This was the first Saturn game I ever played. The screen-filling Sentinel and Juggernaut were unlike anything I had ever seen. It made quite an impression that probably colored my positive feelings about the Saturn for years.
Andrew Park To me X-Men vs SF and MSH VS SF are 2D at their best. 4MB cart did wonders for those games. Since Children of the atom released early in Saturns lifespan non of that was available yet.
As a 15 year old N64 owner at the time, I was so fuckin' jealous that Saturn and PlayStation were getting these Capcom fighting game releases and we weren't. I was stuck with MK Trilogy forever
Marvel Studios need only to look at the fighting styles, moves and aesthetic of CAPCOM's interpretation of Jim Lee's 90's X-Men to successfully reboot the X-Men in the MCU.
@@DrGamelove I would've really enjoyed Castlevania 64 despite the lackluster graphics, as I enjoyed the most of the gameplay and story. But the terrible controls and especially the horrendous camera really bought the game down for me.
mrlaidback83 I never actually played it so I can’t judge it. But in general it seems to be panned by people while SotN still stands as one of the greatest games of all time. That was my point. I loved Lords of Shadow, as far as a 3D vania goes. But technology had improved a lot by the time it came out.
@@DrGamelove yea I hear you, I was just giving my opinion of the game since I played it. My top 3 games are SOTN, Super Castlevania IV and Rondo of Blood.
The two games I bought with my Saturn first were X-Men and Panzer Dragoon! Just a really great game and the start of my favorite period for Capcom Fighters, ending in MvC2, the ultimate refinement of the concept. I’m enjoying these comparison videos SLX. I wish the focus had stayed more on 2D graphics before 3D took over because 32 bit sprite work and effects still look beautiful.
Couldn't agree more. That generation should have had tons of beautiful 2D games. Instead, we got terrible looking and plating 3D games. I mean, some 3D games from that time were good, but not too many.
I thought I was just suffering from nostalgia. I had Children of the Atom for Saturn as a kid and then later in life I picked up the PlayStation copy. As a kid I remembered the Saturn game being so fluid and beautiful when I was looking at the PlayStation port later I was like "Damn, I guess it wasn't the spectacle I remember" Our Saturn died when my cousin jammed a crayon into the laser eye. My older brother chased him down the street with a shovel. My other brother and did not feel any anxieties about intervening in the situation. He didn't catch a shovel to the dome but he got noogied and Indian burned relentlessly at every holiday gathering for.....shit.... a couple years. The funniest thing was even my dad pretended not to notice us doing it the first year. He loved Daytona USA AND that console cost $500 IN THE 90'S!
This game was cool, but it was soul-crushingly hard. One night me, my brother, and my best friend stayed up till about 2 or 3 in the morning trying to beat it on a shared 1-player game as we passed around the controller. It took us a good hour or two just to beat the unstunnable Juggernaut (no typo intended) and could only do it by hiding in a corner, spamming the ice boulder as Iceman, and offering tear-filled prayers to the pantheons of 8 seperate religions. When we got to Magneto, we just couldn't beat him. Every once in a blue moon we could perform a minor miracle and beat Magneto once, but we could never do it twice in a row. Finally, we decided to call it quits before any roosters started crowing. Anyway -- excellent game, and launched one of my favorite series of fighters from Capcom. But HOLY COW was it frustrating at times!
This really shows what a godsend the 4MB ram cart really was. The Capcom fighters that required it later on had a much smaller gap between arcade and home versions.
That 4MB RAM cart should've seen a release in the US, along with X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Had they seen release earlier in the Saturn's life, I guarantee they would've. Shit, I had a Saturn, and I had no idea how bad things were for a bit until I started reading on the 'net what was going on and how badly the system was managed in both the US and Europe. Gross incompetence all around, akin to Nintendo of America fucking up with the end of the Wii's lifespan and then paving the way for the Wii U's spectacular failure. Good grief, I could write a few rants on how poorly they handled things there.
It seemed to me that X-Men was at the height of its popularity when Children of the Atom came out in arcades, and it was a great adaptation of the franchise into fighting game form. The massive, well-animated sprites were gorgeous, and the X-Power Gauge was a fresh and innovative idea. When it came home, it was one of many 1996 releases that sold me on the Saturn. I absolutely loved it, along with all of the 2D Capcom fighters, and my PSX-owning friends had to admit they did, too.
Thanks for the great video! I just recently played the Saturn version and I really liked it a lot. On the statement that Children of the Atom was Capcom’s first foray into the Marvel universe: I think both the Punisher (Arcade) and X-Men Mutant Apocalypse (Super Famicom) were published before CotA.
I can distinctly remember thinking my friends PS1 was dodo compared to my Saturn at the time, purely because I was only enthused by 2D hand drawn style games and Saturn did it best in my eyes.
I never really experienced the Saturn in my childhood, I always had the PlayStation. Seeing X-Men Children of the Atom look awesome on the Saturn is definitely making me turning my head.
The Saturn was a good system, it was just piss poorly managed. The arcade ports from Capcom's CPS2 boards were amazing, especially later on when the RAM carts came into play, it's a shame that those were never released in the US. I wish Sega did a better job, and didn't hire Bernie Stolar. That guy was an idiot who had no business in the video game industry.
Probe rarely got anything right as far as arcade ports go. But for some reason, Acclaim kept trusting them to develop arcade ports for both systems - with horrendous results. Mortal Kombat II on the Saturn is the perfect example. Even with the Saturn's superior 2D capabilities, Probe still turned out a less than stellar version about 3-4 years later (just like X-Men COTA on PS). The music was the worst part. All they had to do was put Dan Forden's arcade masterpiece onto a CD. Nope. Cheesy, tone-deaf synth were the soup of the day there. It makes for a funny listen today though. Apparently, they also did the PC port of COTA which made very few sacrifices if any. So, even they were capable of doing a great job.
I agree with the majority of people in the comments. When it came to the 2D Capcom and SNK Fighters, the Saturn with the extra RAM expansion killed the PS1 versions. There is no contest here.
