UtopiaNemo

@pinkyShy Literally no one anywhere on this page said anything about the MD sound hardware being superior to the SNES. Who exactly are you implying is an idiot or a liar?

This is an article about dedicated fans of the MD hardware doing some cool things with it that were previously thought impossible. The author’s language about it “replicating” tracks is a bit hyperbolic, but these tracks sound way better than they have any right to. Chill out and go sh*t in someone else’s kiddie pool.

@RetroGames I greatly appreciate you saying you prefer SNES tunes more, ie expressing a preference as an opinion instead of a fact. So many people conflate opinions with facts today and it’s maddening.

@RetroGames Pyron didn’t make those tracks. That dude works mostly on optimizing color palettes. The tracks are by Vector Orbex.

I get what you’re saying and there’s merit to some of it, but I think you’re missing the point a bit. Sega fans get stoked to see really good translations of things once thought impossible. Ironically, I was JUST listening to the opening track of SCIV yesterday with my daughter and talking about how the MD can’t do sounds like that. And then this come out. BTW, I will state that I think Savaged Regime’s Theme of Simon actually betters the original, as well as his Mega Man X tunes, but that’s because he knows what the MD does well, and leans into it over slavish imitation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=YsG2UMWEmyU&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.timeextension.com%2F&embeds_referring_origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.timeextension.com&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY

And you know what? I still feel the MD can’t do that. There’s a dark, warm sound that those lo-fi SNES samples pull off that the MD just can’t do. But at the same time, I never would’ve believed it could come as close as VO got them here. And there’s sounds he’s getting out of the MD that I’ve never heard anyone get. And that’s really freaking cool.

The other point I’ll state is that SNES sounds objectively sound no more realistic than MD sounds. Since they’re lofi samples, they mimic real sounds, but they don’t really sound like real instruments. I say this because I’ve played a lot of 16-bit era game tunes to younger kids who grew up in the modern, audio era where games sound like whatever they want to, and almost none of them make any more connection with SNES sounds to real instruments than they do to MD sounds. They’re all synthesized sounding to them. Kind of the same way that folks who saw Toy Story in the theaters thought it looked very believable, but most people today think it looks like hot garbage.

So this release is the PC-88 or 98 version? I’ve never played any of them, but the soundtracks are phenomenal, and the music of each version is done quite well.

Unused ending 2 on the Mega Drive is one of my favorite ‘new Jack swing’ tracks of all time.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aXXccL2dHec&pp=ygUfRXl1dSBkZW5zZXRzdSAyIHVudXNlZCBlbmRpbmcgMg%3D%3D

It’s a weird comment that kind of makes the guy sound like an arrogant douchebag. It’s like a basketball player reflecting on one of the biggest blowout games of his career, saying, “I wish that instead of the score being 127 to 25, I would’ve blocked that one shot and kept them to 23.”

By the end of that console generation, almost no one remembered that the game was originally intended for the Saturn. The fact that it came out first in one territory made no difference in the grand scheme of things.

@Fanboy_Destroyer what did you prefer about Tomb Raider on the Saturn, aside from the fact that the Saturn is more powerful than the PlayStation? 😉

The Saturn’s slower framerate that got really choppy at times and the grainier textures on the Saturn were a bummer for me, but in truth I only played through it on the Saturn, slightly envious of my friends’ PS versions, where closeup textures turned into undulating water (instead of unexpectedly folding origami paper).

@RetroGames a cancer with a cause is still a cancer. I’m getting the impression that you’re kind of a narcissist who feels compelled to have the last word. So feel free. I won’t respond.

@AFourEyedGeek I don’t know how it is abroad, but American children tend to have a playground mindset that second place is completely illegitimate and worthy of derision. The haves mock the have-nots for not having, and look down their noses at them.

It’s an elitist position that, unfortunately, some people never outgrow. Some folks like @Retrogames and the Sega fans he’s obsessed with are good examples of this. So instead of leaving it with their adolescence, they become adult adolescents.

I think a lot of the weird wish fulfillment by some of these Sega fans is defensive. When the thing you really like is met with a series of responses ranging from bemusement to outright snide derision by your schoolmates, you either keep it to yourself or feel you have to defend it, because the implication is always “what kind of loser are you that likes this stupid thing”. I think that’s where a lot of the slavish loyalty comes from.

