@@Clay3613 most of the Saturn 3rd party used the codes from the ps1 versions. Shameful to see the Saturn push out horrible ports. I blame Sega for the surprise launch and it's lousy dev kits and tools.
Saturn definitely faced an unfair uphill battle in the states. Most of the best games stayed in Japan, and most of the US releases were crap like what you covered.
I don't know, look at the list of US and European releases here; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_Saturn_games Plenty of great titles, I'd say it's at least 50% good, which is similar to most every console in existence.
To be fair, these weren't Sega developed/published games, they just happened to be released on a Sega platform. Platform owners generally don't oversee the development of every game released on their platform.
And I'm pretty sure I remember Doom on PS1 being pretty good. Why in the world would the Saturn not be able to look and play just as good? Doom wasn't a true 3D game so it seems like the Saturn should have done Doom proper justice.
There was a cancelled build of the game that apparently ran really smoothly, but caused texture warping. At the insistence of John Carmack they switched to software renderer that used only one cpu and doesn't even look that great in the end.
Romero was not available at the time to approve the game to be released, it was a smooth Doom experience, carmack was the next for the task to approve the game, he told the programmer to use the CPU and not the graphics chips to render the game, Romero said that what carmack did was unfair for saturn owners, he of course would approve the first build sent of the game. So now you know why Saturn Doom sucks, blame carmack for it
@@Juanknes - Did you watch the video? The person who ported the game wanted to make more extensive use of the Saturn 3D hardware, but John Carmack wouldn't allow it as it would have caused some texture quality issues, so they were basically forced to trade a whole heap of performance for better texture integrity etc.
As any Sega Saturn fan knows, our favorite console often gets an unfair rap for its ugly games. That said, games like these provide a lot of ammunition for detractors--Both in its 90's heyday and the casual observer today. There's no ugly games quite like early 5th generation ugly games, and the Saturn sports plenty of them given its byzantine design and lack of comprehensive development tools early on.
The 5th gen was for me the worst. I never played a saturn, as it pretty much was overlook here in ireland. Most places sold the playstation. I always wanted a saturn though. Trying to play the playstation now is a real struggle.
@@Klynch111 I'd say the Saturn wasn't particularly popular in most places--Japan and some random spots (Portugal?) being the exception. That said, 5th generation 2D games have by and large aged incredibly well, and the Saturn benefits by being the premier system for them.
I've played Creature Shock on my 3DO and it looked and played great at the time. Especially after years spent on Megadrive. You can actually defend yourself from enemys' attacks. You just need to press a button that turn screen blue. It depletes the gun power rather quickly (it constantly regenerates back at a slower pace) so you need to preserve it and not to shoot aimelesly and mindlesly. It actually adds some depth to the shooting mechanic. But the game aged rather bad and looked dated when Saturn and PlayStation came up.
@@ThatPunkYT If I had to pick any of these stinkers, it probably would be Battle Monsters, not that I would but just if this list of games were the only options.
Ok when I got to dragonheart and I see what reminds me of "sword of sodan" , a game I had the pleasure of buying full price back in the day :-/ . I thank the gods I never played it. Before, and after that, I see some games I knew of, or would have expected, remembering the era. Then I get hit over the head with time commando.... I'm an old fuck and generally recognize or have played most games up to around 2k, but damn that is such a fuckin piece of shit looking game. I'm glad I never played it and I cant imagine what would motivate someone to create it. To end this shit show, I'm no fan of fmv but I will admit (pause) I had a hell of a good time with with Sewer Shark. The gameplay was simplistic, but add the cut scenes and you got a simple twitch shooter with some funny story. Cheers for another 100% accurate video brother. You know how to call em.
Damn if just lobotomy software had the chance to handle the port of Doom, im sure we would have a great version of Doom I dare to say even better than the PS1 version, just take a look at Duke Nukem with the dymanic lighting and great framerate!
