Saturn Tomb Raider… at 30 FPS??
Longtime followers are likely aware how much I love Tomb Raider on the Saturn — see my review and my short from years past. The game itself was a trend-setter, and the Saturn can lay claim to hosting the very first release, with the PlayStation and PC versions following suit afterwards.
As seminal as the game was, it wasn’t without flaws. Most notably, the more demanding a room’s geometry was on the hardware, the more noticeable the hit on the game’s framerate. Whereas the PlayStation maintained a remarkably steady 30 fps throughout its iteration, the Saturn, while targeting 30 fps and achieving it in narrow corridors and simple environments, often dipped into the low 20s and even teens as the scene became busier or more complex. The Saturn’s variable framerate is really noticeable in the later levels — most especially in the notorious Cistern level. A massive, complex room featuring all sorts of geometry, enemies, and rising levels of water, it chokes the Saturn’s processors. The framerate takes a massive hit, coming down as low as a painful 12 frames per second. Any lower, and this section of Saturn Tomb Raider would be nigh-on unplayable.
Recent times have seen a flourishing of optimizations across Saturn titles, with the likes of Doom, SEGA Touring Car Championship, Daytona USA, and several others seeing significant engine and rendering modifications to improve on the retail releases’ framerates. Some of these projects rely on AI and some are the manual work of dedicated coders, which brings us to this “remix” of Tomb Raider. AJBats recently released both a video and a playable demo of his work-in-progress optimization of Saturn Tomb Raider, featuring a host of code changes aimed at achieving a pleasant, steady 30 frames per second. So — how did they make out?
Drawing upon concepts and techniques found in OpenLara and the fan ports of Tomb Raider to the 3DO and Genesis 32X, as well as the TR1X Project and even some reverse-engineering of the Saturn code, AJBats leveraged Anthropic’s Claude AI to implement a series of optimizations to tighten up the Saturn code. Their video does a fantastic job of explaining the various steps taken, challenges encountered, trade-offs made, and how they were able to achieve their goal. I highly recommend you give it a watch.
The video provides a link to an “Engineering Demo” that will build a Saturn disc image, injecting code into your ripped copy of the game. There is even an option to bring over higher-quality audio samples from the PlayStation disc, but this is not required. The disc image can then be played either in emulation or on real Saturn hardware.
The Saturn Experience
I loaded my fresh, fresh disc image onto a Fenrir optical disc emulator, and ran the code.
The Engineering Demo allows starting from four specific levels — The Caves, City of Vilcabamba, and The Lost Valley (the retail game’s first three levels) as well as the infamous eight level, The Cistern. Although it isn’t explicitly stated, once the first three levels are completed, the game carries on to the game’s fourth level, Tomb of Qualopec, with the FPS optimizations enabled. Lara’s home, which serves as the game’s training level, is also available from the main menu.
Immediately upon loading the game, a marginally updated GUI greets players, with slightly different fonts, icons, and general options. The compass, for those that used it in the retail release, is gone. Diving into the game proper, you’ll notice that the control scheme is quite different from the retail release, and cannot be remapped at will. Some of the opening FMV sequences play out very choppily in this work-in-progress build.
There is an option to run the game with a real-time FPS counter in the upper right corner, which is what I did for my playthrough. Players will immediately notice Lara’s small circular mesh shadow underneath her, which was not present in the retail game. The demo grants Lara full, unlimited use of all the weapons available in the game, and saving is implemented ‘at will’ from the options menu rather than depending on save crystals. Lastly, the game uses a different PUB file name, so saved files from the retail Tomb Raider are not interchangeable with this demo.
Lara’s Home
No change is readily apparent from the retail release. The level plays well and the framerate is good in this demo. The pool at the end features the same shimmering polygons as the original, and the same voice samples play — including Lara offering to take off her wet clothes as she exits the pool. The demo does not extend to Lara acting out her suggestion to do the Nude Raider thing, which I know everyone wanted to know about. You’re welcome.
Caves
Plays very well, though the retail version also handles this level competently. Framerate counter stayed steady at 30, dipping ever so slightly (no lower than 27 fps) in a few rare areas. The bridge scene plays out very smoothly as advertised, and this was one room where the retail release saw a noticeable framerate dip. When the level concluded, there was no stat screen nor option to save, unlike in the retail game.
