/vr/ - Retro Games

Saturnfags, explain this: why is Saturn referred to as the king of 2D? Considering PlayStation's superior specs, wouldn't that mean the PlayStation could do 2D games better as well?

>>7407461
Or... you could just google it.

>>7407461
Playstation has better 3D specs but not 2D specs

>>7407496
>>7407515
And of course, Saturnfags can't defend their ridiculous position. Checkmate.
*tips fedora*
I bid you adieu.

>>7407461
Saturn has better specs, it's just almost nobody knew how to use it.

>>7407461
You're delusional if you think Playstation has better specs. The Sega Saturn has two 32-bit processors. Also the 3D fighting games on the Sega Saturn look much better than the 3D fighting games on the Playstation. Just compare Virtual Fighter 2 to any Tekken game. Also Batman Forever The Arcade Game looks much better on the Sega Saturn than it does on the Playstation.

>>7407446
>implying the Shiturn could do anything right

>>7407583
This game looks like shit, you fucking nigger. Nobody likes virtual fighter.

>>7407583
I like Sega in general, but people like you make it harder to keep doing so.

>>7407610
False. First off that's from Virtua Fighter 1, not Virtua Fighter 2. Secondly if nobody loved Virtua Fighter, then how did it managed to spawn sequels?

>>7407620
>False-flagging
Okay Nincel.

>>7407552
The saturn only has better specs on paper, as soon as you try to use them it all falls apart

>>7407630
Saying "Nincel" makes you look weak and gay. Incel an SJW word.

>>7407461
>why is Saturn referred to as the king of 2D?
The Saturn had two video processors, one for handling sprites and polygons and another for handling background layers. When combined these processors made the Saturn a very capable 2D machine. The Saturn also had 12 Mbit of VRAM vs the PlayStations 8 Mbit of VRAM.

>>7407583
>3D fighting games on the Sega Saturn look much better than the 3D fighting games on the Playstation. Just compare Virtual Fighter 2 to any Tekken game

Seriously just stop. As much as I like the Saturn and as good as Virtua Fighter 2 looked running in the Saturns high resolution mode, the characters were also completely flat and lacked any kind of lighting and shading. In fact when they added these effects in Fighting Vipers and Fighters Megamix the resolution took a huge drop as a result.

>>7407461
The Saturn is far more powerful than PlayStation, but its extremely inflexible. You can achieve impressive results if you design your graphics around its oddities, but if you want something which does not work with its architecture then you are pretty much screwed.

>>7407663
Only on this board full of incels high on copium

>>7407552
>*dabs at yo face*
heh, nothing personnel kid

>>7407663
>getting triggered by the word "nincel"
>Thinks incel is just an SJW word
Obviously you haven't heard the phrase "Social Justice Incel". The only thing that makes people weak and gay, is getting triggered. You're definitely triggered.

>>7407737
False. Tekken was lacking 3D objects in their backgrounds, resulting in the backgrounds looking 2D. Virtua Fighter 2 looked 3D because it was using 3D backgrounds, which made it look great. So yes Virtua Fighter 2 looked more graphically impressive than any of the Tekken games.

>>7407823
Think whatever you want, I just think it's sad that people are using an ineffective and bafflingly bad insult to defend their position (a position which I agree with, by the way).

>>7407823
>Virtua Fighter 2 looked 3D because it was using 3D backgrounds

Virtua Fighter 2 on the Satunn used 2D backgrounds. Any illusions of depth you see is just because of the number of layers that VDP2 was able to output, scale and rotate. VF2 looked great at the time but stop over exaggerating you retard.

>>7407823
>Virtua Fighter 2 looked 3D because it was using 3D backgrounds
Only in the arcade.

>>7407823
Wrong. Incel is a lefty buzzword. Stop trying to fit in with us real right-wing chuds and fuck off back to your plebbit sub, niggerfaggot.

>>7407841
Ineffective? Bad insult? LOL If you say so. It triggers most people I've interacted with.

>>7407882
I meant to say 3D objects, but yes. And no I'm not exaggerating. I actually play the games, unlike you.

>>7407934
Like I told the other anon, I meant 3D objects.

