Why were Scaling 2D arcade games not brought to Home Systems?

[phoenixdownita]

Not all scaler games were model X, a good number of machines doing similar effects were CPU bound.

 

But even so, the CPU in the System X was at the same clock speed as the 3DO with more features. The Jaguar on paper as a superior dual CPU set-up but the bottle necking can cut that to less than half. All consoles release around the same time or before those were much worse.

 

Saturn was the first console, followed by the PSX to have the capability of running X board games.

 

However the Saturn has issues running Y board games. Then again the Y board has 3 CPUs running 68k without memory hogging.

OK just check all the superscaler boards,

https://segaretro.org/Sega_Hang-On_hardware

https://segaretro.org/Sega_OutRun_hardware

https://segaretro.org/Sega_X_Board

https://segaretro.org/Sega_Y_Board

https://segaretro.org/Sega_System_32

 

Or in Wikipedia summary:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_arcade_system_boards#Super_Scaler_series

 

the CPU is not what made the superscaler a superscaler because if a 68K makes a superscaler than Amiga AtariST Genesis Jaguar and countless Unix workstations were all SuperScalers.

[JaguarVision]

OK just check all the superscaler boards,

https://segaretro.org/Sega_Hang-On_hardware

https://segaretro.org/Sega_OutRun_hardware

https://segaretro.org/Sega_X_Board

https://segaretro.org/Sega_Y_Board

https://segaretro.org/Sega_System_32

 

Or in Wikipedia summary:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_arcade_system_boards#Super_Scaler_series

 

the CPU is not what made the superscaler a superscaler because if a 68K makes a superscaler than Amiga AtariST Genesis Jaguar and countless Unix workstations were all SuperScalers.

The U has 3 68ks running.

 

But to be fair I wasn't talking about Sega arcade boards I mean the other arcade producers. The systems are often CPU focused. But I also don't know why your using paper specs instead of developer results for specs.

 

The Jaguar on paper has a higher CPU clock for Tom and Jerry compared to the 3DO but the Jaguar architecture doesn't actually give you what's on paper. Same with Sat. Both it and Jaguar got numerous complaints about CPU access and how it hurt game development on both.

 

But let's discuss the bottom line, if the Jaguar can't run GP Rider and the Saturn can't run Galaxy Force II, then there was no reason to bring more scaler games like the OP wants.

 

So in the end the reason why there were not more scaler games is because the consoles OP claims are capable of running the are NOT capable of running them.

 

Imo

[phoenixdownita]

...

 

But let's discuss the bottom line, if the Jaguar can't run GP Rider and the Saturn can't run Galaxy Force II, then there was no reason to bring more scaler games like the OP wants.

 

So in the end the reason why there were not more scaler games is because the consoles OP claims are capable of running the are NOT capable of running them.

 

Imo

... I thought YOU were the OP

[00010000]

The only reason it played catch up I covered, nightmare to code for, but also one I didn't, Sony themselves. Back then they knew Sega was in trouble and they did some sneaky crap to both Sega and Nintendo in that period using both hands of SCEA and Sony Media. Sega wasn't hard to shove around, being the other CD system to own they at Sony paid for a lot of exclusives or 1yr timed port releases (like with Tomb Raider.) It's an effective tool paying up big bucks to cover a developers losses not having multiple systems up front having the game, but Sony did it with some key titles. In other cases, it was the crappy to code for pain in the butt base the system used making conversion a tricky affair. The Media end, Sony would get their clutches into the 90s print media before online took off and early into it too, and get them and game developers to start repeating and coining stupid ideas and phrases which weren't rooted in reality but helped push them as the cool console for teens and adults. Sega got slammed for its visuals despite not being really off the mark and delays (which they helped cause at times) and Nintendo got damned as the N64 kiddie box, despite in that first year the N64 having more T and M releases than PS1 in the same gap. You make systems uncool to the media, then all the poser kids read it in print, want to be cool too, and they repeat the hate and drive the fans underground keeping their mouths shut so they don't look bad to others. Most of this by now is public, if you dig hard enough to get the stories, but I learned of it working where I was back in 2001 and it was both a surprise and a confirmation of some things I kind of guessed at at the time.

