Anyone here who doesnt like the Saturn ?

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Originally Posted by Thenewguy

1# Price - their system cost considerably more than $300 to manufacture early on (what was it? $380?), leading to a launch price of $400, which is too much.

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Probably a lot more than that too . . . both the PSX and Saturn were being sold at considerable losses (for manufacturing+distribution costs at the very least), and with the PSX doing so in spite of a simpler/cheaper design AND vertical integration, the Saturn (once Sega made the sacrifice to price-match Sony)

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2# Design efficiency & relevance - Whist their machine cost more to manufacture, its results were not actually any better than Playstation, and, in fact it had many inferior aspects, its hardware was also focussed on the wrong areas for market conditions of the time.

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Sony's design almost certainly cost more to design (R&D wise), but heavier R&D investment for a more efficient design relative to manufacturing cost to performance is an extremely smart management move for any long-run product. (Atari/Flare made that sacrifice with the Jaguar, though it obviously didn't pay off for them due to other factors ;) -and still having the issue of relevance of design features)

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3# The system was launched at a stupid time of year, with a stupid surprise launch.

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Definitely true.

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5# Crappy dev tools. You can talk about how Sega did things "the way they'd historically always been done" in the industry, but this is not an excuse. Sega stayed still in this area, there was nothing stopping them from looking at ways of improving their business, and anticipating the importance of dev tools in the same way that Sony did. Sony caught the old stallwarts with their pants down because their business practices had become stagnant.

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Crappy tools AND documentation too . . . the latter had been a problem for Sega for some time with previous platforms (in part due to poor translation and part due to general lack of completeness), the lack of an API on top of that made a big mess. (without good low-level documentation, 3rd parties would be hard-pressed to comprehensively use the hardware -either programming the hardware directly or building their own APIs- . . . ideally you'd want both good libraries and good documentation, but at least have 1 of the 2 -and in a timely manner . . . having 1 or both of those months or years after the release isn't really helpful)

The N64 was problematic in this regard too . . . and the PS2. (though the PS2 at least had comprehensive low-level documentation facilitating 3rd party middleware and low-level optimized games too)

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6# Sega had one big, and crucial advantage over Sony, they had built up a range of exclusive, and popular IPs, and characters associated with their brand name, essentially a fanbase which had already been built up giving them a huge headstart over Sony. Shockingly Sega didn't bother focussing any effort at all in this area.

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Yes, and they also screwed up their brand-name in general with the 32x+Saturn conflict (and Genesis/CD alongside those) on top of the Saturn's own problems and general software direction issues.

Mid-90s Sega was a perfect storm of bad/conflicting decisions and mismanagement.


On top of what you've mentioned, there's also the issue of Sega's overall advertising, marketing, and distribution being highly problematic with the Saturn . . . and the problems at the retail end (in terms of software and hardware availability as well as in-store ads/displays) obviously weren't helped by Sega's PR issues and (especially) the direct harm they did to their retail relationships with the Saturn surprise launch. (and supply shortages even with the few retailers not shocked by the release)

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Originally Posted by Thenewguy

Yeah, its pretty surprising when you take into account that Sony were only just entering the industry, I'd imagine they must've done absolutely obscene amounts of research into the market, and tried to leave no stones unturned at all in their initial action plan. though to be fair, from reading the "making of Playstation" article posted a while ago, it seems as though all of the branches of Sony added something to the mix which would strengthen the system for each region, whereas with Sega the regions weren't really working together as equals to achieve the goal.

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They also got lucky with pretty much every other company making huge mistakes on the market at the time and/or being inherently weak (like Atari) or just plain pig-headed (like Nintendo).

Sony got pretty much everything right, from the hardware end to the SDKs to having relatively open and friendly licensing agreements (compared to Nintendo) to tactfully investing in certain 3rd party games as exclusives as well as investing to build-on in-house/2nd party software development resources (Psygnosis in particular -who was also instrumental in developing the SDKs), and then the marketing. (and management and funding to back all that up . . . and buffering some of the blunders like dumping the PSX's price -which could have killed companies with lesser credit/PR/reserves given how big a loss they were selling and how the RAM/component prices didn't drop as predicted -meaning heavier losses as prices dropped prior to late 1996; even with Sony's vertical integration, they'd taken a big risk -which ended up paying off in the end . . . and still was obviously a lesser risk than it would have been to smaller companies)

Sega did many of the same things with the Genesis, but also had more conflicts and more significant mistakes (and even more costly ones given their limited resources) . . . and obviously there was the non-uniform success in Japan and the west.


Sony was either very smart (investing in market research to cater to all regions and learn from others' mistakes) and lucky on top of that. Nintendo had many of the same advantages when they brought the NES to the US: they'd been pushing to get into the US market for some 3 years by the time the NES had its official launch, and they'd almost certainly invested significantly into learning the market's needs (and exploitable weaknesses). The biggest difference from Nintendo and Sony's tactics is obviously that Nintendo was horribly limiting on 3rd party publishers across the board (and equally hurtful to competing hardware firms) while Sony only really limited competition in cases of direct partnership/buy-outs of software firms. (more like what Sega did in some respects; and even then, things often turned out quite well -especially compared to Nintendo or especially Microsoft, and -again- more like Sega's partnerships than anything else)
Albeit Nintendo screwed that up in Europe (which Sega oddly managed that well with the SMS), where Sony seems to have gotten all regions right. (at least by the time it really mattered -fall of 1996)

They certainly didn't do what NEC had done. ;)

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And yeah, Dreamcast was pretty perfect too, I mean, you could fault some of their advertising in some reasons, but nothing was really glaringly bad (and a lot of that wasn't helped by their lack of funds either). Dreamcasts big problem was fighting consumer apathy which had built up towards Sega over time IMO.

