I recently acquired a Sega Saturn with four games and two controllers for $20. The only thing it was missing was a composite video adapter (it only came with RF!). So, all the games have some static and fuzziness that would probably be fixed with a better cable.
It looks like an interesting system, and I'm happy to have it from a collector's standpoint, but I'm not sure why anyone would prefer this to a Dreamcast.
Like Bill said, because there are different games available on it. Some are platform specific. And sometimes it is that a specific flavour/port just resonates with a person just a tad better than others.
Matt, it's not Dreamcast vs Saturn or console X vs console Y at all. It's about embracing all the machines and appreciating their differences. I have quite a bit of programming skills and I do tend to appreciate the games even more when I know the hardware it is running on. The Z80 is quite a different beast than the 6510, as is the 68000 or an ARM CPU.
The Dreamcast is pretty straightforward when it comes to accessing the hardware, even though it is not a x86 based system like the Xbox both machines share form of simplicity. The PS2 is a complex machine where your code needs to be timed and is running in parallel - not really multi-threaded like we know it today but a similar concept. The Saturn is even more complex because of all the different CPUs running and not being able to access the memory simultaneously. The Saturn really is some wierd 2.5D hybrid pushed to 3D performance!
I tend to appreciate games made on those hard to program limited systems just a bit more than the Xbox360 & PS3 games that have a huge heap of hardware resources at their disposal. Programming the Saturn - with very limited texture memory and no fancy effects - and producing a stunning looking game is a bigger achievement in a way than producing a stunning looking game on a current gen console.
Nice! That's quite a bit of video work!
I recently acquired a Sega Saturn with four games and two controllers for $20. The only thing it was missing was a composite video adapter (it only came with RF!). So, all the games have some static and fuzziness that would probably be fixed with a better cable.
It looks like an interesting system, and I'm happy to have it from a collector's standpoint, but I'm not sure why anyone would prefer this to a Dreamcast.
Like Bill said, because there are different games available on it. Some are platform specific. And sometimes it is that a specific flavour/port just resonates with a person just a tad better than others.
Matt, it's not Dreamcast vs Saturn or console X vs console Y at all. It's about embracing all the machines and appreciating their differences. I have quite a bit of programming skills and I do tend to appreciate the games even more when I know the hardware it is running on. The Z80 is quite a different beast than the 6510, as is the 68000 or an ARM CPU.
The Dreamcast is pretty straightforward when it comes to accessing the hardware, even though it is not a x86 based system like the Xbox both machines share form of simplicity. The PS2 is a complex machine where your code needs to be timed and is running in parallel - not really multi-threaded like we know it today but a similar concept. The Saturn is even more complex because of all the different CPUs running and not being able to access the memory simultaneously. The Saturn really is some wierd 2.5D hybrid pushed to 3D performance!
I tend to appreciate games made on those hard to program limited systems just a bit more than the Xbox360 & PS3 games that have a huge heap of hardware resources at their disposal. Programming the Saturn - with very limited texture memory and no fancy effects - and producing a stunning looking game is a bigger achievement in a way than producing a stunning looking game on a current gen console.
Xbox 360: Lactobacillus P | Wii: 8151 3435 8469 3138
Armchair arcade Editor | Pixellator | www.markvergeer.nl
Armchair Arcade Editor