3 May
2010
3 May
'10
2:42 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cameron Kaiser" <spectre at floodgap.com>
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 4:06 AM
Subject: Re: Greatest videogame device (was Re: An option - Re: the
beginningof the end for floppies)
> Even the Sega Saturn was better than the PS1,
though it was not as
popular.
The Saturn was hard to program, however. As I recall the polygons were
based on quadrilaterals, not triangles, which made porting and modeling
more troublesome regardless of its rendering advantages. And the CPU was
sloooooooow.
Yes it was hard to program, but I believed it to be because of the dual SH2
processors, plus the SH1. However, Sega (or rather their awesome
sub-division AM2) created the SGL (Sega Graphics Library) for it -
essentially a whole load of very
useful programming routines to make coding for it easier. After all, the
consoles hardware was basically Sega's "Titan" arcade board, so they would
know how to make the best of it (and often did). The only exception beiong
the horrible (rushed) European port of Daytona USA.
Despite many sites claiming the contrary, Tomb Raider 1 was released on the
Saturn before the Playstion version (and possibly PC version too).
Sega clearly did much better with the Dreamcast, but I
think there was a
lot of developer bad blood after the Saturn (both for technical and
marketing reasons).
Yes, and the same could be said for Nintendo after the Nintendo 64. Not very
many companies took the time to really push the Gamecube hardware, other
than Nintendo, Rare (Starfox Adventures has awesome visuals), Capcom
(Resident Evil 4), Level 5 (Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 2 & 3) and the
developers behind Eternal Darkness (the sanity meter *must* return in more
modern games, that was the coolest feature ever). Most simply ported PS2 and
PS1 games to the Gamecube and it clearly showed, especially compared to the
other games I have mentioned.
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk