The Saturn version has a special place in my heart. My intro to Doom was with the 32X. Yeah, it had A LOT of content cut, the screen was small, and musical farts weren't that great, but it ran well and I still had fun with its 300 watt bulb-lit levels. A good year or two later, I went shopping at Walmart and unexpectedly saw a copy of the Saturn version, along with the Saturn version of Hexen, at that store. I didn't know it was coming to the Saturn at that time, so it was a surprise. I picked up Hexen that day, but the Saturn version of Doom stayed on my mind. I wondered how different it was, how much better it had to be... stuff like that. A little while later, I read a magazine review about it. The reviewer mentioned how sluggish the framerate was, and they gave it a middling score. It made me feel like I'd chosen the better game with Hexen, but I was still curious about the Saturn's Doom. Eventually, a friend of mine and myself rented it for a weekend from a Hastings store, and I saw firsthand what that reviewer meant. Yeah, it was sluggish alright. But there was so much more to the game, too. Many more levels, more animations, atmospheric lighting, more weapons, more enemies... it really took me by surprise. I found myself not really caring about the framerate, because there was just so much more game to enjoy. In time, I decided that I had to get it, and I picked up from that same Walmart probably a few months after I'd gotten Hexen from there. At home, after getting to play with the Saturn's sound going through my stereo, I then learned that the stereo sound in Saturn Doom was broken, and that you needed to play with mono sound so you'd at least get everything in both speakers. And for as rough as that framerate got at times, I still had a lot fun. I beat that game many times over the years, getting used to the areas where the framerate would hit single digits (hi there, Perfect Hatred). This was my Doom game for years, and despite all of its flaws, I enjoyed every moment. I did eventually track down a PC copy of Doom: Collector's Edition in 2001 so I could play the "real" version of all three Doom games, but I still go back and play a few levels of the Saturn version once in a while.
It was John Carmack's idea to have the team making the Saturn port not use the custom engine. Years later he would say that he regretted making that choice.
@@gameshack1985 My then current PC was, by 1993 standards, mid-range, but I had two ways of playing Doom at full speed: Pressing F5 to run the game in low-detail mode which doubled the horizontal length of the pixels(but allowed me to retain full screen) or in regular detail mode, with the screen running in a border. Of course once I bought some extra RAM this this no longer an issue. One thing I always appreciated about iDs games on the PC where that they were scalable. They wanted as many people as possible to be able to play them, even if they had to turn some settings down.
A lot of people blame John Carmack for the Saturn port turning out this way, but the developer of Hexen on the Saturn proved him right. The Doom engine will run just fine on the Saturn, when done as he prescribed. Rage Software just wasn't up to the task and decided to just blame him instead owning up to not being the right people for the job. There's also a bit of weirdness involving the music. Its redbook audio on this, while it was basically MIDI using a custom sound font on the PSX.
Yeah, I'd read about the sound differences too! I hold my hands up because I know I don't cover every nook and cranny of the games I review as I feel my videos would become too long and a bit boring! 😅
That’s because John was to blame. The coder for Doom on the Saturn was called Jim Bagley and I’ll give you some quotes from the horses mouth from Retro gamer magazine issue 134 page 23. “When I started the project, I had to do a demo for id software to approve. I started by extracting all the levels and audio and textures from the WAD files then made my own Saturn version of this. I then got an early version of the renderer working using the 3D hardware. The demo was sent off and a couple of days later I got a call from John Carmack who stipulated that under no circumstances could I use the 3D hardware to draw the screen and that I had to use the processors like the PC version. Thankfully, I enjoy challenges, so it turned out to be a really enjoyable project, using both SH2’s to render the display like a PC did it, using the 68000 to orchestrate them both.” Jim conceded however that it kneecapped the port which suffered from a poor frame rate and general slow speed. Doom (1993) was a time just before 3D acceleration from graphics cards became a thing on PC’s so presumably this was why John insisted that Doom be programmed in this way.
