Does this interview finally settle all debates about the Sega Saturn? This board has some ridiculous arguments about the console, but it seems like we finally have all the answers from Hideki Sato>Was the Saturn originally intended to be a 2D console? Or a 3D one? >Sato: To be honest, in the beginning, I wasn’t thinking of 3D capabilities for the Saturn at all. This was partially my fault, but additionally, the game developers at Sega at the time had basically no knowledge of 3D game development. They had all been raised in the environment of 2D sprites and backgrounds, and the only developers who had any real experience with 3D were Yu Suzuki and AM2 with the Virtua series. >Actually, all of the other developers wanted to continue developing using the same system they were used to. If you looked at every single Sega employee within the home console division, there were practically no programmers or designers who had any knowledge of polygon technology. >I had taken a look at Sega’s development teams at the time and concluded, “It’s going to be impossible for them to do 3D games.” >I concluded that there was no way Sega’s development assets would be able to do 3D. >However, the PlayStation completely embraced polygons. >When we found out about that, we realized we were in trouble. >Thankfully, the (Saturn) SH-2s could be linked in a cascade connection. A large amount of geometry calculations are required to do polygon graphics, and a single Saturn SH-2 was completely insufficient. >With all the CPUs in the Saturn, only a tiny fraction of developers at Sega were able to make sense of them all and actually put them to use. For third parties… well, there was no way. >I’m not sure if you call it a memory, but a regret I have is not going with one of our options to use the arcade system Model 1 as the base for the Saturn. >We could have gone with 3D polygons with that kind of force. -December 2021 -Hideki Sato, Former Head of Sega Research and Development
>use the arcade system Model 1 as the base for the Saturn. what could have been...
>>10874063>>I’m not sure if you call it a memory, but a regret I have is not going with one of our options to use the arcade system Model 1 as the base for the Saturn. >>We could have gone with 3D polygons with that kind of force. This is the most interesting part.
When does he harakiri to take responsibility
>>10874101The Sega CEO did that in 2001.
Could the Model 1 be used to do 2D stuff? Maybe the dual cpu would still be needed in the end anyway.
>>10874135Why wouldn't it? 3D requires more processing power than 2D. If the CPU can do 3D then it definitely can do 2D. You would just need to increase the RAM for all the 2D sprites so you don't end up like Playstation 1 with nerfed versions of 2D games because it didn't have enough RAM to store all the 2D sprites.
>>10874063How far could they push the Model 1? Could it run Virtua Fighter 2?
>>10874063>For third parties… well, there was no way.Eh I mean DoA on Saturn looks better than Virtua Fighter and plays at 60 FPS.
Wouldn't a model 1 based Saturn be more exoensive than a regular Saturn?
>>10874249*expensive
>>10874156>increase the RAMMore like decrease it. Model 1 had way too much RAM for a 90's home console.
>>10874249Model 1 was old enough that the price had gone down. The really expensive hardware was Model 2. They used a super computer (for the time) to play games like Daytona USA. It was military hardware originally used by Lockheed.
>>10874063sega was founded by a group of american jews
>>10874235DoA was always the better 3D fighting game
>>10874272>Model 1 was old enough that the price had gone downModel 1 was just an year older by the time the Saturn lauched.
>>10874360Sega Model 1 was released in 1992Sega Model 2 was released in 1993
>>10874063Thos pretty much shuts down all debate on Sega Saturn. Those crazy Sega fanboys in other threads can't argue if the answers are coming from Sega itself.
>>10874063>be established manufacturer>all of your top guys are good at what they do and continue making products that fit within their skills>competitor shows a radical new design that will shift the industry away from your comfort zone>immediately panic and try to brute force whatever project you have currently in development to be a direct competitor against this new design>even if this means trying to adapt something that was not at all designed for this new design to compete with something built from the ground up for itThis isn't even really unique to Sega, I suspect a lot of major manufacturers have destroyed themselves doing exactly this. Rarely, if ever, does saying "okay well we have this, how can we make it do what this other thing does?" end in anything but disaster.
>>10874063>I’m not sure if you call it a memory, but a regret I have is not going with one of our options to use the arcade system Model 1 as the base for the Saturn. >We could have gone with 3D polygons with that kind of force. I've been saying that for years.
>>10874549It's odd since Sega didn't have as much money. Yet they gave Saturn an extra CPU per console. This means Hitachi would make twice as much money and Sega would be spending more money. On a strategic level it makes more sense to just scrap the entire Saturn and start over, or adapt the Model 1 arcade board. It's an already existing design. So you just need to down scale and simplify it a bit for consoles. That's what they did for Sega Genesis. No idea why they strayed away from doing that in Saturn. It's a winning formula. They returned to doing that for Dreamcast by making it based on Sega Naomi arcade boards. But too latethe damage was already done.
>>10874303and yet it no longer exists
>>10874063So why did they go with Hitachi CPUs? Hitachi didn't really have any experience making CPUs for gaming. Should have gone with IBM
>>10874063>one of our options to use the arcade system Model 1 as the base for the Saturn.a fucking pipe dream. that setup was so goddamn costly. How much of it would they have had to pull from the board to just get their foot in the door of $400 retail sale price?what does its block diagram even look like with all this shit? Did anyone ever make one?
>>10875104Sega did it with Arcade System 16 and shrinking it down for the Sega Genesis. Why not do it with Sega Model 1?
>>10875062i've always thought that there was some backroom deal that went down between 2 japanese companies and a handshake. There's nothing wrong with the SH2 product except that the pool of programmers who could pick it up and work with it was absolutely tiny by comparison to almost any other chip they were considering.
>>10875124Different anon here. No matter how many interviews I read, it doesn't make sense why Sega went with Hitachi. Sega had previously worked with Motorola, NEC, and a bunch of other chip makers. Sega had even rejected Hitachi chips in the past.Yet all stories I've seen about Sega choosing the Hitachi SH2 for Sega Saturn are just them saying, "Oh yeah. So one day we just decided to go with Hitachi" and nothing else is elaborated on. Like wtf. 10 other chips could have been chosen. Massive articles could be written about this, yet all we get is 2 sentences? It's so strange.
>>10875124>>10875147Hayao Nakayama's brother-in-law worked for Hitachi, and he was golf/drinking buddies with some other Hitachi execs as well.
>>10875147>>10875152This is basically what happened with the Dreamcast too - the American design got 3dfx on board with true next-gen 3D graphics (which probably would have been uncontested until the Gamecube and Xbox came out given the PS2's specs being set in stone)Instead, Sega of Japan guys shook hands with some NEC exec over drinks and we got the absolutely anemic PowerVR slop for the DC
>>10875171Do you have information about the cost of PowerVR chips VS 3dfx? I'm wondering if Hitachi was the budget option despite being so anemic
>>10875179PowerVR was definitely the budget option in the era (you can think of it as being like the AMD to 3dfx's Nvidia), but by 1998 it had begun to fall massively behind due to lackluster support for modern graphics APIs like OpenGL and D3D.
>>10875171The PowerVR2 chip was considerably better than its Voodoo 3-ish competitor in several areas, but Voodoo used an API (Glide), meaning higher commonality with PC games, thus easier/quicker ports of PC games. Also, going with the US design would've meant somewhat earlier launch, since the Blackbelt components were slightly ahead of their Dural/Katana versions in terms of development (IIRC finalizing the SH-4 was a "last-minute all-nighter" sort of deal).
>>10875171>we got the absolutely anemic PowerVR slop for the DCHow freaking dare you. Dreamcast was a great system.
>>10874469Not really. Saturn spamming fucks will keep claiming that regardless of hardware, their soft-dick-made, ported games are somehow better than Sega Slaystation.
>>10874550That was the logical step, especially that they've done it before with Genesis. They were the best arcade machine manufacturers, Model 1 had impressive 3D capabilities they needed at the time. Perhaps, they would be able to outdo PlayStation with this one in hardware terms. Yet, like >>10875124 said, the whole situation sounds like there was a silent, unofficial deal between execs at the top. This deal obviously had them by the balls and instead of doing the logical step of scaling down Model 1 to become base for Saturn, they appear to have been forced to do with what they had from Hitachi. They were also plagued by inability to rein in Sega of America, as they believed American suits too much, yielding to their poor ideas. They wouldn't have problems with SoA if their release schedule was simplified, the same for both Japan and the US. The difference in release schedules led to various money sinkholes being created, such as 32X.
>>10875262>They were also plagued by inability to rein in Sega of America, as they believed American suits too much, yielding to their poor ideas. They wouldn't have problems with SoA if their release schedule was simplified, the same for both Japan and the US. The difference in release schedules led to various money sinkholes being created, such as 32XPlease elaborate. I'm not familiar with this at all.
>>10874063Really stupid company.
>>10874063>>I’m not sure if you call it a memory, but a regret I have is not going with one of our options to use the arcade system Model 1 as the base for the Saturn. >>We could have gone with 3D polygons with that kind of force. It would have saved the Saturn!!!
>>10875275SoA wanted to keep Genesis alive and competitive until the release of Saturn in the US. 32X was developed in fears that Atari Jaguar will snatch the audience before Saturn is released, so this add-on was supposed to reinforce Genesis until Saturn was ready for release. But...... 32X was simultaneously announced with Saturn. In Japan, Saturn was released a month before 32X was released in America. This led to fragmentation of the market, as third party companies would rather wait and develop new games for the upcoming console, already known to be difficult to develop for. Developing for 32X required to learn the old system anew, there was just no point when Saturn's release was just a few months away. Retailers have lost confidence in Sega's business decisions, buying less and stocking less, instead giving more space for competitors. 32X was doomed to fail from the beginning, it was an unnecessary waste of time and money, putting further strain at Sega at the most vulnerable time, which is the transition to the new gen consoles.
>>10875262>They were also plagued by inability to rein in Sega of America They were primarily plagued by their inability to design actually usable hardware. The DC was the only SoJ-designed unit that had no overt weaknesses at the specific time of its creation/release.
>>10874235Every third party needed a programming savant on their team to make a saturn game.
