/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9043534]

apart from having more ram how was the saturn a superior 2D console to the ps1? what are some things the saturn could do that the ps1 couldn't? also why the fuck was my last thread about this deleted?

[Anonymous No.9043540]

>>9043534
more ram basically

[Anonymous No.9043564]

>>9043534
Apparently the PS1 couldn't display actual sprites and every 2D game on it was actually a 3D game with flat models larping as a 2D game.

[Anonymous No.9043567]

>>9043564
how isn't that 2D?

[Anonymous No.9043571]

>>9043534
If you wanna see a pretty blatant example of how Saturn did 2D better, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2C-jpMQmFY.. An entire gameplay feature had to be cut from the PS1 port because of insufficient RAM.

[Anonymous No.9043575]

>>9043571
>because of insufficient RAM
right but that isn't really an architecture difference. people act like the saturn was the most powerful hardware for 2d ever conceived when in reality it just had slightly more ram than the competition.

[Anonymous No.9043580]

>9043575
>ignoring the image that goes into painful detail on how the Saturn was better at 2D
Oh, so that's why your previous thread got deleted.

[Anonymous No.9043586]

>>9043580
I'm a saturn fan but that image is deluded satard propoganda. I have played enough saturn and ps1 games back to back to know that in practical terms, the saturn wasn't superior to the ps1 for 3d in any way regardless of what their specs might have been on paper.

[Anonymous No.9043590]

>please guys! shit on the Saturn! PS1 has transparency effects! why was my thread deleted!

[Anonymous No.9043595]

>>9043590
I don't even like the PS1, but it objectively had superior hardware. part of liking something is being realistic about it. in terms of hardware, the saturn was inferior to the psx for most applications. panzar dragoon is a good example of a game that plays to the saturns strengths, but that only works it's the sort of game that can offload huge swathes of the rendering to VDP2.

you call me a sony fanboy and yet between us you're the one acting like a crying fanboy.

[Anonymous No.9043609]

>>9043567
I literally eplained the difference.

[Anonymous No.9043614]

>>9043609
that's just a different technique for rendering 2d.

[Anonymous No.9043616]

>>9043595
grandia is a good example of the disparity between the consoles. It's a game on both systems, max extensive use of the saturns features and the PlayStation version needed numerous cutbacks and reconfiguration to get running. Neither version performs amazingly (they're both fine) but the Saturn version is far ahead. It makes use of infinite planes, windowing to allow layered infinite planes, numerous scanline effects, infinite planes allow cheap bitmap backgrounds which were used for detailed towns, higher res backgrounds, etc. Saturn makes a lot of these things easier to do, which for that generation of 2D was far more useful. PS1 could often do a lot of the same tricks, although some limits became obvious and comparing similar games on the platforms, ones which utilized the saturns 2D capabilities could often do far more impressive things than what the PS1 could do in 2D. It's all unique visual tricks that become easy to associate with Saturn. I'll post a few examples but this is an example of how you can use the 2D tricks for 3D space and make incredibly impressive and massive feeling environments.

Stellar Assault SS is a visual treat despite how simple it obviously is, it just looks awesome and occasionally pulls out the stops with a barrage of explosions or a scene like this, where the planet instead of being an obvious 2D element has a significant amount of depth and behaves exactly like you think it would in space. It's stunning to behold. The following stage is even MORE impressive but I didn't capture it when I played through it. It involves free movement between a cloudy sky and beneath the clouds, where the land seamlessly transitions in and out. It's fucking nuts and like nothing else that generation. Saturn doesn't break a sweat doing this.

[Anonymous No.9043617]

>>9043586
>Game that was releases after the Saturn version with better engine looks better
Wow

[Anonymous No.9043620]

>>9043614
>3D is just a different technique for rendering 2D
It's still 3D

[Anonymous No.9043624]

>>9043614
>asks the difference between Saturn and Ps1
>Gets them
>"Bro that don't count"
It's different enough to be considered its own thing.

