Kolibri was one of the best looking, best sounding, and most unique games on the system. But it's ok you skipped it. At least you talked about Cosmic Carnage. Well, I mean, you said the name.
Back in the day, I almost bought a 32X. The problem was that the demo units at the stores never seemed to work well. Like sonictoast said, you had to insert the cartridges several times and power cycle the unit several times to even get it to work. The 32X just didn't seem to mate up well with the Genesis. So I decided to invest my video gaming dollars elsewhere, the REAL future of video gaming... uhhh... the 3DO... LOL
The 32x was very powerful. The 32-Bit-Version of Mortal Kombat 2 felt like the ARCADE-version. The cartridges are heavy. I wish, all Mega Drive-games were made in 32 Bit. Imagine Street Fighter 2. Fabtastic actually.
It wasn't that difficult to finish though, was it? I finished it, and I enjoyed it too. For all it's weird glitchiness, I just loved the fact that I was playing a game with textured polygons... on a home console... from a cartridge.
1:26 Shadow Squadron was friggin' awesome!!! Had a crazy far draw distance, and you could blow up the capital ships piece by piece. Love your style and sense of humor Bransfield! I just stumbled upon your channel & subbed after the 1st video, (which I never do).
As a member of a now long dead studio I can tell you that the 32X was a nice power house saddly it was baddly programmed for, like the Saturn was too. And our demo can prove the power of the 32X and with more time we could have made it even better at 60fps or stable 30fps.
Good video. I got a 32x around '98 second-hand and by that time they were already selling for £15, which is what I paid. I even got a couple of games chucked in with it. I was still behind having got a Mega Drive in '96 and a Mega CD in '97 so when I had all this connected and my Mega Drive looked like some sort of space ship, I thought it was incredible. I just didn't realise at that age (12) how poorly the Mega CD and 32x both fared and just how few games came out on the 32x. In hindsight it's a shame we didn't see more games pushed for the Mega CD-32x (were there about 3, and they were all those gash Make My Video games?), I'd have been interested to see what sort of games were possible with that hardware combo. Obviously at the cost of having to have 3 different Sega components plugged in at the same time!
According to segaretro there were only 6 total that used all 3 systems and only 5 that were released in North America and Europe (Corpse Killer, Fahrenheit, Night Trap, Slam City, and Supreme Warrior)... the other (Surgical Strike) only made it to Brazil.
That was the best time to buy these things! Pretty much everything vintage was considered worthless in the late 90s. I got my SNES for £10 from CEx! Around the same time I got a whole load of home computers all for under £30 each - half of them are worth >£300, now.
I'm hoping that if the guys behind the Analog NT and Super NT ever decide to make a Megadrive/Genesis... that it will also be compatible with the 32X cartridges I still have.
No the problem was they would put all of their eggs into one basket and when they weren't competing at their desired level they would scrap it and move on to the next console. When the Saturn launched Sony came into the picture and Nintendo later released their N64, so Sega drops the Saturn and moves on to the Dreamcast where there are no competitors until Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft come along and Sega just gave up.
The point of Space Harrier and After Burner 2 on the 32X was that until then, those games ran on arcade hardware that couldn't really be replicated very well on home consoles (even Space Harrier 2 on the Genesis/Mega Drive couldn't replicate the look of super scaler games despite it being a sequel like you mentioned). That and those two games are timeless and kick everyone's mothers' asses, age be damned.
I really wanted to *love* the 32X, but I was usually let down by the low quality of its games. However, I'd frequently play Doom and Virtua Fighter on the system at a videogame rental store near my house, and I really loved them. I definetely don't remember the locking up and freezing problems some people reported here in the comments section. I thought the system had great potential for some truly great 2d/3d hybrid games, but it suffered from stupid marketing strategies and rushed projects. The hardware had it all: a vastly superior color pallete, sprite scaling and rotation, 3D polygons rendering... there was so much that could've been produced, but it just never happened. Well, shit like that must happen every now and then to shape video gaming history!
It sounds like the Hardware itself wasn't half as bad as we think, the big problem was that MOST of the Games just didn't have anywhere NEAR enough love put in for them. That if they had simply taken their TIME creating games, they could have created some really nice stuff. Unfortunately it was treated mostly as a cheap cash grab, which really helped to drive the first set of nails into the coffin that was Sega as a hardware manufacturer.
True... then again they didn't have the time to take. Releasing the 3sX so near to the end of the Mega Drive's life cycle and so close to the launch of the Saturn, there wasn't really the time there for anyone to put much time into making great games.
Developers didn't even have hardware specs until Spring of 1994, with a launch date of September. Worse, almost none had any experience with two-CPU systems, let alone writing audio for two machines and trying to lay and sync graphics for essentially two machines at the same time.
There is a Sega Power Strip which has the outlet sockets rotated and spaced out, which means you can plug your Genesis, Sega CD, 32X, Saturn and Dreamcast into it. Solves your problems if you have a standard power strip, huh?
The 32X was actually a pretty impressive piece of hardware. The Neo Geo did more with less but that is because SNK actually supported the Neo Geo. What killed the 32X was good old fashioned pride. Sega of Japan did not work with Sega of America. Nintendo proved you can could have multiple platforms when you define what each platform is with their 3 pillar strategy of GBA, DS and Gamecube. Sega could have had a 2 pillar strategy with the 32X as a home for arcade ports of their vast 32 bit super scaler games like a true port of Super Monaco, Rad Mobile and Outrunners and the Saturn could have been home for more unique, memory intensive CD rom games. Also, this would have given developer time to really get to know the hardware to fully take advantage of what it could do plus the fact it could still play Sega Genesis games was a huge bonus. I am still playing Sega Genesis games today. Sad we never got a chance to see what Treasure could do with the 32X hardware. No, it was not the hardware capabilities that killed the 32X it was the inability of Sega of Japan to get along with Sega of America. As the old saying goes, "a house divided will not stand." Thanks for the video! I own a 32X today and there are quite a few great games for it and people are starting taking notice of this which is why the prices are going up on e-bay. If an indie game company makes some quality 32X games I know I would be willing to buy them. Look what Watermelon Games did with the Genesis hardware. WOW! The fact Watermelon Games exists shows there is a market for new quality retro cart games and people will pay. As more and more people buy 32X systems hopefully the market will be there for new 32X games. Who knows, some enterprising individuals might actually make and sell the never released Sega Neptune console (Genesis/32X all in one) which would only increase the demand for new 32X games. Retro gaming is not going anywhere, in fact it is only getting better.
If Sega had made the 32X compact and inexpensive (not taking up more outlets) it would have done great and extended the life of the Genesis tenfold. But there’s like a billion shoulda coulda‘ for Sega in the late 90’s. It was tough being a Sega fan.
Yep. They could've just made an upgraded Genesis for the Christmas 1993 season with a high color mode, costing about half as much for existing Genesis owners. That would've allowed existing polygonal Genesis games (like Hard Drivin) to run at a much higher frame rate.
Half a million in a year is not good. The Wii U sold seven times that in its first year and was considered a dismal failure. In terms of more contemporary hardware, it outsold the Jag (less than 150,000, ouch!) but was smoked by the 3DO which retailed at three times the price and was hardly on sale any longer but sold 2 million units. Even if you only look at other Mega Drive add-ons, the Mega CD sold 2 and a half million. But it's not just the raw numbers where it was a failure. As someone at school at the time - so a prime target for Sega - the system became a joke and started to lend Sega the air of a company that was scrambling around with no clue what it was doing. Why were they offering the chance to turn the Mega Drive into a next-gen console instead of trying to sell me their ACTUAL next-gen console? It made bugger all sense. Given the amount of Mega Drive owners at my school, the Saturn should have been a slam-dunk but there was just no interest, the PlayStation destroyed it. I was one of only three kids with a Saturn that I knew (ironically, I HADN'T owned a Mega Drive in the 16-bit era, I'd been an Amiga kid). Almost everyone went for a PlayStation, a few held out for the N64 and some who could afford it jumped to the PC instead, but there was just no excitement for Sega's machione, and I think the 32X was a big reason why.
Ok, but, like... WWF Raw on the 32x is the only version with KWANG. Does the Genesis version have KWANG? No. Super NES have KWANG? No. Game Gear? No, but that one has Macho Man, so... well, forget about that. Game Boy? No. Only 32x has the majesty of Savio Vega in an ugly mask.
I got the 32X for Christmas the year it came out and it was freaking amazing. I was young enough that I only tended to get games at Christmas or for birthdays so having a limited selection didn't bother me at all. I had Virtua Fighter, Mortal Kombat 2 and Star Wars. Not sure I ever got anymore games for it than that but it was awesome. I used to fly around the Death Star for hours on end. I'm pretty sure that was the first fully 3D game I ever played on a home console. I'm sure if I played it now I would think it was garbage, but at the time it was the best thing in the world for me.
Dads And Dragons I bought a 32X straight up. Not a Christmas present... I seriously used my saved up money and just bought it. Honestly had a great time with it... Virtua Racing Deluxe, Doom, Star Wars Arcade... cool experiences I couldn't have on Genesis or SNES. Star Wars ran way better than Star Fox... Doom ran way better on 32X than on SNES... VR Deluxe was way better than the expensive Genesis port... other games like NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat were superior ports as well. Fuck, even Virtua Fighter was favorable to the rushed Saturn launch port. Had a great time with my 32X.
I have a 32X and when the bottom dropped, it was a fantastic way to get more life from the Genesis. Let s be honest what other console has THAT level of compatibility? You could play Genesis, Master System and cards (with adapter) and that included using the light gun and Sega 3d glasses!! Sega CD, 32X and enhanced CD games plus photo CD and music. Other than PC no other company offered so much backwards compatibility short of the original PS3. As for my favorite, Blackthorne and Shadow Squadron.
Virtua Racing Deluxe is still the best version of Virtua Racing, even after PS2. Knuckles' Chaotix is an acquired taste. Tempo is better than Super Tempo. If you ignore the music and sound effects, it has undeniably the best version of Mortal Kombat II (better than arcade, in my opinion). Kolibri was a cool game. All console versions of Virtua Fighter 1 suck, including Remix. Cosmic Carnage is trash. Brutal: Above the Claw has insufferable music and is worse than the already awful (but with a phenomenal soundtrack!) Brutal: Paws of Fury on Sega CD (and better audio than you thought the SNES could handle SNES version). That's 32X in a nutshell. Worth owning? Sure. Terrible? Nah. Failure? Absolutely.
You gotta play on the actual system then you'll be able to truly criticize the 32x. It was always locking up and freezing. It would rarely turn on. You gotta keep taking out the game, blowing on it then trying again and again and again, hoping everytime that the system would actually work. The set up was down right frustrating, trying to get those metal brackets into your Genesis console to fit the 32x in. Then worst of all is that it would eventually break your Genesis. I kid you not, the 32x was a parasite that would destroy it's host. The true failure of the 32x ws the hardware, not the games.
sonictoast Are you confusing it with the NES? Both of my 32Xs have never froze and I have never had to blow in the carts. Most of the games do suck though.
