/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9052592]

There are anons deluded enough to think if only this shit had been localized, it would sell 10 million copies and Sega would have dominated vidya for the next 30 years.

[Anonymous No.9052608]

>>9052592
What is this game about?

[Anonymous No.9052616]

>>9052592
Just another inferior port for /vr/'s shilled port machine.

[Anonymous No.9052620]

It sold 181,219 units in its first week and would go on to sell 344,554 copies in Japan, becoming the 15th highest-selling game for the system in the region and the country's fourth highest-selling Saturn title of 1997;[46] it ultimately sold over a million copies in Japan.[47] In addition, North American imports of the game were higher than many other games in the genre at the time due to its positive overseas reception and cancellation of the English release on the platform.

[Anonymous No.9052628]

>Nice game you have here Working Designs, I'll approach you for no reason at all and tell you to "cancel this or else" even though I'm not actually paying anything or involved much in the process as a Sega of America executive

It sold enough to qualify for Sony's PlayStation the Best distinction, and was subsequently re-released in Japan in April 1999 at a budget price.

Silver Star Story Complete sold over 223,000 units within its first year in North America,[43] including the entire production run of the four-disc collector's edition.[44] The game became the highest-selling Working Designs title to date, and the third highest-selling role-playing game of 1999 behind Final Fantasy VIII and Planescape: Torment.

[Anonymous No.9052636]

Silhouette Mirage was released in Japan on the Sega Saturn on September 10, 1997 and published by ESP.[23] Sega, which had published Treasure's previous Saturn game, Guardian Heroes, expressed a lack of interest in releasing the game in the West.[24]

The game was ported to the PlayStation as Silhouette Mirage: Reprogrammed Hope in Japan on July 23, 1998.

>Reviewers of the PS1 version ended up recommending the Saturn version, and a notable number of North American players imported that, enough for Working Designs to comment on the issue and revise their translation policies.

[Anonymous No.9052641]

Rieko Kodama was a developer for the game.[2]

Deep Fear was released in Japan on July 16, 1998, for the Sega Saturn, and published by Sega.[3] The Japanese version has all of the spoken dialogue in English along with a good portion of the menus, text and visual clues. The game was released in Europe on June 30, 1998, and was the last Saturn game released in Europe. Deep Fear was not released in North America.

A finished prototype exists for the North American version, but Sega of America refused to publish it.

1up.com listed it as one of the top 5 "Resident Evil Rip-offs" of all time.[2] They questioned Sega's decision to not release the game in North America, feeling that it could have been a quality survival horror series.[2]

[Anonymous No.9052642]

>>9052592
>>9052628
RPGs getting localized probably would've given the Saturn more of a fighting chance in the west but it likely still would've lost due to no real 3D Sonic + its 3D architecture. The Saturn hedged its bets on quadrilateral 3D and it wasn't the direction the industry went with. For gaming, triangular 3D is just way more efficient.

[Anonymous No.9052654]

No game would have "saved" Saturn but there are several that could have kept it stable in America until the Dreamcast. Capcom's CPS2 arcade ports are a big one and even the Saturn SOTN. Anything to just maintain some presence. If it stayed alive then it might have gotten its own version of Tomb Raider 2, which could have helped a lot.

[Anonymous No.9052661]

>>9052642
The Sega Saturn got sabotaged by its North American branch, and its momentum was so utterly killed that potentially profitable stopgap titles like what became Shenmue Saturn, or Sonic Xtreme, or Resident Evil 2 and most 2D Capcom offerings from around 1998, were cancelled because the install base and prior software sales just don't paint a good picture.

Sega of America was refusing to publish their own games, was threatening third parties to drop support for the platform and "just wait" for 1998, no, 1999, no, 2000... and Sony of America was picking the best Saturn titles and securing exculusive publishing deals for them in the West - AFTER they were already denied by Sega of America.

It also ensured no one really trusted the DreamCast to be any better (see all of those Atomiswave games that were never ported to the DreamCast despite the sizeable lineup)

[Anonymous No.9052672]

Here's a good one.

Konami wasn't discouraged by the Sega CD Snatcher sales and was actually working on a Policenauts Saturn version localization, because Sony requested a ton of censorship for the PS1 version and gave them a hard time with 2D games such as Symphony of the Night (last minute rejections leading to a chaotic dub recording session)

But eventually they cancelled it in the same timeframe as Devil Summoner's cancelled localization + Vic Ireland from Working Designs going public with Bernie Stolar's threats to him to stop publishing for the Saturn.

With it, a port of Snatcher never left Japan either, and Kojima permanently remained on the PlayStation after that.

[Anonymous No.9052678]

Suikoden 1
JP Sales (PS1): 200k
US+PAL Sales: 400k

[Anonymous No.9052685]

PS1 Version: Symphony of the Night initially sold poorly. However, it gradually gained sales through word-of-mouth and became a sleeper hit, developing a cult following and selling over 700,000 units in the United States and Japan.

[Anonymous No.9052690]

Only the PS1 version was localized.

Sega had other even higher quality RPGs like Terra Phantastica developed with first party teams, but let's just assume SoA was piss poor and couldn't afford new games and had to rely on third party publishers without constantly sabotaging them.

[Anonymous No.9052701]

Originated on the Super Famicom.
Got an enhanced Saturn version with full voice acting and CD loading optimizations, and then a late PS1 port that was more of a direct version missing most of that.
Guess which one was localized, again.

Localization was handled by Atlus USA, already burned by the cancellation of their localization of Devil Summoner.

The Super Famicom release has sold over 500,000 copies in Japan.[62] The Saturn version had sold over 70,000 units by February 1997, making it one of the console's best sellers at the time.[63] During its release month, Western PlayStation release ranked ninth in EB Games PlayStation sales charts.[64]

[Anonymous No.9052713]

>schizo weeb talks to himself while posting rather low sales numbers of PS1 games, a console everyone had, fantasizing they would have somehow made the Saturn, which no one had, and was dead in every market somehow more successful.
really great thread here.

[Anonymous No.9052718]

Similar case to Tactics Ogre.
In this case the game was already localized for the Super Nintendo and they definitively had the rights to use it. The Saturn version has exclusive content and unique handdrawn artwork.

Localization is PS1 exclusive, and was handled by Atlus USA again.
Atlus USA also handled Ogre Battle 64 despite the overpriced cartridges eating into their profits and a very limited print run, and Crusader of Centy on the dying Sega Genesis (a first party game no less, but that was a different time under Kalinske) which shows they weren't really against supporting failing platforms provided they could work unimpeded.

Ogre Battle was also a financial success

Originally planned to have a relatively small 200,000 copy print run, encouragement by Nintendo after a positive press showing had Matsuno persuading Quest to double that number. The game sold through all 400,000 copies shortly after release, turning it into a commercial success.[5][6] The North American printing by Enix was limited, apparently just 25,000 units, selling out quickly and prompting several reorders.[25][60] It consequently became a collector's item, with unboxed cartridges selling for over $150 each in 1997.[35] The PlayStation version was a commercial success for Atlus in North America, prompting the localization of its sequel Tactics Ogre.[61]

[Anonymous No.9052724]

>>9052713
Saturn outsold PS1 in Japan for the first couple years, it wasn't until devs started abandoning the Saturn that the PS1 overtook it

[Anonymous No.9052725]

>>9052642
It’s pretty unlikely that the types of JRPGs on the Saturn would’ve been able to garner much attention compared to Square’s huge budget titles.

[Anonymous No.9052730]

Let's now talk about Sega of America's handling of games that DID get released.

Sega of Japan's plans
>Sega planned Saga to compete with the PlayStation RPG Final Fantasy VII, believing that having the best RPG would win the console war, and aimed to sell 1.5 million copies.[23] It was planned for release in the same year as Final Fantasy, but was delayed to 1998 to avoid competing with Grandia, another Saturn RPG.

Sega of America's sabotage
>Cancelled Grandia
> Localizer Chris Lucich said it was a "strange transitional period" for Sega of America, which had shrunk from more than 2,000 employees to 200.[8] Sega initially produced only 20,000 North American copies of Saga. After these sold out in two days, a few thousand more were produced. In Europe, only around 1,000 copies were made.
>As Saga received almost no marketing in the West beyond limited print advertisements, the localizers sent screenshots to bloggers, hoping to generate word-of-mouth interest.[8] Sega allotted around only ten copies to the press, and focused on hardcore game media, feeling other outlets would not be interested.

[Anonymous No.9052742]

>>9052725
really just because Sony was paying for most of Square's development budget

[Anonymous No.9052743]

Meet the obscure Japan-only weeb game known as...

Dead or Alive[a] is a 1996 fighting game by Tecmo and the first entry in Team Ninja's long-running Dead or Alive series. It was released first in arcades, followed by home ports for the Sega Saturn in Japan, and later for the PlayStation in all regions.

Although it was not widely distributed in U.S. arcades, Dead or Alive was a commercial success,[12] helping Tecmo pull in a profit of 9.2 million dollars in 1996 and saving the company from bankruptcy.[36] The Saturn version would go on to sell more than 161,000 copies in Japan.[37]

[Anonymous No.9052746]

>>9052742
Pretty sums up the fifth gen. Sega and Nintendo simply could not outspend Sony’s essentially unlimited resources that they put into making the PlayStation a success.

[Anonymous No.9052748]

>>9052743
Oh, I forgot, English versions were planned for Dead or Alive for the US and Europe, but got cancelled "for some reason" despite making it as far as review.

The home versions were successful critically as well. Due to the Saturn version's planned (and eventually aborted) releases in the U.S. and UK, it saw a considerable number of reviews in those two countries. Sega Saturn Magazine described Dead or Alive as "An incredible beat 'em up both technically and visually, even getting close to beating Sega's own-brand VF [Virtua Fighter] games."[33] Computer and Video Games called it "an essential buy for import Saturn gamers",[10] while Next Generation commented, "Dead or Alive is such a polished game that it's surprising to realize this is Tecmo's first 3D fighter."[31] GamePro lauded it for its vast number of moves and throws, and its fast and intense fights.[38]

[Anonymous No.9052750]

>>9052724
They sold more or less 1:1 and not very well for either console. 3rd parties abandoned the Saturn because it had 0 market penetration everywhere else in the world, and in Japan it was a bad mover of software, because most people just bought it to play Virtua Fighter.
After VF2 was released, and then FF7 was released on the PS1, the Saturn was effectively dead in Japan just like it had been everywhere else since launch. It was the domain of cheap anime games, and typical jap shovelware like horse racing, pachinko, shoji, and VNs, which is why this schizo is intentionally avoiding as much as possible posting sales numbers even in Japan for the Saturn versions of these games, because they all sold like complete shit even there.

[Anonymous No.9052753]

>>9052661
I'm not saying the Saturn wasn't sabotaged, I'm saying it would've still lost. Even during the Saturn's peak of popularity and with SEGA badgering them, Square still chose to make FF7 for the PS1 instead of Saturn, likely because the Saturn's 3D capabilities were too cumbersome to deal with.
Now if SoA actually tried, it might've made things better for the Dreamcast but it's kinda pointless to speculate that.

[Anonymous No.9052756]

That's part of it, if the SEGA library had been the same outside of Japan as it was inside of Japan, Playstation would have never took off and the console war would be Nintendo and SEGA duking it out, and then Microsoft and SEGA duking it out. Yes, I think SEGA would have the number one console in the world if they did what I said and kept to it.

The only reason the Playstation succeeded is because of its extensive JP library up to the first half of the PS4. Goes Japan, so goes the world, It's the most advanced country in the world and the model country of the world.

[Anonymous No.9052758]

>>9052750
>which is why this schizo is intentionally avoiding as much as possible posting sales numbers even in Japan for the Saturn versions of these games, because they all sold like complete shit even there.

I'm doing this as a low effort dump of wikipedia blurbs for games that fit this criteria:
- Had successful sales on the Saturn
- Were decent versions of their respective games
- Weren't just "niche games that wouldn't sell in the west"
- Bonus points if the publisher even tried to publish it and was constantly sabotaged

>missing sales numbers for all three regions for some games
vgcharts isn't reliable

[Anonymous No.9052759]

>>9052756
>It's the most advanced country in the world and the model country of the world.

This is what weebs want to believe, but it’s not true. At least certainly not now.

[Anonymous No.9052760]

>>9052756
You would have gotten a lot of (you)s if you hadn't closed out so hard and made it obvious

[Anonymous No.9052765]

>>9052760
Actually Japan does seem to be consistently ranked near the top of technologically advanced countries, but I think the Netherlands are currently at the top and maybe Finland.

[Anonymous No.9052767]

>>9052759
Have you seen all the kinds of things that are automated in Japan, and its infrasturcture? Japan is like scifi near future minus the flying cars. It might be difficult for you to understand when you probably live in a primitive country that thinks mass adoption of middleman services like Amazon and Uber over the internet is advanced tech.

[Anonymous No.9052768]

The Saturn was too expensive to manufacture and Sega couldn't compete on price anyway with Sony's high amount of vertical integration. They could make 90% of their components in-house and only had to pay for raw materials and labor costs. Nintendo somewhat got away with it because the N64 had no moving parts so it wasn't as expensive to produce as the Saturn.

[Anonymous No.9052770]

>>9052767
Purely on a technological level, maybe. Japan however lags behind in some ways and has been consistently chastised for how ineffective their court systems and police force are.

[Anonymous No.9052771]

>>9052768
This is a board with people who think you can produce new CRTs via kickstarter, this kind of logic is gonna be lost on them.

