Game Players June 95 Magazine

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ThePixelatedGenocide
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Re: Game Players June 95 Magazine

Postby ThePixelatedGenocide » June 20th, 2020, 9:42 pm

jon wrote:The Saturn could only do 3d in narrow closed environments like Crash Bandicoot for example. And even then they needed to use sprites for enemies. There are no examples of the Saturn having a game with a wide open world like say Twisted Metal or Goldeneye. They couldn’t even do a 3d Sonic game. I looked at the demo for it. It looks ridiculous.


Sonic Jam's overworld reveals you have no idea what you're going on about.

Then again, so does Burning Rangers.

And Panzer Dragoon Saga had explorable 3d areas, on foot, that shamed Final Fantasy 7. There was also a pretty decent Quake port.

VideoGameCritic wrote:Once again you'd think Sega might have learned a lesson from the Sega CD and 32X, but apparently they decided to double-down on their multi-console strategy.


Don't forget the Game Gear and Pico.

Sega of Japan was just repeating the same mistakes as Atari - how did they talk themselves into supporting the 2600, XE, 7800, and Lynx, at the same time as the ST, STE, and TT? While planning for the Panther and Falcon?

And to be fair, Nintendo of Japan doesn't look much better, when you look at their Famicom, Super Famicom, and N64 add-ons. Plus the Virtual Boy.

Also, how many different standards was NEC throwing out there? You can't even play the entire PC Engine CD library without shelling out for extra upgrades on top of the already expensive CD drive.

jon
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Re: Game Players June 95 Magazine

Postby jon » June 20th, 2020, 10:49 pm

You have no idea what kind of statements your making. To prove your point you’re referencing 2 games and a couple Sonic levels. First off, Burning Rangers is one of those closed environment games I was talking about.
Do you know why there wasn’t any games like For instance a vehicular combat game or an expansive FPS with polygons. Because the Saturn couldn’t do any 3d games that the PS1 and N64 did. You’re basing your argument on 3 games. The Saturn was a joke 3d wise compared to the PS1 or N64. All it could do was on rail 3d where you can’t explore because the hardware sucks. The PS1 was cranking out 3d games every week that the Saturn could never do.
The backgrounds for the Model 2 ports were 2d because the Saturn wasn’t powerful enough. Even Virtua Fighter 2 couldn’t do 3d backgrounds. The Saturn wasn’t even close to being able to do real 3d games with real 3d polygons. Not only for example couldn’t the Saturn have done an extremely small, simple vehicular combat game, but I don’t even think it could do a game like Club Drive for the Jaguar.

ThePixelatedGenocide
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Re: Game Players June 95 Magazine

Postby ThePixelatedGenocide » June 21st, 2020, 12:37 am

jon wrote: All it could do was on rail 3d where you can’t explore


Tomb Raider says otherwise. Sonic R says otherwise - you do know that the tracks aren't linear, I hope? And that you're rewarded for going off track? Nights allows full 3d navigation whenever you're on foot.

Sorry, kiddo, but your claim just doesn't hold up. Especially when you look at open world Nintendo DS games, like COP: the Recruit, which looks amazing despite a 2048 limit per frame at 60fps. The Saturn gets flat surfaces for free, and can combine two polyons into a single quad, so an optimized port would be no problem at all for it to achieve.

Besides, open world 3d exists on an Amiga 500, so it's not like it's a sacred proof of 3d horsepower. The Sega Saturn could have dramatically improved on Hunter, if anyone thought it worth pursuing. But Sega's roots are in the arcade. Even on Dreamcast, Sega of Japan leaned heavily into that style.

ThePixelatedGenocide
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Re: Game Players June 95 Magazine

Postby ThePixelatedGenocide » June 21st, 2020, 12:40 am

jon wrote:I don’t even think it could do a game like Club Drive for the Jaguar.


Oh, wait. This is just a troll.

That'll teach me to skim through posts.

jon
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Re: Game Players June 95 Magazine

Postby jon » June 21st, 2020, 9:51 am

Do you think Sega purposely for example wanted the Saturn to have no games where you can control a car in a fully 3d environment? Or FPS’s as big as Goldeneye.
Let’s just think about vehicular combat games. The PS1 and N64 had those. So your argument is that Sega purposely didn’t want to have any game where you could control a car in a 3d environment.
How is it trolling to say the Saturn couldn’t pull off a primitive polygonal fully 3d car game like Club Drive? The Saturn wasn’t powerful enough for a fully 3d car game where you can control anywhere you want to go. But of course you’ll just forget about that.

ThePixelatedGenocide
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Re: Game Players June 95 Magazine

Postby ThePixelatedGenocide » June 21st, 2020, 3:11 pm

jon wrote:Do you think Sega purposely for example wanted the Saturn to have no games where you can control a car in a fully 3d environment? Or FPS’s as big as Goldeneye.
Let’s just think about vehicular combat games. The PS1 and N64 had those. So your argument is that Sega purposely didn’t want to have any game where you could control a car in a 3d environment.
How is it trolling to say the Saturn couldn’t pull off a primitive polygonal fully 3d car game like Club Drive? The Saturn wasn’t powerful enough for a fully 3d car game where you can control anywhere you want to go. But of course you’ll just forget about that.