I got mine when it came out and the 32x and genesis it was originally on still work like a charm. I got lucky and managed to buy the whole system library when the all the games went on discount after the system failed
Obviously yes. Saturn in Japan is maybe the best system of all time, in America it wouldn't have saved it per say but, it certainly would have been bought more. Less people would have been pissed off from wasting their money on those systems!
I find it hard to believe the Mega CD would've done much to affect the Saturn. The add-on was already dying off by the time the Saturn launched, only really getting a dozen or so games in '95. The 32X may have cut a percentage or two out though. Launching it so close to the Saturn was one of the few terrible decisions Kalinske made. You could say he liked the Mega Drive a little too much.
No. The Saturn's rushed release is what killed it outside of Japan. Sega of Japan also discontinued the Genesis/Megadrive immediately on the release of the Saturn, despite continued support for the 16 bit systems among consumers in the West. Nintendo continued to sell the SNES well into the n64s life, which is the only reason the SNES ultimately outsold the Genesis over its lifetime ( in total worldwide sales).
what if in the US market it went from genesis then directly to dreamcast? i.e. no 32x, sega cd, saturn. would this made the big stores like toys r us, target, walmart, etc happy.
I doubt it, the Genesis wouldn't last against the N64, GC, PS1, PS2. Sega diehards would just move on, by the time the Dreamcast was released, consumers would be like "what took you so long SEGA"? Basically, they'd be trying to keep a 16-Bit console alive while everyone else came up with 32-Bit and 64-Bit machines.
As not many know, Sega of America also had a potential system seller called "Virtua Hamster" in the pipeline, and if some dodgy industry spy from Nintendo hadn't talked them into cancelling this obvious gem, it would have undoubtedly changed the fate of the 32X, Sega's consoles in the long term, and video games perveived as an highly appreciated art form in general.
Holy shit, haha. I just saw AVGN reviewing it, pure comedy gold and disturbingly weird. The thing is, I'm already bad at watering plants, let alone feeding Tamagotchis in games. I had one of course back in the day. It died. Nintendo had a Zelda game indeed on the CDi, wonder if that's possible to play with an emulator somehow.
Or PlayStation. Strange that SoJ thought that third party developers would feel any sense of loyalty to a console company. Especially one that charged them $13 a cart where SONY offered an expedited manufacturing process and a licensing fee of $10 per CD.
I was a fan of the Mega CD I wanted to get the 32X but I instead traded in my Mega Drive and CD for a 3DO that I enjoyed even more, it don’t sound like a long time when you look back but 1 or 2 years of playing 3DO was a long period of time where the 3DO was the best game system out, people who played 3DO later in its life won’t see it that way,. The 3DO I remember having a very big jump in graphics to the point where we had brand new experiences
I loved T-MEK in the arcade. As a teenager somehow I got a job selling computers at Sears and during every lunch break I'd dump quarters into the sit down machine.
Had a 32X, and then a Saturn too. Never had Virtua Fighter on either, got Virtua Fighter 2 with the Saturn and never saw the point of playing old-less-characters-Minecraft-people-edition.
They should have combined the 32x and Mega-CD into one brand new standalone console. It would have beaten the Playstation to CD-ROM gaming and it would have undercut the SNES in a way that trying to keep the Megadrive on life support never could. Sega were very much like Commodore back then in that there was just too much hardware floating around and not enough decent games. If they had focused it all into one product and had some stonking arcade conversions as launch titles then it would have been a different story.
But then that console would have had to compete with the Saturn, causing more confusion. They should have stopped production and development on the 32x, and just used the Genesis/CD for original content, with a spattering of hand me down ports. As always, it's a price point thing, how to make cheap and sell high. PEACE.
They won't do that cause the Sega Saturn was already that, the only problem is the cartridge slot and disc tray on the Sega Saturn are not compatible with either of those.
What emulator were you using for the 32x games? I just tried NBA Jam in Kega Fusion 3.64 and it seemed to work perfectly. I've never been into sports, but I started a game, ran around the court, watched the computer score, etc, and everything looked like it was working correctly.
To me, it seems like it would be just the opposite. All you have to do with a computer is unzip the emulator, configure a controller and load the game.
Gamers tend to have one of two impressions of the 32X depending on when they adopted it. If I paid $200 at launch, I would have been furious. But I paid $20 for the system brand-new when it was being put on clearance, and about $5-10 apiece for the video games as they went likewise. For me, who owned a Genesis but didn't have the money to shell out for a Saturn, it was exactly the kind of cheap "bridge" system it should have been marketed as in the first place if it was going to exist at all. It helped me squeeze a little extra life out of the base system and was a neat novelty, and I appreciate it for that.
Yeah, exactly. If it was a simple upgrade path for Mega Drive owners who wanted next-gen games but couldn't afford big boy consoles, that would have been fine. But it was £200, by the time you'd saved up for it and a couple of games you had enough for a PlayStation. If you could sell your Mega Drive/Genesis and games for another hundred quid, you'd have enough for a Saturn. The original plan for the 32X was a plug-thru cart with an upgraded SVP processor in it. The idea being you'd buy the upgrade for £50 and then you could buy 3D games like Virtua Racing or Virtua Fighter for regular Mega Drive game prices because they didn't need to put the fancy graphics chip in every cart. If that was all it had been, I think it would have sold okay and not been a catastrophic failure that started the process that led to Sega pulling out of hardware altogether. But they just kept shoving extra expensive chips in there that sent the price skyrocketing. I never understood the thing about Virtua Racing costing $100 anyway. Star Fox also had a snazzy graphics chip in it to allow the SNES to chuck polygons around... it retailed for regular SNES prices. What did Sega do with their rival chip that led to it pushing up the price of games so much?
This is why it’s important to predict the future! Sega should’ve known that: - 3D will be the way to go - plan the Saturn launch carefully - ensure a new Sonic game is ready for non-Japanese gamers when the Saturn arrived in their shores - ensure the Saturn could run arcade-perfect conversions of model 2 arcade games - ensure the Saturn is easy to develop for - allow Mega Drive and Mega CD backwards compatibility ti give consumers more of a reason to choose Saturn over PlayStation The Saturn could’ve been a success if they did all of the above! Plus we’d see Star Wars Arcade, Knuckles Chaotix, Kolibri and Virtua Racing Deluxe on it!
Virtua Fighter, Virtua racing, Mortal Kombat 2 and also Doom. Those were the games to get for the 32x. Loved them to bits as a kid. I think these flat shaded polygon look of VR 32x and VF 32x aged better than the texture warped 3d graphics we eventually saw in the 5th generation. Doom 32x gets a lot of hate, but looking back, until the PSX and Doom 64 versions of the game were released, it was the only console port that ran at a decent fps. The Jaguar and Snes version are choppy. In a still frame the Jaqguar and SNES ports looked better. They didn't play better though as they only ran at 5-10fps. In retrospect Doom 32x aged horribly, but during that era, until the PSX and n64 versions arrived, it was your best bet if you didn't own a pc. Except for those four games, I was disappointed. Virtua Fighter is such a good game! That was reason enough to buy the 32x for me. After playing it for months on end I was left hoping more of that kind of jewels were to come, only to eventually realize that there was nothing left to come. So yeah, a figurative heap of shit with a few jewels inside.
The biggest problem with the 32X was too many rushed ports that used the Megadrive for the background graphics, with the 32X only rendering the sprites... and because these were running at different framerates, you got this horribly choppiness to the gameplay. Digital Foundry did a couple of videos recently that expose this for every single 32X game. Additionally, not enough 32X games made use of the additional sound chips. It's doubtful any of the games actually released for the 32X showed what it was capable of.
I don't think the 32X was intended to ignore the Megadrive/Genesis hardware and do everything alone. Did the different layers ever run at different framerates on any games? Thats weird, Ive never noticed that on any of my 32X games. I would say games like Star Wars arcade and Virtua Racing were showing off the 32X's 3D at it's limit.
andyukmonkey No way, because just a year later, Shadow Squadron's 3D engine was a big improvement over Star Wars. I have to believe that if developers had proper time to work on games, and if the thing lived a few more years, we would have eventually seen some truly amazing stuff.
In my late 20s, I lived in tenerife when I was about 12-14. Wonderful little island isn't it? Oh the days of internet cafes and pachangas, oh can't forget the over abundancy of English friends.
Yes, it is a rushed rubbish with 2 quite powerful CPUs crippled by the lack of any hardware graphics acceleration, so they still could not produce SNES-like transparencies, for example, and generally struggled to output any decent graphics at 60 FPS(afterburner, a port of an old arcade game had to run at 30). Yes, it gave Genesis a lot of extra power and more colors, but still was an obvious dead end that couldn’t remain competitive even for a few years and therefore wouldn’t recoup the costs of spending significant development effort on it.
I think SOA planned on everyone getting a Mega Drive, Mega CD, *and* 32x so didn't add things that were already in the Mega CD. Some Mega CD games took advantages of that but to the best of my knowledge apart from relatively recent homebrew/indie games nothing cartridge based ever did. Japan should have really put their foot down instead of letting them go ahead with it :/
Just goes to show that for a game console, a CPU is only as good as it's accompanying GPU. I have always believed that they should have delayed the Sega CD by at least a year or so and simply used the 32X CPU inside of it. Instead of using two of the same CPU though, one would have done quite nicely if accompanied by a decent GPU setup. They could have foregone the extra CPU that they ended up using in the Sega CD which was simply a 2nd Genesis CPU with a faster clock speed. Waiting a year probably would have helped drop the price of the CD-ROM tech which was very expensive at the time, and the savings could have been used on the 32-Bit CPU and improved GPU. They likely could have released this at the same price point but with a much needed performance upgrade. This type of configuration could have easily allowed the system to outshine the likes of the 3DO and Jaguar which were released around that time. This being said, I really hope that the rumor is true about Sega potentially re-entering the console market. That would be absolutely awesome :)
skins4thewin the current generation also shows the inverse, that without a decent CPU to feed the GPU games may get prettier but innovation in gameplay stagnates.
@@Bransfiiiield sure, but you said that it felt as if it was designed to make mega drive owners feel as if they should've went with the SNES from the start. The start was 1988 and they couldn't have possibly gone with a SNES.
@@Bransfiiiield a Mega Drive. But that's exactly my point, how could Mega Drive owners have gone with the SNES from day one when it was released 2 years after the Mega Drive?
The only logical way they could have done the 32x was to release the Neptune for $99 and the Mega Drive add on for $50. If that wasn't feasible, it was a waste of time because 3d graphics on a budget would've been the only reason for it's existence.
