News Raspberry Pi 5 Recalbox Emulation Tested

[Admin]

LeePSPVideo has tested the latest Recalbox Beta for the Raspberry Pi 5 and details which of the harder to emulate consoles now work on the Raspberry Pi 5

Raspberry Pi 5 Recalbox Emulation Tested : Read more

 

[mitch074]

"the PS1 had much better 3D performance [than the Sega Saturn]" - not true. However, the Saturn used a quadratic accelerator when PS1 (and PC) were using triangles; properly made ports for the Saturn were 30% faster than PS1 (see : Tomb Raider, which actually came out on Saturn first), however many developers decided to make ALL their games using triangles, and simply used squares with a side set to 0 to emulate these. And when they made a square ? On PS1 you needed 2 triangles, and on Saturn... They used 2 triangulated quads instead of using a single quad. Because, who has time to make a proper port?

That's before mentioning the lack of perspective correction on the PS1's texture mapper, causing all the textures to warp hideously.

So, no - the main reason wasn't because the Saturn was less powerful - if anything, it was the most powerful 3D-capable 32-bit machine of the time, ahead of the PS1, the N64, the 3DO or the CD32.

The Saturn's main problem was Sega's own 32X Megadrive/Genesis extension : ask a game maker to port their game to Sega's platform, and they have to choose one or the other (while using similar chips, the 32X, with or without Mega CD, had very little else in common with the Saturn). So, which one? Almost unanimous answer was, "Meh - I'll do PS1 instead, and treat Sega's platform once Sega sorted out their crap".

 

[artk2219]

"the PS1 had much better 3D performance [than the Sega Saturn]" - not true. However, the Saturn used a quadratic accelerator when PS1 (and PC) were using triangles; properly made ports for the Saturn were 30% faster than PS1 (see : Tomb Raider, which actually came out on Saturn first), however many developers decided to make ALL their games using triangles, and simply used squares with a side set to 0 to emulate these. And when they made a square ? On PS1 you needed 2 triangles, and on Saturn... They used 2 triangulated quads instead of using a single quad. Because, who has time to make a proper port?

That's before mentioning the lack of perspective correction on the PS1's texture mapper, causing all the textures to warp hideously.

So, no - the main reason wasn't because the Saturn was less powerful - if anything, it was the most powerful 3D-capable 32-bit machine of the time, ahead of the PS1, the N64, the 3DO or the CD32.

The Saturn's main problem was Sega's own 32X Megadrive/Genesis extension : ask a game maker to port their game to Sega's platform, and they have to choose one or the other (while using similar chips, the 32X, with or without Mega CD, had very little else in common with the Saturn). So, which one? Almost unanimous answer was, "Meh - I'll do PS1 instead, and treat Sega's platform once Sega sorted out their crap".

I was about to say the same thing, the PS1 succeeded so well not because it was more powerful (it definitely was not) but because the Saturn was more difficult to program for and Sega had alienated external developer so it got fewer titles, the Saturn was more expensive out of the box, and Sega couldn't stop being their own worst enemy. Sega of Japan had to have control over everything even though Sega of America was making most of the sales and most of the market, there was very little communication back and forth between the two organizations so they both ended up duplicating efforts and thats how we got both the 32x and Saturn. Sega America wanted to extend the genesis life out to 1996 and hoped the 32x add on could add more capabilities while keeping the genesis market, project Neptune was going to make an all in one 32x Genesis console before it was cancelled. The plan was to release a "true" Genesis successor in 1996 or so, but Sega of Japan did its own thing and came up with the Saturn, which admittedly did win in the home Japanese market (The Saturn outsold the Playstation in Japan for the first 3 years or so, thats the only market Sega won in, and it was Sega's best selling console in Japan). In the process they alienated the rest of the world, its was a giant crap show that everyone got to watch.

 

[SirNathan]

So, no - the main reason wasn't because the Saturn was less powerful - if anything, it was the most powerful 3D-capable 32-bit machine of the time, ahead of the PS1, the N64, the 3DO or the CD32.

More powerful than PS1 certainly, but the Saturn is absolutely not more powerful than the N64. You might look at a detailed spec comparison and cherry-pick a couple things where Saturn came out ahead, but N64 has higher polygons/second, and that's what people are usually comparing - 3D performance. Nobody denies that Saturn was a 2D powerhouse though, and many will admit it had tricks up its sleeve not used by most developers.

 

[mitch074]

More powerful than PS1 certainly, but the Saturn is absolutely not more powerful than the N64. You might look at a detailed spec comparison and cherry-pick a couple things where Saturn came out ahead, but N64 has higher polygons/second, and that's what people are usually comparing - 3D performance. Nobody denies that Saturn was a 2D powerhouse though, and many will admit it had tricks up its sleeve not used by most developers.

The N64 was easier to program for, since it had a single 64-bit processor; but, due to bus width and RAM usage constraints, it was mostly used as a 32-bit processor - where it did shine. However, while it was far more complex to program for, the Saturn had more (non-unified) RAM and, cumulated, equivalent potential processing power - and used a CD for storage, which allowed far more textures to be used.
Still, yeah, the N64 could dispute the title of most powerful 3D console of that era. It's debatable though, as few games were ported to both; Quake was, and it looked better on N64, but Panzer Dragoon looked fantastic on the base Saturn where games like Rayman 2 needed a RAM expansion pack to shine.