/vr/ - Retro Games

if a sega fag is infinitely retarded but makes yet another what if thread about the 32x/Saturn/dreamcast does it make them infinite retard +1

People are not gonna buy a CD console that promises 3D graphics just to play the same 2D games they've already played the previous gen. It's not the same as going from a 3D console to another 3D console with backwards compatibility.

If Sega got a cent for every fanfic thread on this board, they would have killed the PlayStation.

>week starts and there's already a BROS WHAT IF SEGA CONSOLE HAD THIS? WOULD IT SAVE IT?

>>10197597
ever notice how these what if threads don't get bernie poster? it's because they're the same guy :)

>>10197597
There's only like 6 good Genesis games.

>>10197597
The only way to fix the Saturn was a total rework. This is my fanfic alternate reality:

>NEC realizes they got lucky with the PC Engine and teams up with Sega
>NEC provides the chip and Sega designs the console
>built around 3d graphics of Virtua fighter alongside their 2D arcade hits
>Simple design, ends up being similar to the PlayStation, costing the same
>Far less complex to design games for, leading to bigger, and better library of 3D titles
>Not officially backwards compatible with either the Sega CD or Mega Drive, sorry, but this would make it too complex
>Instead they release a set of budget CD versions of Mega Drive greatest hits
>Also PC Engine CD greatest hits
>Saturn officially gets all the Visual novel, rom-sims, etc that the PC-FX was gonna get
>end result is the MD and PCE-CD sequel console
>Sony still wins, but by less
>Microsoft is impressed by Sega's forward thinking designs and plans for internet connectivity, that they team up for the next console: The Sega-Microsoft Dreamcast X built upon Direct X
>Microsoft buys Sega

>>10197664
nah there's so many good games. They leaned towards faster action titles, and I preferred the slower games. PCE-CD was the anime console.

>>10197664
That’s 5 more than N64!

>>10197664
Megadrive, just like Nes, Snes, Playstation or Playstation 2, is a very well rounded console that offers great games in any genre.
If someone were to tell me he doesn't like almost nothing from these consoles, I would find it quite suspicious.

>>10197604
Jannies dont ban him because its them

>>10197597
Is this the daily "Would it have saved the Saturn" thread?

>>10197795
Well? Could any of it have?

>>10197812
The only thing that could have saved Sega was Sony and Nintendo quitting.

>>10197820
Even then sega would find a way to fuck up and loose anyways

>>10197597
>Sega was already on the way out during the Genesis's life
>OP thinks adding Genesis functionality would have saved the Saturn

>>10197693
>>NEC realizes they got lucky with the PC Engine and teams up with Sega
This. Both companies messed up and broke at the exact same time but could have had a fighting chance if teamed up.

>>10197795
Bernie didn't release DOA in the west. Another genius business decision.

>>10197617
/thread. Backward compatibility wasn’t an established thing yet.

>>10198314
Probably not. IMO what ultimately caused Sega to leave the console market was a change in consumer preferences. Sega was always an arcade oriented company first and foremost, but demand started to shift toward more complex narrative focused games in the fifth gen.

>>10198412
Funny thing the Saturn, Dreamcast and PC Engine were a Visual Noel system in Japan

>>10198417
I’m referring more to stuff like Resident Evil rather than simplistic visual novels.

>>10198412
And they thought FMV movie-games were the future with the PC FX and Sega CD. They really gambled wrong.

>>10198419
I get what you mean they wanted action adv like Metal Gear Solid even though the narrative in Policenauts and the action in something like Guardian Force is better.

>>10197597
is backwards my friend.
SOA didn't want a console with backwards compatibility while japan wanted one.
Original Plans
>release earlier then nintendo and sony a console of 32 bit as middle ground.
>said console would be compatible with all games released on cartridge format
>said console was also able to play CDs
>said console had properties and advances of sega saturn project.
>Once development of saturn was ready later they would release saturn and developers would have gotten used to saturn thanks to the SDK being similar yet it would be more powerfull.
>SOA didn't want that and opted to make two addons 32x and sega CD.

>>10197597
The saturn already cost more than ps1 and was too complex to develop for. Game designers are bad at programming. Good programmers work in silicon Valley.

You want to make it more expensive and complex. Not going to work.

The sega CD should have had less RAM so it cost less. Then they should have localized weeb games and turbo duo games instead of letting jewy stealer force FMV garbage. There's your successful add-on. Then drop the saturn after the ps1 when they understood what developers actually wanted, and what gamers wanted (easy to make 3D). A single extra year would let them blow the ps1 out of the water with a console that has more ram, Z buffer, no wobble, better textures, and a CD (unlike 64). That also gives them time to have a good launch for the system.

>>10197664
3rd time I've had to post this in a week.

Sega Genesis/Mega Drive + CD:

Turn based: After Armageddon, Aisle Lord, Arslan Senki, Beggar Prince, Cosmic Fantasy CD, Dark Wizard, Langrisser 1&2, Legend Wukong, Lunar 1&2 [unworked patch], Phantasy Star 2&4, Pier Solar, Shining Force 1/2/CD, Shining in the Darkness [Antigrinding patch], Vixen 357

Narrative: Illusion City, Rise of the Dragon, Snatcher, Space Adventure Cobra

Side Action: Alien Soldier, Spiderman Kingpin, Annet Futatabi, Alisia Dragoon, Blades of vengeance, Castlevania Bloodlines, Cave Story, Comix Zone, Contra Hard Corps, Cyborg 009 CD, Dahna, Demolition Man CD, Earthworm Jim 1 CD & 2, El Viento, Exile, Ex Mutants, Gargoyles Ultimate, Gunstar Heroes, Mega Man Wily Wars [Weapon Master] & Sequel Wars, Mega Turrican, Midnight Resistance, Popful Mail [unworked], Pulseman, Ranger X, Rent A Hero, Rocket Knight 1&2, Shinobi 2/3, Shadow Dancer, Pirates of Dark Water, Splatterhouse 2&3, Streets of Rage 2 & 3 DX, Strider, Terminator CD, Twinkle Tale, Valis 1&3, Wolfchild CD, Monster World 3&4, XMen 2, Ys III

