The Sony PlayStation
Review from the Net (by Justin Beech)

I managed to pick up both the Sega Saturn, and Sony Playstation (P.S for brevity) upon their release dates.
I also picked up what software looked good. Here are some random observations (as usual, unstructured..)

Tire kicking:
P.S (Playstation) wins hands down. Its smaller than the Saturn, pleasingly thin, it just feels higher quality.
The Saturn box is better, coloured a nice gold, but boxes get thrown away, so thats a win for the P.S. I also got a 3 year
guarantee with it for $10, so more points to the P.S. I noticed there is no s-video socket on the Saturn, but there
is on the P.S. The P.S has three ports, a larger bus-type one behind a panel and two smaller ones. The Saturn has just one, marked "communication".

Controllers:
The Saturn controller is basically a slightly enhanced Genisis controller, otherwise unremarkable. Of course, both machines
invent new standards for controller ports, so no using old controllers..
The sony controller, while looking a little awkward, feels great, the extrusions fit into the palms of both hands.
We're still at the madly unwrapping plastic bag stage here, .. I wonder how the four buttons replacing the joypad
will go in games?

First Turn on:
Turned on the Saturn, (both the units plug directly into the mains thank god, no power packs).
The Saturn startup screen is nice, a swoopy control panel appears over a star field, with two spinning colored cubes.
Very straight-forward to use, first surprise: a language feature: select "english" and all the instructions are
in English! Bonus! [But, as the manuals state, both units are FOR SALE AND USE ONLY IN JAPAN, this doesnt bode well
for international software swaps..].

Tried an audio CD, all the usual CD functions available, plus, the cubes pulsate in time to the music, if you
dismiss the control panel, the starfield dominates the screen over a rotating nebula picture, and a spacey shuttle
kinda plane makes random runs back and forth. Nice, but not as good as the 3DO light-synth. Oh well, maybe someone
will write a light synth...

Over the to the P.S: turn it on, and a lovely gold logo appears, to a very showy sound effect, all surround and
echo. The resolution difference between the two machines is obvious straight away, the P.S stomps on the Saturn,
delicate copyright-righting at the bottom show the finest of pixel sizes....
Trying an audio CD in the P.S is more disappointing, it also has all the normal CD functions, but absolutely nothing
to look at while it plays. Oh well, the 3DO really spoiled me I guess..

Closer analysis:
So, no S-video connection on the Saturn, you gotta buy a converter cable. There is one on the P.S! hooray! The
Saturn cables are nice and long, but still both controllers sprout from the box in both units, so no daisy chain
here. The P.S cables are very short, the machine begs to be put on the coffee table, rather than next to the TV. This
isnt so stupid actually, as you do tend to do a lot of CD changing and so on with game machines, so its a pain to
install it far away from the couch. The Saturn manual shows off some available peripherals,
a multi-way controller box, a mouse, a joystick multi-button console, a ram pack. Sadly, all the extra controllers got
sold out immediately, with no date for a refresh shipment, so there goes VF against a human for a while.
The P.S shows off a mouse, cute little memory cards and, an RGB cable!!! I want to try *that* on the NEC multisync!
Opening the covers of both units with a CD inside slows the CD to a halt almost straight away. The "access" light
on the Saturn is almost invisible, certainly from a distance, and non-existant on the P.S. This is a good idea, as it
doesnt get you fixated on the CD loading delay... Both units have a "reset" button.
Strangeness! The P.S game CDS are BLACK on the non-label side!! actually, not black, if you hold them to the light
you can just see thru them, the laser must be able to scan thru them..... I just tried one in the stereo and it works
fine, so they must be standard anyway.

Memory manager:
Both units have a memory manager built in to the startup consoles, while the P.S also offers card->card
transfer of data, which might become interesting in future. The P.S has no internal SRAM for save-games, you gotta buy
at least one $24 ram-card. The Saturn used "17" of "500" I think, for storing VF high
scores and play-results matrix, whatever that means!