[Anonymous No.9043634]

>>9043617
literally every single 3D game released on both consoles runs worse on saturn. also saturn was the target platform for the original TR and the fact that the PS1 version which was released less than a month later runs so much better should say everything. the saturn nearly shits itself running burning rangers, and it looks and runs far worse than its contemporaries on PS1.

>>9043620
>>9043624
I didn't ask how the ps1 and saturn were different, I asked how the saturn was superior.

[Anonymous No.9043638]

>>9043586
The image isn't arguing that Saturn 3D > PS1 3D, it's just giving the raw facts. It's a tech article not some kinda console polemic

[Anonymous No.9043640]

Pardon the quality of the recording, this isn't my capture (I do direct) but it's a good example of one of the tricks Saturn could do. It gave devs a ton of control over line interrupts for effects which could produce stupid-good-looking water when used right. People meme about the Grandia water but they don't really give enough examples. This is completely absent on PlayStation. Also note the deck of the ship, that's done with windowing, if layered correctly the Saturn can have numerous infinite planes active at once and these are cheap performance wise but costly for memory.

>>9043634
Burning rangers uses an early version of SGL, and it runs fine performance wise. You already know this but you're than n64 fanboy that likes to shitpost about the saturn instead of playing your n64 games.

[Anonymous No.9043645]

>>9043640
Grandia makes the point for the Saturn's strengths excellently. There's a few other games like Psychic Killer Taromaru which blend 3D and 2D and this seems to be the Saturn's greatest strength, it's a shame there weren't more games that shipped in this style.

[Anonymous No.9043649]

>>9043634
A game's performance has more to do with how it was coded and optimized, if you want numbers and specs then the Saturn is technically the superior machine, if you don't care about that then yeah the PS1 3D games are better so the ps1 is better.
>I didn't ask how the ps1 and saturn were different
You think the fact that one can render actual sprites doesn't affect the development of 2d games, performance and the end result at all?

[Anonymous No.9043651]

>>9043645
This is Psychic Killer Taromaru, it pulls off a tasteful reflection, fluid action (60fps, no drops) big ass sprites and the environments are all 3D. Simple 3D with quality assets and lots of detail so it looks excellent.

[Anonymous No.9043658]

>>9043638
someone once posted a detailed explanation of why that article is bullshit, I can't find it in the archive but basically the article was written by a technical illiterate sega fanboy who just pulled numbers out of his ass. for instance, he multiplied all the numbers for CPU speed by 2 because the Saturn has 2 main processors, which isn't at all how it works.

[Anonymous No.9043665]

>>9043649
>if you want numbers and specs then the Saturn is technically the superior machine
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.

[Anonymous No.9043675]

>>9043651
Look how the environment rotates around the player, That's great stuff and has so many concepts that could be used for game play. Still as it is, it looks excellent and that's a testament to the kind of tricks the Saturn was good at.

[Anonymous No.9043678]

>>9043534
From what I understand is that ps1 2d graphics are just polygons with the perspective disabled so that advantage of saturn is it can use the background layers with more sprites to spare. Still the ps1 can move a huge number of sprites around, ever more than saturn but the ps1 needs the sprites to make the background.
So if you made a platformer with 5 background layers the saturn would handle it easier. Only ones I can think of are castlevania and megaman 8.

In 3d games the background layer should have helped reduce the number of polys needed but it wasn't enough.

The net yaroze demo discs have some games the showed an excessive number of sprites.

>>9043616
panzer dragoon looks legit impressive with the water, even better than some dreamcast games if only looking at the water. This should have been pushed in advertising.

[Anonymous No.9043681]

>>9043665
>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?
Doesn't the Saturn have some homebrew scene looks more impressive than those games?