Platform: Animaniacs, Ecco 1 CD & 2 CD, Flashback, Out of This World, Generations Lost, Flink [speed hack], Highseas Havoc, Taruruuto, Marvel Land, Mickey Mania CD, Castle of Illusion, World of Illusion, Pantufa, Pitfall CD, Prince of Persia 1 CD & 2 (Remastered), Quackshot, Ristar, Socket, Sonic (Classic Heroes, 3 Complete, Mega Mix CD, S-Factor, Mobius Evolution), Lost Vikings, Tinhead, Tiny Toons

Shmup: Keio Squadron, Gaiares, Gynoug, Lords Thunder, MUSHA, Robo Aleste, Panorama Cotton, Thunder Force 2/3/4, Trouble Shooter 1&2, Zero Wing

Top Down: Arcus 1/2/3/Odyssey, Beyond Oasis, Crusader Centy, Landstalker [Mijet controls hack], Light Crusader, Skeleton Krew, Techno Clash, The Chaos Engine, Shadow Run, Tougiou King Colossus, Traysia, True Lies, Xenocrisis, Mega Bomberman

Other: Columns, Marble Madness, Mean Bean, Rock N Roll Racing

>>10198465
Needs Gleylancer

>>10198412
You know sega owns atlus right? You know they make persona and yakuza right? If they could buy them while 3rd party they would have been able to buy them while 1st party and those would be sega exclusives. Every heard of phantasy star? Ever heard of shining force?

>>10198419
Oh you mean the 3rd party game that was on saturn and who's sequels were on dreamcast?

>>10197597
Look up the CDX, it was basically everything Genesis fans wanted Saturn to be. Comes with Sonic CD and Ecco, cartridge slot plays regular Genesis games, etc.

Saturn did have several compilations, not just Sonic Jam but also SEGA Ages Vol. 1, the Disney game compilations, several Capcom compilations, Thunder Force collection, several Konami shmup compilations etc. so while it wasn't necessarily backwards compatible there were still a decent amount of Genesis and 16-bit era games on it.

>>10197625
>>10197795
Rofl

>>10198421
Don't forget about the 3DO

>>10197597
The issue isn't that SoA wanted the Saturn backwards compatible. They wanted to just stick with the Genesis and do nothing to combat the coming new systems because they legitimately thought they weren't a threat. Eventually though they seemed to realize this was idiotic and came up with the 32X idea.

You want to save the Saturn, it's pretty simple and doesn't even involve massively changing the hardware. Go back in time and get Sega of Japan to force Sega of America to get on board with the Saturn around 1992/1993. Get Sega of America focused on transitioning from 16-bit to 32-bit and have devkits and manuals ready for developers around 1993 and and have western focused software ready for launch in 1995. Seriously, go back in time and cancel the 32X idea before it even becomes a napkin scribble and you solve most of Saturn's problems.

As for Genesis compatibility, you could easily do that by just putting a Genesis in an adapter cartridge. They already had the Genesis down to 1 chip by that point, it probably wouldn't have been that difficult to do and probably could have been sold fairly cheap since you could leverage the Saturn for all the AV and I/O parts of it.

>But Saturn was expensive!
It only cost about $40 more to make than the PS1 in 1994, Both fell rapidly in price and were around $200 to produce less than 1.5 years after their late 1994 launch. If Sega of America was on board and prepping for a fall of 1995 launch for Saturn in the US, they probably could have launched at $299 just like Sony did.

>But it was difficult to program for!
It was no more difficult than the N64 or even the SNES before it. The issue was Western devs were playing catch up because Sony was getting devkits and manuals into their hands earlier than Sega. And that's because Sega was instead trying to peddle 32X crap to them.

>>10198651
N64 was definitely easier to program than the Saturn
>Comprehensive SDK with convenient C API, even handles threading and code overlays for you
>One fast CPU + one fast GPU is simpler than a mess of parallelism. Flat unified memory also simplifies things
>Stock gsp* microcodes are suitable for common use cases, custom microcode was scarcely used or needed

The poor Saturn SDK was a bigger problem than its complex hardware, and one that would have been easier to solve.

>>10198651
There wasn't even a c compiler for it available since they went with a brand new CPU design (SH2)
To get anythign done in the Saturn all that shit had to be done in assembly.

The N64 (and PSX) used a well known CPU architecture that had (for the time) a decent c-compiler

Although both are a challange to develop for, its much in favor of the N64 however:
N64: It's relatively easy to get things working on the N64, but a (big) challange to get the most out of it
Saturn: Pure nightmare hell from the start.

There is a documentary on youtube with one of the developers of Saturn's Virtua Racing...
Conclusion is that giving birth to triplets is less painfull than doing saturn development

>>10197597
>and worked on an adapter device for the Saturn's memcard/romcard port to make it work
That's where you fucked up already. No one wants another Goddamn add-on just to play their old library.

>>10197597
What is the obsession with backwards compatibility. The Saturn has basically no hardware in common with the genesis, and adding genesis hardware would be dead weight. And some kind of compatibility add-on would be the height of stupidity since the add-on would basically have to be a complete genesis, so why bother with the add-on at that point rather than just selling a standalone genesis.

>>10199554
Here's your Saturn backwards compatibility addon bro

>>10197597
SOA needed to be more forward thinking, stop dwelling in the past (Genesis, 32x) and focus on the future instead with a 64x addon

>>10197795
The Bernie threads are the best, even if they are loosely tied to the fabled Australia-kun

Just because Sony forced their entrance to the console market via owning CD pressing factories, burning money on advertising and hardware loss, and bribing 3rd parties, doesn't mean the Sega Saturn was unsuccessful. All in all it STILL is one of the big 3 of 5th gen, spergs. Go make what if threads about Jaguar or CD-i instead.

