Right!? I personally love the idea of being able to upgrade a console in this manner. Granted this probably could have been done better, but it really is a fun thought.
Had their been a way to enhance existing genesis games that would have made it sell as well. Imagine Phantasy Star IV with a better color palette or extra sound channels
@@geoffreychauvin1474The original Genesis Model 1 had an FM sound module available that dramatically improved the sound clarity. Only on the model 1 though.
they should sold the genesis sega cd all in one on 1993, and upgrade it in 1995 with a 32x CPU cartridge to stay until the dreamcast... only if they had migrating all the games to cd version and left the cartridge for savegames and 32x cpu this would be a success, but they never exploit it system to the edge.
I think the question that always baffled me is: How do they expect the saturn or 32x to get third party support if you're intentionally splitting the market?
Add-ons are rare outside of Sega? WTF? Famicom Disk System? PC Engine CD? Arcade Card? Satelliview? Intellivoice? Starpath Cassette? This isn't even a complete list.
That probably would have answered all of SOA concerns and I doubt the 32x would have happened. But man the Saturn probably would have been real expensive as a result.
@@HistoricNerd It shouldn't have been more expensive. It already has most of the hardware to play Sega Genesis games such as a Motorola 68k processor, the VDP1 might have been able to have had a legacy mode built in, the Saturn's sound chip could have been able to accept Genesis games sound. The groundwork was already there and for no good reason backwards compatibility was not built in.
While backwards compatibility had been done before, by companies like Atari, it wasn't really prioritized by entertainment companies in the 90s. Nintendo home consoles didn't have cartridge interoperability, and Sony was just starting out with the PS1. Outside of the GameBoy line, It wasn't really a selling point back then the way it is now. Maybe being compatible with music CDs could be considered a form of back compat? It wasn't until the 2000s, when the PS2 launched that backwards compatibility really made companies notice it as an important value-add.
*The only thing the 32X succeeded in:* Being the first nail in the Sega Saturn's coffin before it was even released. The Sega CD was a meaningful experiment in gaming history, it's existance is justifed. The 32X? Not so much.
@@HistoricNerd Every company back then was trying their hand at a CD Add-on. And the only one that didn't have one was Nintendo, because they wussed out on their deal with Sony at the last minute. But even the Super Nintendo nearly had a "Sega CD" like expansion device.
@@Gametester110-qf8vs oh absolutely, I spent a while trying to get information out of Philips about the CD add on they were going to make for Nintendo.
I think the 32X could have been a great budget option, but with the Sony Playstation looming Sega should have just gone all in on the Saturn and saved the money they spent on the 32X
I was so confused when this video started. I saw "MISTAKES WERE MADE" on the video art and thought this was a new MODERN VINTAGE GAMER video. However, it was a HISTORICNERD video... Which, is just as good if not better. A+
Sega having no confidence in the 32X didn't help matters. I was heavily into Sega products throughout the 90s and loved my Genesis. I didn't even know the 32X existed because I never saw one bit of marketing advertising it. Finally one day in 1997 I was standing in the electronics section of Ames department store and saw a bunch of them on a top shelf almost out of sight and marked down to $20 each. Twenty bucks for a new game console that comes with a free game? Sign me up! I still have it to this day.
The biggest mistake was not designing Saturn to accept 32X for more CPU power. If you're already programming a Saturn game to use 2x Hitachi SH2, you can make it 4x SH2 cpu. If you bought 32X already, you were much more likely to buy Saturn if you could still get 32X benefits!
I asked for a Sega Saturn for Christmas, and my mom got me a 32X instead because the store clerk told her it "plays 32 bit games" and she thought that meant it could play "any" 32 bit game.
People don't understand that it takes years to make good games for a console. This means that if the 32X was released it could take 2-3 years before good games would actually come out for it.
If Sega had not even released the 32x and both Japan and the US put all their resources into making good dev kits and more games for the Saturn. Maybe the Saturn could have had legs in the west
Absolutely their priority should have been the dev kits. Things were wild in the 90s because tech was advancing so rapidly. While we normally associate SDKs with the API software stack, the internal Sega devs were talking about an Operating System. Saturn really needed a proper OS to handle task scheduling between the 2 CPUs and various chips. Coding to the bare metal was becoming too complicated. Sega didn’t have very functional dev tools ready until SDK versions 2 and 3 in 1997-98. Saturn had an effective 3-year lifespan of 95-97 in the USA.
Sega's real plan was to do this, keep Sega Saturn exclusive to Japan while 32X remain exclusive to NA. Their plan only failed cause someone leak the Saturn to journalist oversea so by that point everyone oversea was like "oh so that's the real console, then what was the point of this 32X adapter?" After that Sega of America then make an announcement that says 32X is just a bridge between Genesis and Saturn, the Saturn is the actual main console and 32X is only here to offer experience to those who can't afford Saturn. Needless to say this didn't work and a lot of people who was waiting for the 32X never bought one and rather wait for the Saturn instead. This also cause third party devs to decide whether they should focus on the add-on or the main console, they prefer to just focus on the main console instead. Most of the loyal customers who decided to wait for the Saturn saying they saw that it also had a 32X style cartridge slot in there so by waiting they should be able to play both 32X, Genesis, and Saturn games. What they don't know is that the cartridge slot is for ram used only and not to play any kind of cartridge games thus when Sega reveal this those who wanted a Sega Saturn walk away and wait for the PlayStation instead. When the PlayStation launch, it outsell both the Sega 32X and Sega Saturn combined and then some, Sega had doom themselves from the beginning. From that point on Sega was losing money up til the day they got out of the console war.