Another awesome video SLX! I loved X-Men Children of the Atom in arcade, and the Saturn port was all sorts of awesome! It was incredible to play this at home!
The Playstation.... unequivocally LOSES here. I had both versions of this game back during the late 90's. The mighty Saturn was so adept at handling 2D sprites that the sequel to DarkStalkers (Night Warriors: DarkStalkers Revenge) actually came out months before DarkStalkers actually did on PS1. That DarkStalkers conversion was so tough to do on PS1 that Capcom actually handed it off to Psygnosis behind the scenes. Once the 4MB RAM cartridge was released, it was absolutely no contest. PS1 already had slightly *less* system RAM than the Saturn, even without any external RAM devices. And the ps architecture was simply not as well suited for sprite handling on a technical level. For polygons, it's nearly the exact opposite.
Very informative. It is true that teams can just mess up and not get the port right. Sadly a majority of the teams that did this were porting to the Saturn. I wonder what a moder developer with full knowledge of the Saturn could do today.
What is bizarre to me is that, via emulation of course, that I get the full Arcade experience in less then 50mb. Yet to get the cut down version, Saturn or PS1, I have to take a file size of over 500mb. Edit: Please always keep the Saturn version on the same side of the screen in comparisons..
I remember when this came out on PS1 and hearing it was a choppy mess. I didn't know about the saturn version but it shows that it doesn't matter about the hardware or specs, its the developer who is porting it to the system. The switch is showing the same thing with games that people said could never run on it being perfectly transitioned to the system. I think that is the closest comparison in today's gaming space that makes sense. Love the videos.
What a stupid thing to say... Of course hardware matters. It's partially hardware, partially developer. Many 2D fighters were better on Saturn partially because of its hardware and RAM extension feature which enabled things the PS1 simply couldn't do. And I'd hardly call games like Wolfenstein on Switch a perfect transition as stuff was cut down, frame rates are poor, and the game often drops to lower than SD resolution in handheld mode. That's _lower_ than Saturn/PS1 res. Pretty much anything can run of slower hardware if cut down enough, so it's about at what point does the game suffer from being massively gimped by hardware limitations, and the fact it Switch ports largely suffer from this.
Glad to hear the final explanation about ports and that any system can suffer depending on what something is being ported from and who is doing the porting.
Wow it's amazing how many shortcomings The PlayStation version had to overcome just to make this playable... really demonstrates Sega getting their version of this arcade classic correct.
Another thing that goes against the PS1 version of X-Men is they cut out all the character's endings in the game. You escape the asteroid, but then it cuts to the credits, unlike the Saturn port.
Love these videos, hope to see the series continue! I see nothing wrong with "pushing an agenda of the Saturn's dominance" though. This is a Saturn channel mainly anyway👍
I love COTA. I remember that it was one of the first arcades that I could play well as a young kid. The Saturn is the way to go for sure, I don't own the console anymore and I collect Ps1/2 nowadays, but sadly this game costs an arm and a leg on Sony's platform! You still can find the japanese Sega one for cheap.
Great video X, though just a slight correction as Children Of The Atom wasmt Capcom's 1st foray in the Marvel universe. That would be The Punisher arcade game which came out in '93.
When it comes to 2D Fighters, Sony and their lovely console had ZERO chance against Sega. The Saturn is the 2D elite supreme. Mentioning the 6-button would be overkill...but I have to. 6-button controller is meant for fighters, and Sega does it best.
As someone who follows competitive fighting games I will argue that 6 face buttons are actually terrible for fighting games. On an arcade stick, you have 3 fingers and your right thumb all ready for those 6 buttons, on a gamepad you only have your right thumb for all six buttons. Many complicated techniques are borderline impossible on a 6 button pad unless you get creative and grab the pad in some weird way.
ProtoMancave I get what You're saying but Ive never had an issue with this on any vs fighter on the Saturn and i have 80% of them 2D & 3D, the Saturn pad did have shoulder buttons aswell. I would argue that it is the D-Pad that makes the Saturn mk2 controller the better of the 2 consoles, why they changed it for the Dreamcast i'll never understand!
@@RetrOrigin I'm far from competitive so I know I say this as an amateur but my mind works with those 6 buttons next to each other, like an arcade stick, even when I play on a pad. So even though it's probably more efficient, shoulder buttons in a capcom fighter feel awful to me and I do better the other way, by far.
Very well made video! i've only played the Vs. series on the Saturn and this game was the only game that had a bit too many frames cut out for my taste. Everything else about it was fine. They did a whole lot better on the other Vs. games on the Saturn.
3D fighting games like the Tekken and the Dead or Alive series are great but nothing compares to these beautifully animated 2D fighters from the 90’s/early 2000’s.
Especially with the RAM carts, holy shit, it ran CIRCLES around the PSOne when it came to 2D fighters. Like there was no contest whatsoever. Had 2D gaming continued to be popular and had the Saturn not been so poorly managed throughout its life cycle, I guarantee it would've sold a lot better.
@@DesertRainReads Sony's engineers and designers made a big mistake in not creating an additional ram port. But at the end Sony managed to win the war over Sega with a series of amazing games thanks to internal and external developers.
Nice vid. I've always wondered if the equivalent of a RAM cart could have been utilized for the PlayStation to help with 2-D fighters. The serial and parallel ports on the back were probably too slow, but I wonder if the Memory Card slots could have been utilized for anything other than storage.
If there had been a way, it would have been done, I'd guess. The Playstation platform sold 100 million systems, the market was definitely there for it.
Good video as always dude! Do the resident evil comparison next! I always wanted to know which version was better! I never played the Saturn version but I heard it has a lot mire content like new monsters and game modes etc.
Why even bother with this comparison? Everyone knows Saturn 2d capcom fighting games outclass the PlayStation versions. Capcom themselves had a hell of a time porting Darkstalkers back in 95. They almost cancelled it altogether until Sony persuaded them to push on as it was supposed to be a launch window exclusive(SLUS-00036). The fact that the superior sequel was a Saturn exclusive and was released a whole month before Darkstalkers on the PS was an early indicator of Capcom’s preference in regard to 2d capabilities. There were only 2 times I owned the PS version of a 2d capcom game. Street Fighter Alpha(which I won in a tournament in late Jan 96) and Street Fighter Zero 3(bought used rental in late January of 99). This was due to the delay in the Saturn versions. These are also in my opinion exceptional versions of these games when compared to other PS 2d fighting game releases. I can tell Capcom put extra care into these 2 ports.
xtreme gold did you respond to the wrong comment? Thought I’d give you some time to fix it. No one here claimed that. Here’s some advice, don’t thumb up your own comment. Makes you come off as someone with no confidence.
I didn’t know they released children of the atom on PS One! I had a Saturn before a PS One lol, I didn’t get one til 1997 but it still came with the demo disc! Had tomb raider, crash bandicoot, IQ, and many others. I miss those days haha, so much simpler.
No it's not just your preference. The PSX controllers were particularly awful, especially for fighting games that took place on a 2D plane (regardless of whether the characters were rendered in 2D or 3D). Instead of a d-pad, it had what I called "d buttons". Side note: The only console d-pad I have personally been more impressed with than my late-gen Saturn controllers is my XB1 Elite (first gen Elite) controller... and I only own that because it was bundled with an Elite XB1 I got on sale. They solved the RAM issue with the 1MB and later 4MB carts. My PAR 4in1+ is great for playing the later imports... they really put that extra RAM to use, furthering the gap!
If you have interest in those, I'd like to see you doing Saturn vs. PS1 videos about Thunder Force V, Earthworm Jim 2 and Tomb Raider (using the 2nd Saturn version of the latter, with the various tweaks).
It'd have been nice if you took half of the screen from the Saturn and half from the Playstation and put them together. Maybe an idle animation of a 1 vs 1 match, no input. You could better see minute details in graphics and animation, and if there's differences in framerate; I assume they'd desync. Good video tho. Always nice to watch a detailed video on something I didn't know or care about. No sarcasm, believe it or not.
Well the one thing I noticed for Saturn is that the AI is out of whack. To me it felt harder then the CPS 2 version. I can barley get a hit on the CPU opponents and they are always guarding.
@TrueSinister Capcom's reputation was golden back then and the Playstation was the console market leader, so it really wasn't a difficult decision to release it on there. I had both consoles back then so my 2D fighters were on Saturn (including importing Xmen vs Streetfighter and Darkstalkers 3).
@TrueSinister It is a port of a Capcom property though. Marvel comics original IP, with Capcom 2d fighting mechanics on the market leading console at the time.
@TrueSinister The point is that being a port of a known Capcom arcade property, there was a market for the game. It didn't have to be ported by them. Many Genesis/Mega Drive Capcom games were handled by Sega themselves.
I had a friend who lived near a shop that had the arcade cabinet and he brought me by because he was so impressed with this game in 1994. And I was impressed too. My only issue was that I had soured on Marvel by that time, so the appeal was minimized for me. But I'd be lying if I wasn't replaying sequences from the game in my head for days after as the sprites and animation are beautiful. And the giant characters like that were uncommon in those days. I didn't play the game then. It was a bit fast paced and overwhelming to me in 1994. Plus, the cabinet was dominated by a few people. I was happy to just watch. I think Capcom did some amazing work on the Marvel sprites and they're among the best Capcom ever did. I was less of a fan of what they'd do in the future Street Fighter games. A shame about the PS port. I agree with your assessment. Part of the issue looks to come from Probe's development and a lack of optimization. From what I have heard(I had a Saturn, so I never played fighters on PS1), the PS1 was mostly fine when it came to straight one-on-one fighters such as the Street Fighter Alpha and Darkstalkers games as the RAM was less of an issue without having to load more than two characters per fight. It's all a bit moot with this game considering how late a release it was for PS1 as interest had probably dropped a lot by release. Still a shame about the performance and I feel bad for anyone who bought it expecting better, especially when Marvel Super Heroes was available, and from what I heard, was a much better port. Nice work on this comparison, SLX.
My childhood best friend had both - Saturn and PlayStation - and got both copies for each system. Played the hell out of the Playstation version, but the Saturn version is still one of my favorites. Throw in that 4MB RAM cart, oh boy! It was like a true arcade experience. Can't tell you how many hours we both spent beating the hell out of each other in X-Men: Children of the Atom, X-Men vs. Street Fighter.
@@SegaLordX I mean KoF 94 came out several months before this game and had 27 characters. 10 playable characters is pretty sparse. They could have at least made Juggernaut and Magneto unlockable characters on the home console version.
Well, the KoF games were outliers for years. Capcom was always a bit more stingy when it came to character count. I do agree though, Juggernaut and Magneto should have been playable.
The concluding remarks about the differences between videogame console ports is very welcome, and one wishes that videogame magazine from the 1990s were as fair-minded and understanding. Instead, they were endlessly obsessed with egging on rivalries between fans or promoting the idea of System X being "more powerful" than System Y. Who knows? In any case, we don't have to worry about such childish antics today. We'll love everything from all classic systems and have no problems with Playstation, Saturn and N64 sitting side by side. The truth is that the major Generation 5 systems were the closest of any rival platforms in the history of the medium. PSX-SAT-N64 were far closer than, say, Genesis-Turbografx-SNES, NES-SMS-7800 or Atari-C64-Spectrum. But, hey, that knowledge wouldn't help the shouting matches at the school playground over who was "best." As always, videogames were designed around severe limitations on time, budget and skill sets. You needed to ship a finished product on a set date, and often were tasked with creating software that went beyond the console's limits. Any real success depended on knowing the right hardware coding tricks, being familiar with source material (when creating ports or translations) and having sufficient time to piece everything together with a minimum of compromises. This is a great video, as always. I would love to see more comparison videos of PSX-SAT games, if just to see the push and pull of the two rivals. At the time, the universal consensus was that Sony won the multi-platform battles, but today I find myself seeing the score as far more even. Maybe I'm just getting older and more patient. Again, who knows?