 

Can't understate how true this stuff is. Which is why I kept laughing at all the PS fanboys getting mad when games like Rise of the Tomb Raider and TitanFall were XBO exclusives, complaining about MS buying up exclusives. While I think Nintendo's shady business tactics in the late '80s/early '90s may be a bit under-served (and most of them seemingly done by Nintendo of America, which is worth pointing out), it REALLY seems like Sony's underhanded tactics with PS1 and PS2 (to a smaller extent) are barely ever mentioned, despite how obvious some of it should be.

 

It's like they say "history is written by the winners"; putting a spotlight on Sony's less-than-savory actions of the time (some of arrogance coming back lately btw) doesn't actually take any of the blame off of Nintendo or especially Sega's self-inflicted injuries during that era; they both made some massive mistakes that probably would've happened even if Sony weren't in the picture. But it does put into perspective that they're no more a "saint" than Microsoft's been in gaming, in fact they've probably done more underhanded market tactics than them in all honesty, yet at the same time, it's ultimately a business and what may be ethically questionable isn't always (if rarely) legally dubious.

[JaguarVision]

 

Can't understate how true this stuff is. Which is why I kept laughing at all the PS fanboys getting mad when games like Rise of the Tomb Raider and TitanFall were XBO exclusives, complaining about MS buying up exclusives. While I think Nintendo's shady business tactics in the late '80s/early '90s may be a bit under-served (and most of them seemingly done by Nintendo of America, which is worth pointing out), it REALLY seems like Sony's underhanded tactics with PS1 and PS2 (to a smaller extent) are barely ever mentioned, despite how obvious some of it should be.

 

It's like they say "history is written by the winners"; putting a spotlight on Sony's less-than-savory actions of the time (some of arrogance coming back lately btw) doesn't actually take any of the blame off of Nintendo or especially Sega's self-inflicted injuries during that era; they both made some massive mistakes that probably would've happened even if Sony weren't in the picture. But it does put into perspective that they're no more a "saint" than Microsoft's been in gaming, in fact they've probably done more underhanded market tactics than them in all honesty, yet at the same time, it's ultimately a business and what may be ethically questionable isn't always (if rarely) legally dubious.

 

 

You are right on Sony basically buying victory in the PSX days. What's interesting is that some of the gaming journalists companies we have now did cover some of Sony's tactics back then, but oddly since the PS3 none of them mention it, and I think quite a few of the guys who were around then still work for those companies.

 

(As for Sony and the PS4, they are getting a little arrogant lately, but I still doubt we will see a PS2/PS3 level ever again.)

[mbd30]

 

 

You are right on Sony basically buying victory in the PSX days.

 

The PSX had other advantages such as using CD instead of cartridges and being easier to program than the Saturn. Hence Square abandoning Nintendo for Sony.

[John Stamos Mullet]

The Sega 32x had a number of these, specifically Cosmic Carnage.

 

The 32x was also a massive failure.

[00010000]

 

The PSX had other advantages such as using CD instead of cartridges and being easier to program than the Saturn. Hence Square abandoning Nintendo for Sony.

 

It having CD wasn't necessarily a *unique* advantage; not only the Saturn, but the 3DO, PC-FX, Amiga CD32, Sega CD etc. already had CD support and were demonstrating the benefits of the medium at (mostly) consumer-friendly prices.

 

As far as PS1 being easier to develop for...I guess that may be true in some senses but again, we take that nowadays mainly from what magazines and press and devs in the press said at the time, and knowing some of the things Sony did behind-the-scenes there's bound to be some exaggeration on difficulty of Saturn programming. It's just that as the years have gone on it's become second nature for people to repeat what others have said earlier on, it's the kind of legend that builds itself.

