I got a 32X and 8 games in the summer of ‘95 from a kid for $50. Virtua Racing and Fighter, Doom, Metal Head, Star Wars… it was a great summer and I played the hell out of it!
There is spite. Then there is 'willing to destroy your brand and company's image because the north american branch had success where you didn't' levels of petty spite that sega of japan showed.
The only way Sega would've had a chance in the Japanese market at that time would be if they had Final Fantasy titles and Dragon Quest games on it; as JRPGs were huge in Japan from the likes of Squaresoft and Enix!
The biggest problem with 32x is you never get new customers, only a portion of your old customers. They probably should have just made a full system out of the 32x but that was essentially the Saturn, proving SEGA’s biggest enemy was themselves with Sega Japan and America fighting.
The problem was that this addon was very expensive--more than a $149 Neptune. The $49.99 SVP Lock On was highly anticipated and had Daytona USA, Star Wars, and Virtua Fighter already complete--and abandoned.
um... 30million potential market is not bad. But why would you gimp the look of your system like that? People would laugh at you. Amazing hardware, left on the shelf again. Kalinskiiii!!!!!
I appreciate the idea and what SEGA was trying to do at the time, considering the competition. Nintendo did next to nothing but sit there and concentrate on what they already knew was working. SEGA went in 30 directions all at once, trying to get the upper hand. They wore themselves thin and ultimately that's why they failed. Still cool though, specially considering the time!
I mean Nintendo snes at this point was at the beginning of yr 3 life cycle, they did try to go with a cd add on using the 3dfx chip was a great step to keep them in the game another couple years till n64 came out and helped finish what was left of Saturn. 32x wasn't the worst idea, including a pack in would of been nice, it did slow down atari and 3do, but the black eye of a 2nd failed system that was a add on, then expecting consumers to bu
Nintendo did put out a small jab towards Sega in the mid 90s. They started the “Only on Nintendo “ slogan and slapping it on the upper corner of all their most popular IPs. It was very subtle but effective.
They should have just added extra chips inside the Mega Drive cartridges like Nintendo did with the SNES, instead of bringing add-ons out. I know they did with Virtua Racing with the SVP chip, but they should have done it more.
My cousin-in-law gave me his 32X for Christmas a few years ago. I never had one when it was new. And by the time I got my childhood Genesis, the Saturn was already on the scene. I think Sega should have skipped on the 32X and gone straight to the Saturn. But here's what Sega should have done with the Saturn: Include backward compatibility with Genesis and Sega CD games. That and a proper Sonic game would have given the Saturn a fighting chance.
I was oddly obsessed with polygon count as a child. When I got my hands on a 32x and Virtua fighter, I was doing backflips. I was a hype man in my own head. I immediately became a Steve Balmer for the add-on, constantly singing, "omg they've done it" , sometimes even breaking out in dance. I did the same with the N64, Dreamcast, GameCube and many other greats. Imagine my excitement when chasing poly count in the PC arena 😳. The 32x has and will always have a special place in my cherry ticker.
Back in the day I thought the 32x was going to focus on 2D gaming while the Saturn would focus on 3D polygon gaming. If the 32x would've produce near acrade quality 2D games there would've been a market for it. Unfortunately that wasn't the case.
Its the way that the Homebrew scene doesn't really seem to exist on this that will always make me wonder what its true limits are as we never saw them.
90's kids would be so let down knowing that even headed in to 2030, 64 bit is the highest game systems even are stuck at because there's more than bits. If you're not playing a well coded chess game there's no reason to worry about bits usually
I picked one of these up about 10 years ago and paid £50 it came with boxed versions of Doom, Virtua Fighter, Star Wars Arcade, I found one in CEX in Chester yesterday priced at £300, the world of retro gaming has gone mad as much as I like the mad Sega mushroom there is no way on earth it is worth that much, although I will make sure I take care of mine as it looks like I would not be able to replace it very easily.
The 32X failed not just because of the Saturn's launch but also because the 32Xs hardware still had to run through the Genesis/Mega Drive which greatly prevented it from fully utilizing it's color pallete and colors per frame. Doing this also limited the sound capabilities of the 32X. I know there are a lot of Sega fans out there that believe the Genesis/MD was the greatest thing since Heinz Ketchup but the only good piece of hardware that was in the Genesis/MD was the Motorola MC68000 CPU. The rest of the hardware was very old (even the time when it launched) and was very limited in it's color, sound and overall it's shared bandwidth. If Sega had skipped the 32X and went straight to the Saturn, Sega may have survived against the Playstation and N64 and may have possibly still been a big player in the console market.
Yeah, I really do think just skipping both the Sega CD and 32X and going straight from Genesis to Saturn, just like Nintendo went from SNES to N64, would have been so much better in the long run.
Exactly. These manufacturers treated their hardware as merely commodities. They could have been much more powerful had they used better and custom architectures. Look at what Acorn and Argonaut did in hardware with tiny teams, for example.
@@inceptional The 32X was utterly unnecessary and pointless yes, but I love the Mega CD add on for the Mega Drive. It may not have been a commercial success but I love it's varied library of games, which is much larger and contains far more quality than the 32X's limited and largely pathetic library.
I remember when I was a kid and I saw 32x carts in a local rental shop on sale along with the 32x add on on discount and asked my parents for it. Dad was a closet gamer and said no lol.
They definitely should've made the power adapter for the 32X able to power both systems - with two DC connectors (not sure if this is possible, but I don't see why not)
Big W here in Australia had a big stocktake many decades ago. They were selling the 32X for $19AU with some games, and the Mega CD II for $29AU also with some games. I wish I could have purchased them at the time, given their rising prices online.
I could only try it via emulation, but I have to admit that some games were pretty impresive, such as the Sega 32X's version of Virtua Fighter, or the Mortal Kombat 2 version for the same system.