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In Japan and Europe, marketing may have been off, but in the US, they probably couldn't have done much better on the advertizing end (maybe some directly competitive ads against the PS2 to try and counter some of the hype with real-world comparisons).

However, the big criticism on marketing I'd have is with the investment in price drops and packing in the modem as standard (and the massive rebate offers for seganet sign-on). All of those factors meant Sega losing far more money in the short-run for high-risk investments at a time when they couldn't remotely afford it. The DC's launch price would have remained compelling and competitive if unchanged at least up to 2001 (dropping the price below the GC could have kept it the cheapest new-gen system on the market while not sacrificing profits nearly so much -or indeed, selling hardware for profit by that point). And while the internet gimmick was significant, they also were far to reckless with investments in that . . . a more realistically conservative approach would have been to use 3rd party ISPs alone and offer the modem as an accessory and in special deluxe bundles with the browser and keyboard included. (and, if the DC had lasting success on the market, they could later release an ethernet adapter around 2001)

It still may not have been enough to keep the DC profitable, but a more moderated and conservative approach at very least would have made more sense. (in fact, lack of sensible moderation had been one of Sega's biggest problems for a long time -in different ways for both SoJ and SoA, from excessive hardware releases to excessive investment spending- . . . and as I've said before, I wonder if Mike Katz might have made a difference in the long-run towards addressing that problem)

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Originally Posted by Thenewguy

The thing with Sony, was that they never really had to worry about "selling out" because they were not involved with the artistic side, they weren't really a software company (especially in the PS1 days), they were simply designing a product, and they did their best to make a good marketable product, thats it.

Its a lot like what had happened with all the electronic devices in the 70s, & 80s really, the big Japanese companies (Sony included) stood back, paid carefull attention to what all of the other companies were doing, did a ton of market research, and then flooded the market with cheap TV, and stereo's, which emphasized in the important areas, and scrimped in areas which were not seen to be as crucial.

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And, aside from cases of actual price dumping (and selling below cost), there's not really anything wrong with that. (if the domestic manufacturers aren't going to emphasize on price-performance for the market needs, then that leaves the market wide-open for competition to do so)

There's also the issue of cheap labor and different worker restrictions and such, so that makes the cost/price advantage issue even more complex. (aside from dumping)

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You can say that in the end, Sony had a very damaging impact on the industry (and I would kind of agree with you), but at the end of the day I don't think its surprising that magazines like EDGE would get so excited by the appearance of Sony's "big business" methods, and professionalism. Sony clearly showed with the western launch of Playstation that they knew what they were doing, Sony were bringing tons of money into the industry, and videogaming was becoming less stygmatised (which was making their jobs a lot easier too). Sony had made a machine with a great cost to power ratio, games were out fast which were both fun, and showed the capabilities of the machine, Sony had been good for giving 3rd parties good tools to increase software output, and there'd brought big business professionalism to advertising/image etc, all of which are going to lead to people (including EDGE staff) exclaiming "holyshitlookatthisnewmachine!"

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I used to think this too . . . but in hindsight, I think Sony ended up being much healthier for the industry than they could have been given their position.

What Nintendo did with the SNES was far more harmful (not just to competing platforms, but software developers), and Sony was the one to finally and definitively break Nintendo in Japan . . . and rather than perpetuating the restrictive licensing a la Nintendo (let alone the harsh relationships with 3rd parties), Sony instead managed a relatively open and positive buisness model with 3rd party publishers. And, again, even with developers they bought-up, they ended up managing far better than similar cases with Nintendo or (especially) Microsoft.

It probably would have been better (and certainly more interesting) if Sony's competition had been healthier and more capable (keeping a more mixed and diverse hardware market as well as software -and forcing Sony to be even more flexible with 3rd parties), but as it was, the market may not have been better off without them. (especially if it would have meant Nintendo retaining much more of theri power . . . though maybe the Saturn would have largely taken the PSX's place, at least in Japan -still potentially a much more confused mess, and with Sega's management history, hardly clear-cut either) Likewise, if Sony HAD been on the market, but done a relatively mediocre job of management/marketing (or worse hardware for that matter) more like NEC had done previously, that still wouldn't have really helped either in the same way NEC had failed to break Nintendo's monopoly in Japan (even with the attraction of CD-ROM and a much earlier release).

Having Sega wake-up earlier and push for a more efficient business model (internally and in terms of the market needs), NEC doing the same, or Atari, or Nintendo actually changing to an open and competitive business model and forging positive relations with publishers, it could have been a different story (with or without Sony). If Atari had had healthy management to follow up the 7800 with a 16-bit gen console, it certainyl could have been healthy for the market (especially if catering to a lower-end niche like the 7800 -something that no new consoles were doing then, or now for that matter) . . . not to mention what the computer market might be like today if Atari (or CBM) had had more competitive management. ;)

Now, Microsoft never entering the console hardware scene is a much more direct argument to make towards a healthier industry . . . especially if they'd stayed away from buying 3rd party developers. (or if MS had pushed for a more open business model with friendly relations and good management of publishers/developers in-house and 3rd party -but that's never goint to happen :p )

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It also doesn't help that Sega did everything so badly, making Sony look even better/more professional by comparison ;)

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And NEC, and 3DO, and Atari, and Nintendo all in different ways. ;) (well, Nintendo pretty much in the same ways they always had -it just stopped working in their favor)

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Originally Posted by sheath

Provided the PS1 actually wasn't close to the same cost, this is a valid complaint against the design. Unless the plan was to make up per console losses in 2nd and 3rd gen console manufacturing runs.

