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, Street Fighter Zero III, Vampire Savior, Virtual On: Cyber Troopers, Elevator Action 2: The Return, Metal Slug and King of Fighters 95).
I love how import friendly it is; especially when you take into account how many great games never saw the light of day here in the states. In addition, I like that you can trick out the hardware with RAM cartridges and a VCD card (I collect VCD, so it's a must for me). I also prefer the Saturn's controllers to any other, including the 3D controller.
The system had lots of potential, I feel. It went too soon and it didn't receive enough support from SEGA. Not from SOA at least.
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Of all my consoles, and I have many, I play it the most. It has some of my favorite ports (Bio Hazard, Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight and Quake), exclusives (Panzer Dragoon Saga, Deep Fear, Groove on Fight: Gouketsuji Ichizoku 3) and arcade ports (Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Cop and Virtua Cop 2, SEGA Rally, Die Hard Arcade, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, Street Fighter Zero III, Vampire Savior, Virtual On: Cyber Troopers, Elevator Action 2: The Return, Metal Slug and King of Fighters 95).
I love how import friendly it is; especially when you take into account how many great games never saw the light of day here in the states. In addition, I like that you can trick out the hardware with RAM cartridges and a VCD card (I collect VCD, so it's a must for me). I also prefer the Saturn's controllers to any other, including the 3D controller.
The system had lots of potential, I feel. It went too soon and it didn't receive enough support from SEGA. Not from SOA at least.
I feel the same way, I love the Saturn. There may be some validity to the arguement about it being hard to develop for. A lot of 3rd party games for the Saturn were terrible, and did 3D badly, compared to SEGA or Capcom, or other major studios.
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From a homemade-production point of view, this console is definitively a lot harder to develop for than most of its 32 bit competitors. The fact that it completely lacks a stable and complete emulator for quick tests isn't a benefit either, especially if you plan to use some of the hardcore features the hardwre can produce. :-X Another reason would be a full development kit for it, but I'm not entirely sure about this one. There may be some PSY-Q build floating around the net, but I've never seen anything as complete as those for the PSX and N64.
But back to the main topic, this would definitively be a great thing if anybody were able to accomplish it. :P Kudos to ScorpionBE.
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wow, that's probably the first time I see someone saying that.
No, the Saturn was my favorite system ever. Now you've seen two people say it.
Of course, that assumes you imported Japanese games. The Sega Saturn is generally the most under rated console ever.
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Of course, that assumes you imported Japanese games. The Sega Saturn is generally the most under rated console ever.
Plenty of amazing games did make it out on Pal too and yes the Saturn is by far and away the best console ever made, even today . SEGA, Treasure, GameArts, Raizing, Capcom and the likes of Lobomtomy were just on fire on the console
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wow, that's probably the first time I see someone saying that.
No, I tend to agree with the original post. Saturn was brilliant.
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The only negative with the Saturn is the way all the internal storage gets wiped when the clock battery dies. I wish the storage was more permanent. Also, when the Saturn first came out I thought that the cartridge slot was for Genesis games, so that was a little bit of a disappointment.
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Well Crabman, all of us thought it was for playing our MD/Genesis Carts.
I may even have tried inserting a cart, and prior to reading your post I thought those carts were memory cards.
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Initially, the cartridge slot was meant for games at one point, similar to the Master System and how it used both cartridges and Sega Cards. There's even an article about it in a really old issue of EGM. I need to dig it out of the closet. The article was written before Sega unveiled the console itself and used concept drawings only. At some point, they ditched the idea completely.
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I really wish SEGA had focused a little more on backwards compatibility back then. Would have made the transition from the Genesis/32x/CD a little more palpable if people could play all their old games on the Saturn. Of course that would have required putting that hardware into the Saturn, raising the price considerably I'm sure...then again, maybe SEGA could have done what they did with the Genesis and Master System and built the hardware with Genesis/CD bc in mind from the get go...
Of course in the end I don't even know what I'm talking about. But it would have been nice!
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I think it would have been too expensive back then. The Saturn was $399.99 when it was released in NA, so we can only imagine how much it would have cost had they built Genesis/CD/32X into the fucker. However, backward compatibility with Genesis/32X may have been possible had they not changed the cartridge slot and ditched a chip or two. Not entirely sure. I haven't looked at the specs in a bit, and I'm not a programmer. *shrugs*
That's a project for Hyperkin and their Retron units. They should make an all-in-one Master System/Genesis/Sega CD/32X unit. If they could cram a Saturn in that bitch, they could call it "Legacy" or "Universe".
