Check out battle of the ports

[sheath]

Doesn't the PC version fail to limit the framerate, so modern PC's run it *way* too fast (not just framerate, but the speed in general)?

[j_factor]

Wasn't there an Amiga version with system requirements that only a tiny number of people could meet?

[kool kitty89]

Doesn't the PC version fail to limit the framerate, so modern PC's run it *way* too fast (not just framerate, but the speed in general)?

Was it DOS or windows? I don't know of any DOS games released after ~1990 that had that speed problem, though a few mid 90s win9x games did (like S&K collection), but normally limited to windowed mode, not full screen if present at all. (and in all cases I know of they were fully software rendered games, not hardware accelerated iirc)

Wasn't there an Amiga version with system requirements that only a tiny number of people could meet?

Ridiculous as in requiring a fast 68060 or as in requiring a Power PC coprocessor board?

In any case it likely would have applied to fully upgradable AGA based machines only. (so Amiga 4000 ... maybe 3000 if the chipset was upgraded -I think that could be done given most stuff was socketed in the Amiga -I know that was sometimes doen for going from OCS to ECS)

[mick_aka]

Wasn't there an Amiga version with system requirements that only a tiny number of people could meet?

Yep, and even my A1200 with Blizzard 030 @ 50Mhz and 128MB RAM wont run it full speed unless you reduce the screen size to that of a postage stamp.

[kool kitty89]

Yep, and even my A1200 with Blizzard 030 @ 50Mhz and 128MB RAM wont run it full speed unless you reduce the screen size to that of a postage stamp.

Ah, so the 1200 could be upgraded to that extent... could it go up to an 040 or 060?
You probably would have needed an 040 at the very least. (and even then it would probably be like trying to play the PC game with a fast 486)

[mick_aka]

Yep you can get 060 accelerator boards, they still sell for around £300, a little extreme for playing doom.

There's plenty of hardware still being made for Amiga, my A1200 also has an internal scandoubler with VGA out, 4 USB ports, and the hard drive has been replaced with a 4GB compact flash card.

Also the program WHDLoad allows you to install most original floppy games to hard disk meaning no floppies or loading times anymore.

Browsed this forum on my Amiga 1200 more than once

[Da_Shocker]

Can we please get back on track fellas?

[j_factor]

With apologies to Da_Shocker...

Ah, so the 1200 could be upgraded to that extent... could it go up to an 040 or 060?
You probably would have needed an 040 at the very least. (and even then it would probably be like trying to play the PC game with a fast 486)

The 1200 even has PowerPC boards.

And apparently, WipEout was not released for Amiga... but WipEout 2097 was. Info I found:

Minimum Specs: 603e PPC processor, 3D gfx card (with Warp 3D support), WB 3.0, 24Mb fastram, CDROM drive, 1Mb HD space for min. installation.
Recommended: 604e PPC processor, 3D gfx card (with Warp 3D support; Permedia 2 or better), WB 3.1+, 32Mb+ fastram, 70Mb HD space for full installation (required to play CD tracks during animations), sound card (with AHI support), joypad.

Game includes keyboard/joypad (even PSX joypad via an adaptor) and sound card support.

Also contains CDDA tracks and Amiga-specific features (e.g. enabling/disabling sky fog, linear texture mapping and dithering; bilinear/trilinear filtering and mipmapping) not present in the PC/console versions.

I do wonder how many people actually own the necessary hardware for this, how many copies they sold, and how many other games require (or use) that level of Amiga hardware.

[Thenewguy]

The only problem noted was the control/game dynamics issues which should have nothing to do with the PAL to NTSC switch, and I think is something also solved on the PC version and later Wipeout games. (including XL/2097 and the N64 derivative of that)

If the NTSC version is playing too fast then its going to be harder to control and reaction times will be shorter resulting in more crashes

Also, Wipeout PAL is very close to being full screen, so the resolution is also higher, which may also impact speed differences and such.

Hmm, I wonder why: from what I remember, it retains most content from the first game but builds on it a ton, plus the N64 version added 4 player split screen. (I think one of the games also had network support for the Saturn -I forget what the PC multiplayer options were like though)

I meant that when comparing Saturn and PS1, the original Wipeout was seen as a whitewash win for PS1, whilst where it came to Wipeout 2097 the Saturn version was nearly as good as the PS1 version

CVG points for 2097/XL included

Downgraded transparencies and lighting effects
lower texture detail
Slightly lower frame rate (they note the frame rate is good though)
All the real music has been removed

That makes a lot more sense than other generalizations of Europe kicking the Saturn to the curb fairly early in favor of the PSX

Well, the PS1 did take over fairly quickly in Britain, but there were always dissenters and die hard Sega fans for the first couple of years, I think most of the last of them started to move to PS1 around mid 1997 - mid 1998 though, by 1998 I certainly don't think there was many people here who owned just a Saturn.

I could look into it actually, I've got some breakdowns at different times in Britain around I think.

And also remember, that regardless of size and wealth, the US is still significantly smaller in population than Europe: western Europe alone has more people than the US by a fair margin, but including all of Eastern Europe it's over 2x the US population.

Eastern Europe is dirt poor though, and the videogame culture of places like Spain and Italy was much more niche during the 90s.

some figures for the Saturn point to 17 million though, but I'm really not sure which are accurate)

The Saturn sold nowhere near 17 million, trust me when I say its more like 9-10 million, the 17 million figure was seemingly just from one random book, whilst i've run into figures for the 9 million all over the place.