>>10199627
Segafags malding for nearly 30 years running

>>10197795
thats pretty bad schizo

>>10199627
Lel

>>10199690
>US

>>10199690
And it still is one of the big 3. Just like how Mega Drive still is one of the big 3 of 4th gen despite selling worse than SFC and PC Engine in Japan.

>>10199690
oof

>>10199690
At least Sega is a video games company, not a mega corporation.

>Hurrrrrr, you are only looking at US sales!!!

Saturn did even worse than the Master System

>>10199742
non sequitur

>>10199742
.... dreamcasisters?

>>10199742
double oof

>>10199696
If a system underperforms in a single market then sure (look at xbox sales in japan, lel) but the saturn sold like shit almost everywhere, and only in japan did it okay-ish
The only reason that its part of the 'big 3' is because there were only 2 big players to begin with, (and even there the N64 struggled hard compared to the PSX.)

If your victory dance is because it outsold the jaguar and 3do then you need help

>>10198589
Atlus was far from a household name back in the Saturn days.
>>10198592
Too little, too late. The Saturn was a very arcade focused console.

>>10199742
saturnfags should really go into exile
this is shameful

>>10199741
>>/vr/thread/10166982

>>10199742
>Hurrrrrr, you are only looking at US sales!!!
Correct

>>10199745
To be fair, the Dreamcast was discontinued after less than a year and a half on the market in NA. It had a pretty good launch and first year in the US.

>>10200068
The US was Segas biggest market, with 65% (or so) of every genesis/megadrive sold coming from the US.
They had massive brand recognition, a sucessor in the works scheduled for release in the same window as the competition and has cd technology. Despite all that it still went into complete obscurity.

Even nintendo who was late to the party and stuck with carts outperformed it massively.

That should not have been possible unless you manage to fuck up in each and every possible way. (No single reason, just a continous stream of shit decisions)
Even deliberate sabotage would be less effective at fucking it up than Sega management did.

>>10200106
Nintendo time travelers probably spun their machine down and were like nah I don’t think we can actually do worse than this

>>10200106
My big gripe with Sega’s arcade ports to the Saturn is that while high quality, they were also very barebones with no extra modes to extend their replay value. Namco really set the standard for how fighting games should be done for the home market.

>>10200126
Sega never learned how to make console games until too late.

>>10199742
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
SAVE ME SEGATA SANSHIRO

>>10200126
This. Sure the Sega Rally port plays great and looks good for the Saturn but they added only 1 car and 1 track, for a grand total of 3 cars and 4 tracks
You're completely done with your brand new must-have in literally an afternoon, which is really embarrassing when the PS1 has shit like Gran Turismo

>>10200051
It becomes a household name by being promoted. You have no point, you're just blabbering. Saturn was not more arcadey than ps1.

>>10200806
Yes it absolutely was.

>>10200806
>Saturn was not more arcadey than ps1.
source?
PS1 already had Crash, Spyro, FFVII, MGS as non-arcade killer apps.
What did SS have?

>>10200851
Nah. It really wasn't. Ps1 was also arcadey.

>>10200858
>already had
You mean EVENTUALLY had.
Saturn also had rpgs. Crash is as "arcadey" as any saturn platformer.

>killer app
Nothing more than a sales metric, off topic, hence, you're blabbering

>>10200858
Nights into Dreams and Panzer Dragoon.

>>10200917
>Nothing more than a sales metric
Granted the term is pretty much marketing hype, but the point still stands that it actually had software to move console units.
I knew many people who were into cars back in 90's/00's who bought Playstations JUST for Gran Turismo.

>>10200806
>>10200912
Outside of Capcom and Namco titles? PS1 had a lot. Saturn had very little in the way of games made specifically for home consoles by comparison, nothing as major as >>10200858 listed, maybe with the exception of Panzer Dragoon Saga and a handful of other RPG's close to the end of its lifespan. It's more like PS1 had arcade games but a bunch of other stuff on top of it which made it worth owning. Not a Sony pony but I do think it's all an around better console than Saturn

>>10200940
This. Nearly all of Sega’s first party titles for the Saturn were either arcade ports or otherwise featured arcadey gameplay, eg Nights, Panzer Dragoon and Burning Rangers. Hell, one of the big reasons the Saturn is now popular with collectors is because of its faithful arcade ports. That anon is talking crazy.

>>10200929
Again, off topic blabbering.
An rpg is still an rpg even if it doesn't have a super bowl commercial.

>>10200940
You just don't know what you're talking about. Common occurrence.

Most of those ps1 greatest hits were late in its life.

>>10200970
But why are you bringing Atlus into the discussion in relation to the Saturn? They weren’t in an exclusive partnership with Sega at the time and also developed RPGs for the PlayStation.

>>10200969
"arcadey games"
>lists off ps1 games with arcadey gameplay
Crash is arcadey you dumb fuck. It has a linear obstacle course level structure with limited lives. Dumb fuck.

Mgs is a movie, there's Kojima movies on saturn.

Resident evil is on saturn

Tomb raider is on saturn

Rpgs are on saturn

You're fucking retarded

>>10200983
Re-read the thread and try really hard to use your very limited reading comprehension skills, and you'll see why it made sense as a response to the comment i initially responded to. Dumb fuck.

>>10200927
Both of those feature on rails arcade style gameplay.

>>10200986
I did and it doesn’t. Please elaborate.

>>10200984
Okay now list the actual Sega first party games on Saturn. You’ve been avoiding that. Why?

>>10200973
All of those games anon listed were 1998 or earlier. Late in Saturn's lifespan maybe, but PS2 didn't come until 2000.

Really I think Dreamcast got the better half of this gen with games like Tony Hawk and Rayman 2. Saturn came too early to get the best parts of the PS1 era

>>10197597
>Shitturn
>able to be saved
Pick one.

>>10200927
afaik Nights sold 392,383 units, at least only in 1996.
Virtua Fighter 2 sold the most most overall with 1,7 million
No idea how Panzer Dragoon did, and we all have the benefit of hindsight to say it's a great game but did anyone even know about it when it came out? I doubt it if it didn't even crack the charts in Japan.

