The greatness of Sega Saturn is being so obscure to most people in the Americas makes it you feel like a member of a secret ninja order especially back then 😂
I’ve said it before but it deserves repeating - your content is perfection and has been from day one. The length, format, presentation, subject material all 10/10. Don’t go changing
Agreed. They also wanted to be the first to market, but hardware capabilities were increasing exponentially during the 90’s, so waiting a few months would’ve given them better options, cheaper memory, etc
The Kalinski team wanted to add the $49.99 s v p lock on cart to the Genesis. Without the Sega CD, you'd have a $199 32-bit machine in March 1994 with Daytona USA, Virtua Racer, Virtua Fighter, and Star Wars Arcade. Add the Sega CD, and you'd have a 3D powerhouse capable of playing Crash Bandicoot, Syphine Filter, Tomb Raider, and Final Fantasy VII.
Sega Saturn has been one of my favorite systems for generations and it’s always a welcome surprise to find one of your videos focusing on the positive aspects of the console popping up on my UA-cam feed!
Seven Winds Island Story looks so gorgeous! I really hope it's translated eventually. I'm surprised I haven't heard of it, maybe you could do videos of cool obscure Mega Drive/Saturn/Dreamcast games nobody ever talks about? Like- 90% of Saturn and Dreamcast games are obscure but even being in the SEGA community for years, I never even knew something even like Seven Winds existed, because it seems like most people just regurgitate the same 30-70 games for each of these three consoles, overlooking the SUPER obscure stuff.
No arguments about the quality visuals of these games. It seems that Sega engineers were smart by adding a second VDP late in the development process. Awesome video as always!
The Saturn was the last system to really have a distinctive look to its games. Every system since, games look more and more identical (barring performance variance) across platforms
I am still amazed at some of the Saturn games we never never got in the US. It is a shame North America missed out on many Saturn gems! There were so many Saturn games that just had some wild visuals! Hopefully we eventually get an English translation for some of these lesser known Saturn games! Saturn did pre-rendered graphics very well for the time. Lesser known games on the Saturn that stood out were games like *Digital Pinball: Last Gladiator* (personally one of my favorite pinball games) and *Silhouette Mirage* (a very fun Treasure platformer that unfortunately was poorly localized when it was released for US audiences on the PS1).
Thanks to the internet, we can see how many Saturn games were not released in the west. According to Wikipedia, there were 785(!) Japan only Saturn games. Now of course, a lot of those would have no chance of being released in the west, but I'd bet that a good # of them could have been an easy release.
Princess Crown's similarity to Dragon's Crown definitely makes sense considering the director of Princess Crown ended up founding Vanillaware. Dragon's Crown was intended to be a sequel.
I like to count the VDP2 layers (yes, I'm a complete geek) - Street Racer has floor plane, sky plane, scrolling background layer, and controls overlay, that's 4. I understand the most it could do was 5.
Seeing Princess Crown on here hurts my soul, due to the fact god only knows when the Fan Translation will be finished. It seems that the team working on it has gone radio silent. As far as Zero Divide goes, Sega Lord X NEEDS to do a video on it. Easily one of the most underrated fighters on the Saturn.
It’s a shame no translation yet, I’ve been close to get a copy of the game in several occasions, just to enjoy the graphics, but it always puts me off it’s all in Japanese 😔
I don't know about The Final Conflict, but the Japanese version of Zero Divide 2 on PS1 is perfectly playable for English players. Most of the menus are English, it has English voiceovers and only some Japanese subtitles. The version released in PAL regions is pretty much exactly the same, but without the subtitles.
Zero Divide 2 and The Final Conflict are massively underrated fighting games. I bought ZD2 on a whim for my PS1 and it was such a pleasant surprise. The fighting is fast, fluid and responsive, feeling a lot like Virtua Fighter 2 as this video mentioned. The characters are varied and imaginative, though robots tend to suffer a bit from lacking personality and this game is no exception. And then the music, oh boy the music... some of the best '90s melodic techno tracks you'll hear in a fighting game. ZD The Final Conflict on the Saturn was an upgraded version of ZD2 with a different visual style and some changes in its overall structure, but on the whole these two games are very similar and I would highly recommend checking out either one of them.
Just some household down in New Zealand who still plays Master System, Mega drive+CD+32 and Saturn, may not mean much at all, but we would just love to say we enjoy your content so much. Always a joy to see a new video
There actually was a Princess Crown Translation going on years ago but during the time of it's development. We've gotten Lunar, Grandia, Castlevania, Bulkslash and so many other translations/reworkings of Japanese only titles from start to finish. Which makes me think the Prince Crown team silently canceled it.
As soon as I saw the video title I said to myself, “He has to mention Bulk Slash” 😀, I imported it one month ago, really beautiful game, it’s proof enough of the Saturn 3D capabilities, and Salamander2 is transparencies done right in the Saturn. Thanks for the video.
Oh man the art and game style of that 2D Animation game that has no English option. Is one of the most beautiful and creative things I have ever seen for a side scrolling game. I just love it's vibe & the world/characters. I gotta try it.
Good to see Virtual On featured here. It was one of the most pleasant surprises throughout my years gaming as I bought it without knowing much about it, and it ended up becoming one of my favorites on the Saturn. When I go back to it, it looks even better than I remember, and I think that's mostly due to having more appreciation for the mecha design. The port is really great. It may only run at 30fps, but it runs and plays so well that it was never a factor. It's just so smooth. They also did a great job adapting the controls. I liked the game immediately, but once I figured out the tactics to deal with the CPU it really opened things up and made it so much more fun.