[Anonymous No.9043683]

Lets bring up more Grandia, PS1 had to use polygons for the floors here so you get the typical wobbly floor textures. I'm the first defender for the PS1's unstable textures, they don't bother me but the art clearly calls for those clean straight lines and the Saturn can do them all while having a proper sidewalk/road design while the PS1 is just an ugly repeating texture pattern. It's really ugly especially when you look at the map.

[Anonymous No.9043685]

>>9043681
>Doesn't the Saturn have some homebrew scene looks more impressive than those games?
No.

[Anonymous No.9043687]

>>9043658
>for instance, he multiplied all the numbers for CPU speed by 2 because the Saturn has 2 main processors, which isn't at all how it works.
I'm giving you a (You) and a bump for the sheer guts of making up an obvious lie like this. You could've just left it at the "uhh I saw it somewhere" but you had to go the extra mile. Have fun with your trolling, anon.

[Anonymous No.9043691]

>>9043685
Console shooters at the time ran worse than that though

[Anonymous No.9043696]

The map screen is like the finishing blow. Mind you, PlayStation Grandia came out two years after Saturn.

>>9043687
He likes to do that :)

[Anonymous No.9043697]

I'm convinced that this thread wasn't made for arguing but rather to just flex knowledge and spam WEBMs

[Anonymous No.9043698]

>>9043697
It is a good resource for collecting Saturn webms, yeah, props to the Grandia anon. Maybe that's why the mods let this new thread stay up.

[Anonymous No.9043705]

>>9043687
https://desuarchive.org/vr/thread/5463254
https://desuarchive.org/vr/thread/8680906

[Anonymous No.9043714]

>>9043696
Grandia is one game.

[Anonymous No.9043715]

>>9043714
I'm proud of your counting skills.

[Anonymous No.9043718]

>>9043715
Why are you being so passive aggressive? Do you feel threatened by the prospect of one 30 year old console being moderately technologically inferior to another 30 year old console?

[Anonymous No.9043721]

>9043705
>ctrl + F: "CPU"
>no results that back up your supposed "debunking"
*yawns*

[Anonymous No.9043725]

>>9043705
Ok, where is it? Where's the debunking of that image? You don't seriously expect me to read over 100 posts just to keep this stupid discussion going, right?

[Anonymous No.9043727]

>>9043718
He's fucking with you, idiot.

[Anonymous No.9043734]

>>9043714
Duke Nukem 3D also ran better on the Saturn, so make it 2.

[Anonymous No.9043736]

Another strength of the Saturn is in its lighting, it uses a weird model called subtractive lighting I think. It's probably not accurate but the contrasts are really eye catching, I think they look great. So games like Powerslave usually look prettier on Saturn due to how contrasty they are.
>>9043718
Do you always get this mad when you're complimented?

[Anonymous No.9043737]

>>9043725
yea dude i do. you saturn players like playing rpgs so surely you're used to reading a lot right? not my job to educate you

[Anonymous No.9043745]

>>9043737
I accept your concession.

[Anonymous No.9043748]

>>9043737
not me

[Anonymous No.9043751]

>>9043745
dude whatever. the saturn is dead and berried, and sega will never make another console. did you see what they did to sonic origins? kek

[Anonymous No.9043768]

>>9043751

[Anonymous No.9043790]

>>9043571
>posting Sega Retro comparisons
That site is complete and utter nonsense when it comes to technical specs and comparisons. Just ignore anything they say about that.
>>9043683
To be fair, the Saturn isn't using polygons for the floors, they're done with a VDP2 rotating plane.

[Anonymous No.9043808]

>>9043790
>the Saturn isn't using polygons for the floors
That's entirely the point. It can do things that are amazing for 2D graphics and can even be utilized for really good looking 3D graphics. And they run well too. Hence the OP asking the retarded question about what the Saturn's 2D strengths really were. That's like the definitive answer. Thunder Force V is another embarrassing showing for the PS1. The Saturn version runs a little worse at times but looks so much better it's fucking nuts.

[Anonymous No.9043815]

>>9043808
>The Saturn version runs a little worse at times
yeah like 70% of the time.

