Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Aug 23, 2023 12:06:38 GMT
Good comparison of the arcade and console versions of 3tb
Key differences
- Dreamcast runs at higher resolution but no anti-aliasing - Dreamcast has lower resolution 2D backgrounds (Jeffrey's beach moon) - Dreamcast lacks background lighting on characters(blue tint missing on Jeffrey's beach) - Dreamcast has some character polygons missing (Akira's elbows, Shun's hips, Jacky's shoulders) - Dreamcast larger 3D backgrounds have fog added (Sarah's subway, Lion's library, Pai's rooftop) - Dreamcast 3D background have lower resolution textures (especially hills on Lau's wall)
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Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Aug 2, 2023 8:19:36 GMT
Games are never made to be judge on how they play or look in 20 years time. I've never really got this 'aged badly' Some games have aged much better than others though as their mechanics were adopted by the industry while others weren't. Mario 64, Quake, Tomb Raider and Resident Evil were all critically acclaimed back in 1996, but fast forward to 2023 and only Mario 64 and Quake have aged well. Yes Mario 64 has camera issues, but the overall control isn't too dissimilar to Mario Odyssey. Most FPS games on PC still control just like Quake did. Regarding Tomb Raider, I would like it to return to its roots in some aspects, a move towards exploration over combat, a return to actual tombs, and of course the return of sassy Lara (the confirmation of the return Camilla Luddington would probably be enough to put me off the next game), while maintaining the modern control scheme.
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Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Aug 2, 2023 8:11:45 GMT
I've always played games (my first game was Mario Bros 3), but the move to 3D was where I really got into games and I don't think we would've seen the explosion of gaming's popularity in the late 90s without it.
I think my first experience of 3D was Daytona USA in the arcades, I'd never been a fan of driving games such as OutRun or Super Mario Kart but Daytona USA completely blew me away, driving games made sense.
Same goes for fighting games, never got into Street Fighter, I liked Mortal Kombat's style but never got good at it, Virtua Fighter and Tekken were where I got into fighting games, way more moves that were easier to execute and realistic animation. While I've played some 2D fighters since the 3D revolution I've not been convinced to buy a single one of them.
Don't even recall playing any adventure games before Tomb Raider and Resident Evil (maybe the original Zelda), once again these suddenly appealed to me.
The only 2D games I really got into were platformers (Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong Country) and RTS games (Command & Conquer, Dark Reign).
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Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Jul 19, 2023 10:51:30 GMT
Well I loved Tomb Raider then and I still do now. Great game, more puzzle solving than its successors & tricky enough, but not horrifically hard. I found the controls quite clunky on a recent play, but other than that I still love it. It has an atmosphere that modern games struggle to match. Hope the next Tomb Raider game manages to capture the magic of the originals.
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Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Apr 26, 2023 12:41:51 GMT
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.
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Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Apr 25, 2023 13:13:00 GMT
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUZ436FXB4U&t=168sI 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?
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Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Sept 2, 2022 9:33:00 GMT
How about Dead or Alive Saturn vs PlayStation?
Dead or Alive being cancelled was one of the big factors contributing to me trading my Saturn for a PlayStation in early 98, so I only ever played the PlayStation version.
Some observations:
- Gameplay seems the same - Performance seems the same (resolution, frame-rate), difficult to tell from YouTube videos, there's also additional effects like breath on cold stages - PlayStation version has gouraud shading which massively improves the look of characters - PlayStation version appears to have more polygons per fighter and reduced polygon clipping - Saturn version has parallax backdrops where as the PlayStation version is static, PlayStation goes for a more photorealistic look to the backgrounds similar to Tekken 2, Saturn version tries to stay faithful to the arcade - PlayStation explosions are transparent, Saturn seems to be using interlaced lines instead of the usual mesh (I could be wrong) - UI on Saturn remains faithful to the arcade, PlayStation version uses the same "Y2K" font and life bars as Dead or Alive 2
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Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Sept 14, 2021 10:12:40 GMT
I'm on about when the systems 1st hit Japan, not months down the line in the next year. In 1995 the Model 1 board it's self looked old hat with even the console's offering more impressive looking games The average consumer didn’t care what was going on in Japan though. Most consumers first saw the systems running on demo pods in places like GAME, HMV and Curry’s after their UK launch. Back to the Virtua Fighter ports, I’m still waiting on the DF Retro review of the first 3 Virtua Fighter games that John Linneman hinted at a couple of years back. I’d love to see some in depth analysis of how they pulled off the VF2 Saturn port along with the graphical leap on VF3 and Model 3.
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Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Sept 8, 2021 18:45:14 GMT
Yeah the Saturn version was a dog’s dinner compared to the PlayStation.
