The Story of The SEGA 64X - A Ridiculous Sega Saturn Console Add On Documentary
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ค. 2021
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In today's content, we explore the history of the ludicrous Sega 64X and the many ideas that Sega considered in order to make the Sega Saturn a success in America.
#Sega #SegaHistory #RetroGaming
Edited by Ryan of Exploding Music Syndrome, check out their music! - • KANE - WWE/WWF THEMES:...
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I remember i was looking at a 32X at a shop then. The salesperson told me..."Don't buy this, the Saturn is coming." Nice guy.
Damn, that's actually very cool of that dude. Virtually unthinkable for a salesperson to tell someone not to buy something, even if it was a total dud.
Smart guy
No dumb sega everyone who bought the sega cd and or 32x bought ps1 and n64 that why the Saturn and Dreamcast didn’t sell
I kinda want to take a CDX and a 32X and combine them into one console.
Sega has such a fascinating history. They did 20 years worth of stuff in 10 years. Gaming news seems so boring these days in comparison.
well that's because people had weird or bad ideas at the time. the reason why its not like that now is big tech company's got smarter with that (sadly)
Amen. Sony and MS killed true gaming with their money and greedy fingers.
@@AngryPostmanStockholm are you seriously insinuating that the big games companies of the 80's and 90's weren't just as bad in terms of money and "greedy fingers". EVERYTHING decision was just about how to suck as much money from consumers and their dumb parents as possible back then, you could say its the same now but the companies certainly aren't any more greedy than the prominent games companies of the 80's and 90's. Difference is back then they thought the consumers were a lot dumber than they acutaly were and thought they could take advantage of them with gimmick after gimmick, were as now it's the same except less frequent because the connection between producer and consumer is closer than ever and backlash comes a lot quicker nowadays. But like i said, they are still bad now, probably just as bad, it's a lie however to say that they are worse than the older games companies.
I loved my genesis/32x and my dreamcast! I still have my dreamcast
True
The 90s were really a crazy time for weird hardware, both released and aborted. Very enjoyable video as usual
The 90s was very exciting in terms of tech generally I think. It felt like every week there was something better and faster in computers, consoles, phones, everything. What a time to be alive. No wonder all the advertising was full of screaming heads.
Although it was only a joke. A power upgrade cartridge would've actually been pretty cool for the Saturn.
But what REALLY would've helped it was backwards compatibility with Megadrive Cartridges.
Street of Rage 4, Sonic CD2 or a Knuckles Chaotix 2 with better level design or without the rubber band system, Comix Zone 2... I mean, the classics on 2.5 or 3D ... that would have been pretty cool.
A lot more cost effective than the Dreamcast (only $35-60) and would've saved the Saturn in some markets.
I somehow wish to take a glimpse at the parallel universe in which SEGA's console addons actually took off and impressed the masses.
DITO BRO
They only needed a consistent roadmap.
That should've been our universe. It WOULD have been.
I remember reading about this. Learning how deep, the design, and technical level was possible. Crazy how many experimental ideas they were going for.
If all things worked out, dang...
Yes, that "64X" is nothing but a mockup. The real 64 bit enhancement cart would be exactly what it would be...an enhancement cart. Unlike the 32X, the Saturn "64x" would've been a much simpler upgrade, as simple as putting the cart in, insert the disc and that's it. No need to fumble around with several wires and AC adapters.
LETS GO BACK IN TIME AND DO IT!!
SEGA should've released a RAM cart with the sub-$40 Hitachi SH-4 of Dreamcast game. At 360 MIPS and 1.4 Gflops, it could push out 5 million polygons/sec, 10-20x the performance of an entire PlayStation. All for about $50 at Christmas of 1997.
Just found your channel this evening and I’m now binge watching it! Keep up the good work! Phenomenal production values and very engaging content!
This is one of those instances where you think to yourself: Hey. An add-on device that allowed Virtua Fighter 3 on the Saturn? If done correctly that could have worked!
And then your brain crashes back to earth and you remember what company this was at the time and what they had already done.
I just have to imagine the absolute chaos that developing on that system would be. Ultimately, the Dreamcast essentially earned Sega just enough money to not go bankrupt and go third party. This would have killed them early.