As a random collector getting into all the old goodies the past few years, Turbo Duos, NeoGeo Pockets, Mastere Systems, etc. etc. I have to say 32X has its place in the crazy, history of game style storage in my room lol. I love hooking it up to my model 1 Sega Genesis and using good old RGB through SCART cable (to SCART to HDMI adapter, then into my Marantz receiver, looks great on new 4k HDR TV). Personally I enjoy (from vintage standpoint) Kolibri, Tempo, Chaotix, and to some degree Zaxxon 2000. Also have Star Wars, Cosmic Carnage, Doom....and the rest, well I can emulate.Stand alone the 32x is far from something great, but it has its little place in history, that any nostalgia buff or big time collector will appreciate. Like I said, if you have newer TVs, pleasssse give SCART cable with a $40 SCART to HDMI adapter on Amazon a try, its a must for modern setups.
I feel like the 32x could have been more successful if it had been an entirely separate console made with a similar architecture to the Saturn. If that had been the case, then porting games between the two would take minimal effort, and then the 32x would have lived up to Sega's promise of being a budget 32-bit console. Taking this idea a step further, the Saturn could have used the same cartridge slot, allowing some degree of backwards compatibility. In theory, programmers could even have their Saturn game write program data to the memory card, which could then be played on a Genesis or 32x.
No it wasn't shite. I'm saying this as somebody who shrugged at sega thinking sega was "kinda ok I suppose" since I was all for amiga. First of all it does make sense to look at it in its own right but also relatively in terms of business strategies. It was not robbing or "money grubbing" from its megadrive/gensis fan base. Rather, it not only added longevity to the system (especially by filling a 2D niche like blackthorn when 3D was becoming the rage while being crap on the saturn and ps) especially when sega customers were rightly unsure about investing in a console like the saturn which might have flopped (which it sort of did actually), but it also created "some" certainty for its backwards compatability because developers would be able to release games that ran "ok" on a megadrive but had features to unlock if you owned a 32x add-on. As for how some people would be complaining about the price while comparing it to nintendo, that is a spoilt way to look at it. For a start, even if it cost 200 quid, we must consider that, when comparing to SNES games, there were some that were £80 or easily £60. If one must compare, then well yes, £200 means it is the better thing to get. It's two and a half games in price. Of course there are things that could have been done better, especially 32x integration with the megaCD. I think you've been a bit harsh on some of the games. Even saying that though, I'm surprised you got so many thumbs down. As for Doom, the PC owners turned settings down lower than that anyway since generally speaking nobody could afford a PC good enough then. Considering wolfenstein has been remade for megadrive with very efficient coding, it would be cool to see a 32x version made and with efficient code likewise (and with the megacd too) nowadays as homebrew. It'd tan the hide of that official version. I think, if the 32x and megacd, had been better integrated and if some bundle discount were offered to those who bought both (and maybe a discount to retroact by proof-of-purchase for those who already owned a megacd), the decent colour palette would have made CD video clips worthwhile and so movie spin-off games could have been good and sponsored. An example of a good sponsored game from the era is "colin quaver" in the amiga600 game "pushover". If you set amiga coders (which btw some sega codes were) onto the 32x and megacd combo, they'd leap all over the redundant registers for cache friendly routines and impress the hell out of you. They are clever buggers. Very resourceful. Maybe consider making a video about the FPGAarcade with the extra board on it that allows for a floppy drive (like when using amiga games).
Using existing Genesis/Mega Drive versions as a base for many of the 32X updates was a mistake. For instance, I think Mortal Kombat could have looked a lot better; much closer to the arcade version had they not used the same dithering techniques, etc. Though I'm sure it all makes financial sense to the publisher to do what they did. Even though it was essentially still-born, there was still some power there, and these days I'm more interested in what the 32X could have done with 2d titles of it's generation. We could have had more Neo Geo comparisons and all that. Maybe if Sega priced it lower it could have lived along side the Saturn (had the Saturn not also been still born, lol!).
Its price bombed within weeks of launch, so that wasn;t a problem any retailer in the UK that had stock sold it for £20 (at the time the us dollar was pretty identical in terms of costs) mail order stores had it for £50-£70 often with one or more games, The Saturn also started well but lost consumer love.
If it were released a year or two earlier with more development time to get the add-on working and developers on board with it, it could have been a bigger deal. However between its rushed development time and being released months before the Saturn and PS1 came to market, the 32X was DOA when it came to market in 1994.
Yup, that's why I say that a 68EC030 Genesis with 128KB of VRAM (as it was designed for) and a high color video mode would've cost less than the 32X addon, run over 1,000 Genesis titles without a hiccup (and at a higher frame rate), and could've been in stores by Spring of 1994--instead of Fall of 1994. And only cost about $99 for existing Genesis owners.
Oh if you think Virtua Fighter on the SMD was "What the hell that thing was" you really should see how Virtual Fighter came out on the Master System...
The 32X was just supposed to do what the stuff like the Super FX chip did for SNES games, without it costing developers more on every cart, and that cost being passed onto the customer with every special chip game. If it had been timed nicely, and clearly understood, it could have been the "one time buy in" value proposition that it really was.
I had a 32x that kept freezing while playing Chaotix (which was probably best part of the game actually), so they asked me to send it back. After quite a while, I got a replacement that didn't work at all. Black screens all the way. Sent it back again and eventually got refunded. Over the course of about 3 months I got to play bits of one not very good game. The nostalgia goggles do nothing.
Never wanted neither Sega CD, or the 32x, the actual genesis games is what kept that system going. And the fact that both SOA, and SOJ, couldn't see eye to eye, is the reason why Sega CD, 32x, and the Sega Saturn all failed.
As much as the Sega CD was the ultimate mixed bag, the 32X somehow trumped that. Half of its 36 titles were actually really good, and, in true SEGA form, the other half made you wonder how they snuck this Schweizer past QC! What COULD SEGA have done instead? SoJ actually suggested a whole new console using two 68000's, a not completely terrible idea, but one that was rejected by SoA. MOTOROLA had begun shipping their EC versions of 68k processors for about one-third the price of their desktop versions, so a 68EC030 running as fast as 40MHz/15MIPS (though 33MHz/12MIPS was more realistic) and 256KB or RAM would've worked just fine with the existing hardware. You can overclock an existing Genesis CPU to 10MHz, though only polygonal games seem to run faster. This works because the Megadrive kept the CPU and VDP pipelines separate. At a higher price point ($65 for the CPU/DSP), SEGA could've used the 20MHz 68356 (3.3 MIPS 68000), which adds a full 56002 DSP to the chip running at 27.5 MIPS. Heck, the PowerPC 603 had just come out (capable of emulating the 68000, but 68020 ran too slow for APPLE), and the 66MHz versions ran at 100 MIPS but were cheap enough to be used in the infamous Pippin. SoJ had designed the Megadrive for an impressive 128KB of VRAM (but cut it to 64KB at the last minute to save money), larger and faster, while capable of displaying 256 colors out of a much larger palette--and the Sega CD was capable of storing games around 500MB, more than enough for perfect arcade ports. What else could be upgraded on a more powerful Genesis? The VDP could've simply added a 65,536 color, high resolution mode while the Direct Memory Access hardware could've run 10-20x faster. Hundreds of legacy Genesis games with choppy frame rates would suddenly play at 30-60fps, while newer arcade perfect games looking as good as Saturn or PlayStation could be made from scratch by existing developers reusing the same tools. The whole system would cost about $140-160 (same as the 32X addon), while a swap-the-box for existing Genesis owners could be offered for $99, reusing controllers, cables, power adaptor, etc. And the new, 32-bit console would've worked fine with the Sega CD, light gun, etc.
In my point of view, they lost the incredible opportunity of porting Neo Geo games to 32x, with all the fighting gems and no loading times of the cart.
Your wrong on Afterburner and Space harrier, 32x was the first time arcade perfect versions were available in the home. The megadrive versions were pretty poor in comparison. Megadrive Space harrier 2 was just so meh, it had non of the charm and didnt even look as good as the arcade original. Both consoles had afterburner 2 btw, Afterburner 1 was arcade only and lacked throttle control. That zaxxon game looks like a rip off of neo-geo Viewpoint, right down to the polygon enemys over pre-rendered backdrops. Pity noone really pushed the 32x to its limits, it was a pretty capable little machine really. The hummingbird game does look beautiful graphically for the time, pity the gameplay is so basic.
Sega should have upscaled the SVP chip, even if it required an additional power adapter, made it a lockon like Sonic and Knuckles, with Virtua Racing included, and skipped on the full 32x. I owned one, and some of the games were pretty good. But it would have done much better if it only cost as much as Virtua Racing for the Genesis, with additional games.
I had the 32X and the Sega CD and Sega also made 32X CD games. The 32X had almost the exact same hardware specs excluding the CPU as the Super Nintendo. The 32X used the Motorola MC68000 while the SNES used a custom WDC 65C816. Both had 16 bit CPUs but the 32X used the Genesis Motorola MC68000 and ran both CPUs in tandem but the graphics pallete was solely on the 32X which over-rode the Genesis/MegaDrive's graphics bus which was complete shit to begin with. The best thing about the 32X besides being almost identical to the SNES in hardware specs was it's clock speed @12.5 MHz running in tandem with the Genesis/Mega Drive's CPU @ 7.6 MHz made this devour the SNES in sprite pixel per scanline but the SNES still had better pixel per scanline on their backgrounds due to the fact that SNES had only one CPU and a much lower bus latency because of that. The 32X had 2 seperate CPUs that had to communicate which greatly increased communication latency.