This is my first HistoricNerd video, and my goodness what an impact! Excellent coverage and information which helps add more nuance to the common narratives surrounding Sega's decision making at the time, and the CGI (vector illustrations?) is phenomenal. You deserve way more subscribers than you currently have!
What really sucked about the 32x is that you were playing these games, some which were 3D/Pseudo 3D, with a slightly upgraded NES controller. Sega couldn't even be bothered to include the 6 button pad with the 32x. Just one horrible mistake after the next.
Did the 32X even come with controllers to begin with? I thought it was just the system and cables and not much else. I don't know if Sega ever eventually started selling Genesis systems with the Six Button Pad afterwards.
Not wanting to switch development and investment to a next gen console because sales were still strong on the Genesis? Huge mistake. The technology was improving so quickly back then, and the market and demand for videogames was growing so quickly, that they needed to be investing a lot into the development of the next gen console. A stop-gap measure like the 32X was always going to hurt the chances of their next gen console's success. They were way too fixated on short and medium term sales. They weren't thinking about the long game, and failed to comprehend that progress in hardware capabilities was advancing EXPONENTIALLY. Believing that the price of the console was more important than it having better hardware? Not entirely true. How good the hardware was relative to the price, mattered a lot, and, in order to stay competitive in the console market, they needed to accept that a next gen console was going to be significantly more expensive to make than the Genesis in order to be competitive. The people who designed the Saturn understood that, but the design itself was deeply flawed. The one area where the Playstation had the biggest advantage over the other consoles was that it put a higher priority on making the system attractive to third party developers than any of the other sixth gen consoles. But, the Playstation was also the console which cost the least relative to how much it cost to manufacture, at least in terms of the launch price. Pricing it at 300 USD from day one helped it sell well, and was a great strategy, but it was a very expensive and risky strategy too. It wasn't cheaper because they used a cheaper design. In fact, I believe it actually cost more to make than the N64. The high failure rates of the disk drives earlier on added even more cost, because they were legally obligated to fix or replace them under warranty. People would have been willing to pay more for a console if that console was demonstrably more capable than the others, but none of them ended up actually being more capable in every area, though the Playstation and the N64 stood out the most, though not in the same respects. None of the sixth gen console designs struck a perfect balance of hardware capabilities, but Sony came closest with the Playstation. An ideal sixth gen console design would have used a more advanced and more powerful GPU than the one used in the Playstation, one which supported things like mip-mapping and Z-buffering like the GPU of the N64 did, and, with a better designed memory system than the one in the N64, more similar to the memory system used in the Playstation (which used dedicated vram, and had lower memory latency), would have been able to have had even more powerful graphical processing capabilities than the N64, whilst also being easier to program for and to optimize performance for. It's easy to say now with the benefit of hindsight, but the demand for ever more powerful and advanced videogame consoles was growing massively at the time, much faster than even Sony realized, because as gamers grew up, most weren't out-growing video games, and they tended to become willing to spend more money on them. What these console companies needed was someone higher up in the decision making process of the design of the system who better understood what type of hardware design would be best for game development, especially 3d games. Sony's design turned out to be the best, but only because Kutaragi barely managed to convince the CEO to side with him over the other executives at Sony, who were mostly not in favour of the ambitious and expensive nature of the Playstation's proposed design.
I don't think many people really thought about how fast the landscape was changing. People like trip Hawkins were trying to sell the 3do as the VCR home standard implying he thought he had a dramatically more time on the market. So it makes sense to me they'd be stuck in the head space of trying to sell the VHS tapes when DVDs are basically right there for lack of a better analogy.
Good stuff man. Your channel is one of those that youtube refuses to send notifications for some reason, so I have to check directly on your channel for new videos. Glad I decided to check today!
I bought the 32X for $3 in late 1996 when Caldor was still open. IMO SEGA should have released the 32X six months earlier in North America. Then release the Saturn about 2 years later. Another alternative would be to never release the 32X, have SEGA work w/Sony. If the SEGA Sony partnership didn’t fall through we would have had the SEGA Sony PlayStation 5.
Nintendo hid the SNES from the European and American markets for like 3 years. If Sega would not have released the saturn outside of Japan the 32X could have been a lot more popular. People were really digging it on release. Add Sega should pushed way more classic spritescalers besides afterburner, the 32X rocked those ports.
