Reloaded (Saturn) info anyone?

Does anyone have any info about this?

I was under the impression that the Saturn version was completed (and indeed, the fact that a demo of the game appeared on Saturn Power magazine suggests this), but Gremlin chose to drop the Saturn after lackluster reviews of Actua Soccer: Club Edition and Hardcore 4x4. Can anyone confirm this? If so, are copies known to be floating around?

 

I'm not entirely sure myself about whether Reloaded for the Saturn was completed or not, but there's definintely the playable demo out there - not to mention a few audio tracks from the game were also featured on a Saturn Power cover disc, which further suggests that Gremlin cancelled this one at the last minute. The official Saturn magazine here in the UK took possession of what they described as a final PAL copy, though as with many of their reviews the actual code may have been a very late beta (such as with the similarly unreleased Chill). As for the suggestion this one was dropped following poor responses to Actua Soccer: Club Edition and Hardcore 4x4, I've never heard this theory before, though I guess it's certainly a realistic possibility! Would anyone else care to help fill in the blanks... and maybe even point us in the direction of a working disc?

 

I did find one vide:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GSha-uTnTs

I'm guessing its from the demo you two spoke of but it doesn't say so directly so I figured I'd post it and see. Other than the series being called "blood factory" in japan, i haven't found much more.

 

Yeah, that's from the playable demo on the Gremlin / Saturn power demo discs. Saturn Power also had a playable copy in their posession see http://segacollection.com/specials/deanmiv.htm

 

What did they expect. Both of those games were shit. Funny thing is that the Saturn and PlayStation versions of Actua Soccer played just the same yet the PlayStation mags gave it a good score. Just goes to show how low standards were for the PlayStation. The amount of shit that got rave reviews for sales sake is amazing.

Yakumo

EDIT: Hang On. Re-Loaded is the first game right? I'm sure that got a UK release. I know it got a Japnaese release under the name of Blood Factory as was said.

 

Loaded is the first, Re-Loaded is the second game.

 

As though it was any different for the Saturn. Unless you're still buying into SSM's bullshit

 

SSM was full of shit most of the time. I'm talking about EDGE and the likes off. Every PlayStation game that got a port to the Saturn was crap IMO. Not because they looked worse but because they were boring and poor to play yet they all got great scores from the PlayStation mags. The only real great game was Wipe Out 1 and 2. Krazy Ivan, Addidas Soccer (never got released in the end), Lemmings 3D, Actual Golf, Actua Soccer, Loaded, Grid Runner, Assault Riggs, Tunnel B-1 and so on, all got Saturn ports and were all average at best yet they were said to be some of the more popular western developed PlayStation games.

 

That's because Western game development, for the most part, really sucked in the mid-to-late-90s. Plus they jumped onto the 3D bandwagon hard, which made the games even worse since they had no idea what they were doing. All of those games are good example of the 90s "dark ages" of gaming, since they're all boring and ugly, but got good reviews basically because they were in 3D and therefore THE FUTURE! (or something)

 

That's what I wanted to say. :nod:

 

Yeah, it was an era of mediocrity, and it should be no surprise that these titles got slaughtered when they appeared on the Saturn. Actua Soccer: Club Edition was hardly going to compare with Sega Worldwide Soccer 97 at the time.

That said, Loaded is quite fondly remembered by many who played it at the time (even if it was a mediocre game in retrospect). I'd love to see more of Saturn Re-Loaded.

 

Someone on youtube claims he got a xeroxed pirate copy back in the day (in the uk) of the unreleased re-loaded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GSha-uTnTs

check the comments

 

Didn't the original Loaded come in a (mostly) black and white case? My guess is that someone's just mistaken this with the supposedly complete yet unreleased sequel, though it's possible a few silver discs of Reloaded did indeed leak out from one of the magazines that had an opportunity to review this game - a photocopied cover wouldn't be too hard to create! However, we already know for certain that neither Saturn Power or SSM would be responsible as their copies were definitely returned...

On the subject of SSM hyping products, this backfired with Sega Touring Car and The House Of The Dead, while you can't give away Virtua Fighter 2 or Sega Rally these days. Then again, it seems a combination of limited print runs and stupidly high review scores mean that even today you need to sell an organ on the black market to afford Panzer Dragoon Saga or Radiant Silvergun. Of course, with every rule there is an exception, and to Saturn collectors this is Mortal Kombat Trilogy, which lacks both quality and quantity.

 

I'm not sure I can blame SSM for hyping up what were games to get excited about. Sega Touring Car was ported by the team who had previously done an excellent job porting Virtual On to the format, I think most people were surprised when they did such a poor job with Sega Touring Car. As for House of the Dead, I gather Sega forced Tantalus to release a 60% complete build of the game, a build that still had an awful lot of placeholder textures. Tantalus wanted to finish their game, and I'm sure when SSM received an early build of the game, that they assumed it was exactly that - an early build. Sega's impatience screwed us over there.

It seems that an awful lot of the late 97/98 PAL games fetch quite a lot on ebay, possibly because these had quite low production runs, and many of these games were PAL-exclusive titles (though the latter was not the case with Mortal Kombat Trilogy). I picked up the PAL-exclusive Swagman the other day for a mighty £50 quid for an copy in 'decent' condition, when the Playstation version goes for peanuts. The difference, of course, is that Swagman is a cracking game that everyone should own in some form.