Die Hard has huge glass windows which obviously suffer from the typical transparency issues. To hide pop-in the background is black against the grey foreground, PlayStation blends this together with shading, the Saturn has the huge squares crawling along the floor instead. Models and textures seem somewhat blockier too.
Die Harder is a complete mess in terms of frame rate. Texture resolution seems lower on Saturn too.
Die Hard with a Vengeance actually isn’t too bad on Saturn.
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Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Aug 10, 2021 9:51:07 GMT
Bump!
Was thinking about this game the other day and something occurred to me… is Die Hard With A Vengeance the first ever 3D open world driving game?
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Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Aug 2, 2021 14:09:15 GMT
You never seem to read at how poor CyberSled port was on the PS or how Virtua Cop was a more impressive port to that of Time Crisis From what I recall the big 3 from each for their launch windows (in terms of TV, magazine coverage and marketing) were: Saturn: Virtua Fighter Daytona USA Panzer Dragoon PlayStation: WipEout Ridge Racer Tekken Those were each system’s big 3 and the PlayStation titles were far more impressive with magazines calling Saturn a half step compared to the true next-gen PlayStation (CVG were kind to Sega… EDGE, GamesMaster and the others not so much) and many had written the system off. Wasn’t really until Christmas that we saw that Saturn was just as capable as the PlayStation. Virtua Cop released a couple of weeks before Christmas and Saturns were being bundled with Bootleg Sampler showing off Sega Rally and Virtua Fighter running in real time. All of a sudden it was Saturn with the more impressive graphics, but I think by then it was too late.
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Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Aug 2, 2021 10:27:05 GMT
Most people were just comparing the biggest fighting and racing games at the time. Most of the market didn’t have time to read into which arcade hardware these games were ported from. To be fair to Daytona it looked much better in magazine screenshots than Virtua Fighter did, and the damage only really occurred when people saw it running in real-time, Virtua Fighter just looked bad from the start, I recall it looking even worse in the beta shots shown in magazines in 1994, especially when magazines were showing off Mortal Kombat 3 in the very same issue. Worth remembering that people didn’t have a full understanding of what 3D gaming was back then and didn’t understand VF1’s ugly aesthetic. Also worth considering that VF1, outside of downed side-rolling, was a 2D fighter unlike Tohshinden. In fact I don’t think we got true 3D fighters until VF3, Tekken 3 and Soul Calibur (I still consider those 3 games to be the pinnacle of the fighting genre). Back to graphics, yes CyberSled was ugly, but the magazines (CVG and GamesMaster) in particular were constantly drawing comparisons between Virtua Fighter and Tekken. Sony were also talking up how PlayStation was all about guraud shaded & textured polygons (they'd rejected a mascot from Sony USA called "polygon" man).
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Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Aug 2, 2021 9:03:14 GMT
I like VF more because the sound effects are far more bone crushing, the music far better and more importantly its easier to play and learn all the moves, more so for friends who didn't own games VF2 was just too deep and was hard to tell your mates all the moves and for them to learn them all. VF it was much easier and so you had better and closer matches at the time (well for me) Certainly agree with the feeling of impact on the original Virtua Fighter. For all the criticism of the graphics they really got the animations spot on right off the bat, still looks decent to this day. However I find with VF1 (along with Tekken 1/2) is that the small move set pushes players to keep repeating the same moves and combos, a bit like watching a Street Fighter match. I feel VF2 and Tekken 3 nailed the balance between simplicity and depth and it’s probably why the modern equivalents still feel similar. I particularly love each character in Tekken having a 10 hit combo, though I feel Killer Instinct took it way too far. Graphically VF1 was an embarrassment on Saturn and I feel it contributed largely to the system’s failure in the west, especially with all those graphical comparisons to Tekken in the magazines back in the day. VF2 was and still is a such a technical marvel that, if it were ready for launch, we’d have been looking at a different story for the Saturn. Other than the jarring disconnect between the 3D floating rings and the 2D backgrounds it still looks nice to this day.
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Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Aug 1, 2021 9:50:07 GMT
Didn't like 3D fighters. And after the community event that featured VF2 I know now I REALLY don't like them. As soon as I played Virtua Fighter and Tekken I knew there was no going back to Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. I love the higher move set and the way characters move more realistically, side stepping in later 3D fighters enhanced them even more over their 2D counterparts. I much rather the 1st VF to either myself Any particular reason? Is this just a nostalgia thing?
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Nick1984
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Post by Nick1984 on Jan 25, 2021 16:15:49 GMT
Draw for visuals and performance, I have to hand it to Virtua Fighter 2 for gameplay though, I just feel more connected to the character when playing.
Only played DOA on PlayStation though being in the UK.
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