[Anonymous No.9043816]

>>9043815
shouldn't you be playing n64?

[Anonymous No.9043819]

>>9043816
I don't like the n64. believe me the saturn really is my fifth gen console, I just don't feel the need to exaggerate or otherwise lie about its capabilities.

[Anonymous No.9043821]

>>9043819
>I just don't feel the need to exaggerate or otherwise lie
sure you do, I just post proof instead LOL

[Anonymous No.9043824]

>>9043819
*my favorite fifth gen console

[Anonymous No.9043975]

>>9043816
>>9043821
>muh tendo boogeyman

[Anonymous No.9044091]

>>9043564
This is a myth.

[Anonymous No.9044395]

>>9043790
>That site is complete and utter nonsense when it comes to technical specs and comparisons. Just ignore anything they say about that.
[citation needed[

[Anonymous No.9044401]

>>9044395
Post your favorite articles and I'll enumerate the inaccuracies or misrepresentations.

[Anonymous No.9044427]

>>9044401
You could start with the article you're calling bullshit: https://segaretro.org/Sega_Saturn/Hardware_comparison#Vs._PlayStation

[Anonymous No.9044445]

>>9044091
I think it came about from Symphony of the Night
which is a 3D game

[Anonymous No.9044446]

>segaretro
ong fr fr

[Anonymous No.9044467]

>>9044427
>the PS1 can only draw pixels through its polygon engine, whereas the Saturn can draw pixels directly with its processors, giving it more programming flexibility.[7]
Playstation can draw 2D tiles as >>9044091 points out and there are software rendered Playstation games like Doom.

>When both SH-2 and the SCU DSP are used in parallel, the Saturn is capable of computing fixed-point operations faster than the PS1's GTE. The GTE is faster at calculating 3D geometry than each SH-2 and SCU DSP individually, but when these processors are used as a parallel geometry engine, the Saturn can calculate 3D geometry faster than the PS1.
This scenario completely ignores the Playstation CPU which is apparently just left idle. There's no situation in which the SH-2s are completely free for polygon math anyway, you still have a game to run.

>In terms of polygon rendering fillrate, the PS1's GPU and the Saturn's VDP1 have similar performance
This is contradicted by later figures given on the same page. In the comparison table the 15 bit framebuffer fillrates are given as 85 MPixels/s for Saturn and 33 MPixels/s for Playstation. However
>This is including VDP2 fillrate, even though this doesn't draw to a framebuffer. VDP1, which does buffer frames, has only 28.63636 MPixels/s fillrate.
>Playstation fillrate doubles to 67.7376 MPixel/s for 2D graphics or flat polys
>Saturn fillrate is compromised by overdraw for polygons
The first two points can be verified if you just bother to check the citations.

>The GPU uses multiplicative Gouraud shading,[8] which halves its fillrate
This is compared to the doubled fillrate of flat polys, which was previously overlooked. It's actually just normal speed.

>The VDP1's quad polygons are rendered with forward texture mapping (which functions similar to sprites and uses a form of perspective correction),
This just isn't true at all, forward texture mapping still doesn't send Z coords to GPU so it doesn't do any perspective correction.

[Anonymous No.9044736]

>>9043614
yea little known fact many nes games are rendering polygons and pasting sprites on top of it. Bet you guys didnt know your nintendo was a playstation

[Anonymous No.9045081]

>>9043534
How many 2D games of note did the Saturn actually even have over PS1? That generation was all about 3D being the new thing. Outside of fighters you only have certain memorable games like X4 and SOTN. Outside of that though what exactly can we say was popping as far as 2D goes? I am not sure if this is even noteworthy at all even if Saturn was superior. How much so was it honestly? Even if it was who cares? Clearly Saturn had a ton of issues that held it back.