>>10200984
lmfao nice argument. It's like you don't know that Sega was an arcade developer at the time! That was their appeal.

>>10200984
The Capcom and Namco games are actual arcade ports if you want something to compare. But PS1 also had Square and other devs which helped out a lot with the other genres. Saturn did have the Shining and Shining Force games if you wanted something more RPG-like. I guess in the end it's a matter of preference

>>10200984
One Resident Evil and one Tomb Raider made it to the Saturn. Not any of the sequels that were massive hits on the PS1.

>>10199527
>Comprehensive SDK with convenient C API
Saturn had this in 1994 as well. We have both SBL and SGL and their files date back that far.
>One fast CPU + one fast GPU is simpler than a mess of parallelism.
You run into similar situations with multithreading. Secondly Saturn's dual CPU set up isn't that much more complicated than something like using the GTE in the PSX or the different parts of the N64. And if you were used to working with older systems and arcade boards it wasn't that crazy either.
> Flat unified memory also simplifies things
This is literally the Achilles heal of the N64 and part of what makes it a nightmare to deal with. The Memory is slow and shared by the CPU and GPU. So if one is using it the other gets locked out and it stalls the system. In ways it's worse than Saturn's dual CPUs sharing the same bus since it also has to be shared with the GPU to draw things on screen.
>The poor Saturn SDK was a bigger problem than its complex hardware, and one that would have been easier to solve.
The Saturn had decent SDKs available by 1994 and 1995. The problem was Sega of America was balls deep into their 32X idea at this point so the only devs getting them were the Japanese devs.

>>10199542
>There wasn't even a c compiler for it available since they went with a brand new CPU design (SH2)
Hitachi made a C compiler and Sega also licensed out a GNU compiler. Both were available by 1994 and 1995. Sega of America had a C compiler for the 32X for crying out loud. How do you think Doom was ported?

This is the official Sega 32X SDK: https://archive.org/download/SegaSDK

You'll find example C code and compilers dating back as far as early 1993 and 1994. If they had C Compilers for the SH2s in the 32X, what makes you think they didn't have them for the Saturn?

>To get anythign done in the Saturn all that shit had to be done in assembly.
Not true. Again we have the actual SDKs and they have files and demos dating back to 1993. The issue is that Sega of America wasn't getting the Saturn specific stuff into developers hands because they were more focused on the 32X.

>The N64 (and PSX) used a well known CPU architecture that had (for the time) a decent c-compiler
They weren't that well known, it was still switching to RISC and was still a lot of uncharted territory for devs. And as we've already established, the SH2s did have both a Hitachi and GNU C Compiler. The GNU compiler is why we can still compile all of Sega's demos and SDKs to this day with modern GCC, while most of your N64 and PSX stuff is stuck with archaic compilers.

>Saturn: Pure nightmare hell from the start
Have you actually tried developing something for it? It's not nearly as hard as you think. Sega included some nice C demos in stuff like SBL, and again the dates on them go back pretty far.

>There is a documentary on youtube with one of the developers of Saturn's Virtua Racing...
Yes, and the key thing is it's from the US perspective. The problem was again Sega of America focusing on the 32X when they should have been focusing on Saturn.

>>10197693
the issue of the saturn isn't the architecture, the saturn has a good architecture which even if multicore has a linear approach which would have been easy to program (the issue was that the programming instruction set of the vdp's is bugged and jumps straight to vdp2 when it should always go to vdp1 first, this is the real reason the saturn is hard to program) and the saturn costed the same as playstation when it got released and could be sold without a loss in 1995 by the reduction of ram prices (playstation couldn't by the chipset it produced, it was costly by the use of more silicon by the production of a more embedded contained system, unlike the saturn which had separated chips and was made by people more experienced on console design by increasing the size a little but doing it cheaply). the issue that saturn had was:
1. lack of games, buggy instruction set and shitty dev tools which were caused by the retarded decision of the 32x
2. not knowing how to sell the machine outside of japan, not putting a variety of game and doing a surprise launch making so any retailer wouldn't want to be with sega again
3. making an awful contract with publishers by orders being of at least a 100k copies and then taking too long to produce them instead of doing the sonic music style contract and making them on the spot in 1k minimal while just mixing it with other games to fill transportation lines.
without this the saturn would have been a great success.
in general the greatest hits and more shouldn't be even a thing by the a mix of sega cd and sega megadrive being a success on the first place and selling that at his late console life as the budget option instead of the 32x, selling that would be made with a profit and wouldn't require canibalizing the new generation console, sega with this would just make cd's which they had the means to and would just require the burning of the cd's like normal just with the mega cd software and just letting 3rd party games on it.

>>10201167
>>10198462
in general they should have just publicized real games, put the games cheaper by the format being 20x less costly to produce, throwing fmv games on shelves without any publicity after the success of the addon and then make a turbo duo for the mega drive after the success of the mega cd.
this mixed with kicking the shit out of retailers by making a nintendo contract for big department stores (walmart, kmart and more) by not accepting refunds by showing proof that the genesis is a success, giving a request system to put systems at a needed predefined number of at least 1k like the sony music model instead of 500k that they were asking while showing the genesis success as a reason why they should let the console on the shelves by it being an electronic device which has highs and lows instead of being a toy with the refund culture that those have, this mixed with sega having their own transportation when they see good trends and putting in the contract that they can supply consoles at specific moments when sega wants it would make for the genesis success by a long shot.

>>10197597
sega was founded by american jews.
Taito was founded by a jew

>>10200994
All of the big ps1 games are 3rd party you retard. You're moving the goalposts

>>10200997
Only 2 years left. That's late in the consoles life, you idiot

>>10201005
I know that they were. So? The point stands you dumb fuck. Ps1 was made to be an arcade board for Namco. Sony didn't make any games... At all. They're all 3rd parties.

