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

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Thats all technical talk...who cares. important...we now know shenmue runs without a cart.....and looks awesome. i believe a VF3 port that would have looked significantly better then vf2 was possible. 1 too 1 port was impossible. But Last Bronx and other games prove....with smart programming and SDK 3 and higher...full saturn hardware exploitation was possible!

 

How does everyone rate the Sonic World portion of Sonic Jam and Burning Rangers? I reckon these deserve to be rated as some of the more impressive Saturn games, even if the latter does seem to push the hardware beyond its limits, as evidenced by the frequent polygon breakup. Also, I feel bad for not including Grandia in my earlier list... shame on me!

P.S. What about Virtual On? I always felt that was a solid effort from CRI, even if their later conversion of Sega Touring Car was ruined by its low resolution textures, warping polygons and the frame rate dropping every time you passed under a bridge.

 

very good examples....Burning Rangers looks and plays fantastic....allthough i feel the game was rushed.....and could have looked a little more polished....a port would have been nice!
Sonic Jam World stage also looks fantastic...maybe it's one of the two engines used in sonic-x treme. sonic x treme in its last outing on the pc just looks amazing with its never ending turning round stages....what a nice idea....when there is a polygon limit of your hardware. shame on you sega of japan for usurping the whole development!!!
Virtua on is also a very underrated technical gem! Even with its 30 frames it plays very fluid...
ManxTT is also a very good tecnical effort by melbourne house.....dead or alive 1 too.....(good 3 developer stuff)
Touring car is a technical catastrophe its sega rally antithesis......probably rushed low budget....like appolosa softwares sky target...what a shame of a port....

 

Actually, the Sonic World level was a sample of the 32-bit project later completed as Sonic Adventure. My understanding is that it ran on a heavily modified version of the NiGHTS engine, which also powered Burning Rangers. In fact, even the retail Dreamcast version still features many references to the Saturn prototype, and you can tell what areas started off life at this point in development (portions of Ice Cap Zone are believed to date from that period, along with sections from Twinkle Park, Windy Valley, Lost World and Speed Highway).

Without the help they received from AM3 during the conversion of Manx TT, it's unlikely Tantalus would have been able to produce such an accurate Saturn treatment of WipEout 2097... if only their work on The House Of The Dead hadn't been rushed onto shelves, as it's clear quite a lot was learned from Sega's previous involvement. Also, considering the arcade original was an upgrade kit for Manx TT, it would have been great if Tantalus had included elements from Motor Raid as bonus content - the problem with this game is that it's just too short!

P.S. Does anyone know if WipEout 2097 on the Saturn uses the Manx TT conversion's engine? I've read conflicting reports on this one, and I'd love to know for certain at last.

 

Naka san didn't want that Nights engine was used in Sonic x treme. Nakayama ordered its removal....so development went on with the other engine...another sad chapter in Sega us vs. sega japan warfare.
Sonic Jam 3D world wouldn't have worked well as stage....way too much open and slow....In a map setting or adventure world to go from to stage to stage it would have worked quite well...

 

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sonic-x treme is known for is chaos development on multiple hardware .....some say it started already on genesis...32x is for sure...under another name. Believe me STI had spliced the game in two different engines. the game had different game sections running on two different engines. One heavealy used nights engine......both were shown to nakamura. one was canceled. lot of X tremes content is found in other games...even in Sonic DS 3D boss fights.....
Im happy to se some ideas of extrem showing up in the new WiiU incarnation. STI died after that project failed....and Senn had some serious health issues. Sega had become a real arrogant crap enterprise...
Sonicxtreme had the potential to become one of the best sonic games......at least the most special incarnation of them all. in its last incarnation the idea where senn wanted to go is crystal clear......sega avoided the realization of a masterpiece....what a poor behavior for a game company



the final pc version....is fantastic....that is how it should have been done on saturn...fantastic engine and design....creating such a fast game with so few polygons what a brilliant move.....thats how it should have been done on saturn, again an example...if you dont hurry and rush such things become possible

 

I did actually have contact with someone at Tantalus for a while, but communication broke down when I got to the subject of HOTD. The only detail I had confirmed is that Sega Europe pushed to have the game complete and ready in time for Easter 1998, as they held an internal meeting with representatives from various publishers where it was made clear the company did not want to support the Saturn beyond this period. Sadly, we never made it to talking Manx TT or WipEout 2097... that'll teach me for jumping straight to the most controversial title I'd wanted to ask questions about first!

