The Sega Saturn appreciation thread

[Black_Tiger]

Saturn texturing usually looks kinda' ass, the video output is also iffy, being both over-saturated in colour, and often having issues with contrast.

Nights is so pixellated it looks like a low quality GIF

These Saturn threads virtually always turn into delusional fan-wank, this has been no different.

At least this moderate post is a nice change from all the biased comments. It's nice to have a rational concise breakdown of a console's strengths and weaknesses, using technical terms like ass, iffy, delusional and wank.

[Kamahl]

N64 texturing always looks total ass, the video output is also iffy, being both unsaturated in color, and often having issues with contrast.

Mario 64 is so blurry it looks worse than a badly encoded youtube 240p video.

5th gen related threads always turn into delusional fan-wank, this saturn thread has luckily been different.

[Thenewguy]

Doesn't look particularly "dull", or "dim" to me



Doesn't look particularly superior at texturing to the PS1

[j_factor]

Some of those are pretty debatable.

[sheath]

I see The New Guy has been incredibly unbiased and taken all previous discussion to refine his original opinion that the Saturn had inferior texture mapping. Edge Magazine would be so proud of your "objectivity".

Anyway:

[Thenewguy]

Is this stuff supposed to be proving my point?

The Zwei picture has bad contrast

The Quake picture has bad contrast and gritty looking textures.

Even in the village of Holy Ark there's blurry textures, look at the brickwork going down the whole of the left wall, the low res people

None of the other pictures look impressive by Playstation standards, a lot of them look oversaturated (High Velocity's colours look weird as hell), and/or contrasty too.

Sonic R, Virtua Fighter 2, and some of the other 3d fighters which use VDP 2 do look better than most PS1 games (though to be honest I'm not sure if they look better primarily due to increased polygon counts anyway, not texturing), that is not "normally better" as you say, that is the exception to the norm.

Saturn looks better here for instance, I think mainly due to higher polygon counts -

[StarMist]

Nights is so pixellated it looks like a low quality GIF

Nah, Nights looks great, and the PD blurring you showed isn't that big a deal cz there's so much action--much as Nights's short draw doesn't matter due to its play design and speed. (Yes I'm aware your image of PDZ with the leviathan is at a fairly long static point in the game).

5th gen related threads always turn into delusional fan-wank, this saturn thread has luckily been different.

You should see some of those 4th gen threads then. Oh, wait.

[Team Andromeda]

(though to be honest I'm not sure if they look better primarily due to increased polygon counts anyway, not texturing), that is not "normally better" as you say, that is the exception to the norm.

Saturn looks better here for instance, I think mainly due to higher polygon counts -

Its nothing to do with polygon counts as the likes of VF 2 use far less polygons than VF on the Saturn. Those games simply look a hell of a lot better due to the Saturn texture mapping and use of High Res mode . Also you go on about Zwei, well the likes of Star Fox 64 and Omega Boost had low res textures (that game ever features less draw distance) and Zweo looks worse than buck bumble I just can't agree with .

When it comes to dull texures, washed out colours blurry and poor texture mapping the N64 was the machine to own .

Nah, Nights looks great

Nights doesn't look that great it's clipping is a total nightmare - The boss sections look stunning but there's far better 3D on Saturn games

[Barone]

I just tested Hang-On GP for Saturn and noticed that the rider view uses a VDP2 bike layer with a translucent windshield. It's pretty nice looking if you asked me.

This is what I would call "nice":

Thats quite a nice trick actually, Hang On GP could have been quite nice for an early Saturn title, except the animation for the bikes is atrocious. AND DAT bike engine noise!

It's not so atrocious for a 1995 game IMO, but it looks terrible when some asshole pastes a video of Moto Racer, a full two years later game, right after Hang-On GP's.

Saturn texturing usually looks kinda' ass, the video output is also iffy, being both over-saturated in colour, and often having issues with contrast.

Well, I haven't seen many asses rendered in 3D by old 32-bit consoles in a while, so it would be hard for me to make such comparison... However, 3rd party Saturn 3D games usually have mediocre or poor texture quality IMO.

