What the FUCK were they thinking??

[Anonymous No.7400929]

>Yep this is an AMAZING 2D machine-oh shit did you hear that Sony's gonna come out with a fully 3D one? Better just add more processors, chip controllers and a daughterboard just to be sure. I'm sure someone will figure it out...

[Anonymous No.7400960]

>>7400929
They weren't thinking, OP.
They were desperate and afraid. The Saturn was originally the Neptune. Sega thought 32bit 2D gaming and home-perfect arcade games were the future and 3D was a meme.

[Anonymous No.7400982]

>>7400960
I can't blame them. A lotta people though FMV's were the future too and after the Sega CD failed, they probably thought everything else was a meme as well.

[Anonymous No.7401119]

>>7400982
I always felt the PS1 and N64 forced "the future" to arrive way too quickly, that maybe technology wasn't quite ready for 3D gaming.

[Anonymous No.7401143]

>>7400960
A built up Neptune wouldn't have been that bad, to be honest. Not great, but probably more marketable than the Saturn with its lower price. Get rid of the 32x add-on concept and build up the specs a bit with the Neptune (keeping Genesis backwards compatibility) and Sega could probably have limped along with higher profits in the home market for a bit longer.

For example, keep the genlock chip to allow the genesis to act as a background or sprite layer like a cut down VDP2, replace its barebones 32x VDP with the Saturn's VDP1, and bump work RAM from 256kb to 1mb at 32-bits wide.

[Anonymous No.7401145]

>>7400982
FMVs sold FF7
>>7401119
3d was perfectly ok by then
compare to 3d 4th gen games

[Anonymous No.7401178]

>>7400929
Still better than both the Jaguar and excessively postponed PC-FX.

[Anonymous No.7401191]

>>7400929
Saturn >>> Playstation. 32bit 3D sucked anyway in general, unless it was SEGA Model2 board.

[Anonymous No.7401258]

>>7401178
Oh, the PC-FX was the failed PC Engine successor, right? redpill me on it.

[Anonymous No.7401263]

>>7400929
>Sega making bad decisions and having bad management
Oh no! It's almost like it's THEIR fault they don't make consoles anymore and their main franchise is considered a laughing stock.

[Anonymous No.7401270]

>>7400929
Ironic that it was one of the few times Nintendo didn't turn 10 year old technology into a 300 dollar product.

[Anonymous No.7401308]

>>7401258
Yes, it was the hyped and failed successor the the PC-Engine.

[Anonymous No.7401315]

>>7401263
Sega should either make their main franchise Yakuza or Phantasy Star or NiGHTS Make NiGHTS 3 dammit!

[Anonymous No.7401482]

>>7400960
>They were desperate and afraid
Their entire launch strategy reeked of desperation. It was essentially "get this out the door ASAP, we'll kill the newcomer by being first to market!" They took this to a comical extreme with the US launch, burning bridges with retailers in the process.
The desperation also showed in the advertising, at least for the Japanese market with Segata Sanshiro. "How do we market our console? I know, let's have a boomer judoka beat up strangers for not owning one!"
What were they thinking, indeed.

[Anonymous No.7401486]

>>7400929
You are a complete fool if you think it wasn't light years ahead of the competition.
https://youtu.be/QgksfOYP0SI

[Anonymous No.7401491]

>>7401482
>How do we market our console? I know, let's have a boomer judoka beat up strangers for not owning one
Now, to be fair, that wasn't just any random boomer, that was mother fucking japanese pop culture icon Kamen Rider.

[Anonymous No.7401495]

>>7401486
Thanks, mods.

[Anonymous No.7401531]

>>7401191
keep smoking that glass cock

[Anonymous No.7401532]

>>7401315
NiGHTS sucks, christmas NiGHTS is pretty cool though, you can play as sonic :)

[Anonymous No.7401535]

>>7401486
Saturn wad/is a steaming pile of shit with 0 games

[Anonymous No.7401537]

>>7401535
was*

[Anonymous No.7401540]

>>7401119
Considering that everyone complains about "muh jaggies" or "muh blur", yeah, I agree, 3d was extremely rushed and they basically did it just because they could without thinking about *how* they should do it.

[Anonymous No.7401564]

>>7401540
I guess a small mercy is that experimenting with it meant the sixth gen they werent ass-blind and more or less knew what they were doing.
It's a shame though it was the gen where the gears were starting to shift from gameplay into "realism, graphics, bloom, brown and blood" which plagued the seventh gen.
I really don't miss brown and bloom at all.