The 32X was much more capable and deserved better support than what it got. Developers didn't know just how to push it. If anyone ever needed a example of just how capable it truly was, all they have to do is look at the current 32X Resurrection. As it stands though, from a 1995/96 perspective, they should have stuck to porting over older arcade games and fighting games that were still considered relevant, and not been so stingy with ram size on the carts. The hardware could have handled arcade quality ports of proven Sega titles like Outrun, Turbo Outrun, Golden Axe, Altered Beast, Shadow Dancer, Moonwalker, Thunderblade, along with others like Super SF 2 Turbo, Final Fight, Alien vs Predator, Pit Fighter, Time Killers, Samurai Shodown, Fighters History, Survival Arts, Art of Fighting, World Heroes 2 Jet, 3 Count Bout, Mortal Kombat 3, in addition a better port of Primal Rage utilizing a larger ram size via bank switching, etc. They should have also been much stricter on what original, non-arcade related titles were allowed to be released on the system. Games like BC Racers, Brutal, 36 Great Holes, NFL Quarterback club, etc should have never been released for it, as all they ended up being was filler titles that hurt the image of the add on being an arcade porting powerhouse. The marketing kept stressing it was going to bring the arcade experience home. That was never going to happen as long as they kept ignoring the plethora of arcade titles that could be ported over, in favor of upgraded sports titles and subpar original non-arcade titles released on other systems already.
It had the capability of doing more, yes, but that was NEVER gonna happen. How could it with the Saturn nipping at its heels. It was a device that should have never gone past the planning stage.
The disdain for Sega of America is clear when Sega of Japan sent a relatively raw recruit to America to solve such a large issue. It speaks volumes for the lack of respect that Sega of Japan had for Sega of America and the internal dysfunction present in the company at the time.
Thanks! I thought the interviews were so fascinating but it raised questions for me since Sega of America always told a different story. So I really ended up looking into the time line of events and then it kinda made more sense.
At this time, both Nintendo and SEGA where doing whatever they could to promote their consoles. SNES almost had a CD add-on. SEGA actually did a CD add-on. They were just throwing whatever they could at the wall and to see what would stick. The 32X was just that. They threw it at the wall and it didn't stick. Oh well, its okay. All of the companies were doing that.
Awesome video thank you! Really good script, loved the homemade CG! I hope to see more content like this from you in the future! If I may suggest an improvement: there was something "odd" with the voice over, sometimes it was not very "clear", maybe the mixing level or something like that? Anyway, GREAT CONTENT!
Thank you! Yeah I find i can never quite get the mix 100%, what were you listening with if you don't mind me asking. I check the mix on multiple devices but I often miss something.
@ no problem, happy to help! I was listening on PC via AV receiver. It sounded like speech was somehow “muffled”, it got kinda lost in the background sound. Maybe speech track just needed more volume? Still enjoyable anyway, but required a little more focus from the viewer to not loose any word. I see a lot of proficient UA-camrs in the comments, maybe someone could jump in with some hints.
I loved my 32x! Despite its commercial failure. I was really happy with it when it launched. Bringing home an almost arcade perfect version of Space Harrier and After Burner was a great feeling at the time. I really loved all the early polygon stuff too like Star Wars.
Americans often forget that there is world outside the US... Sega is a Japanese company and like any other company, you look at business through your own market, even when you have international ambition (and we all do it - we all think our religion, our rules and our God is the only truth, but we forget that 95% of the humans worship a different God and/or obey different rules - for example). You can't understand Sega without understanding the Arcade culture in Japan. It is easy to pick the winner from a History book, it is a different story when you are on the battlefield. The Neo Geo may not have been a huge commercial succes but it was a huge marketing success; back in the days, and I lived them, everyone dreamed of owning a Neo Geo, even in Europe. So, having the Saturn focused on 2D and Arcade games was not a bad bet when it was made... It became one, yes, but it was not a mistake, just a bad decision (a lack of vision).
@@generalleoff Foreigner investors? What a novelty. It was still a Japanese company, operating from Japan. Your point only explains why Sega Japan was always too complaisant with its counterpart in the US...
@ it was an American company that serviced US military bases in the region. Imported among other things arcade machines into Japan. The arcade culture of Japan was kick stated by Americans following the war. Japanese culture obviously spun that in their own direction but it was nevertheless an American influence. Much like Anime was influenced by Disney.
I think Add-ons, by definition, are destined to fail. Look at the Kinect even. That sold really well but pretty much no one views that add-on as a success. People want to either keep their old machines or buy new ones. They don’t want some kind of micro bump.
Yeah it'd be really hard to pull off a successful one for sure. Since consumers would still be mad that they get locked out of later games releases. So that would have to be an extremely hard gap to balance.
@ Yeah, good point. It just leaves a bitter taste in people’s mouths who don’t upgrade and doesn’t do enough if you do pony up. But all that’s moot now. The difference between generations is almost non-existent at this point. Never in the history of video games have we had two generations with so much cross over. Even now, I don’t feel I’ve played “9th gen games”. I feel like I’ve played “better looking 8th gen. games”. The demarcation line between generations has basically disappeared. Just look at the PS5 Pro. I’ve never been less motivated to buy something in my life.
