• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

The Dreamcast didn't have to die part 2 - Model 2 power at home in 1996 against Sony and Nintendo

VGEsoterica

Member
I can't help myself...I love making these alternative histories backed by facts and the fact is Sega walked away from the buying 3DO M2 deal at the last possible minute. THIS could have been the reality in 1996...just wait to release Saturn til then and pivot it to M2 hardware. But how much better would it really have been?

Well we have a comparison point...the Sega Model 2 hardware. The goal was always to be able to port Model 2 games to Saturn as close as possible for Sega and clearly they did NOT achieve that. But imagine if Sega could have had Model 2 levels of power at home in 1996 to pit against Sony and Nintendo with perfect or near perfect ports of some of their most popular arcade games around. THAT could have been epic for Sega, especially against PS1

So we really need to look at the Sega Model 2 vs the 3DO M2 and conveniently I am pretty sure Konami just looked at the games that existed on Model 2 and straight up copied the entire library when they made their five M2 powered arcade games. Like seriously it's such a blatant rip off of Sega properties I am surprised the lawyers didn't get involved

SO what do you think GAF? Could this have kept Sega in the hardware game longer or am I just being foolish?

 

VGEsoterica

Member
SOJ needed to get out of SOA's way like they did in the 16-bit era. That's the only way they would've remained in the hardware business.
yes the fighting between SOJ and SOA managed to accomplish nothing except wasting money. Two divisions of the same company both spending money and resources to compete against each other?! No matter who wins you just dumped a lot of cash and time on something you WONT use
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
SOJ needed to get out of SOA's way like they did in the 16-bit era. That's the only way they would've remained in the hardware business.
Yea, lots of truth to this.

Reading what was going between the two back then is like something out of a comedy film.

I feel like the Saturn's disastrous launch set them on the path to destruction. SOJ was so effing paranoid over the PSX and PS2 and they were so reactionary in the worst possible way. Such a shame, I play my Saturn all the time still, awesome console. I was never into the DC all that much but I did love playing PSO, so much fun.
 
Last edited:

ManaByte

Member
And how much would this have cost?

Really, Sony did the same thing but with Namco's arcade hardware. Namco made their System 11 arcade board with the original PSX hardware. That allowed games like Tekken and Ridge Racer to have arcade perfect ports.
 

Romulus

Member
Maybe some of it was dwindling consumer confidence too. Segas last 3 hardware products were the Saturn, 32x, and Sega CD. Pretty much a consistent line of market failures.
 
Last edited:
I can't help myself...I love making these alternative histories backed by facts and the fact is Sega walked away from the buying 3DO M2 deal at the last possible minute. THIS could have been the reality in 1996...just wait to release Saturn til then and pivot it to M2 hardware. But how much better would it really have been?

Well we have a comparison point...the Sega Model 2 hardware. The goal was always to be able to port Model 2 games to Saturn as close as possible for Sega and clearly they did NOT achieve that. But imagine if Sega could have had Model 2 levels of power at home in 1996 to pit against Sony and Nintendo with perfect or near perfect ports of some of their most popular arcade games around. THAT could have been epic for Sega, especially against PS1

So we really need to look at the Sega Model 2 vs the 3DO M2 and conveniently I am pretty sure Konami just looked at the games that existed on Model 2 and straight up copied the entire library when they made their five M2 powered arcade games. Like seriously it's such a blatant rip off of Sega properties I am surprised the lawyers didn't get involved

SO what do you think GAF? Could this have kept Sega in the hardware game longer or am I just being foolish?



I question whether or not having "model 2 power" would've changed much in the end. The problems at Sega ran much much deeper than hardware. The whole company was a shitshow, east and west constantly at odds with each other and (in regards to the hypothetical release of 1996) the over reliance on arcade titles.

The rest of the industry had moved on but here was Sega in the mid 90s relying mostly on ports of arcade games that were short and designed around taking quarters. Their design philosophy was antiquated and should have been left behind a half decade before. I can't help but think that even if Sega went the M2 route it would've inevitably ended up in the same scenario we all saw play out.