You see the reason for the 32x was the genesis was still selling passed the saturn, and into the ps1/n64/saturn gen up until the near end of the middle of the gen ~98 the genesis was still selling due to the fact that games were cheaper thus parents who saw the raise price of the ps1 titles it caused parents to purchase them. Not only that but the brazil market. You see the 32x probably would have done better in a exclusive to the brazil market as the cost of the saturn was way to damn high for that market. The issue is the 32x was part of a entirely seperate console that got canned due to the saturn. You see Sega made 2 consoles at the SAME time, which is common with how they have multiple regional corperates IE sega of japan, sega of europe, and sega of america(worst one of them all). The canned console became the 32x it was so heavily watered down in the process. It was 32bit cartiage based system deemed the neptune, which got over sighted by the saturn with a 64bit cd based system. The neptune was unoffically delayed and delayed until the saturn was nearly complete and then reworked into a addon. But like I said the Brazil market would have been ideal if they could have gotten the cost down enough. Which looking at the hardware would have been easy as a stand alone system. The saturn wasn't even worth releasing in south america due to the rediculus cost of litterally everything there. Along with that the austrailina market could have been viable for the same reason. They should have released the saturn in NA, JA, and PAL. While releasing the neptune as a standalone with backwards compatiblity in BR, AU, SK, SV, and various other regions. As the cost factor would be addressed world wide and lower production of both systems wouldn't be needed which would have lowered cost and raised chances of success. Baiscally what I am saying make the 32x/neptune for certain countries, and release saturn for main market countries. This stratigy would have helped sega more than harming them like the 32x did on its own.
back not long after 32X came out in Canada there was a store called Cash converters at one point below will Cash converters had approximately 60 32x systems and I can't member how many bins of games with boxes and everything at one point I think they were selling the games for around five dollars each and 30 2X connector for about 15 some of them had their original box and everything. When the store closed down nearly all of said merchandise that I'm mentioning went to the landfill and I wish I could've been around back then to collect all those games and systems that they threw away can you imagine the kind of money I'd be making on eBay lol.i picked up a 30 2X complete with the instructions and quite a few games with the boxes and so forth at one point at a yard sale they I think 15 or 20the whole box with a Sega Genesis system.i sold the crap games and the tumor for a quite hefty price a few months ago and The good games where I picked up one of those systems where you can play Sega Genesis 32 x and other games all on the same console because it wasn't worth keeping the 32X given what I could sell it for.say what you like about one of those systems like I just mentionedI find they work better generally been screwing around with the old 90s Sega systems and trying to get them working. I'm one of the few people that actually has a good working Dreamcast but unfortunately don't have a lot of good games for it. I picked the Dreamcast up for like $10 and ironically I've gotten a few of them for free that people were throwing out that still work and I sold them on eBay. It's just pretty rare to come across games for the Dreamcast unless you either get bootlegs or want to pay crazy prices on eBay. The 30 2X never really made a lot of sense to me but it did have a few good games. I still think they could've made it as a standalone system instead of being an add-on or at the very least made it something for anesthetic. I've also got a working Sega CD system which I paid $10 for adding yard sale back in the day admittedly it does have some good games just the games are pretty difficult to find again short of going on eBay.
When I was a kid, I almost got my parents to get me this b/c of Knuckles 32X. I'm glad I decided to give up my Sega Fandom and get an N64 instead... Then I wished I'd gotten a Playstation instead... Then I got a PS2 and was happy I finally made the right decision...
The 32x is a great complement, but badly used. I just needed more games and a very sega-like publicity promoting the great power that was added to the genesis. just imagine a wolfenstein 32x, super street fighter 2 turbo, golden axe 2 arcade, aliens arcade edition, alien vs predator arcade, the simpsons arcade, and many more arcades that were ported very well thanks to the power of the 32x. create packages including some of these games along with the 32x, trying to economize the added as much as possible and a very aggressive advertising by comparing it with the snes. another story would be told today. sorry the translation of google.
This and the Sega CD shot the Sega Saturn in the foot and was the first nail on Segas coffin. Sega oversaturated the gaming market with its own products. It probably made buyers hesitant because most figured if they waited something else would be released by them.
Summer before I got my playstation I spent a month's worth of paper delivery money (about $90) on a 32X and every 3D game released for it, during liquidation. The games were better than anything on the Genesis and actually held up ok against the early PSX titles. Bad release schedule, but it made for some awesome gaming on the cheap... one mediocre summer.
Love the Astro Warrior music on the background, that game has some of the best music also first game I played on the Master System. I need to make better videos like you so, but just starting out, love your stuff.
It's a real shame SEGA kept throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In hindsight it was a kind of cool idea, an add on that could have allowed the Megadrive to stick around a little longer and play some of the early 3D era games. That actually would have been a cool investment if SEGA hadn't ditched it as soon as it had been released. Cut the price a bit and let it gain enough new ports and titles (and most importantly let developers put proper time into them), could have sold pretty well with the more cheapskate Megadrive gamers such as myself. Even just giving it as long as the Mega CD had to get a reasonable list of games so it had something of a legacy, especially since I can remember more impressive entries for the 32X out of its 40 than the Mega CD's 200.
The sad thing about the 32X is that it had lots of potential, but there wasn't a lot of western studios that had the knowledge to work graciously on multi CPU machines back in the day.
Old video but I think the "new" Doom 32x Resurrection proves that there was nothing wrong with the hardware, just the marketing and rushed development of many titles. Had it come out a year prior, things would have been different as it would have been more powerful than anything on the horizon. Pitfall on 32X runs at 30 FPS, half the MD version.. the definitive edition of that game is the smooth 60 FPS and best sounding Sega CD version, another add on Sega marketed completely incorrectly and pushed too hard for FMV. Sega CD added tons of power to the Genesis/Mega Drive but only a few games used it. Proper sprite hardware scaling and an extra 68000 CPU but you wouldn't know it, unless you played the Batman driving games which were one of very few examples of what it could do. Sega has shown time and time again that they couldn't do anything right in the hardware world after the Genesis, with ironically the actual hardware never really being the problem. Another example was Saturn which was a BEAST when someone programmed for it properly (Powerslave, anyone)? The fault was Sega's marketing machine which made every mistake one COULD make. Timing. Politics issues between US and Japan headquarters. Cluster f**k after cluster f**k.
The 32x as a kit was quite bad. Big hunk of metal taking up more electricity plug holes. Expensive. BUT the games overall are above avarage. As you tried to shot on the games, you came away generally liking most of them. On emulation it’s my go to Virtua racing option. Doom plays well. The SNES version is more impressive for what it is and has better sound, but the choppy frame rate it’s crap. On the 32x it’s fun as the frame rate is better and fun to see the changes they made. Virtua Fighter is very solid. I had it as a kid as I called the Sega hotline to see if the 32x is a machine to convert my Mega Drive and Mega CD into a Saturn. And the douche said yes. I was young, and internet wasn’t more than some bbs blips, and magazines at the time weren’t very clear, some saying it is it’s own thing. So I had to save for 3 months. Buy it, than a month later find out my sources are bad.
I'm surprised you didn't talk about the Spider-Man Web of Fire on the 32X. It was the best Spider-Man game on home consoles at the time, though to be fair wasn't a hard feat since all the others were done by LJN. Though it doesn't hold up by today's standards I still pull it out every so often for a little bit of nostalgia fun unlike all the other Spidey games which deserve to burn in titular Web of Fire.
Yes. Potential is irrelevant. In practice, not only is it a piece of crap, it was absolutely instrumental in Sega's downfall. Literally one of the worst ideas in gaming hardware and business history.
32x was awesome at the time. How many of you were actually there when it came out? I thought it was pretty impressive. Nintendo had bigger failures in the wii u and virtual boy
Bransfield well my family didn't get a pc until like 1998 and I didn't give 2 shits about Atari jaguar. Seeing a console run doom so well was a revelation.
Looks better than the Jaguar I had (I had the Sega CD also, which was disappointing.) Saturn was definitely a better deal, though. Loved my Saturn. AND Dreamcast!
I'll be honest, let's all be honest. As a kid, you didn't care that your friends ssssnnnneessss cost less. The 32X version DOES look better. You got your Genesis 2-3 years ago, this Christmas you got a 32X. I don't think that's exorbitant spending. I think you're glossing over the significant graphical differences, man. But thanks for the video. :-)
32x likely would have succeeded if SEGA of Japan didn't stab SEGA of America in the back (yep, I'm going there). The 32x is akin to a PC running DOS and decent 3D hardware, hence the joke at the end of Doom 32x port (command prompt). With Doom Resurrection 3.x, we can see just how capable the system is and even with Open Laura running Tomb Raider on it (still waiting to see how optimized and good the game can be on there). In some respects, the 32x ports of virtua fighter, Doom, and MK did far better than the Saturn ports. Cartridges were the better option, regardless of how much space CDs could hold. The homebrew scene is bustling with activity for 32x, check it out! In regards to vram, the 32x only had 256k, but the irony is that 90% of PS1 and Saturn games didn't even need to saturate the vram (most games were terribly unoptimized and only ever really needed 256k vs the 1mb and 1.5MB (questionably 2MB).
Kolibri was one of the best looking, best sounding, and most unique games on the system. But it's ok you skipped it. At least you talked about Cosmic Carnage. Well, I mean, you said the name.
Shame it's a bore to play...
Kolibri is freaking awesome. I think every aspiring evil-overlord should have a hummingbird with laser beams attached to his head.
Back in the day, I almost bought a 32X. The problem was that the demo units at the stores never seemed to work well. Like sonictoast said, you had to insert the cartridges several times and power cycle the unit several times to even get it to work. The 32X just didn't seem to mate up well with the Genesis. So I decided to invest my video gaming dollars elsewhere, the REAL future of video gaming... uhhh... the 3DO... LOL
You dodged one bullet...lol
I have no prob with mine
@@ginovavienne7581 Me either, except I couldn't get it hooked up to my old Genesis. I had to get a Genesis 2.
@@TheChallenger1000 Did you use the Genesis One to the 32x cord, hook up the volume from the front, and use the model 2 cord to the tv?
@@ginovavienne7581 It was 27 years ago, but I recall trying everything. Nothing worked. I just got a Genesis 2 and it all worked out.
32X Doom could have, and should have, been so much better. Carmack himself was porting it. Stupid Sega and their deadlines.
The 32x was very powerful. The 32-Bit-Version of Mortal Kombat 2 felt like the ARCADE-version. The cartridges are heavy. I wish, all Mega Drive-games were made in 32 Bit. Imagine Street Fighter 2. Fabtastic actually.
I paid over 60 dollars for Metal Head back in the day.I made damn sure I finished it.
It wasn't that difficult to finish though, was it? I finished it, and I enjoyed it too. For all it's weird glitchiness, I just loved the fact that I was playing a game with textured polygons... on a home console... from a cartridge.
1:26 Shadow Squadron was friggin' awesome!!! Had a crazy far draw distance, and you could blow up the capital ships piece by piece.
Love your style and sense of humor Bransfield! I just stumbled upon your channel & subbed after the 1st video, (which I never do).
I'll agree with this, Shadow Squadron was a lot of fun. It had a very different, slower-paced gameplay which I like. Good game to chill out.
As a member of a now long dead studio I can tell you that the 32X was a nice power house saddly it was baddly programmed for, like the Saturn was too. And our demo can prove the power of the 32X and with more time we could have made it even better at 60fps or stable 30fps.
Good video.
I got a 32x around '98 second-hand and by that time they were already selling for £15, which is what I paid. I even got a couple of games chucked in with it. I was still behind having got a Mega Drive in '96 and a Mega CD in '97 so when I had all this connected and my Mega Drive looked like some sort of space ship, I thought it was incredible. I just didn't realise at that age (12) how poorly the Mega CD and 32x both fared and just how few games came out on the 32x.
In hindsight it's a shame we didn't see more games pushed for the Mega CD-32x (were there about 3, and they were all those gash Make My Video games?), I'd have been interested to see what sort of games were possible with that hardware combo. Obviously at the cost of having to have 3 different Sega components plugged in at the same time!
