Quake Digital Foundry analysis - a bad port?

[Nick1984]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUZ436FXB4U&t=168s

I remember this being praised by Official Sega Saturn Magazine back in the day, especially regarding the performance and graphics, what a fantastic job Lobotomy had done, here's some quotes from their review in issue 26...

"The 3D engine runs at a blistering pace considering the agony it must be for the Saturn to produce visuals of this quality."

"Quake is perhaps the greatest technical achievement the Saturn has yet to witness"

Watching this DF Retro review it really doesn't run well at all, I'm quite surprised that the frame rate goes down as low as 10fps in many parts reminding me of the open areas in Tomb Raider (especially the T-Rex) area. John says the frame rate combined with the d-pad make the game rather difficult to play.


Was it really that bad?

[buckoa51]

You've played it, surely? It's a competent port considering the hardware limitations. PCs of the time were way more powerful than Saturn/PlayStation.

[Team Andromeda]

Its just Nick stirring again


It run no worse or better than Perfect Dark 64 or Goldeneye 64 and those are held up as classics  and when Quake came out most people I knew who were in to PC gaming had a Pentium 90 and the Saturn version wasn't far off that and had some nice lighting effects incredible for the console and before Nick jumps in, yes a PS version would have been better 


Can you imagine if we had Nick stirring and DF counting frames in the so called glory days? Virtual Racing on the MD and Star Fox, Stunt Racer FX  on the SNES would be classed as unplayable due to frames as would Pilotwings 64, GoldenEye 64, Perfect Dark 64, Wave Race 64 due to sub 30 FPS updates and you could also add in Shadow Of The Colossus on the PS2

Sometimes it wasn't much better on the PC either, even though I had a Pentium the best I could get Geoff Crammond's F1 GP2 was 22 FPS .
People were far more forgiving of frames back them.

Before the days of people showing off they can see lag, count a missing frame and have 400% zoom

[wwammy]

Hmm Quake on the Sega Saturn was the first version of the game I had played but it didn't grab me to be honest.
I much preferred Duke Nukem.

However I was happy that Duke Nukem and Quake came out because they were overall great ports and the Sega Saturn was starved for software at the time.

I wouldn't play Quake on the Sega Saturn these days it was very difficult to see what's going on in the game and we have much better options.

That said there is great work being done in this area with the Hellslave Engine.

I really wonder what the Sega Saturn would be capable of if we were in an alternate universe where the Sega Saturn was the most popular console.

[buckoa51]

This isn't like e.g 32x doom where clearly the port was half assed, Lobotomy /did/ do a good job with it. The N64 version is definitely better of course but the Saturn version is playable enough. Obviously nobody is going to play Quake on the Saturn (or N64, or Amiga where I first played it) these days except out of curiosity or nostalgia.

I'm not even sure a PlayStation version would be guaranteed to be better. Potentially I suppose since the Quake engine was obviously triangles not quads like the Saturn architecture favoured and if it got a good dev team experienced with the hardware.

[Team Andromeda]

I much rather Exhumed and Duke on the Saturn, I even like Alien Trilogy for games, but Quake was a an experience and the Saturn port far better than it has any right to be ..

I didn't like the game on the N64 it lacked the lighting and the music and the music was so much a part of the Quake experience.

It gets Little praise but Alien Resurrection was incredible and had graphics to match Quake IMO

[Nick1984]

Apr 26, 2023 10:45:02 GMT Team Andromeda said:

I much rather Exhumed and Duke on the Saturn, I even like Alien Trilogy for games, but Quake was a an experience and the Saturn port far better than it has any right to be ..

I didn't like the game on the N64 it lacked the lighting and the music and the music was so much a part of the Quake experience.

It gets Little praise but Alien Resurrection was incredible and had graphics to match Quake IMO

It was very impressive, I believe it was also the first console FPS to use the modern twin stick control screen.

Quake II on PS1 also ran really well, though I'm not sure how much it deviated from QII on PC compared to Saturn's deviation from PC QI though in terms of level design.

[Team Andromeda]

I think Goldeneye 64 did offer a twin stick controls with 2 pads, but maybe that's splitting hairs.

