Yep, another unreleased SEGA system

Guess wut? SEGA has a unreleased system! OMG, CAMT B3LI3V3 IT!!!1 :boobies2

Yea, theres yet another one, this one more misterious that the axe game gear from the last week

The only proof of this system existance comes from an Ex-STI (Sega Technical Institute) called. Mike Wallis.

He said THIS in an interview about Sonic Xtreme

With Sonic Xtreme, it was strange.. because at the time, Sega was looking to do a new system.. so Sonic Xtreme actually first started out as a 32X Game. And then, you know when that system came out and sort of tanked they switched it to... there was an intern system before the Saturn, it was Nvidia technology based... now, alot of people don't know this because it was just on the drawing board. But Sega had a partnership with Nvidia technologies for their very first RIVA, TNT Card.. Sega was going to make a cartridge based machine to compete with the N64 rather than a CD-ROM based machine. So we had some early techology and Xtreme basically went on THAT platform, it was going to be a launch title. And then Sega of America said "No, We're going to do a Saturn." Well, actually Sega of Japan came over and said "We're not doing that machine, we're doing the Saturn". It was weird because SOA would do their own thing and SOJ would do their own thing and then eventually SOJ would come in and say "No we're gonna do this" so Sega wasted alot of money and alot of resources on hardware development and software development for machines that eventually would never see the light of day.

An nVidia powered SEGA system, cool, too bad that SOJ didnt use it in the saturn (well, everything except the catridge games)

 

once again lack of coms between to groups has lsot us mabye a great cosnole

fools

 

He may be referring to the "Jupiter", which I believe was supposed to be a cartridge-based Saturn.

 

As far as i know, the Saturn is the Jupiter

Mars=32X
Jupiter=Saturn
Neptune=32X+MD

The problem was that SEGA said that the saturn was the same that a 32XCD, thus gettin people into thinking that Saturn played both cartridge and CD based games

 

As I remember, the Jupiter and Saturn were in development at roughly the same time, but Sega (wisely) didn't see the point in creating an inferior cartridge-based version of their next generation machine. The Saturn was kept and the Jupiter was ditched.

Gigadrive would probably be of help in this thread, since he seems to know a bit about Sega's hardware history.

 

Isnt this information from the (RedEye's website) Lost-Levels?

 

The quoted information was. Everything I was saying is from memory (I forgot where I originally read it).

 

I dont even know that site.....

The info is from a sonic related site. They started an investigation about the game and ended up talking to this guy who worked at SOA

 

Is it Sonic Cult? The paragraph looks familiar.

 

corrections badly needed.

1.) this Nvidia-based console was made AFTER the Saturn had already been made.
Saturn and Jupiter and 32X were designed in the 1992-1994 timeframe, and were evolutions of the GigaDrive which Sega started on in 1990-1991.


2.) Nvidia as a company did not come into existance until 1993, when Saturn was more than half-way completed. So there is no way that the Nvidia-based console came before the Saturn, and there is no way that it was Jupiter either.

3.) Nvidia and Sega worked on Nvidia's NV2 chip which did not have any other name.

the Nvidia-based Sega console did *not* use a Riva TNT (NV4) or a Riva128 (NV3) - the NV4: Riva TNT was not released for PCs until fall 1998, around the time that the Dreamcast came out in Japan, so there is no way that Nvidia had offered Sega a Riva TNT card for a console, because the Nvidia-Sega partnership had started and ended long before Riva TNT was created. The Nvidia chip that was offered to Sega was two chip-generations before TNT.

brief recap of Nvidia chips:

NV1: created in 1994-1995. this was used in Nvidia's first card, the Diamond Edge 3D.

NV2: was in development in 1995 - this was the Sega chip. it never became a properly working chip. Nvidia's worst failure ever.

NV3: was in development in 1996, released in 1997 as the Riva 128 - this was Nvidia's rebirth and their first successful consumer chip

Riva 128 ZX - refresh/update of the NV3 Riva 128... released spring 1998.. this was the begining of Nvidia's 6-month product-development cycle.

NV4: was in development in 1997-1998. this was the Riva TNT or just TNT for short. released fall 1998 with disappointing clockspeeds but still an awesome chip.

NV5: was in develpment in 1998 - this was the TNT2, released in spring 1999. NV5 aka TNT2 had the performance that NV4 aka TNT was *supposed* to have!
this is the chip that finally put Nvidia into serious competition with 3Dfx and ultimately beat 3Dfx Voodoo3 with the 32-bit color feature. TNT2 Ultra was released around the summer of 1999, a speed boosted TNT2....

