That's a bit ironic, isn't it? Poor Saturn... I still love you.

Seriously, though, the original Virtua Fighter set a lot of producers' minds on 3D graphics. It definitely changed the conversation on what was considered possible or even rational to create.

hmmm.... better late than never. Yu Suzuki will always be da man.

It is probably true. Ex: Battle Arena Toshinden's graphics is very similar to the first Virtua Fighter.

I don't know, I don't think that VF contributed to Sega demise, since VF (and Resident Evil!) came out for the Saturn as well.

It's more like Sega was the reason Sega went out of business.

Sega was making mistakes all over the place during this time period. Sega wasted a lot of money on Sega CD, 32X, and Nomad. They also messed up by not continuing many of their big names like Sonic and Streets of Rage for the Saturn. Back then I had a Saturn and my brother has a Playstation. There were alot of games I had for PSX that I thought were exclusive. I didn't know games like Megaman X4 and Blazing Dragons were for both consoles. I had mostly PSX games because the Saturn selection was small at my store.

Im sure VF was a big influence on Tekken.

I guess looking back at it now, SEGA was still catering to fans of arcade games whilst Sony had found a new market ...one that quickly became enormous. Gaming was a niche before Sony entered the market.

SEGA's only mistake was not keeping up with the times.

Got to dig that interview out with Harada...

Now I'm super curious to hear what Harada said about Virtua Fighter.

Guys, here's an article I read a couple months ago. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING FOR ANY SEGA FAN, OR VIDEO GAMING HISTORY BUFF. This article will change your view on some questionable decisions made by Sega.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/04/21/ign-presents-the-history-of-sega?page=1

Augmenting what I already read as I have saved tons of articles from gaming mags that criticized and prasied Sega, it looks like what brought Sega down was due to internal politics. IT LITERALLY WAS A FRICKIN' SOAP OPERA- pride, jealousy, paranoia. It was the man, behind the man, behind the man, behind the...

Sad really, cause at the end of the day, all I really want is the conclusion to Shenmue, VF6, a new Fighting Vipers, Virtual On, Panzer Dragoon, Shinobi,... for Yu Suzuki to head AM2, for Tetsuya Mizuguchi to do another Sega Rally...

Oh Sega...

I remember reading about this in one of those industry interviews back in 2003. Indeed ironic that Sega was leading the arcade scene with 3D graphics, yet decided to base the Saturn on sprite-based tech.

It wasn't just about 3D though. Sony's producers went out and bought a Saturn on release day. When they opened it up, they realised that the Saturn was made from much more expensive parts than the Playstation, so they slowly lowered the price of the Playstation, drawing Sega into a price war, knowing that Sega wouldn't be able to recoup production costs as effectively as they could.

I think another angle to consider is that it probably was also in Sega's interests to keep console and arcade markets separate.

The Saturn was awesome at 2d, however I still don't know why they didn't give it the ability to properly do transparencies. I haven't looked hard for an answer but I hope someone can explain that--would be an interesting read.

Chan, here's a good read, and a blast from the past if you're a SEGA fan...

http://www.superpcenginegrafx.net/blueshadows.html

And for those who came post Sega Saturn/Playstation (1)... if you read the piece, it gives you an insight on just why the Saturn did not succeed.

To this day, I think Sony doled out money hats to people.

God I hated Nick Rox and Gamefan.

1) Didn't know about GaneFan's harping on the SFA thing. But if I remember correctly EGM also scored the game different for this reason (claiming PS version better BC of shadows) and I stopped reading EGM for a long time because of this.

2) Curious what LA Akira's angle on it was as someone who did work on Gamefan. That said, I used to like going into Die Hard (the import store that started Gamefan) when I lived not too far from there for a couple years.

3) The Saturn really does have issues with certain transparencies, especially 3d. Wasn't worried about SFA BC that game played great on Saturn. The lack of transparencies is more pronounced on s-video. Much of the time it's a texture with lots of "holes."

Yu Suzuki, will we ever see a Shenmue 3? I know it's more like wishful thinking but I loved those games

I facepalmed when they apologized after confirming you could revert back to "arcade accurate blue shadows by changing a setting... LOL. Gamefan was a fun read for the "fanboy" style of writing. But I lost all respect for the magazine during the Saturn/PSX wars. I learned early on, that supporting one console/company in lieu of another was not in the interest of a gamer. There was too many exclusives to specific consoles. The Game Fan Sony bias just fed the flames for taking sides. People forget, that the Saturn technically was not a failure sales wise... at least not in it's native Japan where it actually outsold the Playstation for the first couple years.

Found out LA worked at Game Fan not too long ago... Now there's a fun fact... Gamefan started out as a store? Wow.

2D-wise, it had the capability in hardware. The Blue Shadows in SFA were actually "translucent" or semi-transparent, so the Saturn has no problems doing 2D transparencies. 3D-wise is another issue. I think the word you're looking for is "mesh." Most games did employ this method to employ a transparent look. But some other 3D games did do transparencies. Have you played Burning Rangers or Panzer Zwei on Saturn?

Here's a quote from Burning Rangers Wikipedia:

Panzer Zwei also did awesome transparent water effects, no matter how the effect was achieved.

If you think the mesh "transparencies" looks bad on S-Video, take a look at the RGB screen shots on mags of these "transparencies." Could you imagine if us American gamers had SCART TVs?

That being said, with all the 3D hardware shortcomings for the Saturn... and I'm being totally honest here... no game looked better, or ran smoother in the generation then, than VF2 for Saturn.

If you think you loved Shenmue... I loved Shemue to a "Fatal Attraction" level. Seriously, Tohsihiro Nagoshi and co already have a pretty good engine going with the Yakuza series. Why not just use the same engine to run Shenmue 3 on the PS3? I JUST WANT CLOSURE TO A COMPELLING STORYLINE GODDAMMIT!!!!! It's worse than the ending to the Sopranos, cause we're left hanging in so early in the story. We're taken halfway, maybe not even halfway... it's like blue balls!!!!!

Seriously, would anybody contribute to a Kickstarter fund, just to show Sega that the game is wanted, and some of us are serious enough to even frickin' donate $$$ to see the game done?

Fun conversation, Catch!

And yes, was quite a fan of both Burning Rangers and I played the crap out of Panzer Dragoon Zwei, no idea how many times I played that game over and over again (too bad the saves are all gone because the battery died).

Burning Rangers is a game that I'm keeping in the nostalgia box (this means I'm afraid to bring it out and play it now so I can preserve the wonderful memories of it lol) because my gut tells me that while in memory it was an intense game to play, nowadays I would probably be a harder critic of that game despite a strong foundation for gameplay. But in my memory, it was a game I really enjoyed playing a lot and did!

That said, Panzer Dragoon Zwei is a game I can still keep playing over and over. That game is just way too good and I am certain that game holds up even now. The graphics were also some of the best ever of that generation imo.

VF2 Saturn was amazing. VF2 arcade is more amazing, but VF2 Saturn as a console port/build of an arcade game in that generation, was freaking awesome.

BTW, another beautiful game I might keep in the nostalgia box (because gameplay would probably be rough by modern standards) is Astal. That game was a launch title, but it was a gorgeous game. I imagine the gameplay is rough nowadays, but what a looker!

I don't know that it's a matter of SEGA not knowing the fans want it. But instead a matter of the fan base not being large enough to support the investment. I wasted months exploring the world in Shenmue and Shenmue II (still wish I would have imported the EUDC version but, eh, whatever) and loved every moment. But at this point I would settle for a manga series being used to tell the rest of the story so long as it meant I got to see how things wrapped up.