>>10875410The mega drive shit on snes despite a massive 4 fucking years earlier
>>10875530MD had a fuckton of bottlenecks and poor design choices that hamstrung it from reaching its real potential.
>>10875310The 32x is so stupidWtf were they thinking
>>10875310>But... >... 32X was simultaneously announced with Saturn.Diff anon here. You have it backwards. Saturn was announced with 32X. The home office of Sega of Japan knew when 32X was being announced and decided to announce Saturn's release at the time any way. The responsibility for this blunder falls of Sega of Japan. They probably wanted 32X to fail.
>>10875310Sega of America just wanted to sit and wait for a year or so until Saturn was ready for a Western Launch. Sega of Japan said absolutely not to that idea. They ordered Sega of America to respond to the Atari Jaguar and its upcoming 3D capabilities. First Sega of Japan proposed a new upgraded Genesis with enhanced colors and some 3D potential. Sega of America said it would be better to use a cheaper add-on. The logic was that if Saturn is coming in 2 years, then a brand new console doesn't make sense. 2 years is not enough for a new console life cycle. So that's where the idea of the cheaper Sega 32x add-on was created. Sega of America wanted to use more powerful American brand graphics chips like Motorola or 3DFX for the Sega 32x to give it more 3D power. But Sega of Japan said no, and forced Sega of America to use Hitachi chips. This is why the 32x wasn't as powerful and lackluster. Sega had shady backroom deals with Hitachi like other anons mentioned in this thread and forced everyone to use Hitachi chips despite them being much less powerful. Sega 32x could have been more powerful at 3D.Still, Tom Kalinske tried to make the best of the situation. He thought Sega of America would have at least a solid 2 years to promote and sell Sega 32x. Then Sega of Japan announced Saturn at the same time as Sega 32x. Sega of Japan did not communicate this ahead of time to Sega of America. This took Sega of America by surprise, and stole any momentum Sega 32x had with the gaming community. Now every game studio wanted to wait for Sega Saturn instead, and Sega 32x only got half-hearted support from 3rd Party game studios in the West. The rest of history.
>>10876061It's almost like the 32X wasn't their initiative and a sketchy product that came out of SoA's ass in order to "keep the Genesis alive in the West" and not having to deal with the Saturn for the foreseeable future. SoJ wanted the Saturn out in 1994 and SoA said no, hence only Japan got it and the US got the 32X instead. The thing wasn't going to perform well without killer apps to justify it, which SoA was incapable of coming up with.
>>10876653Tom Kalinske (former CEO of Sega of America) said he just wanted to stick with Genesis for another year or so. He didn't want any add-ons like Sega 32x. Tom just wanted to wait until Saturn had more games and the software was more mature. That a 1996 launch date for Saturn was best for the West. But he was overruled by Japan head office. They were worried about the Atari Jaguar and Sony Playstation.
>>10876653That doesn't make any sense. Tom Kalinske wanted to go in on the SONY PlayStation 50/50. SoJ scoffed at the idea wondering aloud what SONY knew about making video games--vastly underestimating the 3D power of the new machine, consumer demand for polygon graphics, and SONY's commitment to addressing the problems that developers faced. SoA had helped them get their game division up and running producing content for the Sega CD, and most of SEGA's developers would eventually jump ship for the easier to write for PlayStation.
>>10875193The PVR2 is fully incapable of pixel shadingSomething the competition already got built-in (And being were the PS2 destroyed everyone)
>>10874063>Sato: To be honest, in the beginning, I wasn’t thinking of 3D capabilities for the Saturn at all.Case closed. No more arguments allowed.
>>10876683>That a 1996 launch date for Saturn was best for the West. Saturn would've been fucking obliterated by PS1 had they released in 1996. We're talking Jaguar levels of obliterated, not 'merely' an utter failure. Though, like I had mentioned previously, neither Kalinske or Nakayama were clairvoyant. The historical track for general electronics companies releasing game consoles was meh by that point (winter '93-'94). Least worst option would have been a late-'94 launch in Japan (which actually happened, but not intentionally) and a mid-'95 launch in the West (which didn't, got stealth-launched in the May disaster). What they had initially planned for was an early-'95 launch in Japan, followed by an early-mid-'96 launch in the West. The absolutely disastrous state of Sega operations in Japan, coupled with high demand for Virtua Fighter, made SoJ jump that date, by almost half a year. Admittedly, they did so fully knowing that they had shit fuck all for a launch lineup: 5 games, of which a mahjong shovelware, a Myst port, an FMV (lol, lmao) detective story, a (basically) tech demo, and VF.
>>10877561>Saturn would've been fucking obliterated by PS1I appreciate your longer and well thought out post, but Saturn WAS OBLITERATED by PS1 and N64. If Sega didn't lose their nerve and launched in 1996 as originally planned, then at least they would have had a fighting chance. Sega would have more games to offer and developers would have had more time to make Saturn games. Especially since Saturn required more effort and time to program. The Sega development kits also sucked in 1994. Extremely bare bones. But 1996 was better.
>>10874101Why would he eat a frisbee? What would that accomplish?
>>10876061>They probably wanted 32X to fail.>Release the damn thing on the same day as the PS
>>10876169I love that pic. The Holy Sega Obelisk. oooooOooooOOOOOooo.
>>10876705>>10876169>>10875262After dealing with Japanese executives for a while now, I finally truly understand how that whole SoJ/SoA went down. The secret is that Japanese execs all have work ethic and egos bordering on psychotic. They work themselves to death and genuinely believe they are the best corporate leadership in the universe because of that. And every god damn C-Suite is like an endless combination of Game of Thrones and Shogun on about 8 different levels at once, played by unhinged megalomaniacs working 100 hour weeks and while they don't kill themselves over loss of face, they might as well.So hiring Kalinske, a non-Japanese and a toy guy, in itself would have been an almost unbearable humiliation borne out of absolute desperation at getting their asses kicked by Nintendo everywhere (which was itself a slightly more unbearable humiliation). And when he told them to do a bunch of stuff that seemed insane (sell at a loss, pack in the killer game for free, go balls-out Gen X on advertising etc), it would have been a MASSIVE relief because if the company failed they could now blame the gaijin.But what he did worked perfectly, the Genesis became the #1 console in America and Europe and stayed that way or at least traded with Nintendo. And to the Japanese this would've been a daily personal humiliation. Actually the better Kalinske did, the more humiliating it would've been for the suits in Japan. The amount of hatred they must have felt for that man is kind of hard to imagine. But the rather efficient maneuvering SoJ did to freeze him out of the decision making process and fuck him up at every turn makes perfect sense to me, now. They would've rather their garbage Rube Goldberg Saturn to fail like it did than a Kalinske-led Saturn succeed, because then he would've been better at every aspect of their job, not just sales but engineering, than they were. So they got rid of him and then promptly drove the company into the grave.
>>10877621 >Saturn WAS OBLITERATED by PS1 and N64Like I said, it could've been even worse, 3DO or Jaguar tier. My point is that absolutely nothing could beat PS1, so there's no point in trying to figure out a way to do so. Least worst case would be a launch timeline which allows a bit of wiggle room against both it and N64, while still taking into account the need to keep the lights on, in the greater context of the 16-bit slump (which hit Sega the hardest). >But 1996 was better. It would've been something like half a year after PS1, also the N64 was releasing at that time as well. And remember that Nintendo didn't actually *want* to delay it, they were forced to because of hardware bugs. And it quite likely cost them several million missed sales, for the winter '95-'96 season.
>>10874063What would be realistic if they went with the scaled down model 1 approach hardware wise?I know they had to add some extra features like texture mapping, and cut down on overall strenght to reduce cost.But the end product would be something close to a PSX?
>>10877665I know you're sarcastic but there are anons in other threads >>10851803 who write HUNDREDS of posts saying that Sega of Japan was an angel company that could do no wrong. That the angelic Japanese did everything they could to support their little brother Sega of America.
>>10877748>What would be realistic if they went with the scaled down model 1 approach hardware wise? >I know they had to add some extra features like texture mapping, and cut down on overall strenght to reduce cost. >But the end product would be something close to a PSX?The Sega Model 1 actually has some texture mapping capabilities, but from what I understand...developers did not use it because they wanted to keep the buttery smooth 60 fps for arcades. Home consoles of that era were around 20 to 30 fps (max). So 60 fps in the early 90s was astonishing.I would imagine a consolized Sega Model 1 would be capped at 30 fps. And they would add some extra support to boost texture mapping. I think polygon wise it would look better than Playstation since Model 1 was a polygon King. My one concern would be the CD-ROM. Load times would be long and annoying for consoles. So I don't think we would get something like Mario 64. Not unless you want to deal with loading times everytime you entered a new room.
>>10877561>launch lineup: 5 games, of which a mahjong shovelware, a Myst port, an FMV (lol, lmao) detective story, a (basically) tech demo, and VF.FMV detective storyI had to look that up!WanChai ConnectionThe story takes place in 1997 (three years into the future from when the game was released) in Wan Chai area of Hong Kong island. The naked woman washed ashore and she doesn't have any recollections. You play as Michael Lee, a Hong Kong detective trying to find out the truth behind an attempted murder case.This game was launched on the same date Sega Saturn console was released, so it's one of the console launch titles. Besides talking to characters and typical adventure dialog and question options, game also features searching for clues mode which lets you look for clues in 3D environment. Live-action sequences usually come between story chapters and are not in full-screen.Amazing!
>>10874790They panicked when they saw Tekken on the Playstation, they couldn't believe how advanced and impressive it was compared to their 3D untextured garbage.
>>10877929>Amazing! The other 3 immediate (~1st month) launch window games were a port of a 1991 2D arcade racer, an FMV (lol, lmao x2) mystery puzzle, and Clockwork Knight. A truly solid launch day/window lineup.
>>10878157The Saturn was neglected. It only had that ONE mahjong game available at launch. Did you know that the PS1 had TWO? Mahjong Station MazinMahjong Goku Sky: AtsushiI don’t even know how to play mahjong!
