The moment of comedy genius for me was the part where Sega Lord X spoke about the publishing of the game - Virtual Hydlide - across Japan, Europe and North America and I quote, "making sure all of us were punished equally!" Brilliant.
As a guy who had his gallbladder removed several years ago, I can confirm that this is a very realistic simulation of that experience! (Why are you telling complete strangers this?) (Eh, I'm bored.)
I've always considered PS1/Saturn/N64 the cutoff point of what people call retro. The industry was shifting to 3D, but there were so many times you had to imagine what the models were SUPPOSED to look like. Compare textures and character models in Final Fantasy 8 and Metal Gear Gear Solid to their respective sequels on the PS2.
@@wraithcadmus I've never seen a game that strobes every time you shoot the gun like this one. Looking at footage of the original version on youtube, it doesn't seem to strobe at every shot in the arcade version.
Sega's main problem with the Saturn, the 32X and the Sega CD is that the 3D capabilities were never realized to their fullest potential. A good chunk of the Sega CD games were these garbage FMV titles (shovelware). Then for the 32X, most of the graphically demanding games of that add-on were just simply ports from either the Genesis, Arcade or even the PC (see Doom). As for the Saturn, while there were a good number of 3D games on it, only a select few really pushed the hardware in terms of its 3D & visual capabilities. The rest were just 2D games. And while 2D games are good looking in their own right, they certainly werent the console sellers that the Saturn needed, especially since it was the start of the 3D era.
All of those hardware were parallel multi multiprocessing (CPU/GPU) with assembly languages. Which the 32x and Saturn relied on using two CPU instead of using one cpu, fast coprocessor like the ps1. Also, separate ram as well for the 32x and Saturn instead of unified ram for graphics, sound, and main ram. Another downside the Saturn had too many processor and its dsp using high level assembly of programming language. Plus, separate color palletes/on screen colors, transperacy, alpha blending, lightings sources/shades, warped quads, slower dsp that is not as fast as the gte from the ps1 and rcp cpu from the n64. All of these things really crippled the Saturn with uglier games list on this video.
At the time it seemed like every game had to be 3D, and we got horrible stuff like Bubsy 3D and other shovelware so bad I can't even remember the titles names. Looking back, I would have rather great looking 2D (Symphony of the Night), or 2 1/2 D like (Clockwork Knight, Strider 2) games which have survived the test of time.
@@mr_teeney Back then, a lot of us were importing Saturn games from Japan, and even a lot of brick and mortar stores stocked Saturn import hardware and software. It was a weird time, where you could get closeout Saturn with some used games for $50, and then use it to import $50 new games just coming out in Japan. Symphony of the Night, X-Men vs Streetfighter, Dungeons and Dragons collection, Radiant Silvergun ... just lots of really great stuff, after the USA Saturn was dead. I even visited Japan in 1999 and picked up a ton of cheap used Saturn and Playstation games in Akihabara. This included a lot of good titles I'd never heard of, like the Gundam Side Story games (the Dreamcast Gundam Side Story game actually got a USA release, shockingly enough). The Gundam Side Story games were 3d rather than 2d, but still pretty good I think. So, the Saturn was indeed blessed with a lot of really great looking 2D classics. Among the importing crowd, it was well known as the best place to experience Capcom arcade ports (and a respectable second best for SNK, at a fraction of the Neo Geo price), but it wasn't limited to just that.
@@mr_teeney True, take as example Mario 64, now get any other game released on the N64 that is labelled as a 3D platformer, they share nearly 90% of everything that Mario 64 was/done. The Playstation also jump started this trend by being pretty much only focused on that, Rarely where the games that weren't 3D on it. And poor Sega thought people would not enjoy a stronger 2D device till the last moments before launch. were they had to modify and rush the whole schematics for the Saturn to be at least able to do some form of 3D rendering and learn how to program on it in the way the project ended... The first Virtua Fighter on it and the Remix version later released is a proof of that. On my personal opinion, they should have never released the 32X nor the Sega CD but rather merging both projects and properly release a console. Sega at that time treated consoles like a software that just needed some "Patch fix"... we had Master System 1, 2, 3, 4 (Brazil only), Genesis 1, 2, 3, 4 ,5, etc (There is a bunch after 3 here on Brazil), and they were going to release another Saturn (the pluto)... They only got it right by the time they released the Dreamcast, and it was already too late...