Well guess I will be the outlier lol. I will attest in saying that I think Doom 1/Ultimate Doom is still a very fun game on Saturn. The controls are very easy to get into, the levels are neither too complex nor too simple. The weapon variety is great, the sound effects are good, and the music is okay, and it looks fairly good visually. Framerate could be better, but I found it tolerable barring 2-3 levels out of the entire 30. I beat it twice the whole way, once in Singleplayer, the other in the Link Cable's Multiplayer. (It's rather similar to Grandia framerate wise honestly) Now having said that. Fuck Doom 2 lol. Its complex level layout causes the framerate to tank even more, and I couldn't take it after 5 or so levels.
I know your video isn't about the 32x, but given the hardware similarity, I would say the recent 32x optimized doom runs much better. Still a piece of gaming history
So was the Saturn version of Courier Crisis a bad port? Or just hated the game? I barely remember it but recall the PlayStation version being kinda fun in a Coolboarders kind of way.
Stunning what a few really motivated developers can do (Unreal on the Saturn), and even more disappointing what how bad a corporate release can be. Thanks for churning out so much Saturn content! Much appreciated!
It's better than the 3DO version so it has that going for it. Other than that it may be the worst version released at the time it's a shame they scrapped the version with the custom engine as it may have looked a little worse but by all accounts would have been a much more playable game.
@@gameshack1985 Rebecca Heinemann. One of those coders who can usually get stuff to run well on hardware it has no business running on...when given a reasonable time table that is. You should look up the story of 3DO Doom some time Its a crazy shit show.
I think the snes version doesn’t perform any better in terms of performances. I still think the saturn version is much better. However both versions aren’t fun because of diffirent or missing sound effects. Why did they had changed those sound effects in both the ps1 and saturn version of it??? Those sound effects from the pc version alone makes the game just sioo addicting to play. Also i don’t care about the music in both versions. This is were the snes version does shine in that department.
@@SomeOrangeCat It was actually a decision by John Carmack who didn't want texture warping in any of the Doom ports. There's some interviews with Jim Bageley of Rage floating around (he's talked about it on the Doomworld forums) where he mentions their original hardware accelerated engine based on the DOS version running at a solid 60fps, the prototype was sent to Carmack and he told them to use a software rendered version, hence the rushed port of the PS1 game. In fact Carmack originally wanted them to use the Saturn's DSPs which according to Jim would have meant an even slower port. Carmack has since admitted this was a mistake, so no skill issue on Rage's end.
@@MegaTerryNutkins I read the Carmack quote. He made no reference to his decision being a mistake, and we have Bageley's word against his. One of them is a legendary programmer whose work helped invent a genre, and forever changed an entire industry. The other brought us "Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion". The developer of Hexen for the Saturn proved Bageley was just a hack who wasn't up to the task.
Bought it and played it from start to finish. Didn't really enjoy it but didn't have a PC or CD drive to get that version. The reason I got it was because there were so few good games for Saturn, I'd take a chance for the price that I payed. Sega Saturn: the most disappointing game machine to get, even for REAL tight wads !!!!
PSX's colored lighting is ugly as heck. Not even ugly as hell because that would fit Doom's aesthetics. Missing colored lighting is an advantage of this specific version of the game. Performance of this version is terrible though which is kinda ridiculous. With two SH-2 CPUs it should be possible to speed up rendering with some smart coding - it doesn't however look like code is all that well written. And what is with checkerboard meshes instead of proper transparency? Does this game use any hardware acceleration for Saturn's transparency limitation to be in place? It might be this port is sad attempt at porting PSX code which was optimized for that console's specs and pushing it to Saturn. If that is the case it would explain why the game runs so poorly. IMHO Saturn deserves better port of Doom. Console's hardware is pretty good and it should allow for better Doom version. Especially would be nice to have normal PC soundtrack using Saturn's FM chip.
The part about the colored lighting being "ugly" sounds like cope to me. Coupled with the punchier sound effects and ambient soundtrack, full of monsters groaning and amelodic dissonance, it gave the PSX port a very different atmosphere to the PC original. It made Doom feel more like a horror game. The Saturn version is all the poorer for not having it in.
@@SomeOrangeCat Honestly, I'm not a big fan of the altered lighting effects on the Playstation version either. That said, while I'm a huge Saturn fan, I'd rather play the PS version any day of the week, as the Saturn port is an absolute chore to play through.
