Side by Side: Doom (32X vs. Saturn)

[kevinski]

Genesis Knight, I've been checking eBay on and off for quite some time, and I've never seen a Japanese copy of Saturn DOOM. I'm kinda curious as to how many copies were even made.

[Rusty Venture]

QEMM to the rescue!!

Don't get me started on that. I'm just thankful that Win95/98 fixed most of those goddamn DOS problems.

Doom/Duke3D would run without having to curse out DOS and deal with that pain in the ass memory management. Install, run setup, make shortcut, play.

[Arjak]

*Reads article on EGM*



What idiots!

[GeckoYamori]

The early-to-mid 90s was an embarrasing period for the maturing game journalism industry. The national Swedish Sega magazine gave the 32X port 100 in every field. Then there's that magazine which gave Donkey Kong Country 117/100.

[Joe Redifer]

Atari was well known for sending out unfinished preview ROM carts for magazines to review, and then they made the mags send them back because they couldn't afford to let the mags keep them. I doubt the game EGM reviewed was 100% complete. I'm not even sure why there is a page comparing 32X and Jaguar Dooms. They both look gawdawful, even for their time. Same goes for the PC version. If you want blocky graphics, play an Atari 2600.

[Rusty Venture]

*Reads article on EGM*



What idiots!

Don't even get me started on EGM. That magazine went to shit after they went SF2 crazy. Great for previews and codes, but that is pretty much it.

[David J.]

I bought a 32X for Doom, because I didn't have a PC at home. But I had a Sega Genesis... and when the 32X was announced, I went apeshit.

I played Doom 2 A LOT at my grandfathers house - he used to play computer games quite a bit. So when I saw the 32X, I lusted for one, and got one when they where $20, along with Doom for $20 also, and I was content for a few months until my family got a computer. And I bought Doom 2 for the computer within a week.

I sold Doom on the 32X a year or two ago along with some other crap games, but I repurchased it for the memories for a pittance.

[cheetah235]

doom is awesome and the midi music kicks ass
but you have to play on pc because pc was first system it came out for... not to mention you get online play that way

the reason why doom is so great is because its fun without much story you dont need story when you have that much violence









lol columbine

[Sen]

I completed (all episodes availeble) a lot of different version of Doom: PC, Saturn, psx, 32x, xbox (in doom 3 CE) and Xbox 360.

All are playable and great games in my opinion, a game ahead of it's time. Sadly the earlier console versies dropped the ball a bit. Not enough to destroy the fun for me, but it could and should have been much better.

[Mamba Tabac]

The 32X music track is a rip-off of Metallica's Master of Puppets by the way. (I hope everyone already knew that)

Actually, it's No Remorse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvqC4...eature=related

If the Japanese version of Doom has a higher frame-rate, then my word the western version must be absolutely rubbish - I have the Japanese version and find it practically unplayable.

[Curryman123]

recently played the PS1 version of Doom and it's fukin amazing.

The sound effects, creepy music, weird lighting effects...add to the experience.

The Saturn version is very bad. Choppy framerate, no light effects and no sound echos.

Moreover, the episode 3 from Doom uses the city background from Doom 2, which makes no sense at all.

So, they couldn't replicate the fiery background of the PSX version?

[The Coop]

Of the two, the Saturn version comes out on top for me. More levels, all the weapons (no BFG 9000 in the 32X game? WTF?), atmospheric lighting so the stuff farther away gets darker, more monsters, most/all of the monster animations... even the sound comes out better on the Saturn version thanks to the botched attempt at "music" on the 32X version. And if you put the Saturn version on "mono", the sound's fixed (it'll be in mono, but it's better than how it is by default). The framerate bites on the Saturn version, but it's still playable much of the time (some big rooms really chug though).

So yeah, neither port is ideal, but you get more for your buck with the Saturn version, along with that great title screen song.



By the way, could you check your PMs if you haven't, Joe?

[Wesker]

So, they couldn't replicate the fiery background of the PSX version?

It probably would have lagged the game as hell, no pun intended.

I don't get why they didn't just used the original PC version skybox instead of doing what they did. Like you said, it makes no sense at all.

[Da_Shocker]

Heh, I gotta give some props to Genesis Knight for actually taking the time to compare two awful versions of Doom. That's dedication. Or just craziness. It was a good read though, and I learned some stuff about Saturn Doom in the process. I always read some horrible things about the Saturn game, but it's worse than I originally thought. Thanks for the comparisons!

If anyone is interested here's one of my favorite articles on a Doom comparison EGM did: http://www.ataritimes.com/article.php?showarticle=216

What a horrible review.

[sheath]

I find the 32X version of Doom more responsive than the Jaguar game, and it is generally faster in framerate as well. The advantage of having in game music can obviously be downplayed, but it seems relatively few people have played the game on the actual hardware today. That chart of Jaguar advantages is silly in my opinion, I'd say the games are roughly equal with trade offs. Seriously, dozens upon hundreds of SNES fans swear up and down that the SNES SFX-2 game looks and sounds wonderful, this is not an objective discussion.