/vr/ - Retro Games

Not the first time you've made a similar thread OP. Why are you so hung up on Sega's death? It happened, it's done, you need to move on and stop obsessing about this.

Oh, here's the Nintenretard going at it again.

Yes OP, SEGA stopped making consoles after the Dreamcast. This is fact.

Thanks.

>>2846345

No, Sega died because they had 2 gigantic failures in a row and the Dreamcast wasn't able to make up for it.

The 32x was a shitty addon nobody wanted that had no games whatsoever.

The Saturn was a nightmare to develop for and couldn't compete with the Playstation in the west. The early launch also fucked up the small chance it had to not get destroyed by the playstation.

I always thought they should've tried harder with the SegaCD but skipped the 32x entirely. Sticking it out with the Saturn another year or two prolly wouldn't have hurt either (such a frantic disorganized withdrawal from the NA market prolly cost them _at least_ as much in lost sales and good will as just sucking it up for another year or two before a controlled shutdown).

Another thing that bugged me was the lame followup to the Gamegear.

I'm pretty sure retailers got sick of wasting shelf space on systems and games that they knew weren't going to sell.

I still contend Saturn and Dreamcast were the best systems of their gen.

Dreamcast was clearly ahead of its time and Saturn was so hard to develop for because of its superior graphics chip.

In the end, it was the money that killed Sega and the devs and retailers weren't making enough of it.

>>2848923

Love the Sega CD but it had one massive problem. It was using the Mega Drive's tech and you can't really do a lot with a CD's storage space on a 16-bit system. Therefore, we got ports with lots of FMVs and CD audio.

One thing that needs to be challenged is the idea that FMV games were bad though. It's popular to crap on Night Trap but the game is fun if you learn the controls.

>>2848847
>The Saturn was a nightmare to develop
I love this meme.

>>2848947

It was as difficult as the N64, if not more so. That still shouldn't have killed the system, but...Ya know....Sega....

>>2848946

There are several examples of quality games on the SegaCD that aren't FMV trash, yet Sega chose not to highlight those like the greatest of morons.

>>2848935

Dreamcast I'll give you. Saturn you're pretty clearly whitewashing.

>>2848961
At least the Saturn has a good library, N64 was more or less a success and that didn't stop it from being a shitty console.

>>2848983

I do agree the Saturn had more potential (N64 using cartridges is the biggest blunder that gen in my opinion), but in the west it certainly didn't reach it, library or otherwise. If you're arguing Jap-only releases then I cannot reasonably dispute that, as I cannot read Moon.

>>2848967
Not that guy but I love the Saturn even more than the Dreamcast. It has an incredible library once you start digging. Didn't even have one as a kid, either.

>>2849018

Incredible if you like arcades. In most other genres it does fairly mediocre.

>>2849021
personally Panzer Dragoon Saga is my favorite RPG ever and SEGA Rally is my favorite racing game ever, but yes the systems library does rest fairly heavily on arcade style games. Pretty much every Sega system does desu. Good thing I love arcade games.

>>2848967

I'm commenting on system specs.

Dreamcast was a great system but it never had Ico, GTA Vice City or Kingdom Hearts. Sony wins on library for sheer volume. (Although Sega games were better on the Dreamcast than their PS2 counterparts)

Saturn was able to run games at a higher resolution than the PS1 and had more VRAM. It was just as powerful as the PS1 for 3D as well but difficult to code for.

>>2846345
>>2848923
If you want to count worldwide then Nintendo had no less than 4 versions of the NES, 2 version of the disk system, and the SNES coming out.
>>2849027
>>2849018
>>2848935
Saturn was great but beating the PS1 and N64 it doesn't.

>>2849043
>Sony wins on library for sheer volume. (Although Sega games were better on the Dreamcast than their PS2 counterparts)

Is this a joke?

>>2849043
>It was just as powerful as the PS1 for 3D

This is the actual meme. It's completely false, invented by Sega fans who convinced themselves to believe that the Saturn had some kind of hidden depth that those mean bad developers were too stupid to exploit.

Two Hitachi SH-2 CPUs will never crunch matrices through matrix stacks as fast as PS1's GTE. VDP1 will never render 3D scenes as fast as PS1's GPU. Literally impossible, beyond these components theoretical limits.

Saturn can only win at 2D because matrix stack operations aren't as important, because VDP1 shitty overdraw is less of a big deal, and because it has extra RAM.