@@HistoricNerd It's honestly something that's more interesting as a novelty thing I'd find. If you can find it for cheap and in good working condition, it's certainly worth adding to your collection of genesis stuff.
Great video. I already knew all about it, but the video gives a very good overview. SEGA even still supported the Master System at the time. I didn't have a 32X at the time, but nowadays, I have all European releases, plus most US region free exclusives.
I've watched a lot of 32x focused documentaries and historic shorts in the past and congrats this is by far the best one I've seen to date absolutely brilliant work
Thanks! I was pretty happy that a bunch of new information dropped in the last year and half. It really opened up more of the story. I'm sure there is more information that will come out later though. I probably spend more time gathering notes than I do editing sometimes.
The 32x was alright back in the day, I had one and enjoyed it. Especially doom. I had all sega systems growing up and liked all. I don't go by what popular opinion is, just what I find enjoyable personally.
@@HistoricNerd I watched a few of your programs. I'm an older gent so seeing this kind of material from an older chap is refreshing. Usually it's a kid or a young person and I just can't click or connect. I assume it's the age differences honestly. Have a good one! 😁
@therant3837 it's funny to think I started this channel when I was in my 20s over well 10 years ago now. Been a fun ride so far though. Glad I connected with you.
@@HistoricNerd Yeah I'm in my 40's so I grew up with these consoles, ya know? I remember when Nintendo Power first came out. I remember the very first issue that's worth some coin nowadays. I even remember when Metroid first came out and there was an art contest Nintendo Power held concerning Samus and ALL of them depicted Samus as a man. What a time to be alive. The promotional tools companies used back then were just phenomenal, and brother they WORKED. What made Nintendo such a power house was their promotional content. I even remember when you could call a 1-900 number to Nintendo Power to get hints and secrets to games like The Legend of Zelda. There was no PRIMA or Bradey Games Guides or... you know.... internet that I'm aware of during the 1980's. And yes.... I eve remember the Turbo Graphix 16.... that I knew of only one person owning. Kinda like the SEGA Genesis let alone the SEGA CD. I only knew TWO people who had a Genesis and ONE who had a SEGA CD. Nintendo was definitely the power house during those days.
Welcome back, Ian. Another banger. I bought everything Sega threw at me as a teen. After the 32x, I truly thought Saturn would be the white whale and bought it close to launch in May. The magazine hype was so crazy at the time... Only to later feel so betrayed and disgusted when they pulled the plug on that early too. At that point, I was done. To this day I've never spent any time with actual physical Dreamcast hardware. I'm hoping one of these days I'll eventually get over myself. 😂
Thanks man! Always happy to release another video. Yeah 32X was either fun or kinda just left people with a real bitter taste. Which seems to reflect people's souring feelings towards Sega at the time. Thanks for sharing your experience man.
I still remember getting the 32x on my 17th birthday, along with Doom. My reason for wanting the 32x however, was because i wanted Mortal Kombat 2, and I wasn't disappointed when I finally got it. I still own my 32x to this day and I still play it, along with the sega cd. I was always a sega fan and was so disappointed that sega went under the way they did. Kid's these days will never understand the console wars of the 90's. What a time to be young!
Sega had too many Irons in the fire. They were still supporting the SMS, GG, Sega CD, Mega Drive, released the Nomad, Pico and considering the Neptune all while trying to launch a next gen console. Not to mention whatever that had going in the arcades. As a Sega fan, I enjoyed and appreciated the cool concepts but in less than 2 years, EB was selling new Nomads for 40 dollars and 32 X for 20. For the time, a handful of games were impressive but in hindsight the 32 X seemed more like a tech demo. Look what we can do, nevermind if we should.
Seeing the transition from the TV to the PC reminds me how cool it was to see the Dreamcast run in a much higher resolution on a product most people already owned, instead of making people buy HDTV’s like when the Xbox 360 came out.
In the mid 90's Sega was doing the most and many of their good systems caught strays because of their reckless shootout against the Playstation. I was alive back then and I can tell you in late 1996 when Sega announced they were discontinuing the Game Gear, Genesis, and 32X in the US to focus solely on Saturn we were mad as hell because many of us were still buying new games like Vectorman 2 and playing on those systems without making the leap to Saturn yet because of it's price. I did buy a 32X with DOOM but because the kit only had a cable for Genesis Model 2 and not the Model 1 which was the Genesis I had, I was forced into returning it for a refund. Had they stuck to their original plan of releasing the Saturn in late 1995 or 1996 and not discontinued their older systems, I think all of them would have benefited greatly and fed off of each other including the 32X probably for the rest of the decade. They also should have released more Arcade titles to 32X like Shadow Dancer, Quartet, Alien Syndrome, Power Drift, etc. I felt so insulted after Sega killed off the Game Gear only for Nintendo to swoop in 2 years later with the Gameboy Color and it still wasn't backlit or graphically impressive as the Game Gear.
Great video!! I went all in on sega saturn and subsequently sega dreamcast. At the time rumors of sega 64x boosting saturn to model3 capabilities was fun to dream! The dreamcast was a great machine ; a great one for sega’s final. Sega forever!