Plz keep up the great work. The Saturn controller is a matter of preference, I can't do proper fighting moves with that d pad, the playstation has the best d pad in imo.
Dem gutts I respect you have your preference but the PS1 Pad doesn't have the full ability to perform a 45 degree roll movement without needing to hit 90 degrees like the Saturn pad does, ive often wondered if some developers have had to take this into account when making vs fighters for PlayStation.
Story behind these home ports are interesting. X-Men was announced for both consoles way back before their U.S launches, in mid-1995. Saturn version dropped in Japan towards the end of the year, but the PS1 version kept having its released date yanked and pushed back, well into 1996. The then-nascent internet gaming community speculated that it was due to Capcom not being able to produce a passable conversion on PS1 hardware. Others suggested that work had not even started on it at all, that it was vaporware. PS1 version disappears from release charts, and in the interval between that and its random release in early 1998, Capcom handed over the remnants of the port to Acclaim and washed their hands of it (aside from their logo and copyright).
I appreciate the detail of this breakdown. Do you plan to make a similar video for Marvel Super Heroes? I don't think it's worthwhile for the Vs. games since the differences are so obvious between the Saturn and PSX versions but at least for Marvel Super Heroes it seems a bit closer.
I had planned on doing many more games in this series, including Marvel Super Heroes, but the turn out for this video has been terribly disappointing. I'm not sure of its future.
Comparing practically all the fighters between Saturn and PlayStation have been covered by other channels but your insight is still the most detailed and easy to understand.
I always found this game so beautiful and rare to find. Never owned it. Is it on any E-shops? I will find out. Just bought Street Fighter 30th aniv. 14.99 for my Switch. Good to have...just to have. Play it more than I thought I would
I'm a Saturn 2d fighter for life, but I can't do this game on Saturn or Ps1. If I choose to get my face smashed by this game, I play it on Mame as it just runs so much smoother. But Marverl Super Heroes on the other hand, my nostalgia runs deep for the console version which I had as a teen, first on the PS1 and later I got the Saturn version and it's my go to, even over the arcade, and that goes for every other Capcom fighter on Saturn, from Zero 1-3, pocket fighter, the VS. duo etc..
The 4mb cart makes a huge difference I have a action replay that I used for these games and saw if sega would have really utilized the expansion port they could have pulled off some amazing things.
4:52 can you give please give us a link to that interview? Also I heard the USA Saturn Version of Atom has less frames than the Japanese one, do you know if that is true or not? Thanks.
Looking back at this game I forgot Juggernaut still has his walking forward animation despite his size and limited ram on the saturn. his walk forward animation is also still there on the ps1 version even though there's only 2mb ram and that makes me wonder why capcom couldn't keep that walk animation on the saturn version of MSH even with the extra 1mb being used even if they just had to use a few frames like cota does.
The Saturn versions of any Capcom game are ports that will always have some differences from their source material. Arcade1Up uses emulation, which of course has its own issues, but tends to be a bit closer just because of the nature of trying to be a carbon copy. You can compare them, but I think it's important to remember that a port and emulation are two very different things.
This was the first Saturn game I ever played. The screen-filling Sentinel and Juggernaut were unlike anything I had ever seen. It made quite an impression that probably colored my positive feelings about the Saturn for years.
This is an example of the Saturn at its best. 2D for life!
Hardware extra RAM
Andrew Park
To me X-Men vs SF and MSH VS SF are 2D at their best. 4MB cart did wonders for those games. Since Children of the atom released early in Saturns lifespan non of that was available yet.
No way, this is good but the games with 4mb ram cart blow this away, X-Men Vs street fighter is unreal!!!
not perfect but a decent port of the arcade game
Word
"It's tacky, cheap looking, and nothing short of a disgrace." Damn savage lol
As a 15 year old N64 owner at the time, I was so fuckin' jealous that Saturn and PlayStation were getting these Capcom fighting game releases and we weren't. I was stuck with MK Trilogy forever
Marvel Studios need only to look at the fighting styles, moves and aesthetic of CAPCOM's interpretation of Jim Lee's 90's X-Men to successfully reboot the X-Men in the MCU.
This game has aged very well. Virtua Fighter 2 and Capcom CPS2 fighting game ports made me fall in love with the Saturn.
LoneWolf 32bit 2D games definitely aged better than the 3D ones! Compare symphony of the night to Castlevania 64 rotfl.
@@DrGamelove I would've really enjoyed Castlevania 64 despite the lackluster graphics, as I enjoyed the most of the gameplay and story. But the terrible controls and especially the horrendous camera really bought the game down for me.
mrlaidback83 I never actually played it so I can’t judge it. But in general it seems to be panned by people while SotN still stands as one of the greatest games of all time. That was my point. I loved Lords of Shadow, as far as a 3D vania goes. But technology had improved a lot by the time it came out.
@@DrGamelove yea I hear you, I was just giving my opinion of the game since I played it. My top 3 games are SOTN, Super Castlevania IV and Rondo of Blood.
mrlaidback83 Rondo, Symphony and Portrait of Ruin are mine.
I really like this on the Saturn. The colors and sprites are very well done and it has a great deal of replay ability.
The two games I bought with my Saturn first were X-Men and Panzer Dragoon! Just a really great game and the start of my favorite period for Capcom Fighters, ending in MvC2, the ultimate refinement of the concept. I’m enjoying these comparison videos SLX. I wish the focus had stayed more on 2D graphics before 3D took over because 32 bit sprite work and effects still look beautiful.
Couldn't agree more. That generation should have had tons of beautiful 2D games. Instead, we got terrible looking and plating 3D games. I mean, some 3D games from that time were good, but not too many.
X-Men Children of the Atom actually got released very quietly for the PlayStation after X-Men vs Street Fighter.
Capcom knocked it out of the park with this game. The artwork, colors, music, special moves and story were amazing.