[16bitter]

Fishy as in Gamefan was praising the game as if it was a Playstation exclusive and sort of pushing the Saturn version aside like it didn't exist. I'd go to Electronics Boutique and see Tomb Raider at the Saturn demo kiosk, but I couldn't find a copy of the game on shelves; I ended up with the Playstation game because of that. Gamefan called the Saturn version of Street Fighter Alpha the inferior version, because it had blue shadows, and would not recognise their wrong in that review until a couple of issues later. It just felt like magazines and stores were against the Saturn from the beginning and were writing the system off long before the Playstation became the the dominant console. It just makes you wonder who or what motivated these views and practices.

GameFan was longtime cheerleader for all things Sega -- they even posted agitprop directly from Sega PR in their 32X section in early '95 (percent of which was outright mendacity, making it another lesson under the rubric of 'truth in advertising' to both sides), that read as if parts of the mag were an extension of Sega Visions.

Dave Halverson was and is the Harry Knowles of video game journalism; meaning that no over-arcing, heavy or underhanded scheming need apply. He's a cheap date. Like Clinton with the Chinese. Buying some ad space and giving him some fanboy swag -- Spiny the Armadillo panties, Hermie Hopperhead condoms, etc. -- and the bastard would raise his 79% to a 99, while making his quasi-employees and/or aliases do the same.

As regards the 'Street Fighter Alpha' fiasco, this was rather a conflation of Halverson's cowardice with the not-altogether atypical-(within the prism of fucking up at GF)-Japanese-Racial-Slur incident of a few months prior; someone fell asleep at the wheel, and something honest, even in its retroactive dishonesty, slipped out. So entertaining. Particularly the Sega Fanboy meltdown (an endangered species at that point) that followed.

It's never mentioned or considered that every other 2D offering from Capcom was advertised as better, when cross-ported, on Saturn within the pages of GF.

Nor did many people acknowledge that Nick Rox's complaints held, in one area, even after the retraction: the Saturn, for whatever reason, always sounded tinny compared to the Playstation on 2D fighters (that is, before the ram carts).

And as was typical of Halverson, I'd note that he kept Rox away from in-depth reviews of Saturn Capcom fighters after the shit hit; which was rather disappointing, since his frame-counting pedantry was at least somewhat entertaining, as opposed to the alternatively empty, near-illiterate praise from either Halverson or a lackey, that so often seemed to exist as little more than an attempt to get quoted on the back of the game's box.

So far as a general anti-Sega bias, I'd look at Sega itself for that. If there was a need to ruin Sega, it started with the petty whims of Sega of Japan, and its general animus towards SOA.

The Saturn itself hit with such a thud that even shills like Halverson could provide little padding, especially compared to the Playstation's far-superior launch, both so far as marketing execution and its softs.

Though, he did try. He really did. Who the hell else would devote covers to 'Skeleton Warriors' and 'Amok'/'Scorcher'?

[retrospiel]

^ Sega of Japan never tried to ruin SOA. That is like the most ridiculous bullcrap ever but for some reason it is incredibly die-hard, regardless of the total lack of any reliable source.

[sheath]

Was it DOS or windows? I don't know of any DOS games released after ~1990 that had that speed problem, though a few mid 90s win9x games did (like S&K collection), but normally limited to windowed mode, not full screen if present at all. (and in all cases I know of they were fully software rendered games, not hardware accelerated iirc)

I tried the Wipeout and Wipeout XL demos sometime around 2002 and they ran at super speed on my Evil Kyro/Duron based system at the time. I don't recall hardware acceleration but they were the standard demos downloaded from that old 3D demos website I can't remember the name of.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Nor did many people acknowledge that Nick Rox's complaints held, in one area, even after the retraction: the Saturn, for whatever reason, always sounded tinny compared to the Playstation on 2D fighters (that is, before the ram carts).

If I remember correctly that has to do with the source for the sound samples. On PS1 voice samples were taken from the original tape recordings where as on the Saturn they were taken from what was used in the Arcade version, which was most likely compressed to fit in the limited memory space. Though I could be wrong here.

[16bitter]

^ Sega of Japan never tried to ruin SOA. That is like the most ridiculous bullcrap ever but for some reason it is incredibly die-hard, regardless of the total lack of any reliable source.

I don't actively care to cull a huge number, or really any, sources for this, but it is known that Sega of Japan reasserted control over Sega of America at the same time that Sega started crumbling as a hardware company.

Do you deny this, have counter-evidence, or generally think that the tea leaves lead to a dead end?

Other circumstantial evidence would be something like the SGI Project, to my side and belief.

Do many on here actually think Sega was better off passing on that chipset? That, as applied to and as the Ultra/Nintendo 64 project and system, it was actually infererior to the Saturn as SOJ asserted?

Do many, likewise, think that discontinuing the Genesis in the West was a move that was good for Sega in these territories, as opposed to its logic in Japan?

I'm being a bit discursive, but I likewise don't see how Sega of Japan's jingoism is an unknown or made-up factor.

Directed sources, such as Kalinske, have stated all this. Are you saying he's an outright liar? Certainly your sig implies it.

I'm curious how you came to those conclusions.

[A Black Falcon]

christuserloeser believes that Sega of America is responsible for all of Sega's ills, remember. Sega of Japan somehow did pretty much nothing wrong in his very strange world...