I had no idea Enix released a Saturn game, and that animation quality makes me sad that Disney didn't show up on the Saturn outside of the budget titles ported from the Genesis.
Yeah, the VDP plane feature is really nice. And especially looking back now, Saturn 3D looks more clean on average than PS1 games. I bet it would have seen some amazing stuff, had it been as popular as the PS1 (I mean, that's the trend - most popular systems get pushed the hardest).
Last Bronx. Watching the characters chest move as they breath in and out whilst lying on the deck was mind-blowing. Little disappointed the didn't add a 30fps option and up the polygon count by using more detailed fighters in a slower game mode. It's great on PS2 though.
Panzer Dragoon Saga has more of that wonderful VDP2-ness, including Zwei-like rippling water, mist and smoke (the latter two changing opacity), but the effect I think that needs to be seen at least once is the way the Guardian Fire changes how the Town of Zoah looks at sunset - just go to Zoah, don't go into any building at all, and just let the effect happen. Yep, it's VDP1, but I felt it needed a mention... somewhere.
Where I'm from the availability of games was limited to what you could find at local stores. When the dreamcast came out there was a better selection of games available. When they discontinued the dreamcast games for it got a lot cheaper. Saturn was not promoted well in my area.
Legend of Oasis is a gorgeous 2D RPG Action game, Advanced World War - Sennen Teikoku no Koubou - Last of the Millennium has one of the most impressive 3D battle scenes produced on the hardware, if you find your way around the menus and battles, you'll see great effects like lighting, particles and the such, aerial, submarine, tanks and foot soldiers scenes, it's a great game that only the first part known as Iron Storm was localized, Last of the Millenium features years of hardware expertize in comparison. Saturn's Grandia is better than the lazy HD remaster released a few years ago, as it's based on the PS1 port, the Saturn also has the Digital Museum part which probably will never be released anywhere else. Dead or Alive and Goiken Muyou: Anarchy on Nippon runs at the higher res mode, the latter seems to run on VF2's engine, Shining Force III - Scenario 3 improves even further the visuals of the battles, with better 3D models, lighting and particle effects, don't forget to check Digital Dance Mix: Namie Amuro, the most impressive 3D model and motion captured moves to ever grace the console. There's a patch to remove the black borders in Shining Force III (all scenarios), it was an artistic choice, the battle scenes are full screen with it and look that much better. I remember magazines saying the borders were to improve performance and loading, but no, they are essentially a bitmap to cover the area which is rendered in full screen, just to give a "cinematic" look.
The Saturn is still one of my favorite even today. I actually just streamed a few Saturn games over on rumble this past week. If you’ve never played anything from this system your missing out!
Some excellent examples of SS optimized visuals, last true hurrah for pure 2D rendering hardware. 😃In my research of 3D graphics evolution the way the SS rendered ground planes is very much in line with how 3D focused throughput during it's earlier infancy, prioritizing the Z-axis with polygons as that's the majority of what you will see the most coming towards the camera. Mode7 style planes still had plenty of use in that generation of graphics even if the SS, PS1, and N64 handled them differently.🤔
Saturn basically did everything 2D better than PS1 64. 64 of course better at 3D, PS1 easier to program for, so the 3D was about the same. Although I would say Saturn has really good lighting
If Saturn SH2 cpus had about x4 the cache, it would have been easier for programmers to utilize a dual CPU setup. Also, if Saturn used triangles instead of quads, it would have been a bit more familiar for 3D development back then. The 3D of Saturn and PS1 are based on rotated (3-axis) and scaled sprites, which traditionally have 4 sides, not 3. There are also some translucency issues with sprites drawn with VDP-1, so dithering was often used. Also, in USA they needed to bring over more games from Japan, not just 3D games either. An awesome 3D sonic bundled in would have done half the work right there. The last key step would have been to not release the 32X. Oh yeah, It would have been nice if it was “299” and didn’t have a botched early launch in the USA…which I still remember when that happened. Other than all that, great console! LOL
Triangles weren’t “standard” in 1994 when these came out. There was no standard for 3D graphics - heck, you could make the argument that Sega’s quads were as good of a standard as any at the time, given it would take more than a decade for anything to catch up to the Model 2 in capabilities, and that came out in 1993..
@@pixelpoppyproductions uhhhhh, that’s not how I remember it. It was indeed early days for 3D, but your statement goes a bit too far. Triangles were indeed a bit easier back then due to tools/software built more so for Triangles than Quads, as well as texture/shading/rendering techniques. The whole reason Sega did this was because their model 1 and 2 hardware used it.
The Saturn's biggest problem for 3D wasn't the use of quads, but the lack of UV mapping support. As it used an advanced sprite engine for rendering quads, that meant those quads were always restricted to using some rectangular image in VRAM as the basis for each quad. That made it impossible to render certain geometry and effects that relied on mapping arbitrary texture regions onto a polygon, making game programmers' lives a lot harder. A good example of this is environment mapping for making surfaces appear shiny: Jon Burton from GameHut has an excellent video explaining how he wrote an entire custom software-based renderer to create the metallic effect used in Sonic R's menu.
Translucency with quads is already difficult. Now try to do bilinear filtering ( 1996 N64, Voodoo )! Quads are a dead end. How would you do UV mapping with quads? The hardware goes over the texels in two nested for loops!
Damn, Street Racer does still look good absolutely. I always preferred the Saturns graphics. PlayStation had games but was warped and ugly to me. 2D games looked better on Saturn as well. That vanillaware looking arpg and Salamander 2 look excellent. I need to emulate all these I missed, which you’ve taught me is a lot. Great video SLX.