[Anonymous No.7401573]

>>7401119
the tech was fine, there was nothing preventing sony or nintendo releasing dual analog controllers in 1996, getting their heads around manual camera control would have just been delayed another gen.

[Anonymous No.7401590]

>>7400929
Well, today people invest in electric cars as if they can become more than strictly a niche product. Your hindsight is always perfect.

There is not much to wonder about, except for dual CPU. Most game console and home computer systems were built around specific accelerator chips providing common functions. Doing it with powerful general purpose processor would make the system prohibitively expensive, or would be impossible because of technological limitations of the era.

[Anonymous No.7401617]

>>7400929
ummm, m8, it was a 3d console from the design stage

cheaper to use multiple cheap chips than a few high end chips

not dev friendly though

[Anonymous No.7401625]

>>7401535
AVGN said it was a based console and he's in my favorite band now so fuck off.

[Anonymous No.7401634]

>>7401625
based and nerd-pilled

[Anonymous No.7401641]

>>7401625
This is the worst goddamn gif ever, we get it, Rolfe's in a gay band haha.

[Anonymous No.7401647]

>>7401641

[Anonymous No.7401773]

>>7401641
Don't even try to reason with these redditors. Even when the mods are not being lazy and they remove their spam, they keep enforcing it further. It'll continue until either /vr/ disappears for some reason or James Rolfe dies.

[Anonymous No.7401868]

>>7401119
The technology had existed since the 1980s, the I, Robot people proved it.

The issue is, 3D was used as a gimmick as much as it was for gameplay.

[Anonymous No.7401973]

If they DOCUMENTED IT AND PROVIDED LIBRARIES TO MAKE USE OF THEIR HARDWARE ADDITIONS maybe the Saturn would have blown everything else out of the water with all its weird unwieldy power. Instead 60% of devs time was unfucking what they had, reconciling what little (erroneous) docs they had with what was actually in the Saturn, and creating from scratch the tools they would need to even begin developing a game.

Sega didn't just oopsie one step of the way and begin an accidental and very unfair, tragic spiral of their company. This was a constant pattern of arrogance, negligence and dismissal that created compounding problems at every step.

[Anonymous No.7402000]

>>7401641
This board has the worst memes

[Anonymous No.7402029]

>>7401143
If they did this with CDs instead of cartridges I believe they would have hung in there a lot longer.

[Anonymous No.7402038]

>>7401625
>>7401647
I've never played a guitar outside of guitar hero. Can someone explain why this gif is so cringe?

[Anonymous No.7402679]

>>7401617
>it was a 3d console from the design stage
then why did it suck so hard at 3D? As far as true 3D games go the only mildly impressive one is Panzer Dragoon Saga, which even then you can see the huge amount of shortcuts taken to achieve the 3D world.
Burning Rangers is also embarrassing compared to what could be done with 3D on the N64 and PS1.

[Anonymous No.7402691]

>>7400960
>Sega thought 32bit 2D gaming and home-perfect arcade games were the future and 3D was a meme
they were based but delusional at the same time

[Anonymous No.7402736]

>>7400960
Even if they thought 3D was a meme, why design a fucking 2D friendly console with no transparencies that was 200 dollars more than the MOST 3D capable console?
Seriously I still can't wrap my fucking head around why the Saturn was so damn expensive when it was so obviously worse in hardware to both of its competitors.

[Anonymous No.7402791]

>>7402736
>when it was so obviously worse in hardware to both of its competitors.
It was more powerful than PSX.

[Anonymous No.7402805]

>>7402791
>citations needed
if it was, why the fuck did it have no impressive 3D games?

[Anonymous No.7402813]

>>7402805
Tomb Raider 1 came out on Saturn first and looked better than PS1

[Anonymous No.7402821]

>>7402813
>1 game, and a very early simple one at that
I'd like to see a Saturn run Silent Hill or Metal Gear Solid.
the fucking thing can't even run Symphony of the Night and can't even do transparencies, where did the fucking extra 100 dollars over the PS1 go? WHERE DID IT GO?

[Anonymous No.7402889]

>>7402805
Sega of Japan didn't exactly explain how to get the most out of the Saturn leading to shitty looking games.

[Anonymous No.7402915]

>>7402889
Even still, what would a Saturn game at 100% capacity even look like? I can't imagine a Saturn running Perfect Dark or Turok 2 or Ocarina or MGS.
Maybe there could have been a bad port of Megaman Legends that barely worked?

[Anonymous No.7402924]

>>7402813
>a game made SPECIFICALLY made for saturn looked better on saturn
>even then it runs between 5~10 fps slower than on ps1

[Anonymous No.7402963]

>>7402924
Like the 3DO, the Saturn bases its 3D on quads.