>>7408225
>chuds
No self-respecting right-winger calls themselves "Chuds" ya dumb social justice incel.

>>7408687
>No self-respecting right-winger calls themselves "Chuds"
Yea we do, cuz it means chad + stud.

>>7407446
Wasn't designed to.

>>7407461
Saturn had a dedicated background processor which could do scanline/HDMA effects better than any console ever made. It could also interact with sprites and polygons in such a way that was almost impossible until pixel shader effects became the norm - but to be fair, the console did not live long enough for these effects to be properly exploited, the most you could see was a background effect being used as a "2d" overlay on a polygon shape (the final boss in Nights and the emerald level in Sonic R for example).

Also the polygon bandwidth was just too slow to do extra special effects anyway. Most you got was Burning Rangers and Sonic R.

The Playstation *did* have better specs and it *could have* equalled the background processors abilities through pure software trickery, but the Playstation did not have enough memory to do so.

>>7408752
>but the Playstation did not have enough memory to do so.
The Playstation was the only console of that generation to not have a RAM expansion. Maybe it would be possible to do so through the parallel port, but they never used that for anything official.

>>7407882
VF2 on Saturn had backgrounds that looked like ass and lacked any depth whatsoever. You had a 3d ground plane flying over a bunch of bitmaps, it looked awful.

Vipers and Megamix made it a bit better by making the backgrounds look like very far away objects and the ground being over a simple color, and Megamix also had large open plains which looked less stupid but now it felt like you were fighting in the great plains several miles away from civilization.

Last Bronx had backgrounds with proper perspective distortion baked into them, so it actually looked like a 3d arena, miles better than VF2. It also had ceilings.

>>7407461
It's a meme engineered by coping Saturnfags and resellers trying to artificially inflate the value of Saturn games. Not being able to do proper transparency automatically puts its 2D below the PSX's as far as I'm concerned, and the workarounds in games like Burning Rangers and Guardian Heroes all have major limitations.

>>7407739
>The Saturn is far more powerful than PlayStation
Stopped reading. There are at least 3 Saturn programming gurus I know of that say the Saturn is weaker than the PSX, the guy behind the Jo engine, Ezra Dreisbach, and Jon Burton. Really, all you have to do is take an honest look at the games, all the butchered ports and graphically unimpressive original titles from Sega, even celebrated ones like VF2, Sega Rally, Burning Rangers, and PDZ, which are all outclassed (graphically) by scores of PSX games, and it should be obvious the Saturn is a dramatically inferior machine in terms of hardware. I mean honestly, do you really think the Saturn could have pulled off Silent Hill? Or Alien Resurrection? Or Soul Reaver, or MGS, or Crash Bandicoot, or Lego Racers, or NFS3, or Spyro, or GT2, or Dino Crisis, or Soul Blade, or TR4?

>the most striking thing about the PlayStation port was how much faster the graphics hardware was than the Saturn. The initial scene after you just start the game is pretty complex. I think it ran 20 fps on the Saturn version. On the PlayStation it ran 30, but the actual rendering part could have been going 60 if the CPU calculations weren’t holding it up. I don’t know if it would have ever been possible to get it to really run 60, but at least there was the potential...

>So I know something about the PlayStation. And really, if you couldn’t tell from the games, the PlayStation is way better than the Saturn. It’s way simpler and way faster. There are a lot of things about the Saturn that are totally dumb. Chief among these is that you can’t draw triangles, only quadrilaterals.

the saturn can actually do transparency right

>>7408687
did you make that to feel better about yourself or something lol

>>7408815
No, why do you think every game does dithering instead?

Playstation couldn't even handle running Radiant Silvergun according to Treasure's CEO. Shit system for poor plebians.

>>7408802
Good post overall, but the quads were the only thing about the Saturn better than the PSX, you're basically drawing two tris at once. If it weren't for the other holdups that'd make rendering much, much faster than the PSX.

>>7408848
Yeah because in that particular instance the VDP2 backgrounds give the Saturn and edge over the Playstation. But 90% of the time that isn't the case.

>>7407823
That's an ironic quote coming from a MtF tranny

>>7408861
> CEO says the system can't run the game
> Durrr it's because the VDP is too good
lol nice b8 m8

>>7408867
wow one guy said something nice about the Saturn, congrats.

