The Sega 32X

[dcultrapro]

yeah its a shame though as the 32x was actually focusing more on good 2d and some 3d with little or no FMV crap in sight. Despite the fact that I feel it was a complete failure I would love to have the money to own the better games on the system such as Kolibri, T-Mek, Shadow Squadron and a few of the others... just a shame they go for such mental money

[onthinice]

I keep telling myself that only a few more games and I could have a complete collection. The price keeps getting in the way of that happening.

[TL]

I keep telling myself that only a few more games and I could have a complete collection. The price keeps getting in the way of that happening.

It's a bit like the Jaguar in the way that there are a few games that just go for insane money

[onthinice]

I agree. I guess it is a good thing that these systems are wanted, but it just seems to put some games out of reach for the average person.

[dcultrapro]

ok so I have a problem now. You guys all know I have a 32x, MEGA CD 2 and Mega Drive 1, and I can run them all together via tv but ONLY if I use composite video and the sound from the headphone jack at the front. the Classic Games Room has the same setup as mine and some other people have said they can get the Mega Drive mk1 and 32x to work on a tv without the headphone jack but I just find it IMPOSSIBLE!! I have the Mk1 and mk2 composite AND scart versions of each cable and the ONLY viable option no matter how many variations I try is the one I mention above. I get picture via the mdmk2 scart cable from the 32x but no sound. Can't understand whats going on. I mean its not a MASSIVE deal but I'd really like to hear what people like Vyothric think as I've always had trouble with this behemouth setup to the point where I'm tempted to buy the MK 2

[dcultrapro]

what do you guys think, Have I solved the problem??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ky87a7dKfA

[TL]

Just came across this video for the unreleased version of Soul Star for the 32X

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtFcw2mYhNk

[onthinice]

Looks good. They should have bought a Star Wars license and made it a Return of the Jedi space battle.

[zapiy]

Looks great.

[dcultrapro]

I uploaded a vid of Stellar Assault from the 32x on my channel recently if those of you 32x fans fancy checking it out?

[Rogue Trooper]

Just in short: The 32X was a great decision by Sega, the only bad thing was they dropped it so early because Sega of Japan wanted all ressources poured into Saturn only. Sega of America wanted the 32X.
I dare to say the 32X could have helped Sega stay competeive; it was a success at first, sold like hot cakes until Sega could not deliver anymore in time. It was more than adequate for its purpose, who knows what we would have seen on it eventually. After all, all that was released was one generation of games. People could get 3D games without shelling out as much as for an all new console. Ingenious.

The 32X should have been supported longer, and the Saturn delayed to tweak the hardware to be better designed so that developers can make more use of the power. Sega could have launched a beefed up Saturn against the N64 then.

Sega's abandoning the 32X was actually my reason for abandoning them. I had saved cash for the 32X when they stopped supporting it, and their actions lead me to buy a PlayStation instead of a Saturn.

But that is of course off-topic.

My experiences with Sega hardware just don't match yours. I only ever experienced three defects with Sega systems, the Dreamcast going back to the bootscreen, the Mega-CD-1-tray not closing correctly and the GG capacitators go bad. I never saw anything else go wrong with any Sega machine.

IF someone could move the 32X part of the above post to the 32X thread, i'd be grateful as i'd love to continue the discussion, but don't want to de-rail this thread.

As for the Game Gear:again, i can only comment on my own personal experiences, lol.Sure there are many angry PS2, 360+PS3 owners out there, but i've never encountered the issues they have

[Rogue Trooper]

Thread bump as 108 Stars made some very interesting points in the Game gear thread, hopefully a MOD will port post over, but until then:

1)I totally agree Saturn should have been delayed and i'd say they should either have taken Silicon Knights offer of a single chip CPU and make saturn as easy to develop for and on par with, power wise the Playstation or..totally redesigned it to be a true 64 Bit CD based machine and go again'st the N64.But which ever route they took from those 2, they'd still face Sony's HUGE budget (Sony could easily afford to buy developers and exclusives and market the ass of the Playstation) and longer they left it, the higher market share the Playstation alone would of had-how many got fed up of waiting for the N64, but a Playstation instead?.

