12 ms·

The 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 syne

by nolok 3y ago

The 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 ago
If 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 ago
  Oh 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 ago
    Ah 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...)
    - polpo 3y ago
      Thanks for the link – just opened an issue concerning the font weight and text color on the site.
- christkv 3y ago
  I do wonder what would have happened if the N64 had included a much bigger texture cache. It seemed the tiny size was it biggest con.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    Wasn't the thing you put in the slot infront of the cart a ram extension slot? I think you can play Rogue Squadron with and without if you want to compare. Or do youe mean some lower cache level?
    - skhr0680 3y ago
      that pack added 4MB extra RAM, OOT and Majora’s Mask are like night and day thanks to it. The N64 had mere kilobytes of texture cache, AFAIK the solution was to stream textures, but it took awhile for developers to figure that out
      - VelesDude 3y ago
        N64 had a 4KB texture cache while the Ps1 had a 2KB cache. But the N64's mip-mapping requirement meant that it essentially had 2KB + lower resolution maps. The streaming helped it a lot but I think the cost of larger carts was a big drag on what developers could do. It is one thing to stream textures but if you cannot afford the cart size in the first place it becomes merely academic.
        skhr0680 3y ago
        I don’t think storage space was an issue for graphics in particular. Remember the base system had 4MB memory and 320x240 resolution
        pezezin 3y ago
        The real problem was different. The PS1 cache was a real cache, managed transparently by the hardware. Textures could take the full 1 MB of VRAM (minus the framebuffer, of course). In contrast, the N64 had a 4 kB texture RAM. That's it, all your textures for the current mesh had to fit in just 4 kB. If you wanted bigger textures, you had to come up with all sort of programming tricks.
- Grazester 3y ago
  This should have been no struggle for Sega. They basically invented the modern 3D game and dominated in the arcade with very advanced 3D games at the time. Did they not leverage Yu Suzuki and the AM division when creating the Saturn? Then again rumor has it they were still stuck on 2D for the home market and then saw the PlayStation specs and freaked and ordered 2 of everything in the Saturn.
  - VyseofArcadia 3y ago
    In interviews IIRC ex-Sega staff has stated that they thought they had one more console generation before a 3D-first console was viable to the home market. Sure, they could do it right then and there, but it would be kind of janky. Consumers would rather have solid arcade-quality 2D games than glitchy home ports of 3D ones. Then Sony decided that the wow factor was worth kind of janky graphics (affine texture mapping, egregious pop-in, only 16-bit color, aliasing out the wazoo, etc.) and the rest is history. Nintendo managed largely not-janky graphics with the N64, but it did come out 2-3 years after the Saturn and Playstation.
    - jandrese 3y ago
      “Not janky” is a weird way of describing the N64’s graphics. Sure Mario looked good, but have you seen most other games on that platform?
      - paulryanrogers 3y ago
        Well it had a proper Z buffer so textures didn't wiggle. Now the fog, draw distance, and texture resolution combined with blurring were terrible. It was basically the haze console.
        01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
        Hope it's okay that I just reply to everyone Wiggling is down to lack of precision and lack of subpixel rendering, unrelated to Z buffering. Z buffers are for hidden surface removal, if you see wiggling on a single triangle floating in a void, it's not a Z buffer problem. When you see models clipping through themselves because the triangles can't hide each other, that's the lack of Z buffer.
- m45t3r 3y ago
  > you'll see that the design of a 3D-capable console in the 90s was a significant challenge for every company. While this is true, I still think that the PlayStation had the most interesting and forwarding looking design of its generation, especially considering the constraints. The design is significantly cheaper than both Saturn and Nintendo 64, it was fully 3D (compared to Saturn for example), using CD as media was spot-on and also having the MJPEG decoder (that allowed PlayStation to have not only significantly higher video quality than its rivals, but also allowed video to be used for backgrounds for much better quality graphics, see for example Resident Evil or Final Fantasy series). I really wanted to see a design inspired in the first PlayStation with more memory (since the low memory compared to its rivals was an issue it seemed, especially in e.g.: 2D fighting games where the amount of animations had to be cut a lot compared to Saturn) and maybe some more hardware accelators to help fix some of the issues that plagued the platform.
  - ehaliewicz2 3y ago
    It is not really any more 3D than the Saturn as it still does texture mapping in 2D space, same as the saturn. It's biggest advantage when it came to 3D graphics, aside from higher performance, was it's UV mapping. They both stretch flat 2D textured shapes around to fake 3D. The N64 is really far beyond the other two in terms of being "fully 3D", with it's fully perspective correct z buffering and texture mapping, let alone mipmapping with bilinear blending and subpixel correct rasterization.
    - VelesDude 3y ago
      This is very true. I consider then N64 to be the first to use anything that resembles hardware vague similar to what the rest of the industry ended up with. It is a shame that SGI's management didn't see a future in PC 3D accelerator cards, it lead to the formation of 3DFX and with things like that SGI's value in the market was crushed astoundingly fast. They had the future but short term thinking blinded them to the path ahead.
    - m45t3r 3y ago
      But N64 was a more expensive design, and also came almost 2 years later, and from an architectural standpoint it also had significant issues (e.g.: the texture cache size that someone said above). This is why I said considering the constraints, I find the first PlayStation to be impressive.
dymax78 3y ago