>>10201018
Saturn also has square games... You fucking moron. The saturn has 3rd party games too.
>>10201047
3 came out after dreamcast. 2 moved to dreamcast.

>>10201260
>HURRR NO ONE BUYS A SEGA CONSOLE FOR SEGA GAMES

Go fuck yourself. You just don’t want to admit that it’s almost all arcade stuff.

>>10201265
This isn’t a thread about the Dreamcast, now is it?

>>10200994
Nta, but at the top of my head:
>Clockwork knight
>Astal
>Bug!
>Princess Crown
>Shining Force 3
>Shinobi (this entry isn't much "arcadey")

>>10201047
TR2 was planned to be on the Saturn too, but Sony bought exclusivity apparently.

>>10201286
Honestly I don’t even know why that anon is trying so hard to deny that the Saturn was an arcade focused console. That was one of the big selling points for Sega fans. >>10201296

>>10197617
>>10198406
You retards realize that the Sega Megadrive itself was backwards compatible with the master system right?

>>10201385
And most people who had it didn't take advantage of that function.

>>10201385
With a separately sold converter. Conveniently forgot that little detail, huh?

>>10201275
>>10201273
You're blabbering.
>sega loet cuz muh jarpig
Sega has jarpigs...
>YEAH BUT SEGA DIDN'T MAKE THEM! THEY'RE 3RD PARTY!
The ones on Playstation are 3rd party...
>Ok BUT WHICH ONE SOLD MORE!?!?!!?!?
You're a blabbering fucking moron.

>>10201319
No it wasn't.

>>10201453
>>10201454
Delusional autist.

>>10197597
Saturn will always be DoA no matter what fanfic

>>10201453
Peak mental illness

>>10197597
I really don't get it with all these shitzo posts
SEGA fucked up big time in every area possible so bad that it went into complete obscurity and yet there are people in here defending the Saturn and it's underwhelming software library

>>10201296
>Sony bought exclusivity
It's true, but the Saturn was also too shit to run it

>>10197693
Sega fans flocked to Xbox anyways because Nintendo and Sony buckbroke their preferred console manufacturer and continue to seethe about it to this day. Nothing changed except for which mega corp is getting sloppy thirds in terms of sales (((Microsoft)))

>>10202045
That was probably bullshit

>>10202151
>Nooo! The Saturn could do literally anything the other consoles could and any of the console's failures are due to forces completely out of Sega's control! They didn't do anything wrong and everyone was scheming against them and used underhanded tricks!

>>10202151
>That was probably bullshit

See >>10202029

>>10202159
They where just using it as an excuse to cover Sony's underhanded business tactics. Fuck you

>>10202159
The homebrew demo of TR2 on the Saturn runs pretty good and it uses the same engine as the first game but with more optimization.
PS1 TR1 has a lot of revisions in the code compared to the Saturn version in order to play better.
But then again, i'm just a novice in programming, i may be just talking it out of my ass.

>>10202193
"When I got to Sega I immediately said, ‘We have to kill Saturn. We have to stop Saturn and start building the new technology.’ That’s what I did. I brought in a new team of people and cleaned house."

>>10201481
>>10202002
He isn't wrong there though.

>>10202245
You can always do amazing shit when you have all the time you need. For example some autists made TR run on the goddamn GBA. The thing is they had less than 8 months to make TR2 back in the day

>>10198465
If not for all the gay hacks (and modern homebrew thrown in with the rest of the games), I'd call it a decent list. Decent, but hardly exhaustive.
Also, it should be illegal to recommend Ecco 2 CD over the regular version.

>>10202258
Something is rotten in the house of Sega and Bernie is taking out the trash

> Before the creation of Saturn, Sega explored the idea of a joint-hardware platform. Sega of -America’s head of R&D Joe Miller was unimpressed with the initial hardware specs of the proposed console, and he liked the idea of sharing the costs on the creation of the hardware since platform holders typically lose money on hardware.

>Sega of America worked with Sony on specs for a potential joint platform. The team pitched the idea to Sony of Japan president Nobuyuki Idei, who agreed that it made good business sense. Unfortunately, Sega of Japan didn’t believe that Sony was serious about creating hardware, so the discussions fell apart and the two companies went separate routes.


That was before SGI spproached SEGA.

>makes australia-kun seethe for years
I dunno, the Sega Saturn seems pretty based to me.

>>10202305
Joe Miller was also the guy that came up with the 32X, so eh.

>>10202549
That was after the sega/sony deal fell through, and he was asked to design that as it was his job to do so. Not much you can do as a genesis add on that is not allowed to outperform the saturn

>>10201385
>2D console supports 2D console
That's completely fine.
I wouldn't buy an N64 to play fucking SNES games.

>>10202586
Not retro but the DS plays GBA games

>>10202305
This was after Nintendo burned Sony too.
I wonder if Sega had teamed up with Sony where we'd be today

>>10202185
>too lazy to write a whole second post
ok retard

>>10202285
Cd is outright superior in every single way, except the title screen music.

The hacks are better than vanilla, get over it

>>10202717
You forgot your meds

>>10202267
Is it a new meme to deny that the Saturn was an arcade oriented console? Of course it was. That was what Sega did best and why 2D Saturn fighting games are superior to their PS1 counterparts.

>>10203124
yeah, the resident 64 schizos are really showing how unhinged they've become lately. They make more saturn threads than fans of the console do.

>>10203124
The Saturn wasn't an arcade oriented console any more than the PS1, or the SNES was. If it's not the Neo Geo, it's not arcade oriented.
>why 2D Saturn fighting games are superior to their PS1 counterparts
Just ignore the times where it's not the case, and the fact that it's irrelevant to how something is arcade oriented or not.

>>10203276
Nah I’m calling bullshit. The Saturn hardware was designed largely with the intent of porting over Sega’s then current arcade lineup that was running on their Model 2 arcade board iirc. The Saturn is definitely more arcade focused than its fifth gen competitors simply by nature of Sega being a big arcade manufacturer at the time.

