CD AGES wrote:Viruta Fighter 2 Ugly!? Tekken tag on PS1!? What the fuck are u smoking!? Virtual fighter 2 is a great looking game! And don't even compare a fighter that's on it's second Installment to a game that's on it's third iteration!
Somebody doesn't understand what an opinion is
. Seriously calm down. Also, the numbers have nothing to do with comparing, if the games are similar then it's more than okay to compare.
Anyways, the Saturn was a 2D powerhouse, while the PlayStation actually had no dedicated 2D hardware and IIRC all 2D sprites on the PlayStation were rendered with flat polygons.
On the other hand the Saturn was severely lacking in the 3D department. There were a few games that held their own such as Sega Rally, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, Sonic R and Fighters Megamix, but they don't look nearly as good as many PlayStation games. Take the Spyro series for example. They really couldn't produce large levels with tons of geometry and detail like that on the Saturn without major pop-in. Though, I've always found that PlayStation games have this weird "paper cutout" look. The polygons typically have tons of seams and just don't look quite as nice as they could.
While earlier on the Saturn typically held better ports of 2D games than the PlayStation, as time went on the PlayStation caught up in terms of faithfulness. The real strength of the Saturn is the sheer number of arcade ports and 2D games, not necessarily the fact that it's better at them. Although with the RAM cart it then blows the PlayStation, and in many cases the Dreamcast out of water in 2D power. IIRC the PlayStation's main downfall was the lack of RAM.
One thing worth noting is that with a good developer you could get fairly decent ports of PlayStation games on the Saturn. Most weren't so good though. Many of Electronic Arts games made it to the Saturn with tons of framerate issues, lower resolutions, and 2D sprites in a lot of places that were 3D models on the PlayStation. This was especially irritating in games that could easily have been handled by the Saturn in the hands of a proper developer. The Lost World and Soviet Strike in particular come to mind. On the other hand, you also saw things like the Resident Evil port which beyond a few minor issues (no transparencies) is better than the original PlayStation version.
The main issue with the Saturn was it was released during the 3D buzz, thus developers tried to shoe-horn in PlayStation style games on a system that was not built to do it. A game that plays to the Saturn's strength with a little 3D and lots of 2D can turn out looking fantastic. Darius Gaiden is a good example.
I don't think any of us know truly how capable the Saturn could have been in 3D though. Sega made it nearly impossible to get all the power out of. They really should have just kept the one processor instead of shoehorning in another one. They didn't even give the other processor it's own memory, so sometimes attempts to use the second processor ended up being slower than just using one. The thing was a mess.
Also, transparencies were possible on the Saturn... by use of the sound processor.
Older. Not wiser.