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Making up early losses with later, cheaper, hardware is ALWAYS a consideration (losses/low profits due to various investments, depending on the case). Planning for that in various ways is good/smart business . . . as is keeping initial manufacturing costs down while maximizing nominal/real-world performance. (and possibly raw performance potential as well)

We can only speculate on the actual manufacturing costs of these systems, but given the Saturn's overall design, it was almost certainly significantly more expensive to manufacture from day 1 than the PSX, and Sony's vertical integration (and later cost reduction and higher volumes) only made this issue even bigger. (not to mention Sony's better position to invest in marketing -be it greater losses on hardware or losses on advertising or pack-in software, it's all marketing investment aimed at making the product more attractive to consumers -unlike more or less aggressive engineering or sheer higher or lower cost, which are more technical/business/management decisions)

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This is only arguable, the only reason these conflicts exist is because of Sony. The Saturn is only arguably inferior to the PS1 overall, and that is only when comparing game types that the PS1 excelled at.

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This is only partially arguable, since Sony designed the PSX around common market trends (multimedia -video decoding- and polygonal 3D -arcade and PC- as well as powerful 2D support). The only areas the PSX didn't strongly cater to were also areas the Saturn were similarly lacking in. (namely pseudo 3D height-map/ray-casting engines -voxels and spans- which the Saturn still doesn't do that much better and certainly doesn't do it efficiently -it wastes a ton of the hardware reasources . . . compared to the Jaguar or 32x which lack much of that hardware and thus make more sense for those methods)

If quads had been the only issue (more like the 3DO), I'd agree with you more, but that's not the case (though Triangles WERE the dominant 3D primitive prior to the PSX -and SGI combined with general practicality are much bigger reasons behind that . . . Namco, ATi, S3, Sony, 3DFX, Redition, Matrox, etc just followed suit -the likes of Sega, 3DO, and Nvidia were the exceptions)

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Marketing/management problem. Games making it look bad is arguable but heavily propagated by the gaming media that was enamored with Sony's management/strategy.

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I think he meant more of how the surprise launch of the Saturn limited it to several poor/rushed looking games for a US launch. (Panzer Dragoon would be the main exception -Virtua Fighter looked poor and Datona was passable but not a great showcase)

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I consider this a strength of Sega at the time, they didn't lean on their past successes they aimed for new ones. The fact that didn't work out for them is a market failure.

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This is just dumb . . . you ALWAYS want to build on past successes and established brand name, franchises, characters etc. It's almost as ridiculous as arguing Sega should have changed their entire company/brand name at their peak of popularity.

The only time you'd want to shift way from such things is due to bad PR . . . if a character/genre/name stops being popular, or gets ruined by particularly bad games/actions, then it's sometimes easier to start fresh than to work back up from the bad PR. (like how Sega dropped Alex Kidd)

It's bad business to throw away established success . . . you can argue all you want about legitimate evolution/enhancement and innovation of new games (rather than just perpetuating more of the same), but doing that and keeping established characters/franchises are NOT mutually exclusive. (either bringing that innovation into those franchises and/or starting new franchises in addition to supporting the established ones.

Lack of strong Sega-sports support was also a big problem . . . not so much a specific character or such, but a franchise nonetheless. (lack of strong EA sport support made that problem even worse)

And, as it was, Sega already had a more diverse in-house set of franchises and characters (and more diverse/innovative games therein) than pretty much anyone else, so moving forward with that would have made good sense AND catered to diversity. (albeit, some of Sega's games were clone-ish games or evolutions of established/popular genres, but there's nothing wrong with that either, especially if those "clones" are alternatives to exclusives on other platforms and especially if they add new/innovative features that benefit the games further -many of the best SMS and MD games fall into these categories)

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Originally Posted by StarMist

They could have done both. Sonic fully ACM'd, with 2P co-op, a level map, and saves would've been a step in a new direction. Phantasy Star V in full 3D or ACM with any kind of new combat system and NetLink would've been a step in a new direction. Making the wholly new franchises they did whilst publishing safe sequels to half their old would've involved very little effort as well.

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Yes, which is more or less what Sega HAD done prior to the Saturn and did do again with the DC to some extent. (they brought innovation into established franchises and added new franchises too -generally only dropping unpopular characters/franchises)

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Originally Posted by sheath

That is where I thought you were coming from. Since we are in this economic downturn that only seems to be getting worse I am thinking that most of the "successful" companies are responsible for the way things have become. We all know that the masses aren't coming up with this stuff on their own. ;)

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Economic downturn isn't quite right . . . it's more a matter of unemployment remaining high in spite of improvements to the economy. (the big recession already recovered and GDP grew beyond what it was before, and there have been smaller recessions that followed and growth after that, but the problem of employment staying down is why the economy still seems bad -and is from that PoV, but not from an overall economic decline/recession standpoint)
I'd go further, but this isn't a political thread. ;)

Where it comes to the whole "Microsoft Vs Sony who was more damaging?" subject I don't agree.