>>10203326
Adding to this: The Dreamcast took this a step further by essentially being a Sega NAOMI arcade chipset in a console form factor.

>>10203276
Name a single 2D fighter that ran better on PlayStation compared to Saturn.

>>10203336
Vanilla SOTN on the Saturn was worse than the PS1 version despite the bonus content.

>>10203425
That's not a fighter.

>>10203336
Muh extra 2 frames of animation. Jesus christ nobody noticed those.

Meanwhile Alpha 3 was actually released on the psx in the west while the saturn version was locked to Japan.

>>10203429
Oops, read too fast.
But, i guess there's DBZ the legend depending on how much you care about the visiuals?
This is a stupid metric anyway simce the SNES had better fightans than the Genesis.

>>10203326
They did it in the dumbest way though. The Saturn's architecture couldn't have been more different from Sega's arcade hardware at the time. Compare that to the Genesis, which was like a scaled down System 16 arcade machine, making ports to it relatively convenient, especially since it used a pretty standard architecture in general that other companies like Capcom had in their own arcade games. The Saturn meanwhile was in a world of it's own. It wasn't "bad" architecture by any means, but it also was ass backwards given that Sega's bread and butter were their arcade games. Compare it to how Namco's System 11, which ran Tekken and such, was essentially just a PS1 with some extra bells and whistles.

And there it wasn't even a single company. Namco and Sony had to coordinate that shit. Sega had no such logistics to worry about but instead opted to keep it's arcade and console divisions as isolated from each other as possible. Yu Suzuki basically operated as if there WAS no console division.

>>10203434
>This is a stupid metric anyway simce the SNES had better fightans than the Genesis.
Not entirely. The Genesis versions of several fighting games tended to look worse but played closer to the arcade. Typically the SNES ports tried to maintain aesthetics while the Genesis maintained mechanical fidelity. Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat, for example.

>>10203336
2D fighting games being better on Saturn was more of a side effect of the Saturn's architecture than a specific goal. That's the benefit of having more RAM, especially when you have an entirely separate GPU with it's own VRAM to handle things like 2D backgrounds. It wasn't really designed for the purpose of porting a bunch of CPS2 and Neo Geo games. It just happened to be good at it compared to the PS1 which was more RAM starved and was saddled with an expansion port that was way too slow to be used for RAM expansion.

>>10203457
Snes had better original fighters were way better though.

>>10203434
This thread isn’t about the Genesis.

>>10203490
That wasn't the point was making.

>>10203457
The examples you cited are often regarded more gameplay-accurate on the SNES however.

>>10203791
That's wrong though. Especially for Mortal Kombat. The SNES looks a lot closer to the arcade minus the blood but it plays like hot buttered ass compared to the Genesis which, while not perfect, more or less moves like the arcade version.

what if they made a [9001 word document describing my ideal sonic game in detail] for the saturn, would it have saved sega?

>>10198441
Most stupid post in the thread. Branch wars are dumb and so are people support it.

>>10203523
>name a 2D fighting game that was better on PlayStation versus Saturn
>SNES had better fightans than the Genesis.

???

The real question is why Sega went so off the rails with the Saturn's hardware if their goal was to port their arcade games. Making the Saturn a scaled down Model 2 would have been way more sensible.

>>10204162
>The real question is why Sega went so off the rails with the Saturn's hardware if their goal was to port their arcade games. Making the Saturn a scaled down Model 2 would have been way more sensible.

Because Sega went too far with nepotism and cronyism. They partnered with a Japanese company that had zero history of making 3D chips for games. Hitachi probably bribed *cough* I mean "lobbied" the Sega of Japan Executives. A scaled down Model 2 probably would have been the way to go. But Sega of Japan Executive team needed new yachts that year.

>>10198651
>>10198441
>>10199573

You Sega of Japan fanboys make me laugh. Don't you realize these posts just makes SoJ look even worse?

1. If Sega of Japan came up with the idea of a "filler system" between Genesis and Saturn, then they are idiots.

2. If Sega of America came up with the idea of a filler system between Genesis and Saturn, then Sega of Japan are idiots for not stopping it. Especially after the failure of the Sega CD.

Either way, Sega of Japan are fools.

>>10203448
Yeah. The Dreamcast design was what the Saturn should have been. Just shove the arcade chipset into a console, Neo Geo style.

>>10204110
The point was that judging a console on how "arcadey" it is by comparing its 2D fighters to other consoles' is retarded.
You're reading just as fast as i did.

>>10204202
>Just shove the arcade chipset into a console, Neo Geo style.
They couldn't quite do that with the Model 2 because it would have made the Saturn hilariously expensive. Sega's arcade games routinely ran on bleeding edge supercomputers. It's why Virtua Fighter 3, a 1996 game, had to wait years before it could be ported to Dreamcast. They had been working on a Saturn version but it would have needed to be butchered and built from the ground up. Sega's arcade division YOLO'ed every single game with little regard to how in the hell it would ever make it into people's homes. "That's someone else's problem" seemed to be the gist of how it operated. This was all well and good in the early 90s but as you got deeper into the decade arcades started to rapidly lose ground to home consoles and it became a liability to not get adequate home ports.

People tend to focus on the lack of teamwork between SoA and SoJ as a major stumbling block but there was just as much of a schism between the console and arcade divisions. It wasn't as antagonistic but they acted as if they were two separate companies that happened to share a brand name.

>>10204241
>They couldn't quite do that with the Model 2 because it would have made the Saturn hilariously expensive.
Then just do what Sega did with the Sega Genesis which is just a downscaled System 16. Make a downscaled Model 2.

The economies of scale were already at play since Model 2 was already being mass produced for arcade cabinets. Production lines were set up already. Making a. weaker consolized Model 2 was already feasible.

>>10204241
Makes a lot of sense. The Saturn’s exclusives like Nights and Panzer Dragoon were pretty short, arcade-like experiences without much replay value in a time when Mario 64 came along and offered a much deeper home experience.