Great video man, top notch CG too. I'm hopeful that the homebrew dev community turns their attention towards "Mars" to show us what might have been. Really talented folks out there. I must have picked up my 32x in Summer of 95, I know I had no interest in a $399 Saturn. Only ever bought 2 games at retail, Star Wars Arcade and VR Deluxe. Then the PlayStation came out at $299 that fall and curbstomped anything on Saturn at the time, ending my almost 10 year run of Sega exclusivity from the master system days. I was a ride or die Sega fan too, but they totally screwed the pooch around that time.
@@DontCallMeScooterrr @DontCallMeScooterrr thank you! Spent a while making the scenes. I'm very hopeful that some Indy devs will make some really cool stuff for the platform. With what they accomplished with doom I'm very optimistic. Even the initial demo scenes were pretty awesome. I didn't grab a 32x until way later but I always liked it.
I thought I had seen all there is to see about the 32x, I put this video on thinking I'd click off after five minutes. New sub, here, friend. I was genuinely impressed with the production, information, and presentation. I look forward to going through these videos.
The Genesis could not keep of with the SNES, that's why there was multiple add-ons to keep it on life support.. When growing up, most kids had an SNES, while there was a few that had the Genesis.. I noticed the kids that had the Genesis had an NES prior, and when the Genesis came out, they switched over.. I waited and bought the SNES, and at some point in 1995 I found a Genesis in a junk pile on the side of the road.. It actually worked with the power button a little mess up, but was still able to get it to turn off/on, I'm pretty sure it was just the plastic arm inside was off track to move the actual power switch on the PCB board.. I believe I still have this unit somewhere in storage..
I don't think people realize how amazing the 32x was. When you see Doom Resurrection the hack of the 32x version of Doom that makes it run in full screen at a solid frame rate with tons of extra features you really can see what Sega was thinking. Here in the States for about $300 you could buy hardware that could run Doom as well as an entry level 486 that would have set you back $2,500. Mind you about 800 of that was probably the hard disk drive but you're still talking about almost $2,000 worth of hardware versus $300 worth of hardware and all in '90s dollars
It was capable of so much more than what we were given at the time, so it really is a shame it was rushed so haphazardly. I think if it had gotten a bit more time in the oven we could have gotten some seriously great titles.
@@jeremygregorio7472 you're most likely correct in this case. I'm just thinking in terms of how some ports were rushed to it without really pushing the hardware is where my thinking was at.
$2500 relative to when? There were Pentium 90MHz systems in late ‘94 (when 32X was new) that were priced at $2500. This can be easily looked up on Google Books; the October 11 1994 issue of PC Magazine has several ads confirming it.
gran reportaje, y parte de la historia que debe ser estudiada, no como fracaso si ver las causantes de por algo que tenia potencial no despego correctamente, que gracias a este video queda una reflexión mas clara.
Thank you! I hope Google translate did what you wrote justice. I've thought about doing a what if video in terms of explaining what could have happened provided it was supported properly.
I had the gen1 Genesis, so when I got my 32X home, I found out I had to call Sega and order a separate cable to use it. Pre internet, that was difficult at best.
31:34 Blaming the retailers is BS. This has to be clear. We are NOT talking about new rules - we are talking about rules everyone knew and agreed on. But when you work for Capitalistic companies you know how motivation works, especially for the Sales team: it is all about bonuses! And that's what killed SoA. It is a story of GREED! They were very happy to hit those bonuses the years before. And when things go the wrong way, you (the saleman) just move on to another company... Who cares?
@@MaxAbramson3 (Do you even know what is Socialism? Because you are American, I doubt it. You may believe the Democrats are the Left, and they are if you are American because they are at the left of the Republicans but if any Democrat was in Europe, he/she would be a right-wing party with some of them being centrist, maybe... Greed is a primary instinct, it has nothing to do with political systems. It exists in any system. I would argue that Capitalism makes it easier to be greedy but that is an opinion that would need to be tested and documented. And no matter what, you can't forget the human factor. This is why Communism could be a fantastic concept if we were robot but can't never work with humans..). Are you really surprised sales people will do whatever they can to get a financial bonus? In what reality are you living???
@@jeremybreau2482 Thank you, I spend too much time playing with renders. I Primarily use blender actually with some After effects. Although unreal could probably render faster I'm not as familiar with Unreal sadly.
Something I don't see talked about much in these discussions is how unreliable the 32X was and how it soured many people on future Sega hardware purchases. My family bought a 32X, and it lasted all of a few months before stopping working entirely. This was the days before the internet, and there was no easy way to get information about repairs or warranty service. It just became an expensive paperweight, and the games we had purchased for it became useless. As a very young kid it was a bitter disappointment.