>>2849050
no
there were a lot of games in ps2

>>2846345
I don't think the 32X had too much of an impact at all (other than diverting developer time and attention away). Saturn's failure was entirely its own thing, and massively screwed the company.

also, that hilariously bad early launch

>>2848947
It's somewhat true. Utilizing the dual-CPU architecture was a bitch, concurrent programming in C is a fucking nightmare (particularly in 1995, long before SMP systems were common), and the VDP1 is kind of slow at drawing shit and drawing quads was just a bad idea since by 1994, the industry had already standardized on triangles.
The system had a DSP in it that nearly no one used because it was a pain in the dick to work with (poor documentation, lacked useful instructions to make life easier)

The nicest components in the machine by far would be the VDP2 (which was an effectively free floor plane that saves a shit ton of polygons, PS1 would have to draw a big-ass grid) and background layer (I actually dunno how the PS1 does backgrounds) and the SCSP (which was a nice, MIDI controllable audio workstation on a chip, Sega used the fuck out of it in almost everything they made after the Saturn because it was actually really nice, up to the DC (IIRC, the DC's AICA is an enhanced version of it) -- only issue is 512kB of sound RAM and no sample compression support at all, but that's not too terrible unless you're trying to use a lot of sound effects, for music purposes it's fine).

>>2849043
on average, PS1 games run at higher resolution than Saturn games, there's a lot of 640x240 or 512x240 PS1 games, although I can think of more Saturn games that used interlaced modes off the top of my head

>>2846345
No, SEGA was wholly dependent on arcade ports. Gamers simply grew out of them.

>>2849050
PS2 had a lot of strengths, but raw textures wasn't one of them.

>>2849257
As much as I love the Saturn, this is true.
The PS1 was definitely what the industry needed at that time. No matter how clever some of Sega's hardware ideas were (or their shortcomings), it's hard to deny Sony simply had nearly everything right here - from hardware simplicity to licensing deals to distribution networks.

>>2850170
Problem was that it took a really long time before anybody worked out how to do VQ texture compression on PS2.

That being said, the Hardcore version of DOA2 is better than the Dreamcast version. They fixed most of the problems of that original Japan release and the lighting and particle effects are tons better.

>>2848935
>Saturn was so hard to develop for because of its superior graphics chip.

I thought that the Saturn was hard to develop for because it was designed like riced out garbage. Made overly complex for the sake of being overly complex.

>>2849627
Ya a lot of SEGA games on the PS2...

>>2846345
Fuck what could have been. I end up looking at my collection with shame. I've always held out on the hope that Nintendo will die each generation. It's so close, they just need to release their own failure Dreamcast and drop dead. Then I can rest knowing the douchebags who gave Sega a hard time finally get to feel the same way.

>>2850779
Hi

>>2850709
No it was it's dual sh-2 setup that they were using in the arcade which most people couldn't program well for. Sega also didn't predict 3d coming in so soon and had to rush in a shitty 3d capability to compete with the ps1 thus why it's a 2d monster and shit at 3d.

>>2850170
PS2 only had texturing issues if you tried porting games directly, without taking advantage of the hardware. If you figured out how to max out the data paths with the VU0 and VU1, and took advantage of the ridiculously high bandwidth memory, then there was nothing the DC could do that the PS2 couldn't (including texture compression).

>>2848847
The only reason the Saturn couldn't compete on the west was because Sega did a horrible job at marketing the machine, and an even worse job at marketing the games. Take a look at Powerslave / Exhumed for example - the game was a decade ahead of its time, and the only reason it has what little cult following it has today, is because the UK Saturn magazine gave huge coverage for the game.

>>2849857
>on average, PS1 games run at higher resolution than Saturn games

I don't think that's true. Do we have a list somewhere?
The resolution alone doesn't matter anyway though, PS1 games looked better because it could do more detailed graphics, even at an equal resolution.

>>2850779
Sega pretty much killed themselves, man. It's time to let go of it.

>>2849257
>This is the actual meme. It's completely false, invented by Sega fans who convinced themselves to believe that the Saturn had some kind of hidden depth that those mean bad developers were too stupid to exploit.

There is some truth to it actually. According to the Lobotomy devs, who ported Quake to both machines, the PS1 was way better at rendering graphics but was worse at general calculation.

>Two Hitachi SH-2 CPUs will never crunch matrices through matrix stacks as fast as PS1's GTE.

Which doesn't matter because the PS1 GPU can't draw as many polygons as the GTE can crunch. Plus the Saturn had a DSP that could do matrix calculations faster than the SH2 despite running at half the clock.