About the video output, which Saturn model are you talking about? And are you considering any other console to say that?
My V-Saturn model 2 composite output looks great IMO. It doesn't show any artifacts or distortion in colors, the saturation seems perfectly balanced and the whole image looks very smooth without being blurry as the Mega Drive outuput (I use a JP MD, model 1 equipped with Sony CXA1145 encoder) and without its artifacts in edges and jail bars (not really noticeable in PAL-M though; in NTSC they are much more pronounced).
For comparison, the US PSOne model that I have surely has worse composite output quality with noticeable artifacts in red tones and oversaturation all over the screen. It also seems to suffer with overcontrast. And people usually say that PSOne has better composite output than the earlier models, so I'm really not impressed with the PS1 composite video output quality at all. It does look perfect using a SCART cable though (I use one of those SCART-to-Component converters that I had to re-calibrate to have better coloring - it was a green mess with default settings, with all consoles).
My JP Panasonic 3DO FZ-10 also has superb composite output. Something that I like about the 3DO (it seems to be valid to most of models in all regions) is that it seems to use a different gamma setting or something, 'cause it has a very unique tone set that I really love. Comparing to the Saturn, I would say that 3DO image is a bit smoother (I've never found anything smoother than the 3DO composite output; it's surely THE console for FMV games) without being blurry but lacks a bit of contrast IMO; both are perfect in terms of having no noticeable artifacts in their image output.

I don't own a N64, but I have three old friends who are Nintendo fanboys and have a N64. All of them using different CRT TVs have the same image problem using composhit: overcontrast and lack of saturation. Goldeneye has some maps in which walls and texture are BARELY visible no matter what you do with your TV settings (the same for Perfect Dark - no pun intended); some other games like Mario Kart 64, Diddy Kong Racing and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time look OK though.

And when I speak about contrast, saturation, etc... I'm taking in account the adjustments that you can do using your TV but, especially for composhit, it usually doesn't help much.

Nights is so pixellated it looks like a low quality GIF

No, it doesn't.

N64 texturing always looks total ass

I would say most of the time, but not always.

Doesn't look particularly "dull", or "dim" to me

I agree but the image you used seems to be filtered.

Doesn't look particularly superior at texturing to the PS1
Image

It would be cool if you have named all games presented in those screenshots.
Croc is a very arguable case I'd say and we would need to look several other stages/locations to claim superiority in one side.
Tomb Raider is classic case of a badly dark 3D Saturn game and I have pointed it earlier in this thread. sheath's comparison video also shows some ugly geometry errors/inconsistencies in Saturn version depending on the camera angle.
Funny that you have picked Wipeout 'cause it's one of the few Saturn racers where the road texture doesn't look bad IMO.
MechWarrior 2 is another example that I have pointed previously when j_factor claimed that the Saturn version was superior. The textures on the Saturn look like an early N64 game in this case.

All in all, I really don't get why some people love to use screenshots to compare graphical quality in games, it's silly IMO. Games are all about movement and, especially in the 32-bit era discussions, still pictures usually will hide/minimize PS1 problems with texture warping and tearing surfaces; just like it will make you ignore the usual lower framerate of the Saturn versions and its common use of different textures rather than lighting in floor/road pavement which makes its games look poor when compared to the PS1 in many cases in such aspect.

I see The New Guy has been incredibly unbiased and taken all previous discussion to refine his original opinion that the Saturn had inferior texture mapping. Edge Magazine would be so proud of your "objectivity".

Anyway:

Again, I don't like still pictures but some of those aren't very favorable to your point IMO.
Like Sega Rally's showing the usual Saturn dull pavement implementation for racing games and its struggle to show some good dust/smoke effect when your car is sliding.
Daytona's grass is very pixelated, Tomb Raider's textures are too dark and pixelated and Quake goes in the same vein (I think it works well for that game though) (and, again, with screenshots you can't see stuff like Quake's lighting been clearly superior to the N64's version in many spots).
Oh, well...

a lot of them look oversaturated (High Velocity's colours look weird as hell), and/or contrasty too.

High Velocity (Touge: King the Sprits) is a late 1995 and it looks clearly better than Peak Performance (Touge Max: Saisoku Driver Master) which is an early 1997 on the PS1; both games developed and published by the very same companies. Clearly better in several aspects: texture warping, perspective correction, coloring, contrast, saturation...
I really doubt you have played similar early racing games on the PS1, 'cause I could list several ones which look really bad compared to High Velocity and their release dates will, in most cases, only add to their shame.

that is not "normally better" as you say, that is the exception to the norm.

I really agree with this part.

Saturn looks better here for instance, I think mainly due to higher polygon counts -

Both screenshots look heavily filtered.