Update: Short answer, it couldn't do much that the Sega CD could do. In fact, the Genesis already had both 320x448i and Shadow/Highlight Mode capable of putting up 256 out of 3,375 colors. Other tricks for full screen rotation and 3D graphics were figured out by 1994 with existing hardware on store shelves, while the upcoming 32X had a frame buffer sync issue that dropped it down from 60fps to 30fps. The audio was no better than the Sega CD, and the CD versions of games could've been made for $10 less (with better soundtracks and cut scenes) instead of the $70 monstrosities that demanded a new $160 addon! They should've called it the $32, since that's all they could get for it as soon as SoJ ordered the Saturn to be released in May (7 months from the 32X release), retailers, developers, and gamers found the rug pulled out from under us. And SEGA was expecting us (now broke after spending $700 on the "Tower of Power") to spend another $400 (think Neo Geo/3DO) on the Saturn... which had only two terrible games out on launch! The Atari Jaguar had a 64-bit object processor, blitter processor, and data bus. ATARI was citing its powerful 64-bit GPU, but SEGA was talking about the small 16-bit adder inside the Genesis and 32-bit SH2 in the 32X. Technically, even the Sega Master system had a powerful 14 MHz, 16-bit Video Display Processor. November 1994: SEGA was king of the hill. May 1995: Sega death watch.
I owned one at the time and really appreciated it. I had Doom, MK II, Virtua Fighter and Star Wars. I used to read all the Sega magazines and remember looking forward to summer games that never materialised such as X Men. I think Sega in hindsight should have delayed the release of the Saturn and given the 32X a fighting chance 🤔
I agree. The Nintendo 64 was cartridge based, and although The Sony Playstation was hitting the discs I truly believe had Sega have stuck with the 32X instead of making another 32 bit system their reputation would have at least stuck with the crowd as far as their initial customer base. I'm not saying the Saturn didn't stand out, and certainly their games were frickin' awesome, but it really did doom Sega's customer support in how they handled everything. If I had been a Sega supporter (and I wasn't at the time because I was a Nintendo Dweeb.... I still am 20 something years later) as a child my mother probably wouldn't have had a problem with this kind of an add on system (there's no way she would've gotten me The Sega CD though) it would've stuck like glue just for the fact alone that I could play my Genesis games and 32X games on the same system respectively. I believe Sega would've had a better chance for survival, and their customer base would've been absolutely enthralled with the idea of a system that could play not only Master System games (with the add on) alongside of Genesis and 32x games as well. It's too bad really. With their reputation in the Arcade industry at the time and their systems it could've really been a possibility that they would have dominated the market and knocked Mario out of his shoes had Sega just of kept their horses held for a spot. Does this resonate with anyone else? I'd like to know what you guys think of what I'm saying here....
@@therant3837 As this video highlighted, the 32X came out as a response to the Atari Jaguar, Nakayama was worried that the Atari would take too much market share before the Saturn arrived. The 32x: - combined with price of the Genesis at the time equaled the price of the Jaguar $249 USD. -DOOM was a launch title and killer app at the time, which showed up a week later on the Jaguar. It was conceived, developed and released all in 94. The problem was Sega of Japan had started developing their next gen 32 bit console back in 92. They knew all along that the Saturn would be their next console not the 32X. They definitely should have stuck with one 32 bit console.
@Super Sexy Sega - ... Sony spooked 'em with the PlayStation. The Saturn showed up in the U.S. outta nowhere for $400. Didn't matter that it was 1st. Alot of people waited for the $300 PlayStation, myself included. I really liked the Saturn for it's quality 2D fighters + 6 button control pad.
Yep. But the damage had been done with the lackadaisical support for the criminally underused Sega CD. If the company wasn't going to properly back its $300 arcade supperscaling beast, why should anyone buy ANY of their hardware? SEGA churned out another $1,000 of kit after the Sega CD, and most gaming enthusiasts just ignored it. Those of us who paid $700 for the "Tower of Power" quickly became the laughing stock of the neighborhood, while everyone else saved up their allowance for a $299 3D leviathan from SONY.
Ya but at lesse thing's like Super FX Chip where an better option. Tech iusses at the time is manily why I never baramed Nintendo for not making an CD drive for the SNES. I wound have loved it the N64 had CD drive that cound play carts as will. In fact I wound not be sopized of the Saturn had such apdeter for Gensis games. Of couse today we don't have those kind of iusses. Unless your moving an app form the Intel and AMD chips to the ARM chips all you relay need to do install software and your all set. In fact that's how the Intel based MACs ran Windows games. Tech iusses was also why Bleemcast only worked with the games it was set-up for.
Despite the fact that this Sega Mega Drive add-on was already destined to fail on the market, I'm just happy that it, and its games, are getting preserved thanks to software-based emulators like PicoDrive, Kega Fusion, and Ares (thank you, Near), and hardware-based emulation, like the Mister FPGA (thank you, srg320).
I used this think that, I had a 32x at launch while waiting for Saturn. These days I'm a big emulation guy, and regularly play from a tightly curated collection of around 1700 games. But the saddest thing I found is with the exception of maybe kalibri and chaotix, there's nothing else in the library that wasn't done better on the Saturn/Arcade it other consoles.
@@BuzzaB77 My 32x Originals consist of Chaotix, Doom, Metal Head, Virtua Racing, 36 Great Holes, Star Wars arcade and Virtua Fighter. All but 36 Great Holes I enjoy, it's hard to remember that first glimpse of 3D now but it was a product of it's time. The very notion of an "add on" these days and in retrospect makes very little sense. Got Kolibri on my everdrive.. haven't a clue what I am supposed to do with it though!
This would have been a perfect video to go with your old “VHS” opening you used to use for your intros. I love this vid (as all of your vids) and thank you for the trip down memory lane.
Sega really shot themselves in the foot with the 32X and Saturn - no wonder they've been reduced to software development only. And all after the outstanding success of the Genesis.
