Great Visual Effects on the Sega Saturn - Part 3

[Music] thank you we are back with part three of great visual effects on the Sega Saturn this time I scoured the comments sections of previous episodes for viewer recommendations and found 10 standouts that I want to Spotlight today these games were impressive for various reasons including performance texture quality special effects and animation the Saturn was not your typical console Hardware when compared to its contemporaries it had a dedicated chip for Sprites and polygons a dedicated chip for backgrounds and infinite planes it had multiple chips governing its audio and even more secondary chips with various responsibilities and that's not even considering the Dual CPUs that had to run it all needless to say the games the Saturn turned out tended to look like nothing else on the market that was sometimes a really bad thing but it was also what made the system so unique when it did nail something that looked fantastic in this episode I have 10 more Saturn games that not only look great but most of them are still very impressive today hope you guys enjoy great visual effects on the Sega Saturn part 3. [Music] up first is Street racer from Vivid image and published by Ubisoft do I really need to say anything here is any commentary necessary to describe its Ultra buttery smooth performance it's high resolution and its gorgeous special effects this was a cart racer that took place on small tracks without landish characters battling one another it supports four players and is quite simply one of the prettiest games on the Saturn it uses the background processor vdp2 to draw a ground and sky plane that frees up the Sprite chip to go Hog Wild on the rest of the details multiple cam reviews heighten its appeal and it even has a fun soundtrack after seeing this I cannot help but to feel Sega really missed an opportunity to make an in-house Kart Racer featuring its own IPS if it had looked anywhere near this good it would have been an instant classic foreign [Music] [Music] was an action RPG released by Atlas in 1997 and there was a satakori released a few years later what's impressive here you ask everything the monster size Sprites the multi-layered backgrounds the art the music hell I could just keep going but the bottom line is simply this it's one of the best looking 32-bit two-dimensional games you'll ever see if you've played something like Dragon's Crown for the Playstation 3 you will have a rough idea of what this is from a gameplay perspective explore talk to people battle enemies and sit back and Marvel as it all unfolds in this beautiful Game World this was unfortunately locked to Japan for the Saturn and is in awful need of a complete fan translation even so it's worth the pain of a guy to enjoy its gameplay sound and absolutely killer visuals I can't recommend it enough [Music] in 1997 Data East published skullfang a follow-up to vapor trail and wolf Fang this was developed by AI system Tokyo and was a vertically scrolling Shoot Em Up that would have been visually unspectacular had it not been for one very important feature its fast and fluid Sprite and background scaling as you battle through the stages enemy planes are constantly flying in at different levels the perspective pans and zooms through the clouds above mountains and every place in between the effect is exhilarating because it's so fast it really provides a unique punch to the visuals and for those that don't know the soundtrack here is absolutely legendary this one is all also hard as hell and not having played it in a while it absolutely dogged me out and made me rage quit half a dozen times if you haven't given this one a shot it's just begging to show you how pitiful your skills are thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] in 1997 Hudson soft and CA production gave us another vdp2 showpiece with the classic mix shooter bulk slash this was another case of a game using an infinite ground plane to allow the Sprite engine of the Saturn to really provide a unique looking mixture of elements on the ground you are often in a city doing battle with your sword and you can also take to the skies and fly around freely reigning death and destruction upon your foes it's almost always smooth and even the polygon pop in doesn't Mar the presentation because the ground plane never disappears in most missions the outer space sections are a tad less impressive but overall this is still a really special game that now has a full English translation complete with new voiceovers there really is nothing like it on the Saturn to the right foreign [Music] really needed some time in this episode developed by givro and published by Enix this is a two-dimensional Adventure game that shares a number of similarities with cinematic Platformers it's done sort of like a children's book come to life and you will be hard-pressed to find Art and animation at this level on the Saturn this world is so cool looking and every single thing that moves does so with a gracefulness that you just didn't see much of at the time you're essentially exploring interacting with other creatures and solving little puzzles to progress the story so it's fairly easy to play be warned however non-japanese speaking Gamers will need a guide for this one there are many interactions that require response in that language and all the menus are in Japanese as well the title translates to seven wins Island story and it's real easy to see why it's called that find yourself a guide in and play it it's well worth the effort [Music] [Music] [Laughter] in 1996 Sega released a home conversion of its model 2 classic cyber Troopers virtual lawn an arena-based met combat game CRI ported it to the Saturn and essentially rewrote the arcade code so the Saturn version would be as close as possible while only running at half the Arcade 60 frames it looks great all the way around the mechs are easy to identify and do the originals Justice and the Arenas and backgrounds provide a great sense of 3D space to do battle in the gameplay takes some getting used to and the AI is cheap as hell but you really have to hand it to the programmers getting such an impressive looking arcade game on Hardware as powerful as the model 2 running this well on the