This is a comparison page for Black Dawn for the Saturn and Playstation 1. All written comparisons, movies, and JPGs were made while playing the games on the actual console and taken from the actual console through an S-Video connection.

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Comparison Comments

Graphics

Black Dawn for the PS1 and Saturn both run at 320x240 and the same sub 30 frames per second. The PS1 game was released 8 months after the Saturn version in 1996, and features full screen dithering as well as lighting effects over the Saturn version. The lighting effects are on enemy air crafts when being fired upon by the guns, which is an addition over the gouraud shading on the ground and enemy craft that is found in both versions of the game. The Saturn game features no secondary technical advantage, but it does display transparent clouds in a similar way to the PS1 game. The Saturn version's capability with transparency must have been overlooked as a "fluke" by game magazines of its day.

The PS1 game appears to have more colors in the ground textures, or at least broader strokes with the gouraud shading, as well as larger more detailed trees and enemy aircrafts. Accordingly, the movie files weigh in at .32 MB per second for the Saturn game and just under .47 MB per second for the PS1 game. Since both movie files are taken using the same hardware and software, and the audio is captured at 1411 kbps, this seems to demonstrate an increase in color for the PS1 game. 3ivx Compression was used on all video files with the exact same settings.

Sound

Both games use digital voice samples and CD Audio.

Gameplay

Both games control exactly the same. However, the Saturn game has only 8 second load times in comparison to the PS1 version's 18 second load time.

Conclusion

Black Dawn is a very good helicopter game for either system, in that it controls the same, and has the same resolution and framerate for either system. While the Saturn version appears to be inferior in color counts and detail level in objects, it is only a minor shortcoming individually and overall. Ultimately, the PS1 game is technically doing more, and this is one case of the PS1 outperforming the Saturn by displaying no more than 32% more colors and including lighting effects which are not in the Saturn version of 8 months prior.