Yeah, makes sense as the SNES was the lead platform for it. All things considered, most ports of it are quite impressive. It's a given the Saturn would have better graphics, but even the freaking Game Boy had a decent port of Street Racer.
Finally someone that knows what they are talking about regarding Virtual On! It's not super beginner friendly, which is probably bad for an arcade game but once you learn to jump and boost in combat rather than stumbling around like a drunkard the game really opens up. Virtual On was a classic as far as I am concerned and I'm glad you stuck with it long enough to get some great footage. A lot of the UA-camrs I've seen... aren't very good at it. The biggest issue I have with the Virtual On games is the difficulty spikes during boss battles. Apart from that. I love them.
@noisyturtle Even though Odin Sphere is not a traditional beat em up, I still call it my favorite beat em up of all time(and I grew up in the golden age if beat em ups like Final Fight, TMNT, Turtles in Time, Streets of Rage, etc.). I have the PS2 version, PS3 with softcover artbook, and the collector's edition for PS4, I love that game so much. I loved the PS2 version's ruleset as weird as it was, it was such a unique experience. But I still thought the HD remake did a great job of remixing it for more accessibility to players, and also allowing the option to play the game with the old PS2 rules. It's like 2 different games, hopefully we get a sequel to Odin Sphere someday that lives up to its greatness. Yea, so I looked it up, there's a physical Princess Crown Japanese PSP port, but nothing on the PSN.
I think Zero Divide is underappreciated. In a sea of terrible fighting games on the PS1, with jittery controls and impossible opponent AI, these were perfectly decent and fun games. The Saturn versions looks really good too.
I find the original Zero Divide hard to recommend these days, but Zero Divide 2 and The Final Conflict are fantastic fighters that deserve more attention. They're not without flaws and maybe suffer a bit from sticking too slavishly to the Virtua Fighter template but compared to many other fighting games from that era, they hold up really well today.
7 winds island story would make a for a great modern day switch/steam remake. All it needs is a translation and a wide screen. Thanks for the regular quality content.
Happy to say that it only took me about a decade but I finally decided (or remembered?🤔) to snag me one of those USB Saturn controllers the model 2 design, and now I can play all the iso's from all the discs I got on the emulator instead. Mednafen is solid once you get the hang of it, been having alot of fun - and also been frustrated at the difficulty curb of these old gems, not as on my game as I used to be back in the 90's huh..
VDP2 really was awesome, but having two VDPs really hurt when it came to transparencies. Even many of the games on this list have ugly dithering because of how complex it was to code transparencies, something the PS1 did with relative ease.
I really miss my saturn , but as she had some memory problems I sold it to an engineer that gave it another life . I also liked visual effects in shining force 3 battle scenes, the fluid vdp 2 backround rotation . Also I may add that Tomb Raider was best looking on the saturn , due to quad there was no texture distortion .
If Street Racer had Power Drift's speed and gameplay, and Sega made a potential "Sonic Drift 3" with it's IPs from it, that would be the ultimate Sonic R replacer.
Dragon Ball Z Legends was released on both Saturn and PlayStation, but the Saturn version looks and runs so much better than the PS1 version thanks to VDP2 rendering the ground.
Always a pleasure watching your videos it would be nice if the gaming market would remake some of these classics princess 👑 had better hair texture than resident evil 4 remake ✌️
I think Sega should have used a single PowerPC 602, which was developed for 3DO by stripping down the 601 but I bet Motorola would have designed it for Sega had they asked. They also could potentially have developed a stripped down version of the Motorola 88110, which was their RISC processor before the POWER series. The 88000 series was expensive because of the FPU and MMU, and internal sabotage from the 68000 division, but I believe Sega could have asked Motorola for a stripped down version, an 88EC110 if you will, and it would have been ready at 50 MHz by 1993.
As a fan of the Zero Divide series on the PSX and Sat as well as the composer for the sequel and the final conflict Akihito Okawa. Im happy that there was a remixed soundtract for The Final Conflict.
Another excellent review, thank you! Saturn had some nice visuals especially in the 2D department which can be seen in games like Princess Crown or even Salamander Deluxe
I always preferred Bulk Slash over Virtual On. It seems more solid to me. In Virtual On I don't like, when you get closer to an object, it starts to flicker, and sometimes it appears to be changing position even you don't move, meaning you don't know if your completely covered from the enemy's fire or not.
I’ve Seen All Of The 1980s To Now What A Life Of Gaming Master System Genesis Game Gear CD 32X Saturn Dreamcast Love Them All SEGA Forever Thanks Sega Lord X For Your Dedicated Work
I have the PSP version and yeah the fact we still all these years later haven't gotten some version of that game ported to any modern console is beyond my comprehension.
Another great vid as always.👍 Saturn is a really sick graphics powerhouse console. I wish more people back then appreciated it more. Thanks for another great video dude.👍😄
Check out Ninpen Manmaru (Ninja Penguin Manmuru) for a 3D platformer that looks an awful lot like its made using the same engine as the 3D section in Sonic Jam...gives you an idea of what a full 3D Saturn Sonic might have been like
I had street racer on PS1 and had to check its performance after seeing this saturn version. Wow, does the saturn version smoke the playstaytions. Much better.
I think if the Saturn either had a single more powerful CPU or they had found away for both CPU's to access the system memory at the same time than things would have turned out differently!
A more powerful and faster cpu with a faster clockspeed dsp that friendlier to program would've been a better option. Master and slave cpus are terrible decision sega made.