I thought I was just suffering from nostalgia. I had Children of the Atom for Saturn as a kid and then later in life I picked up the PlayStation copy. As a kid I remembered the Saturn game being so fluid and beautiful when I was looking at the PlayStation port later I was like "Damn, I guess it wasn't the spectacle I remember"
Our Saturn died when my cousin jammed a crayon into the laser eye. My older brother chased him down the street with a shovel. My other brother and did not feel any anxieties about intervening in the situation.
He didn't catch a shovel to the dome but he got noogied and Indian burned relentlessly at every holiday gathering for.....shit.... a couple years.
The funniest thing was even my dad pretended not to notice us doing it the first year. He loved Daytona USA AND that console cost $500 IN THE 90'S!
Very well done game for the Saturn, it didn’t even use the expansion cart and was awesome, I still pop this in every now and then.
Me too. My battles with Magneto are legendary.
This game was cool, but it was soul-crushingly hard. One night me, my brother, and my best friend stayed up till about 2 or 3 in the morning trying to beat it on a shared 1-player game as we passed around the controller. It took us a good hour or two just to beat the unstunnable Juggernaut (no typo intended) and could only do it by hiding in a corner, spamming the ice boulder as Iceman, and offering tear-filled prayers to the pantheons of 8 seperate religions. When we got to Magneto, we just couldn't beat him. Every once in a blue moon we could perform a minor miracle and beat Magneto once, but we could never do it twice in a row. Finally, we decided to call it quits before any roosters started crowing. Anyway -- excellent game, and launched one of my favorite series of fighters from Capcom. But HOLY COW was it frustrating at times!
Your comment cracked me up yoooo 😂
😂😂😂
Few other Saturn vs PS1 suggestions: Silhouette Mirage, Darius Gaiden, Soukyugurentai, Dodonpachi, Thunder Force V, Resident Evil, Dead or Alive
This really shows what a godsend the 4MB ram cart really was. The Capcom fighters that required it later on had a much smaller gap between arcade and home versions.
That 4MB RAM cart should've seen a release in the US, along with X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Had they seen release earlier in the Saturn's life, I guarantee they would've. Shit, I had a Saturn, and I had no idea how bad things were for a bit until I started reading on the 'net what was going on and how badly the system was managed in both the US and Europe. Gross incompetence all around, akin to Nintendo of America fucking up with the end of the Wii's lifespan and then paving the way for the Wii U's spectacular failure. Good grief, I could write a few rants on how poorly they handled things there.
Except this game doesn't use any cart at all lol.
@@timhouston8007 I know. That’s why I said “The Capcom fighters *that required it later*…” 😉
It seemed to me that X-Men was at the height of its popularity when Children of the Atom came out in arcades, and it was a great adaptation of the franchise into fighting game form. The massive, well-animated sprites were gorgeous, and the X-Power Gauge was a fresh and innovative idea. When it came home, it was one of many 1996 releases that sold me on the Saturn. I absolutely loved it, along with all of the 2D Capcom fighters, and my PSX-owning friends had to admit they did, too.
Thanks for the great video! I just recently played the Saturn version and I really liked it a lot. On the statement that Children of the Atom was Capcom’s first foray into the Marvel universe: I think both the Punisher (Arcade) and X-Men Mutant Apocalypse (Super Famicom) were published before CotA.
Thunder Force V vs. Thunder Force V Perfect System. Make it happen. Both are fantastic in their own right but Saturn has the edge on that one.
This vs videos are great!!! Please continue.
I can distinctly remember thinking my friends PS1 was dodo compared to my Saturn at the time, purely because I was only enthused by 2D hand drawn style games and Saturn did it best in my eyes.
One of my favorite Saturn games, beating magneto was a big moment for me! 😂
I'm the Juggernaut!
I have panic disorder. Binge watching your videos calms me the fuck down. Thank you bro.
I never really experienced the Saturn in my childhood, I always had the PlayStation. Seeing X-Men Children of the Atom look awesome on the Saturn is definitely making me turning my head.
The Saturn was a good system, it was just piss poorly managed. The arcade ports from Capcom's CPS2 boards were amazing, especially later on when the RAM carts came into play, it's a shame that those were never released in the US. I wish Sega did a better job, and didn't hire Bernie Stolar. That guy was an idiot who had no business in the video game industry.
You forgot one big part. PlayStation doesn’t have the character specific endings.
Back when having a Marvel game meant something. Disney wasn't there to destroy it and the series was seeing a real revival.
Man, i miss that distinctive redbook audio sound
Saturn version hands down especially with the six button controller!
It’s interesting on the PS1 they chose a frame skip over simply slowing the game down.
It was amazing having arcade quality graphics on the Saturn, I got this and Guardian Heroes and it was amazing.
I never played X-MEN on PS because I didn't know a PS copy even exist
Actually, 'The Punisher' was Capcom's first foray into The Marvel Universe.
Probe rarely got anything right as far as arcade ports go. But for some reason, Acclaim kept trusting them to develop arcade ports for both systems - with horrendous results.
Mortal Kombat II on the Saturn is the perfect example. Even with the Saturn's superior 2D capabilities, Probe still turned out a less than stellar version about 3-4 years later (just like X-Men COTA on PS). The music was the worst part. All they had to do was put Dan Forden's arcade masterpiece onto a CD. Nope. Cheesy, tone-deaf synth were the soup of the day there. It makes for a funny listen today though.
Apparently, they also did the PC port of COTA which made very few sacrifices if any. So, even they were capable of doing a great job.
I agree with the majority of people in the comments. When it came to the 2D Capcom and SNK Fighters, the Saturn with the extra RAM expansion killed the PS1 versions. There is no contest here.
Needing an add-on part should be major detractor though.
@@Clay3613 it didn't need an add on. Did you watch this video with your eyes closed?
Another awesome video SLX! I loved X-Men Children of the Atom in arcade, and the Saturn port was all sorts of awesome! It was incredible to play this at home!
The Playstation.... unequivocally LOSES here. I had both versions of this game back during the late 90's.
