joekenorer That is actually how it was written on Sega-16.net, I left it that way because I couldn't verify if Miller actually said it that way or not. But most likely a typo on the site.
16 colours per second? You probably meant in a frame, because there's nothing in particular happening in the console at second granularity, nor are VPU writes that much of a performance constraint; however that turns out not even to be strictly true - at half the horizontal resolution, full 512 colour output is possible, however CPU is halted during the active frame area, which normally limits the usefulness of this trick in a game; however, a cartridge co-processor wouldn't be halted, making this perfect for cartridge expansions. This is a synchronisation trick that carefully times an extra long DMA burst into background colour register of palette memory - as difficult as it was in software, again dedicated hardware in the cartridge could have helped. I don't know whether it was widely known or considered at the time - Jon Burton (Traveller's Tales) recently revealed that he was working on something like that back then, but never quite got it working in software - he did get the image output, but the routine needed to be hand tuned for every console and wasn't entirely reliable. Sigflup and Titan however did accomplish a robust implementation that works every single time a few years ago.
Frankly, the SVP cart would have been a better idea than the 32X business-wise. 40 bucks for a special cartridge that keeps the Genesis relevant for a little longer until the Saturn's actually ready would have been less of a debacle than a rushed $180 add-on that only released months apart from the base hardware's real successor and did nothing but sour consumer trust. But the root of all of SEGA's problems still stemmed back to Hayao Nakayama and the Japanese home office cutting Sega of America off at the knees and ruining all the work Tom Kalinske had done in making SEGA relevant over here. They were never the same and the effects can still be felt today.
Tom worked hard to get Sega into stores like Walmart and KB Toys. Then the rushed launch of the Saturn made stores angry at Sega and they refused to sell their products. Tom gave up and left.
@@doom5895 Miscommunication, weird business culture and lack of hindsight. From Sega, Capcom, Square, at some point they made a similar mistake over the years that really didn't benefit them in the end.
$49.95. SEGA had developed Daytona USA, Star Wars Arcade, Daytona USA, Virtua Racing, and Virtua Fighter. More important, it was already ready for Spring of 1994.
HistoricNerd If there were some method of reproducing the SVP chip then repros could be made with it. Unfortunately to make an SVP homebrew game play on real hardware a virtua racing cart would have to be destroyed and its ROM chip replaced with an EPROM programmed with said homebrew code.
@@GoldenGrenadier If you're still around, the MiSTER Genesis FPGA core now has support for the SVP. I'd love to see a standalone SVP core that could potentially work on a $20 FPGA or even cheaper.
I always fantasize about what kind of games and hardware you could find in alternate realities where things might have just gone that little bit different
One reality I've always though about is one where the production of new consoles had become illigal due to not flooding the market or something like that, so companies would have to make their 8 or 16 bit console evolve in another way like they did with these co-prossesor chips, but imagine were they would be if they had kept on working with that. Eventually the console itself would most likely be little more than a shell for the games that would carry it's own more powerful console inside. I think that's what the guy who made the Wolfenstein 3DS GBC cartridge did too.
I had wondered why since in Brazil the master system and genesis lasted so long why they hadn't taken the hardware to a new level. But that's where my thought process goes.
Yeah. I've been thinking the same, but I suppose it has more to do with the Genesis and it's games just filling a gap a placeholder instead of a leading fronteer The MSU1 chip for example is one really impressive little people of technology that blows the Sega CD out of the water when it comes to FMV. Of course the technology wouldn't have been afforable in any way shape or fashion back then but it is an interesting look into what the SNES can achieve and it had it been feasable during it's hay day, I would have loved to see what developers could have done with it.
If Sega had made a 3D game for the Saturn that used the 4mb ram expansion it would have looked amazing, probably better than an N64 title and at higher resolution.
I don't think the patent would have been too much of an issue, Codemasters were good friends with Sega, to the point (aside from EA), they were the only third party developer allowed to make their own official cartridges for the system. I'm quite perplexed why Virtua Fighter 2 exists on the Mega Drive/Genesis though.
Thanks for dropping by to comment! You're most likely right about the patent. I just thought it was a fun theory to share at the end. I found the filing date of the patent suspect, because of its proximity to Sega's SVP modular cartridge discussion with a number of game magazines. I developed this theory because Sega tried to sue a few others companies based of of their patent of "changing camera location" in the Virtua Racing Arcade cabinet. I had wondered what would have caused Sega to pull out of the SVP project even after announcing it, so it was just a fun item to explore.
I suspect that the reason they pulled out of the project was because the 32x achieved more than what the SVP delivered. realistically we have on the one hand a stand alone plug in adaptor that bypasses some of the Genesis/MD's hardware to provide even better gfx with stand alone titles that would be plugged into said adaptor, while on the other hand we have a stand alone plug in adaptor that bypasses some of the G/MD's hardware to provide better gfx with stand alone titles that would be plugged into said adaptor or via the CD attachment... The 32x really made this redundant.
Steven Benson price point of 50 bucks and shorter time to market would be a big advantage. And 32x was a really half-assed design, with worse cost/performance ratio.
Larry Bundy Jr Guru Larry! I agree with you as well! The way SoA president Tom Kalinske so their partners, I think they would have jumped on board with Codemasters. They way he spoke about teaming up with Sony for the Saturn development, how it would allow splitting costs and risk, by working together on the hardware, and also how he so strongly felt that it was far too early to drop Genesis support, this would have fit in perfectly. Without the need for the 32X to boot. Those games could have been downscaled to SVP or upscaled to Saturn standards instead. SoJ was always the issue in the 4th to 5th gen transition.
I imported Virtua Racing SVP for the Totally Video Game stores our parent company owned and I managed. It was a hit and we ordered 10 more, we couldn’t keep them in the store, they were constantly rented and the amount of money we made back on those rentals was obscene. I still have one of those copies along with a large inventory of Genesis boxed games I got to keep when the operation folded just before the tech bubble burst in 2000. I miss those days dearly, writing for VGA/Cyberactive and helping run the three Totally Video Game rental/retail stores. It was just an amazing time and gamers weren’t so jaded. *shakes fist at cloud at current video game landscape of loot boxes, micro-transactions, and kids paying $100 for a fucking digital hat.
There was discussion of a stand alone cart at one point. I think it came down to it would cannibalize their 32x sales if they had two different upgrades that went in the cartridge slot. Edit: he covered that in the vid. lol
@@AmaroqStarwind This vid is the first I've heard of that. I was teenager back then, followed it closely. The rumor going around at the time was Sega didn't want to canibalize sales. The patent dispute would have been the nail in the coffin for sure. At the time they had the Genesis, the Sega CD, the all in one CD console that never saw the states, the 32x and Saturn on the way, the Game Gear... Frankly the 32x could have been affected by that patent, so not sure if it really mattered or not.
Kind of wonder what would have happened if Sega just released a $50 SVP chip cart rather than making a ton of expensive under supported Genesis accessories and spreading themselves too thin.
Wow man I am consistently floored by the quality of your research and editing. This was a fascinating piece on a little known sega hardware topic that doesn't get much coverage. Loved this video bro.
Each one had it's own ac adapter as well so a Sega 32x cd console would have 3 heavy, awkward, plugs. Basically needing it's own strip. Then look at the games. Besides NBA Jam, NHL 94, and Lufia, they were all terrible.
Yup, I had the 32X and CD, so many heavy awkward plugs. I didn't ever own any games which required both the 32X and CD to run though. There weren't many of those.
If Sega of Japan and Sega of America worked together instead of fighting each other and wasting money on launching interal competing platforms, we would probably be playing a sega console today.
If they had just connected the pixel output buss on the VDP to the cartridge port that cable would not have been necessary. The Megadrive/Genesis VDP has address lines for an extra 64K of VRAM and a pixel buss that were unconnected on the board apparently because Sega at the time didn't see a use for them and it saved them a few pennies to just leave them unconnected. Had they been all of the bottleneck problems with the Sega CD scaling hardware and the SVP chip would not have existed. The Sega CD could also have added external CRAM for an additional 4 color pallets and a larger overall selection of colors. The VDP supports up to 32,000 colors and eight 16 color pallets with external CRAM but it couldn't be used because Sega didn't connect the pins to anything.
Man, that is some good production and research. You think the SVP could of bridge the gap between Genesis and the Saturn? The 32-X didn't seem to do so well from my memory.
+firehazard51 Yeah the main draw back of the 32x was cost and really poor release timing. I honestly think the SVP could have been a low cost option that kept the genesis viable for longer instead of the costly sink hole the 32x was. There was a ton of possibilities with the Svp but Sega had way different ideas.
Would it have been enough to save the Saturn though, doubtful. I've heard people like Sam Pettus say that one of the major reasons the Saturn failed was Sega's inability to create a good parallel programming environment prior to bringing the Saturn to market. Do you have any videos on the Saturn @HistoricNerd?
