Saturn Virtua Fighter 3. Saturn 3D upgrade cart. what is known to this day?

I am assuming the Saturn upgrade cartridge was real.

what is known about it?

what graphics chipset did it use:

PowerVR Series 1
3Dfx Voodoo
Lockheed Martin Real3D
3DO M2


what, if any, CPU did it use: PowerPC, MIPs ?



I thought I remember reading that there were two versions of Saturn Virtua Fighter 3:
one that used the 3D upgrade cart
one that used just a stock Saturn without any 3D upgrade (perhaps 4 MB RAM though)


I know some of you have been loooking (probably desperately) for pictures and footage of any version of VF3 for Saturn. not so much to prove that it existed (its pretty much accepted that at least one version did) but just to see what it was like.


Japanese magazines, trade show events, the depths of Sega of Japan..... I believe eventually we will see something on it.


not just about Saturn Virtua Fighter 3, but the upgrade cartridge too, and other games that were in development for it. like Core's Tomb Raider 2, and probably other Sega 3D arcade conversions of Model 2/ Model 3 games....


I'd like to come out of this knowing more than I do now.

 

I doubt it would have used a chipset from 3DFX or a 3D0 M2. More than likely, it was like the chip found in the Genesis/MD version of Virtua Racing albeit with more RAM.

 

Top Skater? :-(

 

it's been said many times that there was no upgrade card for the Saturn. VF3 certainly wasn't going to use it, although Shen mue? i doubt it was in development long enough

 

I thought ut was going to use the standard 4mb cart, theres a long thread about it somewhere here.

 

Shenmue looked to be well into development from the video we have!

 

Hi there,

The Saturn upgrade cart that you are talking about used a lockheed Martin chipset and came with onboard 8mb of low latency ram.

Virtua Fighter 3 didn't use this chip neither did Shenmue. Only Tomb raider 2 was up and running using this "booster"

Virtua Fighter 3 used the in-house SDK2, which more than doubled the performance of a stock Saturn. 700k+ polys were achievable using SDK2, which harnessed the true power of the systems multi processor set up. Visually the test demo of the game was superior to anything ever released on the PSX and even the N64(save IQ). The game was running at a solid 30fps.

However just like the upgrade cart, SDK2 was never used internally or externally as concentration shifted to Dreamcast.

 

I was going to say, from what little I remember of the saga of Saturn Shenmue, it was supposed to be running either on a stock Saturn or with the 4MB RAM cart, but I thought I remembered hearing stated that there was no need for a 3D upgrade of any sort.

 

32x TO THE RESCUE!!

 

Well, who's going to own up to it? I understand you've showed it off before...

 

Madhatter, your Saturn is... backwards. :smt043

 

Hey, it took me 2minutes to do this. It doesn't have to be that perfect.

 

Cool...and what about software running on it?Anything available?

 

it has been stated in an interview that shenmue 2 on saturn was in fact running fully on stock hardware and requried no additional hardware to play. It used teh last sdk i believe.

 

Nope, that would not make sense. The SVP (that's the chip) would do little to augment the Saturn's power, moreover, it didn't have RAM as such (32k internal)

 

Damn i wish sega would release or at least let leak the shenmue on the saturn and also virtual fighter. The scramble to buy up saturns on ebay would be mad...

 

Yes it was an interview with Taku Kihara (AM2 PR team) and Shin Ishikawa. They said:

"Q: Have you worked on the previous DC Shenmue games?
A: I have worked on all Shenmue versions.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit more about the unreleased Saturn version? How long had it been worked on, and did it use the experimental Saturn expansion cartridge or the 4meg RAM card?
A: Nearly two years of work was put in the Saturn version. It didn’t use a booster cartridge nor did it use the 4meg RAM card, so yes, the game was programmed for, and the footage seen as an extra on Shenmue II is from the code running on a stock Saturn."

 

very interesting - thanks for all of that info.

any details on what the lockheed martin chipset actually consisted of? was it beased on the consumer i740 / Auburn chip used by Intel and in Lokcheed's Starfighters cards, or was it based on the older and more powerful Real3D-100 chipset that had its own geometry processor ?

 

well actually, the Saturn upgrade cartridge / booster would have used some 3D accelerator or processor technology from the likes of Lockheed Martin, PowerVR or 3Dfx.

the Sega SVP chip used in Virtua Racing was basicly a DSP and really would not have helped Saturn beyond what a stock Saturn already had (the SH2 CPUs had DSP-like processing and there was also a DSP buried in one of Saturn's other chips)

I'd be willing to bet that the Saturn upgrade had to have used either 3Dfx, PowerVR or Lockheed Real3D. these were the very same companies that Sega partnered with (or at least talked to) to make the BlackBelt and Dural prototype consoles. It is only natural that a Saturn booster was the first step before the consoles were developed.