I had got one for my 13th birthday. After the reduction. I tried it a few years ago and it no longer works. Amazing they dropped to 19.99 now you have to fork out upto 300 on ebay. Oooh little mushroom console how i miss you
32X failed because it was a poor concept released at a poor time with poor support. I was surprised to learn that it had some level of success at launch though. An yeah, the question at 7:55 is a truly baffling mystery. As for consoles I'd like to see covered on this channel, well if your friend owns one, the Vectrex would be cool to see. On the more obscure side, a video on the Super Cassette Vision would be pretty neat.
I actually have doubts whether the 32X would have succeeded even if the Saturn hadn't been announced. No doubt the 32X developers wasted their time with that project, but it's also arguable that the Americans failed to understand Japanese business culture. I suspect that someone at Sega of America really pushed Sega of Japan hard for approval to go ahead with an idea like the 32X because they were impatient and the Genesis needed something "now," and the Japanese were not sure, but eventually just told them to go ahead with it as some kind of "just in case" stopgap if they didn't finish the Saturn on time and see what happened out of politeness, and really didn't think it was going to go anywhere. Then again, that's not saying the Saturn was a wild success either, so maybe both sides of Sega just misread the hardware market in different ways. Of course, Nintendo also had the Virtual Boy around this time, so it was arguably just a very confusing time in which it was very hard to get things right with the transition from 2D to 3D changing everything.
it failed because Sega themselves canceled it within a year. some say it was because of a chip shortage, since it uses the same chip as Saturn, Sega of Japan decided they couldnt have both.
If they wouldn't have tried to milk their market and had just combined that abomination, they could've stayed competitive. Although it had its share of gems, the Saturn was a desperate, rushed attempt to remain relevant. Sega's ego and the difficulty of programming the SS were the final nail in the coffin. Dreamcast was posthumous, but could've been successful it it weren't for the bad taste Sega left in devs' mouths.
I bought one on clearance at Walmart for 10 dollars. I couldn't afford the other 32 bit systems as a kid. Had fun with Virtua Racing and Star Wars. Motocross was pure garbage through
Buyed it back then and had a good Time with my Tower of Power. But NEC-History showed: You can try so hard to stretch your Console-Lifespan, but the Developers will jump ship at the first glimps of New-Future-Power-Hardware. It's a PC-Thing imo.
When the 32x came out, I had hopes for it. I played it some at my friend's house. I enjoyed it for what it was and had lots of fun. Fast forward 27 years later and I can enjoy all the 32x games on my retropie and have fun all over again.
I just got that Uranus joke. I thought it was a console! I spent a year searching for info on it. I kept digging for Uranus and I came up with absolute crap.
The 32X was a failure because there was no point in it. I knew not to waste my $ on it because the Saturn was right around the corner which at the time was going to be Sega's future flagship system. So why waste money on a temporary system you know.
Great video. What is totally insane is the money the 32X and it's extremely limited library of games now sells for on Ebay. Personally I was never interested in adding one to my retro games and console collection, but if I did the only two games I'd want would be the Mortal Kombat II port and Knuckles Chaotix.
The Genesis wasn't dead. It could have gone another year. However, Unlike Nintendo, Sega of Japan and Sega of America couldn't agree and work as a team. That doesnt work as you can see. Sega also had too many sku's going at one time. Genesis, game gear, nomad, cd system, 32x, and even master system 2.
I got one at near launch, possibly as a Christmas present that I'd asked for, so it would have been at the full price which I think was £170. But importantly it was marketed as better value than that because it came with £50 OF MONEY OFF VOUCHERS FOR GAMES!!!1!! So that makes the shiny new 32X just £120, right? Alas, the vouchers were for something like £10 of a £60 game or £5 off a cheaper one, and were set to expire in something like 5 months. So even if anyone could afford half a dozen full price games in that time, you were unlikely to find many 32X games that you'd want to play before the vouchers became useless. There was another disastrous problem. Incompatibility with many Mega Drive 1 units due to timing synchronisation problems. If you were a keen enough gamer to buy a 32X before the heavy discounting, odds are your Mega Drive was an early one also, and odds are the setup would suffer crashes or eventually stop booting altogether, and need to be sent for repairs! This happened to me, and it took ages to get my Mega Drive and 32X back (they had to go together for some reason) from Sega's repair people because they had so many machines to fix. It seems likely that the 32X hadn't been fully tested before release. At the time, I still had much more faith in Sega consoles as the best place for RPGs and arcade games, so I chose a Saturn over the PlayStation. But I'm sure just about anyone else would have jumped ship to Sony after the disappointment of the 32X ended up being more than just a bit of a weak and limited games catalogue.
I get the poor timing issue, but the only real problems I had with the 32X were the need for a 2nd wall wart and the fact that it the housing didn't fit flush on the Genesis - it stood up too high.
I was an early adopter. It was my first home version of Doom and I loved it ( as long as I turn the music off). SW was super fun co-op and virtua racing was quality. Shame it failed so soon. Would have loved to seen what it was capable of as it matured.
32X was the beginning of the end for Sega's hardware, until the Dreamcast won back a couple of breaths before everyone realized it was as easy to pirate as a Specrum game, and before the PS2 truly finished them off.
The Dreamcast, was merely a placeholder for the PS2 to inevitably destroy it, basically the Dreamcast had no chance against the PS2 as the damage to their reputation was irreversible at this point, it was too late for Sega and the PS2 was the final nail in the coffin for Sega who ultimately got what they deserved.
That actually was a great system. The decisions they made over shadows what was possible with its capabilities. Great sound and great graphics in the right programmers' hands.
Great video. I LOVE my Voltron of video game systems which is my Sega Genesis, 32X, Sega CD combo. Too bad Sega did not get along with Sega. The 32X could have been home to arcade ports of Sega's vast library of 32-bit arcade games and all without the loading you got from first-gen CD-based games. I am still hoping that some indie, third-party developer would make games for the 32X. Keep up the great work!
I had recently got the Sega CD model 2 not long prior to the 32x news and Saturn news not long after; it just felt that they were rushing new systems and killing the market for previous ones (not many Sega Cd games compared to Genesis, SNES, NES, etc), Sega basically turned me, a big supporter in they systems and games away from them. I waited for the N64 then switched to Playstation. Would have stayed w/ Sega if they had thought ahead a little instead of treating their customers and ATMs (“they can waste their money on a system that has almost no games made for it”).
A DISGRACE. That thumbnail made me laugh. The disfunction between SEGA of America and SEGA of Japan seems to be what doomed the company. It’s crazy how badly they collaborated. It’s just frustrating to watch
@@MaxOakland it was mostly Sega Japan though. They allowed their reputation as the biggest and greatest game maker to go to their head. Sega America planned well ahead of themselves and had three consoles in R&D and had plans to release them over the next 2 decades. Japan forced them to drop everything and sell what they had because whatever they were working on wasn't worth the risk or trouble and Japan had the only feasible idea. Those ideas were snatched up by Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft and became some of the best systems and their starter platforms for the companies.
@@theghost6412 but Sega Japan didn’t like those consoles. The consoles were bad ideas History shows that console add ons like the Sega CD and 32x are almost always failures. Look at the reason the Wii U failed: people thought it was an add on to the Wii
@@MaxOakland Sega Japan didn't like those consoles because they were not their idea, and they also had weird programming. But as history pointed out, they were not a bad idea at all as they took off and helped found two new competition players in the industry. It was Sega Japan that made the incorrect move and had the bad idea that flopped and also bowed the company out of the race.
The 32X made me question owning another Sega device anytime soon back then. It felt like as soon as I got it Sega was like surprise we have a new system coming out only for that new system to also be replaced unceremoniously by another device. Its why I waited until the Dreamcast was dirt cheap before I bought it. Call me cynical having been burnt by the Game Gear and 32X. Don't get me wrong those systems had games I liked but Sega was so quick to abandon them it left a bad impression on me.
Ouch, very understandable. I didn't buy any of them, it was confusing what would be good. I never bought any from that generation in the end, they looked mostly bad too me. PS2 started to look good imo.
Jesus, that price of a Jag (and not the good kind) is crazy! I remember walking into an ex catalogue shop back in the 90's as a kid and seeing them super cheap. If only I had talked my mum into buying the entire lot, could have made a tenner at least.
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
I got a 32X and 8 games in the summer of ‘95 from a kid for $50. Virtua Racing and Fighter, Doom, Metal Head, Star Wars… it was a great summer and I played the hell out of it!
You got quite a deal of a steal back then! And no money given to Sega themselves to profit off of XD!
There is spite. Then there is 'willing to destroy your brand and company's image because the north american branch had success where you didn't' levels of petty spite that sega of japan showed.
The only way Sega would've had a chance in the Japanese market at that time would be if they had Final Fantasy titles and Dragon Quest games on it; as JRPGs were huge in Japan from the likes of Squaresoft and Enix!
@@G.L.999And yet SEGA had the Phantasy Star series. PS4 was $100 on a cart but could've been put on the Sega CD for $50.
@@MaxAbramson3 Wow I didn't know that. Even most N64 games werem't that expensive as PStar4!
Literally a good thing
چقدر فک میزنی
The biggest problem with 32x is you never get new customers, only a portion of your old customers.
They probably should have just made a full system out of the 32x but that was essentially the Saturn, proving SEGA’s biggest enemy was themselves with Sega Japan and America fighting.
@Babes & Board Games ikr probably a lack of leadership because Nintendo America and Japan don’t have this problem
@Babes & Board Games Sega of Japan was likely jealous of the success of the Genesis in the US.
The problem was that this addon was very expensive--more than a $149 Neptune. The $49.99 SVP Lock On was highly anticipated and had Daytona USA, Star Wars, and Virtua Fighter already complete--and abandoned.
The 32X is was just one of a number of problems that Sega inflicted on themselves, Sega got what they deserved.
um... 30million potential market is not bad. But why would you gimp the look of your system like that? People would laugh at you. Amazing hardware, left on the shelf again. Kalinskiiii!!!!!
I appreciate the idea and what SEGA was trying to do at the time, considering the competition. Nintendo did next to nothing but sit there and concentrate on what they already knew was working. SEGA went in 30 directions all at once, trying to get the upper hand. They wore themselves thin and ultimately that's why they failed. Still cool though, specially considering the time!
@@SomeOrangeCat Right, forgot about the arcade stuff. They ran themselves ragged. LOL yeah they hurt themselves in their confusion is right lol!
@@SomeOrangeCat Exactly. But having a ravenous fanbase helped too I guess.
I mean Nintendo snes at this point was at the beginning of yr 3 life cycle, they did try to go with a cd add on using the 3dfx chip was a great step to keep them in the game another couple years till n64 came out and helped finish what was left of Saturn.
32x wasn't the worst idea, including a pack in would of been nice, it did slow down atari and 3do, but the black eye of a 2nd failed system that was a add on, then expecting consumers to bu
Nintendo did put out a small jab towards Sega in the mid 90s. They started the “Only on Nintendo “ slogan and slapping it on the upper corner of all their most popular IPs. It was very subtle but effective.
Hello Mr Toad. How is Nintendo Land?
They should have just added extra chips inside the Mega Drive cartridges like Nintendo did with the SNES, instead of bringing add-ons out. I know they did with Virtua Racing with the SVP chip, but they should have done it more.
Exactly.
My cousin-in-law gave me his 32X for Christmas a few years ago. I never had one when it was new. And by the time I got my childhood Genesis, the Saturn was already on the scene. I think Sega should have skipped on the 32X and gone straight to the Saturn. But here's what Sega should have done with the Saturn: Include backward compatibility with Genesis and Sega CD games. That and a proper Sonic game would have given the Saturn a fighting chance.