It would not have saved the Saturn. What killed the Saturn was the lack of games carrying over from popular Genesis/Master System IPs, not the hardware. It had no 3D mainline Sonic game, no Mickey Mouse or other Disney games when the blueprint was there with Clockwork Knight, no new Phantasy Star when RPGs exploded in popularity, no follow-up to Eternal Champions because Sega didn't want two fighting game IPs in the early-mid 90s, no Comix Zone for Saturn, no Ristar, no Toejam & Earl, etc. Imagine if Nintendo released the N64 without Mario 64, and never made a Wave Race, Star Fox, Zelda, etc. game during the entire life of the system, instead creating all new IPs that were unfamiliar to the gaming public. That's what Sega did with the Saturn.
I heard sega wanted to rush sonic 3 out to market for somev reason (xmas?), so they split the game in two and later released the modular sonic & knuckles cartridge that contained the other half of the sonic 3 's development content.
This whole video is a perfect microcosm of the biggest problem Sega ever and will ever have faced: tone-deaf executives shouting "WHAT IN THE FUCK IS A SONIC?" whilst snorting small mountains of cocaine. Genesis model 1, 2, 3, 32X, Sega CD, Sega CD/32X games, Gamegear, Sega Channel, Nomad, SVP chip, millions of officially licensed and officially retarded peripherals, towers of consoles that could be 7-layers high and require over a dozen cords, and countless other stupid bullshit hardware gimmicks that caused their game designers to never truly have a clue what in the fuck the hardware limitations were for any given game at any point in time. I cannot imagine being forced to work customer service for those coked up assholes and dealing with the biggest mess ever in the video game industry. By the time they finally learned their lesson and focused exclusively on making Dreamcast a good system it was far too late. Every intelligent person on planet Earth who also wasn't blinded by nostalgia said a giant collective FUCK YOU to Sega forever. I've heard legends saying to this very day some people are still so delusional that they think Sega could still possibly make a return to the console market with Dreamcast 2. The only sadder souls than theirs are living down in hell...
+djhenyo You mock the idea of Sega making a return to the console market yet Atari of all the fucking companies on Earth literally just did that. Friendly reminder this is the same company that's been off the radar for like 30+ years and were so desperate for money they gave an Atari branding license to some crappy kickstarter watch that has absolutely nothing to do with Atari or gaming. Literally *anything* is possible at this point.
I'd love to see what a SVP or 32X version of Daytona would have looked like. Virtua Racing is a great card, sure the 32X one is the better version, but I still like to play both.
They should have included the top slot in virtua racing and released it as an expansion card with a built in game - much more people would be interested in paying $100 for that. The 32x was worse in terms of costs for Sega, the Japanese branch should have stuck to their guns and pushed the company's president to dump the US-developed add-on in favour of the simpler and more cost effective project that the SVP was. The chip was more expensive than Nintendo's FX, but they'd negate this advantage by not selling additional silicon with each and every game like Nintendo did. This would give them a better profit margin (which I bet Nintendo had to lower in order to sell all those custom carts at reasonable prices anyway) and make their tech look better than Nintendo's.
HistoricNerd I bought VR for the Genesis dirt cheap a few years ago and the idea of turning it into an expansion cart was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw it. What blew my mind was that this was a true 3d accelerator that didn't require any additional hardware to function on a 16 bit console. SEGA had geniuses in their R&D, it's a real shame there were so much yes-men and numbskulls in management and marketing.
I've always thought Sega's issue was that they had very talented people and not a clear vision for what path to take to the next generation of systems so they ended up spreading themselves too thin. They had a lot of innovative ideas but lacked the ability to fully support any of them. I can only hope the emulator community for VR comes up with a way to repurpose a chip I would love to see that.
Yeah, the problem is that if they were going to make it expandable they should have done it from the beginning. But they kind of kept making the same mistake over and over... Charging the consumer extra for a large add on and then not having it be compatible with future ones. Either way you look at it you would have been out an extra $100 for just one game.
I remember getting a copy of this game in 1996 at a store I worked at. I was marked down I think 6 or 7 times. The final price (after 10% employee discount) was I believe in the 14 dollar range.
TheBlindingwhite I got my copy back when Sega ran a buy 1 get 1 promotion through kaybee toys so it ended up being a good deal I can't remember the other game I picked out though.
TheBlindingwhite I bought an import copy on launch day from ncx in Manhattan. Total cost 130 bucks. Still have it. Things could have been so different for my beloved SEGA had they listened to Tom.
I still have mine too. Matter of fact I still have all my games and system back to my 2600. I don't have a super large collection by any means but it's a decent little one.
I may be wrong, but it seems like Nintendo did pretty well with so much games using additional hardware build in the cartridges. Sega should have done the same. ...instead of Stuff like... 32 fuckin' X
Great video, nice work. I wish Sega never bothered with the 32X and just focused and ending the generation with a bang with highlight titles that got the most out of the vanilla hardware. The SVP was a better alternative though rather than another really expensive, superfluous add-on. But really, they should have just made like 1-3 must have games using the SVP like what Nintendo did with Starfox and Yoshi's Island. What I don't understand is, why did they design the SVP to be so powerful if it would be way too expensive to produce? Made no sense.
Rom size of the cart? But I have Virtua racing in box and on the back it says 16megs+SVP chip on the back.16 megabits is only 2 megabytes, which the same amount of rom data that Streets of Rage 2 used back in 92. Idk, I think it's because of how powerful the hardware inside the chip was.
Retro Soul another things that made it expensive is the ram, also the pin count inside the SVP and from licensing fee from samsumg since Sega bought the chip from them.
I didn't even know Sega had a chip like the FX.lol. Awesome video, man! I had to go back and look at the comments to make sure I hadn't already watched it while very very intoxicated.. I'm still not sure.. But I enjoyed it like it was the first time. Which it was.. probably.
And Sega eventually went under(in the console market) due to bad marketing decisions. Like rushing out all these addons and new consoles. The Saturn wasn't out long before they released the Dreamcast. Not that the Dreamcast was bad, its the fact they pissed off too many people. They had great systems and games, but they needed to slow down a little and stick to one thing at a time.
But Sega was also not doing as well as Nintendo and did make more marketing mistakes. That is also another big difference. Sega just couldn't keep up to other companies, and then Sony entered the console market and dominated it, so the weakest which was Sega died off due to not being able to compete anymore. Mind you another reason the dreamcast died was no anti piracy measures, so it hurt game sales on the Dreamcast and helped kill the system. Nintendo did make some mistakes, but none as damaging as what Sega did.
Console makers in general tend to support legacy systems for longer than you might think; the 14-year life of the PS2 is a pretty good example from recent years. The difference is that Sega was actively trying to extend the lifespan of the Genesis through a fuckton of add-ons, and failed with all of them, whereas companies like Sony and Nintendo simply supported their older systems for as long as they did because there was still a market for them, albeit a niche one; it's only when these markets become too small to be practical that the consoles are officially discontinued. This is why a system as successful as the Atari or the PS1 could be supported for what feels like a ridiculous amount of time, while a failure as big as the Wii U was thrown away less than two months before is successor released. The only outlier I can think of is the Neo-Geo, which was supported for just over 19 years despite not being too big of a success. Fun fact: the video game system with the longest lifespan in terms of support from its company is the Famicom. Lasting from 1983 to 2003, it had a life of 20 years, two months, and ten days.
Hell the Nintendo Power tip line was still up even when Nintendo already had new consoles out. Even the FDS had rewrite Kiosks in Japan still going many years after the FDS was discontinued, just because. Its crazy how long the Famicom and NES was being supported for.
I think they continued doing without consideration what had worked for them in the past. They iterated quickly multiple designs in the 8-bit era, so the Master System, one of the most advanced consoles of its generation, and pretty popular in Europe and Japan, was their second or third 8-bit console, depending how you count. They beat Nintendo to market with a 16-bit console, and that's pretty much the reason they could compete at all, else they would have gone unnoticed in most of the world. Saturn and Dreamcast are similarly very early entries of their given generation.
Kevster012 I agree to a sort. If they could have just kept releasing quality titles people would still buy those systems. More marketing wouldnt have hurt either. They just pulled the plug on software for those systems too fast. Yeah they werent selling but there werent any key titles being released either.
Very nice and informative. Thanks! A pity what really happened with 32X or SVP... one cannot help but wonder how many things they could be release with a better timing...
What a shame Sega didn't go the SVP lock on route and instead choose to go with the 32X. I think it would have had a better chance of success, with the lower price point attracting consumers reluctant to buy an expensive add-on likely to be obsolete within a year.
I remember reading about this lock on cart and being excited by the idea as VR cost a lot with its inclusion. I remember there was a segment in Sega Magazine here in the U.K. detailing the specs of the chip that made it sound amazing - and I believe it was written by Rich Leadbetter who founded Digital Foundry. Even back then he was into his tech-specs! I should see if I still have that mag! Good vid BTW!
Interesting video! I honestly did not know Sega was working on yet another genesis add on. Kinda makes ya wonder what would've happened if they just combined this, the 32x and the Sega CD into its own console instead.
This video makes me realize how stupid it was for Nintendo (and Sega for one game) to have their co-processor chips attached to the game cartridges themselves. Yes, it makes it simpler for the consumer as you just buy a game cartridge as normal and you don't need to wrap your mind around an accessory that needs to be purchased in order to play a game. But still, having the co-processor as a mini cart that you insert the actual game into would have kept the price of the games that used it down. Hell, they could have sold it for cheap to both encourage people to buy the games that used it, and shut up people who would complain about being "forced" to buy an accessory.