@@maroon9273I believe SEGA did ask for a faster cpu but Hitachi couldn't provide one. The SH2 processor was already finished and couldn't be radically altered. They offered the use of two processors working in a master-slave relationship as a workaround. SEGA accepted and they believed developers could figure out how to work such a setup. But it wasn't their first choice.
Many VDP2 using games have flat surface. This is fine for some games, but it’s also very limiting as it can be effectively used only with certain type of games.
VDP2's flat surfaces can be used with polygon additions to give uneven ground. You see this in many games, such as Virtual On here. In Sonic World, polygons are added to give Sonic obstacles and platforms to jump on. The versatility is still there for a pretty complicated engine.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu That’s why I personally don’t consider the Saturn a failure, but just a console that was not properly released for the international market (yeah, we all know about Sega of America, but there were many more reasons for this to happen).
@@TheMinchio Sega of America wasn't really to blame though. They tried to convince the Japanese HQ to not go through with that godawful early surprise launch, but attributing the success of the Sega Genesis to it coming out a couple of years before the SNES (and also the fact that the Turbografx wasn't a runaway success like the PC Engine in Japan was), they forced it anyways.
@@zanegandini5350 I’m not blaming _only _ to Sega of America, like I said in my comment, there were many reasons why the Saturn didn’t make it to the international scene, from marketing, executive decisions, to even cultural differences.
When it comes to Saturn many often refer to the number of processors it used. It just hit me as I was watching virtual on...Maybe there was no other way to replicate Model 2 than to distribute the workload the way Saturn is supposed to. Am I wrong?
SH2 was already in stock, but Sony claimed superior performance. So SEGA had to put two processors on the PCB. While the CPUs from hitachi are great, the Sega DSP and SEGA bus to connect everything are bad.
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldtThe Sega DSP was capable of rendering 500,000 flat shaded polygons per second, on top of what the VDPs were capable of. Some late Saturn games looked better than anything else.
@@MaxAbramson3 No I am totally confused. The DSP in the Jaguar does geometry, not polygons .. that is the blitter. Likewise, the GTE in the PSX resides in the CPU and does the geometry, while the polygon engine sits next to the video ram and does the polygons. Now VDP1 does the poylgons .. so SegaDSP does the geometry, no? Why is pixel shading relevant for geometry? Is it that the Saturn can only do this in a tech demo, but not while game logic runs? So like the jaguar? A system where the power of the components does not add up?
The greatness of Sega Saturn is being so obscure to most people in the Americas makes it you feel like a member of a secret ninja order especially back then 😂
Also the best ever controller for 2D games
Truth.
That's why I got one over the playstation. An interesting Freak of technology 😂
I mean it was a this or that decision not both.
I’m from the Americas and I only played 3 games for the Saturn 😂
@@joeyjo-joshabadu9636 I dunno about that. If that was the case, everyone would have copied it, instead of the SNES pad's layout.
I’ve said it before but it deserves repeating - your content is perfection and has been from day one. The length, format, presentation, subject material all 10/10. Don’t go changing
Wholeheartedly concur! Quality in every department
Hear hear!
Great call on Street Racer, an underrated game not only for its graphics alone.
Saturn version will forever be the best port of street racer.
If Sega had not made Sega CD & 32X and just went straight from Genesis to Saturn I believe we'd still have Sega consoles to this day
Agreed. They also wanted to be the first to market, but hardware capabilities were increasing exponentially during the 90’s, so waiting a few months would’ve given them better options, cheaper memory, etc
The Kalinski team wanted to add the $49.99 s v p lock on cart to the Genesis. Without the Sega CD, you'd have a $199 32-bit machine in March 1994 with Daytona USA, Virtua Racer, Virtua Fighter, and Star Wars Arcade. Add the Sega CD, and you'd have a 3D powerhouse capable of playing Crash Bandicoot, Syphine Filter, Tomb Raider, and Final Fantasy VII.
Yeah I pretty much skipped all the way until the Dreamcast.
A great way to go out but it's a shame, so much untapped potential.
Sega Saturn has been one of my favorite systems for generations and it’s always a welcome surprise to find one of your videos focusing on the positive aspects of the console popping up on my UA-cam feed!
Plays really well on the Powkiddy X18S by the way I can sit in the pub and play Nights Into Dreams or Bug! How great is that ?
@@FantasyVisuals very cool!
Seven Winds Island Story looks so gorgeous! I really hope it's translated eventually.
I'm surprised I haven't heard of it, maybe you could do videos of cool obscure Mega Drive/Saturn/Dreamcast games nobody ever talks about? Like- 90% of Saturn and Dreamcast games are obscure but even being in the SEGA community for years, I never even knew something even like Seven Winds existed, because it seems like most people just regurgitate the same 30-70 games for each of these three consoles, overlooking the SUPER obscure stuff.
No arguments about the quality visuals of these games. It seems that Sega engineers were smart by adding a second VDP late in the development process. Awesome video as always!
The 2 VDP’s were always a part of the design, they added a second cpu later on
The Saturn was the last system to really have a distinctive look to its games. Every system since, games look more and more identical (barring performance variance) across platforms
I foolishly sold some of my favorite saturn games in the mid 2000s. Dragon Force, Shining Force 3, and Panzer Dragoon Saga.
Harder and harder to collect for everyday but god I love the Saturn. Keep showing me the light Sega Lord X
Best time of my gaming life owning the Saturn.
So sad i had to sell everything- buuut very grateful for emulation.
We really need a Sega Saturn mini. Cause Sega did an awesome job with their first two minis. So many great games that we can relive.