[Anonymous No.9052772]

>>9052758
>Had successful sales on the Saturn
Nothing you posted was successful on the Saturn, every single game was outsold double or even more by it's PS1 or other version
>Weren't just "niche games that wouldn't sell in the west"
jrpgs literally are niche games that don't sell in the west, and never have, and that's 3/4tg of what you posted. which is why the sales even for the PS1 version of them in the west are very low. You are either underage or far too embedded in weeb and internet culture to think jrpgs have ever not been niche.
The only game you posted which might have sold enough to even be worth pressing the discs is Deep Fear
>anything that shows these games all sold like shit is actually unreliable data
classic.

[Anonymous No.9052773]

>>9052770
>chastised for how ineffective their court systems and police force are.
>country with the lowest crime rates in the world has an ineffective court system and police force
I'm sure.

[Anonymous No.9052775]

I only mentioned games that had perfectly ready English versions that for some reason never saw release on the Sega Saturn in the West.

But what about the rest of Bernie Stolar's amazing business decisions?
There's no "weeb" games, not even if they're as western-looking as you can get (Deep Fear) or abstract arcade games super popular in the West. NOTHING should filter past Bernie.
What's the B Plan? about western games?

[Anonymous No.9052779]

>>9052730
>In Europe, only around 1,000 copies were made.
I don't know where that quote originates from, but it's certainly not true considering it's easier to acquire than the American version.

[Anonymous No.9052782]

>>9052773
>country with the lowest crime rates in the world has an ineffective court system and police force

Yes, this is a major point of contention. They seem more concerned with closing cases than actually making sure they’ve effectively investigated things.

[Anonymous No.9052783]

>>9052775
>What's the B Plan? about western games?
Ban them, and then just say how they promote violence everytime somebody cries about it.

[Anonymous No.9052785]

>>9052768
I want to add that the disc drive was probably the single biggest expense in producing consoles. You can make a PCB cheaper over time, you can't really make a mechanical device much cheaper.

[Anonymous No.9052787]

>jrpgs literally are niche games that don't sell in the west, and never have,
>saying this about the gen in which JRPGs became popular in the west due to FF7 and Pokemon
The Saturn schizo is crazy but man, this thread is just this image, huh?

[Anonymous No.9052796]

Sega of America isn't quite dead despite the mass exodus in 1995 to Sony SCEA, and Bernie's subsequent firings. There are still some games that filter through the cracks.
What does businessman extraordinaire Bernie Stolar do?

Why, release them on PC of course.

Including Sonic Xtreme - a decision that somehow caused the PC version to be the LEAD PLATFORM for the game, NOT THE SATURN, and it went on that way for a few months until it was obvious it wouldn't even run on the Saturn (the badly translated documentation manuals by SoA helped) losing a few months of development on top of the time lost when Yuji Naka diva queen fit over the NiGHTs engine. Then for the final reboot time, have a skeleton team work on it until near death.

Some games that managed to get released are Three Dirty Dwarves (amazing marketing acumen there, Bernie) on the Saturn AND the PC.

[Anonymous No.9052801]

>>9052787
They weren't popular. 70+% of the sales for FF7 were outside of America, and basically every other jrpg struggled to hit 2-300k sold. The entire myth about jrpgs ever being wildly popular is just YouTube revisionism because the people making videos about them are the same small subset of nerds that were playing them.

[Anonymous No.9052807]

>>9052787
FF7 wouldn't have succeeded without Sony's massive marketing muscle behind it.

[Anonymous No.9052808]

>>9052782
Do you understand what you just said? A criminal case that's closed is one (1) case that goes into a database that satistician will pull from. Whether a case is opened, closed, criminal convicted or is innocent, or whatever status that case may have is a reported number that goes into the statistics for Japan's overral crime rates.

And this proportion of cases that Japan has is really low compared to other countries. I'll explain this to you in a way that shoulder be simple for you to understand. If someone murders you, you'll become a murder statistic regardless of the status of your case. The crime (your murder) didn't just not happen because the police closed the case in a week.

So major point of contention? No.

[Anonymous No.9052810]

>>9052801
Source: Just trust me, bro

[Anonymous No.9052814]

Sega somehow still had the license to publish Disney games, which they did for a collection that included Mickey Castle of Illusion and Quackshoot. As lazy ports of Genesis games using the original roms and an abstraction layer for a quick guaranteed buck.

Sega of America isn't above supporting retro compatibility. After all, they whined constantly above it enough to want to steer Sega towards the boneheaded X32. But what gives?
Bernie watched as one such collection, Sonic Jam, was released to cover specifically for the lack of a Sonic Xtreme (he couldn't exactly have the gall to sabotage that too), but for the next few collections, oh boy.

The Disney collection remained Japan-only.

[Anonymous No.9052815]

>>9052808
Japan has a had a good number of embarrassing wrongful convictions due to police coercion/forced confession. Obviously all legal systems can be heavily flawed, I’m just saying Japan isn’t as squeaky clean as the image they like to put out to the world.

[Anonymous No.9052818]

And the Garfield port (a half finished version of an old Sega of America project in 1994 for Garfield on the Sega Genesis that would use bigger cartridges or the lock-on technology just like Sonic 3. In the end only 2/3 of it released, and the last third released as a Sega Channel exclusive)

Instead of tracking down the Sega Channel ROM and finishing the game properly, this version was rushed to only restore one more additional level, and...

It was PC exclusive. Yes, no Saturn version at all in this case.
Amazing use of Sega's resources there, Bernie.

[Anonymous No.9052819]

>>9052810
PS1 sales charts are readily publicly available it's not hard to look them up. jrpgs sold like dogshit in America outside of Final Fantasy, and FF games sold a lot based on massive marketing budgets, but even their impact is vastly overstated when it comes to general culture in America. They were nowhere close to games like Tomb Raider, Tony Hawk, Twisted Metal, Tekken, Crash, Medal of Honor, sports and wrestling games, or the like when it comes to the general public.

[Anonymous No.9052821]

The problem with the Saturn was clearly that it didn't have it's own platforming mascot worth a shit, and it didn't have it's own Ocarina of Time, or Final Fantasy 7, or Metal Gear Solid, or Goldeneye. It just had a lot of niche games, which are cool, but you're only going to catch niche audiences with niche games. No one was buying new consoles to play shmups and sidescrollers and sprite games in the mid-90's.

[Anonymous No.9052823]

>>9052819
It's like how Dragon Warrior III wasn't really as important to NES sales in NA as e-celebs claim it was, sure not compared to Tecmo Bowl or The Adaams Family.

[Anonymous No.9052828]

>>9052819
Still though, the mainstream success of Final Fantasy VII is why many big RPG franchises from Japan now get localized for the west. I seriously doubt North America would be getting stuff like the latest Dragon’s Quest or the Tales series if it weren’t for JRPG popularity during the fifth gen creating demand for it.

[Anonymous No.9052831]

>>9052828
Or Fire Emblem. That series really only broke through in the west during the GameCube era.

[Anonymous No.9052837]

FF7 legitimized weeb culture in the West. Whether that's good or bad is up to you, but it did.

[Anonymous No.9052838]

The best is yet to come: unbeknownst to Sega of Japan, Bernie Stolar was making a very odd use of the entire year of delay between the JP 1998 release of the DreamCast + Sonic Adventure (with an almost full English translation by a desperate Sega of Japan) and his 1999 launch.

Not more Sega Saturn support to fill in Sega's coffers.
Not more localizations of Japanese shit.
Not more deals with Sammy to ensure timely ports of Atomiswave titles to the DreamCast (such as the anticipated Metal Slug 6).

There are more pressing priorities.

Nintendo 64 ports of Virtua Fighter 3 and Crazy Taxi, to be published by Acclaim.
A contract was signed.
Which had to be breached, of course, with reparations to Acclaim.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/01/exclusive-former-sega-president-wanted-virtua-fighter-3-and-crazy-taxi-on-the-nintendo-64

If any doubts about Bernie Stolar's business talents after the infamous catastrophe that was the Atari Lynx launch (Poor Bernie because of his genetics in 1993 refused to pay most developers of his upcoming system sellers shit and expected them to keep the lights on AND continue working on the game AND be happy about it), he was fired from Sega in 1999 and soon was hired by Mattel to handle the upcoming Worldwide launch of the Game Boy killer, the WonderSwan Color.

Which never happened, of course.
Increasingly restless publishers like Bandai and Squaresoft had finished localizations ready but no way to release them (Mattel's exclusivity rights) so they dumped some on the South Asian market (technically "Asia"), and then abandoned hope and dumped the system in 2003 (same date when Mattel shuttered Bernie's division before it released anything, and FIRED him) and had to basically port those localizations to the Game Boy Advance, the direct competitor. Sounds familiar?

Rest in piss, Bernie.

[Anonymous No.9052841]

>>9052828
DBZ, and on a lesser note Naruto did more to get weebshit brought over to America than any video game has. The FF games have always sold in America based on extremely flashy graphic whore pandering advertisements that went out of their way not to look Japanese. You couldn't really hide that very well in FF9 and it's sales comparatively cratered compared to 7-8

[Anonymous No.9052842]

>>9052837
Yeah, and it coincided with anime in general becoming big in North America in the late 90s with Pokémon and Cartoon Network getting the rights to DBZ.

[Anonymous No.9052847]

>>9052592
I thought the cope was pretending X-Men vs. Street Fighter would have saved the console.

[Anonymous No.9052848]

Here's just some of the amazing games they released on Saturn in the West in Winter 1997/1998 instead of games like Radiant Silvergun, SoTN, Grandia, Stellar Assault, Bulk Slash, Battle Garegga, Lunar, Vandal Hearts, Tactics Ogre etc.

And this is after Sega vowed to focus on releasing only quality software.

[Anonymous No.9052851]

Before that time, Western localizations of RPGs went out of their way to cover up any Japanese-ness usually by slapping on crappy D&D cover art because it was believed Americans would be filtered by the original artwork.

[Anonymous No.9052859]

>>9052828
>>9052841
FF7 gave the RPG genre a huge shot of life in the west but not to the point where it could've saved the Saturn. If you liked JRPGs you would've just bought a PS1 and get FF7 alongside many other RPGs.

[Anonymous No.9052861]

>he's still talking to himself

[Anonymous No.9052862]

>>9052837
They had many years of weeb games they could dig up and release after FF7 made that happen though but they decided not to.

[Anonymous No.9052871]

>>9052859
Some good RPGs would have given people a reason to look at the Saturn. As it is there is next to nothing on the NA Saturn that provides an experience you can't get on the PS1. Each RPG provides a unique experience so good ones would entice a fan of the genre.

[Anonymous No.9052875]

>dragon ball

Dragon Ball Legends
This one is quite the interesting story lol
Basically Bandai bypassed Bernie Stolar and sorted out with Sega of Europe a localization that was EXCLUSIVE to the Saturn (something that Sony constantly could do -like Metal Slug, etc- but Sega of America for some reason wouldn't). Then SoJ and Bandai asked SoA to handle it (Bandai was already interested in the American market because of the popularity of the anime in Mexico enough to start work on a SNES localization of Super Butouden 2 for the Americas).
SoA STILL managed to sabotage this game. (Which is very minimal on text, like many other Japan-exclusive games not even mentioned in this thread like Leynos 2, etc)


>Both the PlayStation and Saturn versions sold approximately 320,000 copies combined during their lifespan in Japan.

>In December 1996, the Saturn version was distributed in France, Portugal and Spain as part of an agreement between Bandai, Konami and Sega.[6][7][8] The French edition retained the original Japanese name (although is translated as Dragon Ball Z: La grande légende des boules de cristal in the title screen) but the Spanish was renamed to Dragon Ball Z: The Legend.[6][7][8] Rumors persisted into 1997 that the Saturn version was being released in the U.S. In response Jeff Rotter, associate producer of Bandai of America, said that negotiations were underway to bring a Dragon Ball Z game to North America, but he did not say which one, and emphasized that there was not yet actual confirmation of any North American release for the franchise.[9]

[Anonymous No.9052879]

>>9052724
Yeah because everyone wanted Virtua Fighter. After VF2 they abandoned the platform.

[Anonymous No.9052882]

>>9052861
Who gives a shit if it's one anon replying to the same thread? This is more interesting than your console warrior shitposting.

[Anonymous No.9052883]

>>9052871
Every single jrpg the schizo has posted except panzer dragoon is on the PS1, and panzer dragoon got released in America.
The real reason all these games got left in Japan is because software sales on the Saturn were unfathomably low due to it's terrible terrible install base, and it wasn't even worth releasing Saturn versions of games as they were guaranteed losses since they sold so few copies they wouldn't recoup the manufacturing costs

[Anonymous No.9052886]

>>9052661
>potentially profitable stopgap titles like what became Shenmue Saturn, or Sonic Xtreme, or Resident Evil 2 and most 2D Capcom offerings from around 1998, were cancelled because the install base and prior software sales just don't paint a good picture.

I understand what you mean but I still don't see how the fuck they ever thought this strategy made sense

>so we're not selling as many games as we need to be
>well we won't even release any games at all haha fuck you America that'll teach you not to buy our shit
>huh somehow sales are even worse now

[Anonymous No.9052887]

>>9052883
>and panzer dragoon got released in America.
You call that shitshow a release? It had a single extra low print run with zero advertisment that still sold out very quickly.

[Anonymous No.9052895]

>>9052875
SoE still managed to bungle this one by not releasing it in the UK for some bizarre reason, despite the UK being the largest European market for Sega by far. Americans could even have imported it too.

[Anonymous No.9052896]

>>9052770
Japan and Italy consistently rank very high for life expectancy, so that's relevant to issue of their advancement compared to the US which currently has a dropping life expectancy.

