What if the Saturn had a 2D Sonic game at launch or within

probably would have been a bit more successful. system failed due to poor handling for years however, not just no sonic.

>>3930670
People still wouldn't have bought them because
- Sega shafted distributors with the early launch, nobody carried Saturns
- Sega shafted its users with the 32x, nobody bought a Saturn because they didn't want yet another console that gets obsolete within a year.

And by 1996 you already had rumours of Saturn getting an expansion to boost its 3d power. So parents just said "fuck this, imma buy a new Nintendo or a PSX".

>>3930678
why is the playstation the only console people actively refer to by its prototype/dev name? No one calls the xbox the direct xbox, the n64 the ultra 64.

>>3930670
No one wanted 2D anymore in 1995.

>>3930695
Hi Bernie

>>3930692
Because magazines kept using the name for pretty much the entire gen but Ultra 64 got dropped as soon as the N64 came out.

But we got Sonic JAM!

>>3930692
It was an early marketing name.

>>3930670
I think that if they'd released a sonic game, made with the nights engine, and then got more third party support outside japan, they could have been competitive.

Then again, they had sonic adventure at launch with the dc, and then tons of third party support, arcade perfect ports, good to great exclusives, and yet it still died in less than a year in the west. So who knows.

Although, the saturn generally appeals to a very specific group. So even if they did do everything correctly, they still pandered to a bunch of weirdos. (I say that with love)

For example, panzer dragoon saga is seen as one of the best saturn games by sega fans. But it came out in an era where jrpgs were all the rage, every company around had at least one, people ate them up, and jrpgs could and in fact DID sell consoles. So why is it that panzer dragoon saga did no such thing? Most jrpg fanatics either don't know or care that it exists, or they think it's a novelty and nothing more. Just sega fans for the most part think it's great.
Honestly because it'a just a niche, oddball game made for people wanting something different. So the jrpg crowd wasn't interested at all.
Not that it's a bad game per se, but more that it went against type and ultimately didn't do sega the good it could have, were it a different kind of jrpg.

That's what sealed sega's fate. They wanted to pander to their fans, and dgaf about all that money nintendo and sony were scooping up. So maybe there's your answer op.

>>3930779
>they had sonic adventure at launch with the dc

But the Sonic momentum was dead, and the former Sonic fans grew up.

So it lost all the benefits of being Sonic and not Random-Mascot-For-Platformers.

>>3930692
A lot of magazines and even boxes of video games would call it the PSX for whatever reason, so it really is a valid name for the same system

It's rather weird, though, and that DVR model of the PS2 named the PSX only makes the whole thing weirder because now there's two of the damn things.

>>3930841
Are you not aware of how well Sonic Adventure did? That shit was a huge deal.

>>3930779
>tons of third party support

They had no support from EA, which was like half the stuff the normies cared about.

>>3930841

Didn't Sonic Adventure sell more copies than either Sonic 3 or Sonic and Knuckles?

>>3930852
>>3930904
Sales were good, but incredibly inferior to Sonic 1 and 2, though.

For anyone who lived through this period, it's obvious Sonic stopped being "the big deal" in 1998.

>>3931175

I guess I was too young to be in-touch with public trends, then (born in '88). At least me and my friends were thrilled about it from what I recall. While I was exposed to other games in the series by way of friends, Adventure was the first one I owned, probably because the DC was the first Sega console that I owned.

>>3930670
>>3930695

This is unfortunately true. People wanted 3D no matter how shitty it was. Tons of amazing 2D games got passed over just because they weren't 3D in the 32 bit era.

>>3930841

t. someone who never grew up in the 90s

Nobody cared about 2D, it would have done better but not saved it. Sonic X-Treme was also a bust waiting to happen. What they needed was Sonic Adventure, as close to how it was as it could be on the Saturn, two years earlier. Would have been just different enough from Mario 64 to make a difference. Would like a timeline where they made that first and Nights on the Dreamcast after.

2.5D gameplay with a mix of 3d and 2d graphics

>nobody wanted 2d

Except some fighters like Street Fighter and KoF, and those scrolling shooters, or some jrpgs like Grandia, BoF.
Yeah the 32-bit was the beginning of the 3d era in consoles and people wanted to play that, but that didn't stop from making 2d games or stop people buying them.

But Sonic's problem since 3D Blast gensis was that didn't know what to do with him in 3d. So instead of making another 2d game like S3 they decided to release prototypes of 3d Sonics like Sonic 3D Blast Saturn special stage, that bad idea of X-treme(that some people it was interesting for a Sonic), Sonic R that was meh and Jam's 3d world that felt alright.

>>3930670
Then the saturn would have good Sonic game. It wouldn't save the Saturn though since the problems were internal problems, plus previous add-ons mistakes on the genesis and releasing the saturn the way they did. Not releasing some games in the west was also a problem

>>3930695
This.
>>3930705
I hate Bernie but after Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Sonic 3D Blast, people wanted a 3D Sonic already.
People weren't nostalgic for 2D Sonic yet, they were stuffed with it after 2 and 3&K released only a year or two apart.

>>3931251
I did. Sonic was absolutely ubiquitous in 1993, while it was "just another big game" (and not that big frankly, like the Dreamcast itself) in 1999.

When Sonic Adventure got released, the momentum was belonging to Crash Bandicoot or even to Spyro, but not to Sonic who was more like "old star rising from its ashes, but too late, and on a system no one wants to buy". Sorry.

>>3931274
This, but even in 1996 that would have been too late. Nights came too late. PlayStation already won. 1995 would have been adequate for a 3D Sonic, even a dubious or wonky one.