The mighty Saturn was so adept at handling 2D sprites that the sequel to DarkStalkers (Night Warriors: DarkStalkers Revenge) actually came out months before DarkStalkers actually did on PS1. That DarkStalkers conversion was so tough to do on PS1 that Capcom actually handed it off to Psygnosis behind the scenes.
Once the 4MB RAM cartridge was released, it was absolutely no contest. PS1 already had slightly *less* system RAM than the Saturn, even without any external RAM devices. And the ps architecture was simply not as well suited for sprite handling on a technical level. For polygons, it's nearly the exact opposite.
Very informative. It is true that teams can just mess up and not get the port right. Sadly a majority of the teams that did this were porting to the Saturn. I wonder what a moder developer with full knowledge of the Saturn could do today.
What is bizarre to me is that, via emulation of course, that I get the full Arcade experience in less then 50mb. Yet to get the cut down version, Saturn or PS1, I have to take a file size of over 500mb.
Edit: Please always keep the Saturn version on the same side of the screen in comparisons..
I remember when this came out on PS1 and hearing it was a choppy mess. I didn't know about the saturn version but it shows that it doesn't matter about the hardware or specs, its the developer who is porting it to the system. The switch is showing the same thing with games that people said could never run on it being perfectly transitioned to the system. I think that is the closest comparison in today's gaming space that makes sense. Love the videos.
What a stupid thing to say... Of course hardware matters. It's partially hardware, partially developer. Many 2D fighters were better on Saturn partially because of its hardware and RAM extension feature which enabled things the PS1 simply couldn't do. And I'd hardly call games like Wolfenstein on Switch a perfect transition as stuff was cut down, frame rates are poor, and the game often drops to lower than SD resolution in handheld mode. That's _lower_ than Saturn/PS1 res. Pretty much anything can run of slower hardware if cut down enough, so it's about at what point does the game suffer from being massively gimped by hardware limitations, and the fact it Switch ports largely suffer from this.
Glad to hear the final explanation about ports and that any system can suffer depending on what something is being ported from and who is doing the porting.
Wow it's amazing how many shortcomings The PlayStation version had to overcome just to make this playable... really demonstrates Sega getting their version of this arcade classic correct.
Thanks for the quality show!
Correction: The Punisher (1993) was their first foray into Marvel. Not this.
Yeah, I actually meant in regards to fighting games. Shoulda been more clear on that.
I remember playing children of the atom at my local water park when it 1st hit arcades and being blown the hell away.
Another thing that goes against the PS1 version of X-Men is they cut out all the character's endings in the game. You escape the asteroid, but then it cuts to the credits, unlike the Saturn port.
Man I love these Saturn VS PS segments!
I like the Sega Dreamcast for 2D fighter games better. The library of 2D fighter games for that system is insane.
Love these videos, hope to see the series continue!
I see nothing wrong with "pushing an agenda of the Saturn's dominance" though. This is a Saturn channel mainly anyway👍
I love COTA. I remember that it was one of the first arcades that I could play well as a young kid.
The Saturn is the way to go for sure, I don't own the console anymore and I collect Ps1/2 nowadays, but sadly this game costs an arm and a leg on Sony's platform! You still can find the japanese Sega one for cheap.
Great video X, though just a slight correction as Children Of The Atom wasmt Capcom's 1st foray in the Marvel universe. That would be The Punisher arcade game which came out in '93.
I like this comparison video, more of these please!
Pretty sure the Saturn version had more compressed sound effects due to the soundchip lacking hardware audio decompression.
PS sound effects are a bit richer and fuller, but in no way does the Saturn version sound bad.
When it comes to 2D Fighters, Sony and their lovely console had ZERO chance against Sega. The Saturn is the 2D elite supreme. Mentioning the 6-button would be overkill...but I have to. 6-button controller is meant for fighters, and Sega does it best.
Luu Sapphire such a great gamepad!
As someone who follows competitive fighting games I will argue that 6 face buttons are actually terrible for fighting games.
On an arcade stick, you have 3 fingers and your right thumb all ready for those 6 buttons, on a gamepad you only have your right thumb for all six buttons. Many complicated techniques are borderline impossible on a 6 button pad unless you get creative and grab the pad in some weird way.
ProtoMancave
I get what You're saying but Ive never had an issue with this on any vs fighter on the Saturn and i have 80% of them 2D & 3D, the Saturn pad did have shoulder buttons aswell. I would argue that it is the D-Pad that makes the Saturn mk2 controller the better of the 2 consoles, why they changed it for the Dreamcast i'll never understand!
@@RetrOrigin I'm far from competitive so I know I say this as an amateur but my mind works with those 6 buttons next to each other, like an arcade stick, even when I play on a pad. So even though it's probably more efficient, shoulder buttons in a capcom fighter feel awful to me and I do better the other way, by far.
Castlevania 2d is very best ps1
Quick correction; this is capcom’s first fighting game with Marvel’s IP’s, but they did make the action adventure platformer on the SNES.
Yeah, that's what I was aiming for. First fighting game.
They also made a Punisher game.
Very well made video!
i've only played the Vs. series on the Saturn and this game was the only game that had a bit too many frames cut out for my taste. Everything else about it was fine. They did a whole lot better on the other Vs. games on the Saturn.
Bought this on release day. Loved it and played it sooooo much.
3D fighting games like the Tekken and the Dead or Alive series are great but nothing compares to these beautifully animated 2D fighters from the 90’s/early 2000’s.
My man SLX dropping another great video.....Whats next SLX? what-cha got next for us?
Early Master System Games up next.
Until this very day i thought X COA was a Saturn console exclusive, these were the days when Disney didn't mess with capcom's marvel based games.
Sisney didnt acquire marvel till much later
Can you do Castlevania: Symphony of the Night vs. Akumajo Dracula: Nocturne in the Moonlight next?
I used to have this game on my R.I.P Saturn 😭
I miss my Saturn.
Good series 👍
Hope to see Thunder Force V soon!
Saturn was definitely superior when it came to 2D fighters.