Sony are not innovators, Sony simply applied their knowledge of the consumer electronics market to videogaming, everything they had to offer started and ended with the PS1. The PS2 was a lazy, overpriced machine which held the whole of the last generation back, there was no innovation at all, even the controllers stayed as crappy as ever. By the time of the PS3 Sony were a bloated, overconfident, and barren company, they couldn't care less about designing an efficient, competitively priced system as they were sure they couldn't fail, they couldn't care less about chasing up 3rd parties to produce software, as they were sure these companies would be forced to support them anyway, they felt they could cynically chuck their blu-ray players into homes simply to sell more movies to consumers in the long term. Everything the PS3 has done this generation has been based on something done by Nintendo or Microsoft, and all of these features only started to be frantically added after it became apparent that they were possibly in trouble.

Microsoft has at least always pushed towards creating an excellent online service, and they've certainly innovated in that area, with loads of clever features, they also pushed towards Hard Drives over memory cards during the original XBox days, as well as custom soundtracks, they added the gamerscores for 360 etc. Their worst crime has been their failure rate, but from what I've heard when this was originally brought up they quoted "industry standard" figures, figures which Sony had made a precedent in court earlier with the PS2, so in that case they were merely following the crap laid out by Sony.

Essentially, to me its unfortunate, but better to have two giant monstrocities fighting each over, creating competition, than a dictatorship of one where they feel no need to do anything but go through the motions.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Economic downturn isn't quite right . . . it's more a matter of unemployment remaining high in spite of improvements to the economy. (the big recession already recovered and GDP grew beyond what it was before, and there have been smaller recessions that followed and growth after that, but the problem of employment staying down is why the economy still seems bad -and is from that PoV, but not from an overall economic decline/recession standpoint)
I'd go further, but this isn't a political thread. ;)

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Wait for it.... The politics thread is a troll thread and not appropriate for this kind of discussion. The US economy is artificially inflated, again, because it is based on debt. GDP implies that ournational production of marketable products is the basis for our economy, which is not true. Unemployment being as high as it is means that fact is going to come to a head rather than let the elites keep fooling the voters that they are doing a good job. This is at least the third time in the last ten years that I have seen them overtly use debt to float the economy here. Europe has already run out of that kind of political capital, the US won't be too far behind.

More relevant to this discussion is who is responsible for bleeding the masses' credit dry like this. Example, after refugees from New Orleans were settled in my town, and after they started getting their Federal stimulus checks, they started coming to the game store I worked at because "they lost their PS2, Grand Theft Auto III and Gran Turismo." I am not kidding, I could guess what they wanted when I knew they weren't from Texas, and it was always the same three things.

@Newguy, I agree, Microsoft doesn't seem to be their old monopolistic selves. If anything they seem to have realized they will not see the massive revenue stream they have been enjoying without diversification and innovation. Not that I will ever become a fan of them or anything, but they do seem to have created their own modern version of Sega of America in MS Game Studios.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Compared to most newer systems (and even many PC games), the load times on PSX games aren't bad at all though. (even some larger/newer HDD-installed games are similarly slow -let alone loading from DVD/BG . . . or CD)

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I'm not interested in "newer" systems.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Isn't the screen resolution of the Saturn, PSX, and PC versions all nearly (or exactly) the same? (I know the SNES version is lower res -for what that's worth- and the awful GBA port obviously too, but the others should all be around 320

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The Saturn's lowest res is an odd number like 352 x 240. I don't know if the horizontal lines get cut off on a television that is capable of 640 x 480, but I do know it looked much better on my 27" Trinitron, when compared to the Genesis and SNES version.

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The SNES version adds more than that . . . it has a whole added far BG layer (with the skyline/haze/sun) and way more than "a few rocks" in the close BG layer. (it adds a whole detailed BG plane of terrain similar in style to the foreground plane -the waterfall being part of that- and it all scrolls too -at a different rate than the foreground- unlike the static MD BG)

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You really have to take a closer look at the Saturn version. The green planet also scrolls in front of the sun and at the right edge of the level, there are 2 layers of cliffs that scroll independent of each other.

Then you have levels like Inflated Head, that has layers of scrolling in the background on the Saturn and it's pretty much a static background on the SNES. Udderly Abducted has 3 layers of scrolling on the Saturn, while the SNES has a static background with a couple layers of cloud scrolls; The Saturn level is more impressive. Puppy Love has 3 layers (with a glowing volcano) of scrolling, while the SNES has one scrolling background with a couple of layers of scrolling clouds; it looks rather cheap on the SNES. And iso 9000 has 2 layers scrolling on top of eachother in the background, while the SNES level is tiled, with a floating transparent (flat) piece of paper.

Puppy Love is somewhat frustrating on the Saturn though, because the controls feel a little sluggish on that level, compared to playing it on the SNES.

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The Saturn also oddly uses dithered transparecy effects where the SNES doesn't (a few animations in the SNES use no translucency at all -like the explosions- while other effects use alpha blending). At very least the full-layer translucency effects should have been done with VDP2 on the Saturn.

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You should check out The Flying King. It has a layer of clouds that look very transparent; I don't see any dithering there and it looks much like the clouds in Iron Storm. The SNES level doesn't have any clouds.

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Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

The Space Adventure is a better game than Snatcher. If you're having trouble with the volume of Genesis sound in Sega-CD games, you need to get a model 1 Genesis, line the audio out of the headphone jack and adjust the volume on the console.

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Actually I have a model 1 Mega Drive and I did what you said. Thanks a lot (rep given)! The drums, by the Ricoh soundchip, are still louder than they should but the MD music was the one really messing with the dialogue audio comprehension.