@@Aaron-lr1di Or a contrarian. Many Sega diehards are. The PC original was my obsession, and I was impressed with the spooky colored lighting of the PSX version.
Certainly not one of the best ports. They really botched this one up. The Saturn is more than capable of performing so much better with FPS games. Just look at Powerslave/Exhumed or Quake.
*Is there anyone brave enough to admit they had this on release and had the guts to show it to their Playstation or N64 owning mates? I think not....*
The Saturn version has a special place in my heart. My intro to Doom was with the 32X. Yeah, it had A LOT of content cut, the screen was small, and musical farts weren't that great, but it ran well and I still had fun with its 300 watt bulb-lit levels. A good year or two later, I went shopping at Walmart and unexpectedly saw a copy of the Saturn version, along with the Saturn version of Hexen, at that store. I didn't know it was coming to the Saturn at that time, so it was a surprise. I picked up Hexen that day, but the Saturn version of Doom stayed on my mind. I wondered how different it was, how much better it had to be... stuff like that.
A little while later, I read a magazine review about it. The reviewer mentioned how sluggish the framerate was, and they gave it a middling score. It made me feel like I'd chosen the better game with Hexen, but I was still curious about the Saturn's Doom. Eventually, a friend of mine and myself rented it for a weekend from a Hastings store, and I saw firsthand what that reviewer meant. Yeah, it was sluggish alright. But there was so much more to the game, too. Many more levels, more animations, atmospheric lighting, more weapons, more enemies... it really took me by surprise. I found myself not really caring about the framerate, because there was just so much more game to enjoy. In time, I decided that I had to get it, and I picked up from that same Walmart probably a few months after I'd gotten Hexen from there.
At home, after getting to play with the Saturn's sound going through my stereo, I then learned that the stereo sound in Saturn Doom was broken, and that you needed to play with mono sound so you'd at least get everything in both speakers. And for as rough as that framerate got at times, I still had a lot fun. I beat that game many times over the years, getting used to the areas where the framerate would hit single digits (hi there, Perfect Hatred). This was my Doom game for years, and despite all of its flaws, I enjoyed every moment. I did eventually track down a PC copy of Doom: Collector's Edition in 2001 so I could play the "real" version of all three Doom games, but I still go back and play a few levels of the Saturn version once in a while.
@TheCoopsCorner Everyone always has games that hold special places in our memories! Mine might not be Saturn Doom, but I fully relate to your point! 💜
It was John Carmack's idea to have the team making the Saturn port not use the custom engine. Years later he would say that he regretted making that choice.
Ms-Dos ftw😎
@@ChoJin Probably more playable than this version!
@@gameshack1985 My then current PC was, by 1993 standards, mid-range, but I had two ways of playing Doom at full speed: Pressing F5 to run the game in low-detail mode which doubled the horizontal length of the pixels(but allowed me to retain full screen) or in regular detail mode, with the screen running in a border. Of course once I bought some extra RAM this this no longer an issue. One thing I always appreciated about iDs games on the PC where that they were scalable. They wanted as many people as possible to be able to play them, even if they had to turn some settings down.
@@SomeOrangeCat Yeah, I remember doing that on many old PC games...turn everything down to worst settings and hoping it ran better! lol
@@gameshack1985 And now it's considered a feature on console games.
"It' quite standard in fps format.. "
I think it defined the standard
A lot of people blame John Carmack for the Saturn port turning out this way, but the developer of Hexen on the Saturn proved him right. The Doom engine will run just fine on the Saturn, when done as he prescribed. Rage Software just wasn't up to the task and decided to just blame him instead owning up to not being the right people for the job. There's also a bit of weirdness involving the music. Its redbook audio on this, while it was basically MIDI using a custom sound font on the PSX.
Yeah, I'd read about the sound differences too! I hold my hands up because I know I don't cover every nook and cranny of the games I review as I feel my videos would become too long and a bit boring! 😅
@@gameshack1985 Aubrey Hodges got creative with the ambient sounds he used. Distorting everyday sounds and odd stuff like a bee inside of a soda can.
John himself admitted he was wrong.
@@heilong79 He never once said that though. No where in the ten year old quote your misremembering does he say he was wrong.
