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Various Sprites
Category Saturn
Game
Section
Miscellaneous
Submitter Shadowth117
Size 352.15 KB (795x540)
Format PNG (image/png)
Hits 16,977
Comments 8

Various Sprites
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Apr 12, 2024, 2:34 AM
Donkey Kong Country releasing and making the Genesis look like shit in comparison to the SNES probably didn't help either.
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Sep 21, 2022, 12:43 AM
Probably another reason it sold well in Japan was that people were using it to play video CDs. That was a huge thing over there back then. But lack of direction and uncertainty of where to go was definitely the problem. Even Nintendo wasn't sure in the change from 2D to the 3D frontier. The fact that they lost Core Design in this mess is still one of the biggest facepalms. If the Tomb Raider sequels had been exclusive to the Saturn then that alone would've saved the console (IMO). But whether TR1 was successful because of the Saturn or the Playstation is still up for debate. It was certainly helpful that the PS1 was $100 cheaper i do know that. But the bottom line is that TR2 wasn't on the Saturn because the Saturn didn't make it to TR2. By 98 you could get a Saturn and a box of a few games for $30 easy.

People forget that one of the main reasons why the Genesis was so successful was that it was the go to console for sports games at the time. SNES had none that i can think of. The Saturn had a few but was loosing them in droves to the PS1. Genesis' merits were mainly that it had sports and Sonic. Saturn had neither. The plain truth is that working class Americans weren't keen on dropping $300 on a console that had neither of those merits. SOA got to a point that they were just ridiculously out of touch with their customers. Having no Sonic The Hedgehog 4 (thanks to the infighting at Sonic Team) to direct the entire company's focus onto, and thus, no focus put onto the console it was going to be on played no small part in the fate of the US Saturn.
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Sep 20, 2022, 8:35 AM
It's more complex. While the Saturn was a 2D powerhouse, it was very difficult to program especially when it came to 3D due to using quads. The tools weren't there until the better programming library came too late and the documentation was in Japanese. Most Western 3rd party developers had problems making the Saturn ports and wanted to bail as quickly as they could, modern day comparison pre-2010 PS3 ports of 360 games at their worst. Many left for the easier to program PS1 and N64 with their polygons, even the likes of the loyal Core Design gone leaving a very few studios that SOA and Sega Europe could choose from. I think STI closed down with the remaining staff helping on Die Hard Arcade meaning SOA only had a small internal studio too busy with Sonic Xtreme and failed Sonic pitches (Sonic Pool). Zyrinx and Lobotomy were the two exceptions as well as Traveller's Tales bailing them out on the Sonic games. Doesn't help with the rushed arcade ports of Daytona and Virtua Fighter either making people flock to Ridge Racer and Tekken... (Virtua Fighter 2, Fighting Vipers and Sega Rally however are the gold standard on the Saturn for ports).

As much stick as Bernie Stolar got with the die hard fans (especially the RPG fans) for wanting to cancel the Saturn, he made very valid points at the time. The Saturn only made sense in Japan because they still had the arcade competitive culture with fighters and shmups while outside of Japan, developers were chasing that 3D dream ironically Sega themselves had with the Model 1-2 arcade machines. A lot of 2D games on a console back in the mid 1990s in the US/UK got either low review scores, the dreaded 7/10 aka the can't be bothered to review 8/10 of its day, and/or got criticism for being 2D (only Rayman and 2D with a top down 3D map GTA 1 on the PS1 managed to escape this and got really good sales, the Oddworld games also did well enough and Mickey's Wild Adventure was a platinum seller in Europe despite the review). The likes of Castlevania: SOTN that's a classic now were more closer to hard to find flops (reviews at the time said it lack "sparkle"), and collections were rated terribly e.g. Capcom Generations got a 3/10 and the Namco Museum series got low ratings. It was why he pushed for the Dreamcast, an easy to program 3D console that's cheap to make.

So yeah, it sold really well in Japan due to Virtua Fighter 2 and various arcade ports. Probably the odd bit of shovelware (the Saturn got a lot of shovelware such as picture galleries). I think if it need to sell well in the US at the time, it would have needed at least something like a Twisted Metal game, a lot more 3D platformers rather than just a dodgy port of Croc and a 3D WWF game. Sonic Xtreme just wasn't the right idea but a fully 3D Sonic game may helped a little.

Besides from what I heard SOJ actually wanted something like the 32X (or the rumored Giga Drive) for a while but Al Nielsen at the time kept rejecting it. The 32X only went ahead because Nielsen left and Hayao Nakayama, the boss of SOJ approved it. He believed that the US should have the 32X while Japan should have the Saturn that obviously didn't go to plan. Sega Europe was stuck in the middle because they didn't want the 32X either but had no say (I don't think they were that keen on the Saturn either).
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Sep 20, 2022, 2:02 AM
SOA definitely did not value the Saturn. Which was stupid in hindsight cause it was so obviously superior to the 32X and the logical path going forward. With a cartridge slot and a disc drive it had the potential for backwards compatibility with all previous SEGA console games. SOA let it die by not producing many games for it. Meanwhile, in Japan, it's sales records weren't broken until the PS4. That's saying something.
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Sep 19, 2022, 10:48 PM
actually, i've heard from some people (can't verify the source so take this with a grain of salt) that SOJ thought the Saturn was the future of Sega while SOA thought the 32X was the future of Sega so they disagreed and SOA released the 32X very close to the Saturn (which they were obviously forced to release in the US by SOJ)
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Aug 13, 2022, 2:53 PM
IMO, it wouldn't have done much. SEGA sealed their fate by thinking the 32X was good enough to release so close to the Satrun.
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Sep 14, 2018, 2:31 PM
A cancelled game that would have saved the SEGA Saturn in the West. Probably.

As for this sheet, most of these appear to be textures, not sprites.
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Sep 14, 2018, 9:26 AM
wtf is this
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