Game Pilgrimage

Dead or Alive - Saturn - Bloody Roar 2 Playstation 1 - Screenshots

All shots have 2D backgrounds. DOA (1997) has two scrolling 2D plains detached from the ring, Bloody Roar 2 (1999) has one layer backgrounds with some 3D elements in them.

DOA runs at 704x480 resolution and 60FPS with polygonal transparency in the danger zone explosions and no light sourcing or shadows. In comparison to the transparent explosions, the menus in the fighting screens are all standard Saturn dithered transparency. The screenshots make these appear as though they are solid black and clear lines, but they are actually in grids like the other Saturn dithering on this site, something about the resolution makes them appear different in screenshots. A good way to see that they are grid dithering, rather than straight lines as the S-Video shots show is to look at the A/V shots on this site, under Game Info-> Saturn pics-> Dead or Alive - and then click on the pics under the A/V list.

The shading and smooth edges on the character models are acheived through high resolution texture mapping and good art design. Many of the backgrounds have animated elements, and the fire in the dangerzone texture flares periodically. Character animation is noticably higher than that of Bloody Roar 2, though it doesn't appear to actually have 60 unique animation frames per second either. If I were going to make a comparison to the animation differences, I'd say that DOA's characters animate at 30fps, and Bloody Roar 2's varies from 30FPS in standing animation, to below 15FPS in some of the more dramatic animations.

Bloody Roar 2 runs at 512x480 with light sourcing, gouraud shading, and transparency. Even though it is reported that Bloody Roar 2 has a refresh rate of 60FPS, the character animation is at least half that of Dead or Alive's. If Bloody Roar 2 is indeed 60FPS, it appears to be limited to the zooming and rotating of the ring and backgrounds, and not the characters themselves. This is clear when watching the characters move, especially when they jump or dash, the animation level is so low that the character will literally jump from one position to the next, with few if any frames in between.

Ground textures in Bloody Roar 2 are similar in size and repetition to those in Dead or Alive. There is no animation in the ground textures of Bloody Roar 2, unlike those in DOA, but the backgrounds do have some 3D elements in them in some stages. Also, the light sourcing goes a long way to smoothing out the characters, but looking closely at the characters reveals that the texture mapping on them is low resolution, or just a blur of color. Virtua Fighter 2 PC allows you to turn on light sourcing as well, seeing that in action is interesting in comparison to Bloody Roar 2's shots.

Bloody Roar 2