[Anonymous No.9052897]

>>9052883
Maybe not but it might still have been a better idea than Z or Courier Crisis.

[Anonymous No.9052902]

>>9052896
Is Japan still having falling birth rate problems? I remember hearing about that a few years ago.

[Anonymous No.9052904]

>>9052886
Bernie Stolar was very clear about his intentions.
>"We must kill the Saturn."

He went above and beyond for that. Even ported first party games to competitor platforms and the main game cited as the "cause of the failure" (Sonic Xtreme) wasn't even developed for the Saturn as the lead platform. No game escaped, weeb game or not. Internal american development partnerships were cancelled left and right.

And to top it all, he was going to publishers in E3 booths telling them NOT to support the Sega Saturn. Period. There was no other way to support Sega. He was telling them to support Sony or Nintendo in other terms, which they did with absolutely zero problems despite the N64 being in even more dire straits, third party support wise.

[Anonymous No.9052905]

>>9052883
>>9052886
What most people forget is that by just not releasing any games at all in the 18 month gap between the release of the Dreamcast, the few million or so dedicated Sega fans there still were in the West were literally forced to move over to the Playstation or Nintendo. By the time the Dreamcast finally came around they just didn't care anymore, and waited for the PS2 for their next console. Bernie Stolar destroyed Sega's market share and its brand recognition.

[Anonymous No.9052910]

>>9052887
>It had a single extra low print run with zero advertisment
Because Sega was already 10-15m in the red at the time, and spending large amounts of money on something targeted at an install base of jack and shit is a great way to continue digging that hole.
The Saturn was so beyond dead and buried not only in America but everywhere, by the time Bernie got there, that there was no point in spending resources on it, when you were guaranteed to take a loss. Its why the schizo never posts the sales numbers of any of these games on the Saturn because they're all incredibly low, and it would go about his narrative that mean old Bernie killed the Saturn and it's massively popular library of titles that would have saved it as revenge for Pearl Harbor or whatever the fuck.

[Anonymous No.9052917]

>>9052883
>they sold so few copies they wouldn't recoup the manufacturing costs

I would buy that if they were still making cartridges but printing disks costs practically nothing. If my brother's band that nobody outside norcal has ever heard of can publish copies of their album on disk to take on tour with them I'm pretty sure a major game publisher could afford a limited printing of some boutiqe titles.

This was just more Sega autism. They were still pulling this shit with the Yakuza series years later and that was on the fucking playstation, which had a pretty goddamn good install base.

[Anonymous No.9052920]

>>9052871
But that's the rub: RPG fans were a small minority in the US. Pre-7 FFs didn't even break the million mark and would have their games skipped. It wasn't until FF7 came out that the US RPG fan demographic grew significantly. Why would these people pick up the Saturn when they could buy the console that had what created all these new fans *and* still play most of these RPGs anyway? It's not like SNES vs Genesis where they were duking out over established genres in established markets.

[Anonymous No.9052923]

>>9052750
I wouldn't say third parties really abandoned it in Japan. They were still pumping out games and doing major releases well into 1998 and 1999. You can look at the Famitsu sales data and see that Saturn stuff was selling respectfully in Japan.

Especially for third parties when compared to say the N64. One thing to note though is this only shows games that were charting weekly in Famitsu. If a game didn't chart, it's not listed. It's LTD sales stop when it falls off the Famtisu charts. So we don't really have a complete picture.

For example Grandia on those charts shows it sold about 350k on Saturn and about 130k on PS1. Yet it was claimed to have sold 1 million copies on Saturn back in the late 90s when they were prepping for the Sequel. Even if we try adding the localized PS1 versions into that total we still don't get close to 1 million. So obviously sales charts aren't painting the full picture.

Sega of Japan used to have a page that showed total shipped numbers of every game they shipped for systems in Japan, but it seems to have disappeared. If anyone has that archived somewhere it might be interesting to take a look at.

[Anonymous No.9052928]

>>9052592
you must be thinking of yu-no, because desire is complete garbage
there is some interesting ideas in it, but it's pretty underdeveloped
oh and ntr shit

[Anonymous No.9052931]

>>9052886
>>9052905
I think the decision makes sense if you take into consideration that they expected the Dreamcast to be on shelves in 1998. Sega was so dysfunctional that they had two entirely separate architectures being developed with each side of the Pacific not being privy to the specifics of the other's project. Squashing the Saturn and committing 100% to the Dreamcast would have made some sense but only if there wasn't the huge gap there turned out to be. SoA was probably planning for their 3DFX Dreamcast to be out way earlier.

[Anonymous No.9052932]

Even if every single weeaboo game posted in this thread got released in the west the Saturn would've flopped the exact same way.

[Anonymous No.9052934]

>>9052847
I unironically think it would've.

[Anonymous No.9052935]

>>9052917
The post you're replying to was talking about 3rd parties games that got PS1 releases, but left the Saturn versions in Japan. A 3rd party had 0 reason to waste any money on manufacturing Saturn games in America when they would not sell at all, and still owe Sega a licensing fee. The cost of printing, packaging, shipping, etc would always result in a net loss. Sega would do limited print runs of their own games.

[Anonymous No.9052936]

>>9052902
Yes, but that's happening in America, too, so it's kind of a wash. Both countries have a big problem with living expenses outpacing wages so everyone is too poor to do anything beyond feed themselves and keep a tiny roof over their head.

[Anonymous No.9052940]

>>9052920
FFVII was largely irrelevant to the PS1's dominance over the Saturn. That was settled a year prior with Crash Bandicoot. FFVII just finished the job.

[Anonymous No.9052943]

>>9052931
>I think the decision makes sense if you take into consideration that they expected the Dreamcast to be on shelves in 1998. Sega was so dysfunctional that they had two entirely separate architectures being developed with each side of the Pacific not being privy to the specifics of the other's project.

This shit is absolutely wild. I don’t always like it, but I fully understand why Nintendo of Japan has always maintained control over ultimate decision making. Sega needlessly wasted so much R&D money. It’s crazy to think about.

Side note: Were there ever any images released of what the 3DFX Dreamcast could potentially have looked like?

[Anonymous No.9052945]

>>9052807
This.
Final Fantasy VII CGI footage was used in 1993 to woo publishers (and even game journalists) to jump ship from NEC and Nintendo platforms to the PlayStation. It was also one of the most expensive games developed, and a lot of that money came from Sony directly. Besides that, they handled the European localizations. Before that, Squaresoft released barely any of their games on the Super Famicom overseas and cancelled a ton of ongoing localizations.

After FF7, some partnership was announced involving Sony and Electronic Arts to localize and promote as much of their games on the PS1 as possible. They're basically a second party.
Add to that Sony pulling strings and headhunting constantly from Sega and Nintendo: Popolocrois Monogatari engines by much of the Landstalker ex-developers, Alundra by Matrix Software (and some of the same hires as Crusader of Centy), Beyond the Beyond by Camelot who quit Sega in part because of SoA's handling of Shining Force 3 and SoJ's budgeting of their games, and through enterbrain/Famitsu (basically vassals of Sony at that point) a PS1-exclusive Fire Emblem.

>>9052910
>spending large amounts of money
Pressing discs isn't "large amounts of money", and for cases like there there were external publishing partners... like Working Designs and Atlus USA, which conveniently were shooed away by Bernie Stolar TWO YEARS earlier.

>>9052932
The exact same way? Doubtful. It would have done slightly better than Nintendo 64's drought years, at the very least. The failure of the Sega Saturn in the West was catastrophic, and for a very fundamental reason: who would buy a console with no games? The games were there, even their localizations were there, but SoA was constantly stalling while constantly reassuring SoJ everything was fine.

What failed "the exact same way" was the planned WonderSwan Color by Mattel, also by Bernie Stolar, right after the Sega DreamCast.

[Anonymous No.9052949]

>>9052887
I know people want to keep harping on the "uou don't invest in a sinking ship" narrative but fuck, man, if the customer base rabidly consumes very fucking copy you make of something, take the hint and make more.

I mean, if I ran a bakery, and the bakery was doing poor business and I was thinking of closing it, but I had this one product that sold out every time I made it and people kept asking me to make more of it, I would probably make more of it, especially if I already had the recipie and the ingredients. Like, there's really no context where ignoring conspicuous demand for an already available product makes any sense.

[Anonymous No.9052950]

>>9052910
Lol the guy was a complete moron. Even were that the case, you don't publicly announce your console is dead and halt all software production 2 years before the next console is even on shelves.

[Anonymous No.9052951]

>>9052945
>It would have done slightly better than Nintendo 64's drought years, at the very least.
JRPG panty quest #91726 on a dead platform in the 90s would've sold like five copies max.

[Anonymous No.9052958]

>>9052943
Sega was really three separate companies forced to work together. The arcade division felt like it was the "real" Sega, since it was the actual successful arm of the company and leading the technology. There was constant bickering and a lack of cooperation between the arcade and console divisions. Then SoJ and SoA were just plain antagonistic.

[Anonymous No.9052960]

>>9052928
>ntr
Don't you mean hypnotism? :^)

[Anonymous No.9052963]

>>9052730
>Saga received almost no marketing in the West beyond limited print advertisements
And about those print ads...

[Anonymous No.9052965]

>>9052940
In the case of the US yeah, that was at anon saying that Saturn RPGs getting translated would've saved the console.
>>9052943
>>9052958
Yeah, I actually like the Saturn and find it interesting but I think Sega was doomed to stop console making sooner or later. As the gaming industry matured you need centralization to most effectively use your resources. Nintendo had that basically right from the start and is a big reason why they still persist even against companies with tons of money to blow.

[Anonymous No.9052967]

Bonus round:

Another casualty of Bernie Stolar's business acumen.
SoJ was by then convinced that Sega Genesis games weren't worth selling as standalone products, so they contacted NEC/Hudson... and developed Dream Library.
Aka The DreamCast's Virtual Console.
It had downloadable emulated ROMs of Sega Genesis, Master System, and PC Engine games.

And of course, it was denied a release in the West, despite the absolute cheap cost and SoA attempting something similar before (but more costly), the Sega Channel.

Something similar was eventually released as the very final US release for the DreamCast, and it was using fan emulators and roms as a base instead of SoJ's emulation. The developer was so pissed he included instructions to pirates to inject more ROMs in it and tweak compatibility options.

>>9052950
He decided the WonderSwan Color was dead even before it was announced and acted accordingly.

[Anonymous No.9052971]

>>9052967
Surely this would've saved the Dreamcast.

[Anonymous No.9052976]

>>9052945
>Pressing discs isn't "large amounts of money"
Printing discs and manuals, packaging the disc and manual, shipping them around the country, selling and then stocking them to retailers, does actually take money because it's not Joe Nobody printing out a a CD for his garage band but a multi billion dollar industry. Add on to this that you have to pay Sega a licensing fee, and you had no chance of making any of that money back, because nothing on the Saturn sold, at all. The people on this board should ostensibly be in at least their early to mid 30s, and yet you have the basic business understanding of a grade schooler.
>and for cases like there there were external publishing partners... like Working Designs and Atlus USA
Which you then have to hire, and pay more money to, to get no return from, because once again, Saturn games did not sell, at all.

[Anonymous No.9052984]

>>9052965
They were doomed because they just didn't have the cash. You needed to be a billion-dollar corporation to compete after the 5th gen.

[Anonymous No.9052987]

>>9052984
Yeah, but that was a direct result of poor decision making and all the in-fighting between the different divisions of the company.

[Anonymous No.9052989]

>>9052976
"Basic business understanding" immediately loses all credibility when you're defending what Bernie Stolar did.

The licensing, packaging, and manual fee is recouped from pricing the game accordingly.
Skimping on those expenses, which are a tiny percentage of the entire game budget that went into R&D, production, salaries, rating boards, translation work... in the very last stretch means that yes, garage band Joe is a better distributor than your jewish businessman asshole wrecking the entire gaming industry one console company at a time.

To drive the joke that is Sega of America further home, Ubisoft in their humble beginnings as a Benelux-exclusive small time developer somehow managed to carve a niche for the PC Engine there and sell 140k PCE-CDs and even more imported software with just the disc case and cover and a leaflet with a very barebones french translated walkthrough for completely untranslated games.

[Anonymous No.9052992]

Sega's entire claim to fame was getting lucky in the west for a few years with the Genesis and riding that wave for a while. Had NEC not shit the bed with the PC-FX and released a competent follow up to the PC-Engine the Saturn would have been a complete disaster even in Japan. The only reason the Saturn had any stability over there at all is because it filled the niche that NEC abandoned.

[Anonymous No.9052993]

>>9052989
>The licensing, packaging, and manual fee is recouped from pricing the game accordingly.
Each Saturn game would need to be sold for a million dollars at that rate.

[Anonymous No.9052996]

>>9052992
In terms of just consoles, yeah. Their arcade games and arcade chipsets were really what made them world famous though.

[Anonymous No.9053007]

>>9052989
>The licensing, packaging, and manual fee is recouped from pricing the game accordingly.
So you want to take a product with basically 0 market value, and 0 prospective buyers, and then price it at a much higher rate than competing products, while also skimping on the presentation aspects of the product by cutting costs on packaging and advertising, meaning no one would even know that this product is available.
If only Bernie had your sage wisdom to rely on at the time anon, the Saturn would have rose like a Phoenix and been a massive hit, and that 15 million dollar deficit would have disappeared overnight.

[Anonymous No.9053015]

>>9052992
NEC is even more dysfunctional than Bernie's SoA. NEC Japan constantly sabotaged the US branch's plans to secure licenses for the most wanted releases, all the while listening to developer feedback without even thinking about the consequences. So the PC Engine CD was missing the SuperGrafx enhancements because HuCard devs said it would make the base console obsolete too soon, then the PCE-FX was delayed from 1992 to 1994 for the exact same reason (despite the retrocompatibility) with zero R&D changes (not even 3D added despite the MPEG and 2D scaling effects).

