What! What is this!? Let's Play Resident Evil on the Sega Saturn!

Let's Plays
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#1

(Yes, I have an exclamation point there instead of a question mark. It’s completely intentional and in the spirit of Resident Evil’s line delivery)

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ABOUT THE GAME

Resident Evil (originally titled Biohazard in Japan) is a survival horror action-adventure game by Capcom, released in 1996 for the original PlayStation. The plot involves a police special forces squad known as S.T.A.R.S. (Special Tactics And Rescue Service) Alpha Team getting trapped in a mansion full of ravenous zombies, nonsensical puzzles and other horrors when searching for the missing S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team in the wilderness outside Raccoon City, and your job as either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine is to get out of the mansion in one piece as you uncover its secrets and look for survivors. Of course you knew all of that already, but did you know Capcom also made a port of the original RE for the Sega Saturn? (Well, the thread title was a bit of a giveaway, I suppose)

The Saturn port of RE was released in 1997, around the same time the first version of Resident Evil: Director’s Cut came out on the PlayStation. However, the Saturn version is based on the original release and doesn’t contain the extra content and other changes Capcom made to the Director’s Cut. That means the autoaim that was originally present in the Japanese version of Biohazard and got removed for the first western release is missing here as well, and that sucks but hey, at least it made sure people in the 90s would have a harder time completing the game in a single rental! The Advanced/Arrange mode is missing as well, but who cares.

The Saturn version does have a couple of new alternate outfits for the characters and an exclusive Battle Mode that is unlocked by beating the game or using a cheat code, although that mode is not really anything to write home about either since combat isn’t exactly one of old-school RE’s strong suits. Especially since there is no goddamn autoaim :argh: I might show off the Battle Mode at the end of the LP if I’m feeling masochistic enough, but all it really offers is a couple of new enemies (as does one area of the main game, actually). I am of course using the term “new” very loosely here, mind you.

So what’s the deal with this port and why is it so interesting? Long story short, the Saturn’s hardware architecture with its dual video processors was a nightmarish mess that only few developers could take advantage of, and ports of PlayStation games rarely fared well on the system. Capcom did what they could with the RE port, but the end result is still a version of Resident Evil that seems… off in many ways. It’s recognizably the same game and the actual content hasn’t changed much, but RE on the Saturn simply looks and sounds kinda weird if you’re used to the PlayStation original. The truly amazing voice acting is still there, at least, and so are the equally incredible FMVs such as this one:

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ABOUT THE LP

This LP is a playthrough of Jill’s campaign because Chris sucks, and also because Barry is the greatest. Now, I’m by no means amazing at Resident Evil and even though I know the mansion’s layout pretty well I don’t remember the entire game off the top of my head, so I will occasionally get lost and/or horribly killed. I’ll use editing whenever necessary to keep things going at a decent pace, but for the most part you’ll be seeing the whole playthrough as it was recorded.

The version I am playing is the PAL release, and while I wanted to record the game on an NTSC system that didn’t work out as the audio is all synced to the PAL 50 Hz mode’s slower gameplay at a 25 fps frame rate. As such, playing the game at 60 Hz caused all kinds of weird issues and I had to settle for 50 Hz. That being said, I have at least gotten rid of the PAL letterboxing so you get to see the image as it would appear on an NTSC system and at the end of the day, it’s still 100% original hardware. No emulation here.

As for spoilers, go hog wild. This game is over 20 years old, and the story was… not the greatest in the first place.

VIDEOS

Click here for Youtube playlist

Episode 01: The Beginning
Episode 02: Dogs, Crows and Sandwiches
Episode 03: (Don’t Fear) The Keeper
Episode 04: Ouch
Episode 05: Snake Bit
Episode 06: Dorm of the Dead
Episode 07: Planted
Episode 08: Night of the Hunt
Episode 09: Yaaaawn
Episode 10: Deeper Underground
Episode 11: Arklay Laboratory
Episode 12: Finale

2 Likes
#2

Episode 01: The Beginning

Wow! What a mansion! Yes, while everything might look and occasionally sound bit odd, at least the perfect voice acting is still intact. As for the problem with the title screen FMV I mentioned, basically what happens there is that the Saturn changes resolutions when it plays the FMV and that wreaks havoc on modern displays as well as video scalers and capture devices, causing sync to drop momentarily. On a CRT, the title screen should look exactly the same as it did on the PlayStation!

#3

Episode 02: Dogs, Crows and Sandwiches

Ah yes, we’ve definitely got some iconic RE moments in this episode, presented in glorious Saturn-o-vision in all its blocky, mesh-transparency-effected splendor.