>>7407461
>why is Saturn referred to as the king of 2D?
King of 2D is the CPS3
> the PlayStation could do 2D games better as well?
The playstation isnt capable of 2D. Apart from tiling a background together. Most "2D" playstation games are actually running 3D polygon engines.
>PlayStation's superior specs
Thats just make.believe marketing.

Both Tekken 3 and Virtua Fighter 2 have 3D polygonal backgrounds. Both home console versions couldn't deal with that. So VF2 on Saturn has flat texture backgrounds. And the same is true for Tekken 3, having a texture in the background on the PSX. The more you know...

>>7408903
Cope.

>>7407585

Saturn had, theoretically the best potential. No games reached that because it was badly documented and lacked libraries, meaning devs had to waste all their time trying to figure out how to do basic things on a maze-like system that performed its functions in ways unlike all others before and after, while blind.

Saturn was bad more because Sega were absolute cunts than because of the hardware being incapable.

>>7407515
>Playstation has better 3D specs
No it doesn't.

>>7409394
It do. Saturn's VDP1 is shit at pushing polygons.

>>7408903
System 32 was better

>>7409420
Another anon already pointed out Radiant Silvergun couldn't even run on Playstation. There isn;t a single Playstation game that couldn't run on Saturn.

>saturnfags are this delusional

>>7409438
are consolewar fags really this deluded?

If you want an example of the Saturn's superiority in the right hands, just look at what happened to Powerslave when they tried to port it to Playstation. Just a disaster.

>>7409482
>game made for one console didn't port over to another console well
it's almost as if consoles were more unique in programming than they are now

>>7409482
Here's your tomb raider saturn bros

>>7409493
*and this is the original platform :)

>>7409458
Still waiting for you to list games Saturn couldn't do.

>>7409505
>>7408802

>>7408802
Link me up Jon Burton saying any of that. I read his thing on programming Sonic R back in the day.

>>7408730
Chad already meant stud. It means Chad + dud. A dud Chad. But of course nobody is going to keep internet slurs consistent, because only idiots that don't research shit use them and as such the meaning changes to suit the user.

Also pretty sure the term incel was created by the incel community as a descriptive term to bring attention to the involuntary nature of their celibacy, which ultimately backfired considering how being an inconsiderate entitled narcissist and being ignored in the dating pool as a result is hardly involuntary. This is the part where you call me a cuck and continue ignoring the declining quality in your relationships.

>>7409547
>Also pretty sure the term incel was created by the incel community as a descriptive term to bring attention to the involuntary nature of their celibacy, which ultimately backfired considering how being an inconsiderate entitled narcissist and being ignored in the dating pool as a result is hardly involuntary.
>This is the part where you call me a cuck
no, this is the part where i call you pic related

>>7408802
>>7408841
>Saturn can't do transparencies because I get my pro gamer opinions from the only rag for pro gamers, GamePro!
https://youtu.be/f_OchOV_WDg 1:59
Also
>All these games that for sure could have never been done on the Saturn, such as Lego Racers
And you call Saturn fans delusional. It would have been entirely possible, uh bless you care to explain how it couldn't be? Burden of proof and all that?
>>7409420
>The chip that doesn't do 3D calculations is bad at 3D calculations
Hot take. Good thing the VDP-2 is there or else the system would have been worthless to idiots that genuinely believe low resolution textures and polygons look good.

>>7409568
>Ctrl-C Ctrl-V madposting this hard
>Not knowing rudimentary image board history
Lurk moar fag

>>7409643
if you think the term "incel" was created on an image board you are fucking retarded and there's nothing anyone can do to help you

>>7407515
>>>7407461
>Playstation has better 3D specs but not 2D specs

As far as I can tell. The Playstation 1 cannot handle 2D sprites . the PS1 is based entirely on triangle based rendering, and textures are applied via UV mapping. The Playstation 1's sprite engine, just simulates a 2D game engine with polygons.

The Sega Saturn uses something based on Sega's Super scaler hardware? It handles 2D sprites, but manipulates them in 3D using quadrilaterals by applying vertices to each corner. The sprites are basically the textures themselves. The N64 falls into triangle based rendering as well.

