The Sega Saturn is the worst hardware ever designed. It fails at absolutely everything : perrformance, cost, ease of use, you name it.
Seriously, name a design worse than this. Even the Jaguar was at least cheap to manufacture.
it had the best 2D graphics of the 5th generation. the irony being that it got a shoddy port of SotN, one of the best 2D tittles of the 5th generation.
still, it excels at arcade fighters and some side-scrollers. a shame you need to be proficient in moonrunes to fully appreciate one.
There's no way I would have bought one back in the day, but I do admit for particular tastes it does offer something the ps1 can't.
>>3076076
>arcade machine
>bad
Spot the underage
>>3076107
>the irony being that it got a shoddy port of SotN,
SOTN was specifically designed around a framebuffer based 2d/3d chip of the Playstation, not the tilemap based 2d of the Saturn.
And the team porting it did the worst job.
Seriously just hook it up in an emulator and check which backgrounds they used for each scene... it's pathetic.
>>3076490
IIRC, Titan went after Saturn was released.
>>3076107
It's a real shame everyone was pushing 3D games.
>>3076752
including Sega who lead 3D in the arcades
>>3076770
Except its not like any console that gen had super impressive 3D. Arcade machines are free to be expensive while consoles have to be affordable and cheap, which just lead to crappy 3D all around.
>>3076776
What is Conker
>>3076107
>it had the best 2D graphics of the 5th generation
sorta arguable, in theory the N64 can blit like 3 times faster than VDP2 while still doing alpha blending
>Name a design worse than this.
>>3076776
The whole "5th gen was too early" shit is pretty silly. N64 was the best hardware you could buy non commercially for 3d.
Saturn had amazing 2d but wasn't a slouch when it came to 3d. Burning Rangers is one of the most impressive games of the gen.
>>3077006
>N64 was the best hardware you could buy non commercially for 3d.
I think you mean to say that at the time of release it had the best consumer-level 3D hardware. Which is true actually.
>>3077018
No. It was the best until Voodoo3.
Was also the first real graphics card I had.
>>3077024
It was the best until the original Voodoo was released (which was at least twice as fast as the N64's RDP).
>>3076981
In practice the VDP2 can draw a 4096x4096px ground texture and a 1024x1024px skybox texture, both on an infinite plane, and rotate them in perspective correct 3d, while also drawing two scrolling and zooming backgrounds, a static HUD, and a background gradient, all with variable levels of translucency.
The infinite plane alone would eat up a huge amount of the N64s fillrate, unless you "emulate" it via pixel strips.
>>3077026
If you compare just tech states you "could" beat it at release.
No games were all the much better graphically until stuff like Thief in the 90s. Atleast that's my opinion. A lot of those games struggled with certain lighting effects that the consoles could do no problem too.
Look at a game like World Driver Championship
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0be4A0OO9_I
>>3077027
>The infinite plane alone would eat up a huge amount of the N64s fillrate, unless you "emulate" it via pixel strips.
You'd have to emulate it anyway because the N64 doesn't have a piece of hardware that is analogue to the VDP2.
I was just looking at MPixel/s fill rate though. VDP2 is just over 70MPixel/s peak (that assumes the maximum number of backgrounds which can only be achieved when rotating is off), while N64 in blit mode is 246MPixel/s.
>>3077032
>Look at a game like World Driver Championship
The secret behind WDC is actually the hardware T&L code that runs on the N64's RSP.
None of the Voodoo cards do T&L, that's the CPU's business. So if you look strictly at N64 rasterizer (RDP) vs Voodoo rasterizer, then the Voodoo is a clear winner.
>>3077038
Look at the actual games. Comparing raw power is a bit pointless.
>>3077040
Yeah but you could easily argue that the Voodoo being able to run at 3D games at 640x480 alone gave it a big contemporary advantage over N64 (in practice 320x240 to 480x448 at most during gameplay).
>>3077045
This is why I think it’s silly to argue tech stats. World Driver Championship came out in 1999. It looks better than almost anything out at the time. Something like that were a game comes out years after the launch of the console and looks better than even PC’s best doesn’t happen. It’s never happened since.
>>3077049
>World Driver Championship came out in 1999. It looks better than almost anything out at the time
Woah...maybe on console, but Unreal was already out on PC. Hell, even Dreamcast was already out in Japan.