I am still amazed at some of the Saturn games we never never got in the US. It is a shame North America missed out on many Saturn gems! There were so many Saturn games that just had some wild visuals! Hopefully we eventually get an English translation for some of these lesser known Saturn games!
Saturn did pre-rendered graphics very well for the time. Lesser known games on the Saturn that stood out were games like *Digital Pinball: Last Gladiator* (personally one of my favorite pinball games) and *Silhouette Mirage* (a very fun Treasure platformer that unfortunately was poorly localized when it was released for US audiences on the PS1).
Thanks to the internet, we can see how many Saturn games were not released in the west. According to Wikipedia, there were 785(!) Japan only Saturn games. Now of course, a lot of those would have no chance of being released in the west, but I'd bet that a good # of them could have been an easy release.
Princess Crown's similarity to Dragon's Crown definitely makes sense considering the director of Princess Crown ended up founding Vanillaware. Dragon's Crown was intended to be a sequel.
I like to count the VDP2 layers (yes, I'm a complete geek) - Street Racer has floor plane, sky plane, scrolling background layer, and controls overlay, that's 4. I understand the most it could do was 5.
Virtual on was amazing. That was powered by 2 model 2 boards!! What a conversion!
Zero divide = muh hidden gem lol
Any time I see a mention of Zero Divide 2 or The Final Conflict anywhere makes me extremely happy.
2:18 "Sega really missed an opportunity" is the story of the Saturn in a nutshell.
Seeing Princess Crown on here hurts my soul, due to the fact god only knows when the Fan Translation will be finished. It seems that the team working on it has gone radio silent.
As far as Zero Divide goes, Sega Lord X NEEDS to do a video on it. Easily one of the most underrated fighters on the Saturn.
It’s a shame no translation yet, I’ve been close to get a copy of the game in several occasions, just to enjoy the graphics, but it always puts me off it’s all in Japanese 😔
I don't know about The Final Conflict, but the Japanese version of Zero Divide 2 on PS1 is perfectly playable for English players. Most of the menus are English, it has English voiceovers and only some Japanese subtitles. The version released in PAL regions is pretty much exactly the same, but without the subtitles.
Zero Divide 2 and The Final Conflict are massively underrated fighting games. I bought ZD2 on a whim for my PS1 and it was such a pleasant surprise. The fighting is fast, fluid and responsive, feeling a lot like Virtua Fighter 2 as this video mentioned. The characters are varied and imaginative, though robots tend to suffer a bit from lacking personality and this game is no exception. And then the music, oh boy the music... some of the best '90s melodic techno tracks you'll hear in a fighting game. ZD The Final Conflict on the Saturn was an upgraded version of ZD2 with a different visual style and some changes in its overall structure, but on the whole these two games are very similar and I would highly recommend checking out either one of them.
Just some household down in New Zealand who still plays Master System, Mega drive+CD+32 and Saturn,
may not mean much at all, but we would just love to say we enjoy your content so much.
Always a joy to see a new video
Aaaah that virtual on ost really bring nostalgic feeling through my veins...
VDP2 is definitely the hero of the Saturns architecture, most if not all the best looking games on the system owe a debt to that chip
Vdp1 and its framebuffer was a faulty and one of the weakest link of the saturn hardware.
There actually was a Princess Crown Translation going on years ago but during the time of it's development. We've gotten Lunar, Grandia, Castlevania, Bulkslash and so many other translations/reworkings of Japanese only titles from start to finish. Which makes me think the Prince Crown team silently canceled it.
There is a fan made translation ROM, so definitely playable in English. I had fun with it!
No, it is not cancled. Listen to the latest shiro Podcast, there you get the information, that the guy, who started that translation is still on it.
@@zhukov2116 what? Where?
As soon as I saw the video title I said to myself, “He has to mention Bulk Slash” 😀, I imported it one month ago, really beautiful game, it’s proof enough of the Saturn 3D capabilities, and Salamander2 is transparencies done right in the Saturn. Thanks for the video.
Bulk Slash and Princess Crown are really epic! 👍
Oh man the art and game style of that 2D Animation game that has no English option. Is one of the most beautiful and creative things I have ever seen for a side scrolling game. I just love it's vibe & the world/characters. I gotta try it.
Good to see Virtual On featured here. It was one of the most pleasant surprises throughout my years gaming as I bought it without knowing much about it, and it ended up becoming one of my favorites on the Saturn. When I go back to it, it looks even better than I remember, and I think that's mostly due to having more appreciation for the mecha design. The port is really great. It may only run at 30fps, but it runs and plays so well that it was never a factor. It's just so smooth. They also did a great job adapting the controls. I liked the game immediately, but once I figured out the tactics to deal with the CPU it really opened things up and made it so much more fun.
Can't wait for the MiSTer Saturn core to explore this stuff!
I had no idea Enix released a Saturn game, and that animation quality makes me sad that Disney didn't show up on the Saturn outside of the budget titles ported from the Genesis.
Even a illusion sequel as well.
Yeah, the VDP plane feature is really nice. And especially looking back now, Saturn 3D looks more clean on average than PS1 games. I bet it would have seen some amazing stuff, had it been as popular as the PS1 (I mean, that's the trend - most popular systems get pushed the hardest).
Last Bronx. Watching the characters chest move as they breath in and out whilst lying on the deck was mind-blowing.
Little disappointed the didn't add a 30fps option and up the polygon count by using more detailed fighters in a slower game mode. It's great on PS2 though.