[Anonymous No.7403027]

>>7402736
>Even if they thought 3D was a meme
This is a stretch since their top arcade games leading up to its launch were virtual fighter, virtual cop, and Daytona. Sega was at the forefront pushing the 3D games at the arcades in the early 90s and reaping the rewards. The entire purpose of the saturn at launch was to bring the hit AM2 games home and they were all 3D.

[Anonymous No.7403038]

>>7403027
But they added it's 3d capabilities at the last minute.

[Anonymous No.7403050]

>>7403038
I'm just saying if Sega thought it was a fad or meme, it was one they created. I can't think of any other game developer that was anywhere close to Sega in terms of 3D visuals in 1993/1994.

[Anonymous No.7403063]

>>7403027
The Saturn was entirely designed by a Japanese team who was only looking at Japanese markets and what Japanese consumers wanted.
Doing simple home console ports of more "easy" 3D games like racers and fighters and maybe some rail shooters seemed like a good strategy to them. The Saturn's hardware isn't THAT bad at 3D that it couldn't at least do these types of simple short games with competence.

The real problem is they had no idea that the tastes basically everywhere else in the world were shifting away from arcades and entirely towards long, content heavy, and most importantly increasingly complex 3D games. This is where Nintendo really fucking designed their hardware right with the 4 controller ports and basically a full focus on 3D game design. Sega geared themselves up for Virtua Fighter and Daytona USA when the masses wanted Ocarina of Time and MGS. They just completely failed to connect to what foreign consumers wanted.
Just more bad management, maybe if Sega of Japan had actually bothered looking at Europe and America they'd see the arcade business was dying and taste in games was changing.

[Anonymous No.7403262]

>>7403063
>The real problem is they had no idea that the tastes basically everywhere else in the world were shifting away from arcades and entirely towards long, content heavy, and most importantly increasingly complex 3D games.

The industry was changing at a an unprecedented pace in the 90s not seen before or ever since. Just 5 years in the 90s saw more evolution in game design than we have seen from 2001 through 2016.

Over just a few years:
>emergence of the modern 2D and 3D fighting games
>3D platformers
>emergence of FPS
>emergence of RTS (Herzog was a precursor but dune/warcraft/starcraft/aoe solidified the genre)
>4X emerged as a seperate entity from the older stategy games that focused on building or war, but not both together
>survival horror
>quick time event cinematic action games (die hard, the precursor to God of war, Spiderman and countless others)
>modern stealth games (MGS, splinter cell)
>emergence of MMORPG
>modern era of JRPG began in the late 90s
>modern era of WRPGs for both first person (elder scrolls) and isometric looters (diablo)

In the decades since then, the games got a bit more pretty and a bit more HD, but few modern games would otherwise not surprise or wow anyone in 1998. The core gameplay and game design has changed little.

[Anonymous No.7403319]

>>7402679
>then why did it suck so hard at 3D?
Numerous issues, but the biggest misstep was with its video subsystem. The types of 3D games which were popular at the time would not have relied so heavily on VDP2, meaning VDP1 was the work horse, which is a problem because it has one-quarter of the fillrate as the PSX.

>>7402791
>It was more powerful than PSX.
Perhaps in some very specific cases that could be argued. Even if we were to grant that as fact for all scenarios, it doesn't change the fact that it took so many more large ICs to accomplish that, made manufacturing more expensive, and made consolidating the console onto fewer/cheaper chips absurdly difficult.

[Anonymous No.7403338]

>>7403063
I think this is a good analysis.

[Anonymous No.7403339]

>>7400960
Took the words right out of my mouth.

...also the Shiturn just sucked balls and pandered to gooks. It was not our future.

[Anonymous No.7403392]

>>7403038
The last month or two, more like it. You can't add actual 3D hardare in just a minute.

[Anonymous No.7403424]

>>7403063

Virtua Fighter 1-2 were massive hits, and would have sold way more on the PS as well. It would probably be a big series even to this day. Tekken was PlayStations' answer to VF.

[Anonymous No.7403594]

>>7403424
And fighting vipers. That was segas more action packed fighting game with more exaggerated physics and environment and clothing destruction. It was more like an early DOA.

[Anonymous No.7403621]

>>7403594
>>7403424

VF started the 3D fighter fad, and if VF had been on the PS Tekken wouldn't have sold as much and we likely would have gotten VF3 on the PS. VF was a genunie big hit, but was it enough to sell a enough Saturns? I could instead buy the PS and get Tekken and get a similar enough experience.

