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Sega Saturn Architecture – A practical analysis (2021)
- Ghaleon 3y agoIn the end, PR and Sony's pockets beat SEGA. That's really it. SEGA had many self-inflicted wounds for sure. Games: what games set the world on fire on PSX, really? Resident Evil in '96 and FFVII in' 97? And the Saturn had killer games esp in '96. So it's def not the library IMO. Hard to code for: devs had no problem dealing with the Playstation 2 a gen later, and the DC was easy to utilize but everyone dropped it when SEGA discontinued it, even tho the user base was good (in the USA at least, not sure about EUR). Consumer good will toward SEGA: yeah, but look at reliability issues with Sony and MS systems. They were pretty bad, esp with the 360, but these didn't hurt their console long-term health at all. The SEGA CD was not a flop in the States at least. It was always a high-end, kind-of-unnecessary cool product with some great games, but no killer app. It was successful for SEGA. (The 32x WAS a huge eff up tho for everyone involved. But I don't think on a mass-consumer level it's brief existence single-handedly crippled the Saturn). People will buy anything that's marketed well in the States (can't speak for EUR). The Saturn was marketed like CRAP in the US. SEGA had its head up its ass and threw out all that made the Gen more successful than the SNES. We can talk tech and minor details about what worked and didn't work for the consoles, but it's really just marketing and no good Sonic at launch (or ever) that doomed it.
- lizardking 3y agoIt's fair to say that the consensus is that the PSX had a superior library to the Sega Saturn, particularly in the US. 1997 was a banger of a year - FF7, FF Tactics, Tekken 3, Symphony of the Night, etc.
- tosh 3y agoThe Sega Saturn had quite a few gems (e.g. Panzer Dragoon Saga, Shining Force III, Burning Rangers, Dragon Force I & II, …) that were never ported or re-made afaiu. edit: oh, and of course Saturn Bomberman
- thevagrant 3y agoPanzer Dragoon made it to 1st gen Xbox iirc. Saturn and following on, the Dreamcast were quite good and deserved more success.
- tetraca 3y agoPanzer Dragoon (the rail shooter) might have but not Panzer Dragoon Saga (the RPG). That was never re-released and the source code was lost.
- SuperNinKenDo 3y agoPanzer Dragoon Orta did, along with (I believe emulated) copy of the original Panzer Dragoon embedded inside, but not Saga.
- dagw 3y agoSega created a Panzer Dragoon game for the Xbox (great game), but the original Panzer Dragoon games never got ported as far as I know
- fredoralive 3y agoThe first game had a PC port, which was later included as a bonus in Panzer Dragoon Orta.
- bdw5204 3y agoThe original Panzer Dragoon games were remade for modern consoles a few years ago. Saga still hasn't been ported though.
- Grazester 3y agoWhen you unlock Pandora's box in Orta you can play the original game...the PC port version that is
- hnlmorg 3y agoThat’s not PD Saga though Saga was a totally different game to the 2 rail shooters that preceded it
- cubefox 3y agoThis might be the most complex hardware architecture of a home console ever.
- pjmlp 3y agoDreamcast and PS 3 are also quite close in complexity.
- msk-lywenn 3y agoI think you mean PS2 and PS3. Dreamcast was rather easy. One might even say, a dream to program for.
- masklinn 3y agoPS2 was the tail end of the bespoke hardware, and Sony gave their chips very marketing names, but I don’t remember the hardware being especially strange. The SDK being ass would be a different issue.
- msk-lywenn 3y agoWell the two vector coprocessors (vu0, vu1) each talking to a different processor (cpu or "gpu") was quite weird, imho.
- mairusu 3y agoThe PS2 was infamous to develop for. Most of the bottleneck came from the vector units. Most middleware eventually made working around the strange hardware much easier. When asked if they were weary about developing on PS2, due to its reputation of it being tough to code for, Sega devs famously laughed and replied that they already mastered the Saturn - how much harder could it get?