The Nintendo FX carts weren't any more expensive than regular carts, but then the SVP was much more powerful than the FX chip. I do agree though, that a mini cart attachment would have made a lot more sense for Sega!
I often wonder if the version of Daytona USA on Saturn is simply the version from the 32X they were working on since they were pressed for time? It has the same draw distance as Virtua Racing on Genesis.
When I heard that Queens intro I couldn't find the Subscribe button fast enough. The videos themselves are good, too! Thanks for the solid Sega research... it's the best kind of research.
Fascinating video. Was this public information back then? I never even knew about it and I read a lot of game magazines at the time... I just don’t recall it. I’m interested to see what other videos you’ve done.
@@HistoricNerd I don't know how I missed it, maybe I was just so focused on the Saturn, but I love that gaming history is so dense there's always something to learn.
@@DrGamelove I honestly missed it at the time myself as well and I was obsessed with Virtua Racing on the Genesis at that point. I didn't find it untill I started researching the project.
Sega just flooded the market with too many ideas. I loved the Sega CD but never thought, I need another add on when I was still enjoying it. By the time I might have upgraded, the 32X was already bargain bin material and seemed pointless. Being a fan of both Nintendo and Sega there was already plenty to play. I feel like the FX chip kind of stole Sega’s thunder. Maybe that’s why it didn’t get much coverage.
Wow I wonder if any one will leak the roms of the other games that is that chip for Sega. We already know Virtua fighter was completed and running with the chip on Genesis I wonder how it looked
If it was for the SVP and Sega CD, it could have looked good. Only the cars and crew would be polygonal; everything else would be scaled and rotated sprites and background textures.
Nice video! Very informative and interesting; I was just young enough to catch the tail-end of this era, but not really fully live it. I know this type of video requires a lot of time and research, but I'd love to see more content like this on a regular basis!
I have more videos coming. :D They just take me longer to produce because I treat this more as a hobby but next video is about 40% done if that gives you some hope.
This would have worked and bought some time for the Saturn. The Saturn needed a year to get some solid games before bringing it over and charging so much for it. Add that to the SVP cart being overall cheaper to manufacture and cheaper price for the consumer while also allowing them the option to play any game they want, and you could have kept Sega going without them having to cave during the Dreamcast era due to losing money. Instead they would have made hand over fist. We'd still have Sega consoles competing with Nintendo to this day.
Nice video, good to see something about the SVP. A couple of small remarks: 1) at some point in the video you say "internal data bus 16 BYTES", whereas clearly it should be BITS. 2) later in the video you mention the Genesis "only generating 16 colors per second", which doesn't actually mean anything. At any rate, good work!
SVP, SEGA CD and 32x... Too many stuff no commitment to any. Ultimately, it killed all the accessories, and, I would dare to say, also helped to do some damage to the Saturn.
Mega CD actually got a lot of games. SVP had one great game and 32X sure was underused. They should have continued making games for it even though Saturn was out.
A little bit of correction... the bus is 16 bit, not 16 bytes (the on screen spec is correct, while the voice over is not), so is the cache memory, which should not be just called memory, as it would be confused with general RAM.
Imagine SVP lock on cart but also an optional Sega CD disc for CD sound the way Pier Solar shipped. Still a bit of a "tower of power" situation but probably $100 cheaper than the 32X/Sega CD combo.
falsehero2001 it would have been a better raute how ever Sega thought damm we have to sell games at 100 dollars now, and gamers back in my days were mainly us kids who didn't have jobs. Sega should of made the 32x a console but didn't because the Saturn was around the corner Sega was just out dated always one step behind Nintendo.
One of the most consistent things about the rise and mostly fall of Sega is they had many good ideas but none of them fully fleshed-out or given the chance to really fly they too often we're all about moving on to "the next thing" and sadly the next "console". A practice that would eventually turn them into the hollow shell they are today.
The chips weren't GPUs or rasterisers (not the same thing. blitters, rasterisers and the like are not GPUs). They were DSPs/Coprocessors that could do extra math fast.
That "only" $40 difference between SVP games and Super FX games is equivalent to ~$66 today. $60 game carts in 1994 were the equivalent of nearly $100 today. A $100 game cart was the equivalent to $166 today. The SVP had a HUGE price problem. To put it into perspective, the most expensive cart on the SNES at the time was Final Fantasy III (VI) at $80 ($133 in today's money). Nice catch on the Codemaster's patent, though!
I'll admit the wording is poorly chosen. It was me trying to find the right words that allowed for the transition into the discussion about standalone unit.
If they would have released the standalone SVP instead of the 32X. I think consumers would have been more accepting of the earlier games that released during that time. Since game developers weren’t ready for the 3D era. Not to mention paying 50$ is more reasonable than paying 150$.
@@HistoricNerd. Well it's kind of like when Weird Al Yankovic parodies somebody's music, you know they Have made it big. Well when a TH-cam channels Production and entertainment value starts to remind you of another good channel, you know you are not too far behind them, Don't sell yourself short.
@@aarongreenfield9038 Thank you for the compliment should have lead with that. :) Im a big fan of Splash wave, watching his videos has certainly given me more inspiration for motion graphics.
I think comparing the SVP with the SFX is like comparing apples to oranges since they work differently the SVP is itself a graphics processor made to replace the one built in the Genesis console but the SFX is a CO processor that actually works with the SNES's graphics processor keeping the SNES's color palette and video modes.
It’s funny that the SVP was meant to be a bit like the 32x but in a cartridge, and then sega came up with the idea of the SVP being an external add on XD
Nice video. It is a fascinating piece of tech all things considered. I think it could have been the price that could've been the issue as to why we never seen any more SVP games. I only was able to rent Virtua Racing back in the day and I know I wouldn't have been able to afford the game as I was a child of a middle class, blue collar family and I'm sure my folks would not have wanted to spend that much to buy it either, lol. But it was impressive at the time and could have been a competitor for the Super FX. It was interesting to hear that they planned to make a Sonic & Knuckle type cart for it though. Funny enough, many, many years later I was able to buy a copy of VR, CiB, for much less than $100. Can't remember how much I paid but it was under $100. that was a few years back so I don't know how much the game goes for now, atm. I would guess that this is an uncommon game within the collecting community.
that little blurb in this video saying the "Genesis" (i.e. the Megadrive) "not popular/successful in Japan" is VERY debatable. I'd argue it had a pretty strong user base and popularity with at least two (or more) major Megadrive magazines published monthly in Japan like Megadrive Fan and Beep Megadrive starting in '91~ish and ran until '94 (rebranded into Sega Saturn magazines once the Saturn was released. ( I highly doubt those magazines (such as Megadrive Fan) would of been published if the console didn't have a fairly strong user base in Japan.)
Imagine if Sega had supported the SVP and not tried the 32x and Saturn while including DVD functionality in Dreamcast they'd probably still be a console king.
The SVP probably would have still had the same type of fate that the 32x had. Probably not quite as bad as it did not require a much as the 32x in terms of getting it to work. But the main thing is that most consumers were moving on and the little third party support they had were working on games for the Saturn to really release great games on the SVP.
One of the biggest missed opportunities. Offering a cheap upgrade for the aging genesis via a simple small cartridge adapter to add scaling/rotation and a bigger color palette to compete with the Snes.
It makes sense that Samsung manufactured the SVP. They were the distributors in S. Korea for the Sega systems. The Genesis was under the name of the "Super Aladdin Boy".
I didn't know Sega was considering a standalone SVP expansion. While I think it would have been interesting to see more SVP games like Virtua Racing, the idea of a standalone chip would have been a REALLY stupid idea. One of the most common complaints about Sega in the mid 90's was that it was difficult to figure out what the Genesis's successor would be. 32x? CD? Were you supposed to have both? And what about the Saturn? That would have been even worse if Sega ALSO started advertising that you would need ANOTHER expansion to play some games. Additionally, imagine the mess of setting it up. The SVP was similar to the 32X, but seeing as how Virtua Racing only works if the 32x is unplugged, the expansion would have most likely been similar. Meaning that you would need to unplug your 32x every time you wanted to play an SVP game.
You're probably right about that. Sega had way too many systems to really support this thing and their company vision for the future was even more divided among them. I just love that Sega had this idea and even told people they were doing it and then cut their losses and moved on to the next thing. I think its a great what if kind of thing.
I honestly hadn't even thought about the SVP chip when I was younger but it wasn't until recently when I started to see some videos about the Super FX chip and I was like "wait did sega ever respond to that" and that was the genesis of this video.
So, Sega's strategy for a modular SVP cartridge could be summed up as: Make things even more confusing with yet another Genesis/Mega Drive hardware add-on!
Definitely can but not as good as the CD and 32x due to them having more ram in them. However, since it's connecting to genesis cart slot. It is easier to develop scaling games on it than the Sega CD.
First off, good video, you're on the right track. Nevertheless, the intro chip-tune is probably infringing on QOTSA's work (name of song, "No One Knows") and more importantly, a DSP a graphics chip is not. In consoles of the time, and up to the Saturn, DSPs were used as array processors in order to handle 3D matrix calculations, yet they could be used for many other things as well, hence the OEM Samsung chip used in the SVP.