So the post was correct but VF was exactly the right kind of game for the time because it showed off 3D so well and was so cutting edge. Saturn did have some genuine hits and VF and their fighting games were among them. But their lack of hits in other genres that can compare or match up to what the N64 or PS were putting out was damning.

>>7403063

The funny thing is that FF7 and MGS are actually quite conservative games that add flash and 3D graphics to essentially 2D games. I've noticed in general top down games were much easier to translate to 3D because they have a pseudo-3D effect while side-scrollers are more tied to 2D and harder to translate.

[Anonymous No.7403715]

>>7402736
The 3do had hardware transparancies, its an area thats really sticks out, it would have affected peoples opinions of the system when seeing it side by side with the ps1 in stores.

Still reviewers said Saturns graphics were spectacular. This is what a $300 graphics card would get you near the Saturn's launch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C5FYFluOBQ

>>7403063
Nintendo got lucky that sgi had some leftovers they wanted to flog off

[Anonymous No.7403741]

>>7400929
I want more 2D mid nineties games.

[Anonymous No.7404297]

>>7403715
>PC gaming in the 90s
please don't remind me, until the fucking Voodoo 2 came out you may as well have not bothered because whatever card you bought would be useless in like 3 months, and that's if the port you got was remotely decent compared to the console versions in the first place. PC was definitely not the flawless master race it is now in the 90s, I say this as someone who religiously played the whole Mechwarrior series when they were new.

[Anonymous No.7404575]

>>7404297
I remember the early days of the video card wars where even the slot you plugged it in with changed with the wind.
>basic ISA slot was good enough for the old trident 1MB VGA card at the start of the 90s
>EISA slot for the rare mach64 video cards plus some other stuff that Compaq pushed to be different from IBM
>VLB slot for the early gamer orientated video cards of early 90s for the 486
>1993 saw the arrival of PCI video cards used on the early pentiums, and at last things were standardized for a few years
>video card wars heated up and by 1997 PCI could not keep up, so AGP became the new hotness for 3D cards
>1999 saw Pci-x which was rare and onLy matrox made video cards for it. Gamers mostly stuck with AGP until PCI-E came out a few years later

In the time it took for game consoles to go from Sega Genesis debut to playstation golden age, the video card port(bus) had changed like 4 fucking times, each making the previous mother board a relic and unable to be upgraded. A difference of just two years in 90s PC gaming could call for a total system rebuild and the only component you salvaged was your soundblaster.

[Anonymous No.7404623]

>>7403050
I don't know what the fuck Sega were thinking. Daytona USA looked better than any PC game years after it was released.

[Anonymous No.7404624]

>>7401315
Nights is trash, less fun than any Sonic game and I don't even like Sonic

[Anonymous No.7404928]

>>7400960
>>7401482

It's easy to shit on Sega's handling of the Saturn. It wasn't a terrible system, and it did have good games. It's just that PlayStation and history makes it look so, so poor in comparison, in every way. If Sony didn't get PlayStation so 1000% dead-on laser perfect, being in the right place at the right time with a must-have product, marketed to perfection, Saturn would definitely have had a better chance. Saturn's flaw is less that Sega fucked up, and more that they (and everyone else for that matter) grossly underestimated Sony.

[Anonymous No.7404945]

>>7401258
>>7401308
PC FX have much potential.

[Anonymous No.7404990]

>>7404928
Even if you halved Sony's success worldwide and the Saturn didn't do the retarded surprise USA launch, it still would have failed. It NEVER would have caught on in the US and Europe over the PS1 and N64. It didn't have the library, and didn't have the capability to deliver the types of new experiences players of the time demanded, full stop.

[Anonymous No.7405008]

>>7401482
>boomer judoka
to be honest that boomer was Kamen motherfucking Rider

[Anonymous No.7405068]

>>7404990

Oh I'm not saying it would have succeeded. You'd have to take Sony out of the equation entirely and give a Saturn must-have Sonic at launch, in addition to making N64 basically do everything Saturn actually did. Then it *might* have succeeded, that is if it didn't somehow manage to find a way to lose to the Jaguar.

[Anonymous No.7405115]

>>7401258
It was the FMV/Coomer console

[Anonymous No.7405742]

>>7400929
yep, it's kino. a premium console for premium gamers. spared no expense.

[Anonymous No.7405995]

>>7401258
>Oh, the PC-FX was the failed PC Engine successor, right? redpill me on it.

