Sega Saturn was going to focus only on 2D at the beginning?

[Gin]

Let's be serious. Is it true that Saturn was intended to be a 2D machine and that the 3D approach was adopted halfway through development? Is there any real source that confirms this? Any interviews with Sega developers that confirmed this?

The most I know is that this is a lie, and I remember seeing a Reddit post stating this, although I never found it again. I also saw a video in Spanish on YouTube where it was also said that this was a lie.

Is there any reliable source that clarifies this definitively?

 

[RageBurner]

I can't give you a source for this, but I honestly believe this is false. Sega started the 3D revolution in the arcades themselves in earnest. I doubt they'd want their bleeding edge machine to be shortchanged in this department.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

Considering one of their launch titles was virtua fighter, probably no.

although, i don't think it is that farfetched if you think about how early the Saturn was developed (1994-95). 2D games were still in their apex at that time.

 

[RageBurner]

There's a lot of talk about how 3D would have been added presumably as a reaction to the Playstation 1's polygon pushing powers; I think that's the incorrect part in the whole story. I agree with @Strategist that the very first concepts of the Saturn probably didn't consider 3D, but that changed really early on (not necessarily in response to the Playstation).

 

[bjork]

I remember reading somewhere (do not remember where, as it was years ago) that the story was that Sega of Japan was pushing 2D because 3D at home wasn't able to get to a good price point when they started development, I think the equivalent of $500 in yen was the absolute ceiling and it was still too high. Then they saw Ridge Racer or something and decided they needed to catch up and that's where the late addition game in. There's also some story about Tom Kalinske being unimpressed with Saturn in whatever state it was at, and trying to broker some deal for a 3D chipset or something with SCI, but that got shot down. But I don't know that any of that is true or not, and it's been years since I've read up on any of it. I feel like if it were designed truly with 2D in mind and taking in account for advancements, it would've been able to handle the games that required ram carts, without ram carts. Future-proofed, if you will. But maybe ram was too pricey too.

 

[RageBurner]

But maybe ram was too pricey too.

It definitely was. The reason Neo-Geo carts demanded a liver is because they were big slabs of RAM with the ROM soldered along with it, essentially.

 

[Bonkers225]

Their intentions were 3-D, and true at home arcade experience with the RAM carts, and they were very close with that. You weren't going to get Capcom fighters, with almost full animation, and the tag function(Capcom vs Marvel series) anywhere else. PSX releases of these games excluded the tag, and had animations limited.

What Sega didn't expect was the PSX was superior to them when it came to 3-D games though. And more people wanted 3-D in the end.

 

[UnDubious]

I think they always intended to have *some* 3D capacities, but the initial basis for the Saturn when they started to develop it in 1992 was Sega's own 2D System 32 arcade board, the same way that the Sega Genesis is kind of a scaled down System 16. I think everyone knew 3D was going to be big, but they may not have predicted how quickly it would take over. Even in the arcades, the only two companies that were really competing on that front in the early to mid '90s were Sega itself and Namco, and those arcade cabinets were more expensive than 2D games. Everybody else remained cautious for a while and continued making 2D games. So with the Saturn, they essentially aimed for a balance between better 2D and 3D. The PS1 instead focused on 3D at the expense of 2D (to some degree).

 

[freebie#47]

Actually, no. It was around that time that games were making the jump to 3D, and YES Sega USA branch was forcing it. Funny part was that in Japan, Saturn did very good. Too bad hackers and dumb security measures was main reason Sega succumb to the Console race.

 

[Glimbo]

I found this interview with Hideki Sato, the main designer of the Saturn.

Hideki Sato Discussing the Sega Saturn - Mega Drive Shock

Recently, an interview was conducted with Hideki Sato on his life and his time at Sega as part of an oral history research project documenting the game industry in Japan. The interview transcription is over 150 pages long. If you don’t know, Sato was in charge of Sega’s consumer R&D department...

mdshock.com

On how the Saturn design changed in response to the PlayStation:

“The Saturn actually had just one CPU at the beginning. Then Sony appeared with its polygon-based PlayStation. When I was first designing the Saturn architecture, I was focused on sprite graphics, which had been the primary graphics up to that point.