>>10877661>Why would he eat a frisbee?There's a japanese legend that if you eat 1000 frisbees, then you can have a wish turned true. He could've wished for Saturn's success.
>>10877723>Like I said, it could've been even worse, 3DO or Jaguar tier.I don't think you understand. 3DO outsold Sega Saturn in the USA. The only place Sega Saturn did well in was Japan. And even then it was only moderately well. Not a smash hit.
>>10878914>3do outsells Saturn in USA That's really sad. Sega went from juggernaut to pathetic in a single generation
>>10874063The problem with Sega is they were always too focused on the hardware and always neglected their games. Launching Saturn without a Sonic game was a dumb move. Not having ANY Sonic game was an even dumber move.Just make Sega Saturn based on Model 1 with some upgrades for textures. Boom. Problem solved.
>>10874063What would a Saturn based on the Sega Model 1 look like?
>>10880350Exactly the same as the Saturn was, except no texture.
>>10880350You'd end up with a setup very similar to the playstation, i.e. no VDP1&2 nonsense, no dual CPU bullshit, just a fairly straightforward platform designed for 3D from the start (and could do 2D as well by using its 3D pipeline)
>>10874063>Does this interview finally settle all debates about the Sega Saturn? No autists on this board are gonna argue about "what could have been" until the end of time. This is why we need Bernieposting.
>>10875310Genesis would have stayed afloat with decent games regardless of the 32X existing. Taking either the 3DO or the Jaguar seriously as threatening competitors will never not be funny to me.
>>10881067Bernie posters only fuelled the fire, nothing was gonna stop this autism.
>>10878914>I don't think you understand. 3DO outsold Sega Saturn in the USASource?
>>108811703DO sold 2 million. Sega Saturn only sold 1.2 million in the USA. Sega of Japan literally screwed themselves with how badly they messed up with Saturn. Total disaster. The only place Saturn sold moderately well was Japan. That's it.
>>10881072Isn't this a cope? Genesis software sales had dried up by 1995, despite some quality titles releasing around that time. SNES games were still selling in comparison. SoA just couldn't let go.
>>10882047If it did okay in Japan but badly in USA then it's probably the American branch's fault.
>>10882098Let's keep things in Perspective. You say "dried up" but Sega of America were still making millions of dollars in profit with the Genesis. Tom Kalinske was right in saying that they should supported Genesis for another year or so and let Saturn launch in 1996 when all the bugs were worked out and more Saturn games were available.
>>10882106Saturn sold badly *everywhere* outside of Japan.
>>10882047The 3DO sold 2 million WORLDWIDE not just in america.
>>10882193This would only have worked if the mega drive was popular in japan, which wasn't the case.
>>10882106It's this kind of comment that gets the Saturn more hate.SOJ was the head branch of sega, any fault that SoA commits is also their fault.
>>10882209That doesn't make much sense to me. I read here in this thread that it's because of SoA that the Genesis was successful, so I think it follows it's also on them that the Saturn failed (especially if it did okay in Japan)>>10882196Well I guess the European branch is also to blame. They needed to step up.
>>10882203Who cares about Japan?Sega literally made most of their money from the Western Market.
>>10882241It's the japanese division that makes the hardware dumbass, you can't just expect them to ignore their own country.>>10882235Never said that SoA was completely blameless.
>>10882241Most of Sega's game devs and good games come from there.They needed hardware at that point, they couldn't just bend over a get no yen in a whole year just for America's sake.
>>10882235>That doesn't make much sense to me. I read here in this thread that it's because of SoA that the Genesis was successful, so I think it follows it's also on them that the Saturn failed (especially if it did okay in Japan) The reason SoA was successful with the Genesis was because SoJ gave them freedom to do whatever they wanted to make money. They hired Tom Kalinske and said do whatever. SoJ had a very low opinion of the American office and thought they were just a backwater unimportant office. When Tom Kalinske took over Sega of America, it was just a small branch office with a storage warehouse.Tom Kalinske immediately made all the right moves. He established better business relationships with Western retail companies and made new relationships to promote the Genesis, he changed the pack in game from Altered Beast to Sonic the Hedgehog, and did many other things that the Japanese never thought of doing. The Japanese do not understand how to market Sega products outside Japan. In a short time, Genesis exploded in popularity in America. Sonic was the mascot and pushed by Sega of America.Sega of Japan saw how successful Sega of America became and how much bigger the branch office grew. At one point, Sega of America was making MORE money than Sega of Japan. A branch office had surpassed the main office in finances. This is a big No No in Asian culture. They are all about respecting your seniors and knowing your place. So Sega of Japan became jealous and removed Sega of America's freedom to make decisions. Tom Kalinske lost all his power in the later life of the Genesis, and had no power at all during Saturn. Sega of Japan kept overruling Tom Kalinske's decisions. He didn't like this and resigned from the company. Tom then went on to run another big company that became very successful.
>>10882251>It's the japanese division that makes the hardware dumbass, That's not important. Not at all. Production can be made in any country. Nintendo and Sony used parts that were made in American factories, and partnered with Western companies to make those parts. Only Sega stupidly tried to keep it all within Japan. >you can't just expect them to ignore their own country.That's what any SANE person would expect them to do. 75% of their income comes from the Western markets. A smart businessman would focus on regions that make them money. Face it. Japan had already rejected 3 Sega consoles (SG-1000, Master System, and Mega Drive). They didn't like them. Their home country did not like Sega consoles. Sega of Japan was like a battered and abused ex-wife that kept going back to her abusive husband (Japan) thinking he will change and stop hitting her.
>Sega logo is a whiter shade of blue. What changes? Could it be saved?>Sega's parking lot has space for three more vehicles. What changes? Could it be saved?>Sega's country cousin moves to town. What changes? Could it be saved?Ah, the eternal debate.
>>10882315>That's not important. Not at all.Production can be made in any country. Nintendo and Sony used parts that were made in American factories, and partnered with Western companies to make those parts.Their overall design and how they fuctioned were all drafted and idealized in japan.>That's what any SANE person would expect them to do.Except that Sega's arcade IPs during 1993-1995 in japan were getting more profit then ever since they entered the business, which is why they got a moderate success with Saturn.Any businessman would try to get their product famous EVERYWHERE rather than in just one place.
>>10882523>Except that Sega's arcade IPs during 1993-1995 in japan were getting more profit then ever since they entered the businessSega sold far more arcades to the Western world market than in Japan. If it was popular in Japan, it was 10x more popular overseas. The Western Market made Sega far more money in both arcades and consoles. For example - Sega "House of the Dead 1" arcade cabinet. The arcade game was so insanely popular in the West that Sega's arcade factories ran 24/7, and literally could not keep up with demand from the West. They had a backlog and wait list for almost a full year. And Western arcades for the first 1 to 2 years were only allowed to order one cabinet due to crazy demand. Sega couldn't keep up with Western orders.
>>10882285I don't know, that just sounds like shifting the blame to me. Maybe this is a thing in American culture. I visited there a couple of times, so I know a bit about it.>The Japanese do not understand how to market Sega products outside JapanAlso weird, since every other product they make just does fine. Meanwhile, Americans would complain that their cars don't sell in Japan while they don't even make kei cars. So maybe it's just projection.
>>10882564>Also weird, since every other product they make just does fine.Bruh....What world are you living in?Sega barely has a presence anymore in the Western Market. They shut down and downsized their Western offices twice. Even in Japan, Sega had to sell off their arcade business to GiGo because of financial difficulties. That's a business they had for decades. Sega isn't even a shadow of their former 90s glory. They have fallen very, very, very far.
>>10875121>Sega did it with Arcade System 16 and shrinking it down for the Sega Genesis. Why not do it with Sega Model 1?they did it with the system 32 instead, they shrunk it down to make the Saturn.>>10875147there's at least two other entire interviews detailing this, one from Hitachi side, one from Sega side, on why they went with Hitachi.>>10875171the american design was a voodoo banshee and a powerpc cpu. the powervr2 was cheaper, faster, and it was a lot more memory efficient. in fact it was so efficient that they later went on to make the iphone gpus.
>>10876712>The PVR2 is fully incapable of pixel shadingand 3dfx couldn't even do T&L in any of their commercial products, except for a prototype that was still under development in 2000 December when they went bankrupt, and by then Sega had the Naomi 2 which was almost xbox level.
>>10882656>3dfx couldn't even do T&Lneither did the powervr 2, nothing did until the geforce 256>Naomi 2 which was almost xbox levelno
>>10882647>there's at least two other entire interviews detailing this, one from Hitachi side, one from Sega side, on why they went with Hitachi. Yeah but they always avoid talking about why Sega chose Hitachi over the 10 other chips could have chosen. They never say what set Hitachi above the competition.It always goes:>We are considering many chips>Hitachi is one of the options>We chose Hitachi chips>Oh No. Playstation is more powerful.>We Need more Hitachi chips in Saturn.
>>10882686>what set Hitachi above the competitionThey are memory efficient, which was a legitimate concern in 1994. They couldn't foresee a big RAM price drop, but if anyone can foresee anything they'd be a trillionaire. They also weren't slow like 68K or expensive like x86 or PowerPC.
>>10882754But why would you use a chip from a manufacturer that has no history of making chips for gaming, and your own company's programmers don't even know how to use it. Or have experience with it. Using the Motorola Motorola 68040 or 68060 would have been a better choice. It was a proven architecture. Many people were already familiar with it. It also would have given Saturn backwards compatibility with Genesis.
>>10874063good thread, bump
>>10882930>no history of making chips for gamingIt sounds like you might be retarded
>>10882960>It sounds like you might be retardedSound like you don't know your history. The Sega 32x doesn't count either. It was made around the same time as the Saturn.