Its nothing to do with polygon counts

In a similar discussion in assemblergames.com some years ago (IIRC) someone pointed to an interview where one of the guys responsible for development of the game stated that the Saturn version used like 660 polygons for fighters while the PS1 version had something like 550-600 (I don't remember the exact numbers). It probably isn't the main reason for this or that but a dozen of extra polygons in some body parts, like the knees, can make a 3D fighter looks more polished/less rough than the other version/game.

[MrSega]

@thenewguy. I doubt that Crash Bandicoot vid is running authentically on PS1. It indeed looks filtered & may be running on Bleem Emulation or on a PS2. Which both clean up textures & sharpen PS1's resolution.

Whîle PS1 appears to the naked eye to look better than Saturn,its actually inferior to it.

First of all,PS1 only used 1MB of CPU RAM while Saturn used 2. Second, both 3D engines are totally different. PS1 uses Triangle polygons, Saturn used Square.

Also, you forgot polygon & geometric counts. PS1 could only do 360,000 polygons & 100,000 Geometrics. Saturn could do up to 500,000 and 200,000 geometrics.


Barone and the others are right. PS1's 3D engine was fraught with several problems including; polygon clipping, sluggish framerate, texture & visual memory loss, warping, and environnement tearing.



This was caused by its underpowered CPU which was limited to only 4 coding intructions, low resolution, poor sprite & pixel & low visual data.

In order to loophole this, Sony programmed the CPU to run fake extra data. Which results in a change in color or polygon shape creating an illusion. Thats when the frames slowdown, because its being given different unknown instructions.


Saturn rarely had this problem because its VDPs were eqquiped with frame buffering and was programmed with a filter for textures.


Its 2 SH-2 "Aurora" CPUs also were programmed with multi coding instructions.


In order to see Saturn's superiority over PS1, there has to be a youtube LP.démonstration.


Also check out "Shenmue Saturn" & "Deep Fear", The PS1 is nowhere near capable of that on a techincial level.

[sheath]

Is this stuff supposed to be proving my point?

Not if your point is still that the Saturn is relatively bad at texture mapping for its generation.

The Zwei picture has bad contrast

The Quake picture has bad contrast and gritty looking textures.

Even in the village of Holy Ark there's blurry textures, look at the brickwork going down the whole of the left wall, the low res people

I didn't post a Zwei picture, that was Panzer Dragoon Saga. Quake might be a gimme, but I think it looks very similar to Dos Quake and aesthetically good as a stand alone game for that generation. I totally don't see what you are seeing for Holy Ark, but I am also not bashing "blurred" textures. 3DFX and N64 Glide filters were doing nothing but making textures like these look "better" by blurring them at the time. If a Saturn/PS1 game achieves a similar effect with good perspective correction and limited texture warping I call it a technical achievement, not a flaw.

None of the other pictures look impressive by Playstation standards, a lot of them look oversaturated (High Velocity's colours look weird as hell), and/or contrasty too.

You might want to adjust their monitor. Anyway, I'm again not sitting here touting absolutes about either console and like I said above I tend to compare Saturn or PS1 games to software rendered and/or DOS PC games or Arcade games from the time. As for the Playstation itself, man why don't you set about trying to prove its superiority in graphics with games from 1995-1997? Hell, use the whole library I don't care. I owned a PS1 from 1997-1999, and then again from 2001 onward and I just don't see it. All I see is full screen dithering, texture seaming, low resolution repetitive textures, and Genesis quality colors masked by gouraud shading and translucent effects in most games.

Sonic R, Virtua Fighter 2, and some of the other 3d fighters which use VDP 2 do look better than most PS1 games (though to be honest I'm not sure if they look better primarily due to increased polygon counts anyway, not texturing), that is not "normally better" as you say, that is the exception to the norm.

I'm pretty sure I said first and second party games tended to have better texturing than the average PS1 game, aren't those by default exceptions to the rule for a mass market third party gamer? What I don't get is why they don't count, is it because there aren't cyclical sequels to each of them? Does the VDP2 not count because it is cheating?

Saturn looks better here for instance, I think mainly due to higher polygon counts -

I don't see higher polygon counts in the Saturn game (right), when I owned Dead or Alive for PS1 I thought it looked higher polygon count, and it is because it is all polygon rendered. But the models look to be rendered in more polygons, and less textures, to me as well. The floor textures and flat backgrounds are better than the Tekken games but still inferior to most Saturn 3D fighters. Also, isn't Saturn DoA 60FPS to the PS1 game's 30FPS, or am I thinking of Tekken again?

