Yeah I heard about that SGI console: it must be the only case of a SEGA rejected project that we know would've gone bad anyways:lol: Honestly, Pokemon saved the N64. If it werent for all those crazy kids buying that crap the N64 would've failed miserably, most probably worst than the Saturn (since that one stood pretty well in japan). No matter how perfect the hardware could've been, with Sony pouring money into the war and SoJ and SoA fighting over the leadership of the company, any console coming from SEGA at the time was doom to failure...
Consumers didn't kill 32X, Sega did. They could have easily made the system viable if they wanted but because everyone was 5 years old they decided to look like idiots and lose a bunch of money while ruining their reputation. It's a real shame we will more than likely never get to see what the 32X could have brought us as far as real games go. Tech demos are nice and all but real quality games are better.
Indeed, I believe the 32X and even the Neptune could've lived well into 1997, specially since not everybody had the $400 for a Saturn... If the Snes could do it then the 32X could do it too.
How true. If it wasn't for Pokemon the N64 would have been in the league of the PC-FX :lol: I own a N64 and even though it's got some good titles it always looks fuzzy as hell. I'd rather have pop up with a clear view and decent frame rate than fuzzy fogged graphics with naff frame rate. The Saturn was in fact a big success in Japan with almost 1300 titles! sadly western players still view the Saturn based on the piss poor western distribution and sales. Yakumo
No way. Pokemon boosted the gameboy a lot, but on the n64?bullshit. The n64 was doing ok ever since it launched. it offers some truly memorable games, and pokemon stadium/snap isnt one of them. mario 64 "forced" many units in people's home accross the world. Then there were great triple A titles to keep us going, although they were far and apart sometimes.
Sort of.. remove the Special Editions, re-releases, same copies of the game with different covers, double packs and it drops to about 800, I did work out an exact figure... still quite a number of unique games but not as many as people make out. There are also a number of titles that aren't games too and lets be honest there are quite a few, there are also a number of Video CDs with GS catalogue numbers so these could be count for (and against the total saturn number...).
The N64 port of Quake is pretty good, I stuck with it to the end of E1 on Nightmare recently, it's certainly playable. The Saturn port less so. Horrid control and sluggish framerate are the main issues, but it's also significantly different to the original Quake in just about every way: level design, enemy models/animations/AI, weapon balance... I'm sure most of the changes were motivated by necessity, and none of them are deal breakers per se, but given the option I'll go for the original any day. The N64 version also has a split-screen multiplayer option, which is pretty unplayably jerky, but at least it's there. The main 32-bit Doom ports are interestingly different from each other, too - the PSX version is great, the Saturn version unplayably bad (it's really pretty incomprehensible how terrible the framerate is), and the N64 version is a completely different game. Well, I take issue with both these statements There are no comparable Quake games between the Saturn and the PSX, since the PSX only got Quake 2 and the Saturn only got Quake 1. And given the difficulty the team had getting Quake 1 working on Saturn, I really don't think they'd have been up to the challenge of getting it running on 32X, to the extent that such a feat would even be possible at all (I'd guess it'd need to be stripped down to the point of being unrecognisable). Pretty much. Pokemon had very little to do with N64, really - at least, not compared to Mario 64, Goldeneye etc. The latter sold a lot of N64s in Britain.
I'm afraid that's not quite true. I own almost 800 Saturn originals and I don't own all the re-releases, normal and Special editions etc. There are at least 1000 separate Saturn releases. I'll have to count them all on Sega's official listing tomorrow if I get time. Yakumo
@Alchy, the only game I could compare on PSX and Saturn would be Powerslave/Exhumed and maybe Duke Nukem 3d
Yeah... I wasn't really trying to find a point for comparison though, in each case a port is going to say a lot more about the developers responsible for the port than the hardware itself (maybe you agree, I'm just clearing up the intention of my last post). The Saturn port of Duke Nukem 3D is pretty good from what I remember, anyway, although I'm nowhere near as fond of that game as I am Doom or Quake.
The 32x was always just a way to keep Sega of America happy doing something they thought was important, the same as Sega Institute thought they had a chance doing Sonic Xtreme. Thats why the black belt system was never going to happen either. Sega would have been better to have ignored the 32x altogether. They could have just knocked out more SVP games. smf
Why bother? SVP sucked ass. What the Genesis needed more than crappy 3D graphics was a boost in color depth (32X did that) and sound quality for effects and music (32X I think helped with sound effect samples, not music). The Genesis looked so horribly dated when you compare late 16-bit era games from SNES and Genesis. The SNES's graphics and sound capabilities really made the Genesis suffer in my opinion. If Sega had wanted to extend the life of the Genesis they should have released an add-on like the 32X to fix these problems opposed to trying to create a 32-bit 3D system. I imagine those SH-2 cpus weren't cheap and it's not like they were needed if you didn't want to render 3D scenes. Anything to extend the life of the Genesis would have been nice. About the Saturn, it was a cool system but horribly neglected outside of Japan. I think it certainly would have helped the Saturn alot here if they had released titles like Metal Slug, Marvel Vs Street Fighter, Radiant Silvergun, etc.