>>10875062>>10875147 What the OP linked is just highlights. It's mentioned in the full Sato interview as well as interviews with HItachi Engineers. You can read the Hitachi interviews here:https://mdshock.com/2020/06/16/the-story-of-the-hitachi-sh-2-and-the-sega-saturn/The full interview states that while at first he was looking at only 2D, he as well as Nakayama realized they needed to do 3D especially after hearing from his friend Kutaragi that PS1 was embracing 3D. They didn't know the final specs yet (that wouldn't be until late summer/early fall of 1993), just that it was going to be 3D. So that eliminated the 68020 SoA wanted and narrowed it down to an NEC RISC CPU, and a new one in development from Hitachi. He liked the performance of the one from Hitachi, and being that it was in development they were able to work with them to get additional features they wanted.Of all things in the Saturn, the SH-2 is the least controversial choice. For the time it's very good and powerful CPU that beats the MIPS CPUs the PS1 and N64 used in multiplication and division, which is something you really need to be able to do 3D. Where PS1 got it right though is they focused heavily on the GPU having a high fillrate, where as Sega didn't with VDP1.The decision to go for 3D and then go with the SH2 was made in late summer/early fall of 1992.>>10875152This story however is complete nonsense.
>>10875310>>10876169>Sega of Japan was afraid of the Atari JaguarThis has been debunked numerous times. Sega of Japan didn't give a shit about the Atari Jaguar and didn't consider it serious competition at all. The two systems they were concerned about were 3DO and PS1. 32X was not forced on Sega of America, they clearly stated they wanted to stick with Genesis and not release Saturn, so Sega of Japan approached them about what they could do to stay competitive with the PS1. Sega of Japan offered a Genesis with more colors, Sega of America countered with the 32X. 32X was mostly Sega of America's idea and Japan backed them on it thinking it was the right read for the market. They were wrong.>>10875310>>10876061Both of you have this wrong. Saturn was announced and given a release date back in September of 1993. 32X wouldn't even start design until January of 1994 and wouldn't be unveiled to the public until Spring of 1994.>>10882285>Sega of Japan was jealous of Sega of America's success.This has again been debunked numerous times. Both companies want the same goal, to be successful and make money. Sega of Japan only started to reign in control after the failure of the 32X, which was mostly Sega of America's idea and initiative.There's also the issue of Sega of America having tons of unsold stock and starting to rack up losses on returned stock around this time.
>>10883034>This has again been debunked numerous times.Just because you say that doesn't make your head canon real. We have interviews from Tom Kalinske who say otherwise. If it were up to Tom, he would have gone with SGI hardware for Saturn. And wouldnt gave gone with Hitachi for 32x.>Both companies want the same goal, to be successful and make money.No Sega of Japan wanted to more successful than their branch offices. They did not appreciate that Sega of America made way more money than Sega of Japan.
>>10883048> We have interviews from Tom Kalinske who say otherwise. And we have interviews from the Japanese side that don't align with Kalinskes statements as well as interviews with some Sega of America engineers and execs who left around the time this happened. Those stories however tend to align with each other as well as with other people who didn't even work at Sega. They also align with primary sources from the era. When multiple sources align with one story and one other story is the outlier, the outlier is typically not being truthful.Kalinske is most likely not telling the full truth here. His story is simply more entertaining so people keep parroting it.> If it were up to Tom, he would have gone with SGI hardware for SaturnWhich wouldn't have worked for Sega as Saturn's design was near final by this point and it needed to release in 1994 in Japan. SGI caused delays for Nintendo and other problems which is why they ditched them with the Gamecube.> And wouldnt gave gone with Hitachi for 32x.Sega of America's engineers chose the SH2s for the 32X because they felt that was the best part of the Saturn's design. There's nothign wrong with the SH2s for the CPU in Saturn. It's an excellent CPU for the time and Sega got a very good deal on them to the point where Hitachi wasn't even making any money selling the chips to Sega.>No Sega of Japan wanted to more successful than their branch officesThis only makes logical sense if you want to have an irrational hate boner for Sega of Japan.
>>10882656>naomi>almost xbox levellmao no, it was maybe half as powerful as an xbox
>>10883135He said NAOMI 2, not NAOMI. NAOMI 2 has an additional GPU and a hardware T&L chip added along with more memory.
>>10882968Sounds like you're a coping child who gets its history lessons from other children on youtube. I'm not sure whether its more hilarious or scary that you're completely unaware of how spectacularly ignorant you are.
>>10883154Yet, the hardware was incapable of doing framebuffer effects.
>>10883194So what? It's still better than anything 3dfx was offering at the time.
>the console with a chip capable of rendering ~350,000 polygons a second was not designed for 3Dwhen will this meme end
>>10883079Anon we have confirmation from both Sony who wanted to team up with Sega to make a console. Sega said no. And from court documents of Sega themselves getting sued by breaking a partnership agreement with 3dfx. You are simply wrong.
>>10883079>Saturn's design was near final by this point and it needed to release in 1994 in Japan.Who gives af what Japan wants when Japan isn't Sega's main source of income. It was America and Europe that was their biggest customers.
>>10883215yeup, 3dfx shit was a joke at the time. seeing how it performs on a real gauntlet dark legacy cab proves it was dead in the fucking water.
>>10883024>Sago says he didn't design Saturn with 3D in mind.>Ummm....ACkTUALLY... Sato meant something completely different! I swear you Saturn fanboys just won't let this go. The Saturn failed. Move on.
>>10883079Sega signed a partnership agreement with 3dfx and then broke the deal. Did you forget about the big lawsuit that happened in the 90s because of it?
>>10883034Your post makes it seem like SOA either a: didnt want to ever launch the Saturn forever-ever, or b: had any agency in the launch plans. All the reading just says SOA didnt want to goto market at $400+ in NA, haven't seen anything that said they didn't want the Saturn at all ever-never-noway. They wanted a cheaper sale price and more game selection.>so Sega of Japan approached them about what they could do to stay competitive with the PS1.by approached, you mean decided SOA weren't allowed to do what they wanted which was and simply wait until Saturn could sell for cheaper in the US to launch in the US and to not actually compete with the PS1. They didn't want to global launch with Japan at the pricepoint Japan was, and they didn't want to go the following year when it was still intended to sell at $400, and they didn't want to go when SOJ decided to move up the NA launch 5 months to beat Playstation to launch.Then Sony said $299. At that point why bother with the Saturn still at $400 when in 5 months you get Playstation for $299. Yes, Sega then announced they would price drop....but not for 4 more months when it was 30 days before the Playstation launch. Now if that isn't a slap in the face to your fanbase or potential customers...Back in 1993 when the launch price in Japan was set and a big turnoff to SOA, if SOJ had committed to SOA that the Saturn could launch in NA in Fall of 1995 for $300 against the Playstation, it sure seems like it would have flavoured lots of conversations differently and resulted in alot more cohesion.
>>10883253>Anon we have confirmation from both Sony who wanted to team up with Sega to make a console. Sega said no.Yes we know there was a discussion between Sega and Sony about working together on their next console. In that discussion Sega fully revealed the Saturn specs to Sony, which in hindsight was probably a bad idea. The whole reason the deal fell through was because Sony's execs wouldn't give any straight answers to any of Sega's execs, as well as the fact that Sega feared that the partnership would be lopsided with Sony having most of the control:https://mdshock.com/2019/03/18/sega-and-sony-new-insight-into-the-partnership-that-never-came-to-be/>And from court documents of Sega themselves getting sued by breaking a partnership agreement with 3dfx. What does this have to do with anything I said? We have the actual interviews from Hitachi's engineers and the ones from Hideki Sato on why the SH2 was chosen from Hitachi. Are you sure you're not confusing the decision to go with the PowerVR over the 3DFX with the decision to use the SH-2?>>10883257Because Sony was also launching in 1994 and was going to release in the US the following year. Sega needed to be ready for that in both Japan and int he US in those time frames. Redesigning the Saturn wasn't an option.Secondly we now know that Sega of America wasn't really making that much money in reality since they were taking massive losses on returns and storage of unsold inventory.>>10883263I told you the video is based on an article which is snippets from the full interview. The full interview goes into more detail. The decision to go with 3D and the SH2 was made in 1992. That was very early in the Saturn's design. So while yes at the very first instance 3D might not have been on their mind, it was quickly added early in the design phase. The last minute change in response to Sony's final specs was the 2nd SH-2 to boost the 3D performance further.
>>10883272>Your post makes it seem like SOA either a: didnt want to ever launch the Saturn forever-everTheir initial desire was to launch it in 1996, which would be a dumb idea.
>>10882106Yeah, I'm sure that the American branch literally being told to release the Saturn RIGHT NOW by the JP branch despite them going all in on Saturnday later that year is totally their fault too. Oh wait a minute.And that's objective, before we even get into the fact that the JP side is the one that came up with the 32X.
>>10883272The plan wasn't to never have Saturn, but wait years until releasing it, with 32X being the main focus.And no, Sega of Japan did not force that on Sega of America. Sega of America didn't want to abandon the Genesis install base and instead wanted to build on the Genesis and enhance it even before the meeting in 1994. This has been confirmed by both Irimajiri and Nakayama in interviews. Irimajiri flat out says when he joined Sega in the summer of 1993 this debate was going on between the two branches with Sega of America wanting to instead boost the Genesis as a stopgap and then sell Saturn later when it was cheaper to produce. He was sent to Sega of America to resolve the situation where Miller and Kalinske told him passionately that they couldn't abandon the Genesis install base. Irimajiri went back to Japan with that info and they started to come up with a strategy to work for the US instead. In January they approached Sega of America with the idea of a Genesis with boosted colors. Sega of America's engineers countered and said they could get the performance of the Saturn at a fraction of the price by making an add-on that used the Genesis hardware as a base. From that they designed the 32X.Nakayama's interviews also confirm this where he says Sega of America was adamant against the Saturn's price and kept pushing for what became the 32X instead. Sega of Japan didn't force Sega of America into anything, it was a group effort.>>10883295If it weren't for the 32X failing that surprise launch wouldn't have happened. That surprise launch was done in response to 32X failing in order to sweep it under the rug.
>>10883303Yeah what a brilliant move. The hardware that was forced on them didn't sell so let's crowd the market even harder and piss off retailers. That'll do the trick.
