Board 8 > What's the most technically impressive Sega Saturn game? (Day 9) + PS1 final

(+) Yeah! (+)

Damn these secondary consoles.

This is why we're skipping the Ouya.

Myst

Not sure if this is the right pick, but Astal. Its such a beautifull game to look at.

people still abbreviate it as PS

PDS

X-Men VS Street Fighter


It took an expansion cartridge to run, but it was an improvement over the arcade & proved the Saturn was the definitive system for 2D. While the Playstation could only manage 1-on-1 fights (minus a gimmicky mode that required both teams to be identical so it still only had to load two characters) and still had to cut animation frames, the Saturn had the complete game & even had speed options to run the game in turbo mode. [Why in the world you'd want to make the game ludicrously fast is an unanswered question, but it is still impressive.]

Of course, not many people wanted 2D games at the time, but in terms of 2D power this game is a full console generation over the Playstation and completely embarrasses it.

Damn I actually can't believe gran turismo 2 couldn't make the poll that time.

Anyway I was definitely struggling to think of a convincing candidate for this one. There's games on there that really impress me in their own ways, like the budget title Tilk that brings full voice acting and anime-style production to a 30+ hour campaign, and that one Bomberman game on the Saturn has an interesting edge in being the only game i can think of with up to 10 player local multiplayer, but they don't really feel like smart calls when there are so many games on the system boasting 3D graphics unlike them (even including the other bomberman game on the system...)

For me it's probably between one of the higher profile 3D fighting games and mech games (namely the likes of the Virtua Fighter 1/2, Fighters Megamix, Fighting Vipers, Battle Arena Toshinden, Dead or Alive, Zero Divide and Final Fight Revenge among others, as well as ones like the Gungriffon series in the latter regard. Oh yeah, and also the odd standout games in other genres, such as Resident Evil competitor Deep Fear, groovy action games like NiGHTS and Burning Rangers, and of course the popular candidate in Panzer Dragoon Saga). Other genres also definitely saw strong representation this generation too, but given how far they lagged behind the most advanced examples on PS1 I don't think they're quite in contention (yes this is me being unfair to all of the racing games for being so limited compared to gt1/2).

Anyway personally I've decided to hand it to Virtual On, and no it's not just because it happens to fit my aforementioned 3D fitegames and mechgame descriptions, though admittedly it is a large part of it. It's mostly because it just makes sense it's more technically demanding than any other 3D fighter on the system (as an arena fighter with high speed movement and heavy use of projectiles) and they did a great job on the conversion.

Panzer Dragoon Saga

Bump

Badump

Baabumpo

Final bump

Sega Saturn, Shiro!

Powerslave

Or Street Fighter Alpha 3...or really any of the late 2D fighting game releases.

Once people figured out how to program for the thing, it was on it's way out of the USA. Shame, that thing was powerful.