Especially with the RAM carts, holy shit, it ran CIRCLES around the PSOne when it came to 2D fighters. Like there was no contest whatsoever. Had 2D gaming continued to be popular and had the Saturn not been so poorly managed throughout its life cycle, I guarantee it would've sold a lot better.
@@DesertRainReads Sony's engineers and designers made a big mistake in not creating an additional ram port. But at the end Sony managed to win the war over Sega with a series of amazing games thanks to internal and external developers.
Nice vid.
I've always wondered if the equivalent of a RAM cart could have been utilized for the PlayStation to help with 2-D fighters. The serial and parallel ports on the back were probably too slow, but I wonder if the Memory Card slots could have been utilized for anything other than storage.
If there had been a way, it would have been done, I'd guess. The Playstation platform sold 100 million systems, the market was definitely there for it.
Dope work
Good video as always dude! Do the resident evil comparison next! I always wanted to know which version was better! I never played the Saturn version but I heard it has a lot mire content like new monsters and game modes etc.
Saturn wins!!!!
"PERFECT!"
Ps1 Wins
@@j.c.s7762 NO
@@j.c.s7762
Get lost Sony fanboy troll!
Love this game but why is it so damn difficult? Haven't beat it till this day.
Why even bother with this comparison? Everyone knows Saturn 2d capcom fighting games outclass the PlayStation versions. Capcom themselves had a hell of a time porting Darkstalkers back in 95. They almost cancelled it altogether until Sony persuaded them to push on as it was supposed to be a launch window exclusive(SLUS-00036). The fact that the superior sequel was a Saturn exclusive and was released a whole month before Darkstalkers on the PS was an early indicator of Capcom’s preference in regard to 2d capabilities.
There were only 2 times I owned the PS version of a 2d capcom game. Street Fighter Alpha(which I won in a tournament in late Jan 96) and Street Fighter Zero 3(bought used rental in late January of 99). This was due to the delay in the Saturn versions. These are also in my opinion exceptional versions of these games when compared to other PS 2d fighting game releases. I can tell Capcom put extra care into these 2 ports.
I was pretty clear in the video why I chose to compare this particular game.
the sega saturn ports are not arcade perfect games
xtreme gold did you respond to the wrong comment? Thought I’d give you some time to fix it. No one here claimed that. Here’s some advice, don’t thumb up your own comment. Makes you come off as someone with no confidence.
I didn’t know they released children of the atom on PS One! I had a Saturn before a PS One lol, I didn’t get one til 1997 but it still came with the demo disc! Had tomb raider, crash bandicoot, IQ, and many others. I miss those days haha, so much simpler.
Sega really dropped the ball with the Saturn, it had the potential to be an amazing console but poor marketing and bad decisions doomed it.
No it's not just your preference. The PSX controllers were particularly awful, especially for fighting games that took place on a 2D plane (regardless of whether the characters were rendered in 2D or 3D). Instead of a d-pad, it had what I called "d buttons". Side note: The only console d-pad I have personally been more impressed with than my late-gen Saturn controllers is my XB1 Elite (first gen Elite) controller... and I only own that because it was bundled with an Elite XB1 I got on sale.
They solved the RAM issue with the 1MB and later 4MB carts. My PAR 4in1+ is great for playing the later imports... they really put that extra RAM to use, furthering the gap!
going from the xmen games on genesis to this game blew my mind.
If you have interest in those, I'd like to see you doing Saturn vs. PS1 videos about Thunder Force V, Earthworm Jim 2 and Tomb Raider (using the 2nd Saturn version of the latter, with the various tweaks).
It'd have been nice if you took half of the screen from the Saturn and half from the Playstation and put them together. Maybe an idle animation of a 1 vs 1 match, no input. You could better see minute details in graphics and animation, and if there's differences in framerate; I assume they'd desync.
Good video tho. Always nice to watch a detailed video on something I didn't know or care about. No sarcasm, believe it or not.
The missing frames makes it painful on PS.
Seeeeeeeeegaaaaa (love the Astal intro)
Well the one thing I noticed for Saturn is that the AI is out of whack. To me it felt harder then the CPS 2 version. I can barley get a hit on the CPU opponents and they are always guarding.
But PC got it's version as well. I owned the demo back then. I want you to compare that as well
I'm surprised the PS1 version even came out, because at that point, it's sequel was on the console, and was a better port to boot.
@TrueSinister Capcom's reputation was golden back then and the Playstation was the console market leader, so it really wasn't a difficult decision to release it on there.
I had both consoles back then so my 2D fighters were on Saturn (including importing Xmen vs Streetfighter and Darkstalkers 3).
@TrueSinister It is a port of a Capcom property though. Marvel comics original IP, with Capcom 2d fighting mechanics on the market leading console at the time.
@TrueSinister The point is that being a port of a known Capcom arcade property, there was a market for the game. It didn't have to be ported by them. Many Genesis/Mega Drive Capcom games were handled by Sega themselves.
I was just playing this game yesterday. It’s an oldie but goodie. I couldn’t imagine using the PlayStation controller.
I never knew there was a PS1 version. I would've definitely got it.
I had a friend who lived near a shop that had the arcade cabinet and he brought me by because he was so impressed with this game in 1994. And I was impressed too. My only issue was that I had soured on Marvel by that time, so the appeal was minimized for me. But I'd be lying if I wasn't replaying sequences from the game in my head for days after as the sprites and animation are beautiful. And the giant characters like that were uncommon in those days. I didn't play the game then. It was a bit fast paced and overwhelming to me in 1994. Plus, the cabinet was dominated by a few people. I was happy to just watch. I think Capcom did some amazing work on the Marvel sprites and they're among the best Capcom ever did. I was less of a fan of what they'd do in the future Street Fighter games.
A shame about the PS port. I agree with your assessment. Part of the issue looks to come from Probe's development and a lack of optimization. From what I have heard(I had a Saturn, so I never played fighters on PS1), the PS1 was mostly fine when it came to straight one-on-one fighters such as the Street Fighter Alpha and Darkstalkers games as the RAM was less of an issue without having to load more than two characters per fight. It's all a bit moot with this game considering how late a release it was for PS1 as interest had probably dropped a lot by release. Still a shame about the performance and I feel bad for anyone who bought it expecting better, especially when Marvel Super Heroes was available, and from what I heard, was a much better port. Nice work on this comparison, SLX.
