Sonic Xtreme would have sucked.

Not really. Considering the bigger the draw distance, the more CPU intensive it becomes.

You don't need pretty graphics to have a good game on your hands. You just need the system to deliver unique and interesting gameplay. The saturn is the more powerful system, and thusforth the ideal platform to develop the game for.

 

No, it's not. Hell, Sonic 3 is a good Sonic game. You could make something like that with brilliant, vibrant 2D graphics, innovative gameplay, and vast speedy levels. Not impossible at all, and it'd be a good Sonic game, developed for the Saturn.

Hmm...

 

Tell me exactly what the team had planned and I will tell you quite how far off the mark you are.

 

Do anyone remember the Sonic World part in Sonic Jam?

 

I suppose that's why Treasure (whose programmers can push ANY hardware to the maximum and have VERY good insights on any system they worked on) said that it was impossible to port Radiant Silvergun to the playstation because the ps1 was just not powerful enough.

Or I could mention Virtua Fighter 2 that were running at higher resolutions then any other Playstation fighting game, or Virtua Fighter Kids which put even some N64 games to shame.

Or D-Xhird, which people couldn't believe it was a Saturn game when it was unveiled (previously only known as Project DDD on an unknown nextgen hardware - in 1997).

Cotton Boomerang which sported bajillion sprites and projectiles, multiple transparent backgrounds/foregrounds with raster effects, mindblowing full-screen special effects (literally the whole screen was moving throughout the game), all running at solid 60fps, while on the Playstation they couldn't do more then a port of the 1991 prequel.

Guardian Heroes which you will find nothing like on the ps1, neither in term of the size of the graphics, the amount of graphics, the speed of the graphics and the quality of graphics.

10 player multiplayer battles in Saturn Bomberman.

Infinitely superior ports of Duke Nukem, Quake and Exhumed, which even trash the PC originals at many parts (as in: all minus keyboard+mouse controls).

Any Capcom fighting game which looked like a total tard on the Playstation (all except for Street Fighter Zero 3 - which was FINALLY bearable on the ps1).

Oh, and they also had less loading times on the Saturn, Vampire Savior had virtually ZERO loading time for example. You selected your character, got a VS screen, and you fought - no loading screen nor even any mention of it.

Metal Slug, which the playstation handled worse then even the Gameboy Advance (mid-level loading? please...). While the Saturn version, again, was arcade perfect.

The awesome effects in Sonic R, half of which wouldn't work on the ps1, and the other half pushing the framerate to 10 fps, as told by the developers in an interview.

Saturn also had a much sexier CD player, could connect to the internet and had NETPLAY, had built-in memory (no need to buy memory cards), and kept track of the time and date for you, some games even having time-specific game modes.


weak hardware my ass.

 

Which by chance, ran on the NiGHTS engine.


Mike Wallis said Jam would have been better if they used Chris Coffins Boss engine, haha =P

 

Let us not forget the Saturn was the only console out of the three that could use a CD and a cartridge at the same time. While this was mostly used to extend game save space we saw a lot of games (2D fighters mainly) ship with their own ROM or RAM carts to speed up load times.

This could have also been used to add co-processors if a game required them, and I for one don't mind paying a little extra for hardware if it will mean a better game.

 

The N64 would've been just as pixelated as any other ps1/saturn game, except that it did mipmapping by hardware, adding so much blurring to the graphics that your eyes literally melted out after extended play.

 

afaik only Tomb Raider 2 was supposed to have an add-on cart, but they scrapped the idea altogether and went on developing normally, just before Sony bought out the whole series for playstation exclusiveness.

On the other hand, there's also a rumor that Virtua Fighter 3 had working Saturn techdemos pushing as much as 900 000 polygons per second, with no extra hardware, not even ram carts. And given how mature Saturn devkits were at the end of the Saturns lifespan, that's not at all farfetched. The Dreamcast was so powerful from day one because the devkits were evolved versions of the late Saturn kits.

 

Mario 64 wasn't that good. The polygons in that game hurt my eyes.

Oh and nice try using JPEG for the grainly look.

 

Yeah, I'm sure all games that aren't as graphically nice as Mario 64 suck by default.

 

Memory hotfix to lock the game's camera field of view