 

For all intents and purposes there wasn't a lot about Saturn which was any more esoteric or complicated than previous gaming systems. Sega provided all of the chip documentation up front, same as they, Nintendo etc. did with previous systems. The early Saturn devkits weren't godsends but they weren't complete garbage, either. Most of Saturn's limitations already had equivalents in other systems (home console and arcade) that had answers found, albeit on a less hardware-agnostic basis.

 

Sony simply made PS1 development ridiculously simple b/c they emphasized a super-polished SDK, which was the exception at that time. With certain hardware quirks, it would've actually been harder to get things done on PS1 over Saturn. For example, cutting down on the texture warping issues PS1 is notorious for, that took a lot of software effort on the devs part. On Saturn however, the system hardware just naturally led to less of that type of warping since it handled polygon output in a different way. The N64 had quirks which made it more difficult to develop for vs. Saturn, as well, for example it lacking a dedicated audio processor or DSP, and AFAIK it didn't take up the coprocessor-on-a-cart philosophy the SNES did. Never minding the pains in developing for PS2 or PS3, PS3 in particular seeming it was honestly more of a nightmare for devs than Saturn ever was (increase in hardware power notwithstanding).

 

I also always found it somewhat odd that Square just outright ignored Saturn for Final Fantasy as a whole; even if the Nintendo relationship was truly squandered b/c they felt cartridges would be too limiting, you would think a possibility of a Saturn FFVII was on the table for at least a little while considering it was using CD and Sega had experience w/ that medium since 1992 at the least. I'm sure that they were likely swooned by (likely misleading) PS1 demo reels and spec sheets Sony pushed out at the time, but I'm also willing to speculate that some big money exchanges were at hands to seal that deal.

 

Which, again, is perfectly normal: it's a business, you use your assets to get the advantage. And while I'm not knocking the technical strengths of the PS1 as a console, Sony's deep pockets were by far that system's biggest asset in getting so much of the 3rd-party support it got.

[mbd30]

 

As far as PS1 being easier to develop for...I guess that may be true in some senses but again, we take that nowadays mainly from what magazines and press and devs in the press said at the time, and knowing some of the things Sony did behind-the-scenes there's bound to be some exaggeration on difficulty of Saturn programming. It's just that as the years have gone on it's become second nature for people to repeat what others have said earlier on, it's the kind of legend that builds itself.

 

I may be off base on this, but I've heard that the Saturn has multiple processors that makes it trickier to program for, as well as emulate compared to the Playstation.

[deepthaw]

One very fast central processor would be preferable. I don't think all programmers have the ability to program two CPUs most can only get about one-and-a-half times the speed you can get from one SH-2. I think that only 1 in 100 programmers are good enough to get this kind of speed [nearly double] out of the Saturn."

Yu Suzuki reflecting upon Saturn Virtua Fighter development.

Edited September 12, 2018 by deepthaw

[00010000]

 

I may be off base on this, but I've heard that the Saturn has multiple processors that makes it trickier to program for, as well as emulate compared to the Playstation.

 

No you're right on that note; it had something like eight processors (two main CPUs, two VDPs, a microcontroller for the CD-ROM, a memory managing chip, the Yamaha audio processor, and some other chip) which certainly sounds like a lot...okay, it kinda is a lot.

 

But the thing is, other systems before it also had multiple processors to manage. I don't just mean the Jaguar, either; a developer making games for, say, the 32X, technically also had to use the Genesis's processors and the 32X's in parallel. Same with those who made Sega CD games. Even w/ SNES games, any games using coprocessors on their carts, that meant they had to manage those coprocessors AND the chips of the base SNES in parallel.

 

Also worth mentioning that at least w/ the Saturn, most of Away Team (if not all of them) came from their arcade division, and that division had been messing around w/ parallel processing and dual-CPU setups for years, so it came off as second nature to them. The industry as a whole was mainly very 1st-party orientated in terms of what teams influenced the hardware decisions, and 3rd parties would have to tow the line and adapt. It was just expected I guess. Ironically PS1 bucked that trend mainly because it lacked a strong 1st party team of devs, something Nintendo and Sega had well covered. Then once they actually started building up that 1st party team they prioritized them just like Nintendo and Sega did w/ their previously, in the PS2 and especially the PS3. Thankfully they bucked that trend (even if the compromise wasn't the best).

 

Emulation-wise, I never really had issues w/ stuff like SSF aside from the virtual drive stuff (which crashed my desktop more than once). Granted, I've only been using it w/ the later versions, so dunno about how good compatibility was w/ the early editions. But my PC's nowhere near top-of-the-line and runs SSF practically fine; it's also quite an older system yet still, no big issues playing games on SSF with it. Saturn emulation probably isn't 100% and likely never will be, but it's not at some 30% or less like people seem to assume, in fact I doubt the first full public releases of stuff like SSF or Yabuse were that low on compatibility taking into account all the platform versions available.

[Tanooki]

mbd: You're right, that's where I went into it saying it was known as the nightmare to code for at that time and really up until the mess that the WiiU was, perhaps still worse than that I don't know. The Saturn was slapped together in a logical way earlier, but when they saw it wasn't enough instead of scrapping the setup again (remember katana, etc code names?) they just slapped some more chips in there to perk it up, but having all that in there negotiating with each other made for a hellish time coding up games.

 

0001: One thing I think worth noting since you wrote me I have another tidbit from my time at Midway. Aside from the way Sony pulled crap with their media wing on both Nintendo and Sega, and their timed or totally bought off exclusives, they did another couple of things, and neither would be considered underhanded at the least but made a lot of sense in pushing their new tech. Back in that period Sony wasn't suffering yet bleeding cash, they were pretty good in the wallet. So to get people to come into the fold they basically set the cheapest licensee fee among the lot of them, very small fee (forget how little) and as a bribe sometimes they'd even waive the fee and go with the hope or promise of more releases being happy they were so helpful in development and fee forgiveness. The other thing they did, some may see it underhanded, but for awhile earlier in the days when they were dumping on the SNES/Genesis as the outdated past of gaming they actually had fines for developers who would put out a 2D game as they considered it a backwater. They would nail anyone if it was a no body up to like Capcom with their fighting arcade ports, they'd get a fee (fine) for it until enough time and moaning happened it was just dropped. They really wanted 2D to be dead.

[Lost Dragon]

Thing is, these days a lot of people seem to associate Tomb Raider with the Playstation, so articles simply never state the game arrived first on Saturn, focus is always what the series did for the Playstation.

 

Going back to the Saturn era itself, the press loved to make a big fuss of how difficult the Saturn supposedly was to code for.

 

The reality of it seems to be however, it simply took a lot longer to achieve the same or similar results on Saturn and when your doing commercial development, time is a luxury you simply don't have.

 

Magazines would either blatantly lie about Saturn coders (Edge magazine had quotes from a supposed Ninja Saturn coder, who loved the hardware..i contacted him years later, he never touched it, was 100% PC and Playstation during that era) or make a big thing out of coder annoyances with the hardware.

 

Didn't the coder of High Octane on Saturn try and blame the fact Saturn used Quads, not Polygons as for the reason the vehicles aren't textured?.

 

Saying it was nigh on impossible to apply textures to them?.

 

 

[Spike Danton]

As a person who has helped program a game for the Saturn through temporary contract in the 90's, the difficult to develop line is simply false. The Saturn isn't as flexible as the PS1 so you had to take some hits to achieve similar results which is why Saturn 3D games often looked worse than their PS1 versions.

 

Back then, magazines made up that this somehow meant that it would take 3 weeks to rotate one wheel on the 3D car because the Saturn was soooo difficult to make games for, it could take 3 years to make similar hit games that were appearing on the PlayStation. One magazine questioned if Parrapa would even be possible on the Saturn due to it's high color count and camera angles, when that game could easily run on a 32X. Parrapa is not even an impressive game, flat 3D cardboard with flat single colored blocks for the background models. But that's how far these magazines often went to demonize the Saturn.

 

As I said before the most you can say is the lack of flexibility made it so you had to make more sacrifices than the PS1. it's all fabricated.

