This is a comparison page for Wing Arms and War Hawk 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
Wing Arms and War Hawk for the Saturn and PS1 both run at 320x240 and the same
sub 30 frames per second. The PS1 game features transparent smoke effects and
missile trails over the Saturn game. Both games feature gouraud shading on enemy
craft and the player's plane in "chase" mode, but the Saturn game
uses dithered transparency for clouds and missile trails. The light shading
in Wing Arms is yet another example of a special effect the Saturn wasn't supposed
to be capable of, according to game magazines of the day.
War Hawk uses a flat polygonal ground with texture mapping, a highly dithered
color gradient for the sky, and texture mapped polygonal objects for walls,
building structure, fortresses and enemy vessels. Wing Arms uses a 2D scaling
background for the ground effects, dithered transparency for splashing effects,
and texture mapped 3D polygonal objects walls and structures. The ground textures
on War Hawk appear to be of lower color count and resolution than the 2D floors
in Wing Arms. Similarly, the canyon walls in War Hawk are much lower texture
detail than Wing Arm's canyons, but they do have color graduation by presumably
using gouraud shading on the walls.
Accordingly, the Wing Arms gameplay movies range from 1.23 MB per second, for
the Canyon Flight 2 movie, to .61 MB per second, for the Canyon Fortresses movie,
and .85 MB per second for the Supply base at sea movie. That is a range of 25-50%
more than that of the .46MB per second, for the Desert Fortress level, to .64
MB per second for the Canyon level in Warhawk. With the gouraud shading, transparency
and reflective water jacking up the color counts, the Canyon Level in Warhawk
should have been a much larger file if texture map color counts were equal.
Since 3ivx Compression was used on all video files with the exact same settings.,
and the audio was captured at 1411 kbps, this seems to demonstrate a significant
increase in color for the Saturn game.
Sound
Both games use digital voice samples and CD Audio.
Gameplay
Wing Arms in default controls is more arcade style, and does a barrel roll when
the left and right triggers are tapped, while its advanced controls allow for
full control of the craft. War Hawk's default controls are similar to Wing Arm's
arcade style controls, insofar as controlling the ship goes. The most notable
difference is that War Hawk allows you to stop and hover, or even fly backwards,
while Wing Arms does not. War Hawk also has a variety of lock on missiles, which
make destroying enemy crafts much easier than Wing Arm's line of sight rockets.
Neither game is doing more in gameplay, physics or AI. Both games mask load
times very well, and are actually loading for less than 8 seconds for most levels.
Conclusion
This comparison is much more difficult than comparing Wing Arms to Air Combat,
as both games push their respective systems to the max for 1st generation titles.
As mentioned above, technically Wing Arms is displaying higher color counts
while War Hawk is using unique effects in transparency and gouraud shading on
walls, along with the reflective water. The later most effect is likely done
through palette swaps than environment mapping, but is still unique. Since both
games run at the same resolution and framerate, and with the above considerations,
it is unknown which game is doing more technically speaking. 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, with the addition of the
2D backgrounds providing for a no pop-up environment.
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 aforementioned Wing Arms and War Hawk comparison, Wipeout and Cyber Speedway,
and High Velocity and Ridge Racer 1.