83de7218   
   From: weaponx013@yahoo.com   
      
   Cafeman wrote:   
   > From what I've read from various sources over the years, Sega   
   > originally had Saturn with a simpler chip design, mostly with 2D games   
   > in mind.  It was only after the shock of seeing what the Playstation   
   > was going to do that Sega went back and quickly came up with the dual   
   > SH-2 chip design which would give comparable 3D performance. They   
   > didn't design an alpha channel into their 3D graphics architecture   
   > however - this is why hardware 3D transparency wasn't as easy or cool   
   > looking on Saturn as it was on PS1.   
      
   As near as I can tell, this entire story is an industry rumor started by   
   Vic Ireland.  There are no published specs for what the Saturn was going   
   to be before the PS1 specs were announced in mid 1993.  There is a   
   statement floating around that the SOJ president at the time was pissed   
   that Sony's paper specs (the exaggerated 500k Texture mapped, 1 Million   
   flat shaded poly spec sheet) made the Saturn look worse on paper.  Since   
   first year Saturn and PS1 games were in the 60-80k poly per second   
   range, this was only a marketing issue, not a spec issue.  Even the 32X   
   has two SH-2s in it.  I suspect that either the VDP1, the VDP2 or the   
   DSP was added after the PS1 specs were announced, but not more than one   
   of these.   
      
   >   
   > Still, they were going multi-chip from the start, so yes they were   
   > still ahead of their time.   
   >   
      
      
      
   --   
   Scott   
      
   http://www.gamepilgrimage.com   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)