[Anonymous No.9045107]

>>9044467
>the PS1 can only draw pixels through its polygon engine, whereas the Saturn can draw pixels directly with its processors, giving it more programming flexibility.[7]
"can only draw pixels through its polygon engine" =! "can't draw 2D tiles at all". The point is that the tile-based video display of the Saturn gave it more flexibility for 2D titles (at the expense of 3D titles).
>This is including VDP2 fillrate, even though this doesn't draw to a framebuffer. VDP1, which does buffer frames, has only 28.63636 MPixels/s fillrate.
VDP2 doesn't buffer frames but it does display the VDP1's buffer, and is able to draw extra sprites and modify them, hence the higher value given.
The rest is about the Saturn's 3D which I don't really care to defend, someone else can make that their hill to die on.
>>9045081
It's mainly arcade ports such as fighters and shmups, yeah. That might sound pointless in the age of emulation but even now, some games run better through Saturn emulators than MAME (Radiant Silvergun).

[Anonymous No.9045109]

>>9045107
saturn versions of arcade ports are usually better. elevator action returns is still best played on Saturn for example.

[Anonymous No.9045170]

>>9045107
>"can only draw pixels through its polygon engine" =! "can't draw 2D tiles at all".
That isn't what I'm saying. Playstation 2D does bypass polygon capabilities and becomes faster by doing so. The citations clarify this.
>The point is that the tile-based video display of the Saturn gave it more flexibility for 2D titles (at the expense of 3D titles).
That's a good point to make but the text isn't clear at all if that is the intention. "Drawing pixels directly with its processors" sounds a lot more like software than using VDP2.
Lack of specificity is a general problem with the article and results in a lot of comparisons that aren't like for like by excluding important details.

[Anonymous No.9045176]

>>9043683
Looks fine to me, only thing I notice is the Saturn version has shadows

[Anonymous No.9045190]

>>9045176
neither looks bad, read the post until you understand it better

[Anonymous No.9045224]

>>9043534
dedicated tilemapper line scanning display chip. Basically it's like a SNES running at high resolutions, higher color count, and about three times the simultaneous backgrounds.
The polygons are drawn on top of that (or under, or inbetween, depending on one of the innumerable display modes you can set up).

That means that when ever you port one of the old school tile mapper based games that do a shitload of tricks like column scroll or per-line scroll, you don't have to turn the trick into polygons, you can just use them directly. See pic related? On playstation, you have to re-code the entire background effect to use polygons. On Saturn you drop in the numbers to the VDP2 and it's done. Same for tile based backgrounds.

[Anonymous No.9045235]

>>9043616
The best part of Stellar Assault is that it runs at 60fps. However it's still just an arcade Model 1 quality title, and on the Saturn it runs letterboxed - it renders to just half the screen size, and uses barely any textures, so of course it can run at 60fps.

[Anonymous No.9045245]

>>9045235
it's not 60, it's 30. But a very good 30. I think some elements are 60, saturn can do weird mixed framerate stuff.

[Anonymous No.9045249]

>>9043821
not him but TFV is one of my favourite games on the system, and I have to concur that the framerate tends to have issues. The worst part is that the game doesn't slow down in speed like other games do, it just starts skipping frames. So the action is at the same pace but the movement of objects on screen is so choppy that it becomes harder to keep track.

And then you have shit like the penultimate boss (the mother figure), where not only do you get frame skipping, but it also starts skipping drawing of sprites. That's the worst offender in the game. But maybe I'm biased because of how difficult that boss is (which could be a catch-22, as the reason it's so difficult is because of the slowdown and sprite skipping).
Playstation version does not have that issues, and the FMVs tie the game together pretty good. The lack of backgrounds is a huge blow though, especially during the intro of stage 5 where you fly out into orbit.

[Anonymous No.9045254]

>>9044467
>The GPU uses multiplicative Gouraud shading,[8] which halves its fillrate

That part isn't even true, it just adds a few hundred cycles of overhead to read the gouraud shading table, but it doesn't affect the fillrate cause the chip computes the shading during display. There are official cycle calculations by Sega to verify this, which take pixel overwrite into account. However if we punch those figures into the calculator, we get a practical fillrate of 3-12 MPixels for the Saturn, depending on size of the polygon and whether it is textured.