The Sega CD + SVP were both mature tech ready to draw 20,000 flat shaded polygons over Soul Star style backgrounds. All if that was thrown in the trash for some rushed hardware and rushed games.
Crazy thing is that Sega of America thought that American kids wanted nothing but 3d games, but that just wasn’t the case. People wanted great arcade games and the Saturn was a monster at 2d arcade games. Too bad the marketing department in America didn’t understand that…
The Jaguar is one of my least favorite consoles ever. I tried collecting for it back in 2006. After about 15 games in, I asked myself why I was doing this and stopped.
@@SegaLordX There is only one reason to get a Jaguar, IMO. Ironically, to experience "Where did YOU learn. To fly?" Tempest 2000? There are better more accessible sequels to play. Iron Soldier? Pretty good game, but honestly, the more accessible Playstation sequel, Iron Soldier 3 is better. Alien vs Predator? Same as above. There are a few good Jaguar games (I just listed them). But they all have better more accessible alternatives, and the poor quality of the Jaguar controller means that there isn't even that reason to go for original hardware.
@@SegaLordX You should check out Pandemonium's review of Virtua Racing to find out why Time Warner got such poor performance out of the Saturn. They could only access one core while debugging, and just getting their hands on that was a bit of a miracle. Sega may have been willing to sell them the Virtua Racing license, but they got no assistance otherwise.
@Pro Tengu Yes, all of that is very true, but because of the Saturn's design, it was much harder to make games for it vs the Playstation. In that regard, the graphics tended to suffer. But yeah, on a technical standpoint, the Saturn's hardware was superior.
Saturn has more raw power than ps1, yes. But it's 3d engine is so much, much worse. Way less features and performance. It was underdeveloped, but it would never truly match ps1's visuals with lighting on and stuff. Everywhere you look, there's a catch to make it work properly. Sega wouldnt be able to develop another console as problematic even if they tried.
Was a teenager when both Saturn,and PS came to our market. Saturn,was doomed from the begging. Not only it cost more but the games in show rooms looked way uglier. Even the 3DO had bigger sales. Saturn was just "not cool" and Sega which dominated our Russian market with Genesis/Megadrive lost it's market share in a blink of an eye.
In Serbia it didn't sell offically at all. Because of Yugoslav wars and UN imposed sanctions, 16 and 32 bit generations were late in our country. So when PS1 and Saturn came out in Japan, here Mega Drive and SNES begin to grow in popularity. Between the late '96 and the mid '97 PS and N64 start officialy to sell, and at that time Saturn was already defeated and there were no place for it in our market. Many people here didn't know that there was another Sega console between Mega Drive and Dreamcast. And by the way it's the only Sega console I've never got chance to play. Master System was somewhat popular, Mega Drive was the most popular console here as in the most of Europe, and Dreamcast was sweet but short glimpse of 6th generation that we enjoyed mostly with PS2, because Game Cube and first XBox were never owned by many people here.
In Russia PS1 and Saturn were released a year later after initial Europem release. At first as MegaDrive fan I genuinely thought I would go Saturn. But it was 96 and Resident Evil was just released too and at that time it was mind blowing and Saturn had nothing like that. And.then Tomb Rider was released the same year an it was an overkill. Later Saturn received port's of both of them but it was too little and too late for creating a big install base here in Russia. Not a single friend of mine owned Saturn. Ironically piracy was also a big industry driver in Russia. The most pirated platforms actually were successful for the platform owners. Sony made quite a profit even in a situation when every single PS1 sold here had a mod chip. Saturn got hacker bit later. Sometimes I think if Saturn was hacked just on release it could have been way more successful.
@@artiombeknazaryan7542 Yes, piracy was also important reason for PS1 (and later PS2) success in Serbia. Because in developing country devastated by war and sanctions, at the time not many people had money to buy expensive original games. Even in the offical stores pirated games and modchips sold legally. In 16-bit era they sold bootleg cartridges for Mega Drive. I know that's not okay, but otherwise we would never enjoyed gaming in our childhood. :-)
@@solidsnake3828 Interesting to know how the Dreamcast was more popular than Gamecube in some parts of the world. I guess I should have expected it since here in North America the Dreamcast discontinued in 2001 the same year when Gamecube debuted
For race drivin’, I think you have to consider that hard drivin’ was originally made in arcades in 1989 as a very early 3D racer. This game looks beautiful by comparison. Those games may be glitchy, but they were serious pioneers at what they did, and having manual with clutch too. Cant think of any games with that except modern ones.
