I’ve always found it slightly ironic that while several reviewers panned the Saturn, whereas Dreamcast coverage was almost unanimously positive, the Saturn was ultimately much more fun to play. I have a history of being disappointed by highly rated games (Half Life, Goldeneye, Mario 64 etc.), and the Dreamcast gave this particular penchant a real dam breach of an outlet; whereas the Saturn is one of the only systems I’ve ever been satisfied with even half of the well-rated games I played.
So my choice would obviously be the Saturn (I’m desperately hoping someone will make a decent emulator for it… though a good DC one would be great too. Anyone know of any news on that front?). Throwing the question out to the panel…
Tough choice. I think I’d go with the Saturn in the end because of its bigger selection of RPGs and unparalleled experiences like NiGHTS and PDS. The Dreamcast had some amazing games (Skies, JSR, Sonic Adventure, Ikaruga, Soul Calibur, etc) but a lot of these have made it to other platforms leaving the Dreamcast lacking in exclusive titles… not that I mind, but it just gives people less reason to pick up a DC now that it’s no longer being widely supported.
-home to the PD series
-home to Sonic Team’s best agmes : Burning Rangers & Nights
-home to 2 of the best non-plaeyd RPG’s out there : SF3 and Dragon Force
-home to the best controller ever : the small/2nd saturn controller
-introduced me to Riven
-home to the best fighting games ever : FM and VF2
…etc
I don’t think the “bad games count” is a way to judge a console worse than another if it’s “good games count” reaches or exceeds the other one’s (in quality, quantity or both).
Saturn has Radiant Silvergun, Shining Force 3, the core Panzer Dragoon series, a superior Sonic collection of games that doesn’t require me to “unlock” the lock-on Sonic & Knuckles with other Sonic games, NiGHTS: Into Dreams, and Albert Odyssey, a game with fantastic dialogue, even if the game is just OK.
Dreamcast has Ikaruga, but it was ported to GameCube. It also has the arguably superior version of Skies of Arcadia, but that was also ported to GameCube. It had Phantasy Star Online, but the Xbox and GameCube got a superior version. It had the superior release of Grandia II, but PC and PS2 also saw a version of their own. Rez was a neat release, but PS2 got an actual domestic release of the game. Soul Calibur is about the only Dreamcast exclusive that I hold in high regard that wasn’t ported, next to Jet Grind Radio which also rocks out.
yeah… i am sad that games are being taken from the DC and put onto consoles because it just makes DC look less good.
However whenever my friends come round we always decide to play Dreamcast over the Saturn (unless theres about 7 of us then we go for deathtank). But even thought i play my dreamcast so much more (even single player games) i would choose Saturn because it was my first console, and i have had a lot of great experiences/memories with it.
Um…how can the Dreamcast version be superior, when the GC version had so much extra stuff (new discoveries, Piastol/moonfish sidequest, Bounties)? From what I heard the clouds were less well made and the music quality was lowered slightly, but that seems to be the only negative points.
Music quality lowered majorly, not slightly. Let’s add in some mistimed sound effects, areas where the polygons don’t meet up like they’re supposed to, as well as a few other silly bugs, and you have a typical post-Dreamcast Sega rushed-product. Hence why I said arguably superior. The Dreamcast release was more or less solid, while the GameCube release has some blatantly obvious issues.
The only aspect that I liked about the GameCube release over the Dreamcast were the FAR faster load times. I know for a fact that I didn’t enjoy staring at the screen with nothing happening for eight seconds after Ramirez used “Destruction”, since the GameCube renders the graphics without slowdown, and the sound effects were timed based on the Dreamcast’s slowdown, resulting in your seeing the move flash past quickly, and then staring at nothing for the remainder while sound effects continue onward. Yeah, testing department was asleep, because one simple playthrough would have caught that, especially since Ramirez uses that one out of a handful of moves repeatedly.
I don’t believe it’s fair to judge the Dreamcast by saying many of it’s games were ported so that leaves less exclusive titles. Dreamcast had not only a short life but one in between generations basically so it was natural for many of the games to move into the next generation.
I have played basically all American Dreamcast games out there, while I am still new to the Saturn and have only experienced a couple titles so far.
Yes Abadd, I shudder at the thought of Illbleed as well!
But it is. It all boils down to what games you like to play. I have three consoles connected: Saturn, PlayStation 2, and GameCube. Dreamcast is currently packed up and unused, rarely pulled out when I have a desire to play one of the few good exclusives it has.
It’s nothing truly against the Dreamcast, as I played it a lot when it was still alive and well. I logged countless hours on Phantasy Star Online, alone as an example. But when it’s obvious that the console gives me less reasons to keep it out right now, there simply is no reason for me to leave it out “just because it’s not fair”. I simply game on the Dreamcast considerably less than I do on the other three consoles.
[quote=“Parn”]Music quality lowered majorly, not slightly. Let’s add in some mistimed sound effects, areas where the polygons don’t meet up like they’re supposed to, as well as a few other silly bugs, and you have a typical post-Dreamcast Sega rushed-product. Hence why I said arguably superior. The Dreamcast release was more or less solid, while the GameCube release has some blatantly obvious issues.
The only aspect that I liked about the GameCube release over the Dreamcast were the FAR faster load times. I know for a fact that I didn’t enjoy staring at the screen with nothing happening for eight seconds after Ramirez used “Destruction”, since the GameCube renders the graphics without slowdown, and the sound effects were timed based on the Dreamcast’s slowdown, resulting in your seeing the move flash past quickly, and then staring at nothing for the remainder while sound effects continue onward. Yeah, testing department was asleep, because one simple playthrough would have caught that, especially since Ramirez uses that one out of a handful of moves repeatedly.[/quote]
I must have some uber version of SoAL then, because none of those bugs you speak of are present in my version. The Ramirez one I would have noticed; I noticed he takes a while to pop back on screen after using Destruction or Silver Tundra, but that’s about it.