“So I decided to go with polygons (due to the PlayStation). However, there weren’t any people at Sega who knew how to develop such software. Of course, we had Yu Suzuki in the arcade department, but I couldn’t just drag him off to the console department. He was developing titles like Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing. The expertise of all of the developers we had was in sprite graphics, so there seemed no choice but to go with sprites. Nevertheless, I knew we needed polygons. Using various tricks, adding a geometry engine and so on, I changed everything. In the end, just like the PlayStation, we had pseudo-polygons built on a sprite base. I felt no choice but to design a sprite-based architecture. Having said that, after some significant progress, pseudo-polygons did represent a “jump” in graphics in a certain way. There was a distinction of sorts. The processor was very powerful and could support 4,000, even 5,000 sprites, and I thought we could make the graphics work using a sprite engine after adding the Yamaha and such.

“It seemed like we were finally nearing completion. Then, the final PlayStation was revealed. It supported 300,000 polygons. Well, that was ultimately a bunch of lies, but… When you compared the Saturn with the PlayStation, we were completely missing something. The response that I chose was to add another SH processor, so we ended up with two SH-2s. By chance, the SH supported two-way cascaded data transfer. You could add a second processor and connect them in a cascade and get multi-CPU performance. When you get to about the PlayStation 3, multi-processors had become common, but the Saturn was the first home console to use multi-processors. So I added a second SH-2, but I felt that the ‘impact’ was still weak. Well, the SH-2 is a 32-bit processor, and we had two of them, so we could call the Saturn a 64-bit machine. It’s a dirty way of getting to 64-bits. But we revealed the CD-ROM-based Saturn using 64-bits as our sales point.”

 

[UnDubious]

Yeah, I remember reading this interview when the translation came out. A lot of people don't realize that Sega was very large and the arcade and consumer side were basically two separate things. So even though the arcade side had just begun pushing 3D hard when the Saturn was in development, it makes sense that the home consumer people didn't have that expertise yet.

 

[HyperTurboFox]

Actually no, Sega know 3D is the future. Look at their System 32 Machine, it's had 3D capabilities which the genesis can't never pull off. Even if the main focus is sprite scrolling. On top of that Sega is one of these gaming companies that kick off 3D Gaming with Virtual Racing. Give Sega credit, without them 3D Gaming will never take off as of now.

 

[UnDubious]

Actually no, Sega know 3D is the future. Look at their System 32 Machine, it's had 3D capabilities which the genesis can't never pull off. Even if the main focus is sprite scrolling. On top of that Sega is one of these gaming companies that kick off 3D Gaming with Virtual Racing. Give Sega credit, without them 3D Gaming will never take off as of now.

The System 32 can't really do polygons, though, can it? Just pseudo-3D with sprite-scaling. As the interview linked above explains, they did plan for some 3D capacities from the start, but with a greater focus on sprites because that's what their consumer division knew. They later decided it was going to be insufficient and added the second CPU. I agree Sega helped pioneer 3D through their arcade games.

 

[AnonymousCookieMonster]

Hmmm..... I think 3D was built with the system in mind, a step past PS1 but before PS2. (PS1 has wonky 3D due to no z-buffer and other bits).

I keep thinking of Symphony of the Night. Hugely Sprite based, but it does have some 3D aspects, namely certain swords you fight and the backgrounds. But beyond that it's a 2D game. And the Saturn probably would have excelled at that. Imagine Shinobi 4, using Shinobi 3 as a base, and doing a whole new adventure with far more background effects going on in warzones and things. Shmups and sidescroller games would have done really well.