I'm kind of into how a lot of these games look. The Saturn used some really odd, distinctive techniques to work with 3D, and I get a bit of a kick out of seeing some of the less elegant attempts. Really illustrates what an odd console it was.
I liked it on PC. The character/entity rendering sure looked a lot better, was much more cohesive with prerendered background, thanks to textures and some directional lighting. The animation was also pretty decent for the time. It also ran in high resolution, i think 640x480? Video decoding alongside all that was actually technically impressive. The gameplay was janky but not extraordinarily so.
The frightening part about this is that I know there's more than enough material left over for a part II and probably part III. You didn't even get to the legendarily awful FIST. Or Minakata Hakudou Toujou. Or Death Crimson. Or...
Don't you dare to mention Death Crimson and make me remember of it... It freaks me just to know that I still own a copy of it sitting on a shelf, in the next room...
"Street Fighter: The Movie" (the game) is hideous, but weirdly enough, it plays very well. It's almost a perfect port of "Super Street Fighter II Turbo", only beaten with an ugly stick.
Hate to admit it, but loved this game. Didn't mind the ugliness too much; I had a lot of fun with this title. As I understand, it plays better than the Arcade version which had different play mechanics.
It’s partly thanks to Capcom going in and cutting out frames of animation in order to perfectly sync it to SSF2T…which also says a lot about how there wasn’t a lot of animation to the SFII series either.
It plays well (much like Super Street Fighter II Turbo, as you said) and has a really nice soundtrack, including a music video at the end of the story mode. It's better than the arcade game, which feels like the developers were throwing everything at the wall in the hopes that it would stick.
Man, I had no idea Time Commando was released on Saturn. I'm not surprised it looked and ran like shit on Saturn. Weren't the background graphics pre-rendered video?
I only played it on pc and back in the days i loved it. Such a great game. Despite it runs poorly on the saturn i always wanted it for the sake if owning it for the console i love so much.
I always enjoy your videos and witty jokes about certain bad games makes me chuckle alot. And I also love your knowledge of certain games and how depth you go into the history of these games.
I just received my “New in box” Japanese Saturn straight from Japan today. It’s literally never been used. It’s the version with “100” on the box and it says “Campaign box” it comes with Virtua fighter remix in the box.
@@SegaLordX Because when I was little, I remember watching a VHS promotional video of the Saturn and when they showed Black Fire I thought, “Wow, that game looks awesome!”
I had no idea the Saturn had games that made the jaguar look good. This to me is where sega lost their way. Love this channel for entertainment AND information.
I just don’t get how Sega, who was already making 3D arcade games, didn’t realize until late in development that 3D was where everyone else was going. I love a good 2D game more than most 3D games of the PS1/Saturn/N64 era, but that’s where the market was clearly going
@@drunkensailor112 Right but nobody in their right mind was expecting Model 2 performance. It’s about the design. They were designing a 2D console the rushed to slap in some 3D support mid development
My brother-in-law had a SEGA Saturn. When he would come home at 2am, he'd smoke a blunt with me and we'd play Teken and a dragon game where you flew around on its back. It was AWESOME.
Virtua Fighter was so awful when they first released it on the Saturn that they had to re-release an apology “remix” version. I’m surprised that wasn’t the number game on the list.
If I may ask, why is the Saturn your favorite of the three main Sega consoles? I was born in ‘97, so the company was practically doomed at that point, but I did grow up with my dad’s Genesis playing Streets of Rage and Desert Strike.
@@thomaselers7416 Brazil, São Paulo. But at which store, I'm not sure. Not even many of my games where he used to buy, I just remember buying with him a single game, Die Hard Arcade, he used just to show up with new games.
When I was a kid, there were barely any 3DO or Saturn games at Blockbuster. All of my friends had a PS1 (including me). NO ONE I knew ever had a Saturn.
Games with awful graphics like the ones in this video on both the Saturn and PS1 are one big reason why I was glad to primarily be a PC gamer in the mid 90s! That and being able to play Doom, Duke3D, Quake, C&C and so on in up to 8 player mode via a BNC coax network (later on regular ethernet) my best friend and I had setup that went from my house to his house next door were big deals at the time. I can still remember the first weekend playing Starcraft 4 vs 4 with one house against the other house. Good times!!! We did a lot of LAN party gaming for well over a decade until things like jobs, families and so on got in the way. :)
Slx: Saturn is my favourite console and best one that sega made. period. Also slx : crow review, genesis games that better than Saturn , worst looking Saturn titles in a row
Dude this is one of the most hilarious gaming videos I've seen in a while. I wish you'd branch out beyond Sega games because your style is just so good. But I can imagine you could just keep on milking Sega forever, your video ideas are just so unique. I love your videos dude.