NEC doubled down on the Visual Novel and RPG games the PC-Engine CD was making and built a full console around it. It had advanced FMV and was geared more for video play back and cinematic games and completely lacked 3D capabilities. Repeat: it lacked any ability to do 3D. it was the anime console system. The Saturn in many ways was the real PCE-CD successor.

[Anonymous No.7406009]

>>7405995
Did it at least have worthwhile games?
I guess NEC thought 3D was a meme like SEGA did but unlike SEGA they didn't panic.

[Anonymous No.7406067]

>>7401143
honestly if anything I'd say leave the Neptune's specs as the same, the driving force here for the Neptune is A) how cheap it would have been(predictions were for it to be about $150), and B) as essentially a Genesis 2 it would have had more appeal than the add-on version of the 32x, especially if one markets it on it's backwards compatibility with the majority of the Genesis library(especially if they're smart enough to ensure it'd be compatible with the Sega CD and maybe even the Power Base Converter)

essentially the game plan here isn't to try to beat the PS1 or N64, it's merely to keep Sega financially stable long enough for this reality's version of the Dreamcast to hopefully emerge in a healthier position

>>7404990
>>7405068
the thing is Sega doesn't have to beat Sony or Nintendo, they just have to do better than they did in OTL so they don't come out looking like losers

[Anonymous No.7406073]

>>7406009
>Did it at least have worthwhile games?

It's one of the most spectacular failed consoles of all time and it only had a handful of games. Most of them don't even qualify as games too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PC-FX_games

Kishin Dōji Zenki FX: Vajra Fight is probably the best one. It's a beat em up.

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

[Anonymous No.7406083]

>>7402038
It proves that even if you could shred, people would laugh at you in your high school talent show.

[Anonymous No.7406089]

>>7406073
jesus christ, and people call the n64 a failure, what the fuck even.

[Anonymous No.7406145]

>>7404928
Has nothing to do with Sony. The Saturn never would have been a success because it had no goddamn games.
Sega was the company for sports, action, shooter and mature/gory games. Saturn's main title was a bunch of little kids dreaming about some faggot clown flying through hoops.
Every single thing about the Saturn was meant to appeal to one single market which had no cross over appeal to the much bigger US market. They abolished all their in house sports titles, they didn't care about making a Sonic game because it was never a big hit in Japan, all the popular Genesis series like Streets Rage and Toejam & Earl were forgotten about the same way. They pissed off third party devs who were a huge part of the Genesis success by making the system a complete pain in the ass to work on. They released nothing of any particular note in the entire lifespan of the console except ports of arcade games. All they cared about was that Virtua Fighter was doing Dragon Quest numbers and they were finally beating Nintendo in Japan.
SoJ literally bankrupted the company to still finish second to Sony in the one market they gave a shit about.

[Anonymous No.7406213]

>>7404575
>>7404297
Was a strange time.
>80186 and 286 in the early 80's
>CGA or EGA was alright, many games expected you to have the exact right CPU speed, using ISA
>386+387 in the late 80's
>VGA holy shit, Adlib sound, still using ISA
>486 at the end of the 80's and start of the 90's
>VGA cards are getting to 1MB, ISA 16-bit required, Sound Blaster holy shit
>486 before pentiums came around in the early 90's
>VGA cards getting up to 2MBs of RAM and SVGA modes, VLB is really needed to take advantage of that stuff, Sound Blaster still rules
>Pentium arrives early 90's
>now you NEED an SVGA card with 4MBs of RAM, a 3D accelerator card, all running on PCI, Sound Blaster can still go on the ISA ports
>Pentium 2 arrives late 90's
>GeForce or better on AGP with a VooDoo, PCI Sound Blaster
Then the P3 era rolled around and everyone was using either NVidia or ATI, everything was pci express, and most ports were gone in favor of USB.

[Anonymous No.7406219]

Saturn was the last great console. After it gaming in general took a turn for the worse. And the result of all of this, is the fucked up industry we have now. Where bloated conglomerates force feed cinematic pseudo games to braindead consumers.

[Anonymous No.7406243]

>>7400960
Does not take too long to realise that arcade games, outside of an arcade store, are not fun.
Sega really deserved their fall.

[Anonymous No.7406249]

>>7402791
That power wasn't very accessible. The same thing is true of the PS3. If you know what to do with it, it can be the best of it's generation. The problem is a lack of usability. A sharp knife with a comfortable handle will be used more than a super knife with a bad grip.