According to segaretro there were only 6 total that used all 3 systems and only 5 that were released in North America and Europe (Corpse Killer, Fahrenheit, Night Trap, Slam City, and Supreme Warrior)... the other (Surgical Strike) only made it to Brazil.
That was the best time to buy these things! Pretty much everything vintage was considered worthless in the late 90s. I got my SNES for £10 from CEx!
Around the same time I got a whole load of home computers all for under £30 each - half of them are worth >£300, now.
I'm hoping that if the guys behind the Analog NT and Super NT ever decide to make a Megadrive/Genesis... that it will also be compatible with the 32X cartridges I still have.
The problem with SEGA is that they came out with way too many consoles.
No the problem was they would put all of their eggs into one basket and when they weren't competing at their desired level they would scrap it and move on to the next console. When the Saturn launched Sony came into the picture and Nintendo later released their N64, so Sega drops the Saturn and moves on to the Dreamcast where there are no competitors until Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft come along and Sega just gave up.
The point of Space Harrier and After Burner 2 on the 32X was that until then, those games ran on arcade hardware that couldn't really be replicated very well on home consoles (even Space Harrier 2 on the Genesis/Mega Drive couldn't replicate the look of super scaler games despite it being a sequel like you mentioned). That and those two games are timeless and kick everyone's mothers' asses, age be damned.
The 32x did output a damn good video output though for genesis games, that's probably the only reason to own one though.
I really wanted to *love* the 32X, but I was usually let down by the low quality of its games. However, I'd frequently play Doom and Virtua Fighter on the system at a videogame rental store near my house, and I really loved them. I definetely don't remember the locking up and freezing problems some people reported here in the comments section. I thought the system had great potential for some truly great 2d/3d hybrid games, but it suffered from stupid marketing strategies and rushed projects. The hardware had it all: a vastly superior color pallete, sprite scaling and rotation, 3D polygons rendering... there was so much that could've been produced, but it just never happened. Well, shit like that must happen every now and then to shape video gaming history!
It sounds like the Hardware itself wasn't half as bad as we think, the big problem was that MOST of the Games just didn't have anywhere NEAR enough love put in for them. That if they had simply taken their TIME creating games, they could have created some really nice stuff. Unfortunately it was treated mostly as a cheap cash grab, which really helped to drive the first set of nails into the coffin that was Sega as a hardware manufacturer.
True... then again they didn't have the time to take. Releasing the 3sX so near to the end of the Mega Drive's life cycle and so close to the launch of the Saturn, there wasn't really the time there for anyone to put much time into making great games.
Developers didn't even have hardware specs until Spring of 1994, with a launch date of September. Worse, almost none had any experience with two-CPU systems, let alone writing audio for two machines and trying to lay and sync graphics for essentially two machines at the same time.
There is a Sega Power Strip which has the outlet sockets rotated and spaced out, which means you can plug your Genesis, Sega CD, 32X, Saturn and Dreamcast into it. Solves your problems if you have a standard power strip, huh?
So did the $299 PlayStation. So ten times as many SEGA fans went there as for the 32X-CD combo.
Jesus the scaling in Motocross make it occasionally look like an Amstrad CPC game.
The 32X was actually a pretty impressive piece of hardware. The Neo Geo did more with less but that is because SNK actually supported the Neo Geo. What killed the 32X was good old fashioned pride. Sega of Japan did not work with Sega of America. Nintendo proved you can could have multiple platforms when you define what each platform is with their 3 pillar strategy of GBA, DS and Gamecube. Sega could have had a 2 pillar strategy with the 32X as a home for arcade ports of their vast 32 bit super scaler games like a true port of Super Monaco, Rad Mobile and Outrunners and the Saturn could have been home for more unique, memory intensive CD rom games. Also, this would have given developer time to really get to know the hardware to fully take advantage of what it could do plus the fact it could still play Sega Genesis games was a huge bonus. I am still playing Sega Genesis games today. Sad we never got a chance to see what Treasure could do with the 32X hardware. No, it was not the hardware capabilities that killed the 32X it was the inability of Sega of Japan to get along with Sega of America. As the old saying goes, "a house divided will not stand." Thanks for the video! I own a 32X today and there are quite a few great games for it and people are starting taking notice of this which is why the prices are going up on e-bay. If an indie game company makes some quality 32X games I know I would be willing to buy them. Look what Watermelon Games did with the Genesis hardware. WOW! The fact Watermelon Games exists shows there is a market for new quality retro cart games and people will pay. As more and more people buy 32X systems hopefully the market will be there for new 32X games. Who knows, some enterprising individuals might actually make and sell the never released Sega Neptune console (Genesis/32X all in one) which would only increase the demand for new 32X games. Retro gaming is not going anywhere, in fact it is only getting better.
If Sega had made the 32X compact and inexpensive (not taking up more outlets) it would have done great and extended the life of the Genesis tenfold. But there’s like a billion shoulda coulda‘ for Sega in the late 90’s. It was tough being a Sega fan.
Yep. They could've just made an upgraded Genesis for the Christmas 1993 season with a high color mode, costing about half as much for existing Genesis owners. That would've allowed existing polygonal Genesis games (like Hard Drivin) to run at a much higher frame rate.
It didn't kill ALL video games, but it did set Sega on the razor blade slide to the alcohol bath that they now find themselves in. Great video, PEACE.
Didn't the 32X actually sell quite well considering it was killed off in about a year and was an add on? 500,000 or so.
Half a million in a year is not good. The Wii U sold seven times that in its first year and was considered a dismal failure. In terms of more contemporary hardware, it outsold the Jag (less than 150,000, ouch!) but was smoked by the 3DO which retailed at three times the price and was hardly on sale any longer but sold 2 million units. Even if you only look at other Mega Drive add-ons, the Mega CD sold 2 and a half million.
But it's not just the raw numbers where it was a failure. As someone at school at the time - so a prime target for Sega - the system became a joke and started to lend Sega the air of a company that was scrambling around with no clue what it was doing. Why were they offering the chance to turn the Mega Drive into a next-gen console instead of trying to sell me their ACTUAL next-gen console? It made bugger all sense. Given the amount of Mega Drive owners at my school, the Saturn should have been a slam-dunk but there was just no interest, the PlayStation destroyed it. I was one of only three kids with a Saturn that I knew (ironically, I HADN'T owned a Mega Drive in the 16-bit era, I'd been an Amiga kid). Almost everyone went for a PlayStation, a few held out for the N64 and some who could afford it jumped to the PC instead, but there was just no excitement for Sega's machione, and I think the 32X was a big reason why.
Ok, but, like... WWF Raw on the 32x is the only version with KWANG. Does the Genesis version have KWANG? No. Super NES have KWANG? No. Game Gear? No, but that one has Macho Man, so... well, forget about that. Game Boy? No. Only 32x has the majesty of Savio Vega in an ugly mask.
This is absolutely correct. 32X: GOAT.
I'm glad I was able to convince you.
Couldn’t agree more
I think the snes was missing half the roster too
sega was worried about competing with the jaguar, thats where the 32x comes in.
Wow, they really miscalculated that one.
I got the 32X for Christmas the year it came out and it was freaking amazing. I was young enough that I only tended to get games at Christmas or for birthdays so having a limited selection didn't bother me at all. I had Virtua Fighter, Mortal Kombat 2 and Star Wars. Not sure I ever got anymore games for it than that but it was awesome. I used to fly around the Death Star for hours on end. I'm pretty sure that was the first fully 3D game I ever played on a home console. I'm sure if I played it now I would think it was garbage, but at the time it was the best thing in the world for me.
I tell you what, Star Wars Arcade has some magic left in it. Give it a go on an emulator and let that nostalgia punch you in the gut.
Oh man, I'm a little scared. It's so good in my mind. I'll give it a shot though.
Dads And Dragons I bought a 32X straight up. Not a Christmas present... I seriously used my saved up money and just bought it. Honestly had a great time with it... Virtua Racing Deluxe, Doom, Star Wars Arcade... cool experiences I couldn't have on Genesis or SNES. Star Wars ran way better than Star Fox... Doom ran way better on 32X than on SNES... VR Deluxe was way better than the expensive Genesis port... other games like NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat were superior ports as well. Fuck, even Virtua Fighter was favorable to the rushed Saturn launch port. Had a great time with my 32X.
SEGAHEADDY Wholeheartedly agree, dude.
I have a 32X and when the bottom dropped, it was a fantastic way to get more life from the Genesis. Let s be honest what other console has THAT level of compatibility? You could play Genesis, Master System and cards (with adapter) and that included using the light gun and Sega 3d glasses!! Sega CD, 32X and enhanced CD games plus photo CD and music. Other than PC no other company offered so much backwards compatibility short of the original PS3. As for my favorite, Blackthorne and Shadow Squadron.
Virtua Racing Deluxe is still the best version of Virtua Racing, even after PS2. Knuckles' Chaotix is an acquired taste. Tempo is better than Super Tempo. If you ignore the music and sound effects, it has undeniably the best version of Mortal Kombat II (better than arcade, in my opinion). Kolibri was a cool game. All console versions of Virtua Fighter 1 suck, including Remix. Cosmic Carnage is trash. Brutal: Above the Claw has insufferable music and is worse than the already awful (but with a phenomenal soundtrack!) Brutal: Paws of Fury on Sega CD (and better audio than you thought the SNES could handle SNES version). That's 32X in a nutshell. Worth owning? Sure. Terrible? Nah. Failure? Absolutely.
You gotta play on the actual system then you'll be able to truly criticize the 32x. It was always locking up and freezing. It would rarely turn on. You gotta keep taking out the game, blowing on it then trying again and again and again, hoping everytime that the system would actually work. The set up was down right frustrating, trying to get those metal brackets into your Genesis console to fit the 32x in. Then worst of all is that it would eventually break your Genesis. I kid you not, the 32x was a parasite that would destroy it's host. The true failure of the 32x ws the hardware, not the games.
One day, when I have hundreds of pounds spare to pick up a working unit - then I can give it the drubbing it deserves.
I never had those problems with mine. And I kept mine in all the time, even when I played Genesis games.
sonictoast
Are you confusing it with the NES? Both of my 32Xs have never froze and I have never had to blow in the carts. Most of the games do suck though.
I kept having power adapters die every couple months on mine. IDK why
I got mine when it came out and the 32x and genesis it was originally on still work like a charm. I got lucky and managed to buy the whole system library when the all the games went on discount after the system failed
What if 32x and CD was not released? would the Saturn lasted longer?
Obviously yes. Saturn in Japan is maybe the best system of all time, in America it wouldn't have saved it per say but, it certainly would have been bought more. Less people would have been pissed off from wasting their money on those systems!
I find it hard to believe the Mega CD would've done much to affect the Saturn. The add-on was already dying off by the time the Saturn launched, only really getting a dozen or so games in '95. The 32X may have cut a percentage or two out though. Launching it so close to the Saturn was one of the few terrible decisions Kalinske made. You could say he liked the Mega Drive a little too much.