>>9052993
>each customer needs to recoup the development budgets and sega's losses for that quarter
Nice businessman acumen! Let me guess, customers should drive to harbor warehouses and open the containers themselves and then the correct lots, and then get the manuals from a separate warehouse, because Sega hiring people to do that before the game is on stores is an extra expense.
I'm sure with this money saving expertise even Nintendo's war chest would get depleted in a single generation.

[Anonymous No.9053031]

>>9053007
>a product with basically 0 market value, and 0 prospective buyers,
The Sega Saturn games sabotaged by Bernie covered a lot of genres that were and still are thriving today. That's a lot of "things that would never sell".
>and then price it at a much higher rate than competing products,
Companies sell games at a loss? This is news to me. Of course any company would charge the customer for the licensing fee, packaging fee, and distribution fees, as part of the individual game copy's price. Do you find this outrageous?
As for selling games higher than normal because of a lower prospective audience, Sega did it with Phantasy Star IV (80$) and it still did well, and JRPG localizations priced at $75 and still sold extremely well (Squaresoft's entire SNES offerings) were common then.
>while also skimping on the presentation aspects of the product like packaging
Like the smaller CD cases that the TG-16 and PlayStation were already doing? Or the black and white 8 page manuals that Sega was already using?
>and advertising
SoA didn't advertise, and you have Bernie to thank for that.
Yes, I agree it's a negative. That's the whole point. But I thought that was part of the "necessary evil" positive for you?

Good Bernieposter.

[Anonymous No.9053036]

>>9053015
>Nice businessman acumen!
Thanks, I try to compete with the idea of releasing games nobody will buy on a console nobody bought but it's tough.

[Anonymous No.9053043]

>>9053031
>The Sega Saturn games sabotaged by Bernie covered a lot of genres that were and still are thriving today
If you genuinely think any of the games posted in this thread would've sold more than 50k at absolute max then you are living in your own reality.

[Anonymous No.9053045]

>>9053036
You can do better. Bernie's ultimate achievement (the WonderSwan) was managing to ensure nobody buys the console by cancelling its release in the first place. Then you don't have to worry about releasing games any longer. Then it's not your problem any more. Just collect the paychecks until daddy Shlomo hooks you with the next nip company stupid enough to trust you as its CEO.

[Anonymous No.9053048]

Sega fell into the same trap that killed the Master System in NA which was not localizing worthwhile games while greenlighting bottom-rung shovelware.

[Anonymous No.9053051]

>>9053045
>Bernie's ultimate achievement (the WonderSwan) was managing to ensure nobody buys the console by cancelling its release in the first place.
It would've flopped anyway. It doesn't take a genius to see it coming.

[Anonymous No.9053057]

>>9053031
And yeah there were worthwhile Saturn games that didn't consist of Super Schoolgirl Locker Room Adventure.

[Anonymous No.9053067]

>>9053048
In my opinion, it was the japanese division not being hands on enough with their north american development partners (lost them all), their strategic first party and third party releases, and first and foremost not making sure which console their supposed killer app is targeting.
Results: two years of losses with barely ANY MONEY coming in (even software publishers would have made more), lots of burned bridges after an exceptionally good position with third parties, and a CEO who attempts to port all of your upcoming arcade killer apps to the nintendo 64.

Nothing Nintendo or Sega ever did in the 3rd gen is as much of a monumental screw up as this.

>>9053051
Nintendo, and R&D departments everywhere looking to launch new products: Hire this man!

[Anonymous No.9053073]

It's kind of interesting that most of the decisions Nintendo did after that with Nintendo of America were all tailor made to avoid repeats of the Sega situation: the muzzling of NST (after Project Hammer), being extra involved in every single detail for their published games, ensuring each quarter receives a tentpole title, sometimes like with Culdcept 3DS they'd localize the game but leave another company to distribute it to reduce risks, and so on

[Anonymous No.9053079]

>>9053031
>The Sega Saturn games sabotaged by Bernie covered a lot of genres that were and still are thriving today.
What games would those be? Niche PS1 multiplats that at most sold 150-200k copies on a console with literally 35x the marketshare as the Saturn? Ports of fucking Super Nintendo games released in 1997-98?
>Companies sell games at a loss?
Are you actually dumb and childish enough to think games are sold at 100% profit? After licensing fees, retailer cuts, manufacturing and shipping costs, advertising expense, and tons of other shit companies make about $10-15 per sale. To make profit on a single one of these games they would have needed to retail in a ziploc bag for $120
>SoA didn't advertise, and you have Bernie to thank for that.
Because advertising costs money, and is a loss you take because the value of it results in a net profit when you're advertising something for a popular product, with a bunch of marketshare. When you advertise a product no one cares about, for a product no one owns, it's just a total net loss that you don't do when the company you are working for is already 15 million dollars in debt.

[Anonymous No.9053128]

>>9053079
>Are you actually dumb and childish enough to think games are sold at 100% profit?
Bernieposter business tip of the day: Sell a game for $60 you take a $5 loss on. Besides the amusing point that it must be really excellent decision making to make the production costs $65, this basically means that the more people buy this game, the more you're losing money on it.
The last time this actually happened was in the Atari 2600 age, and it was because of a royalties agreement between two companies, and once the one footing the bill realised they cancelled the game before it even finished development.

So yes, the individual game copy on its own needs to turn a profit to be viable for sale.
You don't have to price it at $120 in order to make that happen, not even for the overpriced N64 cartridges.

>>9053079
>What games would those be?
ah, idk, maybe the Saturn's selling points in Japan could be its selling points overseas if the third party publishers aren't blocked at every step of the process? Even Sony seems more interested in those than Sega.

> at most sold 150-200k copies
Is that supposed to be a worse number than 0 copies (thanks to Bernie) or the 150-200k copies Sega games used to sell on the Sega Genesis? How is that a justification for zeroing out profits for almost complete localizations?

[Anonymous No.9053135]

>>9053128
>ah, idk, maybe the Saturn's selling points in Japan could be its selling points overseas
Legitimately more braindead than Bernie when it comes to business.

[Anonymous No.9053136]

>>9052910
>Because Sega was already 10-15m in the red at the time,
How much of those 10-15m were completed games an entire development budget put into them but 0 sales?

[Anonymous No.9053168]

>>9053135
Sure anon, make the Saturn's american selling point 3D and sports games when it has neither of those and reject everything else that doesn't fit that criteria.

Maybe Nintendo should have cancelled all of their kiddie/Japanese/2D games (after developing them to completion, of course) such as Wind Waker and Sunshine and everything else and fired the Nintendo EAD team, and only allowed some western third parties to release FIFA, and some shit clones of GTA here and there, and gave the Tatoo Mario project to some eurojank dev to finish in just 6 months then he has a heart attack and the Mario series is canned.
I'm sure if they got Bernie Stolar he would have saved the GameCube this way from defeat by PS2. Either that or he'd say "he did the best he could, but shitty nips fired me in the end."

[Anonymous No.9053172]

>>9053168
>and reject everything else that doesn't fit that criteria.
More like reject games that will 100% guaranteed flop when you're already in the red.

[Anonymous No.9053179]

>>9053172
More like make yourself even more in the red by 1/ spending zero R&D investment on american teams 2/ watching the japanese R&D go in the red and zeroing returns on that investment 3/ salaries go further in the red, fire more people and further limit what the company can do

[Anonymous No.9053187]

>>9053179
The only reason Sega was ever relevant in the home console market was Sonic. Any money spent on Saturn software development that wasn't dedicated to a 3D Sonic game was wasted money.

[Anonymous No.9053191]

>>9053128
>ah, idk, maybe the Saturn's selling points in Japan could be its selling points overseas if the third party publishers aren't blocked at every step of the process?
lmao
Bernie made a lot of stupid decisions at Sega but people forget that he also presided over Sony during the PS1's very successful launch. The way I see it, he was a mediocre businessman given the task of salvaging a console that its own designers were on record criticizing (pic related). It's funny to mock his hatred of 2D games but he's been made into a boogieman. "If only he wasn't given the reigns, then the Saturn would've won and Sega would still be making hardware!" The real world doesn't work that way, products almost never live or die based off one man, and as been pointed out in this thread, Sega's problems arguably go back to the days of the Master System.
What I wonder is why do you care? Most of these lost Saturn games can be played now, in English. Do you wish you could've grown up under Sega Saturn hegemony or something?

[Anonymous No.9053205]

>>9053187
>Any money spent on Saturn software development that wasn't dedicated to a 3D Sonic game was wasted money.

I'm sure Konami, Capcom, Game Arts, Working Designs, Sega of Japan, Camelot and many others are thankful to Bernie Stolar for deciding that they shouldn't see a single dime of returns from their projects, whether Sega of America is the publisher or someone else.

He sure saved them a lot of wasted money. After all, most of them jumped ship almost immediately to the PlayStation to port those blocked versions and release them with much less problems in the West. They didn't repeat the mistake of risking spending an entire game budget only for some random jewish asshat to tell them they're not allowed to sell their games.

>>9053191
> he also presided over Sony during the PS1's very successful launch.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

He sabotaged them quite a lot. Not just the anti JRPG policies (claimed Popolocrois, Arc the Lad, almost Wild Arms) and anti 2D (most of Capcom's early output and a big reason why they supported the Saturn in the first place)

You know Crash Bandicot, mentioned earlier in this thread as the PlayStation "killer app"?
It's completely 3D, but he still found a way to sabotage it.
A NINE MONTH DELAY for a nearly ready build. He kept it in approval hell over a 2D animation cartoon cutscene they cut as a result, then he fucking ghosted them. They had to bypass him, which, considering his position, was a bit hard.

[Anonymous No.9053206]

>if we fuck up that's 100% the Japan's fault
>if we succeed that's 100% the US merit
Globalism is a fucking joke
I fucking hate "universal appeal" products

[Anonymous No.9053208]

>>9053205
>He sure saved them a lot of wasted money
Unironically, yes.

[Anonymous No.9053212]

>>9053205
>last paragraph
Proof that 2D Arcade never "fell out of fashion with the public" they were actively sabotaged.

[Anonymous No.9053215]

>>9053205
>bernie made some mistakes with the PS1, this completely undoes the fact that it had the most successful launch in the US up to that point
Read this article, it may do you some good: https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/black-and-white-thinking#:~:text=Black%20and%20white%20thinking%20is,or%20the%20world's%20biggest%20failure.

[Anonymous No.9053219]

>>9053208
Game Arts went bankrupt shortly after the Lunar Sega Saturn remake was cancelled in the West thanks to Bernie's talk with Vic Ireland, and they tried to compensate for the third Lunar spinoff by padding it out with unskippable cutscenes and high encounter rates so that it satisfies contractual obligations about the game's length.

I'm sure they're appreciative. Same as Sega's management who randomly fired him in 1999 instead of giving him even more power.

[Anonymous No.9053220]

>>9053205
>last paragraph
Proof that 2D Arcade never "fell out of fashion with the public taste" but were actively sabotaged.
Did you know Midway flooded arcades with 3D boards sold at loss to push Namco and Sega out of the market? Only a complete retard believe in free market.

[Anonymous No.9053225]

>>9052620
>>9052628
>>9052636
>>9052641
>>9052661
>>9052672
>>9052678
>>9052685
>>9052690
>>9052701
>>9052718
>>9052730
>>9052743
>>9052796
>>9052814
>>9052818
>>9052838
>>9052875
>>9052886
Guys, guys guys guys guys. Guys. Boys. Gentlemen. Dudes. You're forgetting the BIG picture here. Sega of America was hard pressed keeping up warehouse storage demands as they continued to produce Sega Genesis hardware up to late 1997. The warehouse rent demanded that the pallets and shelves were stocked to the BRIM with unsold Sega of America produced Sega Genesis hardware. All this talk about already made hardware that can be shipped on cheap CDs...missing the big picture.

WHO was going to make all those Sega Genesis consoles? That's the big killer! N64 watch out! PlayStation you won't stand a chance! Genesis hardware HAS to go somewhere and it's certainly not ending up in customers hands. Let's just hope the Japanese branch doesn't found out where their money is being spent--

oops!

[Anonymous No.9053226]

>>9053128
Almost like I load out the exact amount of profit a sold game makes, and was mocking you for acting like it's 100% of that $60 going back to them. Do t let actual facts or logic get in the way of anything though.
>So yes, the individual game copy on its own needs to turn a profit to be viable for sale.
Which no Saturn game could do, which meant they were not released. Amazing how childishly simple this is to comprehend isn't it?
>maybe the Saturn's selling points in Japan could be its selling points overseas
That strategy had proven itself very successful when Sega launched the console on the back of their VF and Daytona arcade ports, and absolutely didn't condemn the console to bargain bins and no stock reorders only 6 months later. I'm sure investing tons of funds into even more niche genres of games with even less widespread appeal on a console that had been dead for 2 years at that point would have turned things around.
>Is that supposed to be a worse number than 0 copies
150-200k copies on the PS1. The console that had 35x the marketshare of the Saturn in America. The console that had worldwide success, and appealed to every single consumer regardless of age, gender, or taste. The console that was selling more units each month than the Saturn sold in it's lifetime in America, the console that had multiple new releases hit millions of sales each year. And even on this console, these games could only manage that low amount of sales. And you're legitimately attempting to say, that the Saturn, which was dead worldwide by the end of 97, which has one single title in it's entire library that sold 1m copies total in worldwide sales, whose highest selling NA game barely eclipsed 70k copies and was a Madden Football game, would have been saved if Bernie sold a bunch of jrpgs that no one wanted and would have needed to be priced at $120 to even think of making a profit.
You are so fucking delusional it is pathetic, unless you're just shitposting.