5:40 OMG! I just found the game we used to have at our arcade in the mall! I always wanted to play it again but did not know the name, as I didn't know English at the time so I couldn't read the title and didn't know what to look for. Thank you!
Well worthy of a part 2. You did forget to mention that the music of Virtual Hydlide is amazing! At least it is for me. Only worth it really for the soundtrack. It’s seriously outdated though. I wouldn’t call it unfinished or incomplete because it’s not a harsh enough word in my opinion. Dated is a better word to use for Hydlide if you ask me. (Fun fact: Atlus is now owned by Sega! Not to mention, Atlus has a pretty solid reputation especially being renowned for RPGs like SMT and such, I’ve been dying for SMT5 and it’s cool ass protagonist) However, I cannot bash any role-playing game because I think there’s no such thing as a bad RPG because whatever RPG you don’t like or aren’t a fan of those games in general, it comes down to opinion. (To someone, you dislike Final Fantasy but like Tales, I’d be cool with that. Not talking about you here Mel) You’d be hard-pressed to find an RPG with a score of less than 50. That’s what I call garbage and below average. There isn’t a single one on Wikipedia’s worst games ever list and it’s history. (And I still think modern-age traditional fighting games are pretty much perfect in terms of gameplay and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that) This sadly does not apply to other genres. (And you probably think I’m saying it in order for the role-playing game genre to retain its positive image and legacy, don’tcha?) You can argue with me all day on this. Come on, I dare you to!
I love the look of Virtual Hydlide, I like the busy look of all the scaled sprites, the odd shading that's typical for the Saturn, I think it looks cool and inviting, it's just too bad it doesn't play well
LOL. I thought that I was the only one. I really liked the screenshots of that game back in 1995. It's how I imagined "next gen" RPGs. Of course, I had not idea that it was all ridiculously choppy and stuff.
@@Prizrak-hv6qk Sprite scaling games are actually pretty popular with a certain audience, I think it's a great look for the 32 bit era, since 3D games at the time mostly looked really sparse and the sprites make the games look more interesting
1:39 Holly crap.. the background (crowd and scoreboards) is a texture mapped to the ground... It should be mapped to walls... or a skybox in the worst case scenario.. but to the ground? You can't even see unless the ball goes high? They weren't even trying.
You know, since you mention her relatively often on the channel, I'd be curious to see your daughter's top five (or whatever arbitrary number) retro games. Would be a fun perspective from a younger generation.
Props to Race Driving' on Sega Genesis. That shizz was impressive as a kid and looking back now it was one of the first driving simulators and a really fun one.
Those games wouldn't have looked nearly as bad back then as they look now, they were develop with CRT TVs in mind, CRTs make the jagged pixels look smooth and and darkens the colors, search "Pixel CRT vs LCD" on google images. One example, the grid textures would have looked fully transparent on a CRT TV, if you have played Sonic the Hedgehog on a CRT tv there is a semi transparent waterfall that uses the same trick, its called linear blending, basically because of how CRT TVs display the image on screen (by drawing scrolling lines) it makes the pixels "blurry" that creates an optical illusion that makes the image look transparent, it also works as an antialiasing making the edges of things "blurry" or "soft" and not "jagged".
I AM JUST BLOWN AWAY, some of my favorite PC GAMES were on the saturn ? but in a crap form ? man, ALONE IN THE DARK 2 is one of the best games on DOS, and HIGH OCTANE was one of the first 3d racing games and man oh man, TIME COMMANDO, the story of my mom buying me a copy while going to the beach, made me sit in the car and admiring the box all the way to the beach and back and then even while swimming, eating bbq, playing with my R.C car and having fun with friends, all i wanted was to go home and play time commando..... and to be fair , some of these games look heartwarming in a retro kind of way now to be honest.
I can’t get enough of the channel. I know you main Sega, but would love to see more Nintendo, Sony, MS mixed in. Could listen to you read the phone book. Keep it up!