At the same discussion, Courier Crisis was finally approved (despite being finished and rejected months earlier) to pad out the release table and Virgin walked out from negotiations regarding the PAL version of X-Men VS Street Fighter. According to another source that verified the same argument, Virgin wanted the CD and necessary 4MB RAM upgrade to retail for £79.99, while Sega insisted on a £49.99 price tag with the loss to be split between all involved partied - Capcom included - so they could help clear out the Japanese stock of unsold cartridges.

Atlantis, World League Soccer '98 and Chill* were also pencilled in, but the build of HOTD we all know (and love?) was meant to have been a 60% work in progress test copy. However, time ran out to add the planned loading optimisation and substitute placeholder textures with final assets, the latter issue being especially prominent throughout the last two stages. Anyway, to cut a potentially long story short, Sega pressured Tantalus to release HOTD in its incomplete state, claiming that most consumers were already looking forward to the Dreamcast and wouldn't care for such minor issues.

There is also a rumour that Deep Fear was not meant to have arrived on shelves in September '98 alone, though I certainly don't buy into the circulating list of various other games being scheduled for then including Sonic The Fighters, Virtua Fighter 3, Shenmue or Resident Evil 2 - the last game had already been publically cancelled in its Saturn form during a press conference to announce the restarting of development back in February '98, which is when the prototype "1.5" era of development officially came to an end.

*Does anyone know exactly why Chill didn't see the light of day, even though it was completed and ready to accompany Silicon Dreams' other late addition to the Saturn's software library?

 

(Double post!)

 

sonic the fighters was even announced and there were even pictures in flyers(model 2) version. it was an important title for sega...after xtreme failed. The sonic brand was still worth something in the west...even if it was a crapy fighting game. megamix proves that the game was already in development. quite smart move to recycle it in that way....especially the duck stage with ring looks fantastic(background animation)

 

The inclusion of elements from Sonic The Fighters in Megamix wasn't a case of AM2 recycling - just like with VF3, it was a preview of the conversion they'd still been working on into 1997. I recall STF being listed on Sega of Japan's online release table for May 5th 1998 (ironically the same date as given for VF3 at one point), though it's likely this was just a placeholder to let fans know it hadn't yet been cancelled...

 

i think its safe to say they used parts uf the unreleased sonic the fighters game in megamix....clearly the game runs with the inferior fv engine....are te sonic fighters low res like the rest of the bunch....im going to play it.....beeing flat shaded fighters maybe...makes them look better...
About implementing saturn vf3...im not sure...a stage can quickly be made. im still not that convinced vf3 had made big progress on saturn...prove me wrong Yu Suzuki....


32x flat shadded studies

 

the released nights engine looks quite crapy..no implemented stage design...still the 2D sonic is the same as in senns last incarnation on the pc version...and frankly his engine on the pc can easily challange the nights engine....for exemple...no ugly pop up!

 

It would have been sent out to die at £79.99, the Hardcore would have already imported and PAL fighting games did not sell incredibly well on the Saturn.

Was the right decision, sure we'd have liked a better version and what was released was loads better than the build I saw just a few weeks earlier where the backgrounds twisted with vertical lines like the original Panzer Dragoon. The title sold very well for a Saturn title at the time and even supported a higher price gun bundle. Some people were even reportedly buying used Saturns just so they could play the game.

Steep Slope Sliders didn't set the world on fire and the Saturn could not realistically expect greater sales of a Playstation port of another snowboarding game that wasn't Cool Boarders.

The final year of the PAL Saturn releases really was just keeping the pilot light on so the gap between the last Saturn game and the Dreamcast launch was not so great. Sega were happy for any titles to be released at this time but it mostly did not make commercial sense. The releases of the GT Interactive titles really were just a favor to Sega as the then MD of GT Interactive had very good relationship with one of the management at SOE at the time. Certainly the production numbers show there was no possible way money could have been made on these titles ans they have incredibly low print runs.