Panzer Dragoon Saga has more of that wonderful VDP2-ness, including Zwei-like rippling water, mist and smoke (the latter two changing opacity), but the effect I think that needs to be seen at least once is the way the Guardian Fire changes how the Town of Zoah looks at sunset - just go to Zoah, don't go into any building at all, and just let the effect happen. Yep, it's VDP1, but I felt it needed a mention... somewhere.
I was always really impressed with how BUG! looked when I was a teenager.
Virtua On, will always have a special place in my heart. It was the first game I purchased with my own money.
Loved playing that game in the arcades when I was an early teen in the mid 90s
Where I'm from the availability of games was limited to what you could find at local stores.
When the dreamcast came out there was a better selection of games available.
When they discontinued the dreamcast games for it got a lot cheaper.
Saturn was not promoted well in my area.
Legend of Oasis is a gorgeous 2D RPG Action game, Advanced World War - Sennen Teikoku no Koubou - Last of the Millennium has one of the most impressive 3D battle scenes produced on the hardware, if you find your way around the menus and battles, you'll see great effects like lighting, particles and the such, aerial, submarine, tanks and foot soldiers scenes, it's a great game that only the first part known as Iron Storm was localized, Last of the Millenium features years of hardware expertize in comparison. Saturn's Grandia is better than the lazy HD remaster released a few years ago, as it's based on the PS1 port, the Saturn also has the Digital Museum part which probably will never be released anywhere else. Dead or Alive and Goiken Muyou: Anarchy on Nippon runs at the higher res mode, the latter seems to run on VF2's engine, Shining Force III - Scenario 3 improves even further the visuals of the battles, with better 3D models, lighting and particle effects, don't forget to check Digital Dance Mix: Namie Amuro, the most impressive 3D model and motion captured moves to ever grace the console.
There's a patch to remove the black borders in Shining Force III (all scenarios), it was an artistic choice, the battle scenes are full screen with it and look that much better. I remember magazines saying the borders were to improve performance and loading, but no, they are essentially a bitmap to cover the area which is rendered in full screen, just to give a "cinematic" look.
the saturn is one of the few systems i have that NEVER is unplugged from my crt 🥹💖 incredible library
fenrir ftw 🎉
The Saturn is still one of my favorite even today. I actually just streamed a few Saturn games over on rumble this past week. If you’ve never played anything from this system your missing out!
Okay broad
@@skipbayless557 What?
Some excellent examples of SS optimized visuals, last true hurrah for pure 2D rendering hardware. 😃In my research of 3D graphics evolution the way the SS rendered ground planes is very much in line with how 3D focused throughput during it's earlier infancy, prioritizing the Z-axis with polygons as that's the majority of what you will see the most coming towards the camera. Mode7 style planes still had plenty of use in that generation of graphics even if the SS, PS1, and N64 handled them differently.🤔
I'd love to see you do a graphics comparison on games that were released for the playstation Saturn and n64 that'd be a dope video
Saturn basically did everything 2D better than PS1 64. 64 of course better at 3D, PS1 easier to program for, so the 3D was about the same. Although I would say Saturn has really good lighting
If Saturn SH2 cpus had about x4 the cache, it would have been easier for programmers to utilize a dual CPU setup. Also, if Saturn used triangles instead of quads, it would have been a bit more familiar for 3D development back then. The 3D of Saturn and PS1 are based on rotated (3-axis) and scaled sprites, which traditionally have 4 sides, not 3. There are also some translucency issues with sprites drawn with VDP-1, so dithering was often used. Also, in USA they needed to bring over more games from Japan, not just 3D games either. An awesome 3D sonic bundled in would have done half the work right there. The last key step would have been to not release the 32X. Oh yeah, It would have been nice if it was “299” and didn’t have a botched early launch in the USA…which I still remember when that happened. Other than all that, great console! LOL
Triangles weren’t “standard” in 1994 when these came out. There was no standard for 3D graphics - heck, you could make the argument that Sega’s quads were as good of a standard as any at the time, given it would take more than a decade for anything to catch up to the Model 2 in capabilities, and that came out in 1993..
@@pixelpoppyproductions agree with most of this but every home console from the Dreamcast onward was far superior to model 2
@@pixelpoppyproductions uhhhhh, that’s not how I remember it. It was indeed early days for 3D, but your statement goes a bit too far. Triangles were indeed a bit easier back then due to tools/software built more so for Triangles than Quads, as well as texture/shading/rendering techniques. The whole reason Sega did this was because their model 1 and 2 hardware used it.
The Saturn's biggest problem for 3D wasn't the use of quads, but the lack of UV mapping support. As it used an advanced sprite engine for rendering quads, that meant those quads were always restricted to using some rectangular image in VRAM as the basis for each quad. That made it impossible to render certain geometry and effects that relied on mapping arbitrary texture regions onto a polygon, making game programmers' lives a lot harder. A good example of this is environment mapping for making surfaces appear shiny: Jon Burton from GameHut has an excellent video explaining how he wrote an entire custom software-based renderer to create the metallic effect used in Sonic R's menu.
Translucency with quads is already difficult. Now try to do bilinear filtering ( 1996 N64, Voodoo )! Quads are a dead end.
How would you do UV mapping with quads? The hardware goes over the texels in two nested for loops!
Another great showcase showing the power of the Sega Saturn.
Thank you so much for this.
*What will WE do without you, Sega Lord X?*
Damn, Street Racer does still look good absolutely. I always preferred the Saturns graphics. PlayStation had games but was warped and ugly to me. 2D games looked better on Saturn as well. That vanillaware looking arpg and Salamander 2 look excellent. I need to emulate all these I missed, which you’ve taught me is a lot. Great video SLX.