I'm enjoying these videos though keep it up
 
Last edited:

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Dreamcast reminds me of a company loading up on games and not worrying about hardware. For a while yes sega consoles were the hottest things, but since then even the SEGA games are disappointing.
 

VGEsoterica

Member
I question whether or not having "model 2 power" would've changed much in the end. The problems at Sega ran much much deeper than hardware. The whole company was a shitshow, east and west constantly at odds with each other and (in regards to the hypothetical release of 1996) the over reliance on arcade titles.

The rest of the industry had moved on but here was Sega in the mid 90s relying mostly on ports of arcade games that were short and designed around taking quarters. Their design philosophy was antiquated and should have been left behind a half decade before. I can't help but think that even if Sega went the M2 route it would've inevitably ended up in the same scenario we all saw play out.

I'm enjoying these videos though keep it up
the thing is though M2 doesn't just bring arcade perfect ports...it brings really easy to develop for hardware home for Sega. Saturn was a mess to deal with. I MADE a demo on M2 and I am not a coder. More devs would have wanted to work on a Sega M2 vs a Sega Saturn as the SDK and OS on M2 was a dream compared to any other platform on the market
 
The Dreamcast is a beefed up N64. No chance on competing with the PS2. Sega should have put more effort in saving/minimizing the Saturn disaster and launching a more powerful console on the same year as the PS2. Perhaps, this M2 deal would have been the best option Sega could have taken. A simpler and more standardized system. They also would have had more time to follow the transition that was happening in the home console space.
 
yes the fighting between SOJ and SOA managed to accomplish nothing except wasting money. Two divisions of the same company both spending money and resources to compete against each other?! No matter who wins you just dumped a lot of cash and time on something you WONT use
That's just you lot swallowing what that lair Tom Kalinske says and in any major company with subsidies, they'll be disagreements and a little infighting
MS had 2 teams battling against each other to develop the Xbox. SONY Japan and Sony America/Canada had major disagreements over the naming and the pricing of the unit, so much so Olaf Olafsson walked and SONY Japan fired most of the Canadian staff but one never hears much about that.

The biggest mistake SEGA made was letting SEGA America bring out the 32X project instead of dropping it outright and letting them try and develop the 32Bit Sonic. Given how crap M2 games looked from Konami, It was clear SEGA did well to stay away from the Hardware, their games barely troubled PSX games, never mind Model 2 . It's a shame that SEGA didn't continue with Nvidia on that hardware they were working together on mind
 
Last edited:
Really, Sony did the same thing but with Namco's arcade hardware. Namco made their System 11 arcade board with the original PSX hardware. That allowed games like Tekken and Ridge Racer to have arcade perfect ports.

Sony and Namco did it better mainly because they designed an arcade spec that took the limitations of home 3D into account and went from there, rather than building a super-powerful arcade board (for the time) and then needing to pare down a lot of features to get it running on a 3D console from the decade.

If Sega took more of a Neo-Geo approach, made a 5th-gen system that was literally a home Model 2, then maybe that could've worked better. Which is what I guess VGEsoterica VGEsoterica is getting at by suggesting a Sega-branded M2 for 1996, which would've been even more market-friendly MSRP wise than the Neo-Geo AES was for its time.

The rest of the industry had moved on but here was Sega in the mid 90s relying mostly on ports of arcade games that were short and designed around taking quarters. Their design philosophy was antiquated and should have been left behind a half decade before.

This wasn't actually the issue, and the industry didn't shift nearly as far from arcade-style games as some might think. The vast majority of PS1's early content (1994-late 1997) were very arcade-style games in terms of their game design, or in other cases being literal arcade ports. Tekken, Ridge Racer, Destruction Derby, Twisted Metal, Loaded, Jumping Flash, Motor Toon, Crash Bandicoot, Parappa etc. These were all games that either had actual arcade ports, or a lot of arcade game design sensibilities (lives systems, simple controls, very flashy gameplay etc.). A game like Destruction Derby for example, would've worked perfectly as an arcade release with just a few simple design tweaks here and there. You of course had the Resident Evils and Tomb Raiders, and various JRPGs etc. but those were exceptions. Or at the very least, didn't overpower its library compared to the arcade-style games that were present.