I do apologize for my terrible shooting, I know full well that zombies don’t take damage while they’re falling down. I slightly fumbled with the buttons and suddenly the zombie was right there, and I knew I was low on health so I just unloaded on him and his buddy.

#4

I own a Saturn and I knew from the moment this LP started that there was no way it was going to look as good as it did on the PS1, but this is a whole new level of blocky. It’s like everyone is Tofu.

#5

This is amazing.

#6

Episode 03: (Don’t Fear) The Keeper

Is that title pun completely awful? Of course it is, but at least I didn’t name the episode after the most famous line in the Keeper’s Diary. Why was he inside the wardrobe, anyway?

My habit of shooting every zombie I come across (and missing half of those shots due to general incompetence) nearly gets us in trouble, but at least those horrible creatures are dead now. Erm, dead… er? Double dead? Re-dead? Wait, definitely not that one. :gonk:

In other events, we have another enlightening discussion with Barry and find Forest Speyer from the S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team. He’s seen better days. Also, here is the version of the Forest cutscene with Barry (from the Director’s Cut, not my upload). Apparently, you only get this version of the scene if you beeline for the balcony as soon as Barry returns to the dining room at the start of the game.

EDIT: You know what, let’s talk about Forest Speyer. Now of course he’s a sharpshooter with a grenade launcher, which is either very dumb or very metal, possibly both, but that’s not why I want to talk about him. No, what I’m actually wondering is why a generous amount of his blood is on the hallway floor and walls if he got pecked to death by crows out on the balcony. Did he get bitten by a zombie (we know he turns into one in the Director’s Cut’s Advanced mode and the Remake) or a Cerberus beforehand, and then crawl his way to the balcony where the crows finished him off? Or did he get pecked to near-death by the crows on the balcony, retreat to the hallway to bleed on the walls, and then go back to the balcony to die?

Forest’s grenade launcher also comes with a full magazine, so either he never fired a shot while inside the mansion and had no spare ammo, or used up all his ammo except these last six rounds. In all fairness, using a grenade launcher at close quarters is a rather ill-advised plan, especially against birds actively trying to peck your eyes out. In any event, I think it’s safe to say Forest wasn’t very good at his job, which to be fair does apply to most people in Resident Evil.

#7

Episode 04: Ouch

Terrible demons? More like terrible control of the character on my part. I blundered my way right into those zombies. I could blame the Saturn’s D-pad being worse for tank controls than the one on the PlayStation controller as it is very easy to accidentally hit a diagonal direction here, but I won’t make excuses for my mistakes.

In any case, now that we’ve got the Armor Key we’ve got more of the mansion open to us, so we spend most of today’s episode exploring the rooms and picking up items. Finally, we encounter yet another S.T.A.R.S. member who is in a bad way, in this case Richard Aiken who is the Bravo Team’s… wait for it… communications expert. So, of course he has the worst voice acting in the entire game! Next time we’ll go and find him something for that snake venom poisoning of his, although frankly I’m not sure that is going to do much considering his upper body is about 50% snake bite at this point.

#8

Episode 05: Snake Bit

I am joined by ChaosArgate as we finish up the first section of Resident Evil. We also discover that rushing to bring Richard the serum might not have been the best idea in the world, but our protagonist powers at least ensure we can shrug off a bite from a giant snake and keep on trucking. And yes, now that you mention it, Yawn’s (that’s what the snake is called) color palette is rather unfortunately chosen, although I don’t recall him looking quite this much like… well… a giant turd monster in the PlayStation version.

By the way, one interesting thing I’ve noticed when it comes to the Saturn rendering transparency effects is that all the character shadows use proper alpha transparency instead of dithering. You can see it pretty well on Yawn’s shadow on the title card image. Another interesting detail I’ve picked up on is the way Jill’s shadow interacts with the pools of blood left by dead enemies, as the blood disappears when Jill’s shadow crosses it. I’m guessing this is a limitation of the Saturn’s VDP2 processor and its handling of texture and alpha layers.

On a technical note about the video itself, it appears ChaosArgate’s audio went through some pretty aggressive noise removal on his end, so some of his commentary cuts out earlier than it should. Sorry about that!

#9

Episode 06: Dorm of the Dead

We explore the dormitory (I say guard house in the video, but it’s supposed to be a dorm for researchers and guards) and its flooded basement, and come across a bunch of spiders the size of compact cars (just a heads up for any arachnophobes out there: those spiders still look pretty gross despite the shitty graphics), mutant sharks, and a nest of killer bees along with the usual shambling cadavers. Lovely. As if that wasn’t enough, one of Umbrella Inc.'s fine scientists decided to inject a plant with the T-virus just to see what would happen.

