Sega Saturn Prototype - Metal Gear Solid

Some people claim that at the 1998 Tokyo Game Show, a programmer supposedly confirmed that a Saturn version of Metal Gear Solid was in development but got canceled with the announcement of the Dreamcast.

According to some, it's an absurd rumor because the Sega Saturn would have been incapable of running MGS due to its 3D capabilities being light years behind those of the PlayStation.

Whether the rumor is true or not, with this Prototype, I believe the debate about the Sega Saturn 3D capabilities is settled.

If you want to know more about this Prototype I invite you to visit my Patreon:

#MetalGearSolid #SegaSaturn #Sega #Saturn #MGS #MGS1 #Prototype #SolidSnake #Snake #セガサターン #メタルギアソリッド

[Frogbull]

If you want to know more about this Prototype I invite you to visit my Patreon:

[tyrannosaurus]

That’s startup sound and music for Metal Gear solid was so iconic. Still holds up for me with my nostalgia remembering

[dontfeedthemilkshake]

Ports like Wipeout XL and this show that while it might not be as easy to port 3D intensive games to the Saturn, it's absolutely possible a decent version could have made it over with the right team

[ThoughtformsOfTheSubconsciousM]

This is absolutely amazing!! Thank you for all your hard work, extremely impressive! I would definitely donate to see more of this (or dare I hope for the whole game)!!

[mreimer]

Awesome demo! Thanks for showing the Saturn some love.

[suyashsaluja]

At the least Saturn didn’t have the texture warping issues unlike the ps1

[Fonzermish]

Congratulations! Awesome work. I hope you can further develop it if that's the true scope of the project. Good luck whatever comes out of this!

[MoonSarito]

It's a shame that the Sega Saturn wasn't as easy to work with as the PS1 or Nintendo 64 and many developers struggled to make 3D games for it, otherwise things could have been very different.

[greyfox]

Amazing work on this!

Just shows that often it was commercial pressures or developer relationships rather than technical limitations that decided whether a particular game was on a particular system.

Of all the PlayStations heavy hitters this was the one I most wanted to see on Saturn and this goes a small way to realising that dream. I always thought it was well suited to the format. While obviously the original was developed with the PlayStation hardware in mind it just goes to show what was possible with good programming & enough determination & skill. Likewise - had the Saturn been uber successful and this had been developed taking into account the Saturn's strengths (and quirks!) then likely heavy use of VDP plane rotation etc would have gone a long way to doing some of the heavy lifting as the design f the game would have been tweaked to suit the hardware. Even with that I always thought MGS is a game that lends itself well to the hardware.

Great stuff!

[Mankey]

It’s really interesting to know that someone try to make a Sega Saturn port of MGS 1. Imagine if it weren’t got cancelled, and indeed got a Saturn release. Think about the new features they would’ve added, that would be exclusive to the Sega Saturn.

[MutaScale]

Very nice, hope to see a proper rom or repro disc of this in the future. Be nice to play it off OG Saturn hardware.

[Anormal_Activity]

sega saturn needs love.... she was the great misunderstood, she would be very grateful for great games

[TheRetroMartin]

Looking good. My fave PS game. I'd always wondered how good it would go on a Saturn!

[ezcompane]

Oh this is pretty awesome. I'd love to be able to play a port of this on the Saturn hardware. I still have my old Bleemcast disc to play it on the Dreamcast so I'm definitely not opposed to playing MGS on a Sega console.

[gorofujita]

>3D capabilities being *light years behind* those of the PlayStation.

"Light years behind" is a ridiculous overstatement; the Saturn was a bit behind in its handling of 3D graphics, but not by a huge margin. Also, developers never really got to explore its full 3d capabilities as it was discontinued a bit too soon.

[victorcardoso]

This belief that Saturn is not good at 3D games is pure legend! The console had a lot of power and SEGA knew how to extract all the capacity but did not share this devkit and left the developers to their own devices, which resulted in low quality 3D games most of the time compared to the PS1. If SEGA released the devkit from which it made 3D fighting games at 60fps, Pazer Dragon, I'm sure the console would be in second place in the 32/64-bit period!

[wiremesh]

Looks good! You just need to remove that slow acceleration on player movement. Looks painful to play like that.

I wonder if there are areas where you could lighten the load by leveraging some of the Saturn's unique capabilities, like using the VDP2 to render the floor of an environment or something.

[Sulcus]

Only took me about 27 years to find out where that Konami logo music comes from in this game. Just randomly started playing Policenauts and when I got to the main menu, it was one of the biggest "ohhh" moments for me in a while.

[rtmsoundscapes]

impressive! Appreciate author's effort!

[seanmckelvey]

Wait, people have said that the Saturn couldn't have pulled off MGS? Why? it's hardly the most visually impressive game on the PS1 to begin with? the only reason the Saturn "couldn't" run MGS was because the developers of the time couldn't be bothered making it do so, as this demo clearly shows. Great stuff.