>>3931467
Saturn was doing fine in 1996.
It was 1997 when it got dropped HARD, and reduced to nothing by 1998.

>>3931448
2D was unsexy and did not sell well. It drove SNK into bankruptcy. And almost all the PSX games who shipped more than 1,000,000 copies were 3D.

Just imagine how hard a 2D Mario 64 or a 2D Final Fantasy VII would have flopped.

>>3931478
>It drove SNK into bankruptcy.

SNK sold itself to a Pachinko company who then proceeded to sabotage all of their financials. They were doing more or less fine.

>>3931474
Sega was still trying in 1996, but everyone knew it was over when huge stuff like Resident Evil or Crash Bandicoot got released as PSX exclusives.

I was rooting for Saturn since the beginning, but it became too depressing around the summer of '96, as it was clear nothing could prevent Sony from winning now ("winning" = releasing all the hot games, month after month, for the next 3 or 4 years).

>>3931490
Also, seeing the first demos of Mario 64 was heart-breaking.

It was everything we were dreaming of, but the character was Mario instead of Sonic... And Sega still refused to deliver.

At this point, things just became "abandon ship asap" for the prospective Saturn consumer I was.

>>3930713
Not until 1997 when it was already too late.

>>3930670
If they realeased Mania, then actually finished and released X-Treme, then released Adventure on the Saturn using the Jam Engine or something, then didn't release the Dreamcast until about the time the PS2 and GameCube came out, they could still be a contending.

But that's a lot of thens and a lot of foresight/hindsight on my part.

"This Sonic game is good, but is more of the same. Why release a new console if Sega's greatest game is basically a Genesis game with slight better graphics and sound?"
Bad sales. Flop.

>>3931448
>Except some fighters like Street Fighter and KoF,
Street Fighter 3 failed hard thanks to 2D and the new cast. The whole CPSIII concept failed as it only supported 2D when 3D was big.
KOF was only really popular with dirty latinos.

>>3931740
Indeed, but a linear 3D platformer like Pandemonium may have worked.

>>3930670
It would've been shit on by clueless reviewers claiming the game could've just been put on a Genesis cart instead.

>>3930670
It would have been saved. A good 2D Sonic would have bought time for them to do their 3D one that they insisted on trying. Their insistance that the first Saturn Sonic be 3D cost them everything.

>>3930695
It could have helped a fair bit at launch, but no later. They'd also need to throw some polygon effects in there to wow the public in a "yeah, you can't do this on Genesis or SNES, you need Saturn power for this".

But yeah, at launch, it'd have totally moved some machines. Hot on the heels of S3&K, a proper Sonic 4 on the Saturn could have done pretty well and provided consumers with a name they fucking recognize.
The Saturn's launch lineup was a few poor ports of big-name arcade hits and then several "literally who" titles.
mind you, for anything to go well for the Saturn, the early launch needs to have not happened, too

>>3930779
SA1 sold a fuckton of DCs, though. Ultimately, the DC died because Sega bled out, they had too many obligations and no way to get enough income despite fairly strong sales of the machine. PS2 hype caused sales to drop a fair bit, and Sega wasn't in any condition to handle that without folding.

>>3931740
this is another concern and would have pretty much damned the game if it was anything other than a launch window release

>>3931761
SF3 failed for a lot of other things than 2D.

It wasn't ported to anything for years (and you'd need to absolutely slaughter the animation count to get it to run on say, the PS1).
The roster was tiny for the day, compared to the Alpha series or pretty much any SNK game at the time (when NG was a thing, you could be playing something like Alpha 2 instead).
3S's DC port was released in the west right before the PS2 launched (read: when DC sales were the worst because people were interested more in the upcoming PS2) and didn't get a PS2 release until 2004, and ordinary common folk were busy playing Alpha 3, which had loads of characters and a PS1 port (and a DC port).
The CPS3 arcade board was considered expensive, unreliable, cheaply made garbage by operators, so it couldn't do well there (also, Alpha 2 and Alpha 3 existed).

>>3930670
It would have been mercilessly slammed by reviewers for not being 3D.

>>3932745
>several "literally who" titles.

yeah, like Panzer Dragoon.

>>3933815
Unfortunately this. A lot of rags at the time (most notably Next Generation and Game Players) had an anti-2D bias.

>>3931490
>huge stuff like Resident Evil [...] PSX exclusives

Do you mean just at initial release date, or in general? Resident Evil did indeed have a Saturn version.

File: 54466-Shining_Force_3_1st_Scenario_(J)-1.jpg (243KB, 709x709px) Image search: [Google]

243KB, 709x709px

>>3930779
don't forget this epic three part gem

>>3930841
Mutherfucker I had a desktop app counting down the exact microseconds to the DC launch. I was so hyped for a new Sonic game it hurt.
That's why the cancellation of the comic book is so sad to me even though I haven't read it in a decade or more. Sonic was a big deal and STAYED a big deal even when there were no games.

>>3933920
Maybe in America, but in my small country, the Saturn period was tragic for Sonic:

>all magazines dedicated to Sega disappeared (all replaced by PlayStation magazines)
>Sonic comics were not translated or distributed anymore
>Sonic TV series disappeared
>stores did not carry any Sonic merchandise anymore
>the Sonic games themselves were hard to find

It was just a sad period, and the comeback of Sonic looked slightly incongruous after all this time. It had a "ded" status like Alex Kidd.

>>3930692
Because people, forums and magazines have called it that since it came out.
Nobody ever said 'Direct Xbox' or 'Ultra 64'