 

As for the topic, the 32XCD and Saturn had quite a few of those scaler games. Genesis had a few good ports of games like After Burner as well.

Edited September 13, 2018 by Spike Danton

[00010000]

Man, all of this discussion on print publications outright dogging Saturn over fabrications really makes me want to write up some big piece on it sometime. It'd require a lot of research tho and I figure some of you guys have more (actual) industry experience w/ devs and/or press at the time than myself, I'd basically have to scour through many magazine clips and see things in hindsight.

 

But mainly it'd be worth it just to disprove the narrative "bad" Sony started w/ the PS3; at least when it comes to gaming the company's always been arrogant and not above pushing their muscle with sheer money, yet Microsoft buys a few timed exclusives and everyone tries persecuting them. Quite the double-standard. Again that's not to excuse companies like Sega or Nintendo of their poor business decisions, but it's pretty well accepted that Sega's during the '90s only really harmed themselves. Meanwhile Nintendo did some pretty crafty stuff too but at least in the case like the NES, some of those decisions were direct responses to poor decisions from Atari that cratered the gaming market in NA (others like siding w/ Joe Lieberman are pretty trash but hey at least the ESRB came out of that, which overall was a benefit to the industry).

 

Sony's OTOH, at least some of them, seemed more like leveraging capital for benefits (under the guise of "its just business"...which was technically true) rather than letting the free and fair market work it's natural course, because if you're possibly getting publications to dog competitors and there's no internet presence like nowadays to course-correct it when it matters, well...yeah. Not exactly the best look imo.

[Lost Dragon]

If you do...

 

 

Harry Holmwood of Pure Entertainment is a good example, quoted at length in Edge magazine as a ninja coder and his love for the Saturn, when i asked him about his experiences on the hardware, he told me he had never touched it

 

PC and Playstation all the way so the door of false reporting on the Saturn swung both ways.

 

He does have this to say about the UK publishing industry:

 

"The other publisher we were working with was Eidos, who also went through a

host of changes. They were a snappy young upstart when we first signed

with them, but then grew on the back of Tomb Raider to become an absolute

powerhouse. We were working with them for nine months I think before they

hired a producer to look at what we were doing, which was building a

top-down arcade style shoot-em-up called Lunatik. When they finally saw

what we were building they didn't like it one bit... hot on the success of

Tomb Raider they wanted to focus on character-driven games instead. I

remember a somewhat crazy meeting with them where we were told 'what people

want is sexy female characters running around, not spaceships' as well as

'Saturn is dead, we're dropping the Saturn version and will probably drop

the rest if you don't sort it out'..."

 

From a personal and UK experience. .Sony during the original Playstation era...fantastic to deal with as a customer, but Sony during the Playstation 2 and 3 era?

 

Arrogant.

Unhelpful.

Couldn't really care if your machine had died on it's arse, just send it back along with money for a refurb and keep quiet.

Edited September 14, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

Not sure if this helps with your future Saturn article but...coders of Saturn Mortal Kombat Trilogy talked about why the Saturn version used that fake transparency/mesh effect...

 

Technical aspects lost on myself but the Saturn hardware throws up issues when you try and do transparent sprite effects in the foreground as it interfered with the background's. ..

 

When they tried it, game ran at 30 fps, they needed to replicate the 60 fps of the coin op so instead used the mesh effect and had the VDP2 handle the backdrops.

 

 

They also talked of the Saturn's 2 megs of RAM.

 

" Unfortunately it's divided into two banks of 1 meg each. The one meg of "low memory" is extremely slow to access (about 4x as slow).

 

 

The Playstation has two megs of

contiguous RAM. There's a one cycle delay for a memory read. It also

has cache RAM with no delay.

 

Both systems have 512K of sound RAM. However, the Sony has ADPCM with

4:1 compression. We had to fit 2 megs of sounds into 512K. So, the

remainder of the sounds had to be "hidden" elsewhere in the system...