Yes to all of this! The Saturn even had a cartridge port. Use it!
Even a backward compatible adapter would've worked for the NA/EU regions
That's the kinda cheeky behaviour we need when making a uranus joke!
Bravo!
I had the Sega CD. Then a 32X. And finally realized...that this was the largest safety hazard ever.
If you want an electrical fire, that's how you get an electrical fire.
I was oddly obsessed with polygon count as a child. When I got my hands on a 32x and Virtua fighter, I was doing backflips. I was a hype man in my own head. I immediately became a Steve Balmer for the add-on, constantly singing, "omg they've done it" , sometimes even breaking out in dance. I did the same with the N64, Dreamcast, GameCube and many other greats. Imagine my excitement when chasing poly count in the PC arena 😳. The 32x has and will always have a special place in my cherry ticker.
Back in the day I thought the 32x was going to focus on 2D gaming while the Saturn would focus on 3D polygon gaming. If the 32x would've produce near acrade quality 2D games there would've been a market for it. Unfortunately that wasn't the case.
the 32X could have been interesting if it had been released 2 years earlier
Its the way that the Homebrew scene doesn't really seem to exist on this that will always make me wonder what its true limits are as we never saw them.
@@Zaphod-ef9yz some demos from scanvenger are impressive.
@@ciredecgellar8232 oo any recommendations and ill fire up the everdrive.
@@Zaphod-ef9yz th-cam.com/video/pOWZbydnlZE/w-d-xo.html not playable i guess
Doom Resurrection shows off what it could do.
We nearly got a 32X. If we had, there was no way my folks would have got us a PlayStation as well. Bullet dodged.
90's kids would be so let down knowing that even headed in to 2030, 64 bit is the highest game systems even are stuck at because there's more than bits. If you're not playing a well coded chess game there's no reason to worry about bits usually
I picked one of these up about 10 years ago and paid £50 it came with boxed versions of Doom, Virtua Fighter, Star Wars Arcade, I found one in CEX in Chester yesterday priced at £300, the world of retro gaming has gone mad as much as I like the mad Sega mushroom there is no way on earth it is worth that much, although I will make sure I take care of mine as it looks like I would not be able to replace it very easily.
It made this really high pitched sound that was alarming.
I love the AVGN video on how he tried to set it up 🤣
"The sleek design of the Neptune is rather sexy."
*laughs nervously in Hyperdimension Neptunia*
The 32X failed not just because of the Saturn's launch but also because the 32Xs hardware still had to run through the Genesis/Mega Drive which greatly prevented it from fully utilizing it's color pallete and colors per frame. Doing this also limited the sound capabilities of the 32X. I know there are a lot of Sega fans out there that believe the Genesis/MD was the greatest thing since Heinz Ketchup but the only good piece of hardware that was in the Genesis/MD was the Motorola MC68000 CPU. The rest of the hardware was very old (even the time when it launched) and was very limited in it's color, sound and overall it's shared bandwidth. If Sega had skipped the 32X and went straight to the Saturn, Sega may have survived against the Playstation and N64 and may have possibly still been a big player in the console market.
Yeah, I really do think just skipping both the Sega CD and 32X and going straight from Genesis to Saturn, just like Nintendo went from SNES to N64, would have been so much better in the long run.
Exactly. These manufacturers treated their hardware as merely commodities. They could have been much more powerful had they used better and custom architectures.
Look at what Acorn and Argonaut did in hardware with tiny teams, for example.
@@inceptional The 32X was utterly unnecessary and pointless yes, but I love the Mega CD add on for the Mega Drive. It may not have been a commercial success but I love it's varied library of games, which is much larger and contains far more quality than the 32X's limited and largely pathetic library.
I remember when I was a kid and I saw 32x carts in a local rental shop on sale along with the 32x add on on discount and asked my parents for it. Dad was a closet gamer and said no lol.
13:35 - I think there was some regulation which made Sega require it's use. Even though you didn't need them.
They definitely should've made the power adapter for the 32X able to power both systems - with two DC connectors (not sure if this is possible, but I don't see why not)
Shame the Neptune never came out. It would have been highly desirable for the retro gaming community.
Big W here in Australia had a big stocktake many decades ago. They were selling the 32X for $19AU with some games, and the Mega CD II for $29AU also with some games. I wish I could have purchased them at the time, given their rising prices online.
"An ugly mushroom NO one wanted to play with!" Holy inside joke, Batman!😆
I could only try it via emulation, but I have to admit that some games were pretty impresive, such as the Sega 32X's version of Virtua Fighter, or the Mortal Kombat 2 version for the same system.
Update: Short answer, it couldn't do much that the Sega CD could do. In fact, the Genesis already had both 320x448i and Shadow/Highlight Mode capable of putting up 256 out of 3,375 colors. Other tricks for full screen rotation and 3D graphics were figured out by 1994 with existing hardware on store shelves, while the upcoming 32X had a frame buffer sync issue that dropped it down from 60fps to 30fps. The audio was no better than the Sega CD, and the CD versions of games could've been made for $10 less (with better soundtracks and cut scenes) instead of the $70 monstrosities that demanded a new $160 addon!
They should've called it the $32, since that's all they could get for it as soon as SoJ ordered the Saturn to be released in May (7 months from the 32X release), retailers, developers, and gamers found the rug pulled out from under us. And SEGA was expecting us (now broke after spending $700 on the "Tower of Power") to spend another $400 (think Neo Geo/3DO) on the Saturn... which had only two terrible games out on launch!
The Atari Jaguar had a 64-bit object processor, blitter processor, and data bus. ATARI was citing its powerful 64-bit GPU, but SEGA was talking about the small 16-bit adder inside the Genesis and 32-bit SH2 in the 32X. Technically, even the Sega Master system had a powerful 14 MHz, 16-bit Video Display Processor.
