sega saturn power

[RCBH928]

I was just wondering Sega Saturn on release claimed to be very powerful, if I remember clearly it was more powerful than any system out back then including PSX.

What I dont understand is that almost all games scored lower rating on Saturn than any other platform. Even SEGA games themselves i belive were not on Par with psx games like MGS and FF7. Why was that? What game you think showed the Saturn's power the most?

1) I know Saturn had 2 processors that made it difficult ro code for, none the less, SOME games must have harnessed that power. I understand developers who ported games just didnt put in the effort

2)I heard that Saturn was made to be a 2D console, but its not like PSX 2D games sucked next to it. I say they equally look well, maybe some PSX games were better.

3) I know Saturn shines in the shootemups and 2D fighters, What I dont understand was the PSX unable to put out same performance? I cant understand whats so complicated about those kind of games that the PSX couldn't handle .

4) I heard that Saturn can handle 128mb memory but only 4mb expansion was ever released. I would love to see what it could do if it had such memory even. through emulation. Do you anyone tested around that area?

thanx

ps. the racket mobile site throough my iPad is cool

[neilencio]

It's not all about the CPU muscle. The Saturn was analogous to a PC that has a high end cpu but got bottlenecked by a weak videocard.

2D games usually fared better on the Saturn than the PS1, due to the nature of the consoles. The larger RAM on the saturn and its more powerful cpu made it capable of processing 2D better (larger sprites, more frames of animation). The PS1 versions were usually cut down in things that you wouldn't notice based on screenshots. For example, the Capcom VS fighters on the PS1 had missing loading screens, missing menu screens, missing frames of animation, and the ones with tag don't even let you switch fighters during a bout (the 2nd characters were just used as strikers).

There are exceptions of course. I remember that people think the Saturn port of Castlevania: SOTN was shoddy compared to the PS1 version.

[RCBH928]

I dont understand why would a company build a system then gives a bottleneck like the Saturn here, I don't think they are idiots that didn't realize this earlier on.

I believe Sony faced same issue with PS3 when they shipped too little RAM

[AppleQueso]

Probably worth mentioning that most consoles don't get their most technically impressive games until very late in their lifespan. The Saturn essentially only got half a lifespan. I can only imagine the kind of things the system might've pulled off if it would've stuck around longer.

[Nemoide]

I believe the general consensus is that Panzer Dragoon Saga represents the absolute peak of what the Saturn could do in terms of 3D graphics. The developers used all kinds of tricks to get that game looking as good as it could be.

[neilencio]

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/SATPScompare.htm has a good bit on the difference between the Saturn and the PS1, especially this part:

The Saturn, is significantly more powerful than the PS1 in 2D capabilities, but it is also able to run at higher resolutions (640x224, 704x480), and capable of higher resolution and color count textures with less effort. The Saturn is more capable of these things because it has 66% more Video RAM. On the Saturn, as is true on any hardware, more RAM allows for higher color, higher resolution texture mapping, and higher screen resolution. Combine this with the specs directly from Sega and Sony's web pages, showing that both systems were capable of similar polygon performance, shows clearly that the Saturn was no slouch in the 3D department either.

The catch is that Sega achieved comparable polygonal performance with the Saturn by including more processors in the Saturn, which made development more difficult at first than it would be on the more simple PS1. In addition to having better developer support from Sony than Sega gave for the Saturn, and better more mature development kits, the PS1 also had built in special effects in the form of transparency and gouraud shading. This allowed the PS1 to generate lightsourcing and transparent special effects or polygons with a minimum hit to the system's polygon performance. Since the Saturn had to generate these effects through sheer processing muscle, developers of Saturn games usually had to lower the resolution to 320x224 in order to program effects similar to those on the Playstation. What this all means is that because the PS1 could just "turn on" light sourcing and transparency, the effects were achieved with uniform results across any game that used them, while the same effects on the Saturn were subject to the quality of the code, written by each individual developer, to display it.

[RCBH928]

looks like a great article i will save it for a read later, although looks like hard to navigate from my iPad.

You just dont get websites like those Google

[pakopako]

Weird bit of info, but friends of mine who use Saturn emulators have shown that the radar in Panzer Dragoon is actually transparent via emulator compared to... not-as-transparent on the console itself. (The games were coded for transparency -- check out their PC ports -- but were not able to display it on the console hardware itself. Wonder what happened there?)

As for games, to me PDS is the console's FF8. If you compare Final Fantasy VII with Shining Force III (came out about a year after), you can that SEGA could keep up with SONY visually. And most SS games had running audio commentary that (for one reason or another) did not show up in their PSX analogues.

Did SEGA ever release SS dev-kits? I imagine how awkward it must be to track data from multiple graphics and system processors (see: ATARI Jaguar) as well as work with "square" polygons that the Saturn used.

[eSPy]

im guessing the strange architecture was the reason behind alot of the Saturn's problems. Dual CPUs along with several other processors would have made developing for it quite difficult compared to the Playstation.

A lot of the games people point at as being better on the Saturn were the 2d ones (which were often overlooked in that era). Getting good 3d out of the Saturn took a lot more work than developers wanted to give. This lead to pretty poor 3rd party support and the eventual death of the system.

If it had managed to last longer with better support, im sure that we would have seen a lot more being squeezed out of the system....just have a look at that Shenmue demo.

[RCBH928]

I just took a look at Panzer Dragoon Saga and Shenmue Demo.