The shift to more cinematic games leading PS1 AAA more or less began with Final Fantasy VII and Gran Turismo, then in 1998 you got a ton of those kind of games like RE2, Parasite Eve, Xenogears, MGS etc. Those started taking over more as the marquee big AAA releases, but even then you still had arcade games like Tekken 3 in the mix, too. Sega's issue in the mid '90s with their ports to Saturn wasn't that they were arcade games, it was that they had VERY little additional home-exclusive content.

Just compare the Saturn port of VF2 to the PS1 version of Tekken 2. The former didn't have a lot of extra content, in fact the CG videos were put out as their own separate discs that only came to Japan. Why were they not included in the game directly, especially when those CG discs offered at least some element of story and characterization to the fighters? Meanwhile, Tekken 2 had a good deal of extra content, including IIRC some home-exclusive characters, and Tekken 3 took all of that to the next level.

Even early Namco PS1 ports of Ridge Racer and Cyber Sled offered a few extra bonuses, whereas with a lot of Sega's arcade ports to Saturn you were lucky to get remixed OSTs usually. I think some of them did a 'Saturn Mode' but it wasn't the majority, and the one arcade port that got a bevy of extra content, the Saturn version of Virtua Racing, was done by Time Warner!

I think Sega were of the impression simply getting home ports of the arcade games that matched or mostly matched up well visually was enough, and maybe it would've been if other companies like Namco and Midway didn't routinely pump in a ton of extra content for the home ports of their arcade games. But since they did, that made Sega's offerings seem anemic by comparison even if often times Sega's stuff had better gameplay.

Speaking of which, none of Sega's arcade games from that period, IMO, were designed as quarter-munchers. I think that's an unfair label applied to arcade games in general; while some definitely were designed that way, the truth is quite a lot had real skill to them and if you mastered the game mechanics, you could reliably beat them on probably a couple of dollars, if not less. There are tons of shmups for example designed to be beaten on a single credit, if you have the skill to do so. A lot of Sega's arcade games, especially from the '90s, are designed with a fair difficulty level, and if you're at least somewhat decent in them, you can generally beat them without feeding a metric ton of credits into them.

And they also had a lot of depth, there were tournaments for Daytona USA for example. In fact, you can find video for them on Youtube. However, they're all in Japanese as that's where the tournaments were held, but it's pretty fascinating stuff. You simply can't have that for games if they're supposedly shallow on the gameplay front.

The Dreamcast is a beefed up N64. No chance on competing with the PS2. Sega should have put more effort in saving/minimizing the Saturn disaster and launching a more powerful console on the same year as the PS2. Perhaps, this M2 deal would have been the best option Sega could have taken. A simpler and more standardized system. They also would have had more time to follow the transition that was happening in the home console space.

The Dreamcast was a lot more than just a beefed up N64 spec-wise, that's selling it short. It still had hardware advantages over the PS2, such as more VRAM, better color depth (tho that might've been due to using better video out), and on average better textures (it's not until 2003 or so where it feels PS2 games start regularly providing texture quality on par with Dreamcast). There are a few other advantages as well but I'd have to look them up.

PS2 was absolutely overhyped in terms of its technical capabilities, and while part of that was due to Sony another part was due to the media of the time TBH. Of course it did have absolute advantages over Dreamcast in a few very important areas (geometry rate, lighting, pure 3D math calculations etc.), and even over the Xbox and Gamecube (particle fillrate, mainly, partly due to the insane width of its memory bus, it was 2560-bit or something like that...that's wider than some HBM configurations today just for reference).

