I assume you mean art-direction wise.Graphics rrt4>sr>wdc
Graphics is art and tech.I assume you mean art-direction wise.
Because technically there is no comparison. I can understand RRT4 but Sega Rally has a very basic 3D engine compared to both.
Well, technically WDC does more so all that's left is style/art. Which i agree, Sega Rally has the real rally cars that look nice and the sharper textures.Graphics is art and tech.
wdc just looks empty and boring.
I seriously doubt the Saturn would be able to handle Banjo-Kazooie with the same detail, draw distance and frame rate as the N64 version. That game was released in 1998, the same year the Saturn was discontinued. But even as a late game it wouldn't be possible i think. Even if the Saturn would last 3 more years, i still wouldn't believe it could. Not without huge sacrifices.
The closest the Saturn came to that quality was the 3D area in Sonic Jam. But that was a much smaller map that felt like a technical demo. It would have to be something like Sonic-R, with a very short draw distance. Even the venerable Nights has very low environmental detail and it still has an extremely low draw distance. There's also that Penguin platform game that looks very similar to Mario 64 (a launch title for N64) but again, it has smaller levels, shorter draw distances (but still better than Nights and Sonic-R) and a more "boxy" design.
As for Banjo-Kazooie, I'm not sure if even the PS1 would be able to handle that game, it does have some nice 3D free-roaming platformers but i don't remember anything with the same 3D detail density.
Not sure if anyone saw the video on 4 times the 32x beat the Saturn, but also through that I found this, which basically goes into how Virtua Racing on the Saturn ended up not being the definitive port, highly recommended!:
Bernie Stolar gets all the hate from Sega fans and almost all of it comes from that infamous EGM interview. In fact, Saturn was already desd in the US by that point. The hardware was losing money (Sony’s price drop to $199 just killed them),
the software was losing money, there were no breakout hits and the gaming public had already moved on.
It was a PSX-N64 world by Summer 1997.
The real villain of the story, the man most responsible for Saturn’s early demise in the Us, was not Stolar. It was Tom Kalinske. He’s the ine who crippled the company with years of poor management, overspending on too many hardware projects, farming out critical franchises to outside developers and never bringing them in-house, and a series of terrible decisions in 94-95 that guaranteed Saturn would fail. You wanna blame someone? Kalinske’s your guy.
Bernie Stolar gave you Panzer Saga. He gave you Shining Force 3. He bought Visual Concepts and gave you 2K Sports. He gave you the 56k Dreamcast modem. He gave you the 9/9/99 launch lineup. You’re welcome.
Also, if you’re really looking for someone to blame for Saturn’s “failure,” then start pointing fingers at the gamers. What idiots would pass up Dragon Force, Guardian Heroes, Shining Force 3, the Panzer Dragoon Trilogy, the Lobotomy Trilogy, the Sega Sports 98 lineup, Nights, Burning Rangers, all those Sega arcade hits? Seriously?! The only videogame that sold over 200k copies was Madden 97. Even Virtua Fucking Fighter 2 couldn’t crack 180,000 copies.
There’s yer answer. Pure and simple.
Graphics is art and tech.
wdc just looks empty and boring.
5/10 is a bit harsh. It is a demanding game though. And most of the game is locked behind those demanding events that you have to clear in one go. I wish there was an option for a racing line that shows you where to brake and how much.World Driver Championship on N64 has been mentioned a couple times on this thread, which is interesting because I recently wrote a review for an upcoming book project. The visuals are excellent, one of the very best for the system. The car models, track details, lighting effects and smooth frame rate are all sublime and one really has to admire Boss Studios for their dedication. The widescreen mode isn't very practical, but as a technical showpiece w/o the need for the RAM expansion, it's quite a feat.
My one major complaint about this videogame is one that's all too common with N64 racing games: the vehicle physics and handling are a bit of a mess. It's not nearly as bad as something like Multi Racing Championship, Roadsters Trophy and V-Rally Edition 99 (all games I reviewed, all bloody terrible to play), but there's still too much fish-tailing and the tires feel like they're sliding on ice. It aims for a simulation style in that you must hit turns at the proper speed, yet cars bounce off one another like pinballs, and there were so many times where a cheap hit would just send my car spinning wildly.