>>7409719
what are you talking about?

>>7409501
>*and this is the original platform :)

Tomb Raider on the Saturn is still one of the best 3D adventure platformers on the system. The game itself runs at 20FPS, while the PS1 port runs at a perfect 30fps. The DOS release also runs at 30fps max, depending on the hardware configuration, and also supports many different 3D accelerator cards.

The developers chose the Sega Saturn as the lead platform, it has something to do with the developers not watching to remodel everything twice. it is not possible to export PS1 models to the Saturn without heavy remodeling to work within the quadrilateral modeling limitation. But it was easy to convert a Saturn model to the PC or PS1 as triangles. Lara's chunky model in TR1 is the result of all other ports using the Saturn models. But with Tomb Raider 2. Sony probably money-hatted them to push development over to the PS1 as the lead console.

>>7409773
>what are you talking about?

It can do sprites. But it renders them using polygons.

>>7409809
that's N64 not PS1

>>7409813
It's both. Psx and n64 can't do real 2d sprites like the saturn.

>>7409719
After the forth generation all consoles possessed enough RAM to use framebuffer rendering. I believe the only exceptions which used scanline rendering were the Saturn, Jaguar, and Nintendo DS, but even then it was a mixed case as most games still buffered a full screen bitmapped image before display.

But in any case, what exactly is the difference between a flat polygon and a sprite tile? The PSX takes a texture bitmap from VRAM and copies it into the buffering frame. It has coordinates on a screen that can go up, down, left, right just like any 2d console. The polygon can use many textures to simulate a walking, running, or jumping animation just like a sprite system uses multiple tiles. It can be scaled and rotated. It can be given a Z-value so one 2d polygon can be on top of or below another character or "tile." It's literally the same thing and the PSX offered just as much of a generational leap for 2D games as the Saturn or N64.

>>7409438
RSG is more of a 2D game than a 3D game. Only the boss is polygons, everything else is either sprites or tilemaps.

>>7409858
To be specific the PSX and N64 do not have dedicated 2D sprite hardware, but you can easily do a 2D scene in 3D hardware

>>7409617
Yes anon I'm sure a delusional fanboy like you is more knowledgeable of the Saturn's hardware and its capabilities than real Saturn developers.

>>7409650
It had a forum all its own in the nineties founded by a woman and open to all genders; By being so boisterous in being intentionally incorrect you've conceded. Lrn2Research

>>7410063
>I read over 9000 interviews and that means I'm now a Saturn hardware expert Getting flustered is not going to help your argumentation become logically cohesive. If I'm not mistaken, you asked
>I mean honestly, do you really think the Saturn could have pulled off Silent Hill? Or Alien Resurrection? Or Soul Reaver, or MGS, or Crash Bandicoot, or Lego Racers, or NFS3, or Spyro, or GT2, or Dino Crisis, or Soul Blade, or TR4?
Would it have been superior? Well, who's to say when we're speaking hypothetically? Is there any specific reason you believe it couldn't "pull it off"? Sure there would be quirks related to how the hardware interacts with the software, but as anon so aptly put it, >>7409492
>it's almost as if consoles were more unique in programming than they are now

>>7410078
>confusing image boards with generic forums

>>7410114
Not reading your schizo rant. Saturn is my favorite 5th gen console, but part of loving something is being realistic about it. Saturn is dramatically inferior to the PSX hardware wise 90% of the time, outside the few games like Panzer Dragoon Zwei, Radiant Silvergun, and Last Bronx whose sprawling backgrounds make the Saturn a better choice.

>>7410126
>pretending image boards aren't a type of forum
>not knowing forums have visitors overlapping from image boards
>not knowing the incel movement became what it is today because of image board posters
Lurk moar fag

>>7410205
>pretending all forums are image boards
>pretending english 2ch-style image boards existed in the 90s when the term "incel" was first coined
>thinking that because this term has shown up on image boards in recent years, this somehow changes the fact that it did not originate on an image board
>mfw trying to comprehend your utter retardation

>>7410135
Yet homebrew developers are currently able to push the system to pretty impressive levels. XL2 for example isn't being limited by VDP1 fillrate but instead by the SH-2s and he's pushing pretty high polygon counts with transparencies, lighting, etc. at ~30fps in Hellslave:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPYEiDwZbRc

Another homebrew developer who was working on PS1 stuff and decided to port it to Saturn actually noted how surprised he was because the SH-2s in the Saturn were significantly faster than the PS1 CPUs for things like Multiplication and Division.

