Discussion
So among the many poor choices made during the Sega CD and Saturn years, most of them came in the software choices made by Sega as to what to bring over. On the Japanese front, Capcom and SNK were rolling out hit after hit in the arcade, the majority of them fighting games. Around the same time as Toshinden Remix’s US Release, the Sega Saturn of Japan was getting the ROM Cart equipped version of King of Fighters ’95 – a practically perfect port with a minor kink in one stage. With Capcom ramping up development on the 4 Meg Cart to bring home all the Vs series games and others, Sega instead chose to focus on a PlayStation hand–me-down.

It still hurts to look at and realize what we never got. To this day I swear on a stack of Panzer Dragoon Sagas that the Saturn could have been saved by Capcom and Sega working together to get the RAM Cart games out. Anyway…

So six months after being the most over-rated game in PlayStation history, Sega decides to bring the game series over to the struggling Saturn. It’s a safe bet they were going for a ‘hey, we can do it too’ approach, but the concept begins to fizzle within the first round of fighting. The Saturn’s poor (excuse for a) 3D chip struggles with the character textures, and all kinds of havoc are found in the attempts at transparencies. Even more depressing are the removal of the 3D backgrounds – they’ve been reduced to 2D in a similar fashion to Tekken. In a positive light, there’s almost no texture / polygon break up in the character models, something the PlayStation version suffered from.

As mentioned in the Trivia, all the voices have been re-dubbed and they’ve added a Story Mode where the characters talk to each other. Regardless or not if it was done by design, these are some of the worst lines ever delivered in a video game. I literally could not stomach Sofia and had to skip over her Story Mode dialogue. Thankfully the sound effects are more or less there and need no commentary.

Speaking of Story Mode, this part of the game does prove useful – it helps to fill in gaps between the first and second game. There’s also the artwork – Takara removed those regretful renders from the PSX version’s Select Screen and provided the actual 2D artwork the characters are based on.

Lastly on the chopping block is the game’s speed. It’s slower than the original – I’m not sure if it’s because the Saturn couldn’t handle the ported code or if Takara just didn’t care. Players would need to relearn the timing of most combos and attack patterns or watch as they miss hits or whiff entirely.

Despite being the flagship game for Sony, the Sega attempt at fame is a sadly inferior port with nice, if slightly useful extras tacked on to it to try and make up for the visual inferiority and technical breakdown. It’s not a terrible game by any means – it’s just not what it should have been to begin with.

Which was X-Men Vs. Street Fighter.
 

• Sega really wanted to keep this release as close as possible to the PlayStation Version - even the disc art is orange!
   
• * From the Box Copy - Yes, that's right folks. Sega couldn't even spell their own exclusive character's name right. They are known as Cupido in the game.
   
• The voices in the game have been re-dubbed, and dear god do they suck all kinds of ass. Most are either too over-the-top, or just plain terrible with their phony accents.
   
• A strange issue with this port - it runs just a smidge slower than the PlayStation version.
   
• Check out the screenshots on the back of the box - every game has the timer at 00, and there are no names. Early dev screens?
   
• Due to the extra voice work and new character, the Saturn version outweighs the PlayStation version by 90 Megs.
   
• Capcom actually released the 2nd Toshinden in the arcades.