That is certainly something I have been considering. Thanks for the extra info about the chip. I was trying to keep the video really simple in the explanation because I'm sure there could be a whole video just explaining the hardware more in depth.
Its such a shame that Segas management of their console and hardware released was such a shitshow. Everything they did after the initial Genesis console was them trying to run with great force and tripping on their own feet until they finally fell on the knife with the dreamcast. All great hardware that they basically made to get in their own way each time. Really strange and I wonder to this day what morons made all of their very short sighted choices that ended them in the hardware scene.
You sure do say "Virtual Racing" and "Virtual Fighter" a lot for someone who went out of his way to make sure that people say "Virtua" instead of "Virtual" in reference to the SVP. ;) Now, if the SVP lock-on games truly required the SVP cartridge then they would be made to look completely different and unable to insert directly into a Genesis... ...unless they also planned to make them work in an updated Genesis or 32X without the SVP cartridge (integrated SVP) then it would make sense to design them like that. Codemasters had the right idea. That patent shows carts that look really similar to their Aladdin Deck Enhancer NES carts.
So I actually just had different people listen to audio of me saying Virtua and Virtual and they're actually split down the middle depending on the speed i say it at. I know when i talk i can at times i dont fully annunciate which the audio sounding like me saying virtual actually gives me a pretty big laugh....because it is a common mistake but I know when I was recording that i was saying Virtua.....because I made that point at the beginning of the video lol. Yeah the design you see in the video is something i mocked up entirely and i based the idea off parts of cartridges that people had seen before to draw more interest to it. But it does make sense that sega would change the modular carts to only fit with the SVP cart to prevent any confusion with consumers. Yea the patent the end is for the Aladdin deck...I made a mistake in my assumption of its capabilities. I still think the wording "Graphics Co-Processor" could end up in court. But thats why it was just a fun theory i put at the end of the video.
Great video! While researching it did you come across anything to do with overclocking the SVP chip? There's been a few people who have overclocked the Super FX chip to make StarFox look smoother (it actually just speeds the game up rather than increases the frame rate) and I've always wondered if the SVP could be similarly overclocked to smooth Virtua Racing out at bit. I've done a bit of googling for it and didn't find anything. I'd love to know if AM2 ever finished Virtua Fighter for the SVP, that's a game I'd love to try! In fact I'd love to see all the Model 1 games on the SVP.
From what i found there is an emulation community that has a lot of documentation about it but as far as my research took me i don't think they've been successful in getting the chip to do any extra system pushing stuff.
HistoricNerd Thanks for the info! Maybe one day there will be a MegaDrive flash cart like the SD2SNES with an FPGA to emulate the SVP (not that the SD2SNES does SuperFX yet anyway!)
I had no Idea that Sega came up with their own console add-on accessory chip like the Super FX. I think I saw Virtua Racing in the store but I wasn't really interested in racing games for home consoles back then. It's too bad the lock-on cartridge idea didn't work out (I had Sonic and Knuckles and Sonic 2 and 3 and I plugged them together and I thought it was awesome).
I know how they should have made the svp chip on genesis. They should have made it as an upgrade with the virtua racing game on it where users could attach another svp game on top of it without an additional chip on it that way it be a piggy back to save money for sega fans!!
You made sentences from developers move onto the screen and sometimes the transitions look strange. There are other videos which just leave the text on the same position and it does not feel weird. Just saying.
SEGA barked up the wrong tree with the chip pushing polygons at such an early stage imo. Sure it was a novel thing at the time, but personally I wanted to see sprite scaling/rotation, more colors/transparency/layers and better music. A lock-on cart that gave the system NeoGeo like capabilities early on would have been a better investment. Just imagine more games on the Megadrive doing what Nintendo did with Yoshi's Island.
Even though the 32X was a failure, it does make for some fun gaming using an emulator, especially with Virtua Racing Deluxe, Virtua Fighter, Mortal Kombat II, Star Wars, Doom and to a lesser extent Knuckles Chaotix (which is imo worth playing because of it's awesome music). It was much more easily emulated compared to the Saturn, of which I'm not even sure that it can be emulated to full speed even to this day. There is of course the option to use MAME though and the arcade ports of Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter I & II, and Star Wars.
I really enjoy my 32X I find its story to be equally as interesting as the SVP. Joe miller has a great article on Sega 16 about it where he talks about how a lot of what the 32x did was taught 3rd party devs to make games for the Saturn because it required multi processor programming. I've played a crap ton of Shadow squadron, I love that game for the 32x.
I just bought a real 32X again recently, I enjoy it a lot too. I also got a Mega EverDrive along with it so that I can have its full library of games. I managed to hack (with help) the Japanese version of Virtua Racing Deluxe to work on a North American 32X, and it's even better because it saves your trophies and high scores on SRAM, where as the American version didn't.
great video man! lots of good info. i personally didn't buy the svp virtua racing until maybe 5 years ago, and it's ok. But i have had the 32x version since launch and it really blows it away! I think people that hate on the 32x don't remember how popular it was at launch. the Saturn really shouldn't have been released so early, and that's the real problem. Sega had way too many platforms competing with themselves. But the innovation is awesome still. the svp virtua racing is super fast compared to stunt race fx on snes.
Its Bits not Bytes, I miss spoke.
And at 7:15, it's coin-op, not coin-up.
joekenorer That is actually how it was written on Sega-16.net, I left it that way because I couldn't verify if Miller actually said it that way or not. But most likely a typo on the site.
16 colours per second? You probably meant in a frame, because there's nothing in particular happening in the console at second granularity, nor are VPU writes that much of a performance constraint; however that turns out not even to be strictly true - at half the horizontal resolution, full 512 colour output is possible, however CPU is halted during the active frame area, which normally limits the usefulness of this trick in a game; however, a cartridge co-processor wouldn't be halted, making this perfect for cartridge expansions.
This is a synchronisation trick that carefully times an extra long DMA burst into background colour register of palette memory - as difficult as it was in software, again dedicated hardware in the cartridge could have helped. I don't know whether it was widely known or considered at the time - Jon Burton (Traveller's Tales) recently revealed that he was working on something like that back then, but never quite got it working in software - he did get the image output, but the routine needed to be hand tuned for every console and wasn't entirely reliable. Sigflup and Titan however did accomplish a robust implementation that works every single time a few years ago.
Ahh, interesting factoid then. Leave it.
There are 4 bits in a byte.
Frankly, the SVP cart would have been a better idea than the 32X business-wise. 40 bucks for a special cartridge that keeps the Genesis relevant for a little longer until the Saturn's actually ready would have been less of a debacle than a rushed $180 add-on that only released months apart from the base hardware's real successor and did nothing but sour consumer trust. But the root of all of SEGA's problems still stemmed back to Hayao Nakayama and the Japanese home office cutting Sega of America off at the knees and ruining all the work Tom Kalinske had done in making SEGA relevant over here. They were never the same and the effects can still be felt today.
Tom worked hard to get Sega into stores like Walmart and KB Toys. Then the rushed launch of the Saturn made stores angry at Sega and they refused to sell their products. Tom gave up and left.
@@SgtSega sega of Japan is so braindead, why?
@@doom5895 Miscommunication, weird business culture and lack of hindsight. From Sega, Capcom, Square, at some point they made a similar mistake over the years that really didn't benefit them in the end.
$50 + $50 16bit game is, 100. $150+ $50 32bit game,is 200. I think most would choose 32 bit. More colors, 16 more bits.
$49.95. SEGA had developed Daytona USA, Star Wars Arcade, Daytona USA, Virtua Racing, and Virtua Fighter. More important, it was already ready for Spring of 1994.
There needs to be an SVP homebrew community.
Golden Grenadier I'd totally buy one of those games.
HistoricNerd If there were some method of reproducing the SVP chip then repros could be made with it. Unfortunately to make an SVP homebrew game play on real hardware a virtua racing cart would have to be destroyed and its ROM chip replaced with an EPROM programmed with said homebrew code.
Then we're gonna need some reverse engineering!
@@GoldenGrenadier No need for destroying original Virtua Racing cartridges, it's possible to recreate the SVP chip on an FPGA.
@@GoldenGrenadier If you're still around, the MiSTER Genesis FPGA core now has support for the SVP. I'd love to see a standalone SVP core that could potentially work on a $20 FPGA or even cheaper.
I always fantasize about what kind of games and hardware you could find in alternate realities where things might have just gone that little bit different
Right there with you.
One reality I've always though about is one where the production of new consoles had become illigal due to not flooding the market or something like that, so companies would have to make their 8 or 16 bit console evolve in another way like they did with these co-prossesor chips, but imagine were they would be if they had kept on working with that. Eventually the console itself would most likely be little more than a shell for the games that would carry it's own more powerful console inside.
I think that's what the guy who made the Wolfenstein 3DS GBC cartridge did too.
I had wondered why since in Brazil the master system and genesis lasted so long why they hadn't taken the hardware to a new level. But that's where my thought process goes.