Seems like Bases Loaded 96 was programmed using one of the VDP chips to render the field, which also had what should have been a seperate vertical background layer worked into the same infinite plane. Touring Car really requires you to be in the zone to enjoy. I actually like it once my brain gets used to the obnoxious framerate. As for Race Drivin', the only thing more hilarious than the graphics is the music! If you want more wretched looking games, check out Virtual Volleyball by Imagineer, The Incredible Hulk by Eidos, Space Hulk, MYST, Hexen, and Doom.
I'm honestly glad some of these games exist on here, like Virtual Hydlide. They're so stupidly bad in the graphical department that it's great just to tear it a new one. While in the 90's it definitely did more harm than good, in this day in age where we know the Saturn is a beast in it's own way so just coming back to these games out of curiosity and being able to laugh at them is probably the best outcome we can get from these games
How great would it have been if you could have sent a bill to game companies that made crappy games? Even if they didn't pay, I would have felt some sort of vengeance by sending it and knowing I wasted 12 seconds of a secretary's day. Suck on that EA.
I loved Virtual Hydlide! It was odd, but open world and that's what drew me in. I actually finished it, not sure how. Haha Playing this on an emulator now and adjusting the controls for a more modern control scheme with strafing makes it more playable. I love me some weird games.
I always found Street Fighter: The Movie interesting because you could take things from both versions of it and make a relatively solid game. The console version featured here was essentially Super Turbo with an ugly coat of paint. From a gameplay perspective there was little difference from that game, and that was a great thing. I remember renting it and having a surprisingly good experience despite it looking ugly as hell. The arcade game wasn't actually developed by Capcom, and it's clear they didn't really try to emulate previous SF games too closely. What resulted was a game that looks pretty decent as digitized games go, but the gameplay was very inconsistent, imbalanced, and pretty trash in a lot of ways. They had some interesting ideas like adding some interesting new moves to characters, extensive juggle combos, and unique ultimate super combos that would sort of foreshadow things Capcom would incorporate into later games, but overall it was just a bad game. If you took that games visuals and some of their better ideas, but gave it the gameplay feel and polish of the console version, you might have something.
If im being honest, i still kind of like the look of some of the bad looking saturn games. Its different than ps1 and different than ps2. The saturn has this strange, unique way of handling polygons and colors that stands out from the other systems of the time.
So we couldn't get international Saturn releases of Grandia, the Lunar remasters, Shining Force III scenario 2&3, Linkle River Story or Dragon Force 2. But Sega and Atlus made sure Virtual Hydelide was released in every region. Cool.
I remember like it was yesterday. as a little boy i saw daytona usa in the arcade and i thought wow this is a great game and need this at home. at that time i saved all the money i could get in my hands for over 1 year to buy a sega saturn. i was so happy when i connected my saturn to the television and was able to play daytona at home for the first time. When I saw it I thought someone hit me with a shovel right in my face. I thought the console, the tv cable or something else is broken. That's why I never understood why Sega brought games like Sega Touring Car, Sky Target or House of the Dead on the market with such poor graphics, when it rained so bad reviews for Daytona's and virtua fighter's graphics.with virtua cop, sega rally, athlete kings and virtua fighter 2 etc. they had proven what the saturn can do. Back then, a huge step backwards, for whatever reason.
The DS and the Saturn both share roughly the same geometry limits (direct quad vs. triangle comparisons are impossible, but the Saturn requires a skilled coder to get over 2000 plus quads per frame, while the DS can achieve a hard limit of 2048 triangles, easily.) They also share the exact same 512k texture limits.
My vote goes to Tama: Adventurous Ball in Who Gives a Damn About the Subtitle Anyway. One wonders why the game is so slow when it looks like the Saturn is juggling thirty or forty flat-shaded polygons per frame. It might have been novel on the Sega Genesis with a DSP chip in the cartridge, but on the Saturn, it looked like a relic the day it was released.
I really don't mind dithering in a system that can't do semi-transparency, or a system that has color limitations. It's an old fashion technique of faking mid tones and half-transparent objects, and in many cases it works when the pixels aren't completely obvious. And in other cases, it can give a sense of texture to things that would otherwise be a solid color. Some think it's a nuisance, I think it's part of the design and thus I appreciate it.
I bought a Sega Saturn in 1996 and the first game I played on it was Virtua Fighter. I remember that exact moment to this day, only an hour after I got it home already wondering if I should have bought a PlayStation instead.