 

The Playstation also had 1 meg of VRAM. The Saturn has 512K on VDP1 (of

which 16 to 32K is used for the command table). Sprites have to be a

width of 8, (RGB, 32), so some VRAM gets wasted. VDP2 has another

512K for upto 4 back ground scroll maps.

 

Saturn also had 4K (2048 colors) of banked color RAM. while the Playstation used upwards of 20,000 colors. So, some fancy palette swapping needed to be implemented."

 

 

They say they had just 16 weeks to port 150,000 lines of Playstation R3000 Assembler code and optimise it for the Saturn.

 

Saturn version had no intro movies because unlike Sony which gave the Cinepak player for FREE..Sega wanted a lot of cash for it.

[Spike Danton]

The more I look at the specs the more I believe it may have been better to have just made a 32X stand-alone (maybe even CD based) and made that the successor to the Genesis instead of the Saturn. If not world wide than just the US and Europe.

 

It would have had no competition because the PS1 wouldn't come out for another year, giving it a year head start, and the 3DO in 94 was $400, leaving the Jaguar as the only competitor. Jagaur didn't get a visual amazing 3D game till AVP and that was at the end of 94, the 32X would have had numerous 3D games by then. Plus Jaguar had nothing in 95 to match 32X Virua Fighter visually either, or anything that ran as smooth.

 

Not sure if this helps with your future Saturn article but...coders of Saturn Mortal Kombat Trilogy talked about why the Saturn version used that fake transparency/mesh effect...Technical aspects lost on myself but the Saturn hardware throws up issues when you try and do transparent sprite effects in the foreground as it interfered with the background's. ..When they tried it, game ran at 30 fps, they needed to replicate the 60 fps of the coin op so instead used the mesh effect and had the VDP2 handle the backdrops.

This was a very common thing for 2D games that were on both the Saturn and the PSX that had water. Water would almost never be transparent on the Saturn version. Sometimes games would have the water in the background instead of the foreground and then just swap the player sprite with one colored more blue when you entered the water field to make it look like it was underwater. Then when the sprite left the field, it would swap the blue sprite with the normal one.

 

But I wouldn't say that specific development issue was due to the Saturn being difficult to program for, but rather the PS1 was more flexible. If you create within the Saturns capabilities, development is fine.

Edited September 15, 2018 by Spike Danton

[Lost Dragon]

Glad you understood it (and explained it far better than myself).

 

It made for interesting reading in terms of the fact the team had originally attempted it, found the frame rate took a massive hit and thus were in effect forced into using a different approach.

 

Maybe had they been given a longer development time and allowed to write for Saturn hardware from scratch, rather than here is the Playstation code, you've 16 weeks to turn it into a Saturn version, things would of turned out better?.

[Spike Danton]

Glad you understood it (and explained it far better than myself).

 

It made for interesting reading in terms of the fact the team had originally attempted it, found the frame rate took a massive hit and thus were in effect forced into using a different approach.

 

Maybe had they been given a longer development time and allowed to write for Saturn hardware from scratch, rather than here is the Playstation code, you've 16 weeks to turn it into a Saturn version, things would of turned out better?.

Possibly, but we don't know how long the dev time was for the other games that used work arounds. However, since MK Trilogy isn't that graphically demanding overall, another month may have yielded something.

[00010000]

The more I look at the specs the more I believe it may have been better to have just made a 32X stand-alone (maybe even CD based) and made that the successor to the Genesis instead of the Saturn. If not world wide than just the US and Europe.

 

It would have had no competition because the PS1 wouldn't come out for another year, giving it a year head start, and the 3DO in 94 was $400, leaving the Jaguar as the only competitor. Jagaur didn't get a visual amazing 3D game till AVP and that was at the end of 94, the 32X would have had numerous 3D games by then. Plus Jaguar had nothing in 95 to match 32X Virua Fighter visually either, or anything that ran as smooth.

 

 

This was a very common thing for 2D games that were on both the Saturn and the PSX that had water. Water would almost never be transparent on the Saturn version. Sometimes games would have the water in the background instead of the foreground and then just swap the player sprite with one colored more blue when you entered the water field to make it look like it was underwater. Then when the sprite left the field, it would swap the blue sprite with the normal one.