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I'd think at the very least Genesis gameplay through the cart slot might have worked, wasn't the Genesis 2 released the same year as the saturn? It was much smaller I know, though I'm not sure how small they were able to make the internal Genesis hardware by that point.
Ditch the idea of a Genesis 2 and make the Saturn Genesis/MD compatible. Ditch the 32X, shift development of 32X titles to the Saturn (cancel the obviously shitty games). Release the Saturn in 1995 with Genesis support, Knuckles Chaotix as a launch title in the US. I wonder how that would have gone down?
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With Genesis support, I'm sure the Saturn would have done better, though it certainly would not have won the day. The main issues with the Saturn were it's price point and and how difficult it was to get 3D games running on the thing. The Saturn needed to be an easier console to work with and priced competitively with PlayStation from the get go. Still, Genesis support would have pushed a lot of Genesis owners to sell their old consoles and upgrade to a Saturn instead of buying a new console that didn't have any of the old IPs and couldn't play any of their old games. That was one of the PS2's big selling points, back before it had much in the way of a library.
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The Saturn was essentially the fourth Generation equivalent of PS2 and PS3.
Both consoles survived without being developer friendly, only difference is unlike Sony, Sega could never afford to be arrogant.
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The Saturn was essentially the fourth Generation equivalent of PS2 and PS3.
Both consoles survived without being developer friendly, only difference is unlike Sony, Sega could never afford to be arrogant.
Sega could afford it at one time; that's kind of how Sega CD and 32X came about. Once Sega took a little more than half the market share from Nintendo, they were pretty arrogant. When the SNES threatened that, the Sega CD roared out of the gate, fully expecting consumers to shell out $299 for an add-on. Then came the 32X....
They really shouldn't have made the 32X. Like Barry, I feel they should've focused their efforts on Saturn. Really, one or the other. Supporting two 32-bit systems, Genesis, Sega CD, Game Gear and Pico. It was all too much, I feel.
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What I meant was that they couldn't survive with that strategy.
The PS2 had good will generated from PS1. So even though 3rd Parties were suffering with it consumer support was extremely strong. All Dreamcast ports were clearly inferior on PS2 due to the architecture being vastly different. Saturn had the same problems it was not necessarily inferior to another hardware it was just different.
The PS3 on the other hand, lost consumer support as well as 3rd party support. It cost Sony big time. Mark Cerny admitted it and realized the error of the development methodology and has been clear that PS4 will be very developer friendly. Just like Dreamcast.
The key difference here is Sony did not abandon PS3 when consumers and developers started to walk away. They could afford selling the system at a great loss and give developers financial incentives to stick around.
Sega on the other hand had little choice but to drop the Saturn. Sega East really did not want to stop supporting it and in fact supported it in Japan even after the Dreamcast came out because as we all know it was profitable for Japan - just not the rest of the world.
Had Sega been able to allot resources to push the Saturn instead of going for a premature exit things "would" have been different but a dedicated video game company does not have the ability to sustain such expenditures.
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As for the add-on's they were not meant to compete with the Saturn. A silly arrogant decision. Read the upcoming "Rise and Fall of Sega" very good book.
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What I meant was that they couldn't survive with that strategy.
The PS2 had good will generated from PS1.
The PS3 didn't, and it cost Sony big time. Mark Cerny admitted it and fixed it with PS4 but in spite off everything PS3 was successful because Sony continued supporting it. Where as Sega was quickly forced to drop the Saturn. SOJ really did not want to stop supporting it and in fact supported it in Japan even after the Dreamcast came out because as we all know it was profitable for Japan - just not the rest of the world.
Had Sega West decided to push the Saturn in stead of going for a premature exit.
As for the add-on's they were never meant to compete with the Saturn. Read the upcoming "Rise and Fall of Sega" very good book.
Okay, I see what you mean now with the strategy.
As for the Sega CD and 32X, of course they weren't meant to compete with the Saturn, but that's what they ended up doing. The plan, or so it seemed, was to have a more affordable alternative to the Saturn. They even stated that in an issue of EGM, if memory serves, when discussing the 32X/Saturn. In the end, we had all these Sega products competing for shelf space.
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I'd think at the very least Genesis gameplay through the cart slot might have worked, wasn't the Genesis 2 released the same year as the saturn? It was much smaller I know, though I'm not sure how small they were able to make the internal Genesis hardware by that point.