It's one of those videogames where if you were a kid and it was all that you had, you would just hunker down and stubbornly learn how to play, and would eventually become pretty good at it. And there's no denying there's a genuine thrill in racing that perfect lap where you hit all the turns with just a touch of powersliding. But it's very hit-and-miss and there were too many times I'd just spin out or slide everywhere and it became very annoying. I get the sense the software team wanted it both ways, Gran Turismo and Ridge Racer, and that's a hard needle to thread. I came away rating the game a 5/10, but do honestly respect those who enjoy it, and to repeat, I've played far worse on the console.
All that said, yeah, the game looks crazy good.
Go here http://pubs.iir.hit-u.ac.jp/en/pdfs...&cid[]=9&cid[]=10&cid[]=11&s=dd&ppc=20&page=2 and read the full interview with Sato-san. And no SEGA didn't just add a 2nd SH-2 call it a day (even though that on its own adds far more processing) SEGA looked to move from Saturn's previous spec of 4,000 sprites to double them and then add even more hardware spritesI call bullshit here. You don't add a second CPU like this an call it a day. If they did, it was in the very early days, and did not change anything for anybody. Doing this entirely changes the PCB and tools/libraries you have to provide. 32X was already built with the same dual CPU. A ton of arcade hardware from had dual, even triple CPUs (Power Drift).
They had in mind to put two CPUs and two VDPs, and that's it. They needed the two VDPs to offer good capabilities for both 2D and 3D (which Nintendo and Sony both ran away, targeting only 3D). Dual CPUs was something common for Sega, even the MegaDrive has two CPUs as it includes the Z80 from the Master System.
5/10 is a bit harsh. It is a demanding game though. And most of the game is locked behind those demanding events that you have to clear in one go. I wish there was an option for a racing line that shows you where to brake and how much.
Graphically it's unmatched but it does suffer from some bad lighting choices, especially the night tracks. There are some areas where you can't see where you going. Playing on an emulator at higher resolution makes it easier, thankfully.
It's utter crap. For one thing in the 1990s SONY America didn't do any R&D at all while SONY Japan was locked into a deal with NCL and not SEGA and after NCL 'stabbed' SONY in the back. Norio Ohga said that SONY should go its own way and chart its own course. Sorry to crush Tom's lies but SEGA never had access to the PS hardwareYes, this is part of the reason Kalinske advised Sega Japan to team up with Sony. They could have split the loss on the hardware, and raked in the profits from the software! Sega of Japan was too stubborn and prideful to see the bigger picture.
It's utter crap. For one thing in the 1990s SONY America didn't do any R&D at all while SONY Japan was locked into a deal with NCL and not SEGA and after NCL 'stabbed' SONY in the back. Norio Ohga said that SONY should go its own way and chart its own course. Sorry to crush Tom's lies but SEGA never had access to the PS hardware
SEGA were given access to the Lynx, M2/Bulldog, and N64 chipsets mind
Yeah EDGE who interview the staff behind the Playstation and SONY were right to feel the victim by NCL.Oh nevermind, it's EDGE #200. Hilarious how they attempt to sound like the victim when they were also guilty of wrongdoing.
In the end even the Phillips deal fell through, and what did they get as compensation? Mario and Zelda titles that you wouldn't have seen on the cartridge SNES let alone the SNES-CD....you can only imagine at the time a Zelda and Mario game of the quality that you had on the Nintendo systems, with red-book audio...the CD-I would probably be flying off the shelves! End of the day there is no getting away that the Saturn did Sega no favours at all, yeah the Sega CD wasn't quite as good as it could have been but it was a dam lot better than the 32x in terms of Sales, and Kalinske is on record as saying that he is proud of the Sega CD project as at the time it was a new medium for games to get into...he has no regrets...and even that has untapped potential....in theory had the Sega CD had the capabilities of the 32x straight from the off in 1991/1992 who knows where it would have taken Sega (in a good way..)Yeah EDGE who interview the staff behind the Playstation and SONY were right to feel the victim by NCL.
Nintendo didn't even have the courtesy to tell SONY they were going with Philips when SONY was going to unveil the PlayStation.