I've just finished a count of officialy released Saturn games on Sega's own list. This list doesnot include re-released budget versions or and special editions. Just a pure title only release list. Nothing is listed twice. Anyway, Sega released titles total 147 while 3rd party total releases are 912. That's a total of 1059 releases for the Saturn. Now add all the NOt for Sale games, re-released budget versions and special editions and we'll probably end up with something in the area of 1300 like I mentioned earlier in this thread. Yakumo
Not quite, a good look through it will show box sets (T-3125G, King of Fighters collection; T-15037G, EVE burst error & Desire Value pack) and tweaked games (GS-7106 Cyber Troopers Virtua On for Netlink, GS-9116 Sega Rally Plus). Although you can buy these and add them to your collection, if you have them already then they add *no new games* to your collection. Some of the box sets like (T-27811G, Yukyu Gensokyoku Perpetual Collection), I am sure don't add anything new to the games that were released, but I will find out and check. When I have some more free time I'll work out the definate list of original titles released. Looking at it, I missed out the Sega titles (doh!). Yes, although my point is that although there are 1300+ titles released for the Saturn there are not 1300 original titles, having two versions of a game one being with a 4MB RAM cart and the other not, still gives you 1 title.
That will be a difficult task, with different point of vue. Ex: - Clockwork Knight ~Pepperouchau no Fukubukuro~ : new title or not ? - all the seganet: new titles or not ? - black matrix (2nd edition): new title or not ? - ... The list made by Sega are not 100 % complete / correct, that's strange but it is the case. At satakore, we have 1264 japanese releases (with limited releases, re-releases, some video CDs with GS- serial, Seganet releases,...) and 231 japanese not for sale releases => 1495 different releases. I will probably add some demos on the list in the future as I find some new ones sometimes. Yuukyuu Gensoukyoku Hozonban Perpetual Collection: CDs have the same data as original releases (If you want to know, just click on the Saturn Tech DB Links : { Target = Game Release} on the entry at satakore. you will get the page with technical data for each CDs where you can see where the information have been taken from (if normal release + limited edition are listed => same data))
Just to clear things up (and bring this whole thread back on-topic), the 32X tech demo video mentioned originally wasn't actually by Scavenger but a Dutch team called Zyrinx that had its games published by the aforementioned company. Sadly, this highly talented group has since vanished, though fortunately many of its key members are now part of IO Interactive - those of Hitman fame. While it's not a word I like to use liberally, you can find a near-as-close-to definitive history of Zyrinx and other developers linked to Scavenger at the following page: http://www.sega-16.com/Developers Den- Zyrinx.php
Anthaemia: Thanks for that, I knew there WERE Danes :icon_bigg some of them who coded that demo. Since IO interactive is a Danish company.
The 32x was never going to be able to compete with the PlayStation. Any time and money spent on it was wasted. Games like virtua racing could have kept Sega fans happy that they didn't need to go out and buy a snes to play starfox. The short time between the 32x and Saturn being introduced caused alot of bad feeling, which meant that neither succeeded. They managed to start to make a headway with the dreamcast, but when piracy hit they didn't have enough momentum to still make money from it. Ideally the 32x should never have existed and the saturn should have launched with a 3d sonic game. smf
I certainly agree with you there. I think the 32X coming out the way it was so close to the Saturn launch was quite stupid and definitely hurt Sega's image. If they were going to release a upgrade to the Genesis they should have done it earlier and more affordably if at all. They really didn't give Saturn it's fair shake esspecially outside of japan which is more of a shame than the 32X. That reminds me on ebay I saw the craptastic X-Men Vs. Street Fighter PSX port going for 60$+ used. That's pathetic. The port sucked major ass and is really worth maybe 5 bucks. The Saturn had a very good port and a truely excellent MshVsSF port. It would have been nice to see more NeoGeo and Capcom arcade ports to Saturn. I esspecially am disappointed we didn't get a KoF 98' for Saturn using the 4MB RAM cart, and we didn't get Metal Slug 2 either which was close to the timeframe I believe.