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Originally Posted by sheath

I didn't like the Saturn version of Earthworm Jim at all, there was something more generic about it, just like Sonic 3D Blast. It's like they didn't know what to do with all that power and just closed their eyes and did whatever.

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Exactly. I don't like the Saturn version of Sonic 3D Blast. The MD chip tunes are better and those lame loading screens are the pure definition of "generic". Rushed a$$ ports.

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Originally Posted by StarMist

I'm interested in Trekkies's information on some of these too. As for Policenauts I apparently remembered your comparison of SS/PS framerates backwards (which I still don't think matters).
I'd also like to know why you struck out Megaman 8.
Metal Slug has more animation and better colour than the PS version.
The Street Fighter Collection's games have the usual Saturn advantages over the PS ports w/o the sound troubles they sometimes show in SNK ports.
SFA3 is considered a masterpiece and sometimes preferred to the Dreamcast version (I think due to resolution and a trace of input lag on DC--it's not about the controllers). The PS version is an impressive achievement but a bit graphically dull; may also have frames cut--I've owned and played both the DC and PS but never enjoyed it enough to scrutinize either.
Not sure why anything so undemanding as the Parodius games would be better on Saturn unless it's due to load times: if programmed to eliminate it they can have none, eg Layer Section, though most naturally employ breathers twixt levels.
Grandia has thicker colouring on the Saturn. To some people that makes a big difference.

---I still don't see why you feel the Sega CD has more Genesis style gaming than the Saturn.

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I don't know, I think I just messed up.

Metal Slug is much better on the Saturn,yes.
But the PS1 version of Metal Slug X has no loadings during the stages and no signs of slowdown. A very good port. By the way, I prefer Metal Slug X over the original.


---I never said that. I said that PS1 has more Genesis style gaming than the Saturn.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

Oh I completely missed that reply. I didn't add Policenauts because it slipped my mind. But the Saturn version has more content and the FMVs run at a smoother framerate.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 is an Arcade Perfect Port on Saturn. On PS1 it's not, and the Dreamcast port is a broken mess.
Street Fighter Collection has faster load times on the Saturn and I think it might have more animation.
Megaman 8 has 2 additional bosses and better music on the Saturn, as well as nicer graphical effects.
Metal Slug has faster load times and the levels don't come to halt halfway through to load more data. Also less slowdown I think.
Grandia has better graphical effects for a lot of the spells and runs at a higher frame rate. The backgrounds for the battles look nicer too.
Lunar Silver Star Story Complete has better FMVs due the MPEG card, and the music sounds better.
Eternal Blue has nicer graphics and music if I remember correctly.The FMVs also run at a higher framerate.
Parodius games have less loading and performance issues on Saturn if I remember correctly.

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Thanks for the info.
However, I really doubt about "I think it might have more animation" (Street Fighter Collection). Never saw any difference.
If you're not sure, how can you say that?

You also could have cut all the "faster loading times" notes since the Saturn has more ram and its just what is expected from the system (There are few exceptions, like the SNES usually having longer loadings than MD, but that is caused by different reasons and it's just another discussion).

I don't see any reason to rejoice about Grandia and Lunar on the Saturn since the games are totally in Japanese. Maybe you know Japanese but such versions are pretty irrelevant for non-Japanese speakers. Furthermore, the MPEG card is rare as hell; how many people actually have it? 1000-ish?

I doubt about Parodius Da! and Gokujou Parodius having any additional issues on the PS1.

IIRC Street Fighter Alpha 3 on the Saturn is better than the arcade since it gives you more selectable characters right from the first time playing it, personally, I like that.

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Originally Posted by sheath

I'd swear the average load time on the Playstations is over ten seconds, close to 20 seconds in many cases. It always cracks me up to think about people complaining about 6 second load times in Sega CD games when I know how that turned out on the favorite platform of everybody.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

Yeah, PS1 load times were pretty awful. I remember there were some games where the load times felt like they were at least a minute long.

I think the worst load times I've ever had in a Saturn game were for Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. And those were maybe 15 Seconds at worst.

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Originally Posted by StarMist

I can't say for multiplatform titles as Wipeout, Wipeout XL, and some Street Fighters are all I have now and they're the same on each console, but PS games do have more (unskippable) flyscreens. Those on Saturn tend to be skippable since they're for things like Truemotion or in-house subsidiaries. Playstation simply had more big production games meaning collaborations from companies, publishers, &c along with whoever released it in the West wanting credit--which isn't a factor on so many of our Saturn JP exclusives.
Moreover it's the PS laser wearing down so that colourful PS logo lingers for another 5 to twenty seconds depending on its and the disk condition.

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Have to agree with StarMist here.
I have a PSOne and it works like a charm, most of the games that I play on it are 2D and I have nothing to complain about the loading times (I can tell you that Last Blade loads significantly faster on the PS1 compared to the Neo Geo CD though), and I'm very fussy about that too.
Nothing too different from what I usually get from the Sega CD games.

However, 3D games usually have longer loading times compared to the 2D ones. I can remember about Driver and Driver 2 as good nightmare examples.
For multiplatform games, I never saw big differences between Saturn (without the RAM cart) and PS1. 2 o or 3 seconds more is what I'd expect for the said RAM advantages of the Saturn.
Anyway, most of the time for 3D games it is slower to load but it's also faster in game compared to the Saturn, and it's fine this way IMO.