[Anonymous No.9053230]

>>9053219
Uh that spinoff also had pedo porn in it. Whoopsie

[Anonymous No.9053234]

>>9053219
I'm sure those ten copies sold would've saved Game Arts.

[Anonymous No.9053242]

>>9053230
>>9053219
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j6Xpzgvq68
That's exactly what I'm talking about, the direction Japan was heading is so directly antagonist to what Americans market wanted there was no other choice but to violently break up.
The whole idea of a globalized economy where any nation could compete on equal grounds is a children's daydream.

[Anonymous No.9053250]

>>9053205
>A NINE MONTH DELAY for a nearly ready build. He kept it in approval hell over a 2D animation cartoon cutscene they cut as a result, then he fucking ghosted them. They had to bypass him, which, considering his position, was a bit hard.
You're full of shit, the only thing that's true is that SoA wanted the animation dropped. But the delay was to playtest and polish the game as much as possible because of all the hype built up around it, as well as management shake ups over at Sony. Do you actually believe this or are you just throwing shit at a wall and hoping no one fact checks you?

[Anonymous No.9053254]

>>9053250
>all these words to say less games is actually a good thing
just go back to /v/.

[Anonymous No.9053259]

>>9053168
>make the Saturn's american selling point 3D and sports games when it has neither of those
Now hear me out here, just take a second to really absorb this one. What if, now, just a theory, but hang with me. What if, again just a theory, but what if, following up a console that was popular because of action and sports focused, edgy, western appealing, games, with a console full of niche Japanese RPGs and generic 2D platformers, and no continuations of your previous popular series, was the reason the Saturn failed, and not some CEO who took over when the console was already dead and selling out of bargain bins to clear stock

[Anonymous No.9053261]

>>9053230
>zoomed out silhouette nudity
Like the last Sailor Moon season? Nothing a localization job couldn't fix. The publishing woes concerned the Japanese version, and it was clear Game Arts were hurting for money back then, NOT thanking Bernie Stolar for suddenly deciding they need to do a PS1 port now. That money came, only after it was too late for them.
Peculiar business strategy you have there to endanger the continued existence of your business partners, bernieposter.

>>9053226
>Which no Saturn game could do
No Saturn game could have packaging cheaper than $65? We already know Sega's cut is around $10 or less. Does Saturn packaging use gold plastic, and are trucks shipping it to Toys 'R 'Us fueled with unicorn piss?
>and absolutely didn't condemn the console to bargain bins and no stock reorders only 6 months later.
Global software droughts are justification for adding a newer US-exclusive software drought?
>The console that had 35x the marketshare of the Saturn in America. The console that had worldwide success, and appealed to every single consumer regardless of age, gender, or taste.
I thought Sony's PS1 paid influencer program expired by 2003, you shouldn't shill for free
>150-200k copies on the PS1
and the Sega Genesis? If it goes from 100k sales for JP junk to 0 in the next console despite the cheaper production costs for game copies (discs) and the US division isn't even trying (and in fact sabotaging others trying to make it less obvious they're not trying) then the problem is with the US division. Particularly, with someone in the US division who has been in other companies in periods where that same problem manifested itself.
>which was dead worldwide by the end of 97,
Circular logic. "Dead" because of many factors: the situation where software sales are low is artificially engineered by SoA (low print runs, no advertisment, random cancellations after the entire project expenses included is already complete and ready), and its consequences.

[Anonymous No.9053270]

>>9053205
>I'm sure Konami, Capcom, Game Arts, Working Designs, Sega of Japan, Camelot and many others are thankful to Bernie Stolar for deciding that they shouldn't see a single dime of returns from their projects, whether Sega of America is the publisher or someone else.
Why do you keep bringing up Bernie when it relates to third party shit? Bernie has no control over what 3rd parties release, besides getting a licensing deal to them. A deal they all already had, because they had released games for the console. They didn't bring over their games because as has already been explained to you, they would lose money doing so. Should Bernie have personally financed 3rd party releases or something? How retarded are you?

[Anonymous No.9053271]

>>9053261
>the situation where software sales are low is artificially engineered by SoA
We've reached peak weeaboo delusion.

[Anonymous No.9053273]

>>9052592
Look, the Sega Saturn has a bunch of great games on them that you either now have to play with fan translations or just deal with the japanese. The genesis' market share was largest in the US and Europe. WHY Sega would make so many japan-exclusive games baffles me and surely contributed to their failure.

[Anonymous No.9053279]

>>9053261
Lunar Magic School is a slow slice of life with occasional haha pedo jokes. Aggressively un-American. They only made the game worse by padding it with high encounter rate and removing the original magic system from the GameGear version, I wish they would've finished and released the original design before Game Arts dissolution but that game should have never come to the west.

[Anonymous No.9053285]

>>9053254
Did you reply to the right post...? >>9053270
This dope has been caught lying at >>9053250. Don't feed the troll, it's not nice to enable the mentally ill.

[Anonymous No.9053286]

>>9053259
Nintendo and Microsoft's Xbox division didn't commit suicide because a PlayStation 2 was in the same market. They spent money on developing games, finished them, and gave them proper marketing and shelf space.

As a result, they made some money. Some of that money paid back what they spent on those projects. The rest was "profits", used to pay investors in that company, and then to invest in even more games and R&D for a new console. I don't know about burger education, but this is elementary school level of business.

Bernie Stolar decided he didn't need "profits" to run companies. He could indefinitively spend money on more and more expensive projects to cancel, he could prevent other partners from making those profits because he said "the thing that didn't release yet is our future" (and still sabotaged that too, by selling it at a massive loss)

>>9053270
It's pretty well known Bernie Stolar actually interfered with other companies and their plans to localize games on the Sega Saturn, in a similar way SCEA under his tenure asked developers to cancel complete localizations of Japanese games for ludicrous reasons. Most of those games were cancelled, except Rayearth.

>>9053285
Point taken.

[Anonymous No.9053293]

>>9053286
>They spent money on developing games, finished them, and gave them proper marketing and shelf space
The problem is Sega chose to make games nobody wanted on a console nobody owned. That's a hard sell to retailers and pointless to advertise.

[Anonymous No.9053297]

>>9053273
>The genesis' market share was largest in the US and Europe. WHY Sega would make so many japan-exclusive games
PC-Engine CD had very lax censoring for adult games, it got adopted by Kimo-Otaku anime fans.
When the PC-FX flopped they migrated to Sega Saturn.
IMO thoese were peak Gross Otaku consoles with lots of adult visual novels, rpgs, shooters and fighters.

[Anonymous No.9053317]

>>9053261
>No Saturn game could have packaging cheaper than $65?
I will lay this out to you in terms so simple even a toddler like you can understand. If you make 100k copies of something at let's say $2 personal cost, you cannot make profit until you earn 200k. If, based on every metric available, and common business sense you realize you will never make the initial 200k back, you do not move ahead with the production of the copies.
>Global software droughts are justification for adding a newer US-exclusive software drought?
"Global software droughts" is a really hilarious way to phrase "No games anywhere in the world were selling well on the console anymore, so people stopped making them"
>and the Sega Genesis
sold 25x what the Saturn did in America
>the situation where software sales are low is artificially engineered by SoA
Segas American branch didn't make a bunch of Japs not buy Saturns and Saturn software to the point even Japan stopped manufacturing the console by the end of 97.
You are legitimately mentally ill, and it's becoming more and more obvious you weren't even alive when this console was on market.

[Anonymous No.9053318]

>>9053297
Sega's lax Saturn censorship didn't last as long as it's commonly believed, they had an adults only label for a while, then with the looming revisions on what constitutes nudity and what's child porn and what's fit to sell on a console accessible by children, Sega quickly changed their tone.
Yu-No slipped through the cracks with some words replaced with asterisks, but a Dokyuusei port was canned as a direct result of the policy change.

>>9053279
>but that game should have never come to the west
Snatcher had even worse and managed the transition just fine with some cuts, but that's beyond the point. That game was a sign of Game Arts being desperate for money, and it wouldn't save the Saturn. Its original title featured on the Playstation's Greatest Hits list, on the other hand, and Grandia which Sony was very interested in publishing themselves (which is technically SoA losing their contract to localize the game to Sony, absolutely no way to make that look justifiable in any sense)...

[Anonymous No.9053323]

>>9053254
???
>>9053270
That user has been caught lying at >>9053250, they're just a troll not worth engaging with.

[Anonymous No.9053329]

I just remembered as well this game was completed and ready for release but Sega cancelled it at the last minute. Went on to sell 600,000 copies on PS1 in the US.

[Anonymous No.9053332]

>>9053317
>If you make 100k copies of something at let's say $2 personal cost, you cannot make profit until you earn 200k.
Same energy

[Anonymous No.9053336]

>>9053318
>Sega's lax Saturn censorship didn't last as long as it's commonly believed, they had an adults only label for a while, then with the looming revisions on what constitutes nudity and what's child porn and what's fit to sell on a console accessible by children, Sega quickly changed their tone.
That's true but despite that, look how many visual novels came out on Dreamcast in a short time, some of which remained exclusive to the console. The Sega Dreamcast was also traversing a 2D shooter, fighter, visual novel Otaku and western 3D sports, first and third person shooters, dudebro personality split.

[Anonymous No.9053337]

>>9053329
It would've sold less than 50k on Saturn had it been released.

[Anonymous No.9053346]

>>9053286
Neither the Xbox or GameCube made money. The GameCube was a worldwide flop, and had it not been for the outrageous popularity of the Gameboy they would have been in the same situation Sega was in a few years earlier. The Xbox was a gigantic money loss of unbelievable proportions that only continued because Microsoft literally has zillions of dollars.
You still seem entirely incapable of understanding that you take losses in business to eventually recoup them double or triple, which was something that would not have happened with any Saturn software.

[Anonymous No.9053354]

>>9053346
Sounds like something an Intellivision Amico developer would have said.

[Anonymous No.9053356]

>>9053337
ok mystic meg

[Anonymous No.9053358]

>>9053346
>Forbes says that the Xbox division has lost $4 billion since 2001. Four. Billion. Dollars.
From September 2005. That's before the 360 even launched.

[Anonymous No.9053361]

>>9053332
So you've just given up at this point, and have resorted to blatant shitposting I see

[Anonymous No.9053362]

>>9053336

[Anonymous No.9053371]

>>9053361
I'm serious.

[Anonymous No.9053375]

>>9053362

[Anonymous No.9053379]

>>9052818
Sega PC was handled by Sega of Japan anon

[Anonymous No.9053380]

>>9053371
Even assuming that's true, which it's not, that would just make you legitimately mentally retarded.

[Anonymous No.9053384]

>>9053375

[Anonymous No.9053386]

>>9053336
What's the one in column 2 line 2 like? I remember the cover art vaguely.

Slightly on topic, but the DreamCast almost had an English localization for Black Matrix, then they realized the religious themes wouldn't fly in the West and canned it. I don't know if SoA is involved.

[Anonymous No.9053391]

>>9053386
Kuon No Kizuna sairinsyou

[Anonymous No.9053397]

It was a different time.

[Anonymous No.9053412]

>>9052750
>It was the domain of cheap anime games, and typical jap shovelware like horse racing, pachinko, shoji, and VNs
All of this is on the N64 and PS cancerous faggot

[Anonymous No.9053417]

>>9053346
>You still seem entirely incapable of understanding that you take losses in business to eventually recoup them double or triple
Bruh Microsoft have never made a dime in the video game industry. They made a small amount of profit (100 million or so) with the Xbox 360 which is offset by the billions they lost on the Xbox and Xbox One. The Saturn was a bigger financial success than most Xbox consoles. Sega could just no longer compete in the industry with the direction it was heading.

[Anonymous No.9053440]

>>9052801
You’re right except pokemon

[Anonymous No.9053486]

>2 port machines back to back
sega deserved to die

[Anonymous No.9054093]

>>9053397
>Hudson
;_;

[Anonymous No.9054107]

>>9053412
Yes but PS1 also had all the AAA games and developers in addition to pachinko shovelware. The Saturn had none.

[Anonymous No.9054594]

>>9052592
A port of a PC98 visual novel riding off the success of Eve: Burst Error that butchers the music and portions of the plot, in exchange for some good voice acting and decent (but out of place) animation.
>>9052928
Desire (PC98) was pivotal in revitalizing the stagnated shovelware that the visual novel market was at the time. A lot of its ideas like multiple protagonist perspectives, its mystery island setting, multiple routes being canon time loops, etc were first used in it and later became staples of some of the most popular games in the genre, too many to list. Regardless of how it holds up and whether its garbage at the time it was important and very highly evaluated by critics and its audience. YU-NO is fantastic too but I think people in the west under appreciate how important Desire was. That being said, I don't think it would do well in a western market.
>>9052608
I forget the character names, but basically: Journalist goes to Epstein island to investigate the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, only to discover they're trying to manufacture bioweapons and use children to obtain eternal youth.

[Anonymous No.9054802]

>>9052838
How did this jew keep getting jobs

[Anonymous No.9054808]

>>9053318
>Yu-No slipped through the cracks with some words replaced with asterisks, but a Dokyuusei port was canned as a direct result of the policy change.
The asterisks thing is in the Windows port of YU-NO.
The Saturn version doesn't have explicit sex scenes and isn't following EOCS/Sofurin rules but rather Sega's rules; it doesn't have those dialog changes
Doukyuusei was ported to PC Engine and Saturn (and Doukyuusei 2 was ported to Saturn, Playstation, Super Famicom, and PC-FX).
The confusion on the Doukyuusei topic may come form speculation that the 1999 Windows port of Doukyuusei, which was heavily changed from its original PC-98 script, may have been originally planned as a Playstation port that was canned.

