Panzer Dragoon on PS2

[Mozgus]

So I finally tried this out. I'll just post some impressions for now, but I'm considering doing a full scale, three-way comparison feature between the saturn original, and ps2's saturn version and arranged version.

The arranged version simply takes the original, spruces up graphics and presentation, and that's about it. It runs in double resolution, the dragon and rider are remodeled and retextured, with filtering. One neat thing is you can fully see his blaster from first person now and it's not a flat sprite panel anymore. Other bits of the environment appear to be redone, but I'd need to spend more time with it to confirm what.

So far, the big problem with both versions on PS2 are the sound effects. Well, they're fine actually, when they play. They often don't. It really seems like the game has a severe sound-channel limitation here. During the first boss fight, with all the noise going on, only maybe 1 of every 3 or 4 of your shots make a noise. I'll have to go back to the Saturn hardware and see if it had this issue, but I don't remember it.

Past that, the music quality is compressed ADX streams, but they sound fantastic, I'm pleased the say. The FMVs are intact, but they dont seem any cleaner than the Saturn originals. They're probably just re-compressed at a high enough bitrate to not see a downgrade from the old ones. It would have been nice if sega kept a backup high rez set of the FMVs to use for this. Squaresoft did with Final Fantasy 7, because we saw some DVD resolution clips of it's FMVs years later.

[racketboy]

Cool -- I was hoping to put together a post about all the Saturn-to-PS2 ports, but I would be relying on pure outside sources of opinions.

If you could help out, that would be awesome.

Are there any others besides Panzer Dragoon, Virtua Fighter 2, Die Hard Arcade, Dragon Force, Decathlete, and the upcoming NiGHTS?

[JC]

Whoa! How did I miss this? Are these legit ports, or do I need to chip my PS2 in order to play them? Any more info on this would be greatly appreciated.

[racketboy]

Whoa! How did I miss this? Are these legit ports, or do I need to chip my PS2 in order to play them? Any more info on this would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, they are pure ports, but they were only released in Japan as part of the Sega Ages series.

[Mozgus]

Whoa! How did I miss this? Are these legit ports, or do I need to chip my PS2 in order to play them? Any more info on this would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, they are pure ports, but they were only released in Japan as part of the Sega Ages series.

Well I'm not entirely sure. When you select Saturn mode in this game, rather than progress to the next main menu, it does a soft reset, shows the original Saturn BIOS screen (not the one with the flying grey chunks, but the one after that), and then continues. It kind of seems like emulation.

[kinn]

I would love an article like this.

I think I did read somewhere that this was infact emulation.

[racketboy]

Maybe it depends on the game, but I've heard talk about developers porting the actual code for the game at least on Panzer Dragoon.
I would be blown away if the PS2 could emulate the Saturn -- especially that well.

[NebachadnezzaR]

I'be actually been writing about the Sega Ages series for the Saturn Junkyard.

So far only wrote about Dynamite Deka and Virtual On. They're not exactly reviews or anything, just my thoughts on the games.

Anyway, for a more insightful view on the Sega Ages series there's a great article over at Harcore Gaming 101

[marurun]

I am pretty damn sure the PS2 is simply not powerful enough to emulate the Saturn. Short of perfectly tuning every tiny bit of emulator code in pure assembly and then optimizing all of it around a single game it's just not possible.

The Saturn is just a fucking monstrosity of creative, if warped, electronics design. The resulting beast was quite powerful when used properly, but boy did it take some wrangling.