Sega failed… it died… forever. You neckbeards are like that one friend that got dumped by some chick 7 years ago and still hasn’t gotten over yet. In fact this is worse, like 20 years ago worse.This is toxic and kinda creepy.

>>10204241
>>10204265
How does the Saturn even fare against SM2 anyway?

>>10204241
Meanwhile Namco smartly said let’s take a PS1 and put a little sauce on top and that’s our arcade board, yeah it won’t be ultra cutting edge but it’ll be easy as fuck to port it

Guess what the winning strategy was

>>10204265
The only thing the Genesis has in common with the System 16 is the 68000 CPU. It has about as much in common with the System 16 as the Dreamcast has with a Hikaru board.

>>10204319
The System 16 also has a Z80 and Yamaha YM2151 for sound. The Genesis has a Z80 and Yamaha YM2612 doing the same thing. This isn't really a shock as a 68000/Z80 combo was very popular at the time across a ton of platforms but there's clearly a lot of similarities between the two. It's really not a stretch to call the Genesis a consumer grade System 16.

>>10204265
The difference is the hardware in a System 16 was also in a lot of home computers. They were waaay more mass produced than what was in a Model 2. The Motorola 68000 was the main CPU of the original Apple Macintosh. Not saying it'd be impossible but it'd be a bigger pain in the ass to turn the Model 2 into a home console than anything in Sega's 80s arcade cabinets, which in comparison were built with off the shelf components.

Sega lost (and continues to lose)

>>10204304
Yup, Namco knew that by the mid-90s arcade games functioned as demo units for the console release. The real money was getting your game into homes as quickly and with as much fidelity as possible. The turnaround for Namco's games from arcade to PS1 was lightning fast in comparison to what Sega was doing with minimal sacrifices. Virtua Fighter and Tekken were in tight competition with each other early on with Virtua Fighter even edging Tekken out for a bit until VF3 couldn't get it's ass out of the arcade, giving Tekken 3 free reign. Same thing with Ridge Racer. Namco was just farting out winner after winner on the PS1 while Sega had it's thumb up it's ass because it's best games would have made the Saturn shit itself.

>>10204289
Honestly? Not fucking well.

https://youtu.be/NcDyrrRR_e4?si=YI_I2a9r-75Fpkbi

The ports work well enough in that they aren't garbage but you wouldn't even have to do a side-by-side to tell that a bunch of corners were cut. Just having played the arcade versions once would be enough.

>>10204387
I want to clarify that it's not that the Saturn is a substandard machine for a 1994 era console. It's that the Model 2 was stupidly powerful for a 1993 arcade board. And then the Sega Model 3 upped the ante again in 1996.

>>10204396
wasn't Lockheed Martin involved in the design of the Model 2?

>>10204404
I'd use this opportunity to clarify something. Lockheed Martin didn't make or even design the chip. Sega licensed a design and made a cut down version of that. So next time anyone goes "Oooh Aaah Military", no, it wasn't ever for military and didn't cost that much.

>>10204404
Yup. As famous as Sega is for dropping the ball over and over in the console market, it absolutely dominated the arcades. It fundamentally WAS an arcade company with the console thing being a side hustle. Namco was Sega's chief rival so wasn't about to put any of it's shit on the Saturn. Working with Sony was the obvious choice and Sony had no problem making sure it kept Namco happy.

>>10204428
what do you think people thought it was?
They most likely wanted to use something similar to their simulation machines

>>10204319
>>10204354
Then explain why Namco could do it with the Playstation 1, but Sega could not?

>>10204428
That's true but it doesn't need to have been literally military hardware to be cutting edge. The N64's NEC VR4300 wasn't the same CPU in Silicon Graphics Workstations but it was still related and quite advanced for the time.

>>10204446
I don't know what you mean. Are you asking why Namco could port it's games to PS1 so efficiently? Because Namco's arcade boards were pretty much slightly improved PS1s. They worked in tandem with Sony to make sure the hardware was in sync so the pipeline from arcade to console was as smooth as possible. The Sega Model 2 and the Sega Saturn were entirely different machines. They shouldn't have been, of course. Sega absolutely should have made sure there was more synergy between it's arcade and console divisions. But Sega gonna Sega.

>>10204434
People thought it was a graphics chip. It was an outboard Texture Mapping Unit. All of the polygon work is done by other processors on the board. Now, to be clear, this chip is how Model 2 could make textured environments that fast with a lot of polygons and next to no warping. But still, it's "just" a texture mapping unit.

All that needed to happen was this
>The Saturn doesn't get rush launched, leaving it without a single game release for the first 6 months of its existence, and pissing off third parties and retailers forever
>The Saturn needs to not have sloppily thrown together architecture that makes no sense from a design standpoint, and costs so much money to manufacture that Sega loses millions of dollars simply producing them.
>All of the RAM expansion carts, and the MPEG decoder comes out so that people can play the exact same games they're already playing on Playstation without having to purchase an add-on
>All of the niche titles that didn't even move 100k units in Japan, or make a single dollar in the US when they were also released on the Playstation which sold 10x more than the Saturn need to have the time and money spent on exporting them over and then manage to sell 15x more copies
Now imagine this, it's 1998, you just finished playing the Saturn version of massive smash hit Vandal Hearts (better version because the flames in a lantern on a single map are rendered better due to the immense power of the Saturn) and you call up your friend to let him know you just dropped $50 on the new 4MB expansion cart, and now you can play Street Fighter Alpha with slightly better animation quality than the PS1 version that released 2 years ago.
Boom, Saturn is selling out worldwide baby

>>10204489
Kek, I can’t deny any of this, but I still have a soft spot for it. I was a PlayStation kid but my uncle had a Saturn and it felt so exotic and premium when I got to play it.

>>10204535

I feel a lot of people share this opinion.
SEGA was managed as if it was run by a bunch of 5yr olds, with subpar hardware to show for it, released in the most idiotic way possible and an overall underwhelming software library.

But despite all of that there is still fun to be had on that system, and I think anyone who isnt a seething faggot can come up with a list of titles that are worth a full playthrough.