>>7407461
Playstation can't do 2D at all, it just does 3D in a way that mimics 2D.

tfw 4th-gen 16-bit snes can produce hardware half-transparent effects but 5th-gen 32-bit saturn can't

>>7410135
>schizo rant deflection
You've now conceded on that front, so suit yourself. It wouldn't make me right to ignore your writing, that would only make me carelessly arrogant. We're not talking about game selection, that's entirely subjective. All video games can be enjoyable if you have the patience to appreciate them for their own merits, that's the essence of this board (or at least it was until this board became less about discussing games you like playing and more about showing off what games you personally like as an anonymous person to anonymous people (which is incredibly stupid and vain))

Digression aside, we're talking power, here. The PlayStation is great as a general purpose game system which is why 3d performed better, because developers could easily understand how the hardware interacted. Despite that, the Saturn can push a incredible amount of 2d sprites all with scaling and rotation. As a result, heavy-hitting popular franchises sold better on hardware that was easier to work with, but more complex and/or niche titles were better suited for complex niche architecture. PlayStation did better on the market, but it simply doesn't compare to what the Saturn was technically capable of.

It's like having the jaws of life to open a cardboard box. It's technically capable of more, it just isn't in the right place to be pushed to the max. Similarly, most developers weren't familiar with utilizing multiple cores in a system so they ended up ignoring most of them to make programming easier on themselves.

This happens in every Saturn bait thread: The topic starts as "graphics bad" or "games bad" then it becomes "sold bad". It has nothing to do with the capabilities or the games or even the sales. It's just feverish fanboy fanaticism. How lonely can you be?

>>7410213
>claiming image board influence on a forum is not image board culture
>non sequiturs and bad reading comprehension
>admitting you don't understand and being mad about it

>>7410295
english image boards did not exist it the 90s you dumb fucking monkey nigger
just admit you're retarded for thinking all rectangles are squares and be done with it

>>7407739
It is interesting to me how both Saturn & N64 in many ways are objectively more powerful (on paper) than PlayStation, but that certain developer-unfriendly architectural & design decisions greatly complicate &/or bottleneck the two systems. Sony just kinda won by default.

>>7410276
But it can

I kinda want a Saturn. I never knew anyone who had one growing up, most people had an N64 or PS.

>>7408802
>So I know something about the PlayStation. And really, if you couldn’t tell from the games, the PlayStation is way better than the Saturn. It’s way simpler and way faster. There are a lot of things about the Saturn that are totally dumb. Chief among these is that you can’t draw triangles, only quadrilaterals.

>>7408802 this

Which developer said that? There's literally nothing inherently wrong with calculating polygons in quadrilaterals rather than triangles, in fact it could be argued that it's more efficient & more conducive to curved/rounder geometry. The only real downside to Sega backing quad rendering is that everyone else in the industry (except 3DO & nVidia) were standardising tri rendering, necessitating graphic artists re-model all their assets just for Saturn or simply ignore the system. Also, the fact VDP1's quads are derived from heavily distorted 2D sprites was probably overcomplicated & bottlenecked how many could be stably drawn in hardware, but there's still nothing necessarily wrong with choosing quads as a primitive.

>>7410331
I'd say get one but games are pretty expensive for it now, maybe you could get MODE?

>>7410340
oops, meant to tag >>7408859 for 'this'

>>7410301
>Please concede as I'm emotionally unstable due to retardation
Not my fault you took "rudimentary image board culture" to mean "4chan invented the term incel" even though I explained how they didn't. I was talking about how it was recently coopted by image boards users from that original forum. That's what makes it image board culture. Lrn2reading comprehension

>>7410341
>>7410331
Not MODE, go with Professor Abrasive's Satiator, it's plug-'n'-play with no chassis disassembly + CD drive removal required. It just goes into the MPEG/VCD decompression slot on the back like an expansion card.

