Ugliest moment

[Warlok]

The Saturn is my all-time favourite gaming system and blah blah. But you have to admit that some games have the ugliness of something out of this world. Some moments in Saturn gaming history are so freakishly crazy stupid that you don't know whether to cry or laugh. Please mention some! I mainly refer to graphical flaws or examples of extremely bad dramatical taste, not stupid translations from japanese (though some of those are fun, Shining Wisdom is a good example).

Two of my "favourites" (both mentioned before) are the guys that changes tires in Daytona (what were the programmers thinking?!) and the mining cart-scene in Dark Savior. Other great moments are the strange pausations in dialogues in Burning Rangers (when you save someone, they doesn't seem to get the message, caugh inconsequently and Shou won't respond or explain the situation for several seconds and it all feels retarded and awkward). The "GAME OVER YEEEAAAAHHH!" in Sega Rally is weird, but that's only a good thing. Some of the dialogue in Deep Fear and the look of the hero's (can't remember his name) face in the FMV's are amazing as well. Looks like a inflatable sexdoll-version of Barbie's Ken. Only uglier and of an age that is impossible to define. Somewhere between 14 and 45 perhaps.

[sonix]

-Fifa 98 as a whole- looks like shit, plays like shit, horibble loading times, ridiculous results of score simulations (I played world cup and one of the semfinals was Brazil vs Kyrgystan), moreover, EA forgot to put weather conditions in this game, you can set the weather (rain, snow) but it won't make a difference.
-"Voice acting" in Athlete Kings- it makes all charactes look completely retarded, and Jeff Janses is probably the most un-British character ever.
-Announcer in Destruction Derby was horrible.
-Virtual Hydlide, I saw some videos of it and it looks like a 5 FPS game with some horrible visuals

[Anthaemia.]

I know the Saturn conversion of The House Of The Dead was released in an unfinished state, but compared to other late efforts such as Burning Rangers, Panzer Dragoon Saga and Shining Force III it's a major disappointment. However, things can only get worse after you've seen the slowdown that occurs when passing through the tunnel at the end of its third chapter, right before finishing off the spider-like boss in its final resting place. Honestly, was drawing a handful of pixels - and I do mean a handful, quite literally! - on screen at once too much for the Saturn to handle or something? With such "quality" titles appearing so late into its life, it's little surprise PlayStation fanboys were quick to dismiss our favourite 32-bit system as underpowered in terms of its rival's polygonal capability (even though we clearly knew better). Tantalus deserved nothing less than to have all ties with Sega well and truly severed after such a disaster... though I'm sure there are still worse examples of Saturn processor neglect out there, right?

[saturnworship]

Alien Trilogy
Doom
Destruction Derby

crap, crap, crap.

[rossi46]

OOF!

Alien Trilogy in the same context as Destruction Derby and Doom?

A tad harsh, methinks, no? Fair enough, it has those rubbish sprite based enemies, but the atmosphere was electric and it flowed at a very respectable pace.

I invested a lot of time in AT and I still have quite a bit of (rose tinted) love for the old dear. DD and Doom were both fountains of Fail, but AT was alright.

But each to their own and all that.

[saturnworship]

Well, yeah,,but... only 1 processor? Worst framerate than the PSX? Worst effects?

Why?

I find the game great on it's way but...lazy programmers are something UGLY.

[Anthaemia.]

Alien Trilogy? Destruction Derby?! I'd be foolish to deny the crap-fest that was Doom, but Alien Trilogy and Destruction Derby were decent Saturn conversions in my opinion. Destruction Derby was hardly a "fountain of fail," but each to their own (to use another perfect quote from Rossi's earlier post)! I can understand why some anticipating Destruction Derby on the Saturn were disappointed, though in retrospect the original PlayStation effort wasn't that much better. Alien Trilogy should be commended for using just one processor, even if the dormant second could have been utilised for "real" transparencies instead of the usual mesh-job we received instead. Again, what's so terrible about Alien Trilogy on Saturn that makes it worthy of comparison with Doom or perhaps Destruction Derby to a lesser degree? On the other hand, a game like The House Of The Dead used multiple processors and somehow managed to look far worse than Alien Trilogy... where's the justice?

[grolt]

NHL All-Star Hockey is a really, really ugly game. This is compounded by the fact that you can use multiple angles to show you just how bad pixelated sprites can look close up. My favorite was the "puck cam" where you literally just see first person through the puck. It's hilarious to try and play that way...what were they thinking!

As much as I love Congo, again all those blown up sprites look like shit when seen in close-up. I suppose we should mention the FMV games like Double Switch or Quarterback Attack that still make me cry.

[mick_aka]

The one thing that allot of people don't consider nowadays is that from about 1979 - 1995 I knew virtually nobody, anywhere that had a console hooked up to anything larger than a 14" TV.

And I would conclude that most games from that era were geared more towards screens that size.

I playes the 32X version of Virtua Fighter through my old Philips 14" TV recently and it looked FAR nicer than on my 28" Trinitron, on which it looks like shit.

[saturnworship]

why is that mick??

A CRT tv is a CRT tv...it should work nicely with VIRTUA FIGHTER 32X...why not?

[Deleted]

The pixels are smaller - edges look smoother on smaller TVs. Our brains fill in a lot of gaps and make things appear smoother to us.

This issue is particularly relevant when you consider emulating older consoles. Old NES and even 2600 games look a lot better when played in a small window. Play them at full screen and check out the difference.

[Anthaemia.]

Some games were designed to look just as good when resized for larger screens, with a few Saturn titles even boasting interlaced visuals, widescreen support and high resolution graphics long before these were common technological phrases! Virtua Fighter is naturally going to suffer from extensive aliasing, though lushly-textured (in my opinion, for what that's worth) efforts like Panzer Dragoon Saga or NiGHTS probably won't be as retina-destroying now. Such futureproofing was a sign of real genius back then and the only recent example I can think of is Gran Turismo 5, which can allegedly make use of several linked PS3 consoles to run at display mode far beyond the maximum allowed under the HD standard... though does anyone really know if this works properly, or was that just a typically-overhyped Sony tech demo masquerading as reality?

[tempest]

Some of the closeups of the cars in Touring Car just look ugly and hugely pixelated.