Sega Saturn Vs Sony Playstation 1

[Antiriad2097]

Arcade games in the home when arcades were dying. Pass me the PS1.

That does seem to be one of Sega's many failings, they kept chucking out arcade ports in an era when much more was demanded. Its both a great thing about the Dreamcast library, and one of the major reasons for its failure imo.

[Nemesis]

Arcade games in the home when arcades were dying. Pass me the PS1.

That does seem to be one of Sega's many failings, they kept chucking out arcade ports in an era when much more was demanded. Its both a great thing about the Dreamcast library, and one of the major reasons for its failure imo.

Couldn't agree more with this sentiment.

[General Opulence]

I was the opposite, I was totally uninspired by the PS1. The Saturn line-up made me want one so bad, I mean Sega's arcade games in the home - you can't go wrong.

Yeah true, but that had been happening since the master system anyway, but even after Tekken and Ridge Racer swayed me, was the first announcement of psygnosis games heading to the Playstation, those screenshots in Play magazine of Wipeout, Destruction Derby, Assault Rigs, G-Police, Krazy Ivan etc wowzas!

[PlodMadLoon]

Remember 'Quake'? Did you know this game got released on the Sega Saturn but NEVER on the Playstation 1? The Reason? It was because the Playstation 1 could not handle the graphics while the Saturn could.

That one always confused me, 'cos the PlayStation did get a faithful port of the much more technically advanced Quake II. I wonder why that was?

I think the Saturn version benefited from the Quake port being done by developers Lobotomy Software. The story goes that the port of Quake to the Saturn was originally handed to another developer, but Sega was so impressed with what Lobotomy achieved with their game Powerslave that they passed development over to them instead. Lobotomy decided the best thing to do was to ignore trying to migrate the PC code over to the console, and instead did a "from the ground up" recode of the entire game using their own game engine, the SlaveDriver engine, so the port could make the most of the Sega Saturn's unique architecture. Quake on the Saturn is actually running on completely different code to the PC original, but they did such an amazing job of it that you'd never notice!

IIRC the only home console to get ports of both Quake 1 and 2 was the N64? Although the second game was a severely gimped version, unlike the PlayStation port which was much more accurate.

[General Opulence]

Regarding Quake 1 PS1;
On the Assembler website they contacted a guy called "Ezra Dreisbach revealed that it ran at 30fps and was definitely not complete - it existed as a short tech demo for the purpose of securing a publisher. (Which they never did probably due to the lateness of the project and the fact Quake 2 was out soon unlike on the Saturn) Ezra did also confirm it ran much better on the PS than the Saturn.
Also, the project was being led by programmer Jeff Blazier, who previously worked on the PS version of PowerSlave/Exhumed/1999."

[rossi46]

The Saturn had soul. The PS had a large library of shiny but lifeless dross. In the early days, at least.

I had both machines at the time - and a N64 - but the Saturn was our most played machine by far. And still is.

During the xmas holiday this year, my brother came to visit and play Xbox One (while I waited on Sony sending a replacement PS4) and we ended up having an extended Sega Rally-fest for hours instead.

Not bad for a supposed inferior 18 year old machine.

[The Laird]

Also, the project was being led by programmer Jeff Blazier, who previously worked on the PS version of PowerSlave/Exhumed/1999."

Which was better on the Saturn.

[outdated_gamer]

Remember 'Quake'? Did you know this game got released on the Sega Saturn but NEVER on the Playstation 1? The Reason? It was because the Playstation 1 could not handle the graphics while the Saturn could.

That one always confused me, 'cos the PlayStation did get a faithful port of the much more technically advanced Quake II. I wonder why that was?

I think the Saturn version benefited from the Quake port being done by developers Lobotomy Software. The story goes that the port of Quake to the Saturn was originally handed to another developer, but Sega was so impressed with what Lobotomy achieved with their game Powerslave that they passed development over to them instead. Lobotomy decided the best thing to do was to ignore trying to migrate the PC code over to the console, and instead did a "from the ground up" recode of the entire game using their own game engine, the SlaveDriver engine, so the port could make the most of the Sega Saturn's unique architecture. Quake on the Saturn is actually running on completely different code to the PC original, but they did such an amazing job of it that you'd never notice!