That’s because John was to blame. The coder for Doom on the Saturn was called Jim Bagley and I’ll give you some quotes from the horses mouth from Retro gamer magazine issue 134 page 23.
“When I started the project, I had to do a demo for id software to approve. I started by extracting all the levels and audio and textures from the WAD files then made my own Saturn version of this. I then got an early version of the renderer working using the 3D hardware. The demo was sent off and a couple of days later I got a call from John Carmack who stipulated that under no circumstances could I use the 3D hardware to draw the screen and that I had to use the processors like the PC version. Thankfully, I enjoy challenges, so it turned out to be a really enjoyable project, using both SH2’s to render the display like a PC did it, using the 68000 to orchestrate them both.” Jim conceded however that it kneecapped the port which suffered from a poor frame rate and general slow speed.
Doom (1993) was a time just before 3D acceleration from graphics cards became a thing on PC’s so presumably this was why John insisted that Doom be programmed in this way.
great video like
@@jonscottcameron Thanks dude!
If the review was a movie :
The game’s framerate is between 10 and 18fps
Directed by Robert B. Weide
End.
lol
Well guess I will be the outlier lol.
I will attest in saying that I think Doom 1/Ultimate Doom is still a very fun game on Saturn. The controls are very easy to get into, the levels are neither too complex nor too simple. The weapon variety is great, the sound effects are good, and the music is okay, and it looks fairly good visually. Framerate could be better, but I found it tolerable barring 2-3 levels out of the entire 30. I beat it twice the whole way, once in Singleplayer, the other in the Link Cable's Multiplayer. (It's rather similar to Grandia framerate wise honestly)
Now having said that.
Fuck Doom 2 lol. Its complex level layout causes the framerate to tank even more, and I couldn't take it after 5 or so levels.
As you'll have seen by the footage as most of it was Ultimate Doom, I too, did find that part of Saturn Doom slightly more playable.
I know your video isn't about the 32x, but given the hardware similarity, I would say the recent 32x optimized doom runs much better. Still a piece of gaming history
@@pepinw yeah, it definitely does!
Still waiting on someone in the home brew community to fix the issues!
@@otakuuniteda.s.2882 it might happen?
This would require a complete rebuild, like the 32X and GBA got, where they take PrBoom and make an ew port from the ground up.
So was the Saturn version of Courier Crisis a bad port? Or just hated the game? I barely remember it but recall the PlayStation version being kinda fun in a Coolboarders kind of way.
@natecw4164 I hate the game. Personally think it's garbage. 😂
@gameshack1985 Cool, was just curious. Haven't played it since it was new so I'm sure it's probably aged like fine milk 😁
@@natecw4164 Cool Boarders 2 on the other hand, is still brilliant to this day! 😁
@gameshack1985 Definitely, I've got that one in my collection!
I enjoy it when I got in 1998 but I don't enjoy much now.
If it was the only version of Doom I could have played back then I'd have enjoyed it quite a bit too I think!
Stunning what a few really motivated developers can do (Unreal on the Saturn), and even more disappointing what how bad a corporate release can be.
Thanks for churning out so much Saturn content! Much appreciated!
@@manueld885 Thanks for watching! 😎
I know im in the minority here but ive played a few versions of doom 1 and actually prefer wolfenstien 3D on the jaguar and 3DO but do like doom 64
That frame rate is so bad I almost couldn’t even make it through the whole review 😟
But you aren't playing this on the saturn are you? The resolution looks a lot higher
@GavinTownsley This is the Saturn version obviously lol.
It's better than the 3DO version so it has that going for it. Other than that it may be the worst version released at the time it's a shame they scrapped the version with the custom engine as it may have looked a little worse but by all accounts would have been a much more playable game.
@@freddiejohnson6137 Very true, the 3do version was pants! 😂
@@gameshack1985 In the 3DO port's defense, one programmer got suckered into doing the port and told to get it done by that Christmas.
@SomeOrangeCat in that regard, he's a legend then really! 😂
@@gameshack1985 Rebecca Heinemann. One of those coders who can usually get stuff to run well on hardware it has no business running on...when given a reasonable time table that is. You should look up the story of 3DO Doom some time Its a crazy shit show.
I think the snes version doesn’t perform any better in terms of performances.