>For mass gamers of that era, where the big thing was "arcade in your living room" it's a disapointement.... One exception to this is the shmup genre. The Saturn was inundated with Japanese Shmups and many are perfect (or near perfect) arcade ports.
- wk_end 3y ago
  2D fighters, as well. The port of SFA3 on Saturn trounces the PS1 release, for example.
ndiddy 3y ago
This is largely incorrect. The Saturn was entirely a Sega of Japan design. There's an interview (https://mdshock.com/2020/06/16/hideki-sato-discussing-the-sega-saturn/ https://mdshock.com/2020/06/16/hideki-sato-discussing-the-se...) with the Saturn hardware designer that gives some perspective into why he chose to make the hardware the way he did. Basically, he knew that 3D was the future from the response the PSX was getting, but besides AM2 (the team at Sega that did 3D arcade games like Virtua Fighter, Daytona USA, etc), all of Sega's internal expertise was on traditional 2D sprite-based games. Because of this, he felt the best compromise was to make a console that excelled at 2D games and was workable at 3D games. I think his biggest mistake was that he underestimated how quickly the industry would switch to mainly focusing on 3D. The actual result of Sega's infighting was far more stupid IMO. Sega of America wanted a more conservative design than the Saturn using a Motorola 68020 (successor to the 68000 in the Genesis) which would have lower performance, but developers would be more familiar with the hardware. After they lost this fight, they deemed the Saturn impossible to sell in the US due to its high price. SOA then designed the 32X, a $200 add-on to the Genesis that used the same SH2 processors as the Saturn but drew graphics entirely in software and overlayed them on top of the Genesis graphics. The initial plan was that the Saturn would remain exclusively in Japan for 2-3 years while the 32X would sell overseas. Sega of America spent a ton of money trying to build interest for the 32X and focused their internal development exclusively on the 32X. However, both developers and the media were completely uninterested in it compared to the Saturn. After it became evident that the 32X wouldn't hold the market, Sega of America rushed the Saturn to market to draw attention away from the 32X, but had to rely exclusively on Japanese titles (many of which didn't fit the American market) because they'd spent the past year developing 32X titles (the 32X had more cancelled games than released ones). All of this ended up confusing and pissing off developers and consumers.
- Ghaleon 3y ago
  The 32X initially sold well, and media coverage was much stronger than the 3DO/Jag/CDi. But SEGA abandoned support for it REALLY quickly. I had a 32X at launch and was excited, but almost all the games sucked. Shadow Squadron is like the only legitimate non-port, original game that's pretty good lol and it came out when the system was about dead. I think consumers were def skeptical of the 32X despite the marketing, and that was the main thing, in addition to an unimpressive library. Magazine coverage was decent but Gamepro in particular was very negative toward it. Like, Chaotix sucks but the music is amazing, and Gamepro not only trashed the game but gave even the music low marks because "no 32X audio is apparent" lol.
phire 3y ago
I've looked into it, and from what I can tell, the "3D was added late to the Saturn design" narrative is flawed. It's commonly cited that VDP2 was added later to give it 3D support. But VDP2 doesn't do 3D at all, it's responsible for the SNES "mode 7" style background layers. If you remove VDP2 (and ignore the fact that VDP is responsible for video scanout) then the resulting console can still do both 3D just fine (Many 3D games leave VDP2 almost completely unused). 2D game would take a bit of a quality hit as they would have to render the background with hundreds of sprites. If you instead removed VDP1, then all you have left are VDP2's 2D background layers. You don't have 3D and you can't put any sprites on the screen so it's basically useless at 2D games too. As far as I can tell, the Saturn was always meant to have both VDP1 and VDP2. They were designed together to work in tandem. And I think the intention (from SEGA JP) was always for the design be a 2D powerhouse with some limited 3D capabilities, as we saw on the final design. I'm not saying there wasn't arguments between SEGA JP and SEGA US. There seems to be plenty of evidence of that. But I don't think they munged the JP and US designs together at the last moment. And the PSX can't have had any influence on the argument, as the Saturn beat the PSX to market in Japan by 12 days.
- tadfisher 3y ago
  This is typical of Sega arcade hardware of the era (Model 1 and Model 2); these systems have separate "geometry processor" and "rasterizer" boards, with onboard DSPs. If you squint, the Saturn is what someone might come up with as a cost-optimized version of that architecture.
  - phire 3y ago
    Yeah. Especially if you rip out VDP2 and some of the more 2D orientated features of VDP1 it looks very much like an attempt at a cost-optimised Model 2. And if you read the interview that ndiddy linked above (https://mdshock.com/2020/06/16/hideki-sato-discussing-the-sega-saturn/ https://mdshock.com/2020/06/16/hideki-sato-discussing-the-se...), it might be accurate to say the Saturn design is what you get when an engineer with no background in 3D graphics (and unable to steal sufficient 3D graphics experience from the Sega Arcade division) attempts to create a cost-optimised Model 2. I suspect the first pass was just a cost-optimised textured quad renderer, then Sato went back to his 2D graphics experience and extended it into a powerful 2D design.
karmakaze 3y ago
Is this the PSX[0] you're referring to? I had no idea this existed, or what impact it had on gaming consoles. Edit (answered): "Why is PlayStation called PSX? Wishing to distance the project from the failed enterprise with Nintendo, Sony initially branded the PlayStation the "PlayStation X" (PSX)." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSX_(digital_video_recorder) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSX_(digital_video_recorder)
- Luc 3y ago
  PSX was used to refer to the PlayStation before it was released, and it stuck.
gxqoz 3y ago
The latest episode of the excellent video game history podcast They Create Worlds (https://www.theycreateworlds.com/listen https://www.theycreateworlds.com/listen) does a good job debunking some of these myths.