Man I love this shit. I was so into the industry during the 90s. I followed so closely and read every magazine I could. Such a great time in my life.
I like thinking back to how I basically spent 1992 - 1998 on IRC all day every day instead of paying much attention to gaming and missed everything interesting.
@Super Mario it's a you!
EGM was one of the worst mags.
I live in Sweden but boy did i buy all those mags i could, quite late i saw a mag in a store named "gamefan", an american mag and it was the best damn mag ever, super quality paper and shots, 100+
pages and truly deep re/previews, so i actually started subscribe it.
one guy i miss so much is "E Storm"
@@Dr.Quarex chat was a bit more interesting then gaming back then!
@Super Mario #Culture
I've really been enjoying your videos. Keep up the great work!! 👍🏻
I stumbled onto your channel and I'm loving it that's to short a word im absolutely loving all you content the nostalgic path down memory lane you give is amazing I'm subscribed and will be smashing the like button. 👍
I was sincerely hoping you hadn't fallen for that white 32x picture. I'm glad you didn't.
Saturn designer: Better add a cartridge slot just in case
Ahahahaha.
LOL! It was also the "memory card" slot though.
@@nanoglitch6693 and modem and Ram cart slot.
@Brian Babin The first model of ps1 have i/o port, so they could use it, but i think it's too expansive.
Just about every console had some sort of expansion slot of some kind.
Il love your work ! I discover your chanel few days ago, and can't stop watching your vidéos.
In all fairness, they were talking about a cart... not a giant cart into cart addon thing. It was more inline with a ram cart than a 32x.
Like a chipset accelerator enhancement chip.
Yeah, in the end it would have just been a taller version of the memory card with graphics card.
@@pigs18 similar to the svp and ea sports genesis cartridges.
Like the FX2 cartridge for the SNES CD.
@@maroon9273 lol EA sports?
Always coming in with something new that I haven't heard about- love it! Keep it up!
Dreamcast was my favorite. I wish sega would come back into the console market
Same
Pained me when sega died. I was definitely a sega boy at heart. I had every console and add-ons they ever released.
It was a sad day in the Corcoran household when sega finished.
First video and that intro tasted so much like top hat gaming! If you guys are together then that is definitely a prime example of a gaming content power couple! Good on you both
Really interesting find! Never knew this and I was a big time Sega fan.
That’s crazy. Never knew about this. Thanks! Keep up the good work
Really fascinating video! I don't remember any of this from back in the day, but I do think it's a cool concept.
I’m really glad that I found your channel! Your voice overs are incredible! I love the accent by the way! Subscribed!
This is the first video of yours I've watched... Great stuff nice Lady. Keep up the good work!
So much education thankyou addictive channel for retro info love it because it takes me back thanks again for the trips down memory lane❤
I’m into the video for 40 sec and I really liked the editing voice over and overall quality of the video it can easily be compared to commercially made videos awesome work in not sure why it hasn’t got more likes
Found your channel from looking for sega Saturn . Love your channel
Amazing content just subscribed, very well presented 👍🏽 I loved the Saturn still have mine with some amazing imports.
Great video, solid historic background. Much appreciated
This channel deserve more subs! I love your content
I didn't know that this even existed! It was indeed an interesting concept.
I think it was probably a VERY good idea, and would have done a lot for the system. Sega pulled the plug because they wanted to launch the DreamCast and I'm betting they felt it was not only going to put gamers into a situation like the 32X did... when they had just purchased a sega expansion hardware and a successor console drops like the next day AND if it improved the Saturn too much... it might have folks see no need to spend the money on the dreamcast.
Are you the person who designed the 64X? Because that sounds exactly like what the 64X's creator would say!
And that's why you put the SH-4 from the Dreamcast into an add-on. No need for SEGA and customers to spend $300/console when you could get 5 million polygons/sec for $50.
Wow really glad to subscribe this channel is utterly fascinating and the host is quite fetching as well
Thank you for covering something I genuinely didn't know about! Subbed
Very interesting and well produced video
Awesome video and channel.
You got my heart,and got a new subscriber !
Keep up the great work
Do a video on the 3do m2. I wanted that so bad back in the day.
They used the technology in cash machines and vending machines so it wasn't a total waste.