The graphics in the Saturn version continue to be incredibly dark despite the fact my brightness, contrast and gamma settings are more or less optimized (you can see the menu screen looks completely fine, or even slightly too bright in some spots), except for the screen with the beehive for some reason. I didn’t edit that or adjust any settings, it actually was a hell of a lot brighter than anything else in this game.

#10

Episode 07: Planted

I am highly skilled at this video game and definitely not an incompetent moron. Now, if you don’t do the whole V-Jolt song and dance and decide to go fight Plant 42 without weakening it, you’ll eventually get grabbed and then Barry shows up to save the day with a flamethrower.

Meanwhile, if you’re Chris, you’re incapable of solving first grade math problems so you either have to tough it out or have Rebecca make the V-Jolt and weaken Plant 42 during a short section where you play as her.

#11

Episode 08: Night of the Hunt

Welcome home, good hunter.

Despite their fearsome reputation among old school RE fans, Hunters are more goofy than scary. Yeah, they can wreak havoc on your ammo reserves, their jumping attacks are annoying, and they can take your head off in a single swipe which sucks if you haven’t saved recently, but the creatures themselves always looked like something that should show up on the pages of a Marvel comic rather than a horror game. I was never scared of these guys even though everything else in this game (especially the zombies) absolutely terrified me back in 1996 when I watched a friend play through it. Come on, just look at the stupid face of that dumb lizard man in the episode thumbnail. I wonder if Capcom sells plush toy versions of them.

#12

Episode 09: Yaaaawn

As you may have already noticed, I am terrible at this game’s boss fights. The tank controls and complete lack of autoaim don’t exactly help matters, but the dismal performance you see here is mostly on me because I was dumb with my grenade rounds earlier (the acid rounds would’ve been a big help here). If you want to skip the montage of incompetence, click ahead to the 7:15 timestamp.

I’m pretty sure Yawn can’t poison you in this fight, by the way. I’m basing this on two things: the fact I got bitten a million times in this video and never got poisoned, and reading somewhere that Yawn’s venom can only be cured by the Serum.

Also, here is the glorious mess that is the DualShock Edition version of the mansion basement music.

The music in the DualShock release was credited to a composer named Mamoru Samuragochi, who was known as “the Japanese Beethoven” because he was deaf for most of his career. Well, that’s how the story went, anyway. It eventually turned out he had been faking both his deafness and his talent as a composer, and “most of” his work was actually composed by Takashi Niigaki. I’m going to assume that also applies to the musical masterpiece above, although it does sound like something that someone with no hearing or musical talent might write.

#13

Episode 10: Deeper Underground

We find another Bravo Team member (Hey, it’s Enrico Pallazzo Marini!), fight a giant spider, encounter an all-new enemy (actually just a model swap), and most importantly engage in plenty of cranking action. All this and more as we make our way through the underground caverns beneath the mansion! Also, on closer inspection, the boulder did NOT round the corner and break the laws of physics, I just got confused by the camera angles.

That “Is that… Jill?” “Is that voice Enrico’s?” “…Yeah?” exchange is one of my favorite bits of dialogue in this game, by the way. It’s so incredibly awkward!

#14

To finish up the LP in style, I present to you a survival horror double feature!

Episode 11: Arklay Laboratory

We go down to the lab and see what’s on the slab.

Episode 12: Finale

Why is the Tyrant so red in the final fight in this version? Speaking of the Tyrant, if you play as Chris in the Saturn port you get to fight a second one down in the lab. Kill the first Tyrant and another breaks out of its tank.

There is also a Golden Tyrant variant in the Saturn-exclusive Battle Game, but the Battle Game is not very good and I don’t think it’s really worth showing off. The Golden Tyrant is a Tyrant, but golden (you still with me here?) and has much more health. Another enemy exclusive to the Battle Game is Zombie Wesker, which probably doesn’t need additional explanation.

Oh yeah, and here are the alternate costumes from the Saturn version (images grabbed from the wiki because :effort:)

Chris’ alternate costume is quite similar to Leon’s R.P.D uniform but the vest reads S.T.A.R.S on the back rather than R.P.D.

All that said, thanks for joining me on this trip through a weird port of a classic game! Hopefully you enjoyed what you saw and weren’t put to sleep by my commentary, or offended by the occasional terrible gameplay I subjected you to. If you made it all the way to the end of the LP, I salute you!