But structurally speaking there were no games on PS2 that Dreamcast would not have been able to do, some downscaling in certain graphical areas (and maybe increases in a few other areas) nothwithstanding. TBH the only system I feel you can reliably say had games that couldn't be (relatively) easily done on other systems that gen was the Xbox, just due to its built-in features like broadband ethernet and the HDD. A Blinx, for example, you literally could not do a game like that on the Dreamcast, Gamecube or PS2 due to its use of the HDD (and if you wanted to try on the PS2, you'd need the HDD expansion, which I'm not even sure came to market. I know the Network adopter did).
 
Last edited:

nkarafo

Member
M2 is nothing like a Model 2 in terms or power. It's closer to a N64 which makes it only marginally more powerful than the Saturn already is so still miles behind the Model 2, which was almost a generation ahead in terms of performance.
 

Romulus

Member
Sony and Namco did it better mainly because they designed an arcade spec that took the limitations of home 3D into account and went from there, rather than building a super-powerful arcade board (for the time) and then needing to pare down a lot of features to get it running on a 3D console from the decade.

If Sega took more of a Neo-Geo approach, made a 5th-gen system that was literally a home Model 2, then maybe that could've worked better. Which is what I guess VGEsoterica VGEsoterica is getting at by suggesting a Sega-branded M2 for 1996, which would've been even more market-friendly MSRP wise than the Neo-Geo AES was for its time.



This wasn't actually the issue, and the industry didn't shift nearly as far from arcade-style games as some might think. The vast majority of PS1's early content (1994-late 1997) were very arcade-style games in terms of their game design, or in other cases being literal arcade ports. Tekken, Ridge Racer, Destruction Derby, Twisted Metal, Loaded, Jumping Flash, Motor Toon, Crash Bandicoot, Parappa etc. These were all games that either had actual arcade ports, or a lot of arcade game design sensibilities (lives systems, simple controls, very flashy gameplay etc.). A game like Destruction Derby for example, would've worked perfectly as an arcade release with just a few simple design tweaks here and there. You of course had the Resident Evils and Tomb Raiders, and various JRPGs etc. but those were exceptions. Or at the very least, didn't overpower its library compared to the arcade-style games that were present.

The shift to more cinematic games leading PS1 AAA more or less began with Final Fantasy VII and Gran Turismo, then in 1998 you got a ton of those kind of games like RE2, Parasite Eve, Xenogears, MGS etc. Those started taking over more as the marquee big AAA releases, but even then you still had arcade games like Tekken 3 in the mix, too. Sega's issue in the mid '90s with their ports to Saturn wasn't that they were arcade games, it was that they had VERY little additional home-exclusive content.

Just compare the Saturn port of VF2 to the PS1 version of Tekken 2. The former didn't have a lot of extra content, in fact the CG videos were put out as their own separate discs that only came to Japan. Why were they not included in the game directly, especially when those CG discs offered at least some element of story and characterization to the fighters? Meanwhile, Tekken 2 had a good deal of extra content, including IIRC some home-exclusive characters, and Tekken 3 took all of that to the next level.

Even early Namco PS1 ports of Ridge Racer and Cyber Sled offered a few extra bonuses, whereas with a lot of Sega's arcade ports to Saturn you were lucky to get remixed OSTs usually. I think some of them did a 'Saturn Mode' but it wasn't the majority, and the one arcade port that got a bevy of extra content, the Saturn version of Virtua Racing, was done by Time Warner!

I think Sega were of the impression simply getting home ports of the arcade games that matched or mostly matched up well visually was enough, and maybe it would've been if other companies like Namco and Midway didn't routinely pump in a ton of extra content for the home ports of their arcade games. But since they did, that made Sega's offerings seem anemic by comparison even if often times Sega's stuff had better gameplay.

