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[Parallax]

Yep, it's why they didn't localize Arc the Lad at first.

You can blame Bernie Stolar for the policy.

Is there anything good attached to bernie stolars name?

 

[Zee-Row]

Is there anything good attached to bernie stolars name?

Dreamcast launch , thats about it.

 

[charsace]

This is the reason Gunner's Heaven didn't come to the US.

They clearly made exceptions, however, as Mortal Kombat 3 was probably the biggest game to come to the PSX early on.

MK3 was one of the games they moneyhatted.

 

[Krejlooc]

What was the vram difference between PS1 and the Saturn?
Was it a lot?

The saturn version uses the 4 mb ram cartridge.

 

[Tain]

And even without the cart the Saturn at a pretty significant advantage in that area.

 

[Laconic]

And even without the cart the Saturn at a pretty significant advantage in that area.

The only actual disadvantage it faced was Sega's marketing department.

 

[ErichWK]

What other silly things did Bernie do.

 

[rjc571]

Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara would have been butchered on the PSX. Not enough vram.

Not enough VRAM? The PSX had more than 5 times as much VRAM as the arcade board on which D&D runs.

 

[Tain]

Not enough VRAM? The PSX had more than 5 times as much VRAM as the arcade board on which D&D runs.

The arcade board blasts visuals out from big ol' read-only memory.

I mean, the MVS has 84 KB of VRAM but you didn't see the PSX hosting perfect ports of MVS games.

 

[Miguel81]

What was the vram difference between PS1 and the Saturn?
Was it a lot?

Half a MB extra VRAM on Saturn side + the ability to use a RAM cart.

Edit: Game Informer tried to sell the Saturn as more powerful in all areas back in the day(before release), and avoided speaking of the 3D perks that the Playstation had. Maybe they weren't "informed", but I'm still glad I didn't listen and let the lower price and launch software influence me instead.

 

[Gen X]

They were doing this during PS3 as well, you can thank Sony personally for taking a hot steamer dump on Cave, which led them (and later many other shmup developers) to the 360.

/wonders if this is part of the reason PS3 doesn't have Guardian Heroes HD

 

[AniHawk]

scea's gotten better, but their arbitrary 'this game looks visually dated, so no' process still remains.

 

[Summoner]

The arcade board blasts visuals out from big ol' read-only memory.

I mean, the MVS has 84 KB of VRAM but you didn't see the PSX hosting perfect ports of MVS games.

That maybe true, arcade ports in general were never perfect on consoles at that time but they still ran and were very playable....and that's what were debating here.

 

[sörine]

Both SEGA and Nintendo had the same rules about 2D games.

No they didn't. Nintendo had different weird rules (mostly on religion, gore and sexual content) but those basically went away when the ersb formed. On N64 I do believe they had a qualifier about late ports needing to have a certain amount of extra content for awhile but that was it.

Sega was super lax on content approval. Especially with Saturn, it's why they got Warp's Enemy Zero instead of Sony.

 

[Azure Dream]

They apparently blocked 3D games as well. There was a rumor that they killed the US release of Charlie's Angels for the PS2, which made it a Gamecube exclusive here.

OZ (Over Zenith)/The Sword of Etheria had some weird circumstances around being blocked for US release, past the middling reviews. It came out on the same day in Japan as Genji, and even though the two games aren't really similar, there was a vibe at the time that Sony really, really wanted to push Genji, and could have been worried about any passing confusion.

 

[djtiesto]

I remember hearing of this back when it happened. There was talk of it still going on in the PS2 days from SNK having trouble getting their fighting games approved for release in the US.

The end result for me was getting more into PC gaming and buying a Saturn on sale not long after. From there I stuck with Sega, then Microsoft for my primary consoles until I got a finally got a used PS2 late in it's lifecycle.

I stopped reading gaming magazines around the time too as it felt like they were on board with the desire to bury 2d gaming as fast as they could.

I think you had several mags with an appreciation for 2D gaming (Gamefan, of course) but there was Next Generation who would constantly shit on any game remotely 2D. Honestly, a lot of people have positive memories about that mag but I'll never forget their anti-2D bias.

 

[MetalSlug]

This is why we got a bunch of collections on the PS2, like the Street Fighter Anthology, Mega Man Anniversary collection, KOF 97 & 98, etc.

It's also why Metal Slug 3 didn't come to the PS2.

I never knew that.

Thankfully I'm from the UK, so I was able to grab a copy.