- SunlitCat 3y agoI wonder how many games utilized Windows CE (which was a thing for it) on the Dreamcast.
- glimshe 3y agoThe Sega Saturn had a pretty complicated hardware architecture. I can understand that scaling out the game "work" into multiple CPUs and dedicated processors makes sense from a cost-benefit perspective, but I'm sure this contributed to the Saturn's relatively poor sales. Many people said that ultimately it was hard for companies to justify the investment in learning it all to make games that fully utilize the hardware. Somehow this reminds me of Sid Meier's saying that the player must have fun, not the game developer - and in this case, perhaps the hardware designers were having too much fun!
- ZaoLahma 3y agoGrowing up in the 90s, it was bizarre to witness the downfall of Sega. Here the Mega Drive (Genesis) was almost as successful as the SNES. Everyone either had a Mega Drive or played it regularly with friends. It was a very popular piece of hardware. Then the generation after everyone had a Playstation, and I knew of only one kid who ended up with the Saturn. It's so strange considering that the Saturn was released several months ahead of the Playstation here. I dont't know if it was due to the Saturn being seen as the inferior option at the time, pricing, availability or some other factor, but the Playstation absolutely killed it. After that Sega was gone.
- Solvency 3y agoi'm 38 and grew up with this lineage: NES, Genesis, PSX/N64, PS2/XBOX, PS3/XBOX360, XboxOne. I was fanatic about Genesis because of the big title games like Mortal Kombat, Sonic, etc. I VORACIOUSLY read gaming mags and the hype around the PSX was massive. It utterly dwarfed Sega. And seeing the first image of Cloud starting up at the Shinra tower captivated me. The games they were touting were just incredible looking. I was just a kid and marketing won me over.
- MBCook 3y agoSega’s colossal screwup of the launch with a high price, pissing off huge retailers, and then months of no games was a total disaster.
- nolok 3y agoThe article describe it as if the design was surprising with how many chips there were etc, but it's important to understand the context : complete lack of synergy and "fight for dominance" between the Japan and USA team, SEGA JP was making a 2D console, SEGA US was making a 3D console, the JP team was about to win that fight and then the PSX appeared so they, essentially, merged the two together. You end up with a 2D console with parts and bits of an unfinished 3D console inside it. It makes no sense. For a tech enthousiast and someone who loves reading dev postmortem, it's glorious. For someone who likes a clean design, it's irksome to no ends. For mass gamers of that era, where the big thing was "arcade in your living room" it's a disapointement, and SEGA not knowing which side to focus on didn't help at all. The wikipedia article has a lot more details [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Saturn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Saturn
- flipacholas 3y agoIf you check the other articles about the PlayStation [1] and the Nintendo 64 [2], you'll see that the design of a 3D-capable console in the 90s was a significant challenge for every company. Thus, each one proposed a different solution (with different pros and cons), yet all very interesting to analyse and compare. That's the reason this article was written. [1] https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/playstation/ https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/playstation/ [2] https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/nintendo-64/ https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/nintendo-64/
- nolok 3y agoOh I was not criticizing the article per se, my apologies if it came out as such, I just thought this piece of information was important to understand why they ended up with such a random mash of chips.
- flipacholas 3y agoAh no worries! From my side I was only trying to explain more about the origins of the article, since I see it often mentioned/speculated in many forums. By the way, I'm always open to criticism ! (https://github.com/flipacholas/Architecture-of-consoles/issues https://github.com/flipacholas/Architecture-of-consoles/issu...)
- thearrow 3y agoNice analysis! I still have an original Sega Saturn I’ve owned since 1996 that I fire up occasionally for a nostalgia bomb. The thing still runs perfectly, same as the day I unboxed it! They may have ended up with quite a complex hardware architecture, but you’ve gotta love the reliability of the older consoles. The same cannot be said of the more modern consoles I’ve had over the years - burning themselves up or failing in other ways.