But the condition of the laser lens assembly and the PS1 model (in the durability/reliability aspect) are dramatic factors in this regard. Many people prefer the big old models for several non-practical reasons but that's the wrong way to go IMO (the same for the Sega CD model 1 vs Sega CD model 2 revision 1; I will always pick the easier to fix and more reliable model. And it has no sound quality differences like the Mega Drive models have, so no practical reason - or karaoke anyone?).

Any model prior to the 5001 should be avoided for several reasons.
The 9000 series has better CD drives as long as the PSOne models, and these are the ones to go IMO.
I'm sorry for those playing with other models and for those that will complain about models being released after Saturn's death, but I like to have a small console like the PSOne that is more reliable compared to the other models and very smaller when compared to that big clumsy box called Saturn.

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Originally Posted by sheath

Also, the only area that Sega definitely screwed up was marketing the Saturn, and I am convinced that was caused by the break down in East West relations during such a critical product launch. The Saturn itself is a fantastic platform, easily 1:1 with the PS1 while both were in the same market.

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The hardware design and the SDK are also nothing to write home about.
Hard to develop for... Hard to redesign the circuit and cut costs...

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Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

I think that the Playstation was the best handled, designed, launched, etc console of all time. Even with the failure rate, it didn't impact the brand the way it did the 360 or even future Playstation consoles. Even if the graphics didn't have the positive reception they did, the ease of development alone would have been attractive to developers and publishers. It launched at the perfect time with the perfect medium with decent price and good value. The fact that the entire brand launched from a non-game company only makes it all the more impressive.

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Originally Posted by Thenewguy

1# Price - their system cost considerably more than $300 to manufacture early on (what was it? $380?), leading to a launch price of $400, which is too much.

2# Design efficiency & relevance - Whist their machine cost more to manufacture, its results were not actually any better than Playstation, and, in fact it had many inferior aspects, its hardware was also focussed on the wrong areas for market conditions of the time.

3# The system was launched at a stupid time of year, with a stupid surprise launch.

4# The system was launched with games which made it look bad.

5# Crappy dev tools. You can talk about how Sega did things "the way they'd historically always been done" in the industry, but this is not an excuse. Sega stayed still in this area, there was nothing stopping them from looking at ways of improving their business, and anticipating the importance of dev tools in the same way that Sony did. Sony caught the old stallwarts with their pants down because their business practices had become stagnant.

6# Sega had one big, and crucial advantage over Sony, they had built up a range of exclusive, and popular IPs, and characters associated with their brand name, essentially a fanbase which had already been built up giving them a huge headstart over Sony. Shockingly Sega didn't bother focussing any effort at all in this area.

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So much for the bold parts...

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Originally Posted by agostinhobaroners

---I never said that. I said that PS1 has more Genesis style gaming than the Saturn.

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I was trying to telescope a couple statements of yours here, namely that you don't like the Saturn cz there's less G style gaming on it than the PS, but you do like (or love) the Sega CD. Or is that for the FMV and PC style games on SCD? Regarding this and your mention of European affection for the Saturn it had the first Discworld and one of the sequels. And I was reminded in another thread it also had Jewels of the Oracle.

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Thanks for the info.
However, I really doubt about "I think it might have more animation" (Street Fighter Collection). Never saw any difference.
If you're not sure, how can you say that?

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This is highly doubtful, there's not enough animation in those old games to strain the PS. Could still have been terribly ported but that'd be the only cause.

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You also could have cut all the "faster loading times" notes since the Saturn has more ram and its just what is expected from the system

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Then why honour the Playstation's superior 3D? That's what was expected from the PS.

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Originally Posted by StarMist

I was trying to telescope a couple statements of yours here, namely that you don't like the Saturn cz there's less G style gaming on it than the PS, but you do like (or love) the Sega CD. Or is that for the FMV and PC style games on SCD? Regarding this and your mention of European affection for the Saturn it had the first Discworld and one of the sequels. And I was reminded in another thread it also had Jewels of the Oracle.

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It depends on the way you see it.

For what I have read from your posts you see the Sega CD as a standalone platform; while I see it as an add-on to the Mega Drive, an expansion to its hardware capabilities...
As an add-on, I love it.
I love how it combines the Yamaha soundchip of the Mega Drive (and, sometimes, even the PSG) with its Ricoh soundchip... Games like Silpheed and Wing Commander beautifully combine the hardware... In Wing Commander, for an example, you can have dialogue scenes with voice acting in high quality 'cause it's not using CDDA music, allowing successive loadings of new samples to the PCM RAM and you still have the background music, with no interruption, thanks to the Yamaha soundchip of the Mega Drive... Some songs combining the two chips, like in Silpheed, sound better than any other 16-bit console not using CDDA.
Sometimes you'll swear that it's a CD track being playback, but it's just high quality rich chip (no pun intended) tunes. And this perfect combination is possible thanks to the fact that the Mega Drive FM soundchip can produce much clearer and richer sounds compared to the SNES and PC Engine soudchips respectively (just think about those muffled instruments of 95% of the SNES soundtracks being combined with the clearer instruments from the Ricoh soundchip, it would sound very strange).

Games like Pitfall or Another World can be played in their full glory using crystal clear sfx and far superior soundtracks; also offering an overall far superior presentation using the very same VDP.

Other examples, like SoulStar, will give you graphics like you would never expect to see in the Mega Drive, combining the Sega CD ASIC and the Mega Drive VDP...

More aspects, like the new genres of games offered by the add-on were already explored in my previous posts.