Sigh... It's not that NCL dropped SONY or looked to work with someone else, it's how NCL went about it all when SONY was set to publicly announce and show off the PlayStation to the world and after that move SONY did look or want to work with anyone else, so no matter what Tom says or thinks SONY wasn't looking to work with SEGA The SEGA CD was amazing and people should remember it should quite well at the start, all the more amazing given it wasn't that much cheaper than the Saturn in the USA and it was only an add on, credit goes to Tom and Sega America (while SOJ did hardly anything of worth on the system)In the end even the Phillips deal fell through, and what did they get as compensation? Mario and Zelda titles that you wouldn't have seen on the cartridge SNES let alone the SNES-CD....you can only imagine at the time a Zelda and Mario game of the quality that you had on the Nintendo systems, with red-book audio...the CD-I would probably be flying off the shelves! End of the day there is no getting away that the Saturn did Sega no favours at all, yeah the Sega CD wasn't quite as good as it could have been but it was a dam lot better than the 32x in terms of Sales, and Kalinske is on record as saying that he is proud of the Sega CD project as at the time it was a new medium for games to get into...he has no regrets...and even that has untapped potential....in theory had the Sega CD had the capabilities of the 32x straight from the off in 1991/1992 who knows where it would have taken Sega (in a good way..)
It's pretty good that you say not even 10, I could not name more than 3 great games for the N64 (and I have to include games I don't even cafe for).I can't even name 10 great games (and even the handful everybody keeps quoting are debatable imo).
The N64 has some very small texture cache, so games would still be very blurry and the framerate would still be quite low.Who knows what things would have been like with the N64-DD?
The Xbox threads are that way >>>>>>its 2021 and delusional sega fans still think the saturn can do better 3d than the psx and the n64? LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
also fuck nintendo,they did their own bed backstabbing sony
Only if you imported. Domestically the dreamcast spanks the saturn. Import wise its a toss up.That's interesting. I would argue the Saturn has a better library than Dreamcast.
I'm not sure of that to be honest. A Saturn fitted with both a region select and 50/60hz switch was an awesome console. My own Saturn collection back then was probably a 50/50 split between official Pal releases and imports. I had more 4Meg carts than I neededOnly if you imported. Domestically the dreamcast spanks the saturn. Import wise its a toss up.
I read the entire thread and did not find trace of what you suggest. Could you link to the posts ? Thanks in advance.its 2021 and delusional sega fans still think the saturn can do better 3d than the psx and the n64? LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
It's pretty crazy to think how different games would be if SOJ let Tom Kalinske do what he wanted.Hadn't seen that before. Impressive. Done in a way that isn't headache inducing even today.
@ Team Andromeda never underestimate the weight of the bad decisions that Sega of Japan was making on the regular. If it was up to Sega of America, the Saturn would have been a N64 with a CD-ROM drive.
It's pretty crazy to think how different games would be if SOJ let Tom Kalinske do what he wanted.
No 32x, the Saturn would possibly have had the SGI chipset of the n64 with a disc drive from Sony. Even after that, he was strongly opposed to the US Saturn surprise launch which absolutely killed the Saturn in the US. SOJ and Nakayama seemingly didn't like the fact that SOA was so successful, such a weird time for Sega.
Indeed, hopefully one day we'll get to hear more of the story from the SOJ side of things. The name of the game is the game as Peter Main would say.Of course, the problem is that you’re only hearing one person’s POV, and his telling of history is very clearly a case of CYA. We never hear from Sega Japan about those days, or what happened from their point-of-view.
If Kalinske had his way, Sega would have used the Motorola 68030 for the Gen-5 chipset. That would have put the console on par with the Atari Falcon, which, needless to say, would have been a catastrophe.
The story about being offered the Silicon Graphics chipset is interesting. It’s important to note that Sega Japan’s engineers took a good look and came away unimpressed and not what they needed. And to be perfectly honest, I agree. The Nintendo 64 had some good features like z-buffering and perspective correction , but there are too many system bottlenecks and everything is just too damn slow. The software struggles with frame rates and everything just chokes.
Could Saturn handle Banjo-Kazooie, someone asked? Ehh, maybe but probably not. Conversely, could N64 handle Sega’s Model 2 arcade games like VF2, Dead or Alive, Virtua Cop 1/2, Virtual On? Hell. No. Not a chance.
ProTip: Yamauchi’s most famous statement about videogames (I’m paraphrasing): “A games console is nothing but a box.” That means two things. One, software is everything. Two, nobody knows what’s inside the box.
Most gamers have NO idea how consoles work or how computers function. This is doubly so in Gen-5, where the machines become extremely complex (even the “easy” PSX uses four or five processors). All the kids ever knew is that Nintendo 64 was “better” because 64 is bigger than 32. That’s it.
The truth is that N64 had some key advantages and strengths over Saturn & PSX, but was crippled by numerous weaknesses as well. In terms of performance, all three are pretty close to even, with each system having their own strengths and quirks.