[Anonymous No.9054879]

>>9053337
Nah.
You're a jew making excuses because that's how you all act by default.

[Anonymous No.9054989]

God here. I can create an alternate Earth where the Saturn was just as popular in the US as it was in Japan. But by then it won't matter.

[Anonymous No.9055074]

>>9053329
Not only that, it was supposed to be Streets of Rage 4 before SEGA lost interest. Had it carried the name it would've sold much more.

[Anonymous No.9055098]

>>9052592
I mean, it was localized on the PC, and didn't exactly set the world on fire

[Anonymous No.9055103]

The rabid Bernie hatred is just /pol/-tier "Jews control and ruin the world" stuff but applied to 30 year old children's toys and porn machines, huh? I hope the Saturn schizo just keeps it to ranting about that instead of doing a mass shooting.

[Anonymous No.9055105]

>SoA pushes for PC market as a result Sega Rally 2 is made with Window CE on Dreamcast. Game ends up being unoptimized due to massive overhead. Game ends up being a poster child of just how much more powerful the PS2 is just look how well Ridge Racer V runs.
Getting tired of SoA and their eternal shiłls.

[Anonymous No.9055117]

>>9055105
Sega Rally 2 was ported by Sega PC, which was controlled by the Japanese branch. You're thinking of SegaSoft, a separate PC division handled by the Americans.

[Anonymous No.9055137]

>>9055074
it was a bad game so this was ultimate a good thing.

[Anonymous No.9055265]

>>9055098
Link?

[Anonymous No.9055270]

>>9055103
Jews literally are ruining the world.
Just look at who runs any evil organization like yidsey.

You're just fucking ignorant. You don't pay any attention who to actually runs these fucking action committes, lobbyist organizations, or fortune 500 companies.

Or you're just a kike yourself.

[Anonymous No.9055280]

>>9055265
Uh you can play it on Asenheim Project today

https://tss.asenheim.org/en/

If you actually want the native Windows 95 version or something, I don't know how you're going to get it today.

[Anonymous No.9055302]

>9055270
Case in point, lol.

[Anonymous No.9055651]

>>9053336
What a lot of people don't get is that VNs were, while not exactly shovelware, they were shovelware adjacent in that it was a relatively fast way to fill up a software library for a console that was hurting for support. Porn games are the logical extension of this where a system is hurting so bad that it starts accepting all the stuff that other console manufacturers won't allow.

The higher the proportion of VNs, porn games, and mahjong in a console's library, the more likely that it was struggling in the Japanese market.

[Anonymous No.9056927]

>>9055651
You are wrong, VN are for true gamers and thr only reason consoles didn't have porn games was because console companies were piece of trash
Right now VN in the present time is maybe the only game genre that remains pure and keeps being created for the people it always targeted
Calling it shovelware is an insult to anyone that actually loves this medium

[Anonymous No.9056937]

>>9056927
least insane saturn fan

[Anonymous No.9056938]

>>9056927
dangerously based

[Anonymous No.9056959]

>>9055651
KimoWota are cool like that and always support the underdog platform, they also elected the psp, xbox360 (for a short time) and psvita to put their obscene degeneration on. It's trendy thing to play trash games on the losing platform.

[Anonymous No.9056968]

>>9052756
>and then Microsoft and SEGA duking it out
Microsoft only got involved in the console market because they were worried SONY would keep them out of the living room. SEGA is just a game company, not an electronics giant like SONY was.

[Anonymous No.9057240]

>>9055651
>The higher the proportion of VNs, porn games, and mahjong in a console's library, the more likely that it was struggling in the Japanese market.
the PS2 was struggling?

[Anonymous No.9057492]

>>9057240
>anon doesn't know what "proportion" means

[Anonymous No.9057693]

>>9057492
proportionally the psp mogs other platforms in the VN department and it was a runaway success, you make no sense

[Anonymous No.9057748]

>>9057693
I'm not >>9055651, I was just pointing out "the PS2 has VNs too" doesn't mean anything when it had a shit-ton of almost every genre.

[Anonymous No.9057829]

>>9057693
The PSP wasn't a "runaway" success. It was the clear loser in the handheld market.

[Anonymous No.9057978]

>>9052592
This has kipller app all over it.

[Anonymous No.9058091]

>>9055103
>"Bernie is an incompetent failure of a businessman at best and an actively malicious saboteur at worst" is a /pol/ conspiracy theory
>muh /pol/ !!! maybe *someone* will agree with me this time
Bold tactic there, bernieposter.

[Anonymous No.9058113]

>>9055651
The DreamCast wasn't exactly hurting for support, most of its planned software released on the Atomiswave or as rushed ports (with buggy transparencies and all) for the PlayStation 2, because Sega of Japan decided to sunset the console and all the losses they were racking up from Bernie's tenure and their own foolish priorities (entrusting the Saturn system seller to a branch not interested in keeping the console alive, delaying the killer app that WAS ready on time an entire year for the US market)

The PC Engine CD was more successful than the Saturn or DreamCast in Japan and it had shit tons of visual novels... even "digital comics" that are little more than a powerpoint of colorized (sometimes not even that) manga panel scans with audio narration, and not even proper title screens.

[Anonymous No.9058118]

>>9057829
It did extremely well, and is easily the greatest handheld of all time.

[Anonymous No.9058127]

>9058091
Pretty big difference between calling him an incompetent businessman and the schizophrenic meltdowns going on in this thread. I still love that he hasn't responded to being exposed as a liar about Crash. Classic gish gallop tactics.

[Anonymous No.9058203]

>>9058118
It did so well that it was abandoned in the West halfway during its lifecycle, while its direct competitor nearly outsold the PS2.

[Anonymous No.9058214]

>>9055651
Super Fami is full of mahjong

[Anonymous No.9058346]

>>9058113
PC Engine CD is an interesting case. The PC Engine itself didnt have many of those games. Its library was more about arcade ports. The CD having so much porn probably stems from NEC being a PC manufacturer and being willing to accept all the games that were at the time PC centered.

[Anonymous No.9058373]

>>9058346
Tengai Makyo 2 guy stated somewhere they wrote the game with the intention in mind of pushing NEC's censorship policies to see what they could get away with. The same team wrote Linda Cubed which is incredibly interesting because it's one of the few games with an 18+ rating but without any actual sex or porn in it, the rating is completely due to creepiness. In fact the PS1 version was censored and they released a Kanzenban - Complete edition on Saturn. It's the best use case scenario for Sega's loose censorship.

[Anonymous No.9058417]

I HATE BERNIE I HATE BERNIE I HATE BERNIE

[Anonymous No.9058467]

>>9058118
Technically the Vita is since it’s an improvement on the PSP design in every way.

[Anonymous No.9058476]

>>9058118
>too weak to emulate anything beyond 4th gen and PS1
>retarded glossy finish that looks like ass after being touched for 10 seconds
>fucking mini discs as a medium
>shit tier controls with stiff buttons and shitty sliders
>ugly, washed out low res screen with contrast problems and like 90% of units have dead pixels out of the box
>literally not one fucking good exclusive game, not one
the PSP is one of the worst handhelds ever made

[Anonymous No.9058580]

>>9058476
>>9058203
The games were better, and there were more of them. I understand you're a big VN fan, don't worry that's what the DS is for. There's like 8 layton and ace attorney VNs for you to enjoy. Gamers preferred the PSP.

[Anonymous No.9058601]

>>9058476
there were some good games on it for a while but yeah now they're on steam

[Anonymous No.9058918]

>>9058580
>I understand you're a big VN fan
I wonder what goes into the mind of Sony cultists.

Sony and major developers made a ton of action oriented games for the platform clearly oriented for Western appeal (White Knight Chronicles: Origins, Final Fantasy Type-0, Kingdom of Paradise 2, Monster Hunter 3rd Portable, Phantasy Star Portable 2, Mega Man remakes) and never released them in the West and/or repurposed them for other consoles clearly reiterating that was because the sales were abysmal. Don't give me that piracy spiel, DS had it even worse and still sold gangbusters.

>that's what the DS is for
No, the PSP had more visual novels.
Nintendo just was sane enough not to tell developers "these are not real games, cancel these, this is an order" right as they have finished localizing everything and submitted it, so more visual novels games exist for the DS in English while on the PSP it's mostly late generation releases when Sony saw Ace Attorney's success (+200k sales) and stopped that... right as releasing anything for the PSP became unprofitable for third parties.

t. PSP, Vita and 3DS owner

[Anonymous No.9059409]

>>9052672
Wait, they were working on a Devil Summoner localization for Saturn? Meaning they cancelled the localization TWICE considering Sony wouldn't let Atlus put out the PSP version in the west? This infuriates me like you wouldn't believe

[Anonymous No.9061042]

>>9059409
Atlus should be grateful to Bernie Stolar. He decided to cancel their game for them, that's how business is.

More brilliant business acumen from Sega of America.
So there's this JarPIGee (-*spit*-) developed by Sega of Japan called Riglord Saga, that Sega of Japan really wanted to see published in the West and saw it through to completion. You can't mess up at this point, can you?
They didn't account for the American black arts of sabotage colloquially known as "localization".
Sega of America decided that what this early gen release really needed was... a legal problem! It's a role playing game, so make its title "Mystaria: The Realms of Lore", named after the Mystaria location in Dungeons & Dragons, which TSR holds the copyright for.

What happened then was Sega relocalizing and re-releasing the entire game one more time as Blazing Heroes (and of course, never localizing its sequel).

[Anonymous No.9061072]

There's this one, Shining Wisdom.
Sega of America made a lot of noise about retrocompatibility with the Sega Genesis and scrapped X32 projects. So Sega of Japan tried to port some of the Genesis games to the Saturn (none were allowed in the West except for Sonic Jam, which I guess was only allowed because even Bernie Stolar wouldn't have the gall to sabotage even that after Sonic Xtreme) but there were also game projects meant for the Genesis and X32 that Sega of Japan redeveloped as 2D games for the Saturn.

Shining Wisdom was one of those.
A finished NTSC build translated internally at Sega exists. In fact, it was published by Sega of Europe, completely unmodified (not even fixed for PAL speeds). However, the American branch of Sega refused to publish that finished build, and instead allowed Working Designs to... relocalize it from scratch, further delaying the release. Leaving nothing to chance, Bernie Stolar also went and threatened all third parties still localizing Japanese games to stop or else. This included Working Designs. Objective accomplished: WD would never after that pursue any more Sega Saturn software, directly because of that encounter AND Sega of America making it hell to get a RAM Pack adapter (whose use would be exactly for those kind of games) and actively tracking down loopholes about how WD was including them in collector editions or recommending stores selling them, and pulled strings to stop sales of any RAM Pack adapters.

Working Designs is normally grossly unprofessional, but their Sega-developed projects published by them (Shining Wisdom, Rayearth) was much more... ill-spirited and spiteful than the usual.
For Shining Wisdom, its American localization was something else. It tried, among other things, to:
- Change a reference to Shining in the Darkness to promote Beyond the Beyond, a PS1 JRPG made by Camelot for Sony
- all names from Shining Force II were removed

So much for brand recognition. A Sega first party game promoting the PS1.

[Anonymous No.9061234]

>>9061042
Why Sega of Japan thought more of the world needed to experience this trash is anyone's guess.

[Anonymous No.9061501]

>>9061072
There is no way anyone won that $10,000.

[Anonymous No.9061876]

Daisenryaku game for the Saturn, made by Sega under license from the original home computer IP owners after outbidding Nintendo. It's a strategy game, this one particular version is set in World War 2. The game allows you to play as either of the factions, with extremely terse tasteful descriptions of real life events that make no attempt to glamorize war or take one side or another.

>It was a minor hit in Japan.

Of course Sega of America didn't want to handle this so uniquely Japanese concept of strategy games set in Europe, so they gave it to Working Designs who wanted to rename it...

Iron Storm.

>tl;dr from Wikipedia: The Iron Cross was a military decoration in the Kingdom of Prussia, and later in the German Empire (1871–1918) and Nazi Germany (1933–1945).

The marketing campaign was so disastrous that all plans for a European version were scrapped, and they had to "donate 50 cents of every copy sold to the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C."

[Anonymous No.9061892]

After that Daisenryaku PR disaster, no other games in the series were localized until the PSP, and there were a lot of other games.

Gungriffon: The Eurasian Conflict was developed by Game Arts under the working title "3D Polygon", this one a first person mech shooter trying to showcase the Saturn's 3D capabilities. Working Designs was initially involved, but ultimately it was Sega of America that published the game, and a lot of it had to do with the Daisenryaku shitshow. Of course, the even better sequel was never localized.

As it turns out, the game is set in 2015 in Eurasia in a new conflict between the East and West in Ukraine. But the shitshow with "Iron Storm" happened, and Working Designs (who are accusing Sega of America of this in the PS2 manual of another Gungriffon sequel) was originally planning to rename this:

Iron Rain.

Also, there was a "localized" version of the game's script but whatever was there horrified Sega of America enough to remove most of the story "to better suit the U.S. market" in the words of Greg Becksted, producer of the North American version of the game, and at least an European version happened this time.

Sony sure did a lot of sabotage on their own, what with exclusivity contracts for various multiplatforms so that their Saturn versions never get localized (Metal Slug for example) but Sega of America sure saved them a lot of trouble.

