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DNF #1
Duke 3D #1
I wanted to share some of my knowledge over the console ports, thus here are is a review towards a more technical analysis, rather than gameplay.
I know a lot of Duke Nukem 64 and Total Meltdown, however I haven't played the Saturn version myself, still I know enough to compare it to the others.
Performance:
- Sony Playstation: 4
- Nintendo 64: 8
- Sega Saturn: 8
To start, a comparison beetween the performance of the engine. Total Meltdown is a failure, since it looks more like a DOS emulator rather than a game for itself and the frame rate is ridiculous.
On the other hand, Duke 64 and Sega Saturn, are both great and they did a great job in porting the game to the consoles.
Rendering:
- Sony Playstation: 5.5
- Nintendo 64: 8
- Sega Saturn: 9
Again, Total Meltdown fails in giving a properly version to the console, as it doesn't add anything new to the game.
Duke 64 is a special case, as it works similarily to the Polymer rendered, converting a whole level created using Build Engine in 3D rendering. Duke 64 also brings new special effects, with some usage of transparent images and 3d models.
Even though Saturn doesn't add much in terms of art, it has a total new 3D renderer with dynamic shadows and lighting in the maps. It doesn't get a 10 because this appear to limit the level editing a lot.
Art conversion:
- Sony Playstation: 10
- Nintendo 64: 4
- Sega Saturn: 6.5
Total Meltdown is a masterpiece in terms of the art. It seems they took care of recreating every single monster using their original 3d models, and using the original pictures used for ammo and other sprites before they were converted in Duke palette. You probably will notice the monster are a lot more like Chuck Jones rendering than the PC variants. Besides there are some new enemies with the same level of graphics.
Nintendo 64 has a serious issue with the conversion of the art. It's hard to explain, but there are two major problem, the first one being the palette per image. For some reason, every texture appear to be converted with it's own palette, and later the colors are altered, making a lot of them looking washed. Secondly, and worst, is the stretching and unstretching of the textures. It appears that the engine doesn't support the rendering of textures that are not multiples of 8 pixels, thus mostly textures are streched giving extra vertical and horzintal lines. Still, the ROM contains internal ART files which contains the original width and height of the texture, as a result every image is rendered with extra vertical and horizontal lines, but mostly also missing other vertical and horzintal lines. In other words, it's a big mess that makes the sprites look weird but also missing some data, which is a great loss.
Saturn doesn't add much in terms of art (despite some slight altered textures, mostly to save some CPU). In fact, the menus and all looks a little dull based on the texture choice (that is not new art at all).
New levels / changes in levels:
- Sony Playstation: 8
- Nintendo 64: 7.5
- Sega Saturn: 5
Saturn remake all the levels, mostly because unlike Duke 64 they don't have an engine that can render the Build engine levels in 3D, thus they were forced to create everything from the zero. They only have one new map called Urea 51 which is not better than the title. The original makes are worse than the original and with parts cut.
Sony Playstation has a great new episode, Plug and Pray. But I won't give it a better rating because of lots of bugs or inconsistent parts in these levels.
Duke 64 changed the original maps (some like Stadium are pratically new), and made very interesting changes. However it seems the mappers had a lack of mastery in the Build editor, and it seems clear they didn't knew about some commands such as copy & paste of sectors (which probably would have saved them more than half of the time they spent).
Coding:
- Sony Playstation: 3
- Nintendo 64: 9
- Sega Saturn: 6
Total Meltdown only adds a few extra enemies, and it seems clear they did it using the normal CON codes. Actually the changes in the CON codes are very amateur. The enemies lack alert sounds, nor they took care of the amount given by dropped items.
Duke 64 seems to have done a good job, working with both CON codes and source code. There is a whole new set of functioning weapons, with alternative ammo and new projectiles. It's actually a very expensive deal reproduce everything.
Saturn created it's own whole code for everything, making it a whole new game with the visuals of Duke, but it isn't better than the PC game.
Bugs:
- Sony Playstation: 5.5
- Nintendo 64: 4.5
- Sega Saturn: -
Sony Playstation is mostly the same thing as the PC version, however mostly because of their amateur CON coding we have some ugly bugs, but a noticeable is the size bug of the Battlelord. It's hard to explain, but they halved the sprite in order to save CPU, and they tried to counter it doubling his size via CON, however apparently they couldn't figure out how to not do it for the mini Battlelords that appear in episode 2 and further. I think I don't need to mention how much trouble that caused.
Duke 64 has a lot of serious erros and mistakes. I didn't give it a lower rating because I comprehend they did a lot of works. A few examples of bugs: there are blueish Expander weapons laying all around the levels, which actually are multiplayer-only sprites, however the sprite doesn't actually has that function. The Grenade Launcher projectiles can't tell whenever an enemy is or not in a vertical space, as a result there are magical vertically infinite hit boxes in the monsters.
There really isn't much to rate Saturn ever since it's pratically a whole new game in terms of the code, so you can't compare it.
