Genso Suikoden / 幻想水滸伝 - Sega Saturn - Intro and first hour of gameplay [HD 1080p 60fps]
34The only one of the three PlayStation games ported to the Saturn not done by Nagoya Studios, sadly it's still not a good port. As with Vandal Hearts and Castlevania many of the PlayStation effect have been heavily changed for this version. There isn't any ad hoc loading either so battles force the game to a black screen while it loads in the data, a very ugly way of doing transitions. On the plus side the audio sounds better than both the PSP and PS1 versions and the game gets a vastly better opening intro, which was later used for the PSP re-release. There's some new content and quests, plus some of the mini-games have been changed for this version. A great game but not the port the Saturn deserved, many of the changes in this port did however later turn up in the excellent PSP collection, which featured even more improvements.
While the world map and town maps sections remain the same as the PlayStation version, there are countless other changes in this version. Note as an aside the text box design was changes for the English PlayStation release of the game as was the amount of gold Tir starts with.
Improvements over the PlayStation version:
1. New true motion intro that better fits the game
2. New mini-games, quests and a new battle arena
3. Improved audio quality
4. Includes some gameplay balancing
Areas weaker than the PlayStation version:
1. 2D spites in battle appear stretched and distorted
2. Most transparency effects aren't working and are changed to mesh effects or have been removed
3. Added slowdown, during some battles
4. When a battle begins the Saturn turns to a black screen before a load occurs.
5. Many of the new Saturn visual effects don't look as good as the original PS1 versions (Ubi Soft's Rayman on the Saturn included similar 3D effect to the PS1 of Suikoden, such as peeling back the screen or rolling and curving elements of it, Konami Sapporo inexperience likely to blame for the lack of theses)
6. Text boxes use a mesh effect for transparency and make the text harder to read (An issue not present in the Vandal Hearts port, so Konami Sapporo inexperience is also showing again.)
Other tweaks and changes:
1. The black and white character cursor in battle, now changes colour from blue, green and red
2. The dragon flight scene between the capital and the island, feature more transparency effects and the clouds look better. 18:12
3. The colour of the treasure chests have been changed from brown to a blue.
4. Luc's teleport effect changes from the white bubble to a bolt of lightning when the team are teleported out of the tower. 28:40
5. Marco's mini-game in Rockland has been changed from the classic find the coin under the cup game to a guess if the coins under the cup will be heads or tails, much harder to win. 39:10
6. When Ted uses the soul eater on the ant queen, you no longer see the queen being sucked into a 3D pit and disappear, instead she is encased in a huge black bubble in the Saturn version and the screen is turn black for the spell. 59:18
7. Items that you can't afford are no longer greyed out in the shop.
8. When Ted uses the soul eater to escape Windy in the castle the soul eater light effect has been changed to cover the foreground and Ted. 01:15:00
9. The light that appears when Tir takes the Soul Eater rune from Ted is slightly different it's no longer a straight ray of light instead takes a fan shape Tir doesn't flash white either, this change is likely to hide the fact that Gremio disappears behind the light during the the scene. 01:17:45
10. The sound Gremio hears of a thud when Pahn returns with the Imperial Guards for Ted is missing (This is likely a bug with the Saturn port) 01:17:56
11. Not shown in the video but Cleo's fire magic spells have been changed to a flicker effect (showing every other frame) to create the illusion of a transparency.
Also known as: Suikoden (Shortened English title)
Release: 1998
Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Sapporo (Original game KCE Tokyo)
Publisher: Konami Computer Entertainment
Format: Sega Saturn (SS) / セガサターン
Suikoden is also available on the original PlayStation, PlayStation Portable, Windows 95 PC and is available on PSN.
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Unemulated footage captured directly from a modified European Sega Saturn at 60hz using RGB Scart via a scart upscaler in order for it to work with an Elgato Game Capture.