This is what I would call "nice":
Q8JHdCgDGSM[/YOUTUBE]

Yes, I would also call that nice looking, and technically superior to what the Saturn offered in Hang-On GP or Manx TT. I would not call it "best" or "better" looking based on that video though. -edit- 20 second load times! Gads it cracks me up that PS1 fans find that acceptable.

Caution! Rendered Ass!

It's not so atrocious for a 1995 game IMO, but it looks terrible when some asshole pastes a video of Moto Racer, a full two years later game, right after Hang-On GP's.

I even said when I bought the game that the screenshots on the back of the box made it look really ugly. Over RGB upscaled to 720p HDMI it isn't bad looking, but certainly not as nice as Sega's other Saturn Racers. Plus, my gosh does Hang-On GP have twitchy controls, I could barely control it with the 3D pad. I remember why I added it to my want list though, supposedly the Saturn Racer was designed with Hang-On GP in mind and I believe it.

-edit-

Also, that history of Lobotomy Software video I posted over in the Gametrailers top ten FPS thread said that developers were given the system analyzer tools that Polyphony developed for Gran Turismo following its release, and that Quake II was a primary beneficiary of said advanced tools. I think it is fair to say that no such tools were developed for the Saturn and this adds another reason why we should_not compare games from 1998 onward to Saturn titles from previous years.

[Barone]

-edit- 20 second load times! Gads it cracks me up that PS1 fans find that acceptable.

Well, 20 secs for what that game delivers and the duration of each stage isn't all that bad.
Saturn owners wait about the same 20 secs to play a MK Trilogy fight which is, indeed, just the Playstation version (whose loading times are a bit shorter) but using lame dithered "transparencies" instead; and I can pick some links from this very same forum showing guys happy for getting their expensive Saturn MK Trilogy copy.

To not talk about Neo Geo CD owners waiting for 30-35 secs to play a single 60 seconds round of some KOF game and around extra 15 secs for each one of the following rounds...


EDIT: Who's the drunk fella playing Manx TT? Gosh, terrible driving skills...

[Thenewguy]

About the video output, which Saturn model are you talking about?

I believe I own a model 2 (US), presently its hooked up with S-Video, it used to be hooked up with RGB but I couldn't stand the over-saturated colours so I started using S-Video instead, which looks a lot milder.

I don't own a N64, but I have three old friends who are Nintendo fanboys and have a N64. All of them using different CRT TVs have the same image problem using composhit: overcontrast and lack of saturation.

N64 pretty much requires S-Video, and even then I've had huge amounts of varying quality with different brands of cable, which is a real pain in the ass.

I don't think N64's tend to look overcontrast with low end cables, if anything the opposite (a little faded sometimes)

Goldeneye has some maps in which walls and texture are BARELY visible no matter what you do with your TV settings

Never noticed that tbh, in my experience Goldeneye looks a little light and faded if anything.

No, it doesn't.

Well, maybe an exaggeration, it still looks a little messy to me though regardless.

Croc is a very arguable case I'd say and we would need to look several other stages/locations to claim superiority in one side.

I disagree, the PS1 version is much cleaner and clearer to me, you can't see what's ahead of you a lot of the time on Saturn, Saturn has a few other pro's though from what I recall, such as better animated lava IIRC

Funny that you have picked Wipeout 'cause it's one of the few Saturn racers where the road texture doesn't look bad IMO.

That one's there just because it looks a little worse, not because its bad per se, if you look at a lot of Saturn games the colours in the textures tend to look contrasty, whilst the PS1 version blend together more, that's what I see with Wipeout, and here for instance with the snow (each speck stands out on Saturn whilst the snow on PS1 is blended better)

All in all, I really don't get why some people love to use screenshots to compare graphical quality in games, it's silly IMO.

In this situation, when talking specifically about texturing its more apt IMO.

High Velocity (Touge: King the Sprits) is a late 1995...I really doubt you have played similar early racing games on the PS1, 'cause I could list several ones which look really bad compared to High Velocity and their release dates will, in most cases, only add to their shame.

I didn't notice them saying that Saturn games were "better than PS1 games from the same era", just that Saturn games usually looked better in textures, and colour. Period. Also I don't have a problem with the High Velocity graphics, just think the colour looks a little iffy.

I have a lot of PS1 racing games, only ones from 1995 and earlier I've played though are Wipeout, Destruction Derby, Ridge Racer, and Ridge Racer Revolution, The two Ridge Racer games admittedly have pretty weird colouring, but the Reflections games look alright.