November 1994: SEGA was king of the hill.
May 1995: Sega death watch.
Lady decade the Nigella Lawson of video games
8:36 -
Ad: "more, MORE! faster, FASTER,"
Jevil: "chaos, CHAOS!"
I feel like some companies FELT COMPELLED to release any tech they had worked on before it became obsolete, and ignored the market timing.
Sounds brilliant, u & Mr TopHat are killing it big ✌️
Sega should have combined 32x and CD to one and released as a separate console and have that as next gen rather than trying to carry mega drive on
Yes and release earlier like around late 92 or 1993.
I owned one at the time and really appreciated it. I had Doom, MK II, Virtua Fighter and Star Wars. I used to read all the Sega magazines and remember looking forward to summer games that never materialised such as X Men. I think Sega in hindsight should have delayed the release of the Saturn and given the 32X a fighting chance 🤔
I agree. The Nintendo 64 was cartridge based, and although The Sony Playstation was hitting the discs I truly believe had Sega have stuck with the 32X instead of making another 32 bit system their reputation would have at least stuck with the crowd as far as their initial customer base. I'm not saying the Saturn didn't stand out, and certainly their games were frickin' awesome, but it really did doom Sega's customer support in how they handled everything.
If I had been a Sega supporter (and I wasn't at the time because I was a Nintendo Dweeb.... I still am 20 something years later) as a child my mother probably wouldn't have had a problem with this kind of an add on system (there's no way she would've gotten me The Sega CD though) it would've stuck like glue just for the fact alone that I could play my Genesis games and 32X games on the same system respectively.
I believe Sega would've had a better chance for survival, and their customer base would've been absolutely enthralled with the idea of a system that could play not only Master System games (with the add on) alongside of Genesis and 32x games as well. It's too bad really. With their reputation in the Arcade industry at the time and their systems it could've really been a possibility that they would have dominated the market and knocked Mario out of his shoes had Sega just of kept their horses held for a spot.
Does this resonate with anyone else? I'd like to know what you guys think of what I'm saying here....
@@therant3837
As this video highlighted, the 32X came out as a response to the Atari Jaguar, Nakayama was worried that the Atari would take too much market share before the Saturn arrived.
The 32x:
- combined with price of the Genesis at the time equaled the price of the Jaguar $249 USD.
-DOOM was a launch title and killer app at the time, which showed up a week later on the Jaguar.
It was conceived, developed and released all in 94.
The problem was Sega of Japan had started developing their next gen 32 bit console back in 92. They knew all along that the Saturn would be their next console not the 32X.
They definitely should have stuck with one 32 bit console.
@@lazarushernandez5827 Darn my Bipolar senses! I must have missed that in the video. I'm having a Homer Simpson moment. DOH!!!!! :)
Sega should have delayed the release of the Saturn and never released the 32x.
@Super Sexy Sega - ... Sony spooked 'em with the PlayStation. The Saturn showed up in the U.S. outta nowhere for $400. Didn't matter that it was 1st. Alot of people waited for the $300 PlayStation, myself included. I really liked the Saturn for it's quality 2D fighters + 6 button control pad.
Nintendo made a lot of awful decisions, but Sega outdid Nintendo in that regard.
Yep. But the damage had been done with the lackadaisical support for the criminally underused Sega CD. If the company wasn't going to properly back its $300 arcade supperscaling beast, why should anyone buy ANY of their hardware? SEGA churned out another $1,000 of kit after the Sega CD, and most gaming enthusiasts just ignored it.
Those of us who paid $700 for the "Tower of Power" quickly became the laughing stock of the neighborhood, while everyone else saved up their allowance for a $299 3D leviathan from SONY.
Ya but at lesse thing's like Super FX Chip where an better option. Tech iusses at the time is manily why I never baramed Nintendo for not making an CD drive for the SNES. I wound have loved it the N64 had CD drive that cound play carts as will. In fact I wound not be sopized of the Saturn had such apdeter for Gensis games. Of couse today we don't have those kind of iusses. Unless your moving an app form the Intel and AMD chips to the ARM chips all you relay need to do install software and your all set. In fact that's how the Intel based MACs ran Windows games. Tech iusses was also why Bleemcast only worked with the games it was set-up for.
I loved my Genesis/SegaCD/32x. Knuckles chaotix, star wars arcade, kolibri, nighttrap - all great!
Despite the fact that this Sega Mega Drive add-on was already destined to fail on the market, I'm just happy that it, and its games, are getting preserved thanks to software-based emulators like PicoDrive, Kega Fusion, and Ares (thank you, Near), and hardware-based emulation, like the Mister FPGA (thank you, srg320).
picodrive is the worst megadrive emulator ever made.
@@pam8352 🤓why u hate so much
Edit: it works well in provenance on iOS
@@IgnisCygnus147 because i have the original hardware and i can see and hear the difference
I used this think that, I had a 32x at launch while waiting for Saturn. These days I'm a big emulation guy, and regularly play from a tightly curated collection of around 1700 games. But the saddest thing I found is with the exception of maybe kalibri and chaotix, there's nothing else in the library that wasn't done better on the Saturn/Arcade it other consoles.
@@BuzzaB77 My 32x Originals consist of Chaotix, Doom, Metal Head, Virtua Racing, 36 Great Holes, Star Wars arcade and Virtua Fighter. All but 36 Great Holes I enjoy, it's hard to remember that first glimpse of 3D now but it was a product of it's time. The very notion of an "add on" these days and in retrospect makes very little sense.
Got Kolibri on my everdrive.. haven't a clue what I am supposed to do with it though!
"It all seems a bit silly now in retrospect now...."
My 3090 Ti is the bomb reeeeeeeee
This would have been a perfect video to go with your old “VHS” opening you used to use for your intros. I love this vid (as all of your vids) and thank you for the trip down memory lane.