>>10883325No side in this scenario was in the right, anon.
>>10883283>Because Sony was also launching in 1994 and was going to release in the US the following year. So what? >Sega needed to be ready for that in both Japan and int he US in those time frames.No they didn't. Rushing was a stupid business decision and in hindsight was also very wrong. Sega needed to stop focusing on Sony and focus on themselves. Saturn needed a better design and focus on the games. Not being first to market. Being first means nothing. >Redesigning the Saturn wasn't an option.Why not? It's always an option. Like OP showed us, they could have gone with a modified Sega model 1 for Saturn with some added texture capabilities. >Secondly we now know that Sega of America wasn't really making that much money in reality since they were taking massive losses on returns and storage of unsold inventory. Nope. Debunked. Sega, Nintendo, Sony, etc all had extra stock in storage. That's how American retail works. Nothing new here. Lastly, Sega of America also sells Sega arcade machines and they were selling a huge amount. Get your facts straight. Oh wait, your "leak" doesn't have that info does it?
>>10883303>The plan wasn't to never have Saturn, but wait years until releasing it, with 32X being the main focus. Nope. Tom Kalinske said he just wanted to wait with the Genesis and keep supporting it until 1996. He didn't want the Sega 32x either. He wasn't a fan of Saturn's hardware design, but he was trying to make the best of a bad situation.
>>10874303..on planet retard
>>10883352>So what?Ah yes, let's give fucking SONY a year headstart with no competition.I'm sure this wouldn't turn out horribly.>Like OP showed us, they could have gone with a modified Sega model 1 for Saturn with some added texture capabilities.This was before the hardware was set in stone, by end 93/early 94 it would've been unviable.>Not being first to market. Being first means nothing.MD and NES sold well precisely because of this.
>>10883325The hardware wasn't forced on them, the hardware was a group effort in the wrong direction.>>10883352>So What?If they don't have Saturn read they have no chance to compete with the PS1. N64 was not a success. It only did better than Saturn internationally because of how bad Sega fucked up outside of Japan. In Japan where Saturn was handled well it far outsold it in software and in hardware.> Saturn needed a better design and focus on the games.The Saturn hardware was fine. Is it perfect? No. But neither was the Genesis before it, neither was the N64, neither was the PS2, neither was the SNES, etc. The hardware was more than competitive for the time.The main issue was a lack of games, which that issue comes more from the fact they had to split resources with the 32X. If there was no 32X and Sega of America was focused on Saturn, they could have pushed to launch in 1995 at $299 with a solid launch line up.>they could have gone with a modified Sega model 1Do you have any idea how much Model 1 cost in 1992? The thing was stupid expensive and relies on at least 5 DSPs to do all the heavy lifting. That's not viable for a home console design. Secondly just one SH-2 curb stomps the NEC V60 CPU the Model 1 used in performance.
>>10883384Split what resources exactly? The 32x library is garbage. None of those games would have been good on Saturn either. The only good 32x games are ports that are also on the Saturn.
>>10883352>Nope. Debunked.Just because you say that doesn't make it true.> Nintendo, Sony, etc all had extra stock in storage. No they didn't. Nintendo, Konami, and Capcom did take losses like Sega in 1994, but that was due to overestimating demand of new 16-bit games. Sega had over 2x the losses because they also had the issue of returns. Nintendo did NOT have that issue. The proof is in the fact that there was never a massive dump of unsold SNES and Gameboy games on cheap retailers in 1998. There was however a dump of Genesis and Game Gear games on cheap retailers in 1998 because that's when Sega liquidated the unsold inventory and cut their losses with it. We know this is when this happened as they mention it in their FY98 review.> That's how American retail worksThat is NOT how American retail works at all. I've worked retail in the US and know how the ordering works. You almost NEVER get to return unsold stock. That's why you need to be smart about what you order because if you order too much you're stuck with it. That claim is what Kalinske told Irimajiri to cover his ass. The reality is Kalinske made that deal to get Sega into stores but never went back and renegotiated after sales picked up. So eventually it came back to bite them in the ass. >Lastly, Sega of America also sells Sega arcade machines and they were selling a huge amount. And that's a separate division from the home console division. That's accounted separately.>Oh wait, your "leak" doesn't have that info does it?Why are you quoting leak like it isn't real? The leaked documents are 100% real and you can go look through them yourself.>>10883357Yet Kalinske's story doesn't align with any of the Japanese side or even all of his own US coworkers. So either there's a massive conspiracy against Kalinske, or Kalinske isn't telling the whole truth. I'm betting on the latter.
>>10883391Most of those ports weren't launch titles AND were extremely rushed even compared to the 32X's versions.
>>10883391I know from the previous thread you're completely retarded and can't understand resource management, but try to imagine this situation so you can better understand things.Let's say you have about 10 development teams to make games for the next 2 years. You can either have all those teams making games for Saturn so you'd have at least 10 games ready in 1995. Or you can split them between Saturn, 32X, Genesis, and Game Gear. Now you get only 2-3 games on Saturn in 1995 instead of 10. This is what happened with Saturn and 32X. Only instead Sega of America put all their focus in to 32X so they had no games for Saturn in 1995. Therefore they had to rely on outsourcing which resulted in games being late and of poor quality, as well as having to rely on Japanese software that didn't appeal to the US market as well.>None of those games would have been good on Saturn either. The only good 32x games are ports that are also on the Saturn.This is flawed logic and you know it. If those games were being made for Saturn instead of 32X with an extra year of development they could have been Saturn launch games on time and far more polished.
>>10883384>Do you have any idea how much Model 1 cost in 1992? The thing was stupid expensive and relies on at least 5 DSPs to do all the heavy lifting. That's not viable for a home console design. Incorrect. That's exactly what they did with Sega Genesis and Sega Arcade System 16. Genesis was a downscaled version of Arcade System 16.
>>10883418>Genesis was a downscaled version of Arcade System 16.And this shows how fucking retarded you actually are. The only similarity the Genesis has with the System-16 is the 68000. The sound chip is different, the graphics chip is different, even the graphics data itself is stored in a completely incompatible format with even more harsh color restrictions.The Genesis is a continuation of the Master System and has far more in common with that than the System-16. The SG-1000 is Sega's first system and is effectively a Colecovision with a different memory map. The Mark III/Master System adds a new video mode to the TI VDP which allows for more colors, sprites, and scrolling, as well as adding more RAM. The Genesis takes that design and moves the Z80 to being a secondary CPU running the newly added YM2612 and existing PSG chip. The VDP is modified again adding a new video mode that allows for more colors, more sprites, and an additional scrolling background layer. Finally a 68000 is added to act as the new main CPU with more memory, DMA features, etc.It would be more accurate to call the Genesis a souped up Colecovision than it would be to say it's a downscaled version of the System-16 board.
>>10883428Not exactly.>"What became the base of the Mega Drive was the one that was already being used for arcades with the addition of the 68000 and Z-80 on the System 16." -Masami IshikawaFormer Manager Sega’s of Japan Research and Development.
>>10883402>That is NOT how American retail works at all. I've worked retail in the US and know how the ordering works. You almost NEVER get to return unsold stock. >almost Maybe not for you because you worked for tiny retail store with no leverage. I worked for a LARGE nationwide retailer in the USA for 7 years. We buy massive quantities of items. And yes we have returned unsold stock back to manufacturer. We are big enough to demand that right. So yes it happens.
>>10882930Because those are slow.
>>10883402>The reality is Kalinske made that deal to get Sega into stores but never went back and renegotiated after sales picked up. In fairness, he might not have wanted to mess up a good thing. It was that strategy which helped Sega claw marketshare from Nintendo's previously monopolistic grasp, something Sega had previously utterly failed with the MS. The strategy seemed to work just fine, until it suddenly very badly didn't, and blew up in their faces worse than for Nintendo, due to the imbalanced risk distribution. >>10883352>Not being first to market. Being first means nothing. Mega Drive/Genesis specifically bombed in Japan because PC-Engine came out first. PC-Engine bombed in US/Europe because MD/Gen came out first. This lesson wasn't lost on SoJ, so there was a solid incentive to get Saturn out as quickly as possible, before PS1. Especially given that the Japanese MD market was running on fumes by late-93.
>>10883402>Why are you quoting leak like it isn't real? The leaked documents are 100% real and you can go look through them yourself.no it's fake
>>10876712programmable pipelines were a mistake, that is the point at which 3d really started going wrong. Had the dreamcast won and fixed function true 3d gpus became the norm we would have superior 3d graphics today.
>>10884124no, retard
>>10877701I recall that Nintendo officials once visited Rare's offices and were surprised that Westerners did an 8 hour shift and went home instead of working 16 hour days and sleeping in the office.
>>10882098The SNES was also newer hardware by two years. It was therefore not unreasonable to support it through 1996 while the Mega Drive was finished by '95.
>>10882285>The Japanese do not understand how to market Sega products outside Japantbqh they didn't know how to market Sega products in Japan either
>>10884148>>10882098Late Genesis games were mostly shovelware while the SNES was getting major AAA releases all through 95-96.
>buying a giant pile of faulty VSP chips from Samsung and having to cancel several games intended to use themGood job, guys.
>>10883851>Especially given that the Japanese MD market was running on fumes by late-93>>10882932See here. Koei had stopped putting out Mega Drive releases by '94 because the Japanese MD market was kaput. They didn't for example put Civilization on the MD.
>>108841531996 was a very light year for super, 95 was really its last hurrah while the rest of the games industry was moving onto 32-bit consoles. 1995 for Genesis was very similar to 1996 for super, just some scraps and anything past that was barely a blip.
>>10884158That shit was genuinely retarded. The speed with which they memoryholed/shitcanned the whole affair was hilarious. Couldn't let it slip that groriosu nippon got loltrolled by koreans.
>>10884235>>10884158Apparently the fault was that Samsung were retarded and drove the chips at too high a clock speed for the process used or the die density was too high for the process used or something. In any case they all overheated and Sega were advising retailers to not run Virtua Racing in kiosks for extended periods. Some Hitachi engineers decapped a VSP chip and were like "what kind of chimpanzees designed this thing?" They promised 23Mhz clock speed but it was too much for the process used.