Me too, bro. I found out sony brought the m2 tech when 3do scraped it the idea. Sony was hooked on that m2 tech and bought it. From what Heard that ps2 uses a tweeted version of m2 tech on ps2. I remember seeing the m2 tech demo of shooter and it was very impressive.
i love your videos!!!
I had no idea. Thanks for sharing this fascinating piece of retro gaming
I appreciate your content Lady Decade. :-)
I genuinely wanted a Sega nomad as I was in a situation where it actually would have been practical as I lived in a dorm setting at school,so having a nomad I could plug in my room wasn't a bad option. I just didn't know it existed.
This kinda reminds me when AVGN covered the mess of ridiculous releases of Sega consoles back in the 90s lol
okay now i wanna watch some AVGN now
Did they include Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Nomad, and Game Gear?
Those emulated upscaled polys on the Saturn games look fantastic, don't they?
Excellent work on ferreting out these rather obscure yet fascinating bits of console lore, Lady D! You should have WAY more subs, and I know you will soon as more people get a video of yours in their sidebar.
The 2D prowess of the Saturn was part of why post-Kalinske Sega was unable to do anything with the system. Bernie Stolar, hired because he was responsible for the launch of the PlayStation (and ousted because he was keeping Squaresoft's FF7 out of America) instituted a "no 2D, no RPG" policy that effectively crippled the Saturn in the US. Not only were the absolute best Saturn games confined to Japan, but the 3D games (bar the miracle that is Virtua Fighter 2) looked amateurish next to the PlayStation and N64.
The real messed up thing was that Sega had a chance at both the Playstation and N64 hardware. Sega of America had met with Sony who wanted to combine efforts to make a joint 32bit console... Sega of Japan nixxed that idea. The hardware that became the N64 was also presented to SoJ by SoA, SoJ stated it was not up to spec for them, it was tweaked and presented again and SoJ still said no.
Imagine a Sega Sony joint console in the 90s, the Playstation was easier to get 3D titles out of, it likely could have done a good job bringing many of Sega's Virtua games home (it is also likely that Sega would have helped improved the specs with more ram and better 2D abilities).
Imagine a Sega console using the N64 hardware; Sega by that point had seen the benefits of CD media, so it is likely their Saturn64 would has used CDs, meaning more storage for textures, audio, levels etc... which was the N64s main problem.
@@lazarushernandez5827 I never heard about Sony talking to Sega about any hardware partnership, not to say it wasn't possible. However, I do know that a Sony-Nintendo collab was in the works, with Nintendo pulling out in the end.
@@zhangliao8175 Look up the interviews Tom Kalinske did, he was the President of Sega of America during the Genesis era. He is the one that revealed that Sega(of America) and Sony were in talks to partner up. They presented the idea to Sega of Japan who shut it down.
Bernie Stolar is part of why Sega fell. That idiot had no idea what he was doing with the Saturn in the US.
Making the Saturn 2D-focused in terms of hardware like an affordable Neo Geo was a mistake, solely because it was being made for SEGA, a company that refused to utilize 2D capabilities anymore, and in an era where comsumers wanted anything 3D instead of perfected 2D, encouraging the hand of the likes of SEGA to adopt such an attitude; imagine if something like Sonic Mania mixing the know-how of classic 2D Sonic with the 3D and other graphical breakthroughs of 3D Blast and Knuckles' Chaotix had hit the Saturn as its killer app, Sonic's Symphony of the Night moment.
Great video
I love your dedication, I really enjoy watching your videos ❤ I would like to see more from Atari :)
New sub like your style great informative vid 😊👍
Love the new mic btw >:3
LD thanks for the info on the 64x! One of the protos that I don't recall hearing of before now.
Great content
Imagine if Sega had put a fraction of the effort they put into mad hardware ideas into just making Sonic, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe etc. games for the Saturn to actually appeal to the fanbase they'd built up in Europe and America over the 90s...
Or if they'd let more of the Saturn's best titles appear stateside even. Hell, look at Nintendo. They've not been a mainstream powerhouse since the SNES, but they're wildly profitable because they feed their market. Instead of being so jealous of Sega of America that they sabotaged them at every turn, they should have looked at what was working and fed those fans what they wanted.