[Anonymous No.9062332]

>>9061876
I don't even remember this having a marketing campaign at all.

[Anonymous No.9062338]

>>9062332
At this point the schizo is just writing fan fiction.

[Anonymous No.9062463]

>>9062338
To be fair, it takes a really special individual even by schizo standards to get btfo, repeatedly proven to be blatantly lying or outright making things up, and revealed to be a legitimate manchild with no sense of how even simple things like production work, and then wait a few days and start all over with it in the same thread as if nothing happened.

[Anonymous No.9062492]

Is there any decent site that tells you how much a game is censored across versions? Like if Dokyusei is 18 plus on Saturn does that mean it had no censorship? What exactly did 18 plus mean and why were PC games allowed show more stuff if they all had to answer to the same censor?

[Anonymous No.9062524]

>>9062338
>>9062463
I think it has to be an anti-saturn falseflagger. I have a hard time thinking that anyone could see this thread and think "yep, this reflects well on the saturn and its fans." Maybe I just have too much faith in this board, though.

[Anonymous No.9062583]

>>9062524
He's been doing this in threads for years now. He's just an actual, non-meming mentally deranged weeb who gets triggered and goes on these insane rants about Working Designs, and Bernie, and Sega of America. It doesn't matter how many times it's get pointed out that he's lying, or that he's actually making things and events up in his own head, because he'll just ignore all of it, and then wait a few days/weeks to do it again. I genuinely feel bad for whichever family member or assigned caretaker has to deal with him in day to day life.

[Anonymous No.9063227]

>>9062583
>insane rants about Working Designs, and Bernie, and Sega of America

[Anonymous No.9063232]

>>9062332
>>9062338
Sameflagging Bernie posters have to be a precious breed.

[Anonymous No.9063284]

>>9062492
Sadly not. But some japanese fan wikis may have some write ups about version changes for some games.
Usually the least censored versions are PC-98>Windows 95>PC-FX>Saturn>PC Engine>PlayStation>Nintendo

https://segaretro.org/SEGA_Rating
The ratings on the Saturn were equivalent to the ERSB's E/T, M, AO.
>推奨年齢 全年齢
>推奨年齢 年齢制限 18才以上
>X指定 18才以上
Japanese wikipedia has a list by ratings here: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:セガサターン用ソフト

AO:
アイドル雀士スーチーパイRemix
アイドル雀士 スーチーパイII
アイドル麻雀ファイナルロマンス2
きゃんきゃんバニー・プルミエール
THE野球拳スペシャル 〜今夜は12回戦〜
スーパーリアル麻雀グラフィティ
スーパーリアル麻雀PV
スーパーリアル麻雀PVI
対戦アイドル麻雀ファイナルロマンスR
天地無用! 魎皇鬼ごくらくCD-ROM for SEGA SATURN
野々村病院の人々
ホーンテッドカジノ
麻雀天使エンジェルリップス
モータルコンバットII 完全版

M:
アイドル雀士スーチーパイSpecial
アイドル雀士スーチーパイ シークレットアルバム
アイドル雀士スーチーパイ発売5周年記念めちゃ限定版○得パッケージ
アドヴァンスト ヴァリアブル・ジオ
EVE burst error
エイリアントリロジー
エルフを狩るモノたちII
エルフを狩るモノたち -花札編-
下級生 (ゲーム)
きゃんきゃんバニー・エクストラ
きゃんきゃんバニー・プルミエール2
黒の断章
桜通信〜ReMaking Memories〜
出動!ミニスカポリス
スーチーパイアドベンチャー ドキドキナイトメア
スーパーリアル麻雀P7
スタンバイSay You!
全国制服美少女グランプリファインドラブ
続 初恋物語 〜修学旅行〜
卒業 〜Graduation〜
卒業II 〜Neo Generation〜
ダークシード
誕生 〜Debut〜
探偵 神宮寺三郎 夢の終わりに
DESIRE (ゲーム)
デススロットル
同級生 (ゲーム)
同級生2
慟哭 そして…
バーチャコールS
爆れつハンターR
Piaキャロットへようこそ!!
Piaキャロットへようこそ!!2
美少女花札紀行 みちのく秘湯恋物語
ブルーシード 〜奇稲田秘録伝〜
放課後恋愛クラブ -恋のエチュード-
宝魔ハンターライム
麻雀学園祭
麻雀学園祭2
麻雀学園祭DX〜前日にまつわる奮戦記〜
麻雀同級生Special
マリカ 〜真実の世界〜
無人島物語Rふたりのラブラブ愛ランド
RAMPO
瑠璃色の雪

[Anonymous No.9063313]

>>9053250
>"SoA = Sony of America"
I have no words

>"management shake ups over at Sony"
>Bernie gave them the go-ahead in September 1995 but still wouldn't sign the contract until March 1996 while asking them all sorts of massive (anti-2D) changes, all the while Universal saying Tawna is sexist and trying to screw over Naughty Dog ahead of E3 1996
Gee, I just wonder what those internal management shake ups were about, and why things only moved forward for the project when Bernie Stolar was out of the company.

Bonus:
>Gavin and Rubin went with "Willy the Wombat" as a temporary name for the starring character of the game. They never intended the name to be final due both to the name sounding "too dorky" and to the existence of a non-video game property of the same name; the name was also used by Hudson Soft for its Japan-exclusive Sega Saturn role-playing game Willy Wombat.
A mascot game on the Sega Saturn that wouldn't be released in the West was used as an inspiration for the PlayStation's killer app.

[Anonymous No.9063323]

>>9062583
>>9062524
>>9062463
>>9062338
guys check out discord we got a live one on /v/ lmao

[Anonymous No.9063345]

>>9063232
That's what was so controversial?

[Anonymous No.9063354]

Maybe Bernie was out of his position because he was sabotaging Sony's investments in expensive role playing games (Final Fantasy VII) and their third party ties. For once here's an example from Bernie's amazing stewardship for the PlayStation.

>Dungeons & Dragons Collection is a two-disc compilation of the previously released arcade games Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom and Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara. It was released only in Japan on March 4, 1999, exclusively for the Sega Saturn. There is a maximum of two players instead of the original four.[1]
>It was initially announced that the game would be released for both the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation,[1][2] with the PlayStation version due for a U.S. release,[3] but the PlayStation version was never completed.

This one was targeting Western audiences primarily, announced first for the PlayStation, then SCEA (under Bernie) would reject it despite its nearly finished status. It wouldn't be the only one, other games no matter the developer. That's how "Mega Man X3" and "Earthworm Jim 2" are not fit for US release.
This led to Capcom infamously telling Sony that if they pull the same stunt with Mega Man 8 and Mega Man X4, they will make the Resident Evil series exclusive to the Saturn (and that's why indeed RE2 was planned from the get-go for Saturn and N64 ports, and why RE Code Veronica was at a time the actual RE3 until Sony paid for the exclusive rights for the "RE3" name)

Capcom then ported the game to the Saturn in 1997 for a planned Fall '97 US release
(You can get an inprogress leaked build of the localization here: https://hiddenpalace.org/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_Collection_(May_3,_1997_prototype) )
But were forced to do a Fall '99 JP-exclusive release instead.
>The compilation was constantly delayed and the US release was eventually cancelled possibly due to Sega's insistence on dropping support for the Sega Saturn.

[Anonymous No.9063360]

>>9063354
For all the talk about how Japanese weeb RPG wouldn't have saved the Saturn, there is at least a little truth to the idea that Capcom's library could have been very helpful to the thing. Not "beat the PS1 or even N64" helpful but "actually survived until the Dreamcast" helpful.

[Anonymous No.9063382]

>>9063345
The issue was that at some point they painted it in magazine coverage (ads, interviews) and online boards as a nazi friendly game, not to mention the title and logo, and then had to do that to salvage the release. Not hard to see how that could have happened everything considered, from their localization choices to Vic Ireland personally throwing under the bus an ex-employee on Lunar 2 saying he wasn't taking the localization seriously and writing stuff that would never pass professional review.
No matter what their political choices are, they jeopardized the hard work of another developer. With all of their badmouthing of other devs for their faults, not surprising it all caught up with them eventually. But this is besides the point here. Sega had no reason to let things devolve this catastrophically.

>>9063360
The Saturn had all sorts of games from developers all over the world, but these games were mysteriously sabotaged left and right. Sega of America was all but encouraging its development partners (or Euro devs) to join Sony with all of their refusals to do stuff like Comix Zone 2 or similar things, hostility towards third party developers bringing Japanese software no matter the content...

Bernie's excuse was wanting a certain kind of games on the platform, 3D games and sports games.
In the end the only thing that worked out were those sports games, as measly irregular ugly ports. And then he had to go and tell Sega to develop direct competitors to those sports games on the DreamCast, so EA just dropped all support for the platform.

It's sabotage, simply put.
Saturn had even more support than the N64, yet conveniently enough everything was rejected for one reason or another.
That massive stock of unsold Sega Genesis consoles? Nintendo had a similar problem with their unsold SNES stock and basically their solution was to offload it to other countries as imports (like surplus of SF Zero copies in 1996). Sega had TecToy, yet they never did that.

[Anonymous No.9063437]

Let's talk a bit about Bernie Stolar's brief stint at Mattel in 1999.
Mattel brought him in to handle the upcoming launch of the Bandai WonderSwan Color, planned from the get go for a worldwide launch, with Sony and Squaresoft readying support for it. Bernie's division was all about software development and videogames.

In the end, Bandai was reduced to finding loopholes in their contract with Mattel to be able to release whatever they had ready.
>Digimon: Anode/Cathode Tamer is one of two Digimon WonderSwan[1] games (and one of the very few WonderSwan Color games) that are available in English. It combines two separate Japanese games, Digimon Adventure: Anode Tamer (デジモンアドベンチャー アノードテイマー), and Digimon Adventure: Cathode Tamer (デジモンアドベンチャー カソードテイマー), into one. The game was distributed by Bandai Asia and targeted mostly to Hong Kong and possibly several other English-speaking Asian markets. The name is derived from the two different electrodes anode and cathode.

In 2003, the Mattel division was shuttered, and Bernie Stolar was let go. His only major stints after that were more companies that tried to introduce GaaS as early as 2007 (a small influence in the current sorry state of mobile gaming from its promising beginnings, but an influence nonetheless).
>“I went to the CEO, who was Eric Schmidt, and said, ‘Why don’t we put advertising in all these games and give them away for free online?’
>He wouldn’t do it. That’s when I knew I should leave the company. I started helping them evangelize, but I knew there was no future for me.

In Bernie's obituaries online, this period is described as
>He would find success at Mattell by selling Barbie video games, and he stayed there until 2005.
*2003
I checked for Barbie videogame releases on gamefaqs out of morbid curiosity, and only one Barbie videogame (Barbie Explorer) was released between 1999-2003 before it went back to almost yearly releases.

[Anonymous No.9063450]

>>9063360
Why? 2D games were probably at their lowest point during that gen, financially. All the 2D kino in the world couldn't save a system with fundamentally poorly designed 3D hardware.

[Anonymous No.9063456]

>>9063382
I wonder if it was blowback from this ad that came out a little earlier?

[Anonymous No.9063461]

>>9063382
>Saturn had even more support than the N64
You can't just say this without context though. Yes, the Saturn had more third party support but the circumstances were vastly different. The typical Saturn third party game sold 20,000 copies at best, even in Japan. The typical N64 first and second party game broke a million. So it's not like all that third party support was pulling a lot of weight for Sega.

[Anonymous No.9063465]

>>9063450
Capcom's CPS2 games were king of the arcades at the time and people were greatly miffed at the shitty PS1 ports of X-Men vs Street Fighter. Arcades were dying, yes, but what was not dying was the desire for arcade perfect ports. People wanted arcade games. They just wanted them on home consoles rather than at the arcade itself.

[Anonymous No.9063485]

>>9063313
In one corner, we have a deranged weeb schizophrenic who is convinced Bernie Stolar, despite not working at Sega until late 1997, killed the Saturn by somehow making 3rd parties who he had no control over not release games for it.
in the other corner, we have the actual creator and developer of the series.
now who should we believe?

[Anonymous No.9063529]

>>9063485
If Saturn schizos listened to what creators had to say they wouldn't even be praising the console like they are to begin with, see >>9053191

[Anonymous No.9063601]

>>9063382
>The Saturn had all sorts of games from developers all over the world, but these games were mysteriously sabotaged left and right
It's called the Saturn being a poorly designed console nobody bought from a company nobody trusted at this point.

[Anonymous No.9063718]

>>9061042
Actually in hindsight I'd rather have no western Devil Summoner than something along the lines of Revelations: Devil Summoner

[Anonymous No.9063925]

>>9052787
FF7 and Pokémon were huge in the west as far as JRPGs go, Pokémon in particular remains a runaway commercial success to this day, but they were still a minority part of the market all things considered.
Pokémon didn't even start having any kind of notable competition until Persona started slowly getting popular in the mid 2000s, and that's still a very, very distant second to Pokémon's unchallenged popularity in the wast.

[Anonymous No.9063929]

>>9052810
He's right though, Pokémon and Final Fantasy 7 sold well, but they're the only JRPGs which actually sold well in the US in those days.

[Anonymous No.9063935]

>>9052828
Yes, but that growth took a lot of time.

[Anonymous No.9063959]

>>9052886
Bernie made many bad decisions, but cutting the life of the Saturn wasn't one of them, it was a necessary decision by that point. The console had, as said, a very tiny and meek install base, and games sold extremely poorly, even if many of the games were actually pretty good for what they were.
Continuing to invest money into localizing games which just won't sell much won't turn a profit, so killing the Saturn was simply about Sega cutting their losses, supporting the failed Saturn would just continue costing them money which they couldn't afford.