No. The Saturn's rushed release is what killed it outside of Japan. Sega of Japan also discontinued the Genesis/Megadrive immediately on the release of the Saturn, despite continued support for the 16 bit systems among consumers in the West. Nintendo continued to sell the SNES well into the n64s life, which is the only reason the SNES ultimately outsold the Genesis over its lifetime ( in total worldwide sales).
what if in the US market it went from genesis then directly to dreamcast? i.e. no 32x, sega cd, saturn. would this made the big stores like toys r us, target, walmart, etc happy.
I doubt it, the Genesis wouldn't last against the N64, GC, PS1, PS2. Sega diehards would just move on, by the time the Dreamcast was released, consumers would be like "what took you so long SEGA"? Basically, they'd be trying to keep a 16-Bit console alive while everyone else came up with 32-Bit and 64-Bit machines.
As not many know, Sega of America also had a potential system seller called "Virtua Hamster" in the pipeline, and if some dodgy industry spy from Nintendo hadn't talked them into cancelling this obvious gem, it would have undoubtedly changed the fate of the 32X, Sega's consoles in the long term, and video games perveived as an highly appreciated art form in general.
Holy shit, haha. I just saw AVGN reviewing it, pure comedy gold and disturbingly weird. The thing is, I'm already bad at watering plants, let alone feeding Tamagotchis in games. I had one of course back in the day. It died.
Nintendo had a Zelda game indeed on the CDi, wonder if that's possible to play with an emulator somehow.
@Ad Lockhorst don't forget those shitty Mario games on cdi
The problem with the game library is that developers quit making games for it or moving it towards the saturn early on. so we got mainly ports.
Or PlayStation. Strange that SoJ thought that third party developers would feel any sense of loyalty to a console company. Especially one that charged them $13 a cart where SONY offered an expedited manufacturing process and a licensing fee of $10 per CD.
I was a fan of the Mega CD I wanted to get the 32X but I instead traded in my Mega Drive and CD for a 3DO that I enjoyed even more, it don’t sound like a long time when you look back but 1 or 2 years of playing 3DO was a long period of time where the 3DO was the best game system out, people who played 3DO later in its life won’t see it that way,. The 3DO I remember having a very big jump in graphics to the point where we had brand new experiences
I loved T-MEK in the arcade. As a teenager somehow I got a job selling computers at Sears and during every lunch break I'd dump quarters into the sit down machine.
This video should be 2 seconds long. "Yes it is"
Had a 32X, and then a Saturn too. Never had Virtua Fighter on either, got Virtua Fighter 2 with the Saturn and never saw the point of playing old-less-characters-Minecraft-people-edition.
They should have combined the 32x and Mega-CD into one brand new standalone console. It would have beaten the Playstation to CD-ROM gaming and it would have undercut the SNES in a way that trying to keep the Megadrive on life support never could. Sega were very much like Commodore back then in that there was just too much hardware floating around and not enough decent games. If they had focused it all into one product and had some stonking arcade conversions as launch titles then it would have been a different story.
But then that console would have had to compete with the Saturn, causing more confusion. They should have stopped production and development on the 32x, and just used the Genesis/CD for original content, with a spattering of hand me down ports. As always, it's a price point thing, how to make cheap and sell high. PEACE.
They did towards the end of it's life cycle.
@@cookieDaXapper They did make a all-in-one system, it didn"t sell well.
@@tskraj3190 I didn't know that, thanks for the Intel. It was probably too late, PlayStation was a juggernaut. PEACE family.
They won't do that cause the Sega Saturn was already that, the only problem is the cartridge slot and disc tray on the Sega Saturn are not compatible with either of those.
What emulator were you using for the 32x games? I just tried NBA Jam in Kega Fusion 3.64 and it seemed to work perfectly. I've never been into sports, but I started a game, ran around the court, watched the computer score, etc, and everything looked like it was working correctly.
Picodrive on a Raspberry Pi/Retropie setup. I think more stuff would work on a standard PC setup, but this way was much more convenient.
To me, it seems like it would be just the opposite. All you have to do with a computer is unzip the emulator, configure a controller and load the game.
Gamers tend to have one of two impressions of the 32X depending on when they adopted it. If I paid $200 at launch, I would have been furious. But I paid $20 for the system brand-new when it was being put on clearance, and about $5-10 apiece for the video games as they went likewise. For me, who owned a Genesis but didn't have the money to shell out for a Saturn, it was exactly the kind of cheap "bridge" system it should have been marketed as in the first place if it was going to exist at all. It helped me squeeze a little extra life out of the base system and was a neat novelty, and I appreciate it for that.
Yeah, exactly. If it was a simple upgrade path for Mega Drive owners who wanted next-gen games but couldn't afford big boy consoles, that would have been fine. But it was £200, by the time you'd saved up for it and a couple of games you had enough for a PlayStation. If you could sell your Mega Drive/Genesis and games for another hundred quid, you'd have enough for a Saturn.
The original plan for the 32X was a plug-thru cart with an upgraded SVP processor in it. The idea being you'd buy the upgrade for £50 and then you could buy 3D games like Virtua Racing or Virtua Fighter for regular Mega Drive game prices because they didn't need to put the fancy graphics chip in every cart. If that was all it had been, I think it would have sold okay and not been a catastrophic failure that started the process that led to Sega pulling out of hardware altogether. But they just kept shoving extra expensive chips in there that sent the price skyrocketing.
I never understood the thing about Virtua Racing costing $100 anyway. Star Fox also had a snazzy graphics chip in it to allow the SNES to chuck polygons around... it retailed for regular SNES prices. What did Sega do with their rival chip that led to it pushing up the price of games so much?
Mk2 the best arcade version was on the snes even said by the man who made mk2
The megadrive version of Virtua racing is super good imo. I got it for like 20€ a few months ago.
I WAS playing Mortal Combat on the PC back in the day! :-) , AND I LOVED IT!!! ;-)
vaso opel me too. My copy fell out of the sky. Proof of the cloud's existence?
Me 2 and it was close to arcade perfect
This is why it’s important to predict the future! Sega should’ve known that:
- 3D will be the way to go
- plan the Saturn launch carefully
- ensure a new Sonic game is ready for non-Japanese gamers when the Saturn arrived in their shores
- ensure the Saturn could run arcade-perfect conversions of model 2 arcade games
- ensure the Saturn is easy to develop for
- allow Mega Drive and Mega CD backwards compatibility ti give consumers more of a reason to choose Saturn over PlayStation
The Saturn could’ve been a success if they did all of the above! Plus we’d see Star Wars Arcade, Knuckles Chaotix, Kolibri and Virtua Racing Deluxe on it!
4:46 Oh god, *fuck* playing that level in Rogue Squadron II, that shit kicked my ass so many times that it had me seeing red as a kid.
Virtua Fighter, Virtua racing, Mortal Kombat 2 and also Doom. Those were the games to get for the 32x. Loved them to bits as a kid. I think these flat shaded polygon look of VR 32x and VF 32x aged better than the texture warped 3d graphics we eventually saw in the 5th generation.
Doom 32x gets a lot of hate, but looking back, until the PSX and Doom 64 versions of the game were released, it was the only console port that ran at a decent fps. The Jaguar and Snes version are choppy. In a still frame the Jaqguar and SNES ports looked better. They didn't play better though as they only ran at 5-10fps. In retrospect Doom 32x aged horribly, but during that era, until the PSX and n64 versions arrived, it was your best bet if you didn't own a pc.
Except for those four games, I was disappointed. Virtua Fighter is such a good game! That was reason enough to buy the 32x for me. After playing it for months on end I was left hoping more of that kind of jewels were to come, only to eventually realize that there was nothing left to come. So yeah, a figurative heap of shit with a few jewels inside.
The biggest problem with the 32X was too many rushed ports that used the Megadrive for the background graphics, with the 32X only rendering the sprites... and because these were running at different framerates, you got this horribly choppiness to the gameplay. Digital Foundry did a couple of videos recently that expose this for every single 32X game. Additionally, not enough 32X games made use of the additional sound chips. It's doubtful any of the games actually released for the 32X showed what it was capable of.
I don't think the 32X was intended to ignore the Megadrive/Genesis hardware and do everything alone.
Did the different layers ever run at different framerates on any games? Thats weird, Ive never noticed that on any of my 32X games.
I would say games like Star Wars arcade and Virtua Racing were showing off the 32X's 3D at it's limit.
andyukmonkey No way, because just a year later, Shadow Squadron's 3D engine was a big improvement over Star Wars. I have to believe that if developers had proper time to work on games, and if the thing lived a few more years, we would have eventually seen some truly amazing stuff.
In my late 20s, I lived in tenerife when I was about 12-14. Wonderful little island isn't it?
Oh the days of internet cafes and pachangas, oh can't forget the over abundancy of English friends.
Can you make a video about that "Stellar Assault" game I'd really like to learn more about it.
Yes, it is a rushed rubbish with 2 quite powerful CPUs crippled by the lack of any hardware graphics acceleration, so they still could not produce SNES-like transparencies, for example, and generally struggled to output any decent graphics at 60 FPS(afterburner, a port of an old arcade game had to run at 30). Yes, it gave Genesis a lot of extra power and more colors, but still was an obvious dead end that couldn’t remain competitive even for a few years and therefore wouldn’t recoup the costs of spending significant development effort on it.
I think SOA planned on everyone getting a Mega Drive, Mega CD, *and* 32x so didn't add things that were already in the Mega CD. Some Mega CD games took advantages of that but to the best of my knowledge apart from relatively recent homebrew/indie games nothing cartridge based ever did. Japan should have really put their foot down instead of letting them go ahead with it :/
Just goes to show that for a game console, a CPU is only as good as it's accompanying GPU. I have always believed that they should have delayed the Sega CD by at least a year or so and simply used the 32X CPU inside of it. Instead of using two of the same CPU though, one would have done quite nicely if accompanied by a decent GPU setup. They could have foregone the extra CPU that they ended up using in the Sega CD which was simply a 2nd Genesis CPU with a faster clock speed. Waiting a year probably would have helped drop the price of the CD-ROM tech which was very expensive at the time, and the savings could have been used on the 32-Bit CPU and improved GPU. They likely could have released this at the same price point but with a much needed performance upgrade. This type of configuration could have easily allowed the system to outshine the likes of the 3DO and Jaguar which were released around that time.
This being said, I really hope that the rumor is true about Sega potentially re-entering the console market. That would be absolutely awesome :)
skins4thewin the current generation also shows the inverse, that without a decent CPU to feed the GPU games may get prettier but innovation in gameplay stagnates.
Kolibri is probably the best original 32x game :/
12:30 that was impossible, as the SNES wasn’t available on day one, but two years later
it's a video about the 32x, fill in the gaps
@@Bransfiiiield sure, but you said that it felt as if it was designed to make mega drive owners feel as if they should've went with the SNES from the start. The start was 1988 and they couldn't have possibly gone with a SNES.