The 32X had a lot going for it hardware wise. It's a shame that Sega badly & completely shot themselves in the foot with it. Not going to blame specifically SoJ or SoA but the company as a whole. I remember back then being interested in the 32X before it's release. I took a wait & see approach directly after it's launch in part due to the launch of the Saturn in Japan, which is something my friends and I were aware of as we were online with services like Prodigy, AOL and Compuserve. I'm still glad that I did wait & see on the 32X! At the time I was quite happy with the SNES and my 486 PC with a 2X CD-ROM drive for the rest of my games. I would agree that Sega so badly botching the surprise early Saturn launch in 95 eroded away what interested my friends and I had in Sega consoles. Sure, we absolutely loved to play Daytona USA, the local mall had an 8 player linked setup from shortly after that game launched until well into 1996, maybe even 97. After the Saturn launched for games in the home it became only the PS1, the N64 (mostly for 4 player games!), the SNES for older stuff and especially the PC! In the mid to late 90s as my best friend and I lived next door to each other. We had a 10Mbit 10base-T coax network setup between the houses which lead to fairly routine up to 8 player LAN games until we all went off to various colleges in 1998. After the 32X was released none of us ever bought another Sega console again. We didn't trust Sega to support any newer console well enough to justify the cost. While it may seem like we were well off since we had PCs and the like that's mostly because all of us had jobs through HS.
Thanks for sharing your story. I was loosely aware of the 32x when it came out as we rented it once and I thought primal rage was cool, but we never rented 3d games for it at the time which would probably have made it seem more impressive at the time. I was a Sega kid but didn't care for the Saturn so jumped to the N64 and didn't come back to Sega until the Dreamcast.
So where does the SVP chip fit into all of this? I was under the impression that it planted the seeds for the 32x. Because the Virtua Racing Genesis cart cost so much back in the day, Sega didn't want to release a lot of SVP $99 titles and went with an add-on.
Excellent video, and the first of your videos I've seen, so at risk of saying something you've probably read before, you sound a lot like Patrick Warburton lmao
Yeah, the story that it was mostly Sega of Japan's bidding is what I've heard for the longest time. There's a saying that divided house cannot stand. Well, Sega had that divided house for the longest time, then when they did decide to work together it was disastrous. Not that the retailers apparently didn't help, forcing Sega to manufacturer more units than they would have liked it. Yikes.
This makes me think that because the two different markets were behaving differently towards the Mega Drive. The 32X should have been left to the American market while the Sega Saturn in Japan amassed its own Library and when it finally would come out it would have huge software support. The Sega Saturn was the earliest of the consoles that gen releasing before the PS1. The Sega Saturn could have been released at the same time as the N64 without losing anything. Also since the 32x has so much in common with the Sega Saturn hardware they could have had an upgrade path for 32x carts on the Sega Saturn. They also would have had more time to make the Sega Saturn more Arcade like and powerful. Back then Sega vs Nintendo was huge. If that happened I believe Sony would have simply been a footnote in the console history. As the only reason the PS1 overtook Nintendo and Sega was because it was seen as more powerful compared to the Sega Saturn and people made their choice.
It wouldn't be as bad for 3rd party devs if each system didnt have it's own language and architecture. If you are going to have versions of your hit game on multiple consoles, ease of porting is crucial. 32X at leas fed off the Genesis, while Saturn was insanely difficult to program for, which was it's major downfall. That, and the infamous "shot heard round the world" from Sony that panicked Sega and started the downfall.... "$299."
Great video. I was already a PC gamer when the 32x came out, so had zero interest then, but rediscovered it when I went down a deep retro collecting rabbit hole during COVID. My aim was/is to collect all hardware that had a Doom port, and of all the systems I’ve collected, this Frankenstein system remains my favourite to pull out and play, just due to sheer audacity of it. You raise a great point in the “post credits” about how this was kinda pro consumer that hasn’t happened again since. Imagine if something like this happened today, and instead of releasing the PS5 Pro, Sony released a Pro Plus expansion pack instead!
Thanks for checking out the video. Ive been fascinated with the 32X for a while. It's in such an odd place in terms of what it is and offers. The post credits were fun to shoot because there are so many fun what ifs about that I honestly could have rambled about for a while.
What killed the 32x was Donkey Kong Country and Snes games that used chips that allowed better graphics. At the time, I thought it would be better to rent Star Fox from the video store and have 3D graphics than to buy an accessory to have something similar.
I was heavily into Sega back then. But the best add-on to the Genesis was a SNES. Sega CD barely added colors and the 32X added “mode 7” when it was too late. I missed out on a lot of amazing SNES games due to the console wars 🤣
I was a Nintendo only gamer back then (at least as far as buying systems. I would still play on friends' Genesis systems) and while I liked some of what Sega was doing, it felt like they were pushing things out too fast and not supporting them enough. While I thought the Sega CD was incredibly cool, it never seemed terribly well-supported and the 32X seems like more of the same. Looking back I can have a greater appreciation for all that Sega did both for pushing boundaries as well as the gaming industry as a whole. The video was well researched and well produced, by the way.