@RetroGames again dude, you’re talking about this more than any Sega fanboy. You’re literally perpetuating the thing you keep complaining about. YOU.

@RetroGames I would guess because it’s an audacious claim by someone who would seemingly know, what they’re talking about and it goes counter to the common narrative about the systems. Such comments are keen to get folks riled up and talking, which has certainly proved to be the case.

I’m sure we’d be in agreement that it’s a silly thing to base an article around, but it served its function. Personally, I wish Jez San had provided some sort of basis for the claim, because it makes him out to be a bit of an ass. In any case, I’ve enjoyed some of the resultant conversation. To be frank, the author’s intent isn’t something I’m primarily concerned with, as hypothesizing about someone’s motives tends to be a short path toward assuming the worst about people. I do like a lot of the content Time Extension puts out, and I don’t mind a fluff piece every now and then.

@RetroGames crazy thing is, you’re obsessing about it as much as anyone else here, more than just about anyone. Since you’re that stuck on this topic, you totally misread the slant of @avcrypt’s post. Dude’s a homebrewer who has worked on both systems. He’s not primarily concerned with the winner or loser of the 5th gen console war, he’s concerned with how their performance and complexity affects what he’s doing right now.

I totally agree with you that talking “what could’ve been” and who won a business competition is a waste of time. So stop talking about it.

@KitsuneNight he’s definitely trolling, but I also realized he’s kind of commenting on the article, which basically amounts to “a guy said a thing” but the guy didn’t back it up with anything. I hate to say it, but it’s actually kind of funny.

Dudes who get so worked up over which one was better maybe deserve to be trolled a bit. I mean, I can have a conversation about specifics, but at some point it’s just people saying the same thing over and over. I think that’s what he’s getting at

@Leynos did they ever find a build that runs on actual hardware? It does look great, but the footage I’ve seen runs at sub 30fps, has no lighting effects whatsoever, slow animation and a sluggish camera. I don’t know if that counts for me tbh

@KitsuneNight not hard to believe at all. Crappy games are way easier to produce than good games.

@KitsuneNight yeah, I was going to mention that one. It used the same graphics libraries as VF2 and Last Bronx. They’re the only third party that Sega allowed to do that; I don’t think I ever read how that happened. Sega was pretty protective of that stuff

@Toohats you got an honest laugh out of me on this one, and yes, GT and PDS are both great games.

@RetroGames no polygonal driving game on the Saturn hit 50-60 fps, effects or no. They were all 25-30fps or lower.

I didn’t realize Wipeout 3 was a 60fps game. I know RR4 included the OG version of RR, running at 60fps. There isn’t any lighting going on, but it’s still pulling off a game with better draw distance than any racer on the Saturn, at double the framerate.

@RetroGames I think the article is good because it sparked some decent conversation. I do agree that a lot of the points here retread old ground, which is why I made my initial point: instead of looking at what games were better on the PS or the Saturn, take a look at the best examples of each, and then ask, “could the competition do that?”

@RetroGames he’s just trolling, I’d ignore him if I were you. No one here has even quoted any specs, except the theoretical poly max.

@KitsuneNight the troll is also a moron, apparently. A cut-rate Eric Idle, thinks he’s on Monty Python while other people are having actual conversations.

Fighter’s Megamix is great because it has decent lighting for the Saturn, but to do that they had to run it at lower resolution. That’s kind of my point; Saturn was never able to pull off hi-res with lighting at 60fps; the PS could do both.

Daytona CCE is the same way; they were able to finally hit 30fps with a better draw distance, but at a lower resolution without lighting. The PS could throw more texture-mapped polys at once and also have lighting effects, and push the draw distance out so far. Daytona CCE is maybe the best-looking racer on the Saturn but there’s at least 5 PS racers that absolutely blow it out of the water in terms of visuals.

I’d say that Sonic R, Burning Rangers, and Nights could do the 30fps with lighting (and some cool 2D effects), but all of those games they either had abysmal pop-up, or hide it in small corridors with frame drops.