Bottom line: the SG board would not have magically made Sega more successful in Gen-5. It would have been cheaper to build & sell compared to Saturn (its high building costs were its biggest weakness), but it would not have changed things on the software side, and probably would have resulted in poorer Sega arcade conversions. What made N64 a hit was Mario, Wave Race, Goldeneye and Zelda—games only Nintendo could provide.
The games console is nothing more than a box.
its 2021 and delusional sega fans still think the saturn can do better 3d than the psx and the n64? LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
also fuck nintendo,they did their own bed backstabbing sony
Indeed, hopefully one day we'll get to hear more of the story from the SOJ side of things. The name of the game is the game as Peter Main would say.
While the hardware was tough to work on, if the other things had fallen in line, it wouldn't have been an issue imo. Both the PS2 and PS3 weren't exactly dreams to work on but devs made it work and due to the large market share they bit the bullet and learned how to work on those machines.
The 32X and (to a lesser extent) the Sega CD hurt the Saturn more than the Saturn did, at least here in the states. Combine that with the surprise launch that pissed off a lot of retailers (and fans/parents), Sony's fast start and the looming launch of the N64, it was a perfect storm.
@ Daniel Thomas MacInnes I still think the N64 with a CD-ROM drive would have been a winner. The N64 was so gimped by the limited storage available in the cartridges that it's hard to know what was possible with that system. However, devs that took the time to squeeze it could get great results in comparison to PSX (RE2 comes to mind), and without the storage limits the sky would have been the limit. The cheaper manufacturing cost would have been the icing on the cake.
@ EverythingsOverrated I think the 32X was Kalinske's baby, that was a disaster.
Super Mario 64The N64 has some very small texture cache, so games would still be very blurry and the framerate would still be quite low.
Oh, totally. The cartridge format is easily N64’s worst weakness. CD-ROM would have significantly changed things. Then again, that would have a $200 launch price impossible, and that would have impacted sales. But that would have meant mending fences w/Sony and paying them royalties for the use of CDs, two things Emperor Yamauchi-san would never do.
The domestic Dreamcast library is maybe more consistent in terms of quality. However, the top games on Saturn are better. A lot of them represent the very best of their genre: Guardian Heroes, Shining Force 3, PDS, X-Men vs Street Fighter, Radiant Silvergun, Dragonforce, etc.Only if you imported. Domestically the dreamcast spanks the saturn. Import wise its a toss up.
It could be revisionist history, but in the book Console Wars it talks about how Kalinske and Al Nilsen hated the 32X before it was even an add on. They saw it in R&D and were basically like, ya fuck that thing. A year later SOJ hoisted it at them and basically forced them to bring it to market.@ EverythingsOverrated I think the 32X was Kalinske's baby, that was a disaster.
My best friend growing up had the whole tower of power Genesis/SegaCD/32X setup and after that their whole family was done with Sega. I'm glad I ended up getting the DC about 4 months after launch. It was a short ride, but it was fun. Super unique experiences like Phantasy Star Online completely changed my perception of what console gaming was.I know for myself personally, when the DC launch came around, I just skipped it. As an unfortunate owner of the 32x I felt a little burned by the quick discontinuation and the lack of software support.
That game is a technical marvel. Still have my copy in my garage somewhere. Too bad Boss Games folded. WDC and Beetle Adventure Racing were probably the two most impressive racing games on the consoleWorld Driver Championship
could N64 handle Sega’s Model 2 arcade games like VF2, Dead or Alive, Virtua Cop 1/2, Virtual On? Hell. No. Not a chance.
It could be revisionist history, but in the book Console Wars it talks about how Kalinske and Al Nilsen hated the 32X before it was even an add on. They saw it in R&D and were basically like, ya fuck that thing. A year later SOJ hoisted it at them and basically forced them to bring it to market.
Yeah EDGE who interview the staff behind the Playstation and SONY were right to feel the victim by NCL.
Nintendo didn't even have the courtesy to tell SONY they were going with Philips when SONY was going to unveil the PlayStation.
The 64 was not gimped because of cartridges. It’s one of its defining technically superior aspects.@ Daniel Thomas MacInnes I still think the N64 with a CD-ROM drive would have been a winner. The N64 was so gimped by the limited storage available in the cartridges that it's hard to know what was possible with that system. However, devs that took the time to squeeze it could get great results in comparison to PSX (RE2 comes to mind), and without the storage limits the sky would have been the limit. The cheaper manufacturing cost would have been the icing on the cake.
@ EverythingsOverrated I think the 32X was Kalinske's baby, that was a disaster.