And yeah, that YouTube guy is probably confusing Re-Loaded with the prequel.
http://www.satakore.com/satengine/photos/photosmodif/T/T-12301H-50,,Sega-Saturn-Photo-Loaded-EUR.jpg

It's quite depressing that SSM and Saturn Power handed back their games. We know for a fact that SSM had content-complete copies of Re-Loaded, Fighting Force, Syndicate Wars (bar intro FMV) etc, these might be lost forever. Then again, we once thought the same about Return Fire and Chill so who knows.

 

I never had any real problems with Sega Touring Car, mostly because I never rated CRI's previous Saturn conversion (Virtual On) that highly. Fans and journalists alike were perhaps expecting too much from a game that was even second-rate in its original arcade form, with Sega's AM divisions most anticipated titles of this period being The House Of The Dead, Virtua Fighter 3 and SCUD Race... of course, we all know what happened to those last two!

As you correctly said earlier, HOTD was released on the Saturn with roughly 40% of the remaining work being updating placeholder textures and memory optimising to remove the intrusive bouts of mid-level disc accessing. During research for my own project, a programmer at Tantalus has all but confirmed it was Sega's idea to press this late conversion early with a few missing cosmetic edges, the company's belief being that barely anybody would care with its next console just around the corner.

While the likes of Touring Car and HOTD were indeed a little disappointing graphically, they both at least played like their Model 2 counterparts. However, there's little doubt they were rushed in so many ways. On the other hand, it's difficult to imagine the higher echelon development teams such as AM2 or Sonic Team putting out such flawed products (although some continue to question whether the latter's Burning Rangers was pushing the Saturn hardware to breaking point or simply the result of such deadline-based complacency - I choose to favour the former option, considering the lengthy delays this game suffered as a result of significant reworking, ala Biohazard 2).

I realise this subject has been done to death by yours truly in the past, yet I feel the real proverbial acid test would have been if Saturn Virtua Fighter 3, Shenmue or Sonic World/Adventure had been released in such obviously unfinished states. Yu Suzuki had promised something incredible from VF3, and based on the limited video evidence we have of Shenmue it's clear this would also provide a huge leap over the likes of the aforementioned Touring Car and HOTD.

Then again, I guess the difference between those games and the ones I've just mentioned is that AM2 was producing its later titles under high levels of security, with their mere existence being restricted to a select number of staff within its own ranks. A new Sonic game had been hinted at with the Sonic Jam package and Project Sonic campaign, intended to raise awareness of the character's earlier vehicles in Japan (where he'd never really been all that successful, or at least not in contrast with the huge sales overseas).

As we know, all three of these potential late Saturn highlights would find a new home on the Dreamcast, though as a result of more recent and more impressive titles only Shenmue made any real impact. VF3 was even released after the superior Soul Calibur in the US, while Sonic Adventure came across as too much of a change in direction - I guess we can't really be sure without further proof if the earlier Saturn prototype would have followed this approach or been more like the enclosed Sonic World area that was included with Sonic Jam.

Either way, my belief is that if only Sega had maintained its 32-bit system on life support for another year there would have been so many benefits of this decision. For example, more great titles from Japan could have seen the light of day internationally, not to mention that VF3, Shenmue and Sonic World would have proved amazing send-offs before the Dreamcast arrived with truly next generation launch line-up. Maybe that could even have been released with VF4, along with an immediate Shenmue sequel and the vastly-improved Sonic Adventure 2, instead of gamers being forced to wait until Sega was on the verge of leaving the hardware industry before these were ready. Even then, VF4 was an early multiplatform title, giving Sony one of its first PS2 exclusive Sega killer apps - a game that would have itself made a great last minute addition to the Dreamcast's software library, had the company not given up on that just as it did the Saturn a few short years before.

Anyway, what were we talking about again? (Oh, yes. Reloaded. Do carry on. Sorry!)

 

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You only have to look at western titles like Exhumed, Scorcher or even Sonic R to see that devs were beginning to get to grips with what was difficult architecture. Sadly while some Japanese devs did push the machine to it's limits and beyond, very few people outside of Asia saw their efforts.

 

The last gen of Saturn games would've probably been incredible...but most people outside Japan wouldn't have played them, since the Saturn was completely dead in the West by 1998.

 

I once read that a lot of the polygon flickering in Burning Rangers (and NiGHTS, since both use the same graphics engine) was due to the Saturn being pushed into drawing more than it was capable of per frame... or has someone completely misunderstood why this phenomenon happens in the first place? On the other hand, 3D models tend to break up the most in Virtua Fighter 2 and Last Bronx when you only have one character on screen, so maybe the detail is too much for the console to handle?

Regardless of what was happening - or not - in Burning Rangers, I have to agree that another year of Saturn games would have resulted in some truly fantastic software visually, at least. Also, it's true most of the better late titles were mostly seen by the Japanese only. While it's nothing special compared to other products out there, I personally love the overall presentation of D-Xhird in contrast with Nextech's earlier Saturn efforts!

 

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