@Toohats I’m using the word troll because repeating the same thing over and over whilst refusing to dialogue when someone refuted your point is what trolls do. Yes, Jez said a thing. I’ve illustrated why the thing Jez said has no basis in reality and all you can do in response is to repeat that Jez said the thing. If it smells like a troll it’s a troll. Prove me wrong

@KitsuneNight no, they’ve not provided any evidence, they’ve proven themselves a troll. I’m happy to converse with people who can articulate points and have meaningful conversation. He’s not provided any points for discussion because he can’t. Best leave the trolls to rot in their own nonsense

@KitsuneNight Hey, I’d even concede the point if someone were able to produce homebrew graphics that are better than what the PS could do. But no one has yet.

I think Last Bronx looks even better than VF2, but my point isn’t that Saturn games can’t look great; they can. But those two games, arguably the best the Saturn ever looked, which run in high resolution at 60fps using non-shaded texture mapped polys, do not look as good as games like Tekken 3 or Tobal no. 2, which do all that but include fantastic lighting, better textures, and 3D transparencies.

Arguing the Saturn is more powerful than the PS is like arguing the genius who dropped out of high school to smoke weed in his parents’ basement is smarter than the kid with the slightly lower IQ who went on to graduate top of their class. Untapped potential is meaningless.

@Toohats again, in what way specifically? If you can 1) name actual specs and 2) point to even ONE real-world example that utilized it, we can have an intelligent dialogue.

If you compare the absolute best on each system, the PS comes out significantly ahead. That’s absolutely relevant.

@Toohats More powerful by what metric? Theoretical flat-shaded polys that we never saw utilized even once? As soon as you put them in motion and added any kind of lighting or other effects, that number dropped like a stone. I say this as someone who only owned a Saturn at the time. You take both systems at their 3D best and the Saturn is a distant second.

@Leynos Good point about Radiant Silvergun. As far as Grandia and a few other games that happened to look better on the Saturn, my point was that almost always the PS could’ve looked better. The reverse isn’t true; the best-looking 3D games on the PS are doing things the Saturn was incapable of.

Is there any game on the Saturn where you can look at it and go, “Yeah the PlayStation couldn’t do that”?

Other than games that used the RAM cart, I can’t think of anything offhand. Maybe the water effects in Panzer Zwei. But the PS could do something passable, and then do everything else with better textures, shading, and color transparencies.

On the flip side, there are a ton of games on the PS where each of us know the Saturn couldn’t come close. Rage Racer, Ridge Racer 4, Tekken 3, Tobal No. 2, Gran Tourismo 2, Metal Gear Solid….at the same frame rates as any Saturn counterpart, they pushed more polygons with better texture resolution and colors with more and better lighting and shading effects and less draw-in and polygonal transparencies. Heck, even the remix of OG Ridge Rager hit 6oFPS with draw distances roughly on par with the best the Saturn could do. 🤷‍♂️

I love what they did with the music and colors, but man those voices sound terrible. I’m sure they’ve been much improved over the original iteration, but wow.

Please excuse my ignorance, but is it impossible to use different sound drivers for a patch? Or is it that the original is data limited? I’m trying to understand why devs like Data East, Treasure, or Chrysalis were able to utilize fantastic samples while Capcom wasn’t (and even the fixes are at the low end of what’s theoretically possible).

@RetroGames People who were around and read game magazines at the time knew blast processing was a marketing gimmick. EGM talked about it, Next Generation talked about it. In fact, Next Generation, when interviewing Kalinske about the Saturn, asked Kalinske to admit BP was marketing (of course well after the Genesis was competitive, and of course he refused).

I’d also like to see the SNES get some more homebrew love. It’s starting to happen, but the mere fact that SNES was more mainstream and there were and are a more rabid fanbase for the Genesis/Mega Drive means there are more folks predisposed to take the time for making Sega magic. 🤷‍♂️

Can I just say that multiple times a week, Time Extension proves that they are the freaking coolest gaming site by a wide margin? Too late, I just said it.

I bought the compilation book and the Blu-Ray and it is SO good. And that list of names at the end…..looks like a reason to go back!

I’d really like to see this play. Unfortunately the video doesn’t actually show any live playing with sound effects and voice.

Genesis version had terrible samples but yeah, the 6-button controller was god-tier.