Why would the Dreamcast be 1996 or 1997 ITTL? Is it because Sega thought that a 1992 Saturn successor in 1994 would be too early or is it because Sega wanted a Dreamcast in 1996 with a 3D Sonic game as one of TTL's Dreamcast's launch titles?
WI: No Sega 32X?
- Thread starter Ventriloquist
- Start date
There was a 32X console, Neptune, that in the end never launched.
It’s worth remembering the Mega CD was actually pretty old by the time the Saturn arrived, at least in Japan. It wasn’t some dying breath add on, though obviously had limited appeal. Though given Nintendo came close to launching the same idea but didn’t, there’s presumably opportunity to nudge it out the way.
The 32X was a dumb move, and putting Neptune alone up against the PlayStation and N64 would be even dumber.
Best bet is to stop the 32X from happening and have Sega realise 3D is the way to go, giving a Saturn more inline with that, and where AM2 and 3 were going with their arcade tech. A Saturn that does better, without consumers having a negative impression from the 32X in particular, gives Sega a better position next time round, and likely doesn’t force them to go, with the benefit of hindsight, too early, with their next console.
It’s worth remembering the Mega CD was actually pretty old by the time the Saturn arrived, at least in Japan. It wasn’t some dying breath add on, though obviously had limited appeal. Though given Nintendo came close to launching the same idea but didn’t, there’s presumably opportunity to nudge it out the way.
The 32X was a dumb move, and putting Neptune alone up against the PlayStation and N64 would be even dumber.
Best bet is to stop the 32X from happening and have Sega realise 3D is the way to go, giving a Saturn more inline with that, and where AM2 and 3 were going with their arcade tech. A Saturn that does better, without consumers having a negative impression from the 32X in particular, gives Sega a better position next time round, and likely doesn’t force them to go, with the benefit of hindsight, too early, with their next console.
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On the now defuct eidolon inn website, they completely breakdown the whole development of the Saturn, breaking myth from reality
So were you talking about the NEC V60 CPU that was mentioned in the article?
Yes the same one model 1 used but could have been improved or modified for home console use but a massive improvement over two exotic CPU at the time
How much better or worse would've TTL's Daytona USA Sega Saturn port been than OTL's port if the Saturn were to use a NEC V60 CPU?
I’m not sure that was purely a hardware problem, it was just badly done. The Sega Rally port was excellent, so I don’t see any reason as to why Daytona couldn’t have been. Hell, Daytona Championship Circuit Edition was passable.
Sega did seem to learn a lot, or improve a lot, between the very first Saturn games, and the next batch, see Virtua Fighter and Virtua Fighter Remix. So either have them figure out whatever they figured out sooner, or have the Saturn launch a little later etc.
They did rushed the saturn launch, but the main problem is took SEGA almost a whole year to wrote a whole C language based graphics library for the saturn, and people weren't caring about the saturn besides a few Japanese third parties and Eidos in the west(Sony has to paid to get TR exclusive from saturn). So if the Saturn is easier to develop that is going to help sega a lot too
Yeah, the Saturn was capable, it just took too much effort. For example, the likes of Fighting Vipers was as good visually as any PlayStation fighter, but by the time they’d figured out how to be that good, it was way too late.
Plus SEGA has complete corporated disorganization that each regional company has very different goal from each other, that make cooperation a mess.
Without a SEGA 32X and Mismanagement for SEGA as a Company, would we still have a SEGA Dreamcast? would SEGA be protective of their IPs like Nintendo were doing today without going into the ASB territory?
What interests me about this scenario would be if the new ATL SEGA console would be capable of handling an early equivalent to the recent Sonic Mania/Mania Plus games as a last hurrah for the 2D Sonic era (appearing after Sonic 3 & Knuckles yet before Sonic Adventure)?
That is good to know, would have certainly been better then feeling shortchanged playing Sonic 3D Blast prior to switching to the Nintendo N64 and PS2.
Regarding ATL Sega's console history between the Mega Drive/Genesis and Dreamcast (or analogue with better longevity relative to 6th generation opposition), what would have been the ideal outcome with better management?
For example could the Genesis/Mega Drive have been introduced slightly earlier in ATL, before being superseded with say an earlier Neptune (if necessary) followed by an alternate earlier Saturn (with scope for the stillborn 64X development) and ATL Dreamcast that is equipped with backwards compatibility?
They could but would have been more expensive at launch, OTL SEGA scored a homerun with such promise they would sell a lot of mega drive to get the Motorola 68K cheap, but might be possible , launching at 26000Y/260 bucks and slowly reducing the price as possible but still might not be enough for japan but could force an early Neptune/32-bit consoles without the issue of saturn, plus leapfrogging NEC with integrated CD from day one.... that would be an interesting TL
Was thinking of something along the following lines give or take a few years, yet concede to not being sure how realistic it was even with Sega under significantly better management:
- Genesis/Mega Drive would be about a year earlier or late-87 akin to NEC TurboGrafx-16
- ATL Saturn would be late-93 akin to 3DO Interactive and Atari Jaguar
- ATL Dreamcast or equivalent would be around late-98 as OTL if not late-99 (ideally with near-PS2 style longevity).
An earlier Neptune would be difficult to fit in such a scenario and requires the ATL properly-developed (if slightly later) Saturn being 64-bit from the outset, OTOH a later Dreamcast or ATL equivalent has its positives in the sense Sega would have a better grasp on what 6th generation consoles the opposition were developing.
64-bit was a misnomer, even N64 used most of his 32-bit code and few game pushed the 64bit one(Zelda being one, especially majora mask) so it could be just a 3D Capable(see N64,3d0 and PS1) console that double as an amazing 2D one too
Could Sega produce both an earlier Neptune as well as a properly-developed Saturn 64X, even if few games for the latter are able to fully utilize the 64-bit like the OTL N64 or would they have been better off focused on a properly-developed version of the existing Saturn 32-bit (possibly with scope for 64-bit) even at the expense of killing off the early ATL Neptune?
Or is there a way to properly differentiate and reduce any overlap between the two consoles?