The Saturn could, theoretically, transform as many polys as the Playstation - but the VDP1 couldn't draw nowhere near as many or as good looking polys, so it doesn't really matter. (and this is without assuming lightning or game logic, which the Playstation could do on top)

>Saturn can only win at 2D because matrix stack operations aren't as important

The only reason the Saturn is better at 2d is because of the VDP2 (that saves a shit ton of texture memory and can do every single old school h-int type effect), and then later the memory expansion. It was mostly the VDP2 though.

But you can get great 2d on the PS1 too, just with entirely different types of special effects (transparency and rendering to texture instead of extreme multi-layering and parallax), which no 2d game used at the time.

>>2850908
The PS1 has indeed decent 2D graphics, but i doubt it will ever make stuff like Dragon Force and Princess Crown. Also, you can really tell the 2D backgrounds in 3D fighters are much more complex in the Saturn (Last Bronx for instance)

>>2850915
I don't think either of those would really tax the Playstation. You'd maybe lose detail on the backgrounds in both.

>>2850949
I have yet to see a game with shittons of sprites like Dragon Force 1/2 on the PS1.

As for the backgrounds in 3D fighters, they are always flat and boring compared to the Saturn games, just compare the backgrounds from Dead or Alive on both consoles.

>>2850949
No way dude. I think the original PlayStation is one of the greatest systems ever made but it could never do Dragon Force or Princess Crown. Just like the Saturn probably couldn't do FF8 or MGS.

>>2850915
What is the most 2D intensive PS1 game then?

Street Fighter Alpha 3 had some crazy tweaks to make it look as good as it did, but I can't think of a game that threw around a ton of sprites on screen like Dragon Force.

>>2850970
Dunno, but to give an idea the PS1 can't do CPS-1 ports perfectly. Captain Commando port on PS1 has 3 players limitation and some slowdowns when the screen is bloated with enemies.

>>2850962
Other than the parallax backgrounds, neither game do anything that the PS1 couldn't handle next to doing the sprites. And the parallax backgrounds would only have to go to save on memory too, since on the Saturn you can use them without taking any memory away from sprites. It would end up like the ports of Grandia and Silhouette Mirage were - less detail and more repetition in the background and on the 3d ground, but otherwise perfectly intact and with a bunch of extra transparency effects.

>>2850970
>What is the most 2D intensive PS1 game then?

I haven't seen too many PS1 games but Castlevania would get my vote. It was designed with the hardware in mind, and it shows.
Gradius Gaiden is also pretty cool, and I think Sexy Parodius was a perfect port with lots of huge graphics.

Contrary to popular belief, the Playstation is better at pushing sprites than the Saturn is. WAY better. It just has less memory for animation, and no dedicated background unit to do linescroll or heavy parallax.

SF Alpha 3 got around this limit on the PSX by simplifying everything it could, like hit sparks, to use single-colour shapes. Those could be procedurally generated, and so they wasted no texture memory.

>>2850960
>As for the backgrounds in 3D fighters, they are always flat and boring compared to the Saturn games, just compare the backgrounds from Dead or Alive on both consoles.

The Saturn uses a "mode-7" plane there, and it allows it to stretch the ground to infinity with correct perspective, while the Playstation has to subdivide the ground to multiple polygons. This is again the Saturns dedicated background processor at work.

>>2846345
There was a time that Sega realized it was a detriment to gaming and quit....
if only the other consoles would go the same way

>>2851025
Grandia and Silhouette mirage aren't near as intensive as Dragon Force. Not only the sprite count isn't even close, but also the scaling is far from Dragon Force.

As for the 2D backgrounds in 3D fighters, it's not only the "mode 7" effect, but also way more parallax and sprites and backgrounds, giving it a more lively "3D" feel.

>>2851054
>Grandia and Silhouette mirage aren't near as intensive as Dragon Force. Not only the sprite count isn't even close, but also the scaling is far from Dragon Force.

What is the maximum amount of sprites on one screen in Dragon Force? A hundred? Two hundred? Assuming the game runs at 60fps, that gives you 60x200 = 12000 sprites, which on the Playstation means 24000 tris plus whatever you use for the menu and the background.

So 25-30k triangles a second. An average Playstation game could easily do 100k polys a second at 30fps, heck, even Saturn games could hit that number (with quads). So Dragon Force is right in the ballpark of the Playstation. And if the VDP1 had the fillrate to run the game, then the PS1 GPU definitely has it too, even including the backdrops.