Princess Crown needs a full-fledged remake, never mind a translation. Beautiful game.
Talking about Virtual On with mentioning the twin stick controller is a serious social faux par in my house
Ah Street Racer. Loved that on SNES. That's my fave version, due to the rumble mode.
Yeah, makes sense as the SNES was the lead platform for it. All things considered, most ports of it are quite impressive. It's a given the Saturn would have better graphics, but even the freaking Game Boy had a decent port of Street Racer.
Finally someone that knows what they are talking about regarding Virtual On! It's not super beginner friendly, which is probably bad for an arcade game but once you learn to jump and boost in combat rather than stumbling around like a drunkard the game really opens up. Virtual On was a classic as far as I am concerned and I'm glad you stuck with it long enough to get some great footage. A lot of the UA-camrs I've seen... aren't very good at it. The biggest issue I have with the Virtual On games is the difficulty spikes during boss battles. Apart from that. I love them.
Been waiting for this one! Thanks man!!! 💪🏿
You can listen to the cool Street Racer soundtrack in a regular CD player or car stereo
Programmers: "You'll publish some instructions how to use VDP2 right?"
Sega: "No, I don't think I will..."
Princess Crown got a HD rerelease on PS3 that also fixed some of the more tedious and poor design decisions. It's really great!
Really? I'm gonna look it up, but was it digital only? Japanese PSN? Or was it available in the U.S. as well?
@@Chicomite Ohh I'm thinking of Odin Sphere. Still a fantastic remake though.
@@Chicomite Japan only.
@@n0isyturtle
There was a PSP version though I know that, I have it.
@noisyturtle Even though Odin Sphere is not a traditional beat em up, I still call it my favorite beat em up of all time(and I grew up in the golden age if beat em ups like Final Fight, TMNT, Turtles in Time, Streets of Rage, etc.). I have the PS2 version, PS3 with softcover artbook, and the collector's edition for PS4, I love that game so much.
I loved the PS2 version's ruleset as weird as it was, it was such a unique experience. But I still thought the HD remake did a great job of remixing it for more accessibility to players, and also allowing the option to play the game with the old PS2 rules. It's like 2 different games, hopefully we get a sequel to Odin Sphere someday that lives up to its greatness.
Yea, so I looked it up, there's a physical Princess Crown Japanese PSP port, but nothing on the PSN.
I think Zero Divide is underappreciated. In a sea of terrible fighting games on the PS1, with jittery controls and impossible opponent AI, these were perfectly decent and fun games. The Saturn versions looks really good too.
I find the original Zero Divide hard to recommend these days, but Zero Divide 2 and The Final Conflict are fantastic fighters that deserve more attention. They're not without flaws and maybe suffer a bit from sticking too slavishly to the Virtua Fighter template but compared to many other fighting games from that era, they hold up really well today.
7 winds island story would make a for a great modern day switch/steam remake. All it needs is a translation and a wide screen. Thanks for the regular quality content.
God bless the 90s
Love watching your vids every time an upload comes I instantly click you always make my day especially as a Sega fan
Saturn games are a work of art.
The SEGA LORD is back
Another great video review to watch. Keep bringing them
Happy to say that it only took me about a decade but I finally decided (or remembered?🤔) to snag me one of those USB Saturn controllers the model 2 design, and now I can play all the iso's from all the discs I got on the emulator instead. Mednafen is solid once you get the hang of it, been having alot of fun - and also been frustrated at the difficulty curb of these old gems, not as on my game as I used to be back in the 90's huh..
VDP2 really was awesome, but having two VDPs really hurt when it came to transparencies. Even many of the games on this list have ugly dithering because of how complex it was to code transparencies, something the PS1 did with relative ease.
Plus, the separated ram and worst the vdp1 dual framebuffer.
I really miss my saturn , but as she had some memory problems I sold it to an engineer that gave it another life . I also liked visual effects in shining force 3 battle scenes, the fluid vdp 2 backround rotation .
Also I may add that Tomb Raider was best looking on the saturn , due to quad there was no texture distortion .
If Street Racer had Power Drift's speed and gameplay, and Sega made a potential "Sonic Drift 3" with it's IPs from it, that would be the ultimate Sonic R replacer.
Dragon Ball Z Legends was released on both Saturn and PlayStation, but the Saturn version looks and runs so much better than the PS1 version thanks to VDP2 rendering the ground.
Great show notes
I love your contents bro! keep up the good work!
I’ve got nothing to add other than I love your content
Thank you. I appreciate the message.
Always a pleasure watching your videos it would be nice if the gaming market would remake some of these classics princess 👑 had better hair texture than resident evil 4 remake ✌️
I think Sega should have used a single PowerPC 602, which was developed for 3DO by stripping down the 601 but I bet Motorola would have designed it for Sega had they asked. They also could potentially have developed a stripped down version of the Motorola 88110, which was their RISC processor before the POWER series. The 88000 series was expensive because of the FPU and MMU, and internal sabotage from the 68000 division, but I believe Sega could have asked Motorola for a stripped down version, an 88EC110 if you will, and it would have been ready at 50 MHz by 1993.
my jaw just about dropped at 6:41. that's gorgeous
Salamander 2 is SOOO GOOOOOD but so unforgiving.
Will be great to see a technical focus on AM2 Digital Dance Mix.
I really liked the Saturn especially the fighting games they were the best on any console at the Time
As a fan of the Zero Divide series on the PSX and Sat as well as the composer for the sequel and the final conflict Akihito Okawa. Im happy that there was a remixed soundtract for The Final Conflict.