Sega really shot themselves in the foot with the 32X and Saturn - no wonder they've been reduced to software development only. And all after the outstanding success of the Genesis.
Your planetary jokes were quite stellar!
At about 20:00 I think I saw a continue screen, but the options were "YES, MAYBE, NO" .... What the hell happens if you pick "maybe"???
I seriously can't believe that you did that old Uranus joke 🤣🤣🤣
DOOM should have been a 32X Sega CD combo. Everything that couldn't fit on the cart, put on the disk.
I had got one for my 13th birthday. After the reduction. I tried it a few years ago and it no longer works.
Amazing they dropped to 19.99 now you have to fork out upto 300 on ebay. Oooh little mushroom console how i miss you
Back in the 80s, most of everybody I knew all had Nintendo. I have never own any Sega console before, not even the Dreamcast
Such a shame that two companies that were meant to work together effectively shafted one another
Can't help wonder what could have been with full developer support.
32X failed because it was a poor concept released at a poor time with poor support. I was surprised to learn that it had some level of success at launch though. An yeah, the question at 7:55 is a truly baffling mystery.
As for consoles I'd like to see covered on this channel, well if your friend owns one, the Vectrex would be cool to see. On the more obscure side, a video on the Super Cassette Vision would be pretty neat.
I actually have doubts whether the 32X would have succeeded even if the Saturn hadn't been announced. No doubt the 32X developers wasted their time with that project, but it's also arguable that the Americans failed to understand Japanese business culture. I suspect that someone at Sega of America really pushed Sega of Japan hard for approval to go ahead with an idea like the 32X because they were impatient and the Genesis needed something "now," and the Japanese were not sure, but eventually just told them to go ahead with it as some kind of "just in case" stopgap if they didn't finish the Saturn on time and see what happened out of politeness, and really didn't think it was going to go anywhere. Then again, that's not saying the Saturn was a wild success either, so maybe both sides of Sega just misread the hardware market in different ways. Of course, Nintendo also had the Virtual Boy around this time, so it was arguably just a very confusing time in which it was very hard to get things right with the transition from 2D to 3D changing everything.
Down for the count with a migraine, binging your mini docs is really helping. High five 🙌 to you guys!
Her docs are definitely not mini !!! Oh wait, those are her... umm... oh, you mean her shows !!! Yeah, they are awesome !
The song at 1:10 is door into summer from Knuckles Chaotix, i only hust found out like 2 weeks ago
it failed because Sega themselves canceled it within a year.
some say it was because of a chip shortage, since it uses the same chip as Saturn, Sega of Japan decided they couldnt have both.
segaCD was a dream out of reach to me
Lady Decade is a good gamer and would make a great model.
SoJ stands for Sega of Jealousy. Too bad they only decided work as one when it was already too late.
If they wouldn't have tried to milk their market and had just combined that abomination, they could've stayed competitive. Although it had its share of gems, the Saturn was a desperate, rushed attempt to remain relevant. Sega's ego and the difficulty of programming the SS were the final nail in the coffin. Dreamcast was posthumous, but could've been successful it it weren't for the bad taste Sega left in devs' mouths.
You are simply a content machine. Really enjoying the content, but please don’t burn out!
I bought one on clearance at Walmart for 10 dollars. I couldn't afford the other 32 bit systems as a kid. Had fun with Virtua Racing and Star Wars. Motocross was pure garbage through
Buyed it back then and had a good Time with my Tower of Power.
But NEC-History showed: You can try so hard to stretch your Console-Lifespan, but the Developers will jump ship at the first glimps of New-Future-Power-Hardware. It's a PC-Thing imo.
Never got into the genesis, but somehow you stole my attention, miss decade. Lol
Great info. Lady I learn well 😀👍👍
When the 32x came out, I had hopes for it. I played it some at my friend's house. I enjoyed it for what it was and had lots of fun.
Fast forward 27 years later and I can enjoy all the 32x games on my retropie and have fun all over again.
I just got that Uranus joke. I thought it was a console! I spent a year searching for info on it. I kept digging for Uranus and I came up with absolute crap.
Great video,I used to work in retail when the 32x came out and can’t remember selling any 🙄
I remember being only interested in the 32X as a kid because of Knuckles Chaotix.
Anyone else currently thinking about hypothetical costly mistakes with a specific individual?
Subscribed haha
Instead of remaking the Sega Genesis in it's various forms, they should of just focused next gen
The Sega URANUS would've been the BUTT of many jokes...
You should bring up the dream cast that was an awesome one.
The 32X was a failure because there was no point in it. I knew not to waste my $ on it because the Saturn was right around the corner which at the time was going to be Sega's future flagship system. So why waste money on a temporary system you know.
Great video. What is totally insane is the money the 32X and it's extremely limited library of games now sells for on Ebay. Personally I was never interested in adding one to my retro games and console collection, but if I did the only two games I'd want would be the Mortal Kombat II port and Knuckles Chaotix.
The Genesis wasn't dead. It could have gone another year. However, Unlike Nintendo, Sega of Japan and Sega of America couldn't agree and work as a team. That doesnt work as you can see. Sega also had too many sku's going at one time. Genesis, game gear, nomad, cd system, 32x, and even master system 2.
I got one at near launch, possibly as a Christmas present that I'd asked for, so it would have been at the full price which I think was £170. But importantly it was marketed as better value than that because it came with £50 OF MONEY OFF VOUCHERS FOR GAMES!!!1!! So that makes the shiny new 32X just £120, right?
Alas, the vouchers were for something like £10 of a £60 game or £5 off a cheaper one, and were set to expire in something like 5 months. So even if anyone could afford half a dozen full price games in that time, you were unlikely to find many 32X games that you'd want to play before the vouchers became useless.