City of Vilcabamba
Our first taste of very noticeable framerate improvements. The opening room sees four wolves attack Lara, and the game remains deliciously smooth. Polygon warping, more inherent to the PlayStation version due to Sony’s second-rate machine using triangles instead of quads, makes a very slight appearance here, especially in the underwater tunnel sections, but this is a nitpick.
Lost Valley
Now, we are getting into complex, open areas. Frame rate remains constant as promised, even with the velociraptors and T-rex on screen at the same time. The enemy geometry has apparently been simplified, but playing on a CRT, it really isn’t possible to tell the difference. One note about the enemy logic — enemies sometimes get stuck in a loop in this build. A wolf might take a few leaps forward, then reset its position to the beginning and repeat this loop until Lara gets close. A glitch in the Matrix, if you will. The framerate is golden, however. Coming up to the great underground waterfall and basin and seeing the scene unfold at a smooth 30 FPS is a sight to behold.
Tomb of Qualopec
The demo provides the game’s first three levels (and the later Cistern) as starting points, but complete the Lost Valley, and the game continues! The FPS improvements continue to appear implemented. Even rooms where Lara finds herself ambushed by multiple wolves or velociraptors, the framerate remains steady. Although I was able to save my game as I played, I must note that at one point, the game crashed, so the lesson in playing this WIP demo is to save often. Other issues that cropped up include a moveable block that, once moved, existed in both places at once — with the original instance no longer visible. The camera was very jittery in some places, and invisible walls cropped up in some places, getting Lara stuck and forcing a reload of the last save file. At one point Lara fell through what should have been a solid floor, and was stuck in limbo. Still, I was able to complete the level and watch the in-game cutscene with Larsen, which wasn’t quite synched up as it should have been.
St. Francis’ Folly
This is where I leave off for now, but the FPS counter remains on and action remains close to 30 frames at all times. As I play on, if I encounter any earth-shattering discoveries or items of note, I will update this article.
The Cistern
On to the Cistern — the last level pre-selected to load in this demo! This is the game’s eighth level, and geometrically, it is highly detailed. When Lara first enters the main chamber of the cistern complex in the retail release, the game chugs like a dying early-model PlayStation laser. In this demo, things are smooth, smooth! It is truly remarkable seeing the Saturn produce dense 3D visuals of this caliber at a steady 30fps. Scandalous, even. Sacrelicious. Superlatives aside, though the framerate impresses, things do get very glitchy here. On my first playthrough, various random textures were missing, only popping in when Lara got very close. Some sprites — such as the little weeds growing in the pool — were not ordered properly and were visible atop other polygons in cases where they should have been obstructed. The crocodiles (or are they alligators?) seemed glued to the bottom of the pool in the central chamber — which is their correct behavior, but only once the water drains. Some of the rats glitched through walls only to appear elsewhere. Clearly, lots of work to be done still. However, on a subsequent playthrough, none of the glitching occurred, so your mileage may vary. Nevertheless, I cannot emphasize what joy it is to see this level run fast, like it just robbed a bank. Really good stuff.
The Future
Personally, I intend to play through the entire game via this Engineering Demo. As a Tomb Raider fan, it is not really possible for me to not do so.
If AJBats’ intent is to continue to optimize the game, then they are off to a solid start. It isn’t immediately clear how much of the work is done manually in proportion to what has been achieved via Claude AI, for those that take note of this factor. The current build features a host of bugs to be worked out, and an error reporting log and known issues are published on the GitHub. Nevertheless, the progress so far is impressive. As with so many recent Saturn endeavors, the use of AI has enabled accelerated progress, so future updates may potentially be available at a rapid pace. Will the finished product turn out to be the definitive version of Tomb Raider on the SEGA Saturn, shining like the golden artifacts that Lara seeks? Or will it choke, like a pile of AI slop — or worse, digital asbestos? (Sorry — couldn’t resist the ragebait.) Time will tell, but things are looking very promising indeed. It’s quite all right to once again don our prismatic bras and raid us some of the smoothest tombs this side of Saturn!
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