 

But I wouldn't say that specific development issue was due to the Saturn being difficult to program for, but rather the PS1 was more flexible. If you create within the Saturns capabilities, development is fine.

 

On paper a CD-based 32X as its own system actually sounds like a pretty good deal. It was pretty powerful hardware for its time of release, especially considering it was an add-on. But I think the big reason Sega avoided making it CD-based (besides the fact they didn't release it as a standalone system) was because the costs and the fact they already released the Sega CD only two years earlier. Ideally them skipping Sega CD altogether would've allowed a CD-based 32X to have a much stronger impact and hold up better to a PS1 coming right around the corner, because AFAIK, 32X's lack of a dedicated polygon chip alone would've created long-term problems between it and PS1/N64 just a couple of years after release, unless Sega could manage to get critical mass support in that first year which likely would've only happened if Sega CD didn't already exist...

 

...which is a crazy timeline to consider given (least imo) Sega CD actually turned into a worthwhile system in hindsight and honestly didn't damage Sega's brand at all, when you look at Genesis/MegaDrive sales numbers during that time pre-32X. 32X is the one that caused the critical damage; a CD-based 32X standalone system in '94 for all three of the big markets could've done some good damage but also run the risk of a Dreamcast/PS2 scenario too. That's why they'd need that critical mass and for that to happen, Sega CD would have to be nonexistent. imo.

Glad you understood it (and explained it far better than myself).

 

It made for interesting reading in terms of the fact the team had originally attempted it, found the frame rate took a massive hit and thus were in effect forced into using a different approach.

 

Maybe had they been given a longer development time and allowed to write for Saturn hardware from scratch, rather than here is the Playstation code, you've 16 weeks to turn it into a Saturn version, things would of turned out better?.

 

It definitely would've turned out better; look no further than Capcom and SNK's 2D efforts on the exact same platform. It's like night-and-day compared to the Saturn UMK3 port.

 

The system itself was more than capable of handling an arcade-perfect (or better-than-arcade-perfect) port, but like a lot of you guys have been saying, that required time and customization that just wasn't being doled out to anyone but the market leader as budgets were increasing and time was of the essence.

[Lost Dragon]

The most crazy deadline i have seen given, was that of a UK coder who was told to port an Amiga game to the Acorn A3000 and i quote:

 

If you can't get it done in 7 days don't bother.

 

He apparently did it in 5, but he'd written the Amiga original.

 

The more i learn about the Saturn,the more the story of..here's the PlayStation code,just make it work on Saturn..seems to crop up.

 

I thought Jim Bagley got the rough end of the stick with Pal Doom on Saturn.

 

My old questions to him on the RVG community interview :

 

Rogue Trooper

 

Going off memory from interview you did with Games tm, years ago, you were basically told to just port PlayStation Doom to Saturn (and pass codes work on both versions), had things been different – how would you have approached Saturn Doom? Would you have put in any Saturn exclusives such as custom lighting or exclusive levels?

 

Jim

 

Yes, and no, we were given the PC and PlayStation data, but initially, I wanted to use the Saturn’s hardware to it’s max potential, and wrote a render engine to display the PC levels drawing the walls with the GPU, the problem I came across, was apparently John Carmack wasn’t happy about this, he wanted it to look exactly the same as the PC version, but it looked a lot nicer, and was running full screen at 60fps, he said it had to be drawn using the CPU, and not the GPU, he even suggested I used the two DSPs on the Saturn to render the screen, but as they only have 4KB, and if I remember correctly, as it’s been a very long time since I used one, 2KB code space and 2KB data space, doing it this way to render a complete screen full of game, would have been a huge memory bandwidth bottleneck, so I ignored that, and did it using the two SH2s to render the screen, each of the two CPUs splitting the draw time, doing a line each of the walls or floors, and to save time having to reduce the PC levels to fit into the Saturn’s memory, we decided to use the Playstation levels as they had a smaller memory footprint than the PC ones, so it made sense to convert the PlayStation levels, I was quite happy with the end result, as the SH2s ran at 33Mhz and 28Mhz respectively, and I remember playing doom on a 33Mhz PC and it having to play in a stamp sized display to play at a reasonable rate, where as the Saturn was pretty much full screen but this isn’t dissing John Carmack, he’s a very talented coder and clever bloke all round, it’s more me being proud of what speed I got out of two relatively slow cpus.