Yeah. I've been thinking the same, but I suppose it has more to do with the Genesis and it's games just filling a gap a placeholder instead of a leading fronteer
The MSU1 chip for example is one really impressive little people of technology that blows the Sega CD out of the water when it comes to FMV. Of course the technology wouldn't have been afforable in any way shape or fashion back then but it is an interesting look into what the SNES can achieve and it had it been feasable during it's hay day, I would have loved to see what developers could have done with it.
If Sega had made a 3D game for the Saturn that used the 4mb ram expansion it would have looked amazing, probably better than an N64 title and at higher resolution.
I don't think the patent would have been too much of an issue, Codemasters were good friends with Sega, to the point (aside from EA), they were the only third party developer allowed to make their own official cartridges for the system.
I'm quite perplexed why Virtua Fighter 2 exists on the Mega Drive/Genesis though.
Thanks for dropping by to comment! You're most likely right about the patent. I just thought it was a fun theory to share at the end. I found the filing date of the patent suspect, because of its proximity to Sega's SVP modular cartridge discussion with a number of game magazines. I developed this theory because Sega tried to sue a few others companies based of of their patent of "changing camera location" in the Virtua Racing Arcade cabinet. I had wondered what would have caused Sega to pull out of the SVP project even after announcing it, so it was just a fun item to explore.
Larry Bundy Jr
larry, i love ya, but you don't understand the corrupt us courts
I suspect that the reason they pulled out of the project was because the 32x achieved more than what the SVP delivered. realistically we have on the one hand a stand alone plug in adaptor that bypasses some of the Genesis/MD's hardware to provide even better gfx with stand alone titles that would be plugged into said adaptor, while on the other hand we have a stand alone plug in adaptor that bypasses some of the G/MD's hardware to provide better gfx with stand alone titles that would be plugged into said adaptor or via the CD attachment...
The 32x really made this redundant.
Steven Benson price point of 50 bucks and shorter time to market would be a big advantage. And 32x was a really half-assed design, with worse cost/performance ratio.
Larry Bundy Jr Guru Larry! I agree with you as well! The way SoA president Tom Kalinske so their partners, I think they would have jumped on board with Codemasters. They way he spoke about teaming up with Sony for the Saturn development, how it would allow splitting costs and risk, by working together on the hardware, and also how he so strongly felt that it was far too early to drop Genesis support, this would have fit in perfectly. Without the need for the 32X to boot. Those games could have been downscaled to SVP or upscaled to Saturn standards instead. SoJ was always the issue in the 4th to 5th gen transition.
I imported Virtua Racing SVP for the Totally Video Game stores our parent company owned and I managed. It was a hit and we ordered 10 more, we couldn’t keep them in the store, they were constantly rented and the amount of money we made back on those rentals was obscene. I still have one of those copies along with a large inventory of Genesis boxed games I got to keep when the operation folded just before the tech bubble burst in 2000. I miss those days dearly, writing for VGA/Cyberactive and helping run the three Totally Video Game rental/retail stores. It was just an amazing time and gamers weren’t so jaded. *shakes fist at cloud at current video game landscape of loot boxes, micro-transactions, and kids paying $100 for a fucking digital hat.
Sega should have just made Virtua Racing itself a Lock-On unit, so that you could plug other games into Virtua Racing.
Hindsight is 20/20..smh.
Sega wasn't known to do sensible things back then. Would have been a game changer
There was discussion of a stand alone cart at one point.
I think it came down to it would cannibalize their 32x sales if they had two different upgrades that went in the cartridge slot.
Edit: he covered that in the vid. lol
@@glenwaldrop8166 I thought the stand-alone cart was canceled because of patent disputes.
@@AmaroqStarwind This vid is the first I've heard of that.
I was teenager back then, followed it closely. The rumor going around at the time was Sega didn't want to canibalize sales. The patent dispute would have been the nail in the coffin for sure.
At the time they had the Genesis, the Sega CD, the all in one CD console that never saw the states, the 32x and Saturn on the way, the Game Gear...
Frankly the 32x could have been affected by that patent, so not sure if it really mattered or not.
Kind of wonder what would have happened if Sega just released a $50 SVP chip cart rather than making a ton of expensive under supported Genesis accessories and spreading themselves too thin.
it's amazing how SEGA cared about 3D arcade ports so early, and then went on making the Saturn a 2D-oriented machine :p
Sega was anything, but predictable.
@@HistoricNerd They were stupid
The problem with Sega at that time was that the company lacks focus and specific goal.
It was internal fighting that ruined them too. SOA vs SOJ, and STI was having infighting on top of that!
Wow man I am consistently floored by the quality of your research and editing. This was a fascinating piece on a little known sega hardware topic that doesn't get much coverage. Loved this video bro.
Oh So Jiggly Thanks man. I hope to do more like this.
I wish they had stuck with the cartridge instead of the 32x.
The shouldn't had done either. Sega killed itself with add-ons.
Each one had it's own ac adapter as well so a Sega 32x cd console would have 3 heavy, awkward, plugs. Basically needing it's own strip. Then look at the games. Besides NBA Jam, NHL 94, and Lufia, they were all terrible.
Yup, I had the 32X and CD, so many heavy awkward plugs. I didn't ever own any games which required both the 32X and CD to run though. There weren't many of those.
If Sega of Japan and Sega of America worked together instead of fighting each other and wasting money on launching interal competing platforms, we would probably be playing a sega console today.
If they had just connected the pixel output buss on the VDP to the cartridge port that cable would not have been necessary. The Megadrive/Genesis VDP has address lines for an extra 64K of VRAM and a pixel buss that were unconnected on the board apparently because Sega at the time didn't see a use for them and it saved them a few pennies to just leave them unconnected. Had they been all of the bottleneck problems with the Sega CD scaling hardware and the SVP chip would not have existed. The Sega CD could also have added external CRAM for an additional 4 color pallets and a larger overall selection of colors. The VDP supports up to 32,000 colors and eight 16 color pallets with external CRAM but it couldn't be used because Sega didn't connect the pins to anything.
Man, that is some good production and research. You think the SVP could of bridge the gap between Genesis and the Saturn? The 32-X didn't seem to do so well from my memory.
+firehazard51 Yeah the main draw back of the 32x was cost and really poor release timing. I honestly think the SVP could have been a low cost option that kept the genesis viable for longer instead of the costly sink hole the 32x was. There was a ton of possibilities with the Svp but Sega had way different ideas.
Would it have been enough to save the Saturn though, doubtful. I've heard people like Sam Pettus say that one of the major reasons the Saturn failed was Sega's inability to create a good parallel programming environment prior to bringing the Saturn to market. Do you have any videos on the Saturn @HistoricNerd?
ActionX not yet but I have projects in the pipe line for it. I tend to support Sam's theory on that.
@@pupthelovemonkey "Would it have been enough to save the Saturn though, doubtful." Why would the Genesis SVP have been expected to save the Saturn?
It would not have saved the Saturn. What killed the Saturn was the lack of games carrying over from popular Genesis/Master System IPs, not the hardware. It had no 3D mainline Sonic game, no Mickey Mouse or other Disney games when the blueprint was there with Clockwork Knight, no new Phantasy Star when RPGs exploded in popularity, no follow-up to Eternal Champions because Sega didn't want two fighting game IPs in the early-mid 90s, no Comix Zone for Saturn, no Ristar, no Toejam & Earl, etc. Imagine if Nintendo released the N64 without Mario 64, and never made a Wave Race, Star Fox, Zelda, etc. game during the entire life of the system, instead creating all new IPs that were unfamiliar to the gaming public. That's what Sega did with the Saturn.
Incredible work. You're knocking it out of the park with the quality of content and production value.
+Junkball Media Thank you! coming from you that means a lot to me. The great stuff you put out has influenced my want for better quality.
The lock-on technology was also used for Sonic & Knuckles.
I forgot to mention that in the video! I actually had notes about that but didnt include it >.
I heard sega wanted to rush sonic 3 out to market for somev reason (xmas?), so they split the game in two and later released the modular sonic & knuckles cartridge that contained the other half of the sonic 3 's development content.
They knew even Sonic 3 alone would miss the christmas deadline. Thats why Sega decided to make Sonic spinball.
This whole video is a perfect microcosm of the biggest problem Sega ever and will ever have faced: tone-deaf executives shouting "WHAT IN THE FUCK IS A SONIC?" whilst snorting small mountains of cocaine. Genesis model 1, 2, 3, 32X, Sega CD, Sega CD/32X games, Gamegear, Sega Channel, Nomad, SVP chip, millions of officially licensed and officially retarded peripherals, towers of consoles that could be 7-layers high and require over a dozen cords, and countless other stupid bullshit hardware gimmicks that caused their game designers to never truly have a clue what in the fuck the hardware limitations were for any given game at any point in time. I cannot imagine being forced to work customer service for those coked up assholes and dealing with the biggest mess ever in the video game industry. By the time they finally learned their lesson and focused exclusively on making Dreamcast a good system it was far too late. Every intelligent person on planet Earth who also wasn't blinded by nostalgia said a giant collective FUCK YOU to Sega forever. I've heard legends saying to this very day some people are still so delusional that they think Sega could still possibly make a return to the console market with Dreamcast 2. The only sadder souls than theirs are living down in hell...