Now, that leaves the customers you have in the dust, which isn't exactly great either, but much of that comes back to the Saturn simply not being well planned (not the best hardware, poor support for devs, lack of marketing, no proper Sanic, etc). Combine that with poor decisions like the Sega 32X, or thinking that the Sega Genesis could be kept going until 1997, with manufacture continuing on well past market demand being met, and a lot of the thundering success which Sega had with the glorious Genesis in the past starts to get undone.

Nintendo made a gigajillion dollars on 3rd and 4th gen, and even they wouldn't be able to keep it up if they were making cascading fuckups like these. The Dreamcast was a much better machine, but that won't undo previous failures.

[Anonymous No.9063972]

>>9063929
Define "well"? FFVII and Pokemon did gangbusters but a lot of RPGs were selling "well" by the standards of their day. Chrono Trigger sold something like 300,000 units, which wasn't exactly a ton but by SNES standards was reasonably decent. For comparison that's not that much less than what games like Mega Man X and Super Metroid sold, each doing around 400,000 in America.

[Anonymous No.9063973]

>>9063601
>poorly designed console
Didn't prevent those developers from finishing fully bugtested, ready for retail master copies.
Irrelevant to Sega of America deciding to sabotage fully mastered releases dozens of time, more cancellations than actual releases.
>nobody bought
Sega of Japan surely had 6-8 worldwide Saturn consoles on the market.
Consoles are sold at a loss and need to make it back with 2-3 software sales at least.
Consumers of said consoles are usually invested in buying that software because they didn't buy a brick.
For some reason, Bernie Stolar fundamentally doesn't get this, hence the DreamCast's $400 cost and $250 price tag by Bernie behind SoJ's backs.
>from a company nobody trusted at this point
Deflection pilpul.
There was an absence of trust, but it was in the DreamCast gen (+1999) as a direct result of Sega of America's actions (1996-1998).
The reason why no one would develop for the DreamCast was that they had already experience with Sega of America constantly being hostile to them and disregarding these developer's need to put their games on the market.
That loss of trust wasn't there yet when Bernie Stolar and Sega of America didn't start to pull their crap yet.
SoA created that situation, it can't be used to explain away why they had to create that situation.

>>9063929
>sold well
Chrono Trigger / On the Super Nintendo, the game went on to sell 2.31 million copies. In Japan it sold 2.03 million copies, while in America it went on to sell 289,000 copies.
Was considered a success.
Many roleplaying games from then did similar numbers, and FF7 destroyed "it don't sell here", hence companies kept localizing them, even for the N64.

>>9063959
>Continuing to invest money into localizing games
This falls apart when realizing it's not HIS money. There's zero reason to tell third parties to stop trying to give you license fees, press their discs, and create more demand for your console, except to cover your ass for failing to do so on your own.

[Anonymous No.9063976]

>>9052945
Final Fantasy 7 didn't start development until 1994, and that was planning sessions for when it was still intended as a 2D game for the SNES, it wasn't until late 1995 that work began on 3D rendering.

There was no fancy 3D FF7 stuff being shown to anyone in 1993.

[Anonymous No.9063981]

>>9063959
>>9063973
I seriously think Bernie thought the Dreamcast was almost out the door when he was making these demands and was afraid continued support of the Saturn was going to cause another 32X and Saturn situation again. I don't know the timing but if the 3DFX Dreamcast plan was in his hands and he didn't know that SoJ was working on their own architecture then it's possible he just wasn't able to predict that Sega would be left without any console business for a good two years. That's the only way this makes any sense since nobody would just cut the Saturn loose if they didn't have anything else to replace it.

[Anonymous No.9063990]

>>9063973
That's a lot of excuse making and fanfiction for a flopped console.

[Anonymous No.9063997]

>>9063976
>There was no fancy 3D FF7 stuff being shown to anyone in 1993.
There is, and the anecdote is told by the old editor-in-chief for Famitsu and the reason why he wanted it to drop the Famicom Tsushin branding and go all in on Sony support. The isometric 3D game referred to as FF7 was probably a different project, much like the FF4 NES that got completely cancelled and was completely different from the released FF4 SNES.

>>9063981
Doesn't hold water. The DreamCast was out by 1998 in Japan and had its killer app, Sonic Adventure at Christmas ready (and its TGS demos prior to that were localized in English) yet wasn't released until September 1999 in the USA and the console barely got two years of action, with the same dance of European-exclusive software and 2D software held in Japan for no real reason (their Virtual Console like service)
Bernie sure didn't seem to be in a rush to release it.

[Anonymous No.9064015]

As unbelievable as it is, the DreamCast still has some traces of Bernie Stolar's brilliance.

Blue Stinger, aka Sega's poor-man's answer to Resident Evil to smooth out the wait for Code Veronica.
Developed by Climax and published by Sega in Japan, the Japanese side even took care to fully translate and dub it in English. That translation was in fact kept as is in the Western version.
So, the game was out by March 1999 in Japan, but... delayed until 9/9/99 in the USA for no legitimate reason.

>The North American and European versions removed the original cinematic style camera system, instead using a fixed, behind-the-player third-person view, such as that of Tomb Raider.[3] This revamped camera style was met with both critical acclaim and criticism. Some argued that the change took away from the dramatic tension for which the Japanese version had become famous.
The result is that a semi competent fixed angle Resident Evil clone became a janky ass 3D game where the camera is constantly clipping with the scenery or interfering with the gameplay, and low poly elements of the scenery that wouldn't be otherwise noticed are at your face at all times.

Moreover, Sega of America refused to publish this title, so it was handled by Activision.

[Anonymous No.9064027]

>>9053128
Anon, if Game X sold 200000 copies on the far more successful competing Playstation, with a 35x larger install base than the Saturn, then Game X would be projected to sell less than 5700 copies, and that's assuming it is equally popular.

Game X could be ten times as popular with the Saturn audience (unlikely, but let's give it the advantage), and that still means you're looking at a projected 50000-60000 sales, these are absolute poverty numbers.
Mind that it's still with having to advertise the game, having to have it localized, having to print the game, its packaging and associated material, then ship it around to where it would be sold, where it has to take up shelf-space, and if retailers find your game isn't selling well enough, they're not going to waste their space on it, and now you've got stock you're struggling to sell, which costs money for you to house.

The reason for the legendary Atari landfill was that Atari had all this stock they weren't able to sell, and storing that costs them money, so scrapping it all and throwing it away was saving them a lot of expenses. Things like these are not free.
200000 games sold is quite decent, a very hypothetical 50000, probably far less, is outright bad.

>>9063973
>This falls apart when realizing it's not HIS money.
It's his employer's money and his continued employment hinges on his actions.

[Anonymous No.9064038]

>>9064027
The part about storing games is a very important point, because it's to illustrate that you generally can't just make a bunch of stock like this, not in a heavily competitive market like videogames, and sit on it long term and hope to make sales, because you won't recoup costs on storing it.

[Anonymous No.9064039]

>>9064015
>So, the game was out by March 1999 in Japan, but... delayed until 9/9/99 in the USA for no legitimate reason.
Maybe because the console wasn't out until 9/9/99? Also that's not even true as Blue Stinger was out August 31st despite the console not being released yet.

[Anonymous No.9064045]

>>9064015
Bernie was a fucking dreamcast guy to begin with what the fuck are you talking about? he never worked on the saturn. got brought on specifically to work on the dreamcast and when the sega had already given up on the saturn.
I will never ever understand why people blame bernie for the saturns failures. the saturn just didnt have what people wanted'
>delayed until 9/9/99 usa for no reason
the dreamcast wasnt out before 9/9/99 in the usa

[Anonymous No.9064050]

>>9063959
Bernie literally had no hand in whatever you think his bad decisions were

[Anonymous No.9064062]

>>9053230
>>9053242
>pedo porn
>it's just covered nudity which you don't get a good look at
Can't just lead a nigga on with promises of cunny like that.

[Anonymous No.9064089]

Another example of Bernie Stolar's brilliance: Sports games.
Those were some of the rare games that would get his blessing and were deemed to be "what the American public wants".

Let's see how well that went.

EA *did* want to publish their annuals sports games on the Dreamcast, but Stolar's negotiations with them went south and EA backed out because of his arrogant and hostile tone. In the end, just like Working Designs, Konami (ported their planned DreamCast games for the PS2 after the US launch's numerous delays), EA Sports announced they WON'T publish games, including the Madden NFL series, for the Dreamcast.
So Bernie Stolar's genius idea was to have Visual Concepts waste their time developing a Sega-published competitor to EA's sports games. That was NFL 2K.

Of course, Sega could never hope to compete with EA or have a steady supply of sports games. The only way they gave EA a hard time was in 2004 when Sega published the NFL 2K series for the PS2 *and* all other NFL games were cancelled *and* Sega did a heavy discount for the title. In response, EA brought exclusive rights to the team names and all of that ended overnight.

[Anonymous No.9064095]

>>9064038
It seems like third parties handled a lot of that themselves though? My info comes from Working Designs, so take that for what you will, but apparently in order to do their special editions with pack in bonuses and stuff they had people manually filling the boxes. And Victor Ireland had kept stock himself in a warehouse. He liquidated a lot of it years ago on Ebay. So I don't know if it would have been on Sega's dime.

[Anonymous No.9064097]

>>9064089
NFL 2K was good though. I wouldn't call that a "waste of time."

[Anonymous No.9064109]

>>9064089
People loved NFL 2K and clearly it was a threat to EA since they had to buy the entire NFL to compete.

[Anonymous No.9064312]

>>9064015
>So, the game was out by March 1999 in Japan, but... delayed until 9/9/99 in the USA for no legitimate reason.
lmao I love how this dude just keeps repeatedly proving he wasn't even born when anything hes talking about was happening

[Anonymous No.9064327]

>>9064089
EA wanted an agreement where they would be the only company allowed to make sports titles on the Dreamcast, Ber had just spent $20m aquiring Visual Concepts to be a Sega owned in house studio, and said no. EA blacklisted the Dreamcast in response.
All 2K series games would be million+ sellers on the Dreamcast, and continued to be after it's demise, along with being more critically lauded, to the point EA panicked and signed an exclusive agreement with the NFL.
>The only way they gave EA a hard time was in 2004 when Sega published the NFL 2K series for the PS2 *and* all other NFL games were cancelled
This is so blatantly retarded and easily disproved I don't even know why you bother making up all this bullshit in your posts and acting like people aren't going to call you on it.

[Anonymous No.9064359]

>>9052875
Bandai not releasing in the UK was not new even in 96. The UK was (stll would be if not for how easy streaming is) infamously shit at getting anime on TV.

DBZ aired in 2000 off the coatils of pokemon and Sailor Moon, the other anime with a PAL game release in the SNES beat-em-up, was a second banana to Fox Kids UK's Digimon airing that seemed to be a contractual obligation more than anything else.

[Anonymous No.9064364]

>>9052895
Bandai not releasing anime games in the UK was not new even in 96.

The UK was (still would be if not for how easy streaming is) infamously shit at getting anime on TV.

DBZ aired in 2000 off the coatils of Pokemon and Sailor Moon, the other anime with a PAL game with the SNES beat-em-up, was a second banana to Fox Kids UK's Digimon airing that seemed to be a contractual obligation more than anything else.

[Anonymous No.9064378]

No, the deluded ones are people who liked shit like Mario 64 and MGS and didn't enjoy the arcade-style/non style over substance games the Saturn (and Dreamcast) had that basically killed Sega.
Saturn and Dreamcast were the last two good consoles and it's not even particularly close. It's not about being "lol sega fanboy", it was about liking ACTUAL FUCKING GOOD GAMES. Sorry if it offends you that Sega had the majority of them.

[Anonymous No.9064710]

>>9064045
Bernie did outright pull the plug on the Saturn in the US, so he put a target on his back. But yeah, as been tediously explained in this thread, the Saturn was doomed from the start.
>>9063972
>>9063973
Some RPGs did sell decently in the west but they were risky ventures because localizing them was very expensive and thus had lower profit margins. Most of them weren't Chrono Trigger-levels of success, Sakaguchi for example called FF6 in the US a failure and we have reason to believe that was one of the more successful RPGs over there. Cancelling them mid-development was not uncommon, Square did it twice. Even Nintendo infamously shelved Earthbound Zero for decades.
>>9064378
More accurate to the truth than the shit the Saturn schizo is posting, honestly.

[Anonymous No.9064730]

>>9052592
>Sega would have
Marketing sells products. An obscene marketing budget sells an obscene amount of games. Who ever spends the most amount of money on.... in other words SONY WINS every single time. Stop being so goddamned retarded OP.

[Anonymous No.9064734]

>>9064378
>Saturn and Dreamcast were the last two good consoles
Quoted for truth.

[Anonymous No.9064763]

>>9064710
Yeah a lot of RPGs were canceled just because of logistics. They'd take so long to localize that by the time they'd be ready for release the technology moved on and they'd have to compete in a hostile market with far more impressive looking games than they did originally. This is why FFV's US release got canned.

[Anonymous No.9064880]

>>9064763
Hell, it took like 3 different attempts to bring FF5 to the US before it actually happened. RPGs had it bad back then.

[Anonymous No.9064893]

>>9064880
Its easy to forget how shoestring these companies were back then. Squaresoft had to pick between localizing Chrono Trigger or Seiken Densetsu 3 because they literally didn't have the manpower to do both. Whenever Ted Woolsey was out of the office nothing got done.

[Anonymous No.9065951]

>>9064378
>Nights
>not style over substance
>not literally a fraction of the substance of Super Mario 64
tip top kek