 

Rogue Trooper

 

Do you think given the time and freedom, you could have done a version of Doom as good (or better) than the PlayStation version?

 

Jim

 

Given the time and freedom, yes, I’d have done a better version of Doom than the PlayStation version, and it would have looked better than the PC version too. I know for a fact, as it did look better.

Edited September 16, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

I also remember Bullfrog's Glenn Corpes saying Saturn Loaded was a lot closer to the PlayStation version than he had expected it to be..

 

Krisilis had done an amazing job bringing Magic Carpet to the Saturn given the hardware limitations..

 

 

That the Saturn did have more brute force power than the PlayStation.

 

He used Virtua Fighter II as an

example.It had the backgrounds drawn by VDP2, leaving the polygon engine (VDP1) to do the fighters..

 

To do this on the Playstation the backgrounds would need to be polygons also,which would slow things down.

 

 

 

BUT my favourite quote from him about the Saturn hardware was how you had to piss about writing assembler and DSP code, rather than using an excellent R3000 C compiler as you did on the Playstation.

 

Not sure if these soundbites will help?.

[Punisher5.0]

Not sure if this helps with your future Saturn article but...coders of Saturn Mortal Kombat Trilogy talked about why the Saturn version used that fake transparency/mesh effect...

 

Technical aspects lost on myself but the Saturn hardware throws up issues when you try and do transparent sprite effects in the foreground as it interfered with the background's. ..

 

When they tried it, game ran at 30 fps, they needed to replicate the 60 fps of the coin op so instead used the mesh effect and had the VDP2 handle the backdrops.

 

 

They also talked of the Saturn's 2 megs of RAM.

 

" Unfortunately it's divided into two banks of 1 meg each. The one meg of "low memory" is extremely slow to access (about 4x as slow).

 

 

The Playstation has two megs of

contiguous RAM. There's a one cycle delay for a memory read. It also

has cache RAM with no delay.

 

Both systems have 512K of sound RAM. However, the Sony has ADPCM with

4:1 compression. We had to fit 2 megs of sounds into 512K. So, the

remainder of the sounds had to be "hidden" elsewhere in the system...

 

The Playstation also had 1 meg of VRAM. The Saturn has 512K on VDP1 (of

which 16 to 32K is used for the command table). Sprites have to be a

width of 8, (RGB, 32), so some VRAM gets wasted. VDP2 has another

512K for upto 4 back ground scroll maps.

 

Saturn also had 4K (2048 colors) of banked color RAM. while the Playstation used upwards of 20,000 colors. So, some fancy palette swapping needed to be implemented."

 

 

They say they had just 16 weeks to port 150,000 lines of Playstation R3000 Assembler code and optimise it for the Saturn.

 

Saturn version had no intro movies because unlike Sony which gave the Cinepak player for FREE..Sega wanted a lot of cash for it.

I was not aware of these limitations. Thanks for posting this it was interesting to read. I wonder what advantages the Saturn hardware had over the Playstation (besides RAM expansion capability).

[Lost Dragon]

My humble pleasure,glad you liked it.

 

Things get a little curious sound chip wise..

 

I think it goes something along lines of both Saturn and PlayStation having 512K set aside for sound..

 

Saturn has 32 sound channels, but no hardware for sample decompression...

 

PlayStation has 24 channels,but does have hardware support for samples, so you get higher quality samples on PlayStation.

 

Each better suited to certain types of music and sound FX?

 

It's not as straightforward as Saturn has more channels ergo it's the superior soundchip?