Speaking of which, none of Sega's arcade games from that period, IMO, were designed as quarter-munchers. I think that's an unfair label applied to arcade games in general; while some definitely were designed that way, the truth is quite a lot had real skill to them and if you mastered the game mechanics, you could reliably beat them on probably a couple of dollars, if not less. There are tons of shmups for example designed to be beaten on a single credit, if you have the skill to do so. A lot of Sega's arcade games, especially from the '90s, are designed with a fair difficulty level, and if you're at least somewhat decent in them, you can generally beat them without feeding a metric ton of credits into them.

And they also had a lot of depth, there were tournaments for Daytona USA for example. In fact, you can find video for them on Youtube. However, they're all in Japanese as that's where the tournaments were held, but it's pretty fascinating stuff. You simply can't have that for games if they're supposedly shallow on the gameplay front.



The Dreamcast was a lot more than just a beefed up N64 spec-wise, that's selling it short. It still had hardware advantages over the PS2, such as more VRAM, better color depth (tho that might've been due to using better video out), and on average better textures (it's not until 2003 or so where it feels PS2 games start regularly providing texture quality on par with Dreamcast). There are a few other advantages as well but I'd have to look them up.

PS2 was absolutely overhyped in terms of its technical capabilities, and while part of that was due to Sony another part was due to the media of the time TBH. Of course it did have absolute advantages over Dreamcast in a few very important areas (geometry rate, lighting, pure 3D math calculations etc.), and even over the Xbox and Gamecube (particle fillrate, mainly, partly due to the insane width of its memory bus, it was 2560-bit or something like that...that's wider than some HBM configurations today just for reference).

But structurally speaking there were no games on PS2 that Dreamcast would not have been able to do, some downscaling in certain graphical areas (and maybe increases in a few other areas) nothwithstanding. TBH the only system I feel you can reliably say had games that couldn't be (relatively) easily done on other systems that gen was the Xbox, just due to its built-in features like broadband ethernet and the HDD. A Blinx, for example, you literally could not do a game like that on the Dreamcast, Gamecube or PS2 due to its use of the HDD (and if you wanted to try on the PS2, you'd need the HDD expansion, which I'm not even sure came to market. I know the Network adopter did).


And not just the HDD of the og xbox but the shader pipeline and massive gulf in RAM/gpu/cpu speed. Playing riddick felt next gen and the console was already a few years old.
People try and say bandwidth for the ps2 was some massive advantage over GC and xbox, but look at multiplatforms. Most were developed with ps2 in mind yet almost always run at higher settings on xbox. Sometimes 2x fps and higher resolutions on xbox. If bandwidth was that critical, every xbox or GC game shd have struggled.
 
Last edited:

VGEsoterica

Member
M2 is nothing like a Model 2 in terms or power. It's closer to a N64 which makes it only marginally more powerful than the Saturn already is so still miles behind the Model 2, which was almost a generation ahead in terms of performance.
In the right hands M2 can rival Model 2. Konami is just one example of a dev working with the hardware. But the hardware of M2 is theoretically able to outcompete base Model 2. And I am not biased. I have a closet of Model 2 and M2 LOL...and the Model 2 games are usually better in gameplay terms
 

VGEsoterica

Member
Dreamcast reminds me of a company loading up on games and not worrying about hardware. For a while yes sega consoles were the hottest things, but since then even the SEGA games are disappointing.
Sega has def lost a step or two in the last 5-10 years. They either do something really well or totally fail (Sonic Forces)
 

Skifi28

Member
I swear, dreamcast fanboys are the worst. They even have their own timeline they live in. It's been 20 years man, just let it go!
 

IFireflyl

Gold Member
tumblr_p67h27fTg71vj8ggto1_540.gif
 

nkarafo

Member
In the right hands M2 can rival Model 2. Konami is just one example of a dev working with the hardware. But the hardware of M2 is theoretically able to outcompete base Model 2. And I am not biased. I have a closet of Model 2 and M2 LOL...and the Model 2 games are usually better in gameplay terms
Everything i saw so far from M2, including all the games in your own channel, makes it look like a turbocharged N64, even the blurry textures are similar.

Model 2 games are a huge step above. They have way more polygons and textures are sharper/higher resolution.