SEGA was a prideful Japanese company that took their western success for granted. Meanwhile the N64 saw its most success in the west, largely due to support from developers like Rare and Factor 5. The fact that Sonic Team wasn't mandated to have a Sonic game ready to go year one was a massive blunder. NiGHTS is fine but they underestimated the massive draw that a mascot like Sonic provided. Nintendo had the good sense to launch the N64 with a high quality Mario game and it made all the difference.
@@ShadowEl And when they DID get successful IP's in the western market (Eternal champions and such.) Sega of Japan would kill it.
@Dirk Platinum Just about. Sega Japan was NEVER successful. The Genesis did well in America because of Kalinske. The Master System and Megadrive did well in Europe and Australia because of Mastertronic. The Master System persists in Brazil because of TecToy. Left to their own devices, Sega Japan would have ran the Genesis into the ground as well, because they possessed a fatal combination of pride, jealousy and incompetence.
That is what we saw with the Saturn.
Cool channel!Good mix of humor and history. You don't sound like every other retrogaming channel saturating YT with boring ass/rehashed content.
If only Sega JP and US had worked together and used the resources for development of the 32X to put more into the development of the Saturn... even if the Saturn had been delayed, focusing more on exclusives and making it better hardware than the PlayStation, it could have had a much better chance at being successful outside of Japan. All 32X exclusives could have been early titles for the Saturn.
And of course, there needed to be a new Sonic game exclusive to the Saturn.
I remember getting the PS1 on launch,and thinking that the graphics, couldn't get any better!
The Dreamcast is seriously underrated 🔥
how comes i've never heard about this before? thank you for bringing this to my attention lady
Good decade video 😀
Love the channel Lady D! How about a vid. About the magazine electronic gaming monthly or better known as EGM. It was the only true source of no. Biased video game information here in the states and I was genuinely heartbroken with its demise. Keep up the good work!
3:04 Hey! That be me! LOL
I was scanning the comments as I thought that was you 😊
😀 Professional production quality videos! 😀
I was looking forward to this add-on. A magazine commented on it alongside a preview of Virtua Fighter 3. I'm a VF junkie, and was well into local tournaments for the first two games.
@@segaunited3855 are you an insider?
Great video! Where is that outro music from? It was a vintage masterpiece
I was so looking forward to the N64 DD :(
It's a shame Nintendo just couldn't make it work. At least most of the planned software ended up coming out on cartridge - including the very ambitious Animal Forest (AKA Animal Crossing)!
Yo I dig how you are not just regurgitating old info… to me it seems like each video is a step toward your very own niche. Also big shoutout to all the homies working hard behind the scenes helping you move forward .. Love yalls work
I absolutely echo this sentiment
@@BrasssMunky not really a sentiment bro .. more of a statement .
Loving these videos and looking forward to the other ones too. You make some great vids about the best (and worst) machines that we loved and loathed. Thanks for crediting me at the end, always nice to see that.
I've been playing video games since 1987... saw obscure consols and handhelds... never seen the 64X. Thank you for this video and keep up the good work!
They talked about it in video game magazines back in the day.
Lady D, I know you have a hate hardon for Nintendo on this channel but I don't think it's fair to say Nintendo was "screwing everything up" in 95-96 just because of the Virtual Boy failure and wasted 64DD development time. At that point, the DD was still being anticipated by the gaming press as the Ultra/N64 approached the horizon. The hardware delays were killer for Nintendo as Sony and SEGA launched on time in 95, but Nintendo made up for it by keeping the SNES/SFC strong with releases like Donkey Kong Country 2 and 3, and Yoshi's Island. While SEGA was struggling to keep the Genesis/MD relevant, Nintendo was doing a fine job keeping the SNES on life support. And the N64 only happened to launch with the massively successful and industry-shaping Super Mario 64. So yeah, not screwing EVERYTHING up.
She has SNES carts behind her.
@@bangerbangerbro she still takes the time to make disparaging comments and even full negative videos about Nintendo.
@@ShadowEl Nice.
if they ever do a Star trek the next generation reboot make sure to audition for the role of Diana troy :)
Pretty nice topic about Segas History 😃👏🎉
Wow! You taught me something new.
I thought I Knew everything there was about Sega’s history but I had no idea this was ever a thing!