by nolok 3y ago

flipacholas 3y ago

If 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 ago
Oh 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 ago
  Ah 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...)
  - polpo 3y ago
    Thanks for the link – just opened an issue concerning the font weight and text color on the site.
christkv 3y ago
I do wonder what would have happened if the N64 had included a much bigger texture cache. It seemed the tiny size was it biggest con.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  Wasn't the thing you put in the slot infront of the cart a ram extension slot? I think you can play Rogue Squadron with and without if you want to compare. Or do youe mean some lower cache level?
  - skhr0680 3y ago
    that pack added 4MB extra RAM, OOT and Majora’s Mask are like night and day thanks to it. The N64 had mere kilobytes of texture cache, AFAIK the solution was to stream textures, but it took awhile for developers to figure that out
    - VelesDude 3y ago
      N64 had a 4KB texture cache while the Ps1 had a 2KB cache. But the N64's mip-mapping requirement meant that it essentially had 2KB + lower resolution maps. The streaming helped it a lot but I think the cost of larger carts was a big drag on what developers could do. It is one thing to stream textures but if you cannot afford the cart size in the first place it becomes merely academic.
      - skhr0680 3y ago
        I don’t think storage space was an issue for graphics in particular. Remember the base system had 4MB memory and 320x240 resolution
      - pezezin 3y ago
        The real problem was different. The PS1 cache was a real cache, managed transparently by the hardware. Textures could take the full 1 MB of VRAM (minus the framebuffer, of course). In contrast, the N64 had a 4 kB texture RAM. That's it, all your textures for the current mesh had to fit in just 4 kB. If you wanted bigger textures, you had to come up with all sort of programming tricks.
Grazester 3y ago
This should have been no struggle for Sega. They basically invented the modern 3D game and dominated in the arcade with very advanced 3D games at the time. Did they not leverage Yu Suzuki and the AM division when creating the Saturn? Then again rumor has it they were still stuck on 2D for the home market and then saw the PlayStation specs and freaked and ordered 2 of everything in the Saturn.
- VyseofArcadia 3y ago
  In interviews IIRC ex-Sega staff has stated that they thought they had one more console generation before a 3D-first console was viable to the home market. Sure, they could do it right then and there, but it would be kind of janky. Consumers would rather have solid arcade-quality 2D games than glitchy home ports of 3D ones. Then Sony decided that the wow factor was worth kind of janky graphics (affine texture mapping, egregious pop-in, only 16-bit color, aliasing out the wazoo, etc.) and the rest is history. Nintendo managed largely not-janky graphics with the N64, but it did come out 2-3 years after the Saturn and Playstation.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    “Not janky” is a weird way of describing the N64’s graphics. Sure Mario looked good, but have you seen most other games on that platform?
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      Well it had a proper Z buffer so textures didn't wiggle. Now the fog, draw distance, and texture resolution combined with blurring were terrible. It was basically the haze console.
      - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
        Hope it's okay that I just reply to everyone Wiggling is down to lack of precision and lack of subpixel rendering, unrelated to Z buffering. Z buffers are for hidden surface removal, if you see wiggling on a single triangle floating in a void, it's not a Z buffer problem. When you see models clipping through themselves because the triangles can't hide each other, that's the lack of Z buffer.
m45t3r 3y ago