I hope some of these games make it too a Saturn mini. Thanks Sega Lord.
Another excellent review, thank you! Saturn had some nice visuals especially in the 2D department which can be seen in games like Princess Crown or even Salamander Deluxe
I always preferred Bulk Slash over Virtual On. It seems more solid to me. In Virtual On I don't like, when you get closer to an object, it starts to flicker, and sometimes it appears to be changing position even you don't move, meaning you don't know if your completely covered from the enemy's fire or not.
I’ve Seen All Of The 1980s To Now What A Life Of Gaming Master System Genesis Game Gear CD 32X Saturn Dreamcast Love Them All SEGA Forever Thanks Sega Lord X For Your Dedicated Work
Here's hoping the gaming gods finally estow a Princess Crown translation on us this year. u_u
I have the PSP version and yeah the fact we still all these years later haven't gotten some version of that game ported to any modern console is beyond my comprehension.
You've made a pretty clear case that too few developers could properly wrangle the Saturn and it's processors.
No thanks in large part due to the lack of documentation for how it worked and distributing poor development kits.
Love your content! I always find videos you made years ago in my recommended list that I haven't seen.
It's criminal that Princess Crown still has yet to be translated. That and Segagaga are my top wishes
Sega Saturn forever !
Another great vid as always.👍
Saturn is a really sick graphics powerhouse console. I wish more people back then appreciated it more. Thanks for another great video dude.👍😄
Sweet I love these!
another Viper II enjoyer, a man of culture as well.
Check out Ninpen Manmaru (Ninja Penguin Manmuru) for a 3D platformer that looks an awful lot like its made using the same engine as the 3D section in Sonic Jam...gives you an idea of what a full 3D Saturn Sonic might have been like
Sega Kart Racer..?. Like Sonic Drift ... We got Sonic R 😅
Sonic R was no replacement for a real kart racer. Especially one with their most popular IP's represented.
I had street racer on PS1 and had to check its performance after seeing this saturn version. Wow, does the saturn version smoke the playstaytions. Much better.
More Ram and vdp2
Finally a video with just one gaming that I knew! Awesome list! I'm really impressed with those games!
Never stop Sega Lord!
I think if the Saturn either had a single more powerful CPU or they had found away for both CPU's to access the system memory at the same time than things would have turned out differently!
A more powerful and faster cpu with a faster clockspeed dsp that friendlier to program would've been a better option. Master and slave cpus are terrible decision sega made.
@@maroon9273I believe SEGA did ask for a faster cpu but Hitachi couldn't provide one. The SH2 processor was already finished and couldn't be radically altered. They offered the use of two processors working in a master-slave relationship as a workaround. SEGA accepted and they believed developers could figure out how to work such a setup. But it wasn't their first choice.
What about Radiant silvergun..! Great use of VDP2
Sega’s in house racer was the sonic drift series. Wasn’t great but it was cute.
Many VDP2 using games have flat surface. This is fine for some games, but it’s also very limiting as it can be effectively used only with certain type of games.
VDP2's flat surfaces can be used with polygon additions to give uneven ground. You see this in many games, such as Virtual On here. In Sonic World, polygons are added to give Sonic obstacles and platforms to jump on. The versatility is still there for a pretty complicated engine.
Nanatsu Kaze might be one of the prettiest games I've ever seem
its such a shame Saturn wasnt a much more successful console. but im glad we got it (and its mostly wonderful library of games) at all
Well, it was successful in Japan,
The Japanese library was superior that's for sure.
The US and elsewhere got a tiny fraction in comparison.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu That’s why I personally don’t consider the Saturn a failure, but just a console that was not properly released for the international market (yeah, we all know about Sega of America, but there were many more reasons for this to happen).
@@TheMinchio Sega of America wasn't really to blame though. They tried to convince the Japanese HQ to not go through with that godawful early surprise launch, but attributing the success of the Sega Genesis to it coming out a couple of years before the SNES (and also the fact that the Turbografx wasn't a runaway success like the PC Engine in Japan was), they forced it anyways.
@@zanegandini5350 I’m not blaming _only _ to Sega of America, like I said in my comment, there were many reasons why the Saturn didn’t make it to the international scene, from marketing, executive decisions, to even cultural differences.
Wow some great choices here and a couple I havent seen before.. gotta check em out now. Thanx
Street Racer 8 player splitscreen 🤤😅 Awesome game btw. The best version IMO.
When it comes to Saturn many often refer to the number of processors it used. It just hit me as I was watching virtual on...Maybe there was no other way to replicate Model 2 than to distribute the workload the way Saturn is supposed to.
Am I wrong?
SH2 was already in stock, but Sony claimed superior performance. So SEGA had to put two processors on the PCB. While the CPUs from hitachi are great, the Sega DSP and SEGA bus to connect everything are bad.
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldtThe Sega DSP was capable of rendering 500,000 flat shaded polygons per second, on top of what the VDPs were capable of. Some late Saturn games looked better than anything else.
@@MaxAbramson3 No I am totally confused. The DSP in the Jaguar does geometry, not polygons .. that is the blitter. Likewise, the GTE in the PSX resides in the CPU and does the geometry, while the polygon engine sits next to the video ram and does the polygons. Now VDP1 does the poylgons .. so SegaDSP does the geometry, no? Why is pixel shading relevant for geometry? Is it that the Saturn can only do this in a tech demo, but not while game logic runs? So like the jaguar? A system where the power of the components does not add up?
Great part 3 video. 😀👍🎮