Sure it's better than the Saturn and should be able to do more stuff but Model 2 ports would still suffer.
 
Last edited:
In the right hands M2 can rival Model 2. Konami is just one example of a dev working with the hardware. But the hardware of M2 is theoretically able to outcompete base Model 2. And I am not biased. I have a closet of Model 2 and M2 LOL...and the Model 2 games are usually better in gameplay terms
Konami was really good back then and also remember the M2 cost Panasonic over $100 million dollars, in contrast, the DC development cost SEGA $50 to $70 Million to develop.
 
The HDD absolutely came to the market, FFXI required it. That's why when Sony made the slim PS2 without the HDD bay Square ported FFXI to the Xbox 360.

Ah I had totally forgotten about that. It's just that very few PS2 games even used it so it feels like it was never there. Seems like the network adapter got around a lot more, probably to compete with Xbox Live.

And not just the HDD of the og xbox but the shader pipeline and massive gulf in RAM/gpu/cpu speed. Playing riddick felt next gen and the console was already a few years old.
People try and say bandwidth for the ps2 was some massive advantage over GC and xbox, but look at multiplatforms. Most were developed with ps2 in mind yet almost always run at higher settings on xbox. Sometimes 2x fps and higher resolutions on xbox. If bandwidth was that critical, every xbox or GC game shd have struggled.

Yeah, OG Xbox had quite a few advantages over PS2, Dreamcast and Gamecube, tho FWIW I think Gamecube also had a similar shader pipeline, and that definitely separated the two of them from systems like PS2.

Though to also be fair, PS2's particle fillrate advantage did come in handy with some games; Zone of the Enders for example, even the 360 version has compromised particle effects compared to the PS2 one due to that very reason. Silent Hill 2 on OG Xbox also had a similar cutback with the fog/mist effect, it has a lot less volume compared to the PS2 one.

Sega has def lost a step or two in the last 5-10 years. They either do something really well or totally fail (Sonic Forces)

Eh, this REALLY depends on what specific Sega IP you're into. If you're really into the older classic IP that's been dormant for a while, I can understand how it'd feel like they've taken a step or two back. If you're really into classic Sonic, I can also understand, though they've had flashes of brilliant Sonic games over the past decade or so (Generations, All-Star Racing Transformed, Mania).

But if just talking pure gaming output, they've been one of the most consistent and best over the past decade, especially the past few years. You don't win Best Publisher of the Year by MetaCritic averages multiple times without putting out some solid content. And they've been gradually bringing back older IP: Daytona (arcade-only still), House of the Dead (arcade-only still), Streets of Rage, classic Sonic, Sakura Wars, Virtual-On, Virtua Fighter etc. I'm hopeful for Sonic Frontiers, as well.

They're a lot more than just Sonic and have been for a while now. I do think they could promote some of their games a lot better though.

Everything i saw so far from M2, including all the games in your own channel, makes it look like a turbocharged N64, even the blurry textures are similar.

Model 2 games are a huge step above. They have way more polygons, textures are sharper/higher resolution and most (if not all of them) run at steady 60fps.

Sure it's better than the Saturn and should be able to do more stuff but Model 2 ports would still suffer a lot.

There's not a lot fundamentally different from Model 2 vs. M2 that you'd get completely different game design possible on the former not possible on the latter. That said, there's no M2 games with the level of fidelity of the best of Model 2, but we have to keep in mind Model 2 was fully supported commercially, and had one of the best devs in the industry supporting it (Sega). M2 didn't have a very long commercial life at all, and I doubt Konami put their best teams on M2 software (and it's not like Panasonic had any 1P developers to rely on, either).

That all said, a Sega console using M2 tech in 1996, would've translated Model 2 games more faithfully than Saturn, that's for sure. And even if there would've been differences, they'd be a lot less glaring, and still be better looking than PS1's arcade ports from companies like Namco. Only question is the viability of such a Sega console from a business POV and what it'd of done for them realistically as a platform holder.
 