The game was running fine, the bad luck was not because of lazy programmers, it was because Romero was not available at the time to approve the game, and carmack did the test and practically ask the programmer to cripple the port, it was ask to Romero on Instagram or Tweeter, don't remember, he explained that and said he would of course approve the build sent with the smooth frame rate
I think some of these games get a bad rap for digitized graphics and FMV. They were made for standard definition consumer televisions in the 90's, so of course the low resolution content doesn't look good on modern screens.
Being a bad fighting game on the Saturn is like being a bad platformer on the N64 or being a bad RPG on PlayStation... You're so outclassed, you may as well have not shown up. That said, FIST has some really cool character art... and that's the extent of my interest in the game xD
I kinda enjoy playing Chaos Control :) Yes, the ennemies don't disappear because they are part of the FMV, not just like some 2D sprites added over it. So the developers used this trick of blurring them with smoke when they are defeated because they couldn't make them disappear. I think this game has its own atmosphere and I don't consider it to be an awful game.
Black Fire was here in the U.S. too. That terrible helicopter game. A friend gave it to me absolutely free and I tried to enjoy it numerous times. Eventually pawned it.. thanks for the memory lol
I played through Doom on Saturn quiete a lot. As a kid I did not struggled at all to do so. One level for sure was way too slow, but besides that, I loved it. And still do. YES its weak compared to the original, but it is FAR away from being unplayable or not enjoyable. Played through it a few years ago with a friend and did not changed up my mind.
It's technically playable, but very few people would look at that low framerate and call it enjoyable. Unless it was absolutely your only option for playing the game, there are better options. Even a min spec PC using the "low detail" mode would have offered a better experience from a playability perspective. Whatever floats your boat, but it's still an objectively bad port (through no fault of the developer, Carmack wouldn't let him use the system fully) of a great game.
@@yellowblanka6058 Yeah true story, but it did not hurt the game hard it enough to make it bad. Doom is good enough to take this. Back than of course it was my only option to play it.
I love your channel man. As a fellow Sega person growing up, (I got a Genesis instead of an SNES during the Holiday season of 91' mostly due to my family's lack of funds and have loved it ever since), but I have a question for you. Did you ever have a friend you could swap systems with? My poor friends and I used to get by swapping systems when certain games came out. While I loved my Genesis, games like Super Metroid, Super Castlevania IV, Super Metroid, and the Final Fantasy series could pry it from me from time to time. Did you ever participate in the lost tradition of console swapping when a game you heard about was just too good to ignore or cover up with console bias? If so, it might make an interesting episode. Either way, I love your channel X. Happy gaming.
I love how impassioned you get talking about the saturn. I appreciate your perspective. Always wish I could take a peak into an alternate reality where saturn was successful as well as turbografx and ngpc Oh well
Weeooo, what a stinky episode ;) On a slightly more serious note; I was thinking about the Saturn the other day. Honestly trying to figure out what SEGA was thinking when they released it. My conclusion was that SEGA waited too long to introduce a proper heir to what was objectively the best system they ever released, the Genesis/MegaDrive. Almost like they lacked the foresight to see what was coming. Or maybe they believed that no one would consider buying a $3-500 gaming system? Once they finally did come to terms with what the public was willing to throw money at, the Saturn dogma was already a generation old if you count the NEO-GEO as it's closest contender graphics wise. Naturally, the winds brought the rumors that SONY was throwing its hat into the home gaming ring, forgoing the (already tired?) 2D gaming path. This aparrently led SEGA to slap another CPU on the board and hope like hell developers could make heads or tails of its architecture. Sadly, this was not the case. Sure, some games did manage to come close to matching, sometimes even surpassing what the PlayStation was doing. Unfortunately, SEGA didn't have the faith and shit all over the Saturn by releasing the Dreamcast in a way that just rubbed people the wrong way. On a positive note, 2D fighters had the best luck on the system and I'm sure fans of the genre were dutifully satisfied they had made the 'right' choice.
Another great video, man! Keep up with the outstanding work! Despite the relative problems with 3d, how about a video about the Best 3d graphics seen on the console?
I still hope that one day someone finds a running beta/alpha/video that shows Doom on Saturn running in an alternate form. I'd love to see it. I image something with Doom's level design but textures that look more akin to Powerslave.