[Anonymous No.7406250]

>>7406067
I agree with you on price, but I believe it could have been beefed up at a relatively minor cost increase over what would have been the actual Neptune. For example, it used a dual SH-2 setup where generally one was used as the CPU and the other acted as the GPU. The 32x's VDP has fuckall inside it so most graphical effects are done in software (line rasterization, texture mapping, blitter-like effects, etc). Replace the 32x VDP with the Saturn's VDP1 (which actually had less pins on its IC!) and you can eliminate one of the SH-2s and gain more graphical horsepower. I'm not sure how much VDP1 cost to manufacture, but I'm guessing in the $15-20 range, probably at least twice what 32x's did. Or keep the 2nd SH-2 and use it as the Saturn did crunching math to feed the VDP1's polygon rasterizer. And as for work RAM, it doesn't have to go to 1MB like I stated. You could throw in one more 128kx16 SDRAM chip (512k total work RAM instead of 256) and now you've doubled the amount of bandwidth that the CPUs can transfer data through, fully 32-bit, as well as increasing the amount of texturing and sound storage.

The additional cost for the RAM chip and change in VDP is, say, around $15 for what should be a massive computational, graphical, and sound increase. Those 2D games on the 32x which were running at 30fps when not relying on the Genesis' background layer should easily be bumped up to a smooth 60 along with much better looking 3D games.

[Anonymous No.7406695]

>>7400929
They did the same thing with the Mega CD.

[Anonymous No.7406941]

>>7406073
This, If they managed to capture the shootemup scene they had on the pce it would be more or less palatable, but lord, just one title and was mediocre even for pce standards...

If you want to go with a 2d console, do it, I can even fanthom that failure from the people who did it so right with the pce.

[Anonymous No.7407493]

>>7406213
Look at today's PC gaming scene.
>2700k was released in 2011
>pair it with a GTX 770 from 2013
>can easily play any modern PC game with decent framerate and moderate settings
>The motherboard can still support newer GPU and ram allowing an upgrade path
>10 year old OS is still fine

Now imagine trying to play a 2001 game on a 10 year PC back then:
>486DX 25MHZ with 4MB ram and an ISA video card
>Trying to play Max Payne or Deus Ex

In reality most consumer level PC's in 1991 were still the 386SX. Pic related is a 1991 Christmas catalog.

[Anonymous No.7407895]

>>7401119
>that maybe technology wasn't quite ready for 3D gaming.
yeah, this bizzaro world where Doom didn‘t exist

[Anonymous No.7407924]

>>7401315
Yakuza basically is their main franchise now.

[Anonymous No.7407950]

>>7403063
NO! FUCK YOU! Youtube said it was a 2D console with 3D slapped on at the last second show me your fucking subcount bitch.

[Anonymous No.7408048]

>>7407895
Isn't doom a sort of faux 3D? You don't even have to aim up and down.

[Anonymous No.7408261]

>>7400929
Is there any console with dual-CPU architecture that didn't failed? Seems like hardware engineers were getting out of control with this and forgetting about people who are supposed to develop software on their insanely complex systems.

[Anonymous No.7408267]

>>7406089
>>7405115
>Used cd drive unlike 64
Irony. Yet have soul.

[Anonymous No.7408473]

>>7406213
IBM PC was irrelevant as a gaming platform in the '80s. It was no match for 8 bit and 16 bit systems. You are stretching current state of things onto a different era.

[Anonymous No.7408868]

>>7400929
Original Saturn spec had one CPU, the SCU with the DSP inside, the 68k + scsp for sound, 1mb of memory, and the two VDPs (a cut-down version of Segas top-of-the-line System 32 arcade). Plus a cart slot, and a CD expansion slot. It was meant to shit all over the SNES, since that was its only competition at the time. You could buy the Jupiter which was a cart-only system that could be expanded to have a CD, or a Saturn which had the expansion built-in. It was strong enough to run Model 1 games thanks to the DSP.

Then two things happened:
- They realized making the CD an expansion would partition their user base and CDs were cheaper and better anyway. So the Jupiter was axed and the system must now have the CD drive built in. This added a lot to the costs, several extra ASICs from Hitachi and a CD drive by JVC.
- Playstation came out and shat all over the specs, and Sega then scrambled to make the system more powerful. They added the double SH2 setup which required extra glue logic, and bolted on some more slow memory. This fragmented the memory space to fast ram and slow ram, and the dual SH2s were difficult to use.

TL;DR; they were caught off guard and were too far into the Saturn project to cancel it, so they had no choice but to bolt on more stuff.

In the end the two critical flaws were the VDP1 being a third as fast as it needed to, and the manufacturing costs being so high that it almost bankrupted Sega.