Damn your channel is growing fast.
Not real. It originated in a Japanese gaming magazine, when translated it was clearly meant as a gag or satire. That's not to say that Sega wasn't working on a Saturn accelerator for VF3 but cool as this was, this wasn't it. First time I've been to this channel, great video! I love stories like this, as a kid I wanted a Saturn so bad!!
A Most Excellent Channel.
The CDi was my favorite console of that generation. Super underrated, it had some of the best games and an absolute fire controller.
subscribed!
I feel like it they had made the cartridge slot backwards compatible with Genesis/Mega Drive and 32X it would have given the Saturn a huge advantage in the market at the time.
What killed Sega was they took all the brunt of game development and add on hardware (think Time Crisis gun vs 32x add on). Sony's model was just to have studios build it themselves and if it didn't work they would take the brunt. Sega came back as a pure game developer but they didn't have the market power to compete with any new consoles.
That streets of rage footage at the very beginning looks lifted directly from the final boss in Final Fight (which I'm sure has been pointed out many times before) "Great ideas!"
Keep the good work...
That is pretty fascinating concerning the Model 3 as there were a fair number that didn’t get a Dreamcast port. At the reported price, I would have purchased one.
How have I both never heard of this device, and never seen your channel? I love Sega and retro gaming in general.
@@segaunited3855 the channel or the device? I still would have heard about the device at some point, but if it's a new channel, sure.
Wow I don't know that console! Good to know!
Looking forward to your M2 video
Very interesting video. What I like about your videos is that you don't use stock video clips.
thank you! Brava!!
Great video. Lockheed Martin was first involved with Sega for the Model 2 board, though.
This channel is growing fast! I've just joined a couple of weeks ago and I'm amazed by the quality of the content and the frequency it is updated. Just subscribed to Patreon, keep up the good work!
Wow your voice its perfect for retro games ...love that !
Those projected visuals look practically Dreamcast-like! It's a shame it never came to fruition.
Great video. Sega always went balls to the wall with the saturn and dreamcast. Always dreamed of having a saturn or a neo geo when I was kid.
bahahaha I love the bit at 3:04 where you use footage of Brian 'Since Spacies' looking cheerful on the Sega Australia hotline to somehow represent the war between Sega America and Sega Japan haha. I'll have to show him this as he'll love it and it'll crack him up haha. There's actually small joke meme community making funny lines using a similar but grumpy shot of him on the phone at Sega Australia so we'll have a make a new meme saying something like "Sega America.. F*CK YEAH!!!" hahaha
I'd love to see a live Lady Decade interview.
Sega and blackberry need to make comebacks. The world needs them.
Thank you for confirming that the picture at the start is of a piece of cheese.
The more history shines a light on the goings ons at SEGA, the more I'm convinced they failed because of how reactionary they were to whatever their competition came up with next. It was such an 80's method of developing hardware.
Sega's reason for declining is a list a mile long but i'd say the biggest issues not limiting their produced hardware, marketing and being a bit too difficult to work with when dealing with 3rd party developers.
I wouldnt say "reactionary" was their issue. Their bigger issue was not letting R&D be just that, they instead decided to manufacture everything. The 32X should have never happened. Every cent and minute spent on that project, should have been handed to the Saturn. Had that been the case, i think the Dreamcast would have sold better.
@@undergrounddojokeyboardcag701 That had more to do with the disconnect between Sega America and Sega Japan. SOJ should have been CLEAR as to how far along the Saturn was. SOA thought it was at least another year further away than it was.
Not that Sega hasn't had plenty of hardware snafus. The Sega CD was a massive boondoggle, and even their debut hardware in Japan, the SG-1000, was laughable to put out on the same day as the Famicom.
Never knew about this. From the footage it looks like it would've significantly outdone N64 graphics.
But I wouldn't liken it to the 32X - that had its own cartridges that went into it.
This "64X" is more akin to the N64's memory expansion Pak, in that the game media is the same, but something's plugged into the system elsewhere that allows it to be enhanced.
The Sega 64X add-on for the Sega Saturn was lame because it was basically a copied, pasted and edited version of the Sega 32X add-on for the Sega Genesis/Sega Mega Drive.
Wow! first time hearing of this