What's the one thing every single 32X owner had to have in order to be able to play it
@@Bransfiiiield a Mega Drive. But that's exactly my point, how could Mega Drive owners have gone with the SNES from day one when it was released 2 years after the Mega Drive?
The entire video is in the context of the 32X, extrapolate from that
The only logical way they could have done the 32x was to release the Neptune for $99 and the Mega Drive add on for $50. If that wasn't feasible, it was a waste of time because 3d graphics on a budget would've been the only reason for it's existence.
After Burner II for the arcade was so close to its predecessor that it would be better to call it an improved rerelease instead of a sequel.
As a random collector getting into all the old goodies the past few years, Turbo Duos, NeoGeo Pockets, Mastere Systems, etc. etc. I have to say 32X has its place in the crazy, history of game style storage in my room lol. I love hooking it up to my model 1 Sega Genesis and using good old RGB through SCART cable (to SCART to HDMI adapter, then into my Marantz receiver, looks great on new 4k HDR TV). Personally I enjoy (from vintage standpoint) Kolibri, Tempo, Chaotix, and to some degree Zaxxon 2000. Also have Star Wars, Cosmic Carnage, Doom....and the rest, well I can emulate.Stand alone the 32x is far from something great, but it has its little place in history, that any nostalgia buff or big time collector will appreciate. Like I said, if you have newer TVs, pleasssse give SCART cable with a $40 SCART to HDMI adapter on Amazon a try, its a must for modern setups.
I feel like the 32x could have been more successful if it had been an entirely separate console made with a similar architecture to the Saturn. If that had been the case, then porting games between the two would take minimal effort, and then the 32x would have lived up to Sega's promise of being a budget 32-bit console. Taking this idea a step further, the Saturn could have used the same cartridge slot, allowing some degree of backwards compatibility. In theory, programmers could even have their Saturn game write program data to the memory card, which could then be played on a Genesis or 32x.
No it wasn't shite. I'm saying this as somebody who shrugged at sega thinking sega was "kinda ok I suppose" since I was all for amiga. First of all it does make sense to look at it in its own right but also relatively in terms of business strategies. It was not robbing or "money grubbing" from its megadrive/gensis fan base. Rather, it not only added longevity to the system (especially by filling a 2D niche like blackthorn when 3D was becoming the rage while being crap on the saturn and ps) especially when sega customers were rightly unsure about investing in a console like the saturn which might have flopped (which it sort of did actually), but it also created "some" certainty for its backwards compatability because developers would be able to release games that ran "ok" on a megadrive but had features to unlock if you owned a 32x add-on.
As for how some people would be complaining about the price while comparing it to nintendo, that is a spoilt way to look at it. For a start, even if it cost 200 quid, we must consider that, when comparing to SNES games, there were some that were £80 or easily £60. If one must compare, then well yes, £200 means it is the better thing to get. It's two and a half games in price.
Of course there are things that could have been done better, especially 32x integration with the megaCD. I think you've been a bit harsh on some of the games. Even saying that though, I'm surprised you got so many thumbs down. As for Doom, the PC owners turned settings down lower than that anyway since generally speaking nobody could afford a PC good enough then. Considering wolfenstein has been remade for megadrive with very efficient coding, it would be cool to see a 32x version made and with efficient code likewise (and with the megacd too) nowadays as homebrew. It'd tan the hide of that official version.
I think, if the 32x and megacd, had been better integrated and if some bundle discount were offered to those who bought both (and maybe a discount to retroact by proof-of-purchase for those who already owned a megacd), the decent colour palette would have made CD video clips worthwhile and so movie spin-off games could have been good and sponsored. An example of a good sponsored game from the era is "colin quaver" in the amiga600 game "pushover". If you set amiga coders (which btw some sega codes were) onto the 32x and megacd combo, they'd leap all over the redundant registers for cache friendly routines and impress the hell out of you. They are clever buggers. Very resourceful. Maybe consider making a video about the FPGAarcade with the extra board on it that allows for a floppy drive (like when using amiga games).
Using existing Genesis/Mega Drive versions as a base for many of the 32X updates was a mistake. For instance, I think Mortal Kombat could have looked a lot better; much closer to the arcade version had they not used the same dithering techniques, etc. Though I'm sure it all makes financial sense to the publisher to do what they did.
Even though it was essentially still-born, there was still some power there, and these days I'm more interested in what the 32X could have done with 2d titles of it's generation.
We could have had more Neo Geo comparisons and all that. Maybe if Sega priced it lower it could have lived along side the Saturn (had the Saturn not also been still born, lol!).
Its price bombed within weeks of launch, so that wasn;t a problem any retailer in the UK that had stock sold it for £20 (at the time the us dollar was pretty identical in terms of costs) mail order stores had it for £50-£70 often with one or more games, The Saturn also started well but lost consumer love.
You're right, I retract that last sentence, :D
Ad Lockhorst, and when they're done with that, they can buy a new console and, yet, another version of Virtua Racing.
If it were released a year or two earlier with more development time to get the add-on working and developers on board with it, it could have been a bigger deal. However between its rushed development time and being released months before the Saturn and PS1 came to market, the 32X was DOA when it came to market in 1994.
Yup, that's why I say that a 68EC030 Genesis with 128KB of VRAM (as it was designed for) and a high color video mode would've cost less than the 32X addon, run over 1,000 Genesis titles without a hiccup (and at a higher frame rate), and could've been in stores by Spring of 1994--instead of Fall of 1994.
And only cost about $99 for existing Genesis owners.
Oh if you think Virtua Fighter on the SMD was "What the hell that thing was" you really should see how Virtual Fighter came out on the Master System...
Different game.
i almost spat my coffee out at 0.31 secs in.. lol
also this video is awesome, love the way you ramble on.. lol
The 32X was just supposed to do what the stuff like the Super FX chip did for SNES games, without it costing developers more on every cart, and that cost being passed onto the customer with every special chip game. If it had been timed nicely, and clearly understood, it could have been the "one time buy in" value proposition that it really was.
I had a 32x that kept freezing while playing Chaotix (which was probably best part of the game actually), so they asked me to send it back. After quite a while, I got a replacement that didn't work at all. Black screens all the way. Sent it back again and eventually got refunded.
Over the course of about 3 months I got to play bits of one not very good game. The nostalgia goggles do nothing.
Never wanted neither Sega CD, or the 32x, the actual genesis games is what kept that system going. And the fact that both SOA, and SOJ, couldn't see eye to eye, is the reason why Sega CD, 32x, and the Sega Saturn all failed.
As much as the Sega CD was the ultimate mixed bag, the 32X somehow trumped that. Half of its 36 titles were actually really good, and, in true SEGA form, the other half made you wonder how they snuck this Schweizer past QC!
What COULD SEGA have done instead? SoJ actually suggested a whole new console using two 68000's, a not completely terrible idea, but one that was rejected by SoA. MOTOROLA had begun shipping their EC versions of 68k processors for about one-third the price of their desktop versions, so a 68EC030 running as fast as 40MHz/15MIPS (though 33MHz/12MIPS was more realistic) and 256KB or RAM would've worked just fine with the existing hardware. You can overclock an existing Genesis CPU to 10MHz, though only polygonal games seem to run faster. This works because the Megadrive kept the CPU and VDP pipelines separate. At a higher price point ($65 for the CPU/DSP), SEGA could've used the 20MHz 68356 (3.3 MIPS 68000), which adds a full 56002 DSP to the chip running at 27.5 MIPS. Heck, the PowerPC 603 had just come out (capable of emulating the 68000, but 68020 ran too slow for APPLE), and the 66MHz versions ran at 100 MIPS but were cheap enough to be used in the infamous Pippin.
SoJ had designed the Megadrive for an impressive 128KB of VRAM (but cut it to 64KB at the last minute to save money), larger and faster, while capable of displaying 256 colors out of a much larger palette--and the Sega CD was capable of storing games around 500MB, more than enough for perfect arcade ports.
What else could be upgraded on a more powerful Genesis? The VDP could've simply added a 65,536 color, high resolution mode while the Direct Memory Access hardware could've run 10-20x faster. Hundreds of legacy Genesis games with choppy frame rates would suddenly play at 30-60fps, while newer arcade perfect games looking as good as Saturn or PlayStation could be made from scratch by existing developers reusing the same tools.
The whole system would cost about $140-160 (same as the 32X addon), while a swap-the-box for existing Genesis owners could be offered for $99, reusing controllers, cables, power adaptor, etc. And the new, 32-bit console would've worked fine with the Sega CD, light gun, etc.
In my point of view, they lost the incredible opportunity of porting Neo Geo games to 32x, with all the fighting gems and no loading times of the cart.
It was Sega's mistakes to bring too many different hardware in such a short period of time, without property thinking well about it.
Your wrong on Afterburner and Space harrier, 32x was the first time arcade perfect versions were available in the home. The megadrive versions were pretty poor in comparison. Megadrive Space harrier 2 was just so meh, it had non of the charm and didnt even look as good as the arcade original. Both consoles had afterburner 2 btw, Afterburner 1 was arcade only and lacked throttle control.
That zaxxon game looks like a rip off of neo-geo Viewpoint, right down to the polygon enemys over pre-rendered backdrops.
Pity noone really pushed the 32x to its limits, it was a pretty capable little machine really. The hummingbird game does look beautiful graphically for the time, pity the gameplay is so basic.
4:44 music? Metalhead right?
Sega should have upscaled the SVP chip, even if it required an additional power adapter, made it a lockon like Sonic and Knuckles, with Virtua Racing included, and skipped on the full 32x. I owned one, and some of the games were pretty good. But it would have done much better if it only cost as much as Virtua Racing for the Genesis, with additional games.
I had the 32X and the Sega CD and Sega also made 32X CD games. The 32X had almost the exact same hardware specs excluding the CPU as the Super Nintendo. The 32X used the Motorola MC68000 while the SNES used a custom WDC 65C816. Both had 16 bit CPUs but the 32X used the Genesis Motorola MC68000 and ran both CPUs in tandem but the graphics pallete was solely on the 32X which over-rode the Genesis/MegaDrive's graphics bus which was complete shit to begin with. The best thing about the 32X besides being almost identical to the SNES in hardware specs was it's clock speed @12.5 MHz running in tandem with the Genesis/Mega Drive's CPU @ 7.6 MHz made this devour the SNES in sprite pixel per scanline but the SNES still had better pixel per scanline on their backgrounds due to the fact that SNES had only one CPU and a much lower bus latency because of that. The 32X had 2 seperate CPUs that had to communicate which greatly increased communication latency.
@neb6 The Sega CD was meant to beat the SNES, which it did except for the limited color palette. The 32X was meant to beat the doomed Jaguar.