Ditch the idea of a Genesis 2 and make the Saturn Genesis/MD compatible. Ditch the 32X, shift development of 32X titles to the Saturn (cancel the obviously shitty games). Release the Saturn in 1995 with Genesis support, Knuckles Chaotix as a launch title in the US. I wonder how that would have gone down?
That's what you use a time machine for.
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"I came from the future! Listen, this is a list from an internet forum of things you need to avoid doing! Also, here is a harddrive full of data on the next 20 years of game development!"
And then I fade away from existence because in saving SEGA, I erased myself from the future timeline. Nice try, Emmett! Better luck next time.
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If SEGA just put in some chips into their cartridges like in Virtua Racing (something Nintendo did), the 32X wouldn't have had to exist, and I am sure the chips would have come down in costs like they did for Nintendo/Capcom/Namco etc.
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If SEGA just put in some chips into their cartridges like in Virtua Racing (something Nintendo did), the 32X wouldn't have had to exist, and I am sure the chips would have come down in costs like they did for Nintendo/Capcom/Namco etc.
SEGA did try that with Virtua Racing, and - while moderately successful - it was just too expensive. $100 for a single game is pretty steep. Nintendo's Super FX chip titles were cheaper than that. SEGA worked on a LOCK-ON cartridge that would've contained an SVP chip, but it wasn't as powerful as the 32X, so they ditched that project all together.
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That would mean we won't get enhanced Genesis ports on 32X.
We would have had Genesis compatible Sega CD games and it would have been perfect way to give a 2nd chance to Sega CD in the US. It could've should've worked.
I am sure they would've found a way to make VFX ways cheaper.
Either way I can't discuss the - would've should've - things anymore, I find it depressing.
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There was more to the 32X than Genesis ports. The SVP chip wouldn't have been able to produce Shadow Squadron or Metal Head. The SVP - from what I've been able to find out - was capable of 300-500 polygons per-second (16 colors) with an internal clock speed of 23MHz (greater than that of the Super FX-2 chip)...
With the 32X, it had twin Hitachi (SH2) 32-bit RISC processors capable of 23MHz each, 40MIPS, 4Mbits of RAM on top of what the Genesis and Sega CD brought to the table, 500,000 texture-mapped polygons per-second and 32,768 simultaneous colors. The SVP chip can't touch that. Also, when you compare Virtua Racing (GEN) to Virtua Racing Deluxe (32X), it's abundantly clear which is better. The 32X version not only contained two extra vehicles and tracks, but the poly-count, draw-distance and frame-rate were superior to SVP, as were its audio capabilities.
Nintendo sold Super FX enabled games for a $69.99; $30 cheaper than Sega's Virtua Racing.
I don't even know about the whole "Genesis compatible Sega CD game" concept. Sega CD didn't exactly splash onto the scene. It was moderately successful, but - by that point - the 32-bit age was about to hit. Besides, Sega CD may have had some stand-out titles (Battlecorps, Soul Star, Sonic CD, The Adventures of Willy Beamish, Snatcher, Silpheed), though it also suffered from upgraded Genesis port syndrome (Cliffhanger, Demolition Man, Ecco the Dolphin, Batman Returns, Brutal and so on). Not to mention the glut of FMV titles.
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Pier Solar is the first Mega CD compatible Mega Drive game.
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That's great for soundtracks and all, but that doesn't do anything to increase the Genny's color palette or polygon count.
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though it also suffered from upgraded Genesis port syndrome (Cliffhanger, Demolition Man, Ecco the Dolphin, Batman Returns, Brutal and so on). Not to mention the glut of FMV titles
That's lazy development that said Cliffhanger is way better than the Cart version. Mega CD did improve the Mega Drive polygons and its also gave the Mega Drive scaling and rotation effects as well as the ability to texture map - that alone was pretty advance for a machine made in 1991 . Its just a shame so few developers made the effort to use the Hardware
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That's lazy development that said Cliffhanger is way better than the Cart version. Mega CD did improve the Mega Drive polygons and its also gave the Mega Drive scaling and rotation effects as well as the ability to texture map - that alone was pretty advance for a machine made in 1991 . Its just a shame so few developers made the effort to use the Hardware
NOT for a cartridge enabled game, as cube_b3 described.
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NOT for a cartridge enabled game, as cube_b3 described.
Sorry I don't get your point .
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Sorry I don't get your point .
No need to apologize. :)