I wonder whether 32x would have been given the green light had SOJ known of the impending losses at SOA when it was first planned and developed. I suspect not. When the empassioned please of SOA to Irimajiri regarding prolonging the 16 bit market, SOA will have still been flying high, pre stock buy-back, and hence will have had significant bargaining power in discussions with SOJ
The 32X should of been a standalone successor to the Genesis released in late 1993 and the Sega CD should have never been released. It should of also had a 2X CD-Rom for cartridge/CD/or combo games and an enhanced chipset with 68000 at 16mhz (Genesis compatibility/easy arcade ports) and 4 SH2s with 1 meg ram and 512kb vram. Retail for 299.99 and come with 6 button controller and first party developed Virtua Racing 2/Genesis compilation as CD-Rom pack in title. Don't call it 32x though call it Sega Giga Revolution! They should of either done that or not released the 32X/Sega CD and released the Saturn in America in late 1994 with a full launch line up and cartridge games as well with more cartridge/CD-Rom games when necessary. Saturn pack in game would be same as fictional Revolution.
That was the original plan, they were going to release it as the Sega Neptune. By the time it reached prototype stage the Saturn was already getting close to launch so they decided to drop the Neptune and turn the 32x into a Genesis addon instead. They should have just cancelled it completely and concentrated on the Saturn.
@@_Thrackerzod They could have just launched it in late 93 and waited till late 96-97 to launch the Saturn with beefier hardware. Just look at all the cool fan made MSU-MD mods they have for the Genesis and 32X classics. That's what a 32x/Neptune with 2x-Cdrom could do. Cool stuff imagine 32X arcade level Golden Axe with symphony music.
I would like to say that any console can be amazing. Even a 32-bit add-on for a console. All you have to do is sit down and develop a cool game for it. At the time 32 bit systems were coming out and the Genesis user base was big. So they offered an add-on in case you wanted to get in on the next gen systems. However, you need the software to make any system great and they didn't give the developers enough time to make any good software. So it was a powerful add-on, but with no games. Thus nobody bought it. Its up to the homebrew community to make games for it now.
My god do I love the 32X. It had so much potential that sadly was never achieved. I happily and proudly own every 32X game CIB. As much as I love the Mega CD, I still feel like the 32X was a better add-on than the Mega CD in theory, with how much it enhanced the MegaDrive experience over what the Mega CD provided. I also still feel that if Sega had enough available at launch for pre-orders (they didn't, as over one million pre-orders had been placed, and they could only deliver roughly 500 thousand), and if they hadn't launched the Saturn in the USA four months early in May 1995, the 32X would have had massive success in the USA at least. I am a proud 32X fanboy, and nothing will ever change that. @HistoricNerd I am a lifelong Sega historian, and even I learned some things from this video I never knew before. Thank you for your work.
I'm always Glad there are more 32X fan boys out there. Love the console. I was pretty excited when new information came out about the 32x especially from the Japanese side of the house which really answered some questions I always had.
The 32X had a few cool exclusive games on it, but yea it wasn't necessary, considering that the Saturn was on it's way in less than a year at the time.
I adored Sega growing up, but the 32x just didn't impress me, and was more excited to wait for the Saturn. Sega was ahead of the industry once again, but wasn't at the right time. This was the ps5 pro version of the Genesis. It was like a Genesis pro. Or you could say the 32x was a Series S, as the Saturn was the Series X😅
I lost hope in Sega then. I walked into Electronics Boutique and saw the Saturn I shook my head. I eventually bought a JP Saturn and modded it so I could play US games, but then the Dreamcast.... I sometimes am shocked they are still in Business.
Saturn + Virtua Fighter + the ability to save your game (built-in) = $399 PS1 + game (full price) + a memory card to save ($25) = $380 - $390 .. literally a 10 to 20 dollar difference. It's not this "avalanche price difference" that almost everyone says it was. And it's extremely common for the established brand to be a few bucks more. And thats exactly the situation here. The actual problem was people not doing 2 seconds worth of math, and instead regurgitating some person on a forum saying things like "the Saturn is at a suicidal price!".. So $10 or $20 makes the difference between "perfect best price ever" and "dooming themselves with such an outrageous price"...? Just sayin
It paved the way for the 32X - powerful hardware in a confusing architecture and bad programmer's documentation. If you look at Doom32X Resurrection and Sonic R you'll get what I mean.
If Sega went all-in on either the Saturn or Neptune (with carts able to go to at least 64 megabits), they easily could've been in a much better position for when Dreamcast's time came. But since they divided their forces, they ended up killing themselves. Sad, as I was jacked to get a Neptune eventually after seeing the pic of it in EGM
I viewed the Sega CD and 32x as a gooseegg anyway, and instead opted for the Saturn 😅. Had Sega released the Saturn ANY SOONER, it would've been almost a waste of time, because the N64 was hitting its stride, and the Ps1 was the "new kid on the block" , as far as manufacturer. They HAD to do it
For the 32X to be divisive, would require that a decent number of people consider it a success. It's not. It's an absolute failure by every possible metric. Which doesn't mean it's not worth having in a collection. I have one and enjoy the fact that is has 5 or 6 unique good games that don't have ports on any other system. But still it's really not divisive. The library is small and doesn't have "must-play" games.