[Anonymous No.7408882]

>>7401491
>>7405008
And on top of that it was also a Kurosawa movie parody, and in the game ads he was fucking the lead waifu of Sakura Taisen.

[Anonymous No.7408923]

>>7407493
I had (still have i think) a 486DX2 and it could play stuff from 1996 like Heroes 2 or Red Alert. Obviously not as much of a gap as the one you said, but as long as you weren't looking to play the most awesome 3d shit (which required a Pentium), you could get by.

[Anonymous No.7408963]

>>7408868
Don't forget they could have avoided all of this if they just bought the Silicon Graphics prototype like Kalinske wanted them too and literally have had an N64 with a disc drive and tons of third party support along with the Sega fanbase built in, but SoJ never considered the idea because obviously dirty gaijin could never make a game console.

[Anonymous No.7409032]

>>7401482
Revisionist history. They only tried to launch first in the US because SoJ forced Kalinske to do it. The Japanese launch wasn't forced or rushed in any way, and it sold extremely well for the first year.

[Anonymous No.7409043]

>>7403038
This is a meme. Point to one actual source who was involved that corroborates this "added at the last minute" nonsense. The entire point of the system was to bring the Arcade games to the home. Even SoA was trying to get SoJ to sign a deal with SGI to use the chipset that eventually powered the N64, which is confirmed by Kalinske himself and multiple other people involved.

[Anonymous No.7409049]

>>7403063
You think porting Model 2 games to anything from that generation was "easy"? We didn't get anything close to arcade perfect until the PS2 came out.

[Anonymous No.7409052]

>>7408048
DOOM is not real 3D

[Anonymous No.7409053]

>>7409049
Multiple DC games were better than their arcade versions

[Anonymous No.7409079]

>>7408963
That was Kalinske's pipe dream, he didn't knew Japan already had a console under development, plus he forgot that the grand majority of Sega's titles used scanline buffered hardware. Hence why the VDP2 was such an important part of the Saturn.

Also the SGI hardware was super big and wasteful. Nintendo cut it down to the point that it couldn't texture worth shit and was just barely better than the Playstation in practice.

[Anonymous No.7409080]

>>7408923
>I had (still have i think) a 486DX2 and it could play stuff from 1996 like Heroes 2 or Red Alert
The 486DX2 and DX4 were still the best selling PC's on 1995. By late 1995 normal people were able to start affording the entry level pentiums for under $2000, so your PC was not out of date at all for 1996.

By 1997 it would be an antique though. Much of the CPU and video card wars happened in the last half of the decade.

[Anonymous No.7409081]

>>7409032
The Saturn sold like hotcakes in Japan which was the entire reason why they forced Kalinske to abandon everything and push the Saturn immediately.

>>7409043
The only hardware change they did was selecting the dual SH2s to get the most performance and bolting on another 1 meg of slow ram.

[Anonymous No.7409087]

>>7403339

[Anonymous No.7409103]

>>7409053
Most DC arcade titles were ported from hardware that was either equal in power (running on Naomi) or weaker (older 3dfx based hardware, Model 3, etc).

>>7409080
I got it in 2001 or so though, used it to play old games while my primary PC was broken. That was a really fun few weeks. I don't remember the exact hardware specs, only that it was an IBM Abusebox design (probably an IBM 330 but perhaps an earlier one), it was too slow for 3d-intensive games (Toshinden ran at 3fps or so), and it had 8mb ram. It may not have been a DX2 but just a 386SX, I don't know.

You had to comment out mouse.exe from autoexec.bat whenever I wanted to play some games that required more memory. However it could reboot in two seconds flat. I think it had a 340MB hard drive. I oughta archive it one day just in case.

[Anonymous No.7409176]

>>7409053
>>7409103
And despite this, all of the model 3 ports were inferior (VF3, Daytona 2, FV2, etc.). They were respectable but hardly Arcade perfect, let alone better.

[Anonymous No.7409190]

>>7409176
Model 3 > Dreamcast

>>7409081
The Saturn outsold the PSX up until 1997/ Final Fantasy VII. The funny thing is, FF7 was supposed to come out for the SS at first. Because the square soft team liked the Satun hardware.

[Anonymous No.7409242]

>>7400929
total abomination that was doomed to fail even before it was released. If you want perfect hardware design look at the Dreamcast

[Anonymous No.7409269]

>>7408963
I think Kalinske gets some hate nowadays, but from his interviews, some going back to before the Saturn's release, he strikes me as someone who understood what the Western market wanted out of a next-gen system and what they were willing to bear for the cost of a new console. He sounded a bit tepid on the Saturn and my guess is he probably had a ballpark figure for the production cost of the system and knew it would be beyond what the mass market would be willing to purchase in quantity.