You see the reason for the 32x was the genesis was still selling passed the saturn, and into the ps1/n64/saturn gen up until the near end of the middle of the gen ~98 the genesis was still selling due to the fact that games were cheaper thus parents who saw the raise price of the ps1 titles it caused parents to purchase them. Not only that but the brazil market. You see the 32x probably would have done better in a exclusive to the brazil market as the cost of the saturn was way to damn high for that market. The issue is the 32x was part of a entirely seperate console that got canned due to the saturn. You see Sega made 2 consoles at the SAME time, which is common with how they have multiple regional corperates IE sega of japan, sega of europe, and sega of america(worst one of them all). The canned console became the 32x it was so heavily watered down in the process. It was 32bit cartiage based system deemed the neptune, which got over sighted by the saturn with a 64bit cd based system. The neptune was unoffically delayed and delayed until the saturn was nearly complete and then reworked into a addon. But like I said the Brazil market would have been ideal if they could have gotten the cost down enough. Which looking at the hardware would have been easy as a stand alone system. The saturn wasn't even worth releasing in south america due to the rediculus cost of litterally everything there. Along with that the austrailina market could have been viable for the same reason. They should have released the saturn in NA, JA, and PAL. While releasing the neptune as a standalone with backwards compatiblity in BR, AU, SK, SV, and various other regions. As the cost factor would be addressed world wide and lower production of both systems wouldn't be needed which would have lowered cost and raised chances of success.
Baiscally what I am saying make the 32x/neptune for certain countries, and release saturn for main market countries. This stratigy would have helped sega more than harming them like the 32x did on its own.
Remember watching Cybernet and seeing the 32x running Doom and i believe magic carpet and thinking i need a 32x, never did get one.
back not long after 32X came out in Canada there was a store called Cash converters at one point below will Cash converters had approximately 60 32x systems and I can't member how many bins of games with boxes and everything at one point I think they were selling the games for around five dollars each and 30 2X connector for about 15 some of them had their original box and everything. When the store closed down nearly all of said merchandise that I'm mentioning went to the landfill and I wish I could've been around back then to collect all those games and systems that they threw away can you imagine the kind of money I'd be making on eBay lol.i picked up a 30 2X complete with the instructions and quite a few games with the boxes and so forth at one point at a yard sale they I think 15 or 20the whole box with a Sega Genesis system.i sold the crap games and the tumor for a quite hefty price a few months ago and The good games where I picked up one of those systems where you can play Sega Genesis 32 x and other games all on the same console because it wasn't worth keeping the 32X given what I could sell it for.say what you like about one of those systems like I just mentionedI find they work better generally been screwing around with the old 90s Sega systems and trying to get them working. I'm one of the few people that actually has a good working Dreamcast but unfortunately don't have a lot of good games for it. I picked the Dreamcast up for like $10 and ironically I've gotten a few of them for free that people were throwing out that still work and I sold them on eBay. It's just pretty rare to come across games for the Dreamcast unless you either get bootlegs or want to pay crazy prices on eBay. The 30 2X never really made a lot of sense to me but it did have a few good games. I still think they could've made it as a standalone system instead of being an add-on or at the very least made it something for anesthetic. I've also got a working Sega CD system which I paid $10 for adding yard sale back in the day admittedly it does have some good games just the games are pretty difficult to find again short of going on eBay.
When I was a kid, I almost got my parents to get me this b/c of Knuckles 32X. I'm glad I decided to give up my Sega Fandom and get an N64 instead... Then I wished I'd gotten a Playstation instead... Then I got a PS2 and was happy I finally made the right decision...
The 32x is a great complement, but badly used. I just needed more games and a very sega-like publicity promoting the great power that was added to the genesis. just imagine a wolfenstein 32x, super street fighter 2 turbo, golden axe 2 arcade, aliens arcade edition, alien vs predator arcade, the simpsons arcade, and many more arcades that were ported very well thanks to the power of the 32x. create packages including some of these games along with the 32x, trying to economize the added as much as possible and a very aggressive advertising by comparing it with the snes. another story would be told today.
sorry the translation of google.
This and the Sega CD shot the Sega Saturn in the foot and was the first nail on Segas coffin. Sega oversaturated the gaming market with its own products. It probably made buyers hesitant because most figured if they waited something else would be released by them.
Summer before I got my playstation I spent a month's worth of paper delivery money (about $90) on a 32X and every 3D game released for it, during liquidation. The games were better than anything on the Genesis and actually held up ok against the early PSX titles. Bad release schedule, but it made for some awesome gaming on the cheap... one mediocre summer.
Holy shit. You were in Tenerife as a kid? I'm almost 30 and lived there when I was like 14 my best friend was from leeds.
You know what? Being a former Jaguar owner,I noticed the 32x games look a little better than Jaguar equivalent or similar games.
Love the Astro Warrior music on the background, that game has some of the best music also first game I played on the Master System. I need to make better videos like you so, but just starting out, love your stuff.
It's a real shame SEGA kept throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In hindsight it was a kind of cool idea, an add on that could have allowed the Megadrive to stick around a little longer and play some of the early 3D era games. That actually would have been a cool investment if SEGA hadn't ditched it as soon as it had been released. Cut the price a bit and let it gain enough new ports and titles (and most importantly let developers put proper time into them), could have sold pretty well with the more cheapskate Megadrive gamers such as myself. Even just giving it as long as the Mega CD had to get a reasonable list of games so it had something of a legacy, especially since I can remember more impressive entries for the 32X out of its 40 than the Mega CD's 200.
The sad thing about the 32X is that it had lots of potential, but there wasn't a lot of western studios that had the knowledge to work graciously on multi CPU machines back in the day.
raw had kwang as a hidden character who wasnt on megadrive version
Space Harrier was released on the Master System. And they were still trying to push it a generation and a half later.
mattorama That's because the 32X was the first home platform that could actually handle games like Space Harrier properly.
Your point being? Street Fighter 2 has rereleases even today and few complain.
ecks dee get me to top pls
Old video but I think the "new" Doom 32x Resurrection proves that there was nothing wrong with the hardware, just the marketing and rushed development of many titles. Had it come out a year prior, things would have been different as it would have been more powerful than anything on the horizon.
Pitfall on 32X runs at 30 FPS, half the MD version.. the definitive edition of that game is the smooth 60 FPS and best sounding Sega CD version, another add on Sega marketed completely incorrectly and pushed too hard for FMV. Sega CD added tons of power to the Genesis/Mega Drive but only a few games used it. Proper sprite hardware scaling and an extra 68000 CPU but you wouldn't know it, unless you played the Batman driving games which were one of very few examples of what it could do.
Sega has shown time and time again that they couldn't do anything right in the hardware world after the Genesis, with ironically the actual hardware never really being the problem. Another example was Saturn which was a BEAST when someone programmed for it properly (Powerslave, anyone)?
The fault was Sega's marketing machine which made every mistake one COULD make. Timing. Politics issues between US and Japan headquarters. Cluster f**k after cluster f**k.
The 32x as a kit was quite bad. Big hunk of metal taking up more electricity plug holes. Expensive. BUT the games overall are above avarage. As you tried to shot on the games, you came away generally liking most of them. On emulation it’s my go to Virtua racing option. Doom plays well. The SNES version is more impressive for what it is and has better sound, but the choppy frame rate it’s crap. On the 32x it’s fun as the frame rate is better and fun to see the changes they made. Virtua Fighter is very solid. I had it as a kid as I called the Sega hotline to see if the 32x is a machine to convert my Mega Drive and Mega CD into a Saturn. And the douche said yes. I was young, and internet wasn’t more than some bbs blips, and magazines at the time weren’t very clear, some saying it is it’s own thing. So I had to save for 3 months. Buy it, than a month later find out my sources are bad.
I'm surprised you didn't talk about the Spider-Man Web of Fire on the 32X. It was the best Spider-Man game on home consoles at the time, though to be fair wasn't a hard feat since all the others were done by LJN. Though it doesn't hold up by today's standards I still pull it out every so often for a little bit of nostalgia fun unlike all the other Spidey games which deserve to burn in titular Web of Fire.
Yes. Potential is irrelevant. In practice, not only is it a piece of crap, it was absolutely instrumental in Sega's downfall. Literally one of the worst ideas in gaming hardware and business history.
Pitfall is actually worse on the 32x than the vanilla megadrive, as it runs at 30fps, as opposed to the 60 FPS of the stock version...
played space harrier a lot (into shenmue)
32x was awesome at the time. How many of you were actually there when it came out? I thought it was pretty impressive. Nintendo had bigger failures in the wii u and virtual boy
I was there. It was a massive failure, objectively speaking. Even Sega admitted as much.
Bransfield well my family didn't get a pc until like 1998 and I didn't give 2 shits about Atari jaguar. Seeing a console run doom so well was a revelation.
Worth having for Jacky Bryants music alone.
Looks better than the Jaguar I had (I had the Sega CD also, which was disappointing.) Saturn was definitely a better deal, though. Loved my Saturn. AND Dreamcast!
I'll be honest, let's all be honest. As a kid, you didn't care that your friends ssssnnnneessss cost less. The 32X version DOES look better. You got your Genesis 2-3 years ago, this Christmas you got a 32X. I don't think that's exorbitant spending. I think you're glossing over the significant graphical differences, man. But thanks for the video. :-)
Yes! Yes it was. It looks like the magadrive was bing gangb**ged by add-ons, every slot filled Sega really knows how to Fu**k it's self.
I always was under the impression that rich, spoiled kids owned a 32X or Sega CD back in the day.
I wasn't rich or spoiled and I had both. I also got a Maserati for my birthd.... Okay maybe I need to rethink this...
The Saturn and PlayStation, you know actual real 32-bit consoles were responsible for killing the 32x.
32x likely would have succeeded if SEGA of Japan didn't stab SEGA of America in the back (yep, I'm going there). The 32x is akin to a PC running DOS and decent 3D hardware, hence the joke at the end of Doom 32x port (command prompt). With Doom Resurrection 3.x, we can see just how capable the system is and even with Open Laura running Tomb Raider on it (still waiting to see how optimized and good the game can be on there). In some respects, the 32x ports of virtua fighter, Doom, and MK did far better than the Saturn ports. Cartridges were the better option, regardless of how much space CDs could hold. The homebrew scene is bustling with activity for 32x, check it out! In regards to vram, the 32x only had 256k, but the irony is that 90% of PS1 and Saturn games didn't even need to saturate the vram (most games were terribly unoptimized and only ever really needed 256k vs the 1mb and 1.5MB (questionably 2MB).
Pounds and quid, what planet is this?
I played MK2 on PC...because i had only a PC.... Best Version Ever :D
I only play fighting games on keyboard since then...
I'd happily have one. played on one and really enjoyed the games on it. especially virtua racing :)
Points for using the picture of Max Moon
Darxide looks incredible for the hardware it's running on!