Shenmue Saturn + Sega Systems Talk

[everynewday84]

Does it really matter which one was more powerful?...
.

Not in the least.

[maverick]

Does it really matter which one was more powerful?...
.

Not in the least.

Back in the day, Sega used this as a huge selling point. Saturn had three 32-bit processors while playstation only had one.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSQAielYdws [/youtube]

[Jenkins]

It's hard to tell. The problem is, like Yu Suzuki already realized back in the days: "I think that only one out of 100 programmers are good enough to properly program the Saturn." The main programmer from Lobotomy Software said something like (can find the interview/right quote atm...) "to program on a Saturn is like calculating without minus".

The Saturn was designed as a 32Bit "Mega Drive/Genesis". Made for best looking 2D games. The market changed at the time and everyone was flashed by the power of 3D graphics (PC etc.). So SEGA decided just before the prototype was done to open the box again and add more power to the console at the very last minute. Some pre-processor here and main-cpu there... and missed to add the "transparent texture"-support... The Saturn used "Quadrilaterals" instead of "triangles" as its basic geometric primitive. It's very unusual. Most of the industry's standard software were working with triangles. So the designers must think different.

Ezra Driesbach (Lobotomy Software) said: "The graphics hardware was made by guys that obviously wanted to just keep developing 2D hardware and tried to avoid learning anything about 3D".

The Playstation was longer supported by SONY and is easier to handle. The developer gathered more experience and were able to programm more efficient. Therefore some games may look better but the Saturn is in the right hands more powerful, imo. The Saturn was long dead before games like Dino Crisis or MediEvil were released.

No one can really tell which console is better.

- - -

The missing but mindblowing Sonic game was already on the way. It's called Sonic Adventures. SA used the Nights engine back in the days. But they saw the Dreamcast coming and changed their plans (not at least because of the difficult hardware). And it was a good decision, I my eyes.

The "Game Room" from Sonic Jam is a leftover from Sonic Adventure for Saturn (source).

- - -

The serial port was just used by the link and coders cable, afaik. Maybe the printer too.

[everynewday84]

Does it really matter which one was more powerful?...
.

Not in the least.

Back in the day, Sega used this as a huge selling point. Saturn had three 32-bit processors while playstation only had one.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSQAielYdws [/youtube]

Oh, yeah? And how did that work out for them?

[maverick]

The Saturn was long dead before games like Dino Crisis or MediEvil were released.

As a Saturn owner from day one, I can tell you it died in 1997 at E3. Bernie Stolar said "the Saturn is not our future" only two years after it was released. About a week later, Toys 'r us and Target in my area started liquidating all their Saturn games. I tried to reserve a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga (part 3) in 1998 and both stores said they would not even stock it as Sega was out of the video game biz.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

[everynewday84]

Yeah, it was grim for sega Saturn in 1998. Dc was coming out in 2008. Fortunately for me, a game store at the local mall had a wall of sega Saturn games for sale. I picked up Burning Rangers, Steep Slope Sliders, and House of the Dead, new, in summer 1998. Those games were enough to make me a happy Saturn owner.

[Aleron Ives]

It's a pity that Sega is no longer the innovator it used to be. When you think about it, the Saturn is something of a precursor to today's multi-core processing techinques. When hardware designers reached the limits of what they could accomplish with single-core architectures, they switched to using multiple cores and writing threaded applications to further boost computing power. The Saturn's multi-CPU design is essentially the same thing, but even today it is more difficult to write a threaded application than a non-threaded one. Back in 1998, very few programmers probably had the skill to unlock the potential of that kind of setup, since nobody had used it before. Poor Sega. It always envisioned things ten years too early.

[mazonemayu]

Does it really matter which one was more powerful?...

I don't think so...

I didn't say that

[#1phoenixsunsfan]

Exactly, we were talking about Shenmue and VF2 graphics/looks and how much Sega pissed away on Shenmue Saturn cost.

We don't know how good Shenmue Saturn could have looked polished and released because all we see are developmental youtube demos. But the demo looked good I liked camera scrolling and detail I saw of those clips.

With that said I'm glad Sega released Sonic adventure and Shenmue on dc.

It doesn't matter what machine was more powerful not sure why that was discussed.

Show me a fighting game on psone even in 1999 that looks better than virtua fighter 2 in 1996 or whatever though.

For the guy who said everything I said on last page but written better, thank you for answering my serial port question.

[MrSega]

I agree, also this vid proves that the saturn was superior to the ps1 if programmed right, there's no way in hell the ps1 was capable of that kinda stuff

SEGA Saturn had double the power of PS1, capable of an average 500,000 polygons per second and could push up to 900,000 when pushed to its limits. PS1 only used 398,000. But most PS1 games were only averaging 200,000.

Saturn's problem was that since its low res Model 2 hardware, its VDPs were designed to proccess the same data. Most developers thought Saturn & PS1 were one in the same, not realizing that Saturn used a completely different more state-of-the-art 3D engine. Quadlateral instead of Trilateral.

Had SEGA taught its 3rd party partners how to build games from the ground up, there wouldn't have been a problem programming it in the first place.