I still think the saturn version is much better.
However both versions aren’t fun because of diffirent or missing sound effects.
Why did they had changed those sound effects in both the ps1 and saturn version of it???
Those sound effects from the pc version alone makes the game just sioo addicting to play.
Also i don’t care about the music in both versions.
This is were the snes version does shine in that department.
I would also rather play the Saturn version over the Snes...or 3do...and probably 32x. lol
They should not have done a PS1 port and instead went with the version they already had running smoothly. This was a big disapointment.
Hexen proves that the Doom engine would run just fine on the Saturn. Rage Software were just not up to the task. Skill issue.
@@SomeOrangeCat It was actually a decision by John Carmack who didn't want texture warping in any of the Doom ports. There's some interviews with Jim Bageley of Rage floating around (he's talked about it on the Doomworld forums) where he mentions their original hardware accelerated engine based on the DOS version running at a solid 60fps, the prototype was sent to Carmack and he told them to use a software rendered version, hence the rushed port of the PS1 game. In fact Carmack originally wanted them to use the Saturn's DSPs which according to Jim would have meant an even slower port.
Carmack has since admitted this was a mistake, so no skill issue on Rage's end.
@@MegaTerryNutkins I read the Carmack quote. He made no reference to his decision being a mistake, and we have Bageley's word against his. One of them is a legendary programmer whose work helped invent a genre, and forever changed an entire industry. The other brought us "Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion". The developer of Hexen for the Saturn proved Bageley was just a hack who wasn't up to the task.
@@SomeOrangeCat he posted about it on Twitter a while ago, looks like it's still up.
@@MegaTerryNutkins I saw the exact post. Butthurt Rage Software apologists have been misquoting it for ten years.
Bought it and played it from start to finish.
Didn't really enjoy it but didn't have a PC or CD drive to get that version.
The reason I got it was because there were so few good games for Saturn, I'd take a chance for the price that I payed.
Sega Saturn: the most disappointing game machine to get, even for REAL tight wads !!!!
@@terminallygray 😂😂😂
It is smooth for being shite, though.
PSX's colored lighting is ugly as heck. Not even ugly as hell because that would fit Doom's aesthetics. Missing colored lighting is an advantage of this specific version of the game. Performance of this version is terrible though which is kinda ridiculous. With two SH-2 CPUs it should be possible to speed up rendering with some smart coding - it doesn't however look like code is all that well written.
And what is with checkerboard meshes instead of proper transparency? Does this game use any hardware acceleration for Saturn's transparency limitation to be in place? It might be this port is sad attempt at porting PSX code which was optimized for that console's specs and pushing it to Saturn. If that is the case it would explain why the game runs so poorly.
IMHO Saturn deserves better port of Doom. Console's hardware is pretty good and it should allow for better Doom version. Especially would be nice to have normal PC soundtrack using Saturn's FM chip.
@@e8root If the game was designed from the ground up for the Saturn, I'm certain it would have been a great version!
The part about the colored lighting being "ugly" sounds like cope to me. Coupled with the punchier sound effects and ambient soundtrack, full of monsters groaning and amelodic dissonance, it gave the PSX port a very different atmosphere to the PC original. It made Doom feel more like a horror game. The Saturn version is all the poorer for not having it in.
@@SomeOrangeCat Honestly, I'm not a big fan of the altered lighting effects on the Playstation version either. That said, while I'm a huge Saturn fan, I'd rather play the PS version any day of the week, as the Saturn port is an absolute chore to play through.
@@SomeOrangeCat He probably never got a PS1 as a kid lmao
@@Aaron-lr1di Or a contrarian. Many Sega diehards are. The PC original was my obsession, and I was impressed with the spooky colored lighting of the PSX version.
Awful port of a masterpiece of a game, the framerate is abysmal.
@@Grandmastergav86 Indeed, even at the very best of times it’s still so poor!
@@gameshack1985 Yet, as a kid I muddled through and enjoyed it. Club Doom was so much fun lmao.
Certainly not one of the best ports. They really botched this one up. The Saturn is more than capable of performing so much better with FPS games. Just look at Powerslave/Exhumed or Quake.
Indeed, it was pretty lousy to be fair.