As I see it, the Sega CD is an add-on that open new possibilities to squeeze the Mega Drive: by multiplying the storage capacity, improving the diversity of the library and, finally, providing a huge boost to it's hardware capabilities. And all of that I can have using the same all the controllers and peripherals that I already had for the Mega Drive.




The Saturn is another story. A whole new system that does not appeal to me as much as the PS1 by a far margin (for the reasons presented here many times and in different ways), so the PS1 is my platform of choice in the 32-bit era.
Having a PS1, I will buy a Commodore CD32 prior to the Saturn due to the redundancy between PS1 and Saturn libraries. I prefer to explore several different types of games than the same games in several incarnations (I'm addict to multiple comparisons though). The CD32 library does not appeal to em that much, but the possiblity to play several older Amiga games is always tempting my taste.

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Originally Posted by StarMist

Then why honour the Playstation's superior 3D? That's what was expected from the PS.

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'Cause some people here stated the opposite while I never denied that Saturn, usually, had shorter loading times than the PS1.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

This is just dumb . . . you ALWAYS want to build on past successes and established brand name, franchises, characters etc. It's almost as ridiculous as arguing Sega should have changed their entire company/brand name at their peak of popularity.

The only time you'd want to shift way from such things is due to bad PR . . . if a character/genre/name stops being popular, or gets ruined by particularly bad games/actions, then it's sometimes easier to start fresh than to work back up from the bad PR. (like how Sega dropped Alex Kidd)

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This is way beyond basic business management, but your assertions are what kill companies/organizations all the time. Relying on past success can be a creativity killer. The only way to prevent an organizational down slope is to look hard at creations that are working but holding you back from doing something even more accessible.

I have seen successful people turn down jobs for this very reason, actors and actresses do it all the time. They could milk a "character" for all they are worth but they choose not to because they can't see anything more to develop there and are more interested in new things.

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Originally Posted by agostinhobaroners

The hardware design and the SDK are also nothing to write home about.
Hard to develop for... Hard to redesign the circuit and cut costs...

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The hard to develop for part could have been fixed with management focusing more on third parties and development kits than on games.

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Originally Posted by agostinhobaroners

As I see it, the Sega CD is an add-on that open new possibilities to squeeze the Mega Drive: by multiplying the storage capacity, improving the diversity of the library and, finally, providing a huge boost to it's hardware capabilities. And all of that I can have using the same all the controllers and peripherals that I already had for the Mega Drive.

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So do/will you not own a Super Nintendo? Because it has many redundancies with the Genesis whose versions and peripherals are largely superior. It also has many different games in a similar vein to the MD's, just as the Saturn to the PS.

I remember your attachment to peripherals. I however am not in love with the MD's.

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The Saturn is another story. A whole new system that does not appeal to me as much as the PS1 by a far margin (for the reasons presented here many times and in different ways), so the PS1 is my platform of choice in the 32-bit era.
Having a PS1, I will buy a Commodore CD32 prior to the Saturn due to the redundancy between PS1 and Saturn libraries. I prefer to explore several different types of games than the same games in several incarnations (I'm addict to multiple comparisons though). The CD32 library does not appeal to em that much, but the possiblity to play several older Amiga games is always tempting my taste.

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I too would like to play those older Amiga games (almost bought that lot TheSonicRetard did, just didn't know whether I'd need more machinery to play it).
In case you want to see my original PS/SS/Genesis assessments The Greatest Systems- Your list? post #10.

After a fashion I see the Saturn as you do the CD, an extension of the MD filling all those holes the MD has. Rather, not only does it provide text and to a lesser degree PC derived gaming (which is fine, not my favourite) but also polygonal gaming which is at best a joke on the MD. Also the size of 32 bit games suits me much better. And the SCD is not a system I will ever love by any means.

I'm not implying you're being overly unreasonable, taste is taste, only that you're taking more whacks at the Saturn than would be strictly justifiable according to your arguments against it.

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Originally Posted by StarMist

So do/will you not own a Super Nintendo? Because it has many redundancies with the Genesis whose versions and peripherals are largely superior. It also has many different games in a similar vein to the MD's, just as the Saturn to the PS.

I remember your attachment to peripherals. I however am not in love with the MD's.

I too would like to play those older Amiga games (almost bought that lot TheSonicRetard did, just didn't know whether I'd need more machinery to play it).
In case you want to see my original PS/SS/Genesis assessments The Greatest Systems- Your list? post #10.

After a fashion I see the Saturn as you do the CD, an extension of the MD filling all those holes the MD has. Rather, not only does it provide text and to a lesser degree PC derived gaming (which is fine, not my favourite) but also polygonal gaming which is at best a joke on the MD. Also the size of 32 bit games suits me much better. And the SCD is not a system I will ever love by any means.

I'm not implying you're being overly unreasonable, taste is taste, only that you're taking more whacks at the Saturn than would be strictly justifiable according to your arguments against it.

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Great post, really.

Yes I don't have a Super Nintendo and I don't pretend to buy one in the next 12 months; for similar reasons to the ones I pointed before, but in this case it's way worse (I don't like several aspects about the Saturn, but it is still possible to change my mind about getting one since it has good exclusives and the best games are truly superb).

