The talented modder who gave Saturn Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII and Crash Bandicoot has pulled off the same trick with Shenmue to celebrate 30 years of Saturn.
Frogbull has put together a facsimile of the Dreamcast classic on Sega's 32-bit console, which is impressive in itself – but fans of the series will be aware that there's a historical connection to this, too.
Yu Suzuki and his team at AM2 initially prototyped the game on Saturn in 1996 before development was shifted to the more powerful Dreamcast in 1997. Initially entitled The Old Man and the Peach Tree, the tech demo would evolve into a Virtua Fighter RPG before it eventually became the epic quest for revenge we know and love today.
Sega would include footage of Shenmue running on Saturn as a bonus in Shenmue II, but Frogbull's mock-up goes way beyond even that. It's not a full game and only includes the arcade environment and a few emulated Sega coin-op classics, but it is running on real hardware.
Shenmue would launch on Dreamcast in 1999 and reportedly cost Sega between $40 and $70 million, although that figure includes the 2001 sequel, which was later ported to Xbox.
In 2019, we finally got Shenmue III, the rights to which have recently been picked up by ININ Games.
Comments 14
Kinda funny how there's shadows on the characters in this Saturn game, and yet most games on my Quest 3 still don't have shadows on the characters. Well, not funny, rather frikin' absurd and annoying actually. Quest 3 developers really need to get their **** together.
It's a cool proof of concept thing, but that's all it really is.
And good lord are those graphics rough.
The Saturn can do way better then this.
The pixels are so chunky i can count them.
@KitsuneNight Alright, why don't you create a proof of concept then?
@Lanmanna
***** strawman argument and you know it.
You don't have to be able to do better, ( or be able to do at all) in order to criticize.
The entire review system of everything would be rendered null and void otherwise.
And the Saturn can do better then this, even Daytona USA looks better.
@Lanmanna
LOL shut the whole thing down, no one is allowed to speak on videogames unless they make them themselves. 😂
@-wc- How dare you instruct others on how to properly operate a comment section without having created said comment section yourself.
@Andee
spoken like a true "telling other people what comments sections.. of which.. they can or cannot instruct others" noob.
How come all the games played in the arcade there are master system versions when the saturn already had arcade perfect versions of each game?
@guardian1128 That's what I was going to ask. I thought it would be the arcade versions?
@slider1983 I can only assume storage limitations of the CDs the saturn uses (700mb) vs the GD-Roms used on the Dreamcast (~1000mb). Possibly. 🙄
@guardian1128 Good point.
@RetroGames You mean shadows cast by the characters? The only shadows I can see on the characters here are baked into the textures.
Though yeah, the overall point stands, as there were Saturn/PS1/N64/SNES(!) games with reasonably accurate real-time shadows casting on the ground, as well as GameCube/PS2/Xbox games that had self-shadowing (where characters' heads, arms, etc., could cast shadows across their torsos and legs). Yet there are much newer games that struggle to implement either of these.
@guardian1128 @slider1983
As this was a demo, I doubt the CD storage limits factored in much here. Old arcade games like Space Harrier aren't huge, but they would add up pretty quickly so that would be a concern if this was a real project needing to fit on disc. I think it's more of a RAM issue. The Master System ROMs would each fit easily into the limited RAM. I think the actual ports of games like Space Harrier on Saturn would be difficult to include within another game like this due to resources required. I assume the system needs to keep some data in RAM relating to the hub world. On top of that, whatever Master System emulation they're using isn't running full speed. Plus, since it's just a mock up, basically, Master System is easy to implement.
@smoreon Yes, shadows cast by the characters.
I don't even need self-shadowing in my VR games, but basic shadows being cast by the characters should be the minimum at this point imo.
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...