Saturn Vf3 footage being released soon?

SEGA
1

Famed batshit insane Virtua Fighter fan Anthaemia will be releasing some full 320*224 screenshots of the game in action (He claims to own a VHS of the game from within SEGA). Presueably as a result of fading Non Disclosur Agreements.

Preview thumbnail (supposedly from an intro cut scene or such):

It will be interesting to see what the in-game footage is like :slight_smile:

He claims many of the stages have had their geometry severely reduced and effects removed, with the subway stage losing itā€™s moving trains in favor of a stationary train at the edge of the platform.

2

I seem to recall footage being in a SEGA Flash demo disc but Iā€™m not sure if that was just arcade footage showing what to expect from the then announced Saturn release or if it was supposed to be the game running on Saturn. It didnā€™t look as good as the arcade game to me but that might have been the bad video quality and not the gameā€™s reduced visuals. Edit: This one. I havenā€™t checked VF3 in a while though, how does it look to you? It looks beyond what the Saturn could normally do but then again the frame rate seems pretty bad also, though I guess that could just be the video itself again, not the game.

3

Oh man, that video takes me back. I remember watching it as clear as day, and any framerate issues arenā€™t on the video, itā€™s the games themselves.

Loving the Last Bronx section, with the lovely ladies!

4

I really enjoy reading Anthaemiaā€™s posts :anjou_love:

Heā€™s almost machine-like in his ability to instantly recall every piece of information heā€™s uncovered about a game. His posts are usually long and exhaustive as a result, but I always find what he has to say really interesting.

I remember reading somewhere that he was planning to create a website devoted to all his research, I wonder how heā€™s coming along with that.

Chizzles do you have a link of Anthaemia making this announcement?

I wonder how he got his hands on this VHS tape and if heā€™s able to make a video rip. I bet heā€™s probably already written a thesis comparing the differences between the Saturn and arcade versions of the game lol.

Regarding the Sega Flash demos: I really loved the music that played in the background! I also remember that VF3 video quite fondly, and was really gutted about it being cancelled.

Shadow: Hehe, theyā€™re not a patch on the Fighting Vipers babes :anjou_love:

5

[quote=ā€œShadowā€]Oh man, that video takes me back. I remember watching it as clear as day, and any framerate issues arenā€™t on the video, itā€™s the games themselves.

[/quote]

Thatā€™s because all 3 videoā€™s are using Arcade footage , not a single piece of Saturn game footage at all

6

This might be slightly off topic, but wasnā€™t Virtua Fighter 4 supposed to be on the Dreamcast at one point?

7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya1YXGkwRP4)
(Vf3 ??? demo)

Here we go, video is uploaded.

Judging by the video it seems to be some kind of Attract mode demo, a la VF2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW8M_D_v0M8)
(Vf2 attarct mode)

I have to say those are either really good Saturn graphics or really bad pre rendered graphics, I canā€™t tellā€¦

I was expecting something more uhā€¦ good. The bit-rate of the video is hardly impressive to say the least, at that quality we canā€™t judge anything like aliasing or textures because the video is pretty damn blurry and considerably worse than any VHS source could possibly be.

<(悜Š“悜<ā€™)

All I can say with certainty is that it is absolutely not the Arcade or Dreamcast versionā€¦ and would make no sense for SEGA to create pre-rendered footage that actually looks worse than the Dreamcast versionsā€¦

8

They is no way on earth thatā€™s real-time Saturn graphics , The total Saturn polygon output , couldnā€™t handle the Akria Model alone in that footage . Seems nothing more to me than test data , and AM#2 messing around , or mock up on how the Model 3 game would look .

9

[quote=ā€œTeam Andromedaā€]

They is no way on earth thatā€™s real-time Saturn graphics , The total Saturn polygon output , couldnā€™t handle the Akria Model alone in that footage . Seems nothing more to me than test data , and AM#2 messing around , or mock up on how the Model 3 game would look .[/quote]

It is pretty much a certainty that this video is related to the Saturn version in some way, it could perhaps be a mock-up using models that would have been later toned down further for use on the actual console?

However one very interesting point, not apparent in the low quality Youtube upload, is that the textures are completely unfiltered in the footage on the VHS tapeā€¦ Why would a pre rendered sequence have unfiltered textures? Texture filtering is on by default on the model 3 hardware. And rendering workstations at the time also all used texture filtering.

There lies the possibility that this is actually non-real time footage from the Saturn itself, sped up later with video editing.

Konami have used this technique for Metal Gear Solid 4 in the past, where they use the console to render a cut scene without frameskip, capture the video output and then speed it up after with video editing. Similar to how SEGA made pre-rendered cut scenes using the game assets and engine for Yakuza II.