The only limit is whether you can fit enough animation in memory. That's why Castlevania was running in the lowest possible resolution, because it meant smaller framebuffer, and more space for animation.

>way more parallax and sprites and backgrounds, giving it a more lively "3D" feel.

The parallax backgrounds in Saturn 3d fighters always bugged me, because they looked like what they are - simple backdrops that scrolled and scaled around. That's not how a backdrop moves around in 3d, it would need to rotate as you move around. Just look at VF2, you pretty much have an arena floating in empty space with one or two backgrounds zooming around behind you. It looked the worst when the edge of the level was visible, it completely shattered the illusion.

It took until Last Bronx to fix that, where they simply pre-rendered some perspective distortion on the background. Even just that looked radically better! But, by that time, Playstation fighters started getting full 3d arenas...

>>2851243
Again, you are just playing with theoretical numbers, which isn't reality. Remember the SNES could handle up to 120 sprites on screen "theoretically", but struggles with 4 sprites in Final Fight. I already stated before that the PS1 struggles with CPS-1 ports like Captain Commando too.

Last Bronx has better 2D backgrounds than any 3D fighter on the PS1. As for 3D arenas, the only good one IMO is Soul Blade, and while it looks good, it's just 30 FPS.

bump

>>2851258
>Remember the SNES could handle up to 120 sprites on screen "theoretically", but struggles with 4 sprites in Final Fight.

Uh, the SNES slows down for completely different reasons. The CPU is not fast enough for one. And each character in Final Fight was made up of multiple sprites, so the 4 characters on screen may have been made up from 100+ individual sprites depending on how the game was built.

That isn't a problem here. Any amount of sprites the Saturn can push, the Playstation can equal and surpass. It only loses out in the amount of animation it can put on the sprites, due to having less video memory, and due to needing to draw the backgrounds using polygons as well (which it can, but those textures take more space in memory, which means you have less remaining for animation).

I don't know why Captain Commando struggles, but at a guess it is because it can't fit so much animation into video memory (hence the 3 player limitation too). It can still stream new animations from system memory, but that takes up time, so it slows things down. Saturn games have the same problem in animation-heavy games too, all the X-Men / Marvel games have either slowdown or frame drops, and so do Metal Slug, Cyberbots, and probably a lot other games using lots of animation and/or huge sprites.

Dragon Force doesn't use huge animations though, it just scales up a lot of small sprites. PS1 can do that no problem.

>>2851279
Maybe if you give me some examples i could believe you, the best i have seen so far is this, which is far from impressive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhooP1baQQc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtqedq2SqlA

X-Men/Marvel ports were kinda mediocre, but they still had extra raster effects and animation. Then Street Fighter Alpha 2 on Saturn was a much better port, extra background effect/animations, more character animations, faster gameplay, intro included etc.

Another game that came to mind just now, is Night Striker, a Super Scaler game from Taito. The PS1 version is heavily downgraded with worse scaling and only 25 or 30 FPS. The Saturn version looks better and is 60 FPS, pretty much arcade perfect.

>>2851307
Here a video from Night Striker by the way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YfXsFxHu4Q

>>>2850962
>Contrary to popular belief, the Playstation is better at pushing sprites than the Saturn is. WAY better. It just has less memory for animation, and no dedicated background unit to do linescroll or heavy parallax.
I just remembered that Tekken 3 arcade is running on System 12, which is basically a PSX with an overclocked CPU and 2MB video memory instead of 1MB.

And basically the only difference between the arcade game and PSX Tekken 3 are the backgrounds.

>>2851307
>Maybe if you give me some examples i could believe you, the best i have seen so far is this, which is far from impressive.

I'm not that familiar with Playstation games, sorry. But I figure there weren't many great 2d games on it, because it didn't have memory for the animations. It doesn't matter how many sprites you push if they aren't well animated.

>Another game that came to mind just now, is Night Striker, a Super Scaler game from Taito. The PS1 version is heavily downgraded with worse scaling and only 25 or 30 FPS. The Saturn version looks better and is 60 FPS, pretty much arcade perfect.

Note that that game also does the background with raster effects, which the Playstation has NO hardware to do. It has to brute force it with polygons, which is the most likely reason for the frame drop.

Wasn't the Saturn designed as a 2D console and then they tried to shift gears and force it into 3D later in it's life? That 3D controller didn't even launch when the Saturn launched.

>>2851490
Yep, pretty much that, it has tons of dedicated hardware for 2D. Although PS1 also didn't start with a 3D controller.

