ZylonBane on 25/11/2014 at 18:30
Yikes. Good thing this apparently never went anywhere. The stock Genesis can barely manage Wolf3D levels of FPS rendering.
icemann on 25/11/2014 at 23:35
The Genesis / Mega Drive, didn't get the love it deserved back in the day by many of the developers.
If SS had made it onto it, that certainly would have made a huge splash. Whether it would have actually been a good game we'll never know. I would assume that they'd have had to majorly change the interface.
ZylonBane on 26/11/2014 at 19:22
Quote Posted by icemann
Whether it would have actually been a good game we'll never know. I would assume that they'd have had to majorly change the interface.
The interface would have been a secondary problem at best. The Genesis flat-out cannot render SS1's environments at a playable frame rate. For reference, the minimum recommended CPU for Wolf3D was a 286. SS1 requires at least a 486.
icemann on 26/11/2014 at 23:56
Some pretty good ports of 486 PC games was done back around that time. The ports of the Might and Magic games for example tended to be far superior to the PC versions.
Other times they'd end up looking completely different, though good in their own right (ie Populous, Syndicate).
Trance on 27/11/2014 at 00:47
The difference there is the system resource requirement between those two games, and how much one could strip out while still having it be essentially the same game. System Shock really is too much, graphics- and simulation-wise, for the Genesis to take. And stripping it down to make it work on the Genesis would involve way too much hacking off to leave it recognizable as System Shock.
ZylonBane on 27/11/2014 at 17:43
Quote Posted by icemann
Some pretty good ports of 486 PC games was done back around that time. The ports of the Might and Magic games for example tended to be far superior to the PC versions.
Back then if a console game looked better than its PC counterpart, it was because the design of the game played to the strengths of a game console-- higher color depth, better sound chip, hardware native scrolling, sprites, etc. A software texture-mapped 3D renderer like SS1 uses benefits from none of these things. It is purely CPU-bound.
Really, the earliest game console that could have handled SS1's visuals would have been the (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwH8J4CPh0Y) 3DO. But packing all the gameplay functionality onto its simplistic controller would have been a huge pain, so realistically you're looking at the Saturn or better yet the PS1 w/DualShock for a tolerable experience.
icemann on 28/11/2014 at 04:54
If it had happened, I'd assume that they`d have gone with a far more cartoony look and perhaps a change to a more turn based style (more in line with the Eye of the beholder and Might and Magic as I previously mentioned).
I remember playing a port of Dungeon Master on the snes and that played alright. Though the interface was quite cumbersome.
Much of it comes from how good the coders were of the game in whether the port would have been accurate and fun. Coders back in those worked miracles in achieving the impossible on the older consoles.
ZylonBane on 28/11/2014 at 19:39
Quote Posted by icemann
If it had happened, I'd assume that they`d have gone with a far more cartoony look and perhaps a change to a more turn based style
I honestly can't tell if you're joking or insane here. Turn-based System Shock?
More cartoony? How would changing the art style help it render textured polygons any faster?