There's a megadrive game where the 3D and cutscenes were surprisingly weak, probably for space and hardware limitations (named Xoom or something, mech plus riding machine in warzones, etc) which would, if remade to use the extra hardware and space on the CD, to really flesh the game out vs feeling like a Beta product.

The big push to 3D doesn't feel like it was worth it. 2.5D, sure, take advantage of extra rendering options without 3D movement and hit detection. (Trine going 2.5D to 3D took something like 8x the work)

 

[miguk]

Actually, no. It was around that time that games were making the jump to 3D, and YES Sega USA branch was forcing it. Funny part was that in Japan, Saturn did very good. Too bad hackers and dumb security measures was main reason Sega succumb to the Console race.

That's a myth, actually. The Dreamcast sold perfectly fine at first and had no financial problems prior to the release of the PS2. But then they did the numbers and realized that if they didn't have a certain amount of sales in the next year the Dreamcast wouldn't be profitable. And all those sales went to Sony because there was no cheaper DVD player on the market. (There were definitely better DVD players, as others supported Region 0, DVD±R/RW, VCD, and/or MP3. But they all cost more than the PS2.)

Yes, it was easy to run copies on the DC, but only a minority of owners were doing that. That's especially true when you factor in that a lot of DC piracy was through Usenet and other user-unfriendly methods.

 

[UnDubious]

Wasn't it easy to do copies on the PS2 as well, anyway? I remember a friend of mine had an entire binder full of bootlegged PS2 games.

 

[Ikagura]

Yes and no.

3D was planned but not the major focus until the PS1 came to showcase how much 3D they'll produce.

The issue is that some ports of arcade games were rushed whereas Namco's games on the PSX were almost arcade perfect.

 

[UnDubious]

The rushed ports were pretty much just the launch games - Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter. Later ports like Virtua Fighter 2 were great.

 

[Ikagura]

The only 32-bits era console that focused exclusively on 2D was perhaps the PC-FX since it focused only on anime FMV.

 

[UnDubious]

The PC-FX does have a few normal games, it's not just anime FMV. There's a few regular RPGs, a few action games like Zeroigar (shmup) or Zenki (short side-scrolling beat-'em-up... story-heavy though).
But yeah, it's all 2D. It can do some nice 2D, too.

 

[fake-kun]

I love everybody just ignoring the original post's request for the definite source and throwing around unsubstantiated claims.

 

[UnDubious]

I love everybody just ignoring the original post's request for the definite source and throwing around unsabtianated claims.

Most people are just talking nonsense, but somebody posted a Hideki Sato interview that confirms it. They meant to include some 3D capabilities from the beginning, but the focus was more so on 2D overall because 3D was so new and their consumer division wasn't familiar with it (the arcade division was but they were busy with that).

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24]

Most people are just talking nonsense, but somebody posted a Hideki Sato interview that confirms it. They meant to include some 3D capabilities from the beginning, but the focus was more so on 2D overall because 3D was so new and their consumer division wasn't familiar with it (the arcade division was but they were busy with that).

Which makes sense. You have to remember that SEGA was still putting out super scalers and games with heavy sprite scaling effects at the time. The Mega Drive/Genesis was built without sprite scaling capabilities, which ended up being a problem consistently on the console (didn’t effect its market performance, but I’m sure they were looking to fix that issue on the new machine).

All being said, a massive debunk to the idea that Saturn was supposed to be 2D console but then shifted way late into development is Virtua Fighter. The entire marketing plan in Japan HINGED on Virtua Fighter. The game, while not being a pack in, sold at an astonishing 1:1 ratio with the console in Japan.

Sure, the Saturn’s initial plans were less 3D focused, but that was very much not the case for the end product.

 

[DanCalibur]

I have no idea but apparently the other way around is true:

"If it wasn't for Virtua Fighter, the PlayStation probably would have had a completely different hardware concept," said former Sony Computer Entertainment producer Ryoji Akagawa.