Agreed, the frame rate on the Japanese version shown here does look much better to me though? I'm only judging it by eye but as it switches from one to the other I absolutely detect a smoother picture?? Anyone else?
@@mattpowell8369Sadly, as far as I know, the Japanese version doesn’t have a smoother framerate either. I played the game, and it’s pretty much the same as the American/European versions.
When I was a kid my first two Sega Saturn games were nhl 98 and black fire. Both were on the list lol. At the time though those games were my childhood. I also had Virtua cop one and two Virtua fighter Daytona USA galactic attack and bust a move.
You know what is interesting about my time with the Saturn? I have never played a bad game for the machine. I had them both in 1995 and bought most games for my PSX. It also has a lot to do with me buying my own games by then. Yes, my parents bought me a few games but they would ask me what I wanted for Christmas. I was working for the family business and they paid me very well.
My eyes are bleeding from the awful graphics in these games. The only redeeming quality "Rise 2: Resurrection" had was the song "Cyborg" by Brian May from Queen. Everything else was - in the words of Ole Anderson - the shits.
Carmack didn't want someone else doing something with Doom that he couldn't take credit for. The Saturn version being bad was a pure ego thing on Carmack's part. The guy was a master programmer but he was also an ass.
That helicopter game would give me headache for sure. And mate, Mr. Carmack only learned about the texture/visuals not being the 1st priority after the first Rage with his idea of MegaTexture technology.. The guys who made the new Is Tech 6 ( Doom 2016 ) were CryEngine tech guys that believed that Framerates are king... By the way, CryTek let them go because they were focused on framerate.
Oof! I owned Congo on the Saturn back when I was in high school, and you were being waaay to nice in your review, lol! The scaling was horrible, which made it impossible to navigate the levels without constantly looking at the automap. Also, if the mosquitos bite you, they can give you malaria, which makes the entire screen warp at random for a few seconds. Oh - and there were platforming sections. Makes you wonder just who gave the go ahead for this game to be released.
@@SegaLordX interesting, the visuals of D put me into laughing fits. As where Creature Shock things seemed horrifying. I love Warp though, great company.
@Hicknopunk That is pretty funny. I found D to be more cerebral horror because of its setting. I was turned off by the silliness of Creature Shocks giant bugs.
@@SegaLordX Part of the problem with the Saturn CS is it sounds like they used the midi soundtrack, on a low end sound card. The PC game has CD tracks too and I played CS with an AWE32 with 2.5 megs of ram. This gives the game lots of atmospheric bass it seemed the Saturn soundtrack is lacking. All the sound in the world though might not hook you if you are laughing at the bugs.
Battle Monsters is a good idea. I mean "Dark Stalkers" was a success. I like that the environment was different in Battle Monsters. You didn't always just have a flat surface. You could jump on staircases I saw in this video. That's pretty cool.
Fist was a 3D attempt at the Pretty Fighter series which saw its first game on the SNES using traditional 2D pixel art, then a 2D fighter on the Saturn using digitized hand drawn anime cel art. Battle Monsters had a 3D brother of a game on the PS1 called Killing Zone.
A game like Blackfyre would've been an amazing technical thing if it were on the Genesis using an advanced SVP Chip inside the cartridge. But for the Saturn, one would expect something way, waaaaaay better than that!
@@SegaLordX I should also add if you run out of lives in congo it deletes your congo save file. not only that, if you have only one congo save and it gets erased from a game over, it deletes everything on the internal memory, i lost my saves for Powerslave, Princess crown, Three Dirty Dwarves, Quake, Duke Nukem, everything.
Whether it's the worst or not, convincing yourself you like lame things is truly the life of a Sega fan! Same for TG16, 3DO, whatever is not Nintendo, etc :-D If you can reckon a way to tolerate it, usually on some technological or violent gimmick, or just because this is what you bought and now you're stuck with it, that means you like it! This is a well made channel, like an Ed Wood production.