Texturing adds an extra memory read, so that's what straight up halves the fillrate. This (and the low amount of memory) is why some people preferred to gouraud shaded single color polygons instead of textured ones.

also, sega retro is full of shit and is the worst possible place you can get for hardware info.

[Anonymous No.9045258]

>>9045249
>Playstation version does not have that issues
yeah because they toned it down to look horrible.

[Anonymous No.9045271]

>>9043736
saturn lightning works by taking a color value and offsetting it by whatever value is set up in the gouraud shading table (said table is just a list of 4 corner colours to use for the shading).

What makes Saturn lightning odd is because of the low amount of texture memory, and because you have to use paletted polygons if you wanted to use the VDP2 in any manner, the textures have to use very few colours. And you have to set up every one of the shaded colours yourself too, because in paletted mode, gouraud shading just changes your palette index. You have to set up gradients per every pixel colour and have the shading ramp them around. It's ridiculous.

[Anonymous No.9045290]

>>9043534

kind of curious why the Saturn decided to go with 'no cd-door opening during game load' and PS didnt.

[Anonymous No.9046191]

>>9043634
>sonic team game has poor optimization
who is surprised by this

[Anonymous No.9046242]

>>9045290
It was a standard enforced by Sega. Anytime the CD Door is opened your game is supposed to call the BIOS function to return to the CD Player. While there's no technical reason you can't just open the door and not return to the CD Player, your game wouldn't pass QA and get printed if you didn't follow Sega's standards.

[Anonymous No.9046579]

>>9043651
Dude this is barely above a SNES game. Nobody wanted to invest in a 5th gen system to play another side-scrolling 2D beat em up. This would have been absolutely embarrassing to show at E3.

[Anonymous No.9046583]

>>9043675
FF tactics did the exact same thing, rotating a 3D camera around sprites is not some astounding technical feat.

[Anonymous No.9046594]

>>9043534
Is it actually better at 2D though? All of 5th gen could make amazing looking sprites because of their higher resolutions and gigantic color palette. However when I look up each systems max resolution, Saturn's is the fucking smallest. So again, why is Saturn better at 2D?

Saturn: 704×224
PS1: 640×480
N64: 640×480

[Anonymous No.9046602]

>>9046594
Increased horizontal resolution was rarely used and so was interlaced mode. Most games from that gen were running at a cool 320x240 regardless of platform. Some were even lower like SotN at 256x224.

[Anonymous No.9046725]

>>9046579
>>9046583
yeah but it's on SATURN so it's an unprecedented masterpiece that could never in a million years have been pulled off on PS1.

[Anonymous No.9047050]

>>9046583
>3D camera around sprites is not some astounding technical feat.
no one said it is, retard-kun.

[Anonymous No.9047062]

>>9045170
I think the confusion is over Sega Retro citing a dev who was using the term "polygon engine" when comparing the two different consoles. I can get why the dev would use such a vulgar description when talking to normies but yeah, a technical wiki should be more precise with their language. I think it's fine to call PS1 2D fake as long as Saturn fans can accept their 3D being called fake without crying :^)

[Anonymous No.9047080]

>>9046594
Good looking 2g games aren't just about static images. The backgrounds, animattion frames, transformations, etc all matter. I can't think of many (any?) 2d games that use high resolution modes for anything other than menus. I can't think of any 640x480 pc game ports that kept that resolution instead of cutting it.

[Anonymous No.9047181]

>>9043645
I should play Grandia. Looks really good

[Anonymous No.9047197]

>>9047181
fun rpg with a lot of heart too

[Anonymous No.9047564]

>>9046579
>Game is technically 2.5D with 3D Textured scenery
>Barely a step above SNES
Are you retarded?

