This is a comparison page for Cyber Speedway and Wipeout 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

Cyber Speedway and Wipeout run at a similar low resolution and framerate, probably both 320x240 like most other launch titles. They both feature similar texture mapping quality, while Wipeout is much darker and uses a healthy portion of dithering in many areas, and Cyber Speedway has dithered transparency. It's a very difficult call to say which one is technically doing more, as both feature plenty of polygon break up and pop-in, along with framerate issues.

Sound

Both games use digital voice samples and CD Audio.

Gameplay

Both games feature very similar gameplay, physics and AI. Cyber Speedway features 8 seconds of load time from the title screen to the menu and less than 5 seconds of load time to the level while Wipeout features a whopping 22 seconds of load time to gameplay just from the previous screen. The most notable difference between the two games is that Cyber Speedway features a 2 Player split screen mode, a mode which wasn't introduced to the Wipeout series until Wipeout 3 in August of 1999.

Conclusion

What this comparison does is compare two games in the same genre, released within a month of one another. In that comparison, there is no support for the portrayal game magazines gave the Saturn in 1995, as the Saturn game is doing most of what the PS1 was doing, minus transparency and full screen dithering.

As early as 1995, there was already a huge disparity between what could be seen on either system in gameplay, and what magazines, and subsequently their subscribers, were touting about the comparison. Other 1995 comparisons on this site include the Wing Arms and War Hawk comparison, and High Velocity and Ridge Racer 1.