[Barone]

I believe I own a model 2 (US), presently its hooked up with S-Video, it used to be hooked up with RGB but I couldn't stand the over-saturated colours so I started using S-Video instead, which looks a lot milder.

Interesting...
Also, IDK if there's any/noticeable difference in Saturn's video output quality depending on the model but I have seen some other consoles which do vary a lot. One of my friends wanted to trash his old SNES once he got a Super Famicom; Mega Drive models can have three or four different encoders, etc...

I'll try to find more info about this...

N64 pretty much requires S-Video, and even then I've had huge amounts of varying quality with different brands of cable, which is a real pain in the ass.

I don't think N64's tend to look overcontrast with low end cables, if anything the opposite (a little faded sometimes)

Never noticed that tbh, in my experience Goldeneye looks a little light and faded if anything.

Interesting too...
Funny (sadly) that S-Video was almost ignored in Brazil; most of the older CRT TVs don't have it and the newer ones have component input instead.

Well, maybe an exaggeration, it still looks a little messy to me though regardless.

OK.

I disagree, the PS1 version is much cleaner and clearer to me, you can't see what's ahead of you a lot of the time on Saturn, Saturn has a few other pro's though from what I recall, such as better animated lava IIRC

It would be hard to notice all that just comparing a single shot.
Saturn version also has lower framerate IIRC.

if you look at a lot of Saturn games the colours in the textures tend to look contrasty, whilst the PS1 version blend together more, that's what I see with Wipeout, and here for instance with the snow (each speck stands out on Saturn whilst the snow on PS1 is blended better)

Yep.

In this situation, when talking specifically about texturing its more apt IMO.

You're still losing the notion of how the textures look in game, with camera and lighting variations.

I have a lot of PS1 racing games, only ones from 1995 and earlier I've played though are Wipeout, Destruction Derby, Ridge Racer, and Ridge Racer Revolution, The two Ridge Racer games admittedly have pretty weird colouring, but the Reflections games look alright.

Yep.

[TVC 15]

This is in no way a criticism for either sides argument, but just a hypothesis. I can't fathom where these urban rumours, or perceptive biases come from regarding the whole Saturn vs PSX texture debate. Plain as day the Saturn has far less texture memory to play around, in 3d heavy games, such as racers where the VDP2 can't compensate for tight bends and different levels of height terrain to draw the floors, quite clearly the PSX pulls ahead, Sega Rally has lovely textures in the courses, but the cars look subjectively like arse, even when I first played it in 96', as an argument for graphics in motion its excellent however.

Its the same old, same old tepid warmed up late night after a jog lasagne argument. Saturn can only ever compete when VDP2 is in play. Virtua Fighter 2 looks excellent because of how well VDP2 is used, and some strict limitations of the high resolution interlaced mode. 8BPP textures with no shading, the interlacing makes every look nice and dandy, and less VRAM texture space is taken up by the bitmap floor and backgrounds. There's probably some tricks to compress things with paletted textures, I do recall in the VDP2 manual being able to do some colour lookup tricks with VDP1 textures.

The Saturn perceptively seems better at textures as an artistic choice, 1st parties probably knew the limitations of the VDP1, and focused on emphasising textures since VDP1 would slow down when using Gourad shading, PSX could probably texture and shade at the same time as fast the VDP1 does just drawing textures. Hence why good looking Saturn titles have that anime style painterly look to them.

Virtual On has the flat-shading of the Model 2 version pre-baked into the textures, had Virtual On used shading or lighting for the Virtuariod mechs it would have probably slowed the VDP1 down further, VDP2 is already helping heavily to draw the scenery.

Aesthetically Virtual On would probably cater better to the PSX video hardware, lots of transparent explosions, minimal textures but heavy shading with diffuse lighting on the Virtuaroids metal surfaces.

In summary.... Armchair moment that will piss of Saturn fans... Virtual On would have looked better on PSX. With a minimal trade off in background quality and maybe VDP2 floor texturing.

In the end specific game styles are better suited to the Saturn VDP1+2 hardware setup, but in most cases the hardware is overspecialised, in general rendering tasks PSX is more flexible and better for general game design.

Pure rendering grunt PSX wins hands down. Ultimately for a 3D feature set PSX is better designed, and IMHO on paper the textures are better. The additive lighting (rather than multiplicative) is horrible for the Saturn's low-res textures, leading to the over saturated colours.

The specialised VDP2 is probably the Saturn hardwares triumph but also its biggest limitation.