>>2851490
The 3D controller for Saturn came out around the same time the dual analogs came out for the PS1.

Game companies tried to force themselves into the 32 bit era when 64 bit era consoles were possible or already being designed.

Sega was scared shitless of Atari of all companies, and tried to rush out the Sega Neptune to compete with Atari. Atari was coming out with it's failed 32 bit console, the Atari Panther.

Both companies canned their 32-bit systems and skipped straight to their 32-bit/64-bit systems in the Jaguar and Saturn respectively. The Jaguar was a massively underrated console that had a lot of potential that was never tapped and it came out in 93, a year before the PS1, and had the ability for fully polygonal graphics.

It's ironic that these rushed 32-bit consoles killed both companies, the Neptune and Panther's development fucked up internal ideas at both companies about what to release next.

>>2851507
I don't know why, probably because I'm tired and slaphappy, but imagining Atari and Sega tripping over themselves trying to rush out pieces of shit because of each other and then shitting out Jaguar and Saturn respectively and dying afterwards is making me laugh my ass off.

>>2850801
>Politicians threatening to censor and control video games
>Lincoln just sits there trying to throw Sega under the bus over and over again

>>2851507
Sega really fucked up thinking Atari had a chance.

>>2851528
It's a pretty stupid mental image but that's essentially what they did. Instead of releasing Panther and Neptune and giving their 64-bit systems a bit more time to cook, they cancelled the intermediaries and launched their shit piles.

I'm not saying Saturn is as bad as Jaguar, but I am saying that, given the time frame of release, if Jaguar had similar support to the Saturn and the same lifespan, Jaguar could've been closer to equal. Sega just managed to hold on a bit because of the success of the Mega Drive. Atari fell quicker because their 7800 was pure shit.

They both should've let their 5th gens cook longer.

The dude who made intellivision said
"If a hardware platform has a year to cook longer than it's competition, every year there's a real advantage. Stronger hardware, greater graphical power, and it was simply a moment of when is that stake driven into the ground, and that's what the designers have to work with."

>>2851536
The Jaguar's CPU's were pretty close to Saturn's.

Sega thought they were clever.

>>2851536
If we're going to play what if; consider that the 3DO was much easier to program than the Jag or Saturn.

If the 3DO had a better launch ($200 cheaper and a less bland controller) how would it have fared in the console war?

>>2851546
in what sense? the fact that they were all CPUs?

are you nuts?

>>2851593
They are not similar at all. The guy is just full of shit.

>>2851578
Well 3DO looks kinda underpowered in 2D and 3D, and that price drop still would be more expensive than the PS1.

>>2851490
>Wasn't the Saturn designed as a 2D console
No. Enough with this urban legend.

>>2846345
> Overly diverse product line without enough strong IP that could move systems.
> Created a junk attachment that devalued their brand and weakened consumer confidence
> Excess of stock they didn't work to move from shelves alienated retailers, and cost them potential fans
> Didn't listen to their employees who knew what it took to succeed in international markets
> Alienated longtime fans
> Terrible cashflow management, often times excessively spending on experimental projects that were content sparse and had limited appeal.

>>2851595
In the clock speed

>>2851578
The 3DO wasn't even in the game. No one gave a shit about it.

>>2851767
Well, it was primarily meant to be a 2d machine, a System 32 in a home console like how the Megadrive was a System 16.

When the PS1 specs came out, they changed the main cup from a NEC V60 to the dual SH2 which would be better at doing 3d math, and tacked on another mbyte of memory.

>>2852037
>In the clock speed

The clock speed means fuck all, and the 28.7MHz is just a multiple of the NTSC colourburst anyway.

>>2852062
>NEC V60
The V60 was already used by Sega to do some 3D stuff. See: Model 1 games.

>>2852112
The Model 1 had FIVE co-processors to offload the 3d math to, and it had video hardware with ten times the fill rate of a N64.

It having a Nec V60 main cpu means nothing.

>It wasn't the Saturn
>It wasn't the 32X/Neptune debacle
>It was PlayStation killed the Sega

>All this PlayStation arguing in here

If Sega had a Sonic game from launch, it would've sold so many more systems.

>>2852160
>video hardware with ten times the fill rate of a N64.

Scratch that, I compared the wrong specs. It was 2-3x only, which was still a ton since it actually could use that with proper textures and large resolution.