>>10197597
The only good thing about the Saturn is that it looks cool and has an interesting black design and controller for the 1990s. But the actual hardware driving the machine is so...clumsy and awkward to program for. No idea what Sega of Japan was thinking with this nonsense.

>>10206631
It’s ironic because the PlayStation was comparatively a developer-friendly console, but then they followed it up with the PS2’s weird custom architecture.

>>10206661
It's the typical story with corporations. After a huge major success, corporations get really cocky and arrogant and stop focusing on what made their mschine great. Then the followup machine had issues or problems.

-Everything after the Atari 2600

-Nintendo Gameboy to Virtual Boy

-Sega Genesis to Sega Saturn

-PS1 to PS2 (with Sony trying to push their own weird chip architecture)

-Xbox 360 to Xbox One

-Nintendo Wii to Wii U


I'm sure there are other examples but those are first to my mind.

>>10206789
>-PS1 to PS2 (with Sony trying to push their own weird chip architecture)
If it works, it works. 155 million units speak for itself.

>>10206804
Not saying it didn't sell well. 3rd parties really pushed the PS2. But there were complaints about the odd architecture.

Then it got even weirder with the PS2 to PS3. Sony didn't want to give up the idea of using the Playstation to push whatever new technology they came up with.

>>10206631
The Saturn's architecture wasn't really that odd. The dual SH-2s may have been awkward at the time but remember that dual core CPUs weren't that far around the corner and may have been in use in some capacity even back then. And quads were absolutely viable and had their own advantages. I'm not saying the Saturn was ahead of it's time exactly, but it wasn't the batshit crazy system people seem to think it was. It did turn out to be something of a dead end but you wouldn't have been able to predict that in 1994.

>>10206834
2 CPUs is entirely different from one dual-core CPU. Namely, that the two SH-2 cannot access RAM at the same time, and have no mechanics to negotiate data between each other. Note: multi-CPU is still awkward now in 2023, and that's after we already resolved the aforementioned issue.

>>10206804
Maybe i'm coping, but i believe the PS2 would've been like the PS3 (good sales but the hardware gimped the overall potential) had Sega and Nintendo not have committed the greastest consecutive fuck ups in vidya history during the 5th gen.

>>10206834
How technologically retarded do you have to be to think a dual CPU setup is even comparable to a dual-core setup?
>It did turn out to be something of a dead end but you wouldn't have been able to predict that in 1994.
Yes, you would have because a dual CPU setup is so retarded it's never even been floated as a possibility in any other device.
Legitimately one of the dumbest posts on this board.

>Regular threads by segacucks lamenting their hardware demise

There is plain old pathetic, and there is suoer turbo permavirgin pathetic. Guess which one you are OP

>>10206943
>a dual CPU setup is so retarded it's never even been floated as a possibility in any other device.
what?
please don't call others technologically retarded and then use this statement

>>10206954
All those dual cpu consoles, phones and handhelds. And who can forget about the huge consumer investment in dual cpu mobos and laptops.

>>10206998
Servers anon
And workstations
Even thinking about it logically a GPU is essentially its own CPU

>>10207015
Oh of course all those consumer industry servers! Who could forget about those. Why doesnt Microsoft use 1TB of RAM in the Xbox while we're at it.
Pedantic fucking retard you know what I meant, and it doesn't excuse how stupid your original post was.
>a GPU is essentially its own CPU
stop posting

>>10207040
>stop posting
I accept your concession

What if OP didn't make endless "what if sega..." threads?

I think if Sega had not released the 32x, and focused their resources on developing proper successors to their most popular Genesis games, then they would have succeeded. A console lives and dies by it's games, and in the West we had none of that. Japan had it all.

>>10207397
Launching Saturn with a competent Doom port instead of the 32X actually might have made a difference. I don't know about the Genesis games though. Sega was throwing a lot of darts at the wall near the end and none of those franchises really found their footing. I guess they could have made Vectorman 3 or a new Eternal Champions but those don't strike me as potential system sellers. Seems like it'd be a lateral move from Bug! and Nights.

>>10207417
Doom on Saturn turning out the way it did was apparently because of John Carmack's meddling. He didn't want the devs to utilise any of the Saturn's hardware, as it would have resulted in something unsatisfactory to Carmack's eyes. That man's a programming genius, but that was definitely one of his biggest blunders (the other being id Tech 5).

But what Sega absolutely needed was sequels to their Genesis franchises. We needed a Streets of Rage 4, a Sonic the Hedgehog 4, a port of Golden Axe: Revenge of Death Adder, and new IPs that weren't shovelware produced by Sega of America. By the time promising games like Burning Rangers launched, the Saturn was already dead and buried by the American branch and the company was forced to jump ship to something else. Sega also should have pushed for more RPGs, when the genre was reaching new heights. They should have coaxed Square Enix into porting games like Final Fantasy 7 to the Saturn.

>>10207434
No, what he didn't want was texture warping. The means to achieve that is up to the porting team. They in turn decided the way to achieve that is not utilizing any of the Saturn's hardware and underutilizing the Saturn's CPU.

>>10207434
Sega could never get Squaresoft games on Saturn under any circumstances. Sony co-published FFVII, footing the bill for the marketing budget. Square was just a hair shy of being a Sony second party. It's actually one of the reasons Nintendo could never have retained them no matter what they did. Sony simply bought them off.

>>10207457
Pretty sure what happened was after scrapping what they had done they had no time and had to rush out a direct port of the Playstation version.
The nonsense I've heard about 60 is pure fantasy though. Source: literally no fps game on the Saturn runs even close to that. I don't think any run at over 30.

>>10207468
Pretty much every single Doom port back then was fucked in one way or another. I don't think it's Sega's fault specifically but even a merely adequate Doom at launch would have been better than no Doom.

>>10199690
>B-But in Japan i-it was way bigger!!!

Sega died because of the Saturn.

>>10207468
On that matter, the PS1 version had no texture warping. On THE texture warping console.