Saturn Virtua Fighter 3 add-on,. Sonic Adventure, Soulstorm , confirmed 100%.

Minor technical point: it wouldn't need to. This port can actually feed video to the VDP2 - after all, that's how the MPEG card itself works.

 

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I doubt it was a back hander. Abe's Odysee was never considered a 'big game', it was just hyped by the developers. I don't think most people cared about it and it didn't do that well at retail either.

 

Abe Oddysee was a big name in the UK that's for sure. At the time of it's release I was manager of HMV Liverpool's games Dep' and remember clearly how well it sold for many months.

Sony were well known for paying off developers to keep titles exclusive or at least a wide window release before other formats in the UK. Probably the most famous being Core Design's Tomb Raider that was originally a Saturn title but strangely appeared on the PlayStation first. The same went for Core's other games, Ninja although that never got a release on any format and Fighting Force which did see a PlayStation release while the original saturn version didn't.

Yakumo

 

Actually, there's one person that keeps bringing up Saturn Virtua Fighter 3 so I've just gone and done it again to prove who's always responsible!

P.S. Ninja wasn't released for the PS? If that's right I'd better start taking more care of my playable demo...

 

Hexen on the Saturn and N64. The Saturn version beats the N64 one by a mile. It's amazing how blurry the textures are in the N64 version.

 

Let me make myself clear about Saturn -- Many of the 3D games that were released for it were exellent. VF2, Sega Rally, etc. They looked decent and played great. However from a purely technical point of view, with regard to 3D graphics, the Saturn versions of these games were all clever hacks. Saturn wasn't a 3D machine. It couldn't even do 100% perfect ports of Model 1 games, nevermind Model 2 games, much less Model 3 games.

 

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I know they paid off developers/publishers, I just don't think that is the reason the Saturn version was canned in this instance. It was probably harder to convert and the perceived sales would not have been worth it.

 

Tomb Raider II, Destruction Derby 2, Wild 9s and Abe's Oddysee were all cancelled in their Saturn forms as a result of Sony making large offers securing PlayStation exclusivity, with the latter more than capable of being perfectly reproduced on Sega's console. Of course, there may have been a few minor problems relating to transparency issues, but since it was primarily a sprite-based game it's possible the developers could have avoided resorting to the usual substitute mesh effect. Another title I can think of that suffered a similar fate was Heart Of Darkness, though I'm not sure if this one was cancelled on Saturn because of a contract with Sony or technical issues. However, since it was also 2D it's more likely the reason was financial and not due to any hardware limitations...

Since we're on the subject of cancelled Saturn games, Formula One was only dropped because the window from license holder FOCA prevented new releases based on the 1995 season from being approved after a certain date, and I remember Probe Software starting work on this PlayStation conversion when the expiry date was close to expiring. Sadly, they couldn't get a renewal to use more current data because Psygnosis had already claimed sole rights for the 1997 season on consoles - and we all know where that update ended up going! Finally, did you know Travellers Tales had originally been hired by Sega to develop a new F1 game in time for the 1998 season? After months of preliminary engine work, this project evolved into something very different (following the replacement of lifelike cars with Sonic and his friends, no less).

 

Saturn didn't got hardware limitations compared to psx. It got time and investment limitations. You can reproduce even surpass (shenmue saturn anyone??) psx or n64 at some extent games, another thing is that it was really hard and a monetary suicide to anyone to do that.

Too bad Saturn never got great dev kits and sega never got enough guts.

 

All right guys I know you love Sega but seriously saying that the Saturn could beat the PS1 and even the N64 in terms of 3D graphics is ridiculous.The design was a mess.2 CPUs and the cache was shared.Big problem.Also its dedicated chip for 3D graphics(VDP1 if I'm not mistaken) was nowhere near as good and efficient as the one on the PS1.And of course it was a tease to program,it's not like you were lazy ,it's just that it was very difficult to get the most out of the system.Yes Shenmue looks cool but I don't believe shit if I don't see it in front of me.The Dreamcast version was an open world game with lots of people and many places to go.The game loaded everytime you went in a house or a shop or exited a particular area,but still it was pretty big for its time.Now I can't imagine the Saturn doing that.

Have your ever seen Rayman 2 on the PS1?Or should I mention Quake 2?How about Legend of Dragoon?Heck even Harry Potter 1 looks awesome for a PS1 game and guess what,it blows every Saturn title away.

In conclusion I think the Saturn was a very powerful machine but still...