+djhenyo You mock the idea of Sega making a return to the console market yet Atari of all the fucking companies on Earth literally just did that.
Friendly reminder this is the same company that's been off the radar for like 30+ years and were so desperate for money they gave an Atari branding license to some crappy kickstarter watch that has absolutely nothing to do with Atari or gaming. Literally *anything* is possible at this point.
All I can think of is when AVGN commented on the Genesis like it was on life support with all the add ons for that system.
SEGA loves attachments
LIL D 916 I guess you could say they are very attached to them. Badum cheesh.
coming out with dreamcast attachment called nightmare
and they say apple is in the forefront
Would love to see footage of the other concept games.
I'd love to see what a SVP or 32X version of Daytona would have looked like. Virtua Racing is a great card, sure the 32X one is the better version, but I still like to play both.
They should have included the top slot in virtua racing and released it as an expansion card with a built in game - much more people would be interested in paying $100 for that. The 32x was worse in terms of costs for Sega, the Japanese branch should have stuck to their guns and pushed the company's president to dump the US-developed add-on in favour of the simpler and more cost effective project that the SVP was. The chip was more expensive than Nintendo's FX, but they'd negate this advantage by not selling additional silicon with each and every game like Nintendo did. This would give them a better profit margin (which I bet Nintendo had to lower in order to sell all those custom carts at reasonable prices anyway) and make their tech look better than Nintendo's.
Michał Pawlak that would have been nuts if virtua racing was expandable. I think my younger self's brain would have melted if I had seen that.
HistoricNerd I bought VR for the Genesis dirt cheap a few years ago and the idea of turning it into an expansion cart was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw it. What blew my mind was that this was a true 3d accelerator that didn't require any additional hardware to function on a 16 bit console. SEGA had geniuses in their R&D, it's a real shame there were so much yes-men and numbskulls in management and marketing.
I've always thought Sega's issue was that they had very talented people and not a clear vision for what path to take to the next generation of systems so they ended up spreading themselves too thin. They had a lot of innovative ideas but lacked the ability to fully support any of them. I can only hope the emulator community for VR comes up with a way to repurpose a chip I would love to see that.
Yeah, the problem is that if they were going to make it expandable they should have done it from the beginning.
But they kind of kept making the same mistake over and over... Charging the consumer extra for a large add on and then not having it be compatible with future ones.
Either way you look at it you would have been out an extra $100 for just one game.
Michał Pawlak is similar to the the MPEG slot of the Saturn or Superboy cart?
I remember getting a copy of this game in 1996 at a store I worked at. I was marked down I think 6 or 7 times. The final price (after 10% employee discount) was I believe in the 14 dollar range.
TheBlindingwhite I got my copy back when Sega ran a buy 1 get 1 promotion through kaybee toys so it ended up being a good deal I can't remember the other game I picked out though.
TheBlindingwhite I bought an import copy on launch day from ncx in Manhattan. Total cost 130 bucks. Still have it. Things could have been so different for my beloved SEGA had they listened to Tom.
I still have mine too. Matter of fact I still have all my games and system back to my 2600. I don't have a super large collection by any means but it's a decent little one.
I may be wrong, but it seems like Nintendo did pretty well with so much games using additional hardware build in the cartridges. Sega should have done the same. ...instead of Stuff like... 32 fuckin' X
The 32X itself should have been a cheaper add on, no hassle. Those dang plugs required a special adaptor for crying out loud. lol
Great video, nice work. I wish Sega never bothered with the 32X and just focused and ending the generation with a bang with highlight titles that got the most out of the vanilla hardware.
The SVP was a better alternative though rather than another really expensive, superfluous add-on. But really, they should have just made like 1-3 must have games using the SVP like what Nintendo did with Starfox and Yoshi's Island. What I don't understand is, why did they design the SVP to be so powerful if it would be way too expensive to produce? Made no sense.
It's due to the ROM size in the cart. I wish they add data and storage decompression like SA1 in the SVP chip to reduce the size).
Rom size of the cart? But I have Virtua racing in box and on the back it says 16megs+SVP chip on the back.16 megabits is only 2 megabytes, which the same amount of rom data that Streets of Rage 2 used back in 92.
Idk, I think it's because of how powerful the hardware inside the chip was.
You are right, just checked as well.
Retro Soul another things that made it expensive is the ram, also the pin count inside the SVP and from licensing fee from samsumg since Sega bought the chip from them.
In the video he said that they had certain games that were hits that had to work. They could not make it weaker.
I didn't even know Sega had a chip like the FX.lol. Awesome video, man! I had to go back and look at the comments to make sure I hadn't already watched it while very very intoxicated.. I'm still not sure.. But I enjoyed it like it was the first time. Which it was.. probably.
P2000Camaro Haha. I picked the music while buzzed on beer so I hope that kept your buz in a good place.
Amazing level of research here - loved that Codemasters patent that you uncovered at the end!
Thanks, I appreciate that. It may not be the reason they didnt move forward with it but thought it was something really interesting to share.
That chiptune version of No One Knows though.
SonofSethoitae totally :)
Yeah I liked that too.
@@HistoricNerd Where can I find the chiptune song you have used in the video?
Thanks in advance! :)
Fo sho
And Sega eventually went under(in the console market) due to bad marketing decisions. Like rushing out all these addons and new consoles. The Saturn wasn't out long before they released the Dreamcast. Not that the Dreamcast was bad, its the fact they pissed off too many people. They had great systems and games, but they needed to slow down a little and stick to one thing at a time.
But Sega was also not doing as well as Nintendo and did make more marketing mistakes. That is also another big difference. Sega just couldn't keep up to other companies, and then Sony entered the console market and dominated it, so the weakest which was Sega died off due to not being able to compete anymore. Mind you another reason the dreamcast died was no anti piracy measures, so it hurt game sales on the Dreamcast and helped kill the system. Nintendo did make some mistakes, but none as damaging as what Sega did.
Console makers in general tend to support legacy systems for longer than you might think; the 14-year life of the PS2 is a pretty good example from recent years. The difference is that Sega was actively trying to extend the lifespan of the Genesis through a fuckton of add-ons, and failed with all of them, whereas companies like Sony and Nintendo simply supported their older systems for as long as they did because there was still a market for them, albeit a niche one; it's only when these markets become too small to be practical that the consoles are officially discontinued. This is why a system as successful as the Atari or the PS1 could be supported for what feels like a ridiculous amount of time, while a failure as big as the Wii U was thrown away less than two months before is successor released. The only outlier I can think of is the Neo-Geo, which was supported for just over 19 years despite not being too big of a success.
Fun fact: the video game system with the longest lifespan in terms of support from its company is the Famicom. Lasting from 1983 to 2003, it had a life of 20 years, two months, and ten days.
Hell the Nintendo Power tip line was still up even when Nintendo already had new consoles out. Even the FDS had rewrite Kiosks in Japan still going many years after the FDS was discontinued, just because. Its crazy how long the Famicom and NES was being supported for.
I think they continued doing without consideration what had worked for them in the past. They iterated quickly multiple designs in the 8-bit era, so the Master System, one of the most advanced consoles of its generation, and pretty popular in Europe and Japan, was their second or third 8-bit console, depending how you count. They beat Nintendo to market with a 16-bit console, and that's pretty much the reason they could compete at all, else they would have gone unnoticed in most of the world. Saturn and Dreamcast are similarly very early entries of their given generation.
Kevster012 I agree to a sort. If they could have just kept releasing quality titles people would still buy those systems. More marketing wouldnt have hurt either. They just pulled the plug on software for those systems too fast. Yeah they werent selling but there werent any key titles being released either.
Very nice and informative. Thanks! A pity what really happened with 32X or SVP... one cannot help but wonder how many things they could be release with a better timing...
Got a new subscriber here. Love learning about gaming history. Great video.
What a shame Sega didn't go the SVP lock on route and instead choose to go with the 32X. I think it would have had a better chance of success, with the lower price point attracting consumers reluctant to buy an expensive add-on likely to be obsolete within a year.
I remember reading about this lock on cart and being excited by the idea as VR cost a lot with its inclusion. I remember there was a segment in Sega Magazine here in the U.K. detailing the specs of the chip that made it sound amazing - and I believe it was written by Rich Leadbetter who founded Digital Foundry. Even back then he was into his tech-specs! I should see if I still have that mag!
Good vid BTW!
Thank you! let me know what you find out in that magazine id love to know.
Interesting video! I honestly did not know Sega was working on yet another genesis add on. Kinda makes ya wonder what would've happened if they just combined this, the 32x and the Sega CD into its own console instead.
Man, I love your videos.
Thanks! I've been really enjoying your videos as well.
I feel your channel will be hitting tens of thousands subscribers in no time :)
Amazing vídeo, pretty well done. Well edited, well narrated
Eric P. Alvaro Thank you for that. I hope to keep improving my content.
This video makes me realize how stupid it was for Nintendo (and Sega for one game) to have their co-processor chips attached to the game cartridges themselves. Yes, it makes it simpler for the consumer as you just buy a game cartridge as normal and you don't need to wrap your mind around an accessory that needs to be purchased in order to play a game. But still, having the co-processor as a mini cart that you insert the actual game into would have kept the price of the games that used it down. Hell, they could have sold it for cheap to both encourage people to buy the games that used it, and shut up people who would complain about being "forced" to buy an accessory.
fireaza I think it honestly would have been a pretty innovative idea had Sega followed through.