Playing the main Title:
Virtua Fighter was first. Well, what can I say, "identical to the arcade" comes to mind. A few times, body polygons
flicker out or disappear, but nothing bothering, the speed is certainly identical to the arcade, and all the
characters and moves are there. While impressive, and certainly fun, its not texture
mapped, and does not prove the Saturn can hold it against the P.S... it does prove however that its got it all over
the 3DO at least for plain polygon rates.

Ok, Switch to P.S, and try Ridge Racer.
AWESOME.. oops, got ahead of myself! While its loading, (no more than 10 seconds), you get to play Galaxian...
now _this_ is creative use of dead time. First surprise to me was, having loaded Ridge Racer, you can open the P.S,
take out the CD, and put it away!!!! Ahh, what a joy after 3DO CD access blues!
Of course, the Ridge Racer techno soundtracks are on the CD (5 tracks), but, guess what? you can put in _your_own
_favourite_cd !! I just replaced the game CD with the best audio CD I could think of to match the racing, and listened
to that instead of the Rotterdam hard-core which was getting a little annoying after the 20th repitition.
I dont actually think they "designed this in", because the tracks are limited to the 2-6 from your CD, but its
pretty cool feature/bug...

Anyway, back to the game. Well, its Ridge Racer, almost a carbon copy.. The differences I could tell are:
the textures are not quite as perfect as the arcade, the polygons are obviously a little larger (ie, there aren't
as many). One other point of difference was distant skyline usually "pops up" when on the horizon,
rather than always being visible, and the glass building over the tunnel doesnt reflect the scene in realtime,
otherwise its ALL there, Smooth rounded car bodies with decals, the airplane taking off, night falling,
the helicopter, the earth moving machinery. Its all there, with the announcer sound-bites, sound
effects and so on ALL IN RAM, all read off the CD during an initial sub-10 second load!
And of course you can drive backwards.. Plus, last but not least, the frame rate is there!
Its LIQUID SMOOTH, it must be 24fps or more, from across the room from where I'm typing this, it looks like a
movie! Actually, smoother than a movie, you know: when a movie pans, you notice the frames, well, with Playstation
Ridge Racer there is no perception of frame-by-frame scene generation at all, anymore than there is in Sonic
or any other 16bit platform game, it is just totally smooth. There also seem to be a few extras, at dusk, the buildings
get yellow from the sunset, you can drive a mirror image of the course by driving at speed through a certain
barrier, you can get a chase-car view whilst driving and you don't get wacked from behind as often as the
original. Oh yes, the roadside 'ads have changed, they now advertise
Starblade and CyberSled upcoming for Playstation. This was also the first test of the controller
and it works really well: at least with buttons for directions you know exactly what you are pressing and
when... I rate it far better than the 3DO controller and a better than the Saturn one also. Of course, RR could
do with a proportional joystick or wheel, but, its still easy to drive it smoothly with buttons.

Let me repeat. Its so amazing to sit in your lounge room playing Ridge Racer on your own TV, learning the
tricks that the arcade was too expensive to allow, all from a cream box 1/3rd the size of the 3DO...
Anyway, so as you can tell, I'm mucho impressed with Playstation Ridge Racer, based on this evidence, the Sony
can handle perfectly ALL the arcade titles currently out there, excepting maybe Virtua Fighter II.
As if to prove a point, another title available on release date that I picked up was Gokujou Parodyusu-da,
which is a two-pack, the original Paradyosu and the latest 1994 version. Well, I played the arcade 94
version a month ago, and this is a carbon copy, huge boss creatures, super power-ups, sound effects music and all.
On the 3DO or any other console, this title would be a smash, with literally hundreds of sprites animating their
way around the screen at once and two players simultaneously blasting everything to oblivion, but on the P.S, it is
outshone by Ridge Racer and the upcoming title list.

Other released titles: P.S

The P.S has another killer title: A-IV. This is A-train version 4, it needs the mouse..
I didnt buy this, as its an intense sim-city style train construction simulation with probably an inch thick of Japanese
documentation, but the queue in the shop testified to its popularity. A-train got ported by Maxis? I think to the Mac,
and was pretty good as version 1. Version 4 is awesome. One feature of this game is that after your railways are up and running you can take a 3D ride on your any of your trains, through
the cities and towns that have grown up around the railroad. Ah, well, I hope they do an english port...
The other titles for P.S included a Mahjong game with Virtua Fighter II type animated players, complete with
finger tapping as they ponder the next move... Plus Nekketsu Oyaku, a one or two player beat-em-up. A few others also.

