On April 26, 2024, community member Frogbull posed yet another “what if” question for Saturn by teasing a demo build of Naughty Dog’s Crash Bandicoot running on Saturn hardware.
“Naughty Dog really pushed the limits of the PlayStation in 1996, making it one of the most technically impressive games of its time.
-Frogbull
During the development of Crash Bandicoot, the memory limitations were a major concern. To optimize performance and conserve memory, a lot of vertex colors were used instead of traditional textures. Additionally, to save even more memory they butchered the libraries provided by Sony.”
Frogbull claims he had no plans on porting Crash to Saturn but was motivated to do so after reading skeptical comments on a developer forum. Never one to back down from a challenge, he used XL2‘s Z-Treme Engine in addition to techniques learned through his work on the MGS and FFVII demos in order to get the orange bandicoot crashing onto Saturn…
Most of the assets, such as 3D models, textures, sounds and animations were extracted from the PlayStation games using Almamu’s fork of the CrashEdit tool. However, while obtaining the assets was fairly simple and straightforward, the real challenge was making them work on Saturn’s hardware, which proved difficult, considering Crash’s animations don’t use a skeleton rigging the way that most 3D character animation does. Frogbull also had to convert all Triangles to Quads, sacrificing proper UV mapping as a result.
Since the Crash uses a non-standard enhanced resolution of 512×240 on PlayStation, Forgbull decided to take a similar approach for Saturn, opting for a the higher 352×240 resolution as opposed to the typical 320×224 standard.
Frogbull was particularly pleased with the water cascade effect that he was able to reproduce for Ripper Roo’s stage, achieved by using multiple sprites. Frogbull notes that by using this same technique, it should also be possible to closely mimic the way the water flows towards the screen on PlayStation.
Frogbull’s greatest challenge on this project so far has been memory optimization, but it’s been coming along and taking shape regardless, and Frogbull has been working with on physics and even building a level editor. He says he’s open to creating more complex, Saturn-exclusive levels if the “interest is there”, and asks that folks help spread the word about the project and consider following his work on Patreon.
A massive Saturn fan since Christmas ’96, Dave is enthusiastic about growing the community and spreading Saturn love and knowledge to fans old and new. Co-founding the SEGA SATURN, SHIRO! podcast back in 2017 and creating the SHIRO! SHOW in 2020, he seeks to create interesting and engaging Saturn-related content for the community. Dave’s interests circle around game preservation, and he is a huge fan of game magazines and developer interviews.
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