>>10884253Didn't Sega bullshit Hitachi that those were engineering samples (to keep up appearances), when in fact they were production chips?
>>10884212>>10884170The interesting thing about the FC/NES is that over its decade long run you could see the games keep getting more sophisticated so you start with Donkey Kong and end with Kirby's Adventure while the SNES peaked early on; within two years of launch we'd basically seen everything it could do.
>>10884272I think the problem was enhancement chips weren't just memory controllers and nintendo had the weird fast/slow tiered structure. Certainly more interesting games were happening on Genesis, even early on.
There was a Sega engineer who described the fault with the VSP chips and he said something about the die density or the insulation layer being very thin and Hitachi after decapping one said it was a bad design. I couldn't figure out exactly what he meant but I gathered it was related to the chip being overworked for the process used (idk what it was though maybe 1.5 um?)
>>10884253>In any case they all overheated and Sega were advising retailers to not run Virtua Racing in kiosks for extended periods.Kek, just the first of many more fuckups to follow
>>10884276The FastROM/SlowROM thing was because higher speed mask ROMs were expensive when the SNES launched so Nintendo designed it to be able to use cheaper lower speed ones at half the CPU clock speed. After the first year and a half of the SNES however everyone just used FastROM except on some board games and whatnot where speed wasn't that important (and Nintendo used SlowROM on first party carts like Yoshi's Island as they did huge runs and needed to save a few cents)
>>10883416Your paranoia aside, you are completely wrong about this. They would not have been good. No amount of time would have made any of Sega of America's shovelware good. Video game development is an art, and Sega of America did not have talent or access to talented studios. When people were getting hyped for Playstation, they were not being hyped for shovelware from literally who studios. Playstation had real games from major developers.Likewise, Nintendo was able to ride out 95-96 because they had actual games coming out from serious developers.32x and Saturn had shovelware from amateurs.
>>10884314I'm pretty sure people would've loved a decent port of doom as a saturn launch title.
Alright. The day is october, 3rd, 1996. Sega's president decides to use a graphite suit for the day, instead of a light grey one. What changes? Could the Saturn be saved?
>>10875198Keep seething and I'll keep enjoying all the arcade kino you'll never get to touch. Don't worry I don't want your ported slop from the Shovelwarestation
>>10884314>Video game development is an art, and Sega of America did not have talent or access to talented studiosI like Garfield: Caught in the Act but the PC version is better than the Mega Drive one.
>>10874063>Sato: To be honest, in the beginning, I wasn’t thinking of 3D capabilities for the Saturn at all.>However, the PlayStation completely embraced polygons. >When we found out about that, we realized we were in trouble. >Thankfully, the (Saturn) SH-2s could be linked in a cascade connection.This explains everything. Why Saturn was so underpowered when it came to 3D and why it had such a weird complicated design. >a regret I have is not going with one of our options to use the arcade system Model 1 as the base for the Saturn.This is exactly what you should have done. You had a 3D board ready to do. Just downsize it.
The PS1 was built off existing technology as Sony had made an experimental 3D workstation back in the late 80s.
nothing wrong with the Saturn's 3D hardware, it was just meant for 3D more in the 3DO sense than the PS1 sense. they just didn't expect there to be a console that could push polys really fast and panicked when they realized what was happening.
>>10884936>nothing wrong with the saturn's 3D hardware, they were just unbelievably behind the times and tried to create an awful frankenstein product that no one would want to buy in the first place, and then no one made any good games for it either because it was too complicatedThe fact that a company completely new to making gaming consoles managed to smoke them so hard is undeniable proof that they had absolutely no fucking idea what they were doing.
>>10885003Even worse is Sega already working 3D hardware in their arcade machines but refused to put them in their consoles because Sega is so dysfunctionally run and the different departments don't speak to eachother. Every Sega department acts like their own little island.
>>10885054Since the home console division was widely seen as a loser/money sink I wouldn't blame the arcade guys for acting snooty and not wanting to associate with them.
>>10883384>In Japan where Saturn was handled well it far outsold it in software and in hardware.Too bad the library was 80% shovelware except for some arcade ports that were pretty good at the time but pointless now when you can just use MAME.
>>10885064>Since the home console division was widely seen as a loser/money sink I wouldn't blame the arcade guys for acting snooty and not wanting to associate with them.Imagine being Japanese and working in the failing console department. You made 3 consoles and they all FAILED in Japan miserably. It gets terrible reviews from Japanese gaming press and is rejected by Japanese gamers. Your pride is at all time low. Then the Americans take your last failed console, change the marketing, and its a huge hit in overseas. Everyone praises the American division for earning so much money. Now yoy Japanese boss is yelling at you behind closed doors for not being like the American branch and asking why you can sell Mega Drives like Americans can. He calls you failure and tells you to learn from the Americans. Now you've grown to hate Sega of America. You suddenly stop responding to their messages. You stop including them in meetings. You throw all their suggestions in the trash. You want Sega of America to fail.
>>10885069>t. formulated my opinion on the Saturn from the opinions of others
>>10875198The only Saturn spammers are the ones who post 5+ anti-Saturn bait threads every day.
>be SOJ>yes, yes. we made second place with the Saturn in Japan they finally noticed us. up yours, everybody!
>>10885701>third placeFtfy N64 sold more iirc
>>10885054Sega's 3D arcade hardware and a potential 32bit home console is even more drastic a difference than that between System 16 and the Genesis (which is a huge difference). Not realistic.
>>10885796they were retards. they could pull off a diet home system version of System 16 but their 3D cabs were too much to be able to downscale.
>>10885805That's exactly what Sega did with Dreamcast and Naomi arcade boards. Sega Saturn was the only outlier.
Sega's business model was bringing the arcades home but Japanese didn't really care about that; they want casual, low effort home system games.
>>10885862Based nips. Leave arcade to the arcade.
>>10885862Sega wasn't very good at making RPG games. It's their big weakness.
>>10885856Naomi was always parallel to Dreamcast except for an upgrade it got later on. It’s the equivalent to ST-V with Saturn
>>10885054Couldn't they have just put Model 1 hardware in the Saturn and called it a day?
>>10886681>Couldn't they have just put Model 1 hardware in the Saturn and called it a day?Probably. They could have come up console based on Model 1 with some modifications. He mentions that as an option during the interview. It would have saved a ton of money and time. But Sega internal politics probably wouldn't let him. Why? Because Sega of Japan CEO had a questionable relationship with Hitachi. He had family and friends who worked for Hitachi. It's no coincidence that Sega chose Hitachi to make brand new chips for the Sega Saturn - even though better options were available.
>Veteran programmer Steve Palmer, author of the classic sports videogame NBA Jam and currently working with Pitbull Syndicate, who developed for both systems during their entire respective lifetimes, sums up the Saturn development problem quite well.>[Sega] gave us exactly what we wanted; [however,] the industry changed at exactly the same time, [so] we no longer had a choice in the matter. Things suddenly had to be finished yesterday. Sega could not have forseen this change .... [Most of the third-party crowd] couldn't get it to do what they wanted it to do quickly enough, so they didn't bother. It's amazing, because it didn't require much effort to get the machine to perform on a [PlayStation] level. >Programmers being programmers, though, they probably were not happy unless they felt they were pushing the machine, and it seemed like too much effort to do that.>To learn to program the Saturn was to learn the machine. To learn to program the [PlayStation] was to learn C. Learning C is much easier than learning the hardware of a new machine, and with the Saturn, there was a lot of hardware to learn .... >There was not enough time for people to learn the hardware. The same would have been true of the [PlayStation], except you didn't need to learn how to talk to the [hardware]. The libraries took care of that for you. Sega's approach was to release hardware documentation for every aspect of the Saturn. That was understandable - it was the way everyone had done it before, and it's what programmers were used to, but the industry had changed. Video games were no longer a "niche" market, and the "big boys" had moved in. Time is money. Nobody was given the time to learn new hardware anymore.
>Before leaving Boston we’d hired our first employee (who didn’t start full time until January 1995), a brilliant programmer and M.I.T. buddy of mine named Dave Baggett. We were also excited to work closely with Universal VP Mark Cerny, who had made the original Marble Madness and Sonic 2. In California, in 1994, this foursome of me, Jason, Dave, and Mark were the main creative contributors to the game that would become Crash Bandicoot.>We all agreed that the “Sonic’s Ass,” game was an awesome idea. As far as we knew, no one had even begun work on bringing the best-selling-but-notoriously-difficult CAG to 3D. Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, was said to be working on Yoshi’s Island, his massive ode to 2D action.>But an important initial question was “which system?”>The 3D0 was DOA, but we also got our hands on specs for the upcoming Sega Saturn, the Sega 32X, and the mysterious Sony Playstation. The decision really didn’t take very long. 3D0, poor 3D power, and no sales. 32X, unholy Frankenstein’s monster – and no sales. Saturn, also a crazy hybrid design, and really clunky dev units. Then there was the Sony. Their track record in video games was null, but it was a sexy company and a sexy machine – by far the best of the lot. I won’t even bring up the Jaguar.
>>10887162>To learn to program the Saturn was to learn the machine. To learn to program the [PlayStation] was to learn C. Learning C is much easier than learning the hardware of a new machine, and with the Saturn, there was a lot of hardware to learn ....>There was not enough time for people to learn the hardware. The same would have been true of the [PlayStation], except you didn't need to learn how to talk to the [hardware]. The libraries took care of that for you. Sega's approach was to release hardware documentation for every aspect of the Saturn. That was understandable - it was the way everyone had done it before, and it's what programmers were used to, but the industry had changed. Video games were no longer a "niche" market, and the "big boys" had moved in. Time is money. Nobody was given the time to learn new hardware anymore.As I understand it, Sony purposely made the PS1 a very closed box system programmed in C so as to make it easy to develop for and they didn't really provide any documentation of the hardware registers and whatnot. Bare metal coding was even discouraged with the warning that games coded in assembly language wouldn't pass Q/C (Naughty Dog just ignored them and did it anyway). Programmers didn't especially like this because they enjoyed bit banging registers as a flex and the PS1 was boring and provided no challenge. For that reason Sony responded to these complaints and made the PS2 harder and more dependent on low level coding.