Other released titles: Saturn

Myst! yes, Myst for Saturn came out on release date. Probably same as a PC, but lower rez. Also, a car racing
game, Gale Racer, which was ok, but not great, and a 3D 1st person adventure, "Shinsetsu Memikan", which sadly
involves pre-rendered graphics, so is more a testiment to the CD storage capacity than the Saturn hardware.
Thats basically it for the Saturn, and the expected release schedule is looking a little lame, save for the
Sega titles like Daytona, and a Shockwave-style game where you get to fly a dragon.

Other title info:

Oh, P.S gets Myst also. (those Myst guys must be well into their 3rd million by now)..
P.S has an AMAZING fighting game called Takara. This is Virtua Fighter with Weapons. I played it on the Playstations sitting
for demo at the Ginza Sony Plaza [I recommend anyone in Tokyo to visit this place, if only to try this game]. The graphics
are great, the characters are far nicer than VF style polygon robots, some of he clothes are translucent for example. The
weapons and spells look and work great. I had far more fun playing this against a friend for 10 minutes than I ever had
struggling with VF! This title is out Jan 2nd, and will be a smash, the mags are already raving about it, its more than
an answer to the Saturns VF and Segas arcade-only VFII. Also noteworthy is a pachinko simulation, noteworthy because,
of course, this is Playstation, so the entire pinball surface is 3D, you can twist and zoom right down to the level of
the silver pins..
Also, a 1st person dungeon RPG, which I saw on the Playstation promo video, and it looks very smooth. Actually, there are two, one is kind of RPG oriented with orthogonal walls, and the other looks more system shock style, complex interior 3D.

Summary:

The Saturn is slightly disappointing, but these things almost never live up to the hype, so all in all, its still a pretty
cool machine. There is definite power lurking there, twin Risc 30mip CPUS can do a lot, but its not earned its stripes yet.
For me, the low res is annoying. I just got a 32" Sony wide-screen TV, and with all that screen real estate the Saturn looks a little pixellated. But, if Sega manages a reasonable Daytona, or the dragon game looks as fun as the video promo, owners will be well happy.

The Playstation, on the other hand, EXCEEDS the hype. (there wasn't that much hype really). Its one awesome machine, and watching Ridge Racer spool away in the background the somewhat
arbitrary "500 mips" listed for the graphics accelerator printed in the fine specs at the end of the manual don't look
nearly so crazy. A R3000 CPU at 33mhz does the housekeeping, and this mysterious fat LSI is obviously doing an amazing amount of work... and the best thing of all ? Its the SMALLEST and
the CHEAPEST of the 4 supposed "next generation" consoles. The other three are all at the $440-$500 price point in Japan, and the PS is sitting nicely at around $380. By the way, the P.S is a sellout.. Now we wait for the 28-odd titles spread throughout December/January, and the further 30-odd coming out through Febuary...

So what about 3DO:

3DO has a catalog of titles, there is no doubt, but the action is with P.S. The new model 3DO looks very cheap, cheap plastic, cheap controllers. It needs a massive price drop, it doesnt have a killer game [SFII is not it], most of the title catalog looks, well, strange. Too few familiar titles, either arcade conversions or game themes, pick up the boxes, where are the shootemups? the platforms? the 3D flight sims? There are just a few, and they are hard to find in all the dross. In Japan, I think, the war is over. Thanks, 3DO, for providing interest in '94, but its worn out now. In homeland USA, it may last longer, but just because the Sony wont be available till 95 wont stop the news getting around....
In the local game shop here, the 3DO title rack, previously in prime real estate area near the cash desk has been shifted
back next to the dusty Genisis CD rack. I'm sure the new location is coincidental.... on the other hand.... :-)

 

happy gaming...

Justin@dev.null