IIRC the only home console to get ports of both Quake 1 and 2 was the N64? Although the second game was a severely gimped version, unlike the PlayStation port which was much more accurate.

Like you wrote yourself - they used a different engine to port Quake over to the Saturn, not the original PC version engine. The N64 port had reduced geometry and texture detail, but it used the original PC version engine and had effects comparable to those in OpenGL Quake on the PC. I think the PS could have ran Quake but it would be a port with reduced detail, geometry and lighting. You may not know this but Quake II's geometry and lighting are actually less advanced than Quake 1's. And Quake II on the PS still has reduced model detail and some different level parts, loading and such. Although it's pretty impressive for a machine with only 3 MB RAM and a 33 Mhz 32-bit CPU (the N64 port less so, although it's not bad).

[Lost Dragon]

Arcade games in the home when arcades were dying. Pass me the PS1.

That does seem to be one of Sega's many failings, they kept chucking out arcade ports in an era when much more was demanded. Its both a great thing about the Dreamcast library, and one of the major reasons for its failure imo.

Yet if you look back to the magazines at the time, you had likes of Namco pushing home the fact you'd soon be playing their arcade games in your home, thanks to the Playstation (remember these hard bastards from the arcade?), plus things like MK3 were seen as the big news at the time.So arcades might have been in twilight years, but games press were going mental over Tekken, Ridge Racer, Time Crisis etc etc all coming into the home.

[Lost Dragon]

Re:Quake on PS1 which for a while there press were running with was impossible on Playstation (this at a time when PS1 had seen inferior versions of both Hexen and Duke Nukem 3D compared to Saturn 'thanks' to developers just trying to port PC code to PS1, bad idea).Story went 7 developers had tried and failed to get Quake running at decent rate on PS1, all failed.
Lobotomy said in an interview, they'd be willing to do Quake on PS1, but were just too tied up with Saturn projects.All Playstation Quake needed was a development team to write game for Playstation hardware, which in terms of merge amount of Ram avaiable compared to a PC, meant you had to approach conversion with writing in different manner.

Lets not forget that Nick "Orlando" Pelling (Firetrack BBC/C64) was converting Unreal from PC to PS1 and things like Shadow Master, Lifeforce Tenka and Quake II showed Quake was more than possible on PS1

[Nemesis]

The Saturn had soul. The PS had a large library of shiny but lifeless dross. In the early days, at least.
.

Absolute Rhubarb.

[Lost Dragon]

Yeah, considering both Saturn and PS1 covered same genres, hard to see what 1 delivered the other did'nt. PS had Wipeout, Saturn had Gran Chaser, PS had Tekken, Saturn had VF, Saturn had Daytona USA, Sega Rally, PS had Ridge Racer, Saturn had V.Cop, PS had Time Crisis.

PC conversions to both like Magic Carpet just boiled down to cosmetic effects being different between the 2, both had ports from MD/SNES/3DO etc.Saturn offered more if you were a love of 2D, PS1 more 3D, but then the hardware dictated that.

I ended up buying both for the exclusives on both, Saturn years later, but wanted:Amok, Mass Destruction, Panzer Daroon series etc etc.

[rossi46]

Yeah, considering both Saturn and PS1 covered same genres, hard to see what 1 delivered the other did'nt. PS had Wipeout, Saturn had Gran Chaser, PS had Tekken, Saturn had VF, Saturn had Daytona USA, Sega Rally, PS had Ridge Racer, Saturn had V.Cop, PS had Time Crisis.

With the exception of wipeout, I rest my case.

[RodimusPrime]

Yeah, considering both Saturn and PS1 covered same genres, hard to see what 1 delivered the other did'nt. PS had Wipeout, Saturn had Gran Chaser, PS had Tekken, Saturn had VF, Saturn had Daytona USA, Sega Rally, PS had Ridge Racer, Saturn had V.Cop, PS had Time Crisis.

With the exception of wipeout, I rest my case.

Ridge racer was propbably the most exciting game being released at the time. I think because the series has been watered down it clouds peoples judgement and they forget just how amazing it was to see it on PS.

Tekken, and RR were most certainly not lifeless dross at the time, people were going mental at the prospect of seeing those games. They were just as exciting, and new as VF and sega rally.

[HalcyonDaze00]

The Saturn had soul. The PS had a large library of shiny but lifeless dross

nonsense