You only have to look at the kind of games being produced in 1998 to see that programmers had learned quite a lot since earlier days, with the likes of Burning Rangers, Panzer Dragoon Saga and the Shenmue prototype more than enough to prove that while it was never going to be Model 3 perfect, Virtua Fighter 3 was indeed possible on the Saturn. As for the claim that VF3 never existed, why then has exsegadev confirmed that a final playable build was shown by a Sega representative? In a thread filled with some presumptions, I'm going to hazard a guess that somebody has been neglecting to read every last detail here.

Yes, some of the messages are long (and perhaps boring to those not 100% interested), but to others - such as myself, of course - it is refreshing to know that concrete information about this "holy grail" is finally starting to leak. Now it's only a matter of time before this knowledge gets back to more senior people within Sega and maybe we might actually get to see something from this mythical Saturn conversion, which definitely WAS completed on two separate occasions because documentation listing the dates it was compiled and even rejected by management has been discovered in the past by similarly determined individuals who should also be credited for their failure to back down in the face of such blatant ignorance.

Returning back to one recent subject that has been commented on, I too had no idea that Sega Touring Car was another game - along with Daytona Circuit Edition - that benefitted from further graphical improvements for its Japanese release, although I guess the (allegedly) higher frame rate may also have something to do with the raise in speed NTSC consoles have over their PAL counterparts, even if this is only a 17.5% increase. Also, did you know that all of the textures in the Saturn version of The House Of The Dead were actually placeholders? Once the coders at Tantalus demonstrated their first build to feature all four stages, they were simply told to leave everything as it was, adding just a few extra modes and therefore helping to bring this high profile game's release forward by a few months. Naturally, this was just one more error of judgement from a company becoming increasingly interested in its upcoming system, which can be the only reason executives sat around a table and decided to release the likes of Whizz and Courier Crisis as opposed to Virtua Fighter 3, Shenmue or even PAL translations of Grandia and the long-promised-yet-ill-fated X-Men VS Street Fighter. *sigh*

Sonic Adventure was in the early planning stages as a Saturn project, though I doubt it would have been far along enough to make the console in time before Sega eventually ceased all development in favour of the Dreamcast - just look at how this also benefitted Shenmue. If you want a good indication of how Sonic Adventure might have looked on the Saturn (in a similar way to Fighters Megamix and Digital Dance Mix being "previews" for what gamers could have expected from Virtua Fighter 3, had it been released), try the Sonic World portion of Sonic Jam, as it's believed this originally formed part of a much larger stage that may have been one of at least two hub sections like those used in the final Dreamcast version, along with a proposed snow-themed area that most certainly became Ice Cap. Also, look carefully in some real time cut scenes and you might notice that a lower polygon Sonic model is used than in the main game, which although similar to that from Sonic R was actually proof that some code was lifted directly from the original Saturn work - this may or may not have been a third installment to the "Project Sonic" campaign.

Finally, hackers managed to find more similarities between Sonic Adventure and Sega's previous console than other Dreamcast titles, further highlighting its 32-bit roots. For those still not convinced (and I definitely recall mentioning this here before - sometimes you have to repeat yourself to get through with certain people!), a few stages in the final game look as if they were simply upgraded from levels that could have easily been possible on the Saturn. The first portion of Speed Highway and some tube-like links between world areas in particular come to mind, though as is all too often with these things much of what I say has yet to be proved in its entirety.

One last thing I'd like to say in this already lengthy rant is that Mark Maslowicz is just one person I have a serious interest in contacting regarding Saturn Virtua Fighter 3, though efforts to get anything out of the EMAP team have so far proved painfully fruitless... even if they did at least reveal that there is a strong possibility they might have seen something, despite the best efforts of Sega executives to keep any sightings of this game under wraps. I remain confident that one day we can find the right person to discuss this game, and I'm sure there are more people who would love to either play or just see this one in action - if not to end years of speculation as to its existence then to finally prove whether such an ambitious title really was in the reach of Sega's criminally underrated system. Then again, AM2 doesn't really need to show anything from VF3 as the footage of Shenmue it has already released speaks volumes about just how misguided Sony made the world regarding the Saturn's true power. After all, didn't Travellers Tales once confirm that Sonic R would only be possible on the PlayStation if the speed was dropped to 2-5fps, or Lobotomy claim they had Quake up and running (with all the Saturn version's effects intact) at a virtually unplayable frame rate? Now there are some figures you didn't hear Sony bragging about in a hurry!

there are performance figures for the likes of Shenmue and Virtua Fighter 3 floating around, though you only have to see the video that came with Shenmue II to realise AM2 was pushing the Saturn harder than anyone. The reason Yu Suzuki's team was able to push out so many incredible (yet criminally still unreleased) games in such a small time frame is because Shenmue's production can be traced back to 1994, while VF3 was being worked on in similar levels of secrecy between other Saturn projects, such as Fighters Megamix and Digital Dance Mix. As most people familiar with those two games and their connections to AM2's long-lost Saturn conversion will know, it would have been impossible for VF3 to exist on the Saturn without these "research" titles. FMM provided the graphics engine for the first revision of VF3, while Digital Dance Mix served as a test bed for the second revision's switching character model system, as later seen in the Aoi tech demo that was televised at such a ridiculous time barely anybody saw it - a move typical of Sega's Saturn-era promotion, in my opinion!