NV10: was in development in 1998-1999. this was the GeForce256, the original GeForce. first major consumer 3D chip to have on-chip polygon/geometry processing so that it didnt need much of the CPU like all previous consumer 3D accelerators did.












This NV2 chip for Sega in 1995 is what Nvidia was doing inbetween NV1
(Diamond Edge 3D) of 1994-1995 and NV3 (Riva 128) of 1997. So the beginning and end of the Sega-Nvidia partnership was all within the year 1995.


this Nvidia-based console is therefore inbetween the Saturn and the Dreamcast. sometimes you will see articles stating that the NV2 chip was for the Dreamcast. this is also not exactly correct. while it WAS for a console to be the successor to the Saturn, it was not specifically the Dreamcast. call it Saturn II or Eclipse if you like, but not Dreamcast.


after Nvidia was dumped by Sega sometime 1995, Sega looked their own arcade technology from Martin Marietta (Model 2) Lockheed Martin (Model 3) as well as other chipsets from Lockheed Martin (Real3D-100) and at the 3DO M2, then at 3Dfx Voodoo/Banshee (Black Belt) and Videologic-NEC PowerVR2 (Dural-Katana-Dreamcast)


timeline: Saturn is completed by late summer 1994 because it gets released in Japan in Nov 1994. Sega of America looks into other options to create a console that is more powerful than Saturn in 1995....... Saturn gets released in U.S. in May 1995 and full launch happens in Sept 1995.... Sega of America briefly works with Nvidia on a more powerful console to compete with Nintendo64.... Nvidia will not bend over issues about what type of polygons to use (quads). Sega dumps Nvidia before the end of 1995.

 

http://www.firingsquad.com/features/nv2/page2.asp

unfortunately, I do not know the precise, exact timeline for when Sega started working with Nvidia on the NV2 chip for a new Sega console. it all happened in 1995 timeframe but I don't know what month. as you probably already know, and saw from that FiringSquad article, Sega worked with almost every major 3D chipset / technology company to find suitable & affordable 3D technology for a console to either *upgrade* the Saturn, or *replace* the Saturn.

It started with Lockheed Martin and their Real3D graphicsdivision. this was once thought to be Sega's best bet because Lockheed Martin's Real3D provided the 3D technology for Sega's arcade games. then Sega went on to work with Nvidia, then back to Lockeed Martin, then to 3DO M2, then to 3Dfx's Voodoo/Banshee and Videologic PowerVR2 . (NEC had been pushing PowerVR1 on Sega since 1995 but Sega never accepted PowerVR1) ...... in July 1997 Sega made their final decision on how to proceed beyond the Saturn..... they decided on the PowerVR2-based Dural, which was renamed Katana, and renamed again to Dreamcast in 1998.

 

i thought the saturn project was from SOJ, and that the 32x was from SOA, hence the two 32bits at one year of interval, and the 32x comming after the saturn in japan.

 

there is some truth to that. Sega of America I believe, did much of the work to create the 32X. the 32X was basicly what Saturn would have been without chip upgrades and without a CD-ROM.

the Jupiter would have been more powerful than 32X, the Jupitor was basicly a Saturn without CD-ROM.

the time between 32X and Saturn or Saturn and 32X is less than one year, more like 6 months.

USA: 32X fall 1994 - Saturn spring 1995
Japan: Saturn fall 1994 - 32X winter or spring 1995 ?



ok lets go back and look at most of the Sega-console timeline, minus the Master System / Mark III.


16-bit Megadrive-Genesis: development started around 1987. released in 1988 in Japan, 1989 in USA, 1990 in UK/Europe


16-bit Sega CD-ROM is in development by 1989..... gets a major overhaul in 1990-1991... no longer just a CD-ROM but now a CD-ROM plus extra CPU and scaling & rotation chip and more memory... releases in late 1991 in Japan...1992 in the USA..


32-bit GigaDrive: development started in 1990 or 1991 - based on the System32 board which was developed in 1990 ( released in arcades as Rad Mobile of 1991) ...

GigaDrive evolved for quite some time....... 1992........Saturn/Jupitor/Mars32X were all evolutions of GigaDrive..... Jupitor scrapped, 32X and Saturn both came out in 1994, the 32X in USA, the Saturn in Japan.