The Super Nintendo is a bunch of missed opportunities and let downs IMO:
- The main processor clock is a bad joke. Had it been clocked at 5-6Mhz and it would have put the MD's M68000 into shame many times. Had it used a M68000 clocked at 10MHz, well, bye bye MD.
It's just too bad for a 2 years later console than MD (3 years when compared to the PC Engine). Much more games with bad slowdown than you can find on MD/PCE, shooters library badly hurt, beat'em ups with stupid on screen character limitations... And you can't even overclock the damn thing, something like 10% of overclock will break the games.
- The sound system is the biggest let down: the Sony SPC700 was a waste of money IMO 'cause the way the system interfaces with it is goofy, to say the least.
The forced interpolation and the poor SDK killed the sound of 95% of the SNES library. Most of the games sound deeply muffled and the soundtracks sound similar for the most part; while the MD library offers a plethora of different styles and instruments in the soundtracks... OK, I agree that Mega Drive has more annoyingly bad sounding games (a big thanks to EA!) by comparison but what is great sounds really superb in all aspects, crystal clear.
The voice samples in the games, overall, are much less distorted than the MD ones. However it still pales in comparison to the PC Engine most of time, which is a shame.
Finally, it's all the way a samples playback based sound system which, IMO, would make more sense if they had released a CD add-on to make use of it without having to dramatically reduce the samples' quality, like was common with the cartridge games (But probably the Sony prototype might have had some bad bottlenecks in this regard due to the SNES lame sound system hardware design) (the 64K RAM for the sound doesn't help but it's still reasonable for a 1990 system using ADPCM - I'm looking at you Sega CD!). Also, generalizing, SNES soundtracks need more space in the cartridge than the MD/PCE (HuCard) ones which was never a good thing (more and more compression).
- Planar graphics needing compression + wimpy processor == loading times. What you guys were saying about PS1 vs Saturn in this aspect, oh, it's so more irritating and common when you compare SNES vs MD. Some games also have in game loadings while the MD version doesn't, like Phantom 2040. And we are talking about a system whose work RAM is 2x MD's work RAM.
- The SNES library doesn't hold a candle to the NES library.
- Censorship says "hi!" all the time... The library already has lots of childish and goofy games, then, the few more "mature" ones get butchered with stupid changes... No blood, no nude scenes, no strong language... Nothing! To hell with things like Flashback's Death Tower changed to Cyber Tower; so needless... Prince of Persia swords cause explosions instead of bloodbath, just goofy and childish as fuck.
- The 256x224 resolution does not appeal to me. Many games have less viewable area when compared to the MD and sometimes it affects the gameplay (for the worse, of course).
Many more to go, but I'll stop here to preserve my health...



I don't like polygonal gaming that much...
But you're correct, I don't have so many reasons to whack the Saturn (I don't hate, I just don't like it); but some posts here (not yours; not everybody) overpower the good points of the system IMO, so I like to argue about that; sometimes you have to be radical to make your point clear, especially when some act like deafblind fanboys.

Lol Nintendo harmful to the industry(what, by not allowing a ton of ports on their systems, and wanting the games that are released to be exclusive? That's a good thing people, massive amount of ports is not competition, and is not all that different then what caused the gaming crash, so I think we should thank nintendo buy saying, if you want to make games for this this, it can't be whored off to other systems). Nintendo Didn't say you can't make games for other systems(the exact opposite, companies were only allowed to make 3 games a year for the NES, done to basically limit a ton of low end games flooding the market, but also gives companies more of a mreason to make games for a bunch of different systems), they said you can't make the "same" game, which by the way, not only helps every system out(as it makes each library uniqe), but is very healthy to the industry in general.

MS is insanely damaging on the otherhand, as they actually buy companies, so their games can only be on the XBOX systems in general, not just "specific" games( Rare anybody).

Sony is very damaging, but in other ways as well(promotes graphic power over good game design, buyouts the press, owns market share in the medium used on their systems, and bribes companies to virtually only make games for them).

As for Sega they only damaged themselves, which sadly made way for MS to later come in(remember Sega really started online gaming, It's the one major thing Sega actually brought to the table, completely original, but once Sega killed them selves(stupid morons), it allowed MS to come in, and really cause damage.

What is it, like 90% of online gaming consists of FPS or more precisely COD clones now.

Sega had diversity(hasn't always been their strong point, but by the time online gaming came into the picture, they were finally getting with the program, with what people wanted), they had leaderboards, they had MMOs( did they also have online fighters? ), and exc.

I mean damn, there's online for Shenmue for crying out loud, which to do such for an adventure game is odd, and amazing at the same time.

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Originally Posted by Zoltor

MS is insanely damaging on the otherhand, as they actually buy companies, so their games can only be on the XBOX systems in general, not just "specific" games (Rare anybody).

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During the 80s in Japan Nintendo got there first, and by the time the big competition got started Nintendo had 90% of the Japanese videogame market, and games appearing on Nintendo consoles had to be exclusive.

If a company has a exclusivity clause, and they have a monopoly, nobody else can get any 3rd party exclusives at all, its simply not possible, no 3rd party company is going to agree to put an exclusive game on a system with less than 10% marketshare, its literal suicide for their business, therefore, with Nintendo's business practices all 3rd party games in Japan pretty much had to be exclusive to Nintendo.

Nintendo demanded that they manufacture all the cartridges themselves, they charged 3rd parties double the amount it cost to manufacture them, and then they charged them a hefty licensing fee on top of that. 3rd parties had two choices, either they could cave in to every demand Nintendo made, or they could support another system, which had >10% marketshare, which meant their company went out of business.

Their exclusivity deal meant they had all the best software, and kept their marketshare high, their high marketshare meant that their exclusivity deal couldn't be broken ;)