You've got to keep in mind that Sega were three parts kind of running independently SOJ, SOA, SOE. Japan did there own thing and they decided what the other offices got. There were no all territory big round table discussions of things like Shenmue or Sonic Fighters. There was discussion for Virtua Fighter 3 with SOE but not AFAIK SOA.

 

I forgot to mention GT Interactive before, but its continued support of the Saturn long after most of the other third parties had abandoned the system was indeed the result of a management-level friendship! Also, it still surprises me that Steep Slope Sliders failed to perform well here in Europe - especially since it came out around the same time as Winter Heat and could have been cheaply promoted (as in the US) along with this title. Sega might even have been able to tie it in with the then-upcoming Nagano Winter Olympics and reworked the PAL version as a fully licensed cash-in, as I know they made a few improvements over the Japanese original. Surely that would have generated a little extra interest, yes?

Also, it's great to finally hear confirmation from another source regarding the mythical discussion at SOE about the possibility of releasing Virtua Fighter 3 on the Saturn. SOA had already wrecked any chance of gaining further releases in their native territory following Bernie Stolar's doom-laden "Saturn is not our future" comment back in '97, but at least it's good to know negotiations were still ongoing to secure more titles over here, as happened with Deep Fear around the same period. Is there anything else you can say on this subject, such as what the plans were for VF3?

There were even claims the full second revision of VF3 was to appear as a cover disc on the official Sega Saturn Magazine in a special one-off final 38th issue that would have also featured a world exclusive review, full character move list and expert players guide, plus a lengthy showcase on the game's troubled development along with comments from Yu Suzuki - even a preview of Genki's VF3tb conversion with other 128-bit titles covered for good measure! Naturally, a quick e-mail to former editor Richard Leadbetter gave me all the proof I needed to shoot down this particular rumour faster than you can say "mythbuster," but I'm sure there was some degree of truth to it, even if the majority was just a pipe dream. Would you care to elaborate?

P.S. Am I correct in saying that SOA had virtually no knowledge of Shenmue existing before the Project Berkeley era? I know that Virtua AD was a codename floating around Europe, as it was mentioned in a handful of magazines. However, the few details coming over from Japan were explicit in describing this as Yu Suzuki's next big project, with the first use of this name dating back to November/December '96 as seen on AM2's official website.

 

Is that running on real 32X hardware? It certainly looks a lot smoother than most of the retail games that were released.

 

Yes correct. Often titles would just arrive out of the blue from SOJ almost finished with no announcements. There was no information on a Saturn Shenmue it would have been a work in progress rather then an announced titled.

The VF3 Special Edition magazine sounds like some blue sky thinking, wouldn't it be nice if... After the way Rich was treated by SOE and Emap and following the Lobotomy Demo disc debacle there would have been very little chance of this happening.

 

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What exactly did happen with that? I seem to recall there being regular progress updates in SSM, but the project was on and then off more times than I could ever keep up with. I'm fairly sure licensing issues with id Software led to delays in clearing the Quake demo, plus I remember some talk from Sega to the effect of "Why do you want Exhumed on a cover sampler when it's such an old game?" despite Rich Leadbetter's insistence the disc feature playable versions of all four titles Lobotomy produced for the Saturn, including Duke Nukem 3D and Death Tank Zwei, the latter in complete form.On the other hand, did relations between SSM's editor and SOE really deteriorate that much as a result of this not materialising? I think EMAP pitched a design for the Official Dreamcast Magazine, plus we all know the Sega Flash series continued for a while longer - in fact, weren't there another two volumes following the Lobotomy debacle? Sure, most of the content was repeated over both discs, but the point is that I was not aware Rich and the team had any falling out with SOE, though I gues it does explain why later issues became so focused on the Dreamcast or import Saturn games as opposed to promoting the handful of titles still being released in PAL territories. Then again, they dedicated far more page space to Deep Fear than it ever deserved, plus Capcom's 4MB RAM dependent software was championed massively, even if any chance of us getting just X-Men VS Street Fighter had collapsed at the negotiation stage by then...