They didn't seem to have a problem selling any Star Fox or Yoshi's Island carts.
The Nintendo FX carts weren't any more expensive than regular carts, but then the SVP was much more powerful than the FX chip. I do agree though, that a mini cart attachment would have made a lot more sense for Sega!
I often wonder if the version of Daytona USA on Saturn is simply the version from the 32X they were working on since they were pressed for time? It has the same draw distance as Virtua Racing on Genesis.
Thx for this video. I hadn't even heard of the SVP chip. Fascinating stuff.
When I heard that Queens intro I couldn't find the Subscribe button fast enough. The videos themselves are good, too! Thanks for the solid Sega research... it's the best kind of research.
Great video! It makes me want the stand-alone SVP to exist!
After I made the mock up....I really wanted it to be real.
well, you know what that means? you're going to have to make one! lol
Let me get back to you after 6 years of Electronic engineering school.
sounds... plausible?
Hmmm Kick Starter?
good research. very informative. pure and simple. subscribed. keep the good work.
Fascinating video. Was this public information back then? I never even knew about it and I read a lot of game magazines at the time... I just don’t recall it. I’m interested to see what other videos you’ve done.
As far as I know the SVP add on was public knowledge in the gaming mags but I think it was over looked at the time however
@@HistoricNerd I don't know how I missed it, maybe I was just so focused on the Saturn, but I love that gaming history is so dense there's always something to learn.
@@DrGamelove I honestly missed it at the time myself as well and I was obsessed with Virtua Racing on the Genesis at that point. I didn't find it untill I started researching the project.
Sega just flooded the market with too many ideas. I loved the Sega CD but never thought, I need another add on when I was still enjoying it. By the time I might have upgraded, the 32X was already bargain bin material and seemed pointless. Being a fan of both Nintendo and Sega there was already plenty to play. I feel like the FX chip kind of stole Sega’s thunder. Maybe that’s why it didn’t get much coverage.
Wow I wonder if any one will leak the roms of the other games that is that chip for Sega. We already know Virtua fighter was completed and running with the chip on Genesis I wonder how it looked
Always love watching these vids!
+Retroware :) glad to hear it!
I can't imagine how horrible a Daytona USA port for the Genesis would have been, but I would still have loved to see it.
If it was for the SVP and Sega CD, it could have looked good. Only the cars and crew would be polygonal; everything else would be scaled and rotated sprites and background textures.
good video. the svp was always a interesting what could of been topic for sega.
David Steck Absolutely. I had wondered why so little was written about it. so I had to do it myself and discovered some really cool things about it.
Nice video! Very informative and interesting; I was just young enough to catch the tail-end of this era, but not really fully live it. I know this type of video requires a lot of time and research, but I'd love to see more content like this on a regular basis!
I have more videos coming. :D They just take me longer to produce because I treat this more as a hobby but next video is about 40% done if that gives you some hope.
Speaking of SEGA and Samsung, you should do the history of every SEGA console in South Korea, since Samsung was SEGA's distributor back then.
That would be a fun video actually
This would have worked and bought some time for the Saturn. The Saturn needed a year to get some solid games before bringing it over and charging so much for it. Add that to the SVP cart being overall cheaper to manufacture and cheaper price for the consumer while also allowing them the option to play any game they want, and you could have kept Sega going without them having to cave during the Dreamcast era due to losing money. Instead they would have made hand over fist. We'd still have Sega consoles competing with Nintendo to this day.
Nice video, good to see something about the SVP. A couple of small remarks: 1) at some point in the video you say "internal data bus 16 BYTES", whereas clearly it should be BITS. 2) later in the video you mention the Genesis "only generating 16 colors per second", which doesn't actually mean anything. At any rate, good work!
8-bit QOTSA for the intro.... excellent!
SVP, SEGA CD and 32x...
Too many stuff no commitment to any. Ultimately, it killed all the accessories, and, I would dare to say, also helped to do some damage to the Saturn.
Mega CD actually got a lot of games. SVP had one great game and 32X sure was underused. They should have continued making games for it even though Saturn was out.
A little bit of correction... the bus is 16 bit, not 16 bytes (the on screen spec is correct, while the voice over is not), so is the cache memory, which should not be just called memory, as it would be confused with general RAM.
Imagine SVP lock on cart but also an optional Sega CD disc for CD sound the way Pier Solar shipped. Still a bit of a "tower of power" situation but probably $100 cheaper than the 32X/Sega CD combo.
Unreleased SVP games in the Sega Mega Drive mini 2? (Wishful thinking mode on).
SVP would have been a better direction then the 32x.
falsehero2001 it would have been a better raute how ever Sega thought damm we have to sell games at 100 dollars now, and gamers back in my days were mainly us kids who didn't have jobs. Sega should of made the 32x a console but didn't because the Saturn was around the corner Sega was just out dated always one step behind Nintendo.
One of the most consistent things about the rise and mostly fall of Sega is they had many good ideas but none of them fully fleshed-out or given the chance to really fly they too often we're all about moving on to "the next thing" and sadly the next "console". A practice that would eventually turn them into the hollow shell they are today.
oh shit this channel is similar to the Gaming Historian Channel, good vid.
The chips weren't GPUs or rasterisers (not the same thing. blitters, rasterisers and the like are not GPUs). They were DSPs/Coprocessors that could do extra math fast.
duuuuude... congrats on getting this picked up and seen! That's so AWESOME!! :D
+CaffeinatedTigress Thanks :)
That "only" $40 difference between SVP games and Super FX games is equivalent to ~$66 today. $60 game carts in 1994 were the equivalent of nearly $100 today. A $100 game cart was the equivalent to $166 today. The SVP had a HUGE price problem. To put it into perspective, the most expensive cart on the SNES at the time was Final Fantasy III (VI) at $80 ($133 in today's money).
Nice catch on the Codemaster's patent, though!
I'll admit the wording is poorly chosen. It was me trying to find the right words that allowed for the transition into the discussion about standalone unit.
If they would have released the standalone SVP instead of the 32X. I think consumers would have been more accepting of the earlier games that released during that time. Since game developers weren’t ready for the 3D era.
Not to mention paying 50$ is more reasonable than paying 150$.
It would $50 and more cheaper than the 32x and its games.
Very informative and entertaining, this reminds me a lot of splash waves channel.
I wish i was as Talented as that channel, His stuff is on an entirely different level.
@@HistoricNerd. Well it's kind of like when Weird Al Yankovic parodies somebody's music, you know they Have made it big. Well when a TH-cam channels Production and entertainment value starts to remind you of another good channel, you know you are not too far behind them, Don't sell yourself short.
@@HistoricNerd. I mean look, you've even attracted Larry Bundy junior to your comment section, not too shabby.
@@aarongreenfield9038 Thank you for the compliment should have lead with that. :) Im a big fan of Splash wave, watching his videos has certainly given me more inspiration for motion graphics.
@@HistoricNerd. 👍
Man I remember that. damn it's been so like thanks dude the information was impressive
Subbed when I heard Sonic's teleport sound in the beginning lol.
I think comparing the SVP with the SFX is like comparing apples to oranges since they work differently the SVP is itself a graphics processor made to replace the one built in the Genesis console but the SFX is a CO processor that actually works with the SNES's graphics processor keeping the SNES's color palette and video modes.
Love these vids, keep them up. I ended up getting a Jaguar over a 32x....wish I’d waited for the PS
16 BYTES-wide data buses!? Holy shit so it was a 128-bit processor? Cool, man.
It’s funny that the SVP was meant to be a bit like the 32x but in a cartridge, and then sega came up with the idea of the SVP being an external add on XD
Thank you for the video. It answered a bunch of my questions and theories.
No problem! Appreciate the comment!
Nice video.
It is a fascinating piece of tech all things considered. I think it could have been the price that could've been the issue as to why we never seen any more SVP games. I only was able to rent Virtua Racing back in the day and I know I wouldn't have been able to afford the game as I was a child of a middle class, blue collar family and I'm sure my folks would not have wanted to spend that much to buy it either, lol. But it was impressive at the time and could have been a competitor for the Super FX. It was interesting to hear that they planned to make a Sonic & Knuckle type cart for it though.
Funny enough, many, many years later I was able to buy a copy of VR, CiB, for much less than $100. Can't remember how much I paid but it was under $100. that was a few years back so I don't know how much the game goes for now, atm. I would guess that this is an uncommon game within the collecting community.
that little blurb in this video saying the "Genesis" (i.e. the Megadrive) "not popular/successful in Japan" is VERY debatable.
I'd argue it had a pretty strong user base and popularity with at least two (or more) major Megadrive magazines published monthly in Japan like Megadrive Fan and Beep Megadrive starting in '91~ish and ran until '94 (rebranded into Sega Saturn magazines once the Saturn was released. ( I highly doubt those magazines (such as Megadrive Fan) would of been published if the console didn't have a fairly strong user base in Japan.)
I am a simple man. I love Josh Homme and I love retro gaming. You sir, made a chip tune out of QOTSA, I have no words...
Criminally underrated channel!
Thank you!
First time viewing your channel, but was that a chip tune version of QOTSA "No One Knows?" If so, that's an indicator of a quality channel.
jo hn It is indeed
Imagine if Sega had supported the SVP and not tried the 32x and Saturn while including DVD functionality in Dreamcast they'd probably still be a console king.
The SVP probably would have still had the same type of fate that the 32x had. Probably not quite as bad as it did not require a much as the 32x in terms of getting it to work.
But the main thing is that most consumers were moving on and the little third party support they had were working on games for the Saturn to really release great games on the SVP.
Great info
Thanks!
Man I want those svp games ! I didn't know vf was done
I wonder if it would be possible to have a port of Doom by using the SVP on genesis.
That's something I'd love to see as well.
It probably wouldn't have been much better than the snes port, but I'm sure you could do it.
One of the biggest missed opportunities. Offering a cheap upgrade for the aging genesis via a simple small cartridge adapter to add scaling/rotation and a bigger color palette to compete with the Snes.
It makes sense that Samsung manufactured the SVP. They were the distributors in S. Korea for the Sega systems. The Genesis was under the name of the "Super Aladdin Boy".
Awesome video, and sad we did not get the SVP add on, or the stand alone Neptune console from SEGA.
Commodorefan64 I've always wanted a Neptune to be honest.
I didn't know Sega was considering a standalone SVP expansion. While I think it would have been interesting to see more SVP games like Virtua Racing, the idea of a standalone chip would have been a REALLY stupid idea. One of the most common complaints about Sega in the mid 90's was that it was difficult to figure out what the Genesis's successor would be. 32x? CD? Were you supposed to have both? And what about the Saturn? That would have been even worse if Sega ALSO started advertising that you would need ANOTHER expansion to play some games. Additionally, imagine the mess of setting it up. The SVP was similar to the 32X, but seeing as how Virtua Racing only works if the 32x is unplugged, the expansion would have most likely been similar. Meaning that you would need to unplug your 32x every time you wanted to play an SVP game.
You're probably right about that. Sega had way too many systems to really support this thing and their company vision for the future was even more divided among them. I just love that Sega had this idea and even told people they were doing it and then cut their losses and moved on to the next thing. I think its a great what if kind of thing.
OMG i love your videos!!! Please make more!
Thanks! I got another one coming out in about a month
Great video, never heard of SVP Chip... strange because I even owned a Virtua Racing cart like that for years.
I honestly hadn't even thought about the SVP chip when I was younger but it wasn't until recently when I started to see some videos about the Super FX chip and I was like "wait did sega ever respond to that" and that was the genesis of this video.
So, Sega's strategy for a modular SVP cartridge could be summed up as: Make things even more confusing with yet another Genesis/Mega Drive hardware add-on!
+Eric Kleefeld pretty much.....
i wonder if the SVP chip would have helped Genesis to handle super scalers like After Burner and Space Harrier.
Definitely can but not as good as the CD and 32x due to them having more ram in them. However, since it's connecting to genesis cart slot. It is easier to develop scaling games on it than the Sega CD.
great work! I love learning about hardware. I am super subscribed!
Dillons Rolling Western Glad to hear it!
First off, good video, you're on the right track. Nevertheless, the intro chip-tune is probably infringing on QOTSA's work (name of song, "No One Knows") and more importantly, a DSP a graphics chip is not. In consoles of the time, and up to the Saturn, DSPs were used as array processors in order to handle 3D matrix calculations, yet they could be used for many other things as well, hence the OEM Samsung chip used in the SVP.
That is certainly something I have been considering. Thanks for the extra info about the chip. I was trying to keep the video really simple in the explanation because I'm sure there could be a whole video just explaining the hardware more in depth.
No worries, keep up the good work!
Its such a shame that Segas management of their console and hardware released was such a shitshow. Everything they did after the initial Genesis console was them trying to run with great force and tripping on their own feet until they finally fell on the knife with the dreamcast. All great hardware that they basically made to get in their own way each time. Really strange and I wonder to this day what morons made all of their very short sighted choices that ended them in the hardware scene.
You sure do say "Virtual Racing" and "Virtual Fighter" a lot for someone who went out of his way to make sure that people say "Virtua" instead of "Virtual" in reference to the SVP. ;) Now, if the SVP lock-on games truly required the SVP cartridge then they would be made to look completely different and unable to insert directly into a Genesis...
...unless they also planned to make them work in an updated Genesis or 32X without the SVP cartridge (integrated SVP) then it would make sense to design them like that. Codemasters had the right idea. That patent shows carts that look really similar to their Aladdin Deck Enhancer NES carts.
So I actually just had different people listen to audio of me saying Virtua and Virtual and they're actually split down the middle depending on the speed i say it at. I know when i talk i can at times i dont fully annunciate which the audio sounding like me saying virtual actually gives me a pretty big laugh....because it is a common mistake but I know when I was recording that i was saying Virtua.....because I made that point at the beginning of the video lol. Yeah the design you see in the video is something i mocked up entirely and i based the idea off parts of cartridges that people had seen before to draw more interest to it. But it does make sense that sega would change the modular carts to only fit with the SVP cart to prevent any confusion with consumers. Yea the patent the end is for the Aladdin deck...I made a mistake in my assumption of its capabilities. I still think the wording "Graphics Co-Processor" could end up in court. But thats why it was just a fun theory i put at the end of the video.
Great video! While researching it did you come across anything to do with overclocking the SVP chip? There's been a few people who have overclocked the Super FX chip to make StarFox look smoother (it actually just speeds the game up rather than increases the frame rate) and I've always wondered if the SVP could be similarly overclocked to smooth Virtua Racing out at bit. I've done a bit of googling for it and didn't find anything.
I'd love to know if AM2 ever finished Virtua Fighter for the SVP, that's a game I'd love to try! In fact I'd love to see all the Model 1 games on the SVP.
From what i found there is an emulation community that has a lot of documentation about it but as far as my research took me i don't think they've been successful in getting the chip to do any extra system pushing stuff.
HistoricNerd Thanks for the info! Maybe one day there will be a MegaDrive flash cart like the SD2SNES with an FPGA to emulate the SVP (not that the SD2SNES does SuperFX yet anyway!)
I had no Idea that Sega came up with their own console add-on accessory chip like the Super FX. I think I saw Virtua Racing in the store but I wasn't really interested in racing games for home consoles back then. It's too bad the lock-on cartridge idea didn't work out (I had Sonic and Knuckles and Sonic 2 and 3 and I plugged them together and I thought it was awesome).
I know how they should have made the svp chip on genesis. They should have made it as an upgrade with the virtua racing game on it where users could attach another svp game on top of it without an additional chip on it that way it be a piggy back to save money for sega fans!!
Good video
Strange editing
Sean Lecca In what way, I'm curious. I kinda edited it with a side scrolling idea in mind so I was basically just playing with that theme as a base.
You made sentences from developers move onto the screen and sometimes the transitions look strange.
There are other videos which just leave the text on the same position and it does not feel weird. Just saying.
Thanks for the feed honest feed back.
SEGA barked up the wrong tree with the chip pushing polygons at such an early stage imo. Sure it was a novel thing at the time, but personally I wanted to see sprite scaling/rotation, more colors/transparency/layers and better music. A lock-on cart that gave the system NeoGeo like capabilities early on would have been a better investment.
Just imagine more games on the Megadrive doing what Nintendo did with Yoshi's Island.
Hands down best intro ever!
Even though the 32X was a failure, it does make for some fun gaming using an emulator, especially with Virtua Racing Deluxe, Virtua Fighter, Mortal Kombat II, Star Wars, Doom and to a lesser extent Knuckles Chaotix (which is imo worth playing because of it's awesome music). It was much more easily emulated compared to the Saturn, of which I'm not even sure that it can be emulated to full speed even to this day. There is of course the option to use MAME though and the arcade ports of Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter I & II, and Star Wars.
I really enjoy my 32X I find its story to be equally as interesting as the SVP. Joe miller has a great article on Sega 16 about it where he talks about how a lot of what the 32x did was taught 3rd party devs to make games for the Saturn because it required multi processor programming. I've played a crap ton of Shadow squadron, I love that game for the 32x.
I just bought a real 32X again recently, I enjoy it a lot too. I also got a Mega EverDrive along with it so that I can have its full library of games. I managed to hack (with help) the Japanese version of Virtua Racing Deluxe to work on a North American 32X, and it's even better because it saves your trophies and high scores on SRAM, where as the American version didn't.
great video man! lots of good info. i personally didn't buy the svp virtua racing until maybe 5 years ago, and it's ok. But i have had the 32x version since launch and it really blows it away! I think people that hate on the 32x don't remember how popular it was at launch. the Saturn really shouldn't have been released so early, and that's the real problem. Sega had way too many platforms competing with themselves. But the innovation is awesome still. the svp virtua racing is super fast compared to stunt race fx on snes.
Yeah, I feel like the 32x gets a bum wrap. I enjoy mine but yeah the SVP is just a really interesting idea.
Interesting video. The chip spec text being dark gray on a dark gray background wasn't a good choice. The voice over also mixed up bits and bytes.