Daytona USA or Ridge Racer?

[Megamixer]

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the original Saturn conversion of Daytona only disappointing because it was rushed? Ridge Racer obviously wasn't so it would have been interesting to compare conversions that had both had the proper attention paid to them.

[Sephiroth81]

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the original Saturn conversion of Daytona only disappointing because it was rushed? Ridge Racer obviously wasn't so it would have been interesting to compare conversions that had both had the proper attention paid to them.

Yea, they did....Daytona USA CE - but its still not as good as Ridge Racer, as the Saturn isn't quite capable enough.

[Katzkatz]

Daytona - mainly for the multi player aspect of it. Plus, in the arcades when you heard : "DAAAAAYYYYYYTONNNNNNAAAAAA!" blurting out of the sound system.

That being said, I suppose the arcade cab was quite good - especially as it had the six manual transmission and a clutch pedal. Quite novel for the game.

[nakamura]

Daytona CE was really nice visually but the handling wasn't quite right.

[Son_of_Shinobi]

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the original Saturn conversion of Daytona only disappointing because it was rushed? Ridge Racer obviously wasn't so it would have been interesting to compare conversions that had both had the proper attention paid to them.

Yea, they did....Daytona USA CE - but its still not as good as Ridge Racer, as the Saturn isn't quite capable enough.

This.

There is no way the Saturn could have faithfully reproduced Daytona in all it's arcade glory

DC maybe, but saturn no

In reply to the original post - Daytona all the way for me. All day, every day

[Sephiroth81]

Daytona CE was really nice visually but the handling wasn't quite right.

It handles pretty well with the 3D Analogue stick. I think the handling (or the negativity towards it) has been exaggerated over the years. Daytona CE is not perfect, but its better than the original as an overall game.

Either way, the Saturn version is totally obsolete now with the Xbox Live/PS3 versions being 60fps arcade perfect and in High Definition. This game beats Ridge Racer!

[outdated_gamer]

I guess it was only really until the Dreamcast that home consoles could reach Model 2 standards (well, it comfortably out performed Model 2).

True, it was quite a shock when it turned out that the Dreamcast could not only do Model 3 level visuals but even beyond it. That's why I consider the Dreamcast to represent one of the biggest jumps in visual quality on the consoles. I mean just compare a PS game to a DC game:






Now that's "next-gen".

[Sephiroth81]

True, it was quite a shock when it turned out that the Dreamcast could not only do Model 3 level visuals but even beyond it. That's why I consider the Dreamcast to represent one of the biggest jumps in visual quality on the consoles. I mean just compare a PS game to a DC game:






Now that's "next-gen".

Absolutely - the gulf between the 5th and 6th gen was extraordinary. Although you could argue the technical gap between 4th and 5th was bigger....looking at SNES/Megadrive games compared to PS1/SAT/N64, we basically went from the pinnacle of 2D gaming to the dawn of 3D games.

Although 2D games in the mid 1990s looked of course a lot cleaner and better than 3D games of the same era....but I guess the tricky leap had to be taken at some point.

[outdated_gamer]

Absolutely - the gulf between the 5th and 6th gen was extraordinary. Although you could argue the technical gap between 4th and 5th was bigger....looking at SNES/Megadrive games compared to PS1/SAT/N64, we basically went from the pinnacle of 2D gaming to the dawn of 3D games.

Although 2D games in the mid 1990s looked of course a lot cleaner and better than 3D games of the same era....but I guess the tricky leap had to be taken at some point.

Yes, the jump from 4th gen to 5th gen was even more dramatic, from a technical point of view. It basically went from sprite-based 2D visuals with a few colours on screen at once and some pseudo 3D effects like Mode 7 to full, textured polygon 3D graphics with thousands of colours and advanced effects.

Granted, 5th gen 3D graphics might not have aged very well compared to some earlier 2D games, but back then the prospect of fully 3D gaming on a home console system was amazing. That jump also gave birth to some fully new genres or dramatic changes in some long-running (formerly 2D) franchises.

[Nemesis]

Graphics-wise, Daytona was miles better than Ridge Racer, comparing the Arcade versions.

Strongly disagree with that statement.

Sega's Model 2 Arcade board was certainly a lot more advanced than Namco's System 22 Arcade board. You can compare the specs here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Se ... ga_Model_2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namco_System_22


As you can see, the Model 2 features no less than five Floating Point Units or FPUs. It was also the first commercial Arcade board to be capable of linear texture filtering as seen much later on the N64 and PC 3D accelerators like Voodoo Graphics.

The reason why the home port of Ridge Racer is favoured over the Daytona one is simply that no home system at the time could come nearly close to the Arcade version of Daytona.

Regardless of tech specs, I preferred the visuals and visual style of RR to Daytona. I didn't look at Daytona and think "blimey, this sh1ts on RR in terms of graphics."

[nakamura]

I didn't either. I much preferred the visual style of Ridge.

[SonicTheHedgehog]

I always preferred the visual style & handling of Daytona to Ridge but i enjoyed Ridge aswel. Overall Daytona is my favorite arcade game of all time and the arcade game i have spent the most money on over the years at well over £150 quid. I found the 3 courses to be perfect and i was amazed at the 20/30/40 car grid at the time and the fact that your car picked up damage was another thing that was quite special back then. Takenobu Mitsuyoshi's soundtrack was also brilliant and the songs are some of the most catchy and memorable tunes in any arcade game. There were also alot of other things that i loved about Daytona like the Roooooooooooliiiiiiing staaaaaaaaaaaart & the Daaaaaaytooooonaaaaaaaa that blared out of the speakers.

The Saturn version of Daytona's handling i found to be arcade perfect but it looked disgusting and ran at a poor frame rate. the CCE did address those problems but as Martin mentioned the handling wasn't right and neither was the handling in Daytona USA 2001 on the DC although it was better than CCE and featured all the courses from 1 and CCE aswel as a few new courses which all looked lovely.

Sega really did start designing the Saturn too early. They should of instead brought it out a year later than the Playstation mabee around Nov 1995 in Japan utilising better technology like a Hitachi SH3 chip clocked around 50-66mhz mabee with a FPU which would of been absolutely affordable for a Nov 95 launch along with a more cleaner setup and a single gpu mabee a Power VR 1 derivative or Nvidia's NV1 gpu as well as better development kits. We would of seen much better conversions of Model 2 games and much stronger 3rd party support and mabee Sega would of at the very least lived alot longer and had much more success .

Going back to Daytona I do feel i should mention the excellent arcade sequel Daytona USA 2 that featured 3 magnificent courses especially Joypolis 2020 Amusement Park. The gameplay was again top notch and the graphics at the time were incredible. In fact it took years and years before i saw graphics that were as good and even now when i see it running i'm amazed just how good it was and still is.