>>3077059
It looks better than TNN Motorsports: Hardcore Heat.
Think the game came out a few months before DC.
>>3076076
As a console that I can get for like $50 and pirate all the great 2d games it is fantastic, but if I were going to get one when it first came ojt for $500 and a shitty us library that can't play good 3d games? Yeah, the thing was ill concieved.
does someone have a working SSF that they use? could you upload it for me? i swear i have tried to get SSF to run on my pc 3 times and it never works
>>3077094
Didn't help they pulled that "released the same day we announce" shit.
You guys are misguided, I feel like you kids never even played a Saturn and you're just parroting some retro console reviewer. The Saturn had so many fucking gems, the games were top notch and exclusive to the console.
The only problem that the Saturn really has that makes you want to tear your fucking hair out is the fact that internal game saves are kept by one of those round CMOS batteries. If the battery dies, your saves are lost. There are memory carts you can buy, but you can't save data directly to the memory cart, those carts are solely for backup purposes.
>>3076076
I think anyone who hates on Sega just isn't gud at buckling down and beating hard games. They just want to scream and cry and blame it on something other than their own inability. Sorry, this is a bit off-topic but I see it all the time. I'm gonna wrap this up as you don't appreciate difficulty, OP.
>>3079838
dead on, same to arcade gaming
>>3079832
Well now you sound like one of those retro game reviewer parrots. The "gems" you are saying were mostly released in japan, in the usa you had the crappiest ports of all multiplatform titles, and the only good exclusive games released in the usa were like Virtua Fighter 2, Fighters Megamix, Panzer Dragoon 1-2-Saga, and Nights.
>There are memory carts you can buy, but you can't save data directly to the memory cart, those carts are solely for backup purposes.
Only if you buy an Action Replay. Original memory carts can be used for direct saving by almost every game. I think the only game that can't save on them directly is Digital Pinball Last Gladiators, and those JP-only titles that required expansions carts to run.
>>3076981
Clearly Treasure stuck all their 2D games in the Saturn and PS1 because they are retards, since the N64 is a bijillion times faster at doing sprites.
>>3079873
But wait, they did make mischief makers and bagai-oh N64 exclusives, and would you look at that, it's pretty goddamn matched with all the other 5th gen crap.
It's my favorite gen5 system.
Suck my dick, OP.
>>3079873
cartridges
also blitting way is harder
>>3079873
Or because the profit margin for n64 games was obscenely tiny due to cartridge and licensing costs. The Saturn did 2d well anyway, and the ps1's install base was so huge it would be stupid not to develop for it.
>>3079832
This is an issue for me, I really want to get into Shining force 3 but I'm concerned that the battery will die before I get a chance to finish it.
>>3076516
>Seriously just hook it up in an emulator and check which backgrounds they used for each scene... it's pathetic.
How fucked up are the backgrounds? Saturn emulation is kinda shit so it might be hard for me to see for myself.
>>3079873
But this is false. As >>3079875 said, Treasure did Mischief Makers and Bangai-O for the N64, both 2D sprite-based games.
On PS1 they only did Rakugaki Showtime, which is actually a 3D game with 2D "paper cut" characters ala Paper Mario, and a port of Silouhette Mirage which is a Saturn game.
Saturn got 3 2D games from Treasure, N64 got 2 2D games and 1 3D game, and PS1 got 1 3D game and 1 2D Saturn port.
>>3080008
Mischief Maker is 2D/3D.
N64 has only a very small handful of fully 2D games, which is saying something.
>>3080102
Mischief Makers is 2D, the only 3D I can remember are these platforms on Vertigo, one or two levels.
Symphony of the Night also has some polygons here and there but it's a 2D game, right?
>>3080102
if you want to be really anal, technically speaking saturn, ps1 and n64 all generate sprites on 3D hardware
so no game is "2D"
>>3080139
The Saturn didn't render the sprites 3D.
>>3080258
Saturn's VDP1 is just as 3D as the PS1's GPU. Sprites are rendered as a flat quad polygon.
>>3080258
>The Saturn didn't render the sprites 3D.
If you really want to be anal about it, the Saturn rendered sprites as quadratic affine mapped polygons.
Playstation could render sprites as either triangular or quadratic affine mapped polygons.
>>3079969
You would need a memory cart anyway if you plan on doing all 3 scenarios. They're big files.
