It should have been ported.

[dataDave]

I've been thinking... I'd like to see Mario 64 ported into Odyssey in a free update. Get all 120 stars to earn Power Moon #1000.

[Nu-Eclipse]

lol. CPS-III stuff on the Saturn.

CPS-II emulation was pretty much perfect on the Saturn (albeit with RAM expansion). Was CPS-III really that much more advanced that it would've been a complete non-starter on the Saturn?

[Leon Retro]

lol. CPS-III stuff on the Saturn.

Yeah, should have been a first year Dreamcast game.

I had the PCB of Warzard. Thought it was a bit crap, personally.

I haven't played it very often over the years, but going back to it last week, I really enjoyed it. The whole design is really attractive, and it plays well. But it doesn't get mentioned much, so I guess it doesn't have many fans.

[dvdx2]

Warzard is a game I want to love, but just can’t get into it. I have the full PCB artwork and an amazing poster that I still need to get framed though.

[Leon Retro]

Warzard is a game I want to love, but just can’t get into it.

I would say it's a really accessible fighter, so easy to get some fun out of. When I was playing it the other day, it reminded me of Golden Axe: The Duel, but with nicer graphics. I think it's a beautiful game with some really impressive sprite work. I've rarely seen it talked about though, so I guess it doesn't gel with most people.

[_SD_]

Just watched some footage of Warzard and the animation is fantastic. The character designs are quite nice too, pity it’s so obscure. I’d definitely give it a go for £12.99 on PSN if it was ever ported.

[Asura]

CPS-II emulation was pretty much perfect on the Saturn (albeit with RAM expansion). Was CPS-III really that much more advanced that it would've been a complete non-starter on the Saturn?

I'm shooting in the dark here, but I'm thinking it might've been do-able.

I believe one of III's bigger improvements was more/faster RAM, which is one of the things that allowed it to cram in all those sprites that give Street Fighter III such fluid motion and numerous animation frames. I'm not sure of the amount though, because Wikipedia just lists it as "variable", though that in itself could mean it might've been quite a bit. RAM was pretty limited on both the Saturn and the PS1 (hence the need for the RAM pack on the Saturn).

However I would love to have seen it tried, [MENTION=2970]Nu-Eclipse[/MENTION]. I mean we've all seen the SNES version of Street Fighter Alpha 2 (or the GBA version of SF Alpha 3), which may have cut corners all over the shop, but were technical marvels in their own way.

I suppose the question to ask is that the Saturn could do a good NeoGeo impression, and the NeoGeo could do Garou. Therefore if the Saturn could do Garou, could it do a good SFIII?

[_SD_]

If there’s enough room on the RAM pack to hold all the animation frames for both characters, I don’t see why 3rd Strike or Warzard wouldn’t work. Even if a larger capacity RAM pack needed to be introduced, the Saturn seems more than capable enough of throwing around large sprites it has access too.

[Leon Retro]

I believe one of III's bigger improvements was more/faster RAM, which is one of the things that allowed it to cram in all those sprites that give Street Fighter III such fluid motion and numerous animation frames.

Looking at the specs of the CPS-3, I can only assume that the reason why games for the system weren't ported to the Saturn, was because of them needing more RAM than even a Saturn with a 4MB expansion. Maybe Capcom did tests, and despite the actual games fitting on a CD-ROM, there may not have been enough RAM to hold a sufficient amount of animation frames. I would guess that's the reason.

[BigDeadFreak]

I suppose the question to ask is that the Saturn could do a good NeoGeo impression, and the NeoGeo could do Garou. Therefore if the Saturn could do Garou, could it do a good SFIII?

Good point. I'm sure the Saturn could do a decent impression of SFIII but would it have been worth it? Third Strike came out in the arcades at around the same time that the Dreamcast was released. I reckon part of the thinking would have been to wait and release a proper port on the next generation of consoles. The alternative would probably have been a super expensive 8MB RAM cart and a huge amount of time trying to get a neutered version of the game to run on the Saturn. Far better to just wait and do a better port to the DC and PS2.

I suppose another question would have been who would have bought a Saturn port of SFIII? It wasn't exactly the most coveted game in the world as most people were more interested in stuff like Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid at the time. Plus, the Saturn was a very niche console with very few people playing it in the late 90s. So, it would have appealed to a small amount of gamers at best with most people just waiting for the inevitable better port on the next gen of consoles.

[Asura]

Good point. I'm sure the Saturn could do a decent impression of SFIII but would it have been worth it? Third Strike came out in the arcades at around the same time that the Dreamcast was released.

True, but remember that Street Fighter III is more than just Third Strike; the prior games came out years before that.

[Leon Retro]

Good point. I'm sure the Saturn could do a decent impression of SFIII but would it have been worth it? .

Maybe even an 8MB cart wouldn't have been enough. If Capcom had managed to get the first SF3 game onto the Saturn, I think it would have sold well in Japan and on import. So it would have probably sold a reasonable amount. But maybe when Capcom weighed everything up, they decided it would make more sense to wait for the next generation machines.

[CMcK]

I always wondered what the Saturn could have done with large ROM carts like the Neo-Geo. Surely perfect Neo-Geo, Cave, CPS II and III ports wouldn't be out of the question? I suppose back then that would have been impractical on cost grounds but nowadays...

[dataDave]

I would have happily liked the option of paying over twice as much for arcade perfect games.

[Nu-Eclipse]

I always wondered what the Saturn could have done with large ROM carts like the Neo-Geo. Surely perfect Neo-Geo, Cave, CPS II and III ports wouldn't be out of the question?

Erm...the Saturn did get perfect CPS-II and Neo ports. The RAM cartridge was pretty much spot-on for the job.