> you'll see that the design of a 3D-capable console in the 90s was a significant challenge for every company. While this is true, I still think that the PlayStation had the most interesting and forwarding looking design of its generation, especially considering the constraints. The design is significantly cheaper than both Saturn and Nintendo 64, it was fully 3D (compared to Saturn for example), using CD as media was spot-on and also having the MJPEG decoder (that allowed PlayStation to have not only significantly higher video quality than its rivals, but also allowed video to be used for backgrounds for much better quality graphics, see for example Resident Evil or Final Fantasy series). I really wanted to see a design inspired in the first PlayStation with more memory (since the low memory compared to its rivals was an issue it seemed, especially in e.g.: 2D fighting games where the amount of animations had to be cut a lot compared to Saturn) and maybe some more hardware accelators to help fix some of the issues that plagued the platform.
- ehaliewicz2 3y ago
  It is not really any more 3D than the Saturn as it still does texture mapping in 2D space, same as the saturn. It's biggest advantage when it came to 3D graphics, aside from higher performance, was it's UV mapping. They both stretch flat 2D textured shapes around to fake 3D. The N64 is really far beyond the other two in terms of being "fully 3D", with it's fully perspective correct z buffering and texture mapping, let alone mipmapping with bilinear blending and subpixel correct rasterization.
  - VelesDude 3y ago
    This is very true. I consider then N64 to be the first to use anything that resembles hardware vague similar to what the rest of the industry ended up with. It is a shame that SGI's management didn't see a future in PC 3D accelerator cards, it lead to the formation of 3DFX and with things like that SGI's value in the market was crushed astoundingly fast. They had the future but short term thinking blinded them to the path ahead.
  - m45t3r 3y ago
    But N64 was a more expensive design, and also came almost 2 years later, and from an architectural standpoint it also had significant issues (e.g.: the texture cache size that someone said above). This is why I said considering the constraints, I find the first PlayStation to be impressive.

dymax78 3y ago

>For mass gamers of that era, where the big thing was "arcade in your living room" it's a disapointement.... One exception to this is the shmup genre. The Saturn was inundated with Japanese Shmups and many are perfect (or near perfect) arcade ports.

wk_end 3y ago
2D fighters, as well. The port of SFA3 on Saturn trounces the PS1 release, for example.

ndiddy 3y ago

This is largely incorrect. The Saturn was entirely a Sega of Japan design. There's an interview (https://mdshock.com/2020/06/16/hideki-sato-discussing-the-sega-saturn/ https://mdshock.com/2020/06/16/hideki-sato-discussing-the-se...) with the Saturn hardware designer that gives some perspective into why he chose to make the hardware the way he did. Basically, he knew that 3D was the future from the response the PSX was getting, but besides AM2 (the team at Sega that did 3D arcade games like Virtua Fighter, Daytona USA, etc), all of Sega's internal expertise was on traditional 2D sprite-based games. Because of this, he felt the best compromise was to make a console that excelled at 2D games and was workable at 3D games. I think his biggest mistake was that he underestimated how quickly the industry would switch to mainly focusing on 3D. The actual result of Sega's infighting was far more stupid IMO. Sega of America wanted a more conservative design than the Saturn using a Motorola 68020 (successor to the 68000 in the Genesis) which would have lower performance, but developers would be more familiar with the hardware. After they lost this fight, they deemed the Saturn impossible to sell in the US due to its high price. SOA then designed the 32X, a $200 add-on to the Genesis that used the same SH2 processors as the Saturn but drew graphics entirely in software and overlayed them on top of the Genesis graphics. The initial plan was that the Saturn would remain exclusively in Japan for 2-3 years while the 32X would sell overseas. Sega of America spent a ton of money trying to build interest for the 32X and focused their internal development exclusively on the 32X. However, both developers and the media were completely uninterested in it compared to the Saturn. After it became evident that the 32X wouldn't hold the market, Sega of America rushed the Saturn to market to draw attention away from the 32X, but had to rely exclusively on Japanese titles (many of which didn't fit the American market) because they'd spent the past year developing 32X titles (the 32X had more cancelled games than released ones). All of this ended up confusing and pissing off developers and consumers.

