Sega announced earlier today that it would bring Sega Saturn great Guardian Heroes to Xbox Live Arcade. Awesome, right? Everyone loves a Treasure game! Not awesome? First screen shots of the XBLA port of Guardian Heroes.
The game's "all-new graphics and visual effects" are vicious on the eyes, probably explaining why the news went out with just a press release and concept art. Sega's filtering the Saturn game's sprite-based graphics for something that's less blocky, but ultimately less attractive.
Now, the silver lining. According to Sega reps commenting on the official Sega blog, that graphical filter is completely optional. Hopefully that means we can play Guardian Heroes with properly scaled sprites if we choose to do so. Sega says we'll hear more about filtering options "this month."
Still, if you find nothing wrong with the look of this Guardian Heroes port, carry on through the gallery above.
Today, Sega announced its financial results for the full fiscal year that started in April 2024 and ended in March 2025.
I like what's on their legacy IP list, but there are still many more franchises they could revive. Shining Force and Chakan come to mind.
"That’s not how you launch a system".
I wish we lived in the Alternate Timeline where Sega was still a dominant force in the console space and it hadn't been Microsoft.
Saturn was a fantastic piece of kit... they just went a little too ambitious with its dual CPU setup. which turned a lot of developers off (at the time). The homebrew community have done some amazing work many years later, thanks to multichip experience. It is still the best platform for arcade fighters and shmups of all time. Dreamcast is a close 2nd though.
Yeah it was a interesting decision especially when looking at how dual CPU is considered a root cause of why the Jaguar was a failure.
Also the hardware rendered four sided polygons where the standard was three if they kept with triangle polygons I feel the systems development would have been easier to work with and we would have seen more third party ports in the west.
I think it was a victim of its time more than anything it saw huge success in Japan but the leadership and internal turmoil in the west meant games were not getting localised along with a focus on arcade like games were the PlayStation and later the N64 were pushing more in depth experiences over coin munching high score driven games.
I still enjoy my Saturn it was the first console I mowed lawns for and saved up for to purchase. I went so far as to purchase a used Saturn to run off an SD card. I even have a second Dreamcast modded to run off an SD card as well.
Certain video games firsts have become common knowledge over the years, while some incredible feats have fallen into the dustbin of time - TechStomper has dug up five of those forgotten firsts.
... and all that excitement died immediately when I saw the horrible screenshots that have been released.
Just awful. This game deserves a proper HD-remake, instead of this kinda cheap lazy cash-in.
I still dont get how sega and snk can't muster to properly understand and use filters that have been around since the early days of snes and arcade emulation .
Out of the dozen of 2d filters of existence , those two always pick the worst .
I don't think it looks to bad. I remember the sprites being all blocky especially in the back plane and wasn't there alot of slowdown as well?. IIf it comes to PSN I'll pick it up if the gameplay is improved a little bit.
OK? its only a filter other than that it looks fine to me, no need to get crazy over it.
Graphic's whores! GH is one of the best beat em ups ever made and you're worried about some sprites?! You can turn the filter off.
This whole thread is what's wrong with gaming today.