Alien Resurrection was awesome on the PS and had some of the best graphics seen on the system, I was gutted when the planned DC version was dropped.

Quake 2 was a coding showcase on the PS2, bit I never liked Quake 2 on the PC, never mind the PS.

I did also enjoy Blood 2 the Chosen at that time

[davyk]

Quake 2 was quite impressive on the N64. It supported the memory expansion too. But I never got on with FPS games on consoles. The only one I enjoyed was Doom 64. The basic problem I have with console FPS games is the control. Twin stick control just didn't do it for me. It isn't a genre I'm a huge of anyhow but I loved Doom 2 on PC and Doom64.

I played a bit of Exhumed on Saturn and enjoyed that at a technical level as it felt very solid and like the design, but I soon gave up on it. I just don't like moving about in 3D levels - it's the main reason I gave up on mainstream gaming and while I loved Super Metroid and Zelda LttP on SNES, I really didn't like Ocarina of Time and Metroid Prime.

But I'm in a minority. 3D simply doesn't impress me and never really did. I couldn't (can't) understand the obsession with it.

[Team Andromeda]

I didn't like Quake 2 on any system, but the game was a masterclass in programming on the PS. I actually found the N64 the console to own for FPS at the time and it's one of the main reasons I loved the system so much... Goldeneye was incredible and I also loved Turok 1 and 2.

Exhumed was amazing, because for me it was a 3D Metroid game set in the past with the most perfect level design outside of Mario IV and what I loved ever more was after finishing the game, using the SSM Team Dolls walkthrough to find all the dolls, which would test one's platform and gaming skills to the limit. I've never enjoyed an FPS so much (thought Duke came close)

I was one of those people who were happy with 2D and 3D games, but one knew after Mario 64 all main AAA games needed to be 3D sadly...

[davyk]

I can see why 3D is important in driving games and in something like recreating the sensation of flight. It's great for that - some of my favourite games use 3D that way. But running around trying to find things in 3D or 2D is a complete bore to me, and so many 3D games have you roaming around aimlessly to pad the content out.

[Team Andromeda]

3D was amazing and the future you could see that in the Arcades. I'll never forget the 1st time I played Tomb Raider or Mario 64 it was utterly amazing.

There are some games I also felt worked better in 2D mind. I would have rathered saw SEGA made a mega 2D Shinobi game on the PS2 than the 3D effort, but most would have laughed if it was 2D.

[buckoa51]

Doom 64 was great, I really liked that about the N64 how even when it got its own version of games they were often "remixed" or different somehow, you never see anything like that now since all the consoles are basically just the same PC architecture.

[davyk]

Mario 64 was the first time I was properly impressed by 3D. It wasn't "corridored" like so many 3D games of the time in which despite appearances it was very limited re where you could go and you were steered to go a particular way. With M64 you could go "round the back" of things and go anywhere within the bounds of the level. The simpler abstract look was the price of that of course but that means it has aged a bit more gracefully than its contemporaries.  Doom has that feel too but of course it wasn't real 3D - it was just a clever illusion (albeit a highly immersive one).

I remember liking Battlezone from way back and some old driving games like Pole Position that created a 3D look.. It was good enough to immerse you in the game but I never saw them as superior to really good 2D games. Always saw it as a bit of a novelty.

Pilotwings was another one that I really liked but I didn't like Pilotwings 64 quite as much (which was actually 3D versus the Mode 7 of SNES). I'm still waiting for a followup...unlikely I will ever see it.

3D has never felt as exact as 2D when it comes to jumping etc. It has rarely truly engaged me. Though I have really loved it (Doom 2, Pilotwings, M64, Sega Rally, Daytona, F-Zero X) when it has engaged me.

I remember enjoying some PC Quake on the office LAN (might have been Quake 2). It was impressive too. We had a great time chasing each other around - the levels were tight and well designed and the action was a real laugh.

[davyk]

I also remember really enjoying Wetrix on the N64. An actual proper 3D puzzle game.

There's Kurushi/IQ on PS1 but as clever as that game is and as beautiful as it is ,it could be done in 2D. The rolling cubes are really only there because it looks good.