- Ghaleon 3y agoIt's not just old consoles that are reliable, it was SEGA (and Nintendo). When Sony and MS rolled in their consoles are ready cut corners in reliability, and here we are today. PSX and Playstation 2 disc-read errors are extremely common and crippling, even back then. But by the time people noticed they already owned a bunch of games and would just buy a new console lol.
- pezezin 3y agoSo true. I bought a Saturn a month ago after hearing and reading much about it for years, and the thing still works perfectly. I even bought a stack of CD-R to burn some "backups", and not a single read error. I was expecting to have laser power issues, but nothing, it just works.
- itomato 3y agoThe diversity in consoles reminded me of the diversity in home computers in the waning glory days before PC domination. Some of the same OEMs and publishers made it through until today. I’d like to see an infographic and may be so motivated that I make one.
- Aissen 3y agoI love Copetti's work (and have previously used it with citation), but it always feels too high-level. But since I know how much work it is to write those, it always feels unfair to ask for more. Anyway, thank you Rodrigo if you're reading this !
- PUSH_AX 3y agoMy favourite technical breakdown/hack of the Saturn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOyfZex7B3E
- hbn 3y agoSpeaking of awkward Sega architecture, MattKC recently did a video[1] on his second channel about the 32X, which if you don't know was a weird module that slotted into the cartridge slot of the Genesis to enable it to play a separate lineup 32-bit games. Since it was essentially 2 consoles working in tandem, it was another situation where you had 2 CPUs working together to pump out a video image. He tried to wire up his own video cables and found you could cut out the video signal from one machine and only get the output rendered from the other. The 32X itself would pump out 3D rendering while the Genesis would supply 2D graphics for e.g. menus, HUD, sprites, etc. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl9fjoolS2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl9fjoolS2s
- gamepsys 3y ago> Consequently, the VDP1 is designed to use quadrilaterals as primitives, which means that it can only compose models using 4-vertex polygons (sprites). This gave the 3D Sega Saturn games a more boxy look than PS1 counterparts. Comparing Resident Evil on Saturn and PS1 is a good side by side to see the difference. The overall result is that Sega Saturn games have a unique aesthetic in 90s 3D gaming. It's also worth highlighting that the Sega Saturn's emulation is far behind other platforms. Perhaps it's the lack of success in the west, paired with the complex architecture.
- wk_end 3y agoSaturn emulation is very solid at this point. But yeah, for a long time it was quite poor.
- breadmaster 3y agoYes, it's really quite good right now, and very accessible under programs like OpenEmu. I have a Saturn hooked up to a CRT still, but the emu doesn't feel very different these days.
- segasaturn 3y agoSaturn Emulation is definitely possible but the amount of complexity in the hardware means that it's much more resource intensive than its 32-bit contemporaries: https://mednafen.github.io/documentation/ss.html#Section_intro https://mednafen.github.io/documentation/ss.html#Section_int... >Mednafen's Sega Saturn emulation is extremely CPU intensive. The minimum recommended CPU is a quad-core Intel Haswell-microarchitecture CPU with a base frequency of >= 3.3GHz and a turbo frequency of >= 3.7GHz(e.g. Xeon E3-1226 v3), but note that this recommendation does not apply to any unofficial ports or forks, which may have higher CPU requirements. Those minimum specs are about the same as what's required to emulate a Wii via Dolphin, two generations ahead of the Saturn!
- nikanj 3y agoFor some perspective, Haswell came out in 2013. Those steep processor requirements aren't that steep in 2024
- flykespice 3y agoNowadays Console hardware has gotten boring, lacking the great diversity of the previous generations. It's basically a PC motherboard repurposed.
- donatj 3y agoAs a lover of the Sega Saturn, I really believe the use of quads over tris really contributed to the Saturn's unique look.
- busfahrer 3y agoI love Copetti’s architecture articles, especially the one on PS1, such an interesting early not-quite-3D architecture.