There was another disastrous problem. Incompatibility with many Mega Drive 1 units due to timing synchronisation problems. If you were a keen enough gamer to buy a 32X before the heavy discounting, odds are your Mega Drive was an early one also, and odds are the setup would suffer crashes or eventually stop booting altogether, and need to be sent for repairs! This happened to me, and it took ages to get my Mega Drive and 32X back (they had to go together for some reason) from Sega's repair people because they had so many machines to fix. It seems likely that the 32X hadn't been fully tested before release.
At the time, I still had much more faith in Sega consoles as the best place for RPGs and arcade games, so I chose a Saturn over the PlayStation. But I'm sure just about anyone else would have jumped ship to Sony after the disappointment of the 32X ended up being more than just a bit of a weak and limited games catalogue.
Sega holds a special place in my hart my first system was a Sega Master System.
The Atari Jaguar did have the Alien game, seriously addictive awesome game, all its others were not winners.
I get the poor timing issue, but the only real problems I had with the 32X were the need for a 2nd wall wart and the fact that it the housing didn't fit flush on the Genesis - it stood up too high.
I love the gracious living quote.
I was an early adopter. It was my first home version of Doom and I loved it ( as long as I turn the music off). SW was super fun co-op and virtua racing was quality. Shame it failed so soon. Would have loved to seen what it was capable of as it matured.
Sega tried to create it's own Megazord... it... did not go well...
Instead of the 32x, they should have better utilized the Sega CDs enhancements. What an underutilized piece of hardware.
Even a simpler sega cd with the 32x vdp and ram would've done justice than two add-ons. Even a standalone sega cd with its own hardware.
A great retrospective on a console that doesn’t get enough love
Add ons never really work. People don’t want to buy new stuff to put on their old system.
I loved my 32x. Christmas of 94 playing Doom and blasting White Zombie.
The Sega Saturn is what the 32x should have been in the first place.
Poor Knuckles couldn’t get a break
I only ever saw these in gaming magazines. I never knew anyone who had one
32X was the beginning of the end for Sega's hardware,
until the Dreamcast won back a couple of breaths before everyone realized it was as easy to pirate as a Specrum game, and before the PS2 truly finished them off.
The Dreamcast, was merely a placeholder for the PS2 to inevitably destroy it, basically the Dreamcast had no chance against the PS2 as the damage to their reputation was irreversible at this point, it was too late for Sega and the PS2 was the final nail in the coffin for Sega who ultimately got what they deserved.
That actually was a great system. The decisions they made over shadows what was possible with its capabilities. Great sound and great graphics in the right programmers' hands.
Great video. I LOVE my Voltron of video game systems which is my Sega Genesis, 32X, Sega CD combo. Too bad Sega did not get along with Sega. The 32X could have been home to arcade ports of Sega's vast library of 32-bit arcade games and all without the loading you got from first-gen CD-based games. I am still hoping that some indie, third-party developer would make games for the 32X. Keep up the great work!
I had recently got the Sega CD model 2 not long prior to the 32x news and Saturn news not long after; it just felt that they were rushing new systems and killing the market for previous ones (not many Sega Cd games compared to Genesis, SNES, NES, etc), Sega basically turned me, a big supporter in they systems and games away from them. I waited for the N64 then switched to Playstation. Would have stayed w/ Sega if they had thought ahead a little instead of treating their customers and ATMs (“they can waste their money on a system that has almost no games made for it”).
A DISGRACE. That thumbnail made me laugh. The disfunction between SEGA of America and SEGA of Japan seems to be what doomed the company. It’s crazy how badly they collaborated. It’s just frustrating to watch
it was all on Sega Japan's head for getting too full of themselves.
@@theghost6412 I think Sega of America made at least as many bad choices for the same reason
@@MaxOakland it was mostly Sega Japan though. They allowed their reputation as the biggest and greatest game maker to go to their head. Sega America planned well ahead of themselves and had three consoles in R&D and had plans to release them over the next 2 decades. Japan forced them to drop everything and sell what they had because whatever they were working on wasn't worth the risk or trouble and Japan had the only feasible idea.
Those ideas were snatched up by Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft and became some of the best systems and their starter platforms for the companies.
@@theghost6412 but Sega Japan didn’t like those consoles. The consoles were bad ideas
History shows that console add ons like the Sega CD and 32x are almost always failures. Look at the reason the Wii U failed: people thought it was an add on to the Wii
@@MaxOakland Sega Japan didn't like those consoles because they were not their idea, and they also had weird programming.
But as history pointed out, they were not a bad idea at all as they took off and helped found two new competition players in the industry.
It was Sega Japan that made the incorrect move and had the bad idea that flopped and also bowed the company out of the race.
The 32X made me question owning another Sega device anytime soon back then. It felt like as soon as I got it Sega was like surprise we have a new system coming out only for that new system to also be replaced unceremoniously by another device. Its why I waited until the Dreamcast was dirt cheap before I bought it. Call me cynical having been burnt by the Game Gear and 32X. Don't get me wrong those systems had games I liked but Sega was so quick to abandon them it left a bad impression on me.
Ouch, very understandable. I didn't buy any of them, it was confusing what would be good. I never bought any from that generation in the end, they looked mostly bad too me. PS2 started to look good imo.
The 32X was when you realised that you made a mistake investing in Sega and should have got with Nintendo instead.
Sold my "OG" " Triple Tower of Power" a few years back.. Miss it on occasion. Love the channel.
I now want a sega 32x attachment mushroom. Im sold, thanks. 😄
It's funny the way British people say "jaguar"
Jesus, that price of a Jag (and not the good kind) is crazy! I remember walking into an ex catalogue shop back in the 90's as a kid and seeing them super cheap. If only I had talked my mum into buying the entire lot, could have made a tenner at least.
5:21 epic comb over!
I love how the 32x looks like a bicycle helmet and seat at the same time.
The amount of content your pushing out is insane my lady!
Your videos are so slept on, keep up the good work!
So very CUTE how you say ‘blue hedgehogs’ sooooo adorable! 🤗☺️🤗