Ghaleon 3y ago
The 32X initially sold well, and media coverage was much stronger than the 3DO/Jag/CDi. But SEGA abandoned support for it REALLY quickly. I had a 32X at launch and was excited, but almost all the games sucked. Shadow Squadron is like the only legitimate non-port, original game that's pretty good lol and it came out when the system was about dead. I think consumers were def skeptical of the 32X despite the marketing, and that was the main thing, in addition to an unimpressive library. Magazine coverage was decent but Gamepro in particular was very negative toward it. Like, Chaotix sucks but the music is amazing, and Gamepro not only trashed the game but gave even the music low marks because "no 32X audio is apparent" lol.

phire 3y ago

I've looked into it, and from what I can tell, the "3D was added late to the Saturn design" narrative is flawed. It's commonly cited that VDP2 was added later to give it 3D support. But VDP2 doesn't do 3D at all, it's responsible for the SNES "mode 7" style background layers. If you remove VDP2 (and ignore the fact that VDP is responsible for video scanout) then the resulting console can still do both 3D just fine (Many 3D games leave VDP2 almost completely unused). 2D game would take a bit of a quality hit as they would have to render the background with hundreds of sprites. If you instead removed VDP1, then all you have left are VDP2's 2D background layers. You don't have 3D and you can't put any sprites on the screen so it's basically useless at 2D games too. As far as I can tell, the Saturn was always meant to have both VDP1 and VDP2. They were designed together to work in tandem. And I think the intention (from SEGA JP) was always for the design be a 2D powerhouse with some limited 3D capabilities, as we saw on the final design. I'm not saying there wasn't arguments between SEGA JP and SEGA US. There seems to be plenty of evidence of that. But I don't think they munged the JP and US designs together at the last moment. And the PSX can't have had any influence on the argument, as the Saturn beat the PSX to market in Japan by 12 days.

tadfisher 3y ago
This is typical of Sega arcade hardware of the era (Model 1 and Model 2); these systems have separate "geometry processor" and "rasterizer" boards, with onboard DSPs. If you squint, the Saturn is what someone might come up with as a cost-optimized version of that architecture.
- phire 3y ago
  Yeah. Especially if you rip out VDP2 and some of the more 2D orientated features of VDP1 it looks very much like an attempt at a cost-optimised Model 2. And if you read the interview that ndiddy linked above (https://mdshock.com/2020/06/16/hideki-sato-discussing-the-sega-saturn/ https://mdshock.com/2020/06/16/hideki-sato-discussing-the-se...), it might be accurate to say the Saturn design is what you get when an engineer with no background in 3D graphics (and unable to steal sufficient 3D graphics experience from the Sega Arcade division) attempts to create a cost-optimised Model 2. I suspect the first pass was just a cost-optimised textured quad renderer, then Sato went back to his 2D graphics experience and extended it into a powerful 2D design.

karmakaze 3y ago

Is this the PSX[0] you're referring to? I had no idea this existed, or what impact it had on gaming consoles. Edit (answered): "Why is PlayStation called PSX? Wishing to distance the project from the failed enterprise with Nintendo, Sony initially branded the PlayStation the "PlayStation X" (PSX)." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSX_(digital_video_recorder) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSX_(digital_video_recorder)

Luc 3y ago
PSX was used to refer to the PlayStation before it was released, and it stuck.

gxqoz 3y ago

The latest episode of the excellent video game history podcast They Create Worlds (https://www.theycreateworlds.com/listen https://www.theycreateworlds.com/listen) does a good job debunking some of these myths.