>>2852160
Oh, yeah. Of course it was to be a low-cost version of that, but Sega definitely had in mind at least Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter when planning for their console.
Keep in mind that on paper, the very first plans was that (Megadrive + Mega CD + 32X) == (Saturn). This view was short-lived, obviously. The Saturn would have been a very, very gimped console - but still designed with basic 3D in mind.

>>2852186
Where are you getting your fill rate specs from?

Seems like it would be easy to miscalculate the exact ratios considering the N64 has a lot of helper units (Filter, Blender, Combiner) along its graphic pipeline.

>>2852038
3DO sold 4 times as many units as Jaguar.

>>2852250
Correction
3DO sold 8 times as many units as Jaguar

>Companies in the 90s thought they should rush out shitty underdeveloped 32-bit consoles

>Atari Panther - Cancelled
>Sega Neptune - Cancelled
>Nintendo Virtual Boy - Released and horrible flop that puts a bad mark on Nintendo that probably hurt 64 a bit and helped 64 drag down GameCube too

These people, they never learn.

>>2852634
may of lacked games but the virtual boy was way fuckin better than anything sega had on the table...
>nothing because they didn't do vr

>>2855308
I was comparing the 32-bit consoles from Atari, Nintendo and Sega and why they all failed.

>>2850820
on what arcade hardware was sega using Dual SH2? did you make this shit up?

Model 1 used a NEC CPU
Model 2 used an Intel i960
Model 3 used PPC 603
Naomi used SH4 just like the Dreamcast

what the hell are you talking about lol
surely you don't mean the STV which is literally a Saturn arcade board?

>>2851595
exactly my point.

>>2852037
clock speed means absolutely nothing other than a straight apples-to-apples comparison of the raw number.

literally nothing.

>>2850820
>No it was it's dual sh-2 setup that they were using in the arcade which most people couldn't program well for.
It was only used on STV, which was essentially a Saturn arcade board. Model 2 and 3 blown the fuck out of the Saturn in 3D

>Sega also didn't predict 3d coming in so soon
They literally popularized 3D, it was just a weird/rushed decision to focus on 2D.

>thus why it's a 2d monster and shit at 3d.
It's a monster at 2D because its hardware is designed for 2D, genius.

>>2852171
Sega should have tried to get a 2D/2.5D Sonic on the Saturn within a year of launch. It would have helped the Saturn be a little more competitive outside Japan.

>>2855308
Virtual Boy never was VR.
Now fuck off already, shithead. We've had enough of your stupid anti-sega agenda.

>>2846434
What the fuck are you doing on a board for retro video games? You do know that literally every other board is about something different?

>>2850779
I love losers like you, I love knowing how you nurse your pathetic hatred decade after decade, it fuels me : )

>>2850170
Are you really using this as an example. I'm a big Dreamcastfag, but it's unfair to compare the PS2 and DC versions of DoA2 because the PS2 release was not intended to be the final release of the game. That's why it looks like such shit.

>>2855839
>They literally popularized 3D, it was just a weird/rushed decision to focus on 2D.

not in home consoles.

Lets remember what else is going on in its development/release timeframe of 92 or so.

and especially in Japan.

Who was Sega competing with in the home market at the time and technically disadvantaged to? Superfamicom because of the sony sound engine, The PC-Engine and the original Neo Geo MVS. All 3 had major color/rez improvements over the Megadrive.

So when the megacd came out, it helped with the additional sound engine and the computational power a bit which was exactly what they wanted, but couldn't get around the basic graphics output limitations of the original console it was attached to.

It makes sense that when they designed the Saturn, they were only interested in being superior to these other home consoles offerings at first. The only 3-D stuff sega dabbled in at that point in home consoles was a couple of 3-d scaling effects added to the megacd and the Virtuaprocessor. So they probably thought they just needed to have a hard chip comparable to the Virtuaprocessor in the system to do 'enough' 3-d to outshine what anyone else was doing in Japan.

Until Playstation dropped their bomb, nobody else was talking about 3-d in home market seriously in Japan. The new Pc-engine machine the pc-fx that was coming out wasnt talking about any 3-d capability, the neo geo wasn't getting any changes, and until sony broke up with nintendo the two of them werent talking serious 3d yet either.

remember the gap in arcade machine performance was still pretty huge just for 2-d performance (excepting neo geo). Street Fighter 2 coming out in a halfway decent form on ANY home machine was a big farking deal.

and what happens in japan tends to stay in japan, so the home pc 3-d revolution that began to break with openGL in 1991, and d3d later was largely ignored.