Why would I forget your demonstration that you don't know anything about console hardware or good art direction? Polygon counts? Triangles vs. quads? Stylistic design? Your troll character doesn't understand such evil sorcery.

It prefers bad Jaguar graphics, instead. Such nostalgia...

jon
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Re: Game Players June 95 Magazine

Postby jon » June 22nd, 2020, 4:55 pm

The Saturn couldn’t get a car or plane to have freedom of movement in a 3d environment. They deserved to get creamed by the PS1 and N64. I don’t know that there’s any sort of counter argument.

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DrLitch
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Re: Game Players June 95 Magazine

Postby DrLitch » June 22nd, 2020, 8:03 pm

Tomb Raider is not the sort of 3D Jon is talking about. Not really very open world, lots of interconnected smaller areas. Not a very impressive game at all. I heard Tomb Raider started it's development cycle on the Atari Jaguar. As for Poly counts on Tomb Raider, not too difficult, one two three....

Quake does not count either with it's room sized environments. Big Poly's, low counts. It looked clean and shiny with a 3DFX card but poly counts were low no matter what version. Still the port on Saturn was better than the N64.

In terms of 3D abilities it is hard to say with Saturn. In poly counts it far exceeds the N64 (at least according to Sega's numbers) although the N64 used an AA filter to smooth the jaggies. It looks like Shenmue started it's development life on the Saturn. What hurt the Saturn, more than the N64, was lack of 3rd party support. The failure of the Saturn also coincided with Sega's leanest years in creating AAA content. So with limited or no 3rd party support releasing 3D content it is hard to say what the console was capable of. In terms of sampling, the Playstation and N64 had enough to draw conclusions. Saturn, we have Dead or Alive (impressive) and a demo of Shenmue as shining lights. Comparable to best of Playstation graphics. The handful of other 3D titles are mediocre graphically (for the time) or well below average. Daytona or Sega Rally for instance could probably have been ported to the 32X without missing out on anything.

ThePixelatedGenocide
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Re: Game Players June 95 Magazine

Postby ThePixelatedGenocide » June 23rd, 2020, 8:01 am

Sega Rally for instance could probably have been ported to the 32X without missing out on anything.


Except a playable frame rate.

The 32x can't even run Virtua Racing at Rally's 30fps.

Besides. watch DarXide. Whenever you're not in space, it's like it's being rendered by clicking through the screenshots on a slow dial-up. Meanwhile, Metal Head compensates with Daytona worthy draw distance, only its stage geometry is bad Sokoban.

As for Tomb Raider on Jag? Pre-rendered sprites don't count. According to Rebellion, the Jaguar has just enough power to render the Tomb Raider levels, but not the actual Tomb Raider.

And again, Sonic Jam and Sonic R prove that N64 quality stage design was possible, if Sega of Japan actually wanted to pursue that option. But this was the same Sega that still thought mediocre Afterburner sequels were appropriate for a full priced home console release. Their biggest disappointment with the Saturn was that they forgot to include the coin slot.

VicViper
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Re: Game Players June 95 Magazine

Postby VicViper » June 27th, 2020, 4:34 am

As for Tomb Raider on Jag? Pre-rendered sprites don't count. According to Rebellion, the Jaguar has just enough power to render the Tomb Raider levels, but not the actual Tomb Raider.


The actually finished version of Tomb Raider? I really can't see that ever happening, and certainly not at 30 FPS, or 20 FPS (when Saturn drops frames the hardest). Just talking about the levels themselves, I'd say even that is a very optimistic statement.
Even the pre-alpha of 1996 sounds like a bit of a stretch on Jaguar CD, when in 1997 this other game was released for Jaguar CD (Super FX-tier framerate, plenty of untextured polygons, very limited draw distance... even the first port of Daytona USA looks a lot better, and it's a huge downgrade from the original): https://youtu.be/CPjN6cvMs0Q?t=33

When you look at Jaguar CD 3D games, they always have a combination of at least three of the following: poor draw distance, barren level of detail, low framerates, low polygon count, untextured polygons... (by PS1/SAT standards at least, I always saw Jaguar as more of a 2D machine than a 3D one)
The most technically impressive Jaguar CD game in my opinion is Iron Soldier 2, and that's a far cry from Tomb Raider 1 in almost every department.

Tomb Raider as is, without compromises, would fry the Jaguar CD. The first level is relatively barren and geometrically simple (with a few exceptions like the "room" with the first lever, or the whole area with the jump over the pit with the bear inside and the foliage coming from the ceiling), so I guess it'd """sorta""" work, but as soon as you get into Vilcabamba, I can't imagine it going well at all, especially with the PS1 & Saturn draw distance.


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