[Anonymous No.9047568]

>>9047062
Sega retro isn't really a technical wiki. It's a fanboy fanfiction wiki. Actual devs have tried to correct the info multiple times but they've been banned and had their changes reverted.

[Anonymous No.9047609]

>>9046579
>>9046583
Are you fags unable to read or just trolling?

[Anonymous No.9047617]

>>9047568
First I've heard of that but it wouldn't surprise me, considering how Sonic Retro can get at times, kek

[Anonymous No.9049038]

I'm just going to say tat the Playstation port of In The Hunt was better than the Saturn port and had less slowdown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJab4odvKY8

I also liked the PS1 port of Viewpoint
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhKsNBByNkQ

It has a neat port of Strider 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZPrb5Xry_w&t=32s

I'm pretty sure the Saturn was a monster with sprites. But the PS1 could do some surprisingly good arcade ports every once in a while.

[Anonymous No.9049059]

>>9049038
It isn't really the sprites that makes the Saturn better, it is the support for backgrounds. It is the most advanced console for it, as shown in games posted previously.
If you want a system that does sprites, that is the Neo Geo. That is the only thing it does, and it does it well. It can instantly access sprite data from a cartridge with far more space than the Saturn has RAM.

[Anonymous No.9049075]

>>9049059
>It isn't really the sprites that makes the Saturn better, it is the support for backgrounds. It is the most advanced console for it, as shown in games posted previously.
>If you want a system that does sprites, that is the Neo Geo. That is the only thing it does, and it does it well. It can instantly access sprite data from a cartridge with far more space than the Saturn has RAM.

SNK released the Neo-Geo CD in 1994, which is a Neo - Geo AES with a CD-ROM drive. The CD system has more memory than either the Saturn or the PS1, and there are still some Neo-Geo CD games that have missing frames. Sega allowed for 1 and 4MB RAM cartridges to be released in Japan, which allowed for some good Neo-Geo home ports, as well as many other 2D beat em ups/ arcade ports.

[Anonymous No.9049117]

>>9043534
Mostly just graphics, rendering, load speeds and going on the internet i think? It had a modem port on it, no?

[Anonymous No.9049162]

>>9049075
Saturn RAM expansions were significantly slower than internal RAM or VRAM and sprites had to be streamed into VRAM to be displayed. It significantly cut down on what you could display in a single frame.

[Anonymous No.9049430]

>>9049162
I don't think they're any slower than LWRAM as they're also 16-bit DRAM. So they're not useful for having more RAM to run code or do 3D Rendering with, they're just useful for more static data. The issue is more that the RAM carts are on a different bus than the CPUs and VDPs so you can slow things down if you're sloppy with how you access them.

As for streaming to VRAM, that's not really any different than normal as your sprite data needs to be in VRAM for VDP1 to display it.

[Anonymous No.9049505]

>>9049430
>As for streaming to VRAM, that's not really any different than normal as your sprite data needs to be in VRAM for VDP1 to display it.
Usually your sprite data is permanently loaded in VRAM and doesn't have to be streamed there every frame.

[Anonymous No.9049580]

>>9049505
Not necessarily. If you have a lot of sprites and can't store all their frames of animation at once in VRAM you'll need to periodically update VRAM with new frames of animation. That's not really that crazy or out of the ordinary for 2D Fighters, with or without the RAM cart.

[Anonymous No.9049601]

sheath should be forbidden from editing wikipedia and segaretro

[Anonymous No.9049617]

>>9049580
Sure, but it does cut your effective bandwidth.
I bring it up as a comparison to the Neo Geo/CD which just have a lot of video memory. External RAM carts are a bit inefficient.

[Anonymous No.9049635]

>>9049617
Sure having more VRAM is always better, but copying stuff over to VRAM from another RAM source isn't that bad. It's fast enough that you can decode FMV straight to VDP1 VRAM without issue and no impact to performance after all. So I'd imagine copying over a couple new frames of animation shouldn't really be that bad.