It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall of SOJ in '92 and '93. They seemed hyper-focused on rectifying the hardware situation in Japan to the detriment of the West, which was for two console generations its main area of success.

[Anonymous No.7409287]

>>7409242
Insignificant.

[Anonymous No.7409305]

>>7409269
>They seemed hyper-focused on rectifying the hardware situation in Japan to the detriment of the West, which was for two console generations its main area of success.
They were. All SoJ wanted was to beat Nintendo in Japan. They seethed for years that they never could and then got even more pissed when the random dirty foreigner they hired to oversee the american branch they never gave a shit about actually did it.
Like >>7403063 said the Saturn was made for one market and one market only. They never cared about whether it was successful anywhere else or that it was literally bankrupting the company just by being produced as long as they could finally sit in their fucking board meetings with the knowledge they beat Nintendo in Japan.
It's a console designed out of complete obsession, pettiness, and jealously.

[Anonymous No.7409309]

>>7408963
Oh, and I agree with you with regards to SGI's hardware. We have the benefit of hindsight and can easily spot the design flaws of that system, but the fact remains that it struck a healthy balance between power and price. I think Kalinske was probably impressed by the proposed specs of the system, but as a business man he was probably more impressed with its tight design and low cost of production.

[Anonymous No.7409332]

>>7400929
the only thing sega ever had going for it was blood in mortal combat. The dreamcast was ok, but they fucked that up too not including dvd.

[Anonymous No.7409421]

>>7409269
>Kalinske gets some hate nowadays
He is a dick. At least these days he is.

[Anonymous No.7409535]

>>7409305
Apparently part of the seething is because, if a branch becomes more successful than the headquarters, that branch BECOMES the headquarters like it so happened to Sony lately, and I think the execs at SoJ didn't want Sega (the company) to return to the US/being headquartered there once more by an american CEO.

[Anonymous No.7409539]

>>7409421
>At least these days he is.
what'd he do?

[Anonymous No.7409563]

>>7401145
>FMVs sold FF7
You don't know what FMVs are.
FMVs are games like Phantasmagoria and the infamous Night Trap.
They use 3DPD actors/actresses.

[Anonymous No.7409569]

>>7409563
Not him but FF7 used a LOT of FMVs, tho. Sometimes for the backgrounds themselves or mesh with the backgrounds at the end of the cutscene (the intro train scene comes to mind, or vice versa when Cloud escapes from the soldiers by jumping onto the game, even tho on FMV he retained the lego proportions.

[Anonymous No.7409576]

>>7409569
Those are 3D models, not live actors.

[Anonymous No.7409586]

>>7409576
I...
Dude, FMV stands for Full Motion Video, it has to be a video file in the CD, it doesn't have to be live action. The anime cutscenes in MMX4 and MM8 for example are FMVs, it's video playback. Likewise, the famous scene where Cloud puts Aeris in the water is a video playing, it's an FMV.

[Anonymous No.7409632]

>>7409563
I see you were educated by le funny retro gaming Youtube videos.

Here, the whole level is just a video with a small number of dynamic objects drawn over it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8tAQ_PVMOg

[Anonymous No.7411540]

Neat

[Anonymous No.7411816]

>>7409563
FMV doesn't necessarily mean live action, retard

[Anonymous No.7411941]

>>7402821
>1 game, and a very early simple one at that
You have to remember that the "personality" of the early 32-bit generation was very different than the end. Look at early PS1 3D games like Jumping Flash. It's extremely simple and, for lack of a better word, "video gamey". 1994-1995 3D was basic platforming and arcade fighting games. The complexities of cinematic atmosphere and expansive environments were a later development. Tomb Raider was considered peak gaming at the time.

[Anonymous No.7411996]

>>7402791
>>7402791
>>7402791

lol

NO

[Anonymous No.7412039]

>>7409190
>The Saturn outsold the PSX up until 1997
>source: my ass

[Anonymous No.7412051]

>>7412039
he means in nipland. not that it matters since it was dead and buried everywhere else by 97, and Japan lost all it's relevance as a market during the 16-bit era

[Anonymous No.7412079]

>>7412051
Saturn's performance in Japan is overstated, too. It was stable but only because the N64 shit the bed over there and NEC abandoned the industry after the PC-FX disaster. A distant second place was the default position for Sega to slide into.

[Anonymous No.7413776]

I'm sure they'll come up with something

[Anonymous No.7414351]

>>7412079
>cope