If Satiator (or MODE) are too expensive for you, just order a Pseudo Saturn Kai cart off AliExpress so you can at least play games of any region & burned CD-Rs.

>>7409719
>The Sega Saturn uses something based on Sega's Super scaler hardware? It handles 2D sprites, but manipulates them in 3D using quadrilaterals by applying vertices to each corner.
What you're describing is Saturn's VDP1, & I'm unsure it has a direct lineage with Yu Suzuki's Super Scaler. VDP1 may have been conceived by Hideki Sato for Saturn (& ST-V) alone. I do know that VDP2, added later & tasked with background drawing & 'Mode 7' style scaling & rotation thereof, was based on the graphics chip in Sega System 32, which itself was derived from Super Scaler.

>>7410343
consider learning english if you want to be understood

>>7410250
I don't think you're appreciating the approach that Playstation, Nintendo 64, 3DO, and all modern consoles past the forth generation did for producing 2D games. Would it have satisfied you if Sony had implemented a needless scanline buffer to display bitmap images arranged as tiles randomly in VRAM for doing 2D rather than using the VDC they already used for displaying buffered frames?

>>7410353
saturn emulation has gotten good enough as is so dont even bother with original hardware

>>7410353
>Professor Abrasive's Satiator
That's neat anon, thank you.

>>7410381
>the approach that Playstation, Nintendo 64, 3DO, and all modern consoles past the forth generation did for producing 2D games
Traditional composition of 2D graphics was deployed as recently as the DS

>>7410376
You can't? I'm shocked. Not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_OchOV_WDg

who gives a shit about transparency
just use composite on a crt like a normal person
rgb is a scam my life in gaming is a gayop

>>7410391
I know as I had posed this >>7409917 earlier in the thread mentioning the DS. If you're interested at all, you might want to dig into the Atari Jaguar a bit as it had a powerful line buffer as well that was used both for displaying traditional tiles and sprites as well as displaying a fully buffered frame like you'd see from the PSX, Nintendo 64, or the Saturn's VDP1. The point is, Sony didn't need to implement a traditional sprite engine because their own video display controller was able to accomplish this fast enough with flat polygons. It's the exact same result using different methods; It's real 2D, just a more advanced fifth generation version of it.

>>7410427
Alright. Inversely, I'm curious as to whether or not you would define the graphics Saturn's graphics chipset (VDP1 &/or VDP2) produces as real 3D.

>>7410384
how you play it is irrelevant

>>7410402
sorry, this is an english speaking image boa- i mean, forum. can you reformat what you wrote in english, please? much appreciated

>>7410284
Can the Saturn handle FF9? Didn't think so.

>>7409917
>But in any case, what exactly is the difference between a flat polygon and a sprite tile? The PSX takes a texture bitmap from VRAM and copies it into the buffering frame. It has coordinates on a screen that can go up, down, left, right just like any 2d console. The polygon can use many textures to simulate a walking, running, or jumping animation just like a sprite system uses multiple tiles. It can be scaled and rotated. It can be given a Z-value so one 2d polygon can be on top of or below another character or "tile." It's literally the same thing and the PSX offered just as much of a generational leap for 2D games as the Saturn or N64.


I'm not really saying that the end result is really much different. Both these machines use different methods to render their sprites, is all i was saying. It seems like, the PS1 does have some sort of 2D engine that still used polygons, but it functioned just like a 2D game on the SNES. The PS1 was designed around rendering triangles. sprites are applied like textures through UV mapping. Sony did design the PS1 around rendering polygons.

>>7410612
By merit of PDS existing, it's not impossible.

>>7410557
It always has been despite your attempts to delude yourself otherwise. Has a reduced focus on public school budgeting indirectly affected your cognitive capability, compadre?

>>7410612
why would it not?

>giving a shit
Graphicsbabies. I swear to fuck, every single one of you should be forced to play Atari VCS games only for at least 2 years so you can understand that gaming isn't about fucking graphics.

>>7410810
/thread

>>7410810
I know this is a retro board but if the game has below Super Nintendo graphics I ain't gonna waste my time on that grandpa shit.

>>7410838
https://youtu.be/w025kQRMZwA 1:49