My childhood best friend had both - Saturn and PlayStation - and got both copies for each system. Played the hell out of the Playstation version, but the Saturn version is still one of my favorites. Throw in that 4MB RAM cart, oh boy! It was like a true arcade experience. Can't tell you how many hours we both spent beating the hell out of each other in X-Men: Children of the Atom, X-Men vs. Street Fighter.
Are ya gonna cover Shenmue III?
Eventually, yes.
Sega Lord X will be waiting patiently 🤟
Great game, was amazed when I first saw it running as little kid in the 90s. Main problem was its extremely limited roster.
For a fighter in 1994, it wasn't too bad. We didn't start seeing crazy amounts of fighters until MvC2.
@@SegaLordX I mean KoF 94 came out several months before this game and had 27 characters. 10 playable characters is pretty sparse. They could have at least made Juggernaut and Magneto unlockable characters on the home console version.
Well, the KoF games were outliers for years. Capcom was always a bit more stingy when it came to character count. I do agree though, Juggernaut and Magneto should have been playable.
The concluding remarks about the differences between videogame console ports is very welcome, and one wishes that videogame magazine from the 1990s were as fair-minded and understanding. Instead, they were endlessly obsessed with egging on rivalries between fans or promoting the idea of System X being "more powerful" than System Y. Who knows? In any case, we don't have to worry about such childish antics today. We'll love everything from all classic systems and have no problems with Playstation, Saturn and N64 sitting side by side. The truth is that the major Generation 5 systems were the closest of any rival platforms in the history of the medium. PSX-SAT-N64 were far closer than, say, Genesis-Turbografx-SNES, NES-SMS-7800 or Atari-C64-Spectrum. But, hey, that knowledge wouldn't help the shouting matches at the school playground over who was "best."
As always, videogames were designed around severe limitations on time, budget and skill sets. You needed to ship a finished product on a set date, and often were tasked with creating software that went beyond the console's limits. Any real success depended on knowing the right hardware coding tricks, being familiar with source material (when creating ports or translations) and having sufficient time to piece everything together with a minimum of compromises.
This is a great video, as always. I would love to see more comparison videos of PSX-SAT games, if just to see the push and pull of the two rivals. At the time, the universal consensus was that Sony won the multi-platform battles, but today I find myself seeing the score as far more even. Maybe I'm just getting older and more patient. Again, who knows?
Plz keep up the great work.
The Saturn controller is a matter of preference, I can't do proper fighting moves with that d pad, the playstation has the best d pad in imo.
Dem gutts
I respect you have your preference but the PS1 Pad doesn't have the full ability to perform a 45 degree roll movement without needing to hit 90 degrees like the Saturn pad does, ive often wondered if some developers have had to take this into account when making vs fighters for PlayStation.
Story behind these home ports are interesting. X-Men was announced for both consoles way back before their U.S launches, in mid-1995. Saturn version dropped in Japan towards the end of the year, but the PS1 version kept having its released date yanked and pushed back, well into 1996. The then-nascent internet gaming community speculated that it was due to Capcom not being able to produce a passable conversion on PS1 hardware. Others suggested that work had not even started on it at all, that it was vaporware.
PS1 version disappears from release charts, and in the interval between that and its random release in early 1998, Capcom handed over the remnants of the port to Acclaim and washed their hands of it (aside from their logo and copyright).
I appreciate the detail of this breakdown. Do you plan to make a similar video for Marvel Super Heroes? I don't think it's worthwhile for the Vs. games since the differences are so obvious between the Saturn and PSX versions but at least for Marvel Super Heroes it seems a bit closer.
I had planned on doing many more games in this series, including Marvel Super Heroes, but the turn out for this video has been terribly disappointing. I'm not sure of its future.
Comparing practically all the fighters between Saturn and PlayStation have been covered by other channels but your insight is still the most detailed and easy to understand.
Loving the comparison videos!!!! Can't wait for Marvel Super Heroes. Keep up the great work!!
I always found this game so beautiful and rare to find. Never owned it. Is it on any E-shops? I will find out.
Just bought Street Fighter 30th aniv. 14.99 for my Switch. Good to have...just to have. Play it more than I thought I would
Me too, takes me back for sure and plays great
I'm a Saturn 2d fighter for life, but I can't do this game on Saturn or Ps1. If I choose to get my face smashed by this game, I play it on Mame as it just runs so much smoother. But Marverl Super Heroes on the other hand, my nostalgia runs deep for the console version which I had as a teen, first on the PS1 and later I got the Saturn version and it's my go to, even over the arcade, and that goes for every other Capcom fighter on Saturn, from Zero 1-3, pocket fighter, the VS. duo etc..
This is great
The 4mb cart makes a huge difference I have a action replay that I used for these games and saw if sega would have really utilized the expansion port they could have pulled off some amazing things.
4:52 can you give please give us a link to that interview? Also I heard the USA Saturn Version of Atom has less frames than the Japanese one, do you know if that is true or not? Thanks.
Darn to bad the newer Capcom fighter's don't have fantastic music like the older games! Not even close! Yo SLX
Looking back at this game I forgot Juggernaut still has his walking forward animation despite his size and limited ram on the saturn. his walk forward animation is also still there on the ps1 version even though there's only 2mb ram and that makes me wonder why capcom couldn't keep that walk animation on the saturn version of MSH even with the extra 1mb being used even if they just had to use a few frames like cota does.
Sega Lord X what are your thoughts on comparing Saturn’s version to Arcade1Up’s?
The Saturn versions of any Capcom game are ports that will always have some differences from their source material. Arcade1Up uses emulation, which of course has its own issues, but tends to be a bit closer just because of the nature of trying to be a carbon copy. You can compare them, but I think it's important to remember that a port and emulation are two very different things.
Great channel
My favorite fighter of all time!