It has been known for a while that at one point, AM2 tasked CORE Design with the task of creating a rolling demo of Scud Race for the Dreamcast, lesser known is that AM2 also requested a running demo of Virtua Fighter 3 for the Saturn. This demo was taken to completion and handed back to AM2 although Am2 never requested any more of CORE Design and the supervisor for the creation of the demo was sent back to AM2 never hearing any more of the project.
Iā€™m not suggesting that this video is even from that demo, of course.

I have heard in the past that the demos of VF3 created on Saturn used 120p resolution for background rendering and 244p rendering for the characters (a la Fighting Vipers, being composited into the same image at the end).

If we consider a possiblity that the Saturn was indeed rendering the backgrounds at 120p while the characters are rending in 244p, what are the odds that the Saturn could pull something impressive like VF3 off?

It would look pixelated as hellā€¦ no doubt about thatā€¦

10

There is no way those are mock ups or anything related to Saturn in-game models , I doubt theyā€™re anything to do with the Saturn version at all , FMV or not . The best in-game models we could have expected, would be a slighty improved VF Megamix models , maybe running at high Res , But thatā€™s the most imo.

I remember a interview with Yu Suzuki , where he said , that while the Saturn wouldnā€™t be able to capture Model 3 graphics , the Saturn version would capture the ā€˜spritā€™ of the Arcade machine .
Trying to compress the move data would have been hard enough for the AM#2 team , never mind the Model 3 graphics .

I think that was simply magazine talk , where we had everyone , from Lobotomy to CORE , handling the SCUD Race demo .
I would imagine it was the tools and library team, that did the demo , maybe from the likes of AM#1 when making the early DC and NA@MI tools

11

:anjou_embarassed:

A number of effects reveal that this footage was produced using a scanline renderer, the most obvious being self-shadowing. For example, at 0:16 you see Jeffreyā€™s hair casting a shadow on his back ā€¦ which is something that did not make it into Virtua Fighter until version 5.

K

12

OK, so my bad, it turns out this video is actually from an FMV related to the Saturn version.

TA, Anthemia is a journalist, he claims that this video came from an staff member of Sega Europe and since it has been clarified that this video is a rip of a TruMotion file that was present on the Saturn VF3 demoā€™s disc. My bad. He says there is also an opening CGI sequence, however itā€™s just a lower res version of the one that was presented on the VHS that was released in Japan to promote the Saturn version/included on the Dreamcast game as an extra. However he mentions that the ā€˜BuildUp!ā€™ logo is present on the Saturnā€™s TruMotion version of the footage.

As for the video itself however, there are still claims floating around that this footage is rendered by Saturn with each frame being shooped to look betterā€¦ I doubt that even myself though.

Anyway, Regarding CORE design handling tech demos, I donā€™t have much problem believing CORE may have worked on Demos with SEGA in the past. The member of staff in question who was positioned at CORE design has anonymously posted on the internet about his experience at CORE in the past on several japanese websites and Anthemia claims to have discussed something with him directly at one point via the internet.

STORM! from Sega Nerds says he has spoken to the guy online as well, although his name escapes me right nowā€¦

Supposedly, Mark Maslowicz from Sega Europe is the go-to-guy regarding VF3 questions anyone may have. Sadly he has left Sega Europe and dissapeared off the face of the earth simultaneouslyā€¦

13

The same CORE that did pathetic graphics on the Dreamcast in terms of TombRadier and Fighting Force II , but did bloody wonders on a tech demo of one of the most advanced looking games around at the time ?.
I have a hard time believing that , though if we believe gossipā€¦
Herdy Gerdy was meant to look so much better running on the DC , to what it ended up looking like on the PS2 .

Maybe Captivation Digital did the tech demo of Scud Race , has they were involved in most of SOA tech Demoā€™s , before they messed up the DC port of Half-Life

Pfft . Storm says so much bull , half the time itā€™s hard to know what 's real to make believe stuff

14

Well I must admit, the man claiming to be from Am2 never did say which team or development house he was actually outsourced too, it was just assumed amongst the community that he was referring to a team within CORE.
I have even heard that it was Genki who were the ones working on the Saturn demo. All we can be certain of is that this Video file came from somewhere reliable within Sega Europe from a man who himself claims to have actually played a playable build of VF3 for Saturn. And that this video file probably came from either BuildUp or AM2.

However you are correct, most people who claim to have seen the game running say it only looked marginally more impressive than Megamix.

Regarding Coreā€¦

Although I protest, CORE is made of individual Teams just like SEGA.

Just because one team ballsed things upā€¦

Well just look at Sonic Team.

15

[quote=ā€œChizzlesā€]

Regarding Coreā€¦

Although I protest, CORE is made of individual Teams just like SEGA.

Just because one team ballsed things upā€¦

Well just look at Sonic Team.[/quote]

The TR and Fighting Force were 2 different teams , and they looked complete pants on the DC. In fact more or less every CORE game looked rather poor on the next gen systems , bar Herdy Gerdy .

I doubt they produced the Scud Racer demoā€™s