>>10885003Consoles yes but that is because the established players where huffing their own farts. Sony was a truly massive operation with extensive history manufacturing hardware. To think a company of sony's size and experience wouldn't know how to go about it is ignorant at best and obviously laughable in hindsight.
>>10887169Based Andy making a game that will destroy your playstation's cd drive.
>>10885003>The fact that a company completely new to making gaming consoles managed to smoke them so hard is undeniable proof that they had absolutely no fucking idea what they were doing. According to rumors, Sony recycled an old shelved design for a 3D GPU. Story goes that, in the late-80s, Sony had subcontracted Toshiba to design a 3D accelerator for a CAD workstation. They eventually decided not to go ahead with it, owing to bad economics (because of the late-80s memory chip cartel making RAM artificially expensive). The processor was still competitive enough in the early-'90s, so they reused it for gaming graphics (admittedly it was an old design, so it didn't feature Z-culling, which hadn't previously been an issue for still 3D images).
>>10883024>beats the MIPS CPUs the PS1 and N64 used in multiplication and divisionbut not as fast as the PS1 GTE.>>10883034>This has been debunked numerous times.one of their people has been quoted saying something like "how will you counter the Jaguar then" which led to the 32x.
This thread is hilarious. You have direct quotes from Sega of Japan Research and Development saying the Saturn wasn't designed for 2D, and they were taken by surprise by Playstation. But Sega fanboys STILL won't accept it, and come up with mentally deranged reasons to still blame Sega of America.
>>10888237>You have direct quotes from Sega of Japan Research and Development saying the Saturn wasn't designed for 2D, and they were taken by surprise by Playstation. Those quotes tend to show that Sega was doomed to playing catch-up, and eventually failing. In fairness, I don't see a timeline where Sega manages to maintain a foothold in the console market. I guess we could counterfactually theorize what would've happened if they did go ahead with shrinking down an arcade board. Or maybe a timeline where SoJ aren't retarded cunts: they don't develop the Sega CD at all (accepting that they're not going to make it work properly within the constraints imposed by the base Mega Drive), and instead accept SoA's offer to buy out Hawkins and develop the 3DO into a standalone Sega console (SoA and Hawkins had informally discussed a partnership, but the anti argument was that Sega had just put out a CD unit of their own).
>>10888270Not that anon...but you're mostly right. But I think history has shown that there's room in the market for about 3 different home gaming consoles. Xbox/Nintendo/PlaystationIf Sega was properly run, they could have perhaps fought for 3rd or 2nd place with Nintendo. And we would instead have Sega/Nintendo/Playstation. With no Xbox. It's just that Sega was so poorly managed that they repeatedly shot themselves in the foot. No one in the Sega Japanese branch was forward thinking at all. Besides the smaller arcade division, everyone else in the company was content with just 2D and didn't even want to try to make 3D games. The hardware is a disaster. They also seemed to dislike the American branch and didn't want to support Sonic games.If I were running the company and saw how popular Sonic was outside of Japan, then I would immediately throw full support behind Sonic and turn that Blue Hedgehog into the company mascot. I would also develop and support proper game franchises that would last beyond 1 console generation. I wouldn't care how the Japanese feel about it. And I certainly would not take resources away from Sonic to make a game about some floating clown that no one cares about.Sega screwed up so unbelievably badly in a single generation that it's crazy to see. Like multiple tranwrecks slamming into eachother.
It was their own fault for having no faith in the home system division and treating it as inferior to the arcade division and then complaining that they didn't sell any consoles.
>>10888293>Sega screwed up so unbelievably badly in a single generation that it's crazy to see. Like multiple tranwrecks slamming into eachother. It was accumulated damage over a couple generations. There were actually a lot of missteps which added up: Game Gear, Sega CD (it wasn't a success, given the R&D money poured into it), Pico, the VR headset, Activator, the SVP fuckup, 32X, all those amusement park financial black holes... >They also seemed to dislike the American branch and didn't want to support Sonic games. There was an interview with some journalist guy (who wrote several games history books) about how SoJ straight-up didn't understand the Western market at all. They viewed Western-produced games as shlock, and couldn't understand why they sold, whereas Japanese shlock failed. >Yes, many of these products came out of Japan and failed in Japan; but Sega of America had what Nakayama-san perceived as a more willing market. He wanted to see Kalinske and Toyoda walk on water, and their inability to market utter tripe disappointed him. >One last thing. You know, and I know, that Madden and NBA Live and many of those other made-in-America games were great. Nakayama didn’t. Japanese gamers did not like or respect many of the American-made games that became big hits here. I do not think Nakayama understood the cultural differences. I think he thought that Kalinske and company were selling schlock and he could not understand why they succeeded at selling American-made schlock but failed when it came to Japanese-made schlock sent over by Sega of Japan.
>>10888237I trust Sega lord x more than some SoJ schmuck
>>10888339>There was an interview with some journalist guy (who wrote several games history books) about how SoJ straight-up didn't understand the Western market at all. They viewed Western-produced games as shlock, and couldn't understand why they sold, whereas Japanese shlock failed. Semi-related:There was an interview done with Toei during the 1990s. They are a Japanese company that made Super Sentai (also know as "Power Rangers" in the West). The Japanese Executive didn't understand why Power Rangers was so popular worldwide, but Super Sentai was not popular. That every attempt to market Super Sentai failed, but Power Rangers succeeded. He didn't understand why Americans had to adapt, recast, rewrite the story, and change his Super Sentai show. Americans only used footage of the battle scenes but changed everything else. He couldn't grasp why Americans and Europeans just air Super Sentai on TV without any changes. He did say that Toei received a cut of every Power Ranger merchandise sold, so he was happy his company Toei was making big money from the West. But He said his dream was for Super Sentai to be accepted worldwide and that Power Rangers is not what he had in mind. That he had mixed feelings about it and didn't like Power Rangers.I would imagine this sentiment and Japanese thinking is probably the same for Sega of Japan. A complete lack of understanding of the Western Market and disliking when Westerners make any changes to their Japanese product.
>>10888409robotech
>>10888409Great to read. Thanks! I mean it. Much better than another batch of "what-ifs".
>>10888409>That every attempt to market Super Sentai failed, but Power Rangers succeeded.>He didn't understand why Americans had to adapt, recast, rewrite the story, and change his Super Sentai showIt failed in all of Asia too besides South Korea and SK only picked it up years after the success of Power Rangers. And they used the Power Rangers name and aired the American version at the same time. Lol.
>>10888409Were the changes in power rangers that good? What were they?
>>10888607Having watched both the original Sentai show and original Power Rangers, I would say the Power Rangers did a much better job.Super Sentai is charming in own way, but it's *extremely* culturally specific. Lots of highly specific Japanese culture, writing, language, and Japanese acting styles exist in the show. It also feels cheaply made at times - even for a budget TV show. Power Rangers only kept the battle scenes with the giant robots and the transformation suit battles wheb you can't see the actors face. The Americans changed everything else. I would also argue it had better sound effects and storylines. The writers also created the" Power Rangers Universe" and linked all the Power Ranger's shows together. There was an ongoing storyline between the shows that kept fans hooked. The Japanese didn't do this. The Japanese made each of their Sentai showa Standalone. The West also did a much better job pushing Power Rangers and getting the Power Rangers video games made, marketing them, and releasing on gaming systems. I don't think Super Sentai did anything like that.Overall, I don't know if it's stubbornness, but I can't really believe that a smart Japanese Executive is stupid enough to believe they can just push a highly Japanese specific show into Western countries without any changes. Their whole attitude reeks of "Just accept our show and stop Complaining you stupid foreigner. Give us money!" vibes.I think the same thing infected Sega of Japan. Everyone who worked at Sega of Japan didn't really consider (or WANT to consider) that the West had different wants and needs. Before Tom Kalinske was hired, Sega of America was just a tiny sales office and a storage warehouse. The Japanese were taken by surprise when Sega of America made billions of dollars and outsold Japan and the home office. Many employees at Sega of Japan were very confused by America and Europe. Then tried to force their Japanese hardware style on us with the Sega Saturn.
>>10888607They basically remake the entire show except for a few scenes. The changes sometimes work (Zyuranger - Original Power Rangers), sometimes don't (I prefer Dekaranger and Go-onger to SPD and RPM), sometimes REALLY don't (Shinkenger and Samurai; to be fair Power Rangers got fucked over with a Japanese concept)>>10888667Americans have a love-hate relationship with foreign media. The only thing they love more than foreign media is making them not-foreign. Power Rangers paved the way for current year lolcowlizers, indirectly but undeniably.
>>10888842>Americans have a love-hate relationship with foreign media.The difference is that they are trying to market Power Rangers to 5 year old kids in America. Having subtitles doesn't work while they are still trying to learn to read and write.
>>10888847I mean, just dubbing the actors could've been an option.Although all the tokusatsu that opted for that didn't reach the heights of Power Rangers.
>>10888863>I mean, just dubbing the actors could've been an option.canceled in 3 months.
>>10888863Don't kid yourself. 5 year old children would have laughed the dubbing, and the show would have never been successful. Probably cancelled after a few months tops.
>>10888667>Then tried to force their Japanese hardware style on us with the Sega Saturn. Thing is, Saturn wasn't "Japanese hardware style". SNES was "Japanese hardware style". PS2 was "Japanese hardware style" (peak, even). PS3 was (partly) "Japanese hardware style" (would've been even more so if they had gone with Krazy Ken's "no GPU" idea). Saturn was just a panicked bodge job trying to reach some measure of performance parity with their competition (and doing so in the shortest timeframe possible). In a different world, where SoJ hadn't been retarded from the get-go, we'd have instead had the Sega Titan (ex-3DO IMp) in mid-'93, and the Sega Jupiter (ex-3DO/Matsushita M2) in mid-late-'97.