 

Those games you mentioned doesn't stand any match in front of Shenmue (personal oppinion)

Anyways, i doubt those comparissons are of any help. Saturn was already a dead console in 1998, beaten down because of the INCOMPETENT SEGA.We will never see what the Saturn was really capable of.

 

Actually, by late 1997/early 1998 we were finally receiving games that were pushing the Saturn to levels of graphical achievement beyond the PlayStation and into something approaching Nintendo 64 territory. Sonic R, Burning Rangers, Shining Force III, Panzer Dragoon Saga and the Shenmue prototype were just the tip of the iceberg, and I doubt a game with as such a high profile as Virtua Fighter 3 was going to be a disappointment - especially when you consider AM2 gave up the handling of a Dreamcast version to ensure their 32-bit treatment was the best it could possibly be, even if it was ultimately never released!

Nobody's in any doubt as to the incompetency of Sega, but to say the Saturn was underpowered it just buying into Sony's hype. Yu Suzuki claimed from day one that a single percent of Saturn programmers would be able to take full advantage of the system's complex architecture, so why are many people still surprised by how unfriendly the console is to many lesser-skilled coders? There's a good reason most amateurs preferred the PlayStation environment, and it's for this very reason Sega would do so badly in the 32-bit era. Combined with its other wrong decisions of the time, Sega deservedly failed to last much longer as a hardware company...

 

So Sonic R looks better than the games I mentioned?And so does Burning Rangers?Shining Force III looked great actually,panzer dragoon saga was extremely pixelated.And geez,you're referring to Shenmue as if it was released.There's only a video out there and the framerate is like what,20 fps?And that's not even solid there are places where it takes a nice dive downwards.And still you're talking about a game that was never released on the Saturn.What I tried to say in my previous post is that I don't know how "far" the game could render in the Saturn version.I'm pretty sure it would have applied several techniques with fogs etc.

 

panzer dragoon saga pixelated? yes. and so doesn't look pixelated metal gear or tomb raider 2?

come on people, even the craziest psx fanboys admitted saga was / is a milestone.

but i think that those wars were stupid in 1996, imagine now...

sorry if sometimes i seem too fanboy, and my enthusiams also doesn't help, but saturn got really good games graphically talking for it's age.

there are 3d games that are better on the saturn than on the psx, and viceversa of course.

as there are 2d games that are better on the psx than on the saturn, and viceversa...

 

I never said PD Saga wasn't an awesome game.In fact it has awesome graphics for the Saturn and very good for its time.
2D games were almost always better on the Saturn that is a FACT.
3D games on the other hand were almost always better if not MUCH better on the PS1.Though most 3D games on the PS1 had a lot of pixelation now that I think of it.

 

But the sega saturn got also awesome things for the 3d (as the same as capital faults..) ... 3d games well done were really stable , and good looking, hi-res.

put some list would be just discussin again and again the same... this thread is to show that saturn got some cancelled things...

saga, shining force 3 and burning rangers looked top-notch for it's time. among great psx games. personally i think burning rangers stands a great rival for sould reaver.

people should keep in mind the saturn catalogue pales in comparisson with the psx, and only a few titles from the same time "should" be compared, honestly.

anyways, i hope someday we can see more saturn "obscure" footage.

 

I think much of the appeal with Saturn prototype hunters is knowing there's at least one game - possibly even complete, depending on who you ask - that has the potential to far surpass anything released, or maybe even more if you live in hope of the Shenmue prototype ever leaking. The reason for AM2 keeping VF3 under such high levels of security can be attributed to the fact producer Yu Suzuki had great faith in his team's work. I can only begin to imagine how the majority of PlayStation supporters would have reacted when a complete VF3 was shown running on stock Saturn hardware in late 1998 as was the original plan, but all these years later we've still yet to see a single screenshot (and by contrast, even now there are some who struggle to comprehend the Shenmue prototype footage). Instead of praising incredible later efforts such as Burning Rangers, Panzer Dragoon Saga and Shining Force III, some appear content to continue bashing them in favour of more commercially successful PlayStation titles. For this very reason, some amazing examples of 32-bit era programming are being neglected their place in history... and you wonder why AM2 isn't in a hurry to show off what would have been its defining Saturn game. There are plenty of other "obscure" titles out there yet to surface, though I doubt we'll see anything comparable with the Shenmue prototype apart from perhaps VF3, providing we ever get to see anything of this one now!

 

sonic and 3d should never ben in the same sentence as... EVERY 3d sonic game has shown us.