VGEsoterica

Member
Ah I had totally forgotten about that. It's just that very few PS2 games even used it so it feels like it was never there. Seems like the network adapter got around a lot more, probably to compete with Xbox Live.



Yeah, OG Xbox had quite a few advantages over PS2, Dreamcast and Gamecube, tho FWIW I think Gamecube also had a similar shader pipeline, and that definitely separated the two of them from systems like PS2.

Though to also be fair, PS2's particle fillrate advantage did come in handy with some games; Zone of the Enders for example, even the 360 version has compromised particle effects compared to the PS2 one due to that very reason. Silent Hill 2 on OG Xbox also had a similar cutback with the fog/mist effect, it has a lot less volume compared to the PS2 one.



Eh, this REALLY depends on what specific Sega IP you're into. If you're really into the older classic IP that's been dormant for a while, I can understand how it'd feel like they've taken a step or two back. If you're really into classic Sonic, I can also understand, though they've had flashes of brilliant Sonic games over the past decade or so (Generations, All-Star Racing Transformed, Mania).

But if just talking pure gaming output, they've been one of the most consistent and best over the past decade, especially the past few years. You don't win Best Publisher of the Year by MetaCritic averages multiple times without putting out some solid content. And they've been gradually bringing back older IP: Daytona (arcade-only still), House of the Dead (arcade-only still), Streets of Rage, classic Sonic, Sakura Wars, Virtual-On, Virtua Fighter etc. I'm hopeful for Sonic Frontiers, as well.

They're a lot more than just Sonic and have been for a while now. I do think they could promote some of their games a lot better though.



There's not a lot fundamentally different from Model 2 vs. M2 that you'd get completely different game design possible on the former not possible on the latter. That said, there's no M2 games with the level of fidelity of the best of Model 2, but we have to keep in mind Model 2 was fully supported commercially, and had one of the best devs in the industry supporting it (Sega). M2 didn't have a very long commercial life at all, and I doubt Konami put their best teams on M2 software (and it's not like Panasonic had any 1P developers to rely on, either).

That all said, a Sega console using M2 tech in 1996, would've translated Model 2 games more faithfully than Saturn, that's for sure. And even if there would've been differences, they'd be a lot less glaring, and still be better looking than PS1's arcade ports from companies like Namco. Only question is the viability of such a Sega console from a business POV and what it'd of done for them realistically as a platform holder.
Yes Konami put second and third tier devs on M2 projects and they still look and play legit. KCER handled most of those games
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Really, Sony did the same thing but with Namco's arcade hardware. Namco made their System 11 arcade board with the original PSX hardware. That allowed games like Tekken and Ridge Racer to have arcade perfect ports.
They weren't arcade perfect, but they were pretty close. Ridge Racer was released in the arcade on System 22 and ported down, leaving it at only 30 FPS at lower resolution and it suffered from the classic PS1 texture warping. The arcade version was 60 FPS and much cleaner. Tekken was more or less the same as the arcade. There were differences in text and fonts and some other assets but the gameplay was pretty much the same in action.
 

Romulus

Member
Though to also be fair, PS2's particle fillrate advantage did come in handy with some games; Zone of the Enders for example, even the 360 version has compromised particle effects compared to the PS2 one due to that very reason. Silent Hill 2 on OG Xbox also had a similar cutback with the fog/mist effect, it has a lot less volume compared to the PS2 one.

I've heard that several times, but the instances are extremely rare and every time I see a comparison video, it just seems pretty lackluster in terms of the differences. And could easily be attributed to a bad port considering how rare it happened. Even the PC version of silent hill 2 was worse than the xbox, and that definitely wasn't because of power. They were just sub-par ports. They screwed up the audio files, FMV, all kinds of simple stuff wasn't even ported over correctly on Xbox or PC so it just shows it was a low effort.
 