>>10889041But Mighty Morphin was dubbed in several languages and was a massive hit. What prevents the US from competently dubbing foreign live action like Latin America, Italy or France do.Lots of tokusatsu were a success in Brazil and France, too.
>>10889381Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was rewritten to be more accessible and appealing to Western audiences. Of course it would be a success in Europe. It was a worldwide hit in dozens of countries. It earned tens of billions of dollars in merchandise sales. They even re-dubbed Power Rangers in Japanese and aired it in Japan. It even gained a cult following in Japan where fans actually liked the show.
>>10889283IIRC Playstation and Nintendo 64 use some American components. They cooperated with Western companies.Sega of Japan refused to do that despite having multiple offers (and even working with American companies in the past). For whatever reason, Sega of Japan stuck with mostly Japanese only components and designs for the Sega Saturn.
>>10889404>and even working with American companies in the past Genesis used a Texas Instruments processor for its sound (alongside the Yamaha music chip), and its CPU was the Motorola 68k (although I think it was built by Hitachi). And, of course, Lockheed Martin designed the 3D accelerator for their arcade units. Them suddenly going "American designs are _le bad_ for our home consoles" is quite odd. I suspect the main reason was economics (licenses for US IP became a lot more expensive in the '90s, with the fall of the Japanese economy). Though this could've been side-stepped by outright buying a complete design, for them to tweak further (plus the 3DO IMp's Clio and Madam processors were Panasonic-sourced, so a Japanese company was already involved). Another issue might've been preferred sourcing, which appears to have been a thing in Japan: just like Nintendo worked almost exclusively with Sharp and Ricoh, SoJ seems to have stuck to NEC (V-series CPU for their arcades) and Hitachi (home consoles).
>>10889381>What prevents the US from competently dubbing foreign live action like Latin America, Italy or France do.Those countries import a lot of English media and are used to dubs/subs, we're talking about the 90s in the US here when TV was still good. There were like 6+ channels that had dedicated time slots for kids tv shows full of good cartoons and live action stuff. A dub of a shitty jap show would have bombed so hard it's not funny.
>>10889449>Them suddenly going "American designs are _le bad_ for our home consoles" is quite odd.It's not odd if your counteroffer is a fucking 68K variant, a CPU family that was already falling behind in the early 90s and Motorola made clear they were not developing that anymore and focusing on PowerPC.
>>1088951268040 was fairly competitive with 80486 early versions, only falling behind after Intel came up with the clock multiplier.
>>10889449>and its CPU was the Motorola 68k (although I think it was built by Hitachi)Model 1s use either real Motorola 68ks or Signetics ones. Model 2/3 have a Hitachi chip.
>>10888667and that's why you ought to ignore mentally ill weebs who think the Saturn folded for lack of localizing B-tier RPGs and porn games
>>10889872It's not something people really think about now but SEGA having nothing to show for their sizable jock audience with the Saturn would have cost them a ton. IIRC the only football game Saturn got in its first year was a dodgy FMV one lol
>>10874072what's the relevance of your retarded faggy gif?
>>10890354Oddly enough, there were several sports titles released for the Saturn, but they were Japan-exclusive. Most of them were baseball, but there was also volleyball, motor boat racing, soccer etc.
>>10889381Racism.Both japan and america audiences aren't used to follow stories with a foreign cast.
>>1089042690s america in this case, stuff has changed since then.
To be honest I don't think the ps1 is significantly better than the Saturn in terms of 3D.Easier for developers? Maybe, but the end result for the consumer end is roughly the same, in fact Saturn doesn't have issues of texture wobbling as bad as ps1.
>>10890364It's the model 1 mascot, dumdum.
>>10890429>90s america in this case, stuff has changed since then.Not really. Japanese acting is extremely "over the top" and comical at times. They don't know how to act subtle. A tender crying moment in a Japanese show will have the woman wailing and yelling. Total Melo dramatic. They act like they are in an anime. And Don't even get me started on Japanese TV where it's 75% filled with "variety" shows. Celebs, idols, and guests have to give over-exaggerated reactions to various situations. Taste some locally made food? "OMG SUGOII OYASHIIIIII!!" and add 10 different sound effects and meme stickers on screen. Repeat 25x times until show is over. Hollywood has been downhill since the late 2000s. But they've been carried hard by super hero Marvel films. But even those are are failing now for various ideological (w0ke) reasons. The writing has been awful the past few years. It's so bad that people would rather stream foreign shows.But back to the Sega topic. I highly suspect something weird or shady was going on between Sega and Hitachi. Sega chose Hitachi over Motorola, NEC, 3dfx, SGI, etc. Hitachi had no track record of making custom CPU chips so it was a very odd choice that didn't really work for them. Many people have complained that the Hitachi SH series was underpowered. Even Nintendo went with the SGI chips for the Nintendo 64. I think it worked out great for them. Sega really messed up with thr Saturn.
>>10890606I was talking about foreign cast as a whole not just america to japan and vice versa.
>>10890606Nobody ever says Desperate Housewives and Dr Phil are all Americans are capable of acting.
>>10891097>and Dr Phil...sounds extremely MAGA lately now that he's no longer under Oprah's boot
>>10890606>Hitachi had no track record of making custom CPU chips so it was a very odd choice that didn't really work for them. Many people have complained that the Hitachi SH series was underpowered.They used Canon to manufacture the Master System/Mega Drive VDP and Canon was a fucking printer manufacturer.
>>10890426>Both japan and america audiences aren't used to follow stories with a foreign cast.Japan loved Full House. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz3c4Wyr-uwTranslating some of these comments and it seems they were watching a lot of American tv.
>>10890606>Not really. Japanese acting is extremely "over the top" and comical at times. They don't know how to act subtle.Isn't that method acting? (like on stage)Happened in early TV as well, e.g. reminds me when I watched Star Trek TOS a few years ago with Kirk acting over the top like that.
>>10892048Hyper exaggerated movements or hyper displayed of emotions are called "overacting" and is generally frowned upon in modern film and TV unless you are doing it for comedic effect.There is one exception. That is theater stage actors. Those actors must have large movements and exaggerated emotionss so the audience can see and hear the actor in such a huge theater hall with a few hundred people watching. William Shatner was trained as a theater actor first. Then transitioned into acting in TV and film. His habits of overacting come from his theater training. It's also part of his style.When he did the Trek movies, he toned down his overacting. In Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan, the Directors commentary discusses how they worked with Shatner to get rid of the overacting and make him act natural. It's a great film. I recommend it.Japanese acting is different. Many of their actors and actresses are chosen for their popularity and not their skill. Often they take idols (popular singer/dancer celebs) and stick them in films with the hope of selling tickets or boost ratings. These people often have no acting training. In addition, many actors seem to imitate anime characters. This makes it extra jarring and unrealistic. Imagine someone acting like Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck's attitude. Way too unrealistic. Japanese have great cinema and films. But their dramas (low budget TV or FILM dramatic stories)....arent the best. >>10890441>To be honest I don't think the ps1 is significantly better than the Saturn in terms of 3D. >Easier for developers? Maybe, but the end result for the consumer end is roughly the same, in fact Saturn doesn't have issues of texture wobbling as bad as ps1.I disagree. Ridge Racer on PS1 completely destroys Daytona USA on Sega Saturn. Daytona has framerate issues and tons of draw distance problems. Too much pop-in.
>>10892093>Daytona has framerate issues and tons of draw distance problems. Too much pop-in. The original version of Daytona USA suffers from being a direct downport, instead of a rework. It was simply impossible to take a Model 2 game and plop it on the Saturn. Namco's System 22 was a notably weaker arcade board than Sega's, yet the devteam still had to cut resolution and framerate in half for the PS1 version of RR. The CCE edition was a far better version, since they dropped the original engine and rebuilt the game into something that could actually run in an acceptable fashion on the Saturn.
>>10892108>The CCE edition was a far better version,Nope. Can't accept CCE. No idea why but they completely messed up the controls compared to the original Daytona USA release. It plays like a different game.
>>10892093>I disagree. Ridge Racer on PS1 completely destroys Daytona USA on Sega Saturn. Daytona has framerate issues and tons of draw distance problems. Too much pop-inYou're intentionally picking a port that is known to have been rushed for the Saturn. Sega Rally would be a more honest pick.But let's compare Virtua Fighter 2's 60fps to Tekken's 30
>>10892165I picked the two biggest name brand ports. There's nothing dishonest about it.
>>10884158source?
>>10892137>Nope. Can't accept CCEBut I can.Just kidding. I don't like it either.
>>10892165It's not our fault Sega claims they rushed the port. The only thing that matters is the final product. Daytona USA was supposed to be system seller and launch game. Clearly Sega didn't care. That's why Namco is better.
>>10893418NTA, but even getting a half-playable Model 2 port was a feat in and of its own. Sega were simply overambitious. They should've gone for Model 1 games and improve those (since it was closer to Saturn's specs), instead of trying to downport Model 2 games.
>>10895121Yeah but the average customer doesn't care about any of that. They only care about the final product. They see a laggy game with framerate issues and serious pop in draw distance problems.Then they look at a Playstation kiosk with smooth consistent 30 fps, and solid driving games like Ridge Racer or Gran Turismo and immediately go to buy a Playstation.
>>10895121From my understanding Sega could have made Daytona work but they rushed out the game before it was finished to compete with Playstation. I have no idea why. A finished game is 1000x better than an unpolished turd
>>10888489uuhhh no, that was mostly on harmony gold's standard scheme of chop chop'ing anime to bits to market it to western audiences. Most people didn't have access to the original material or didn't even know it existed, when they did the original works were massively preferred. >>10888520what-ifs is what can be discussed mostly because execs are going to look at things in hindsight, and try to make themselves look good, outside parties are going to try to chronic a wholer picture without all the complete bits and wits of what really happened, and fans are mostly going to talk about what they'd loved to happen.
>>10893418Sega Rally is better than 1track Racer