I actually like the idea of 32x and on paper it's hardware was really good - 2× SH-2 32-bit RISC processor @ 23 MHz . While Playstation 1 had MIPS R3000A-compatible 32-bit RISC CPU MIPS R3051 with 5 KB L1 cache, running at 33.8688 MHz. . So in theory Sega genesis with 32x could have had decent 3d games and perfect Arcade ports with lots of colors and no slowdowns. But unfortunately Sega screwed up. If they focused on 32x and Sega CD a bit more in terms of games and gave them more time before releasing Saturn then the things could have been a bit different.
Kalinske Team's plan was to stick with the Sega CD + SVP ($50), already ready with 6 hit arcade games for release just two months later in March 1994. That would've cleared out the Sega CD inventory and brought in $1-2 billion in revenue in 1994 that SEGA desperately needed--rather than $1-2 billion in hardware, games, and inventories just sitting around in warehouses.
They really dropped the ball in the face of the Saturns initial delay. They really should have hammered out their time lines better and things might have been a lot less chaotic.
@HistoricNerd Sega CD + SVP was the roadmap that everyone was on, and would've held up until 1996 when PS1 hit it's stride. SEGA would still have leading marketshare until FF7, MGS, and GT.
It's really interesting for me looking back at how much I genuinely anticipated the 32X, but I never got to own one! I think it was just too close to the PS1 and Saturn, both of which I bought on day 1. Im trying to remember what made me just forget about the 32X. I wanted so many games for the add-on. It may have been the motocross game. I remember that being so bad that it broke my heart. Doom as well. Then Doom on PS1 was absolute perfection. Id love to pick a 32X up now but the prices are ludicrous!
Oh man, I fell victim to the ads back then as well except it was rise of the robots. I was so excited for that game.... mistakes were made. The 32X really did get buried.
@HistoricNerd Man, I would do anything to go back and experience it all over again. I loved this time in gaming... its probably my favorite time of my life, the mid-90s. Music was great, the movies were awesome, and the games were just incredible, at home and the arcade.
@LukeDodge916 strangely enough that's about the only console it didn't get a port to. I think cosmic carnage is probably my least liked game on the system.
At least I prefer an addon like 32X or an Expansion Pak, rather than a PRO version of the console.
Right!? I personally love the idea of being able to upgrade a console in this manner. Granted this probably could have been done better, but it really is a fun thought.
Had their been a way to enhance existing genesis games that would have made it sell as well. Imagine Phantasy Star IV with a better color palette or extra sound channels
@@geoffreychauvin1474The original Genesis Model 1 had an FM sound module available that dramatically improved the sound clarity. Only on the model 1 though.
they should sold the genesis sega cd all in one on 1993, and upgrade it in 1995 with a 32x CPU cartridge to stay until the dreamcast... only if they had migrating all the games to cd version and left the cartridge for savegames and 32x cpu this would be a success, but they never exploit it system to the edge.
Same here, kind of like upgrading a PC over time till it can't be done any further before a new platform is required.
I think the question that always baffled me is: How do they expect the saturn or 32x to get third party support if you're intentionally splitting the market?
I think they believed that the die hard genesis devs would jump at the chance for it.
Good point.
Add-ons are rare outside of Sega? WTF?
Famicom Disk System? PC Engine CD? Arcade Card? Satelliview? Intellivoice? Starpath Cassette?
This isn't even a complete list.
Kudos for covering that insane retailer bargain, however.
Most skip over that bloodbath.
Haha, yeah, I probably should have written it like "add ons that boost base performance and power"* to have given better clarity.
Just think of how different things would have been if they would have just released the Saturn with backwards compatibility for Genesis.
That probably would have answered all of SOA concerns and I doubt the 32x would have happened. But man the Saturn probably would have been real expensive as a result.
@@HistoricNerd
It shouldn't have been more expensive. It already has most of the hardware to play Sega Genesis games such as a Motorola 68k processor, the VDP1 might have been able to have had a legacy mode built in, the Saturn's sound chip could have been able to accept Genesis games sound. The groundwork was already there and for no good reason backwards compatibility was not built in.
While backwards compatibility had been done before, by companies like Atari, it wasn't really prioritized by entertainment companies in the 90s. Nintendo home consoles didn't have cartridge interoperability, and Sony was just starting out with the PS1. Outside of the GameBoy line, It wasn't really a selling point back then the way it is now. Maybe being compatible with music CDs could be considered a form of back compat? It wasn't until the 2000s, when the PS2 launched that backwards compatibility really made companies notice it as an important value-add.
*The only thing the 32X succeeded in:* Being the first nail in the Sega Saturn's coffin before it was even released. The Sega CD was a meaningful experiment in gaming history, it's existance is justifed. The 32X? Not so much.
Totally fair, "experiment" is probably the nicest thing a lot of people can say about it lol.
@@HistoricNerd Every company back then was trying their hand at a CD Add-on. And the only one that didn't have one was Nintendo, because they wussed out on their deal with Sony at the last minute. But even the Super Nintendo nearly had a "Sega CD" like expansion device.
@@Gametester110-qf8vs oh absolutely, I spent a while trying to get information out of