VGEsoterica

Member
They weren't arcade perfect, but they were pretty close. Ridge Racer was released in the arcade on System 22 and ported down, leaving it at only 30 FPS at lower resolution and it suffered from the classic PS1 texture warping. The arcade version was 60 FPS and much cleaner. Tekken was more or less the same as the arcade. There were differences in text and fonts and some other assets but the gameplay was pretty much the same in action.
Yes Ridge Racer on PS1 was legit. It’s just when you put it side by side against the arcade version you really see the large gulf between the two.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Yes Ridge Racer on PS1 was legit. It’s just when you put it side by side against the arcade version you really see the large gulf between the two.
The 60 FPS Bonus Turbo Mode demo they did years after launch was pretty amazing considering the hardware. It still wasn't as polished as the arcade version but it was so smooth. PS1 had some chops if developers were willing to put in the effort.
 

Hawk269

Member
Yea, lots of truth to this.

Reading what was going between the two back then is like something out of a comedy film.

I feel like the Saturn's disastrous launch set them on the path to destruction. SOJ was so effing paranoid over the PSX and PS2 and they were so reactionary in the worst possible way. Such a shame, I play my Saturn all the time still, awesome console. I was never into the DC all that much but I did love playing PSO, so much fun.
We need a Sega version of the 6 part MS Power On show. I love Sega, still own all the systems they have made and I continue to look and buy old Sega games, just recently added 5 CIB Sega Master System games to my collection....but I would love a well made documentary that goes all over this in great detail.

The Dreamcast was so much ahead of it's time. I still imagine if Sega managed to survive and be successful what a Dreamcast 2 would be like. One thing for sure, Sega on their own hardware were incredible content makers.
 
Having been fortunate enough that Konami used a local arcade as a test site, I managed to play their M2 based games. Visually at the time they were nice, but not that impressive. No where near as impressive as going to E3 and seeing Soul Caliber running on a Dreamcast. That was a sight to behold that I clearly can still remember.

Perhaps if Sega just focused on software, never released the 32x and didn't pass on SGI's tech things would have been different in that gen. After that gen, going with the 3DFX hardware would have been my vote. Easy PC ports and GLIDE api could have had huge impacts on the landscape then.
 
I've heard that several times, but the instances are extremely rare and every time I see a comparison video, it just seems pretty lackluster in terms of the differences. And could easily be attributed to a bad port considering how rare it happened. Even the PC version of silent hill 2 was worse than the xbox, and that definitely wasn't because of power. They were just sub-par ports. They screwed up the audio files, FMV, all kinds of simple stuff wasn't even ported over correctly on Xbox or PC so it just shows it was a low effort.

That is certainly a possibility and can never be ruled out. Considering the status of Xbox in the industry at the time, and the general state of PC gaming (seems like 2002 - pre Steam were what some'd call the "Dark Ages" of PC gaming), and Konami's general lack of experience in doing PC ports, and it could definitely be down to lack of resources and experience with how some parts of the Xbox SH2 port turned out, and the PC port in general.

That might be the more likely reason, but there are pros and cons to weighing each possibility.

We need a Sega version of the 6 part MS Power On show. I love Sega, still own all the systems they have made and I continue to look and buy old Sega games, just recently added 5 CIB Sega Master System games to my collection....but I would love a well made documentary that goes all over this in great detail.

I'd be so down for this. Sadly, it'd require Sega of Japan to provide a lot of insight, including things that are still only really known amongst them. Considering how Japanese executives tend to be pretty reserved, and don't delve that openly into internal corporate politics of their companies (or their company divisions/branches), I strongly doubt we'll be a modern documentary equivalent of Power On focused on Sega's time as a platform holder.

Thankfully, there's the Service Games book and, if you know where to look, the Eidolinn's Inn articles a big chunk of the book are based on. Not all the info in the articles are fully accurate, and some of it is more speculative on the writer's part (the book is a much more polished version of the articles and greatly expands on the content of the articles plus additional information too), but you won't find a more comprehensive set of articles on Sega hardware history anywhere else besides Sega Retro.
 
Top Bottom