Sega is already looking at creating a replacement for Saturn in 1994 with Lockheed Martin.... but Saturn plans proceed...... Sega again looks at creating a replacement OR upgrade for Saturn in 1995...... hense: Sega working with Nvidia, Lockheed Martin, NEC persuing Sega with PowerVR, and Sega looking at 3DO-M2... this continues through 1996.....

the Sega 3D upgrade for VF3 is in the works by 1996..... nothing happens as far as anything getting released..... 1997 comes with Sega looking mostly at 3Dfx and PowerVR.... Sega decides on PowerVR2 based Dural in July 1997
(as I said before) the Dural is of course, the Katana/Dreamcast

Dreamcast released in Nov 1998 in Japan, Sept 1999 in the USA.

 

This STI guy mentions in the interview that some details may be wrong becos he doesnt remember about those days (its already a decade ago guys :smt022 )

I agree with the TNT mistake, even i doubt about it the 1st time. The info about Sega unreleased systems were very scarce at the time, so one tries to fix the gaps in the history. In this case, SEGA had a proto TNT card :smt082

Anyways, the "black belt" marketing idea lets you know how poor was the REAL idea of SEGA about the market, and how advanced was sony with his ad campaigns.

The 32X shouldnt came out at all, the whole addon concept (with all its wiring complications for the consumer) was a pain in the ass. On the other hand, it coulda been a success if they lauched it before, around mid 94. Obviously at that time the tech was more expensive, but thats easy to solve: instead of doin a scraped saturn, make a System32 intead, with some poligonal capacity, and launch it with a cool game (at the time, virtua racing)

BTW, i heard the saturn had a series of last minute changes, all becos of the london techdemos of the PSX that wowed every developer that went to the presentation. Those changes left a lot of hardware bugs on the saturn. Its that true? or just another urban myth?

I didnt know about Sega goin after 3DO and his M2. I suppose 3DO just send them to hell, after all, they were goin to release it.

A M2 module/addOn for the saturn, too bad it never was a reality :smt009


The fabled M2 module for the Fz-10

 

well heres an intersting little tidbit if anybody didnt know this from the book "ultimate history of videogames"

so baisicly the 32x was released by sega of america as a means of not having to release segas slight upgrade.

 

as for changes its pretty much true, baisicly segas president at the time felt humiliated and was extremely upset with the engineers pointing out the specs on paper and chewing them out about it, the major change which lead to the saturn being a pain in the ass to develop for was them sicking two processors in at the last minute that had to work parrallel at the same time, meaning evering thing had to be processeced and split through the two processors, instead of one doing some of the work and the other doing the rest of the work, as well the playstation demonstration pretty much changed the saturn to what it became by adding more 3d capailitys, but its known that the saturns 3d power was added at the very last minute.

 

wraping my most above posts....


in the time between the Megadrive-Genesis, MegaCD-SegaCD (late 80s early 90s) and the Dreamcast (late 90s) Sega experimented with and developed many, many different pieces of home hardware. the only major new hardware platforms that ever saw the light of day were: 32X, Saturn, and Dreamcast

(not counting the Genesis-based Nomad or other clones of existing consoles).

 

The main problem of the dual CPU layout of the saturn was that the processors couldt access the memory at the same time, thus creating a large chain of operations.

The quad-textures is something i didnt knew, and now it seems that was a problem as big as the CPU.

Now, SEGA could fix that, but the problem was SEGAs internal extructure. Look the PS2, its pretty hard to programm on it , yet it has more than 2 thirds of the market, plus a lot of games. All of that having a higher ratio of tech inferiority against GC and Xbox that the one Saturn has against PSX and N64.

Leaving the whole legal&extortion thing out, aparently sony did a superb job with the devkits, the tutorials and the programmer help lines. Indeed, almost every programmer in the Saturn had complains about the way SEGA didnt give a shit about the issues they had to deal with.

 

i remember hearing about that, and that some of the first development kits offered barelyu worked. Plus it didnt help that they were also sending them 32x kits at the same time. Also in the book i was mention earlyer, it mentions that durring the 32bit era, developers were being pushed to get games out faster, thus many programers progmamed for playstation as it was easyer and had better support make the development process much faster.

 

By the way, the supposed fact that "the Saturn's 3D capability was added at the last minute" has been proven to be myth several times. There's a leaked Sega document from march 1994 that mentions 3D already as an important part of the architecture.

Also, I'm curious whether Jupiter somehow evolved into Titan (Sega ST-V arcade board), which is also a Saturn with cartridge, up to the point that most of the chips are identical.