Conversely, convincing yourself you like only the best available is truly the life of a Nintendo fan! Despite playing the same repackaged games for the last 30+ years, you reckon because it has some new gameplay gimmick like motion controls, a water spraying backpack, a vacuum cleaner, or being able to climb everything in sight, means you like it! ;p ;)
@@SegaLordX I haven't played most of those but you just made em sound pretty frickin cool! And you specifically listed genuine gameplay mechanics which *aren't* gimmicks, because that's what those particular products are, and they're the best there is at it. Nailed it! Anyway, I wasn't kidding -- you have top notch youtube production value and lots of heart! I find it refreshingly honest that I've lost count of how many times you've said "this pretty much sucks but I found a way to like it" even in a video that wasn't about the worst at all. lol. Even with gaming aside, that's a very meaningful and mature attitude in life and I look up to you for this channel. I watch most of the videos and I click 'like' on every one that I watch. Do you have a background in broadcast or any such thing?
I've always seen Black Fire for sale at video game conventions and retro stores and wondered why there were so many copies of it everywhere. Now I know why. Those textures made me nauseous lol
Okay I'm gonna defend Blackfire here- you say there's no crosshairs but the game had a really great targeting system that everybody on RU-vid doesn't seem to ever use. It's a totally different game when you're blind-firing! Still looks like shit though, can't argue there.
9:10 John Romero said he (the lead programmer of the port) had a build of the game running at a smooth frame rate , it was sent to id software to take their seal of approval, but guess what, it was Romero's task to approve it but he was on vacation or not available , don't remember exactly, and carmack was the next on that duty, he wanted the game to run like the pc and render everything on the CPU and not using the full hardware capabilities of the Saturn, Romero said he wouldn't hesitate to approve the first build with the better frame rate, and what carmack did was not fair for saturn users, if only that build of the game was sent a couple of days earlier or a couple of days later we would have a decent port of Doom for the Saturn
I always find voxel based games fascinating. Too bad Novalogic failed so hard on Black Fire. It could have looked so much better if they didn't colour the voxels so randomly - Like they did before in Comanche on PC...
You're *100% correct about the hardware being irrelevant when all of the software is garbage, Sega Lord X.* It doesn't matter how amazing and capable the hardware is, if all of the software is garbage. I'd rather have something 1/2 as powerful if it has great games..
The Saturn was my first console, my older brother’s hand me down when I was about 2-3 years old. We had/have croc, VF2, Clockwork Knight, a bunch of random sports games, Bug!, and Dragon Heart. Lol. I loved the game as a kid, probably shouldnt go back to it then. After the Saturn, I got a PS2 and the rest is history, although I’ve always been slightly bitter that we never had any of the more sought-after Saturn games.
Time Commando was a bit tighten up on the PSX while it was better on the PC, where it has better graphics, precision,, and physics than the PSX and Sega Saturn versions. I played the PSX version, thinking it'd be better than I'd expect, but it turned to be a whip in my arse. I was just skimming into the first level, kicking anything killing me in a quick rush of survival.
op'ed characters in fighting games are a lot more common nowadays than you think, example: both MKX and MK11 have characters that simply can't be beat unless you either mirror match or fight them with equally op'ed characters, Cassy Cage for example is op'ed so much on both MKX and MK11 that unless you pick another op'ed character like Jax it doesn't matter how skilled you are you will lose, don't believe me? i challenge anyone reading this to find and post one link to a ranked match of MKX or MK11 where someone lost with Cassy Cage against any character other than Jax or herself, you won't find one because it literally can't be done. no bro, op'ed characters in fighting games are very much a reality that continues today.
I remember Time Commando came out, had it on PC (Still have it) I remember it as having clunky controls, but I did play it. On Computer though, it may have been better there. I think it did look pretty good for the time, and was a pretty succsesful game. The same company made Little Big Adventure, I remember that as very good and very succsesful, it also had clunky strange controls, but was easier to control than Time Commando....
Seeing that dragon heart footage reminded me of conan exiles for some reason then you said funcom and it blew my mind. didnt know they have been around that long