Saturn they even baked in both the horizontal and vertical split screen multiplayer option if you can believe it you lose some polygons and performance in this port but I don't think you could have asked for anything more considering the Gulpin power Sega had to contend with everything [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] nms software developed mass destruction in 1997 an overhead shooter where you guide a tank into battle as the name implies everything here blows up real nice and thanks to bdp2 handling the ground plane again it runs incredible better and cleaner looking than the PlayStation version in fact the visuals also come off nice thanks to being able to destroy so much of the scenery if you've ever played return fire and enjoyed that I think you really need to give this one a try some may find it simplistic but I love the Mindless destruction sometimes you need a game where you can take out your stress on the bad guys and their evil ways it's real easy for me to sit back and enjoy something from that era that runs so smooth that wasn't often the case in early polygon development foreign [Music] [Music] Griffin came out in 1996 developed by game arts and boy did the Saturn really need this kind of game it's a fully three-dimensional Mech combat title that allows you to control a massive war machine that has multiple weapons the ability to move around the Playfield fast and even some limited flight go where you want and tackle the mission how you want best part is the little details that really make each Mission stand out there's night missions where you can use night vision there's weather effects like fog and snow this game really does show that Saturn could provide a strong 3D free roaming experience that ran great it gave way to a sequel that looked even better and this one supported the impact card for even better full motion video I love that this went for a realistic Style with the graphics instead of doing something Ultra cartoony it felt like it was telling a serious story and the visuals backed up that sense of urgency and drama back then it was all that and much more thank you released in 1997 by Zoom I always felt that zero divide the final Conflict got a raw deal on the Saturn most folks take one look and dismiss it as a soulless clone of better games but I really dig the animation the weird Arenas and the effects that pop off as you battle these robots break down as you fight with sparks flying and pieces falling off as things progress it also has a sort of air pressure wave that follows the heavy attacks that give them some real many of the mechs look gnarly and have a cyberbots feel to them the backgrounds have three-dimensional elements and I really like the almost abstract presentation of each one it's almost as if the fights are taking place in cyberspace the gameplay here fits squarely in the virtual fighter mode and if you are familiar with sega's classic you'll jump right into this one with a whole lot of success I know the colors and art will likely turn away some of you but I really really do like the look I would have loved to have seen another one of these on the Saturn get set ready go in 1997 Konami released salamander Deluxe pack a compilation of the salamander life force and salamander 2 arcade titles while all of these were great I specifically want to focus on salamander 2 for this episode this uses both horizontal and vertically scrolling stages that features ton of pre-rendered Sprites some of the best animation you've seen in a shooter and background layering that looks damn near three-dimensional I mean take a look at those perfect transparencies in the enemy animations look so nasty and real almost as if it's pulsating and Alive Parallax online scrolling here and there punctuated game that really stood out when I played it I've actually seen him play the original arcade version of this and the Saturn did a bang-up job in every area I don't think I even felt a single frame drop the entire way it sure does all get out but man it's a visual Feast the entire way flavor options [Applause] there is no question that when it comes to the standout and most unique looking titles for the Saturn vdp2 the background chip played a major role in most of those games and it wasn't just the two-dimensional stuff because vdp2 could display two very large infinite planes that could be scaled and rotated with ease many of the Saturn's better looking three-dimensional offerings relied on it heavily to assist in most of the Saturn's 3D Fighters it's vdp2 that's doing the ring or ground sometimes it even did the indoor areas like in last Bronx games that had large free roaming environments often needed the assist from vdp2 something that would have been essential in getting a three-dimensional Sonic looking and running great you really do see the difference it could make when comparing early titles on the platform it was vdp2 that allowed Virtual Fighter to go from this to this and it was bdp2 that gave us some of the coolest looking games that could fill the screen with impressive effects often when a Saturn game was more impressive than its PlayStation counterpart it was almost always something directly responsible thanks to bdp2 more detail and Thunder Force 5's backgrounds vdp2 smoother frame rate and effects in games like Street racer and mass destruction yep again bdp2 Hideki Sato The Man Behind the Saturn's design knew that bdp2 was going to be pivotal in making the Saturn perform at a level that was comparable to its Rivals had Sega relied on a single CPU solution and given developers the tools to utilize its custom bdps better it could have made a world of difference I'm sigalord X thank you guys for watching and I will catch you next time [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Sega Lord X

Views: 42,774

Keywords: sega saturn, best graphics, best games, segalordx, sega lord x, sega genesis, sega dreamcast, mega drive, megadrive, game gear, 32x, mega cd, genesis, saturn, master system, sega, sega cd, gameplay, review, movies, retro games, retro gaming, video games, ps4, xbox, wii, nintendo, gamecube, n64, ps1, ps2, ps3, psp, vita, switch, atari, sega saturn games

Id: 15yrYgZWXEU

Length: 17min 19sec (1039 seconds)

Published: Thu May 11 2023