2)The 32X....i'll post on in seperate post in a little while.

[Rogue Trooper]

Cheers to whoever moved 108's post.

Ok then 32X a total disaster for SEGA and something that never should have happened in my eyes and i'll explain why:

1) It was the latest  from SEGA to try and keep the MD as a competitive format in face of increasing competition from likes of 3DO and Jaguar-a lot of us had been badly burned by SEGA with the MCD, it did'nt get the Scalar coin-op conversions we expected it to have (Outrun, Afterburner, Galaxy force, Powerdrift, Space Harrier etc, despite SEGA etc making a lot of fuss about the hardware's ability in handling sprites etc), instead they unwisely went for FMV and used the CD storage aspect instead so many times, that was followed by the SVP chip, which turned out to be too far removed from anything like being cost-effective to continue using and now here was 32X and Saturn was to follow after, plus rumours of Neptune (32X+MD) and we'd seen the CD-X and Nomad.

Think at 1 time on paper SEGA were supporting:MD, MCD, Pico, G.G and 32X, plus had teams working on Saturn games, just madness and Sega were streched thin (think that's why Saturn Virtua Racing was given to Time Warner), as a consumer you were left thinking SEGA's going to have to drop support on 1 or more of these, plus how long before the 32X is dropped in favour of the Saturn?

2)Failure to convert Scalar coin-op's to MCD was a poor choice, but bringing likes of Afterburner+Space Harrier to 32X was far worse, great as these games were in the day, they simply were not what punters expected on 32-Bit RISC based hardware (and SEGA cocked up on Saturn by bringing Gale racer to it, again, old game arriving far too late on wrong system), let alone as stand alone carts, had they been released as 2-in-1 budget titles, they might have fared better.

3)For all the talk of the extra 'power' the 32X gave the MD, when i look at just how that power was used, it seems so often it was either 'enhanced' versions of MD/MCD games-larger sprites, better use of colour, more parallax scrolling, clearer sound, extra frames of animation etc (and even then things like SNES MKII ran faster than 32X version, which is just bizzare) or the 32X exclusive stuff had to be comprimised somewhat i.e Metal Head:Great texture-mapping, but slow even for a MECH gameMotocross:3D, texture Mapping+scaling, but movement not really much more convincing than that found in a MD game of same ilk or impressive 3D, but game lacked depth (Starwars and Darxide).

Things like Stellar assault used plain polys, Motherbase had jerky scrolling, Doom ran in bordered window, Chaotix made great use of the colours, scaling routines etc but kept the polygons to a bonus level, was'nt much in way of baddies on screen at 1 time in main game, 36 Great Holes Golf+Motocross looked drab, blurry in places, cosmic Carnage, whilst using the scaling abilities and featuring large sprites was sluggish, had jerk animation, poor sound etc.

The only things i saw that really hinted at power of 32X (Darkxide aside) were Scavengers tech demo's and The X-Men demo, but since we're not talking full games here, hard to judge and Virtua Fighter, which just arrived far too late, had it been a launch game and a lot more games of this quality followed, things could have been very different for 32X.

3)as it stood, the system looked like a stop-gap until Saturn arrived and it's power was split between beefing up MD 2D+sound along with colours and some better than SVP chip 3D.

But SEGA really were not helping with things like Virtua Racing appearing on 3 formats i feel, just added to the confusion.

[Shadowrunner]

I bought a 32X shortly after launch and then ended up selling it awhile later when Sega abandoned it. I agree there isn't a lot of must have games on it but at the same time I really miss playing Virtua Racing and Star Wars Arcade to name a couple and for that reason one of these days I'm going to buy another one.
Like 108 said, we never saw the extent of what the hardware could do. Hopefully someday we will see some homebrew games developed for it.

[TL]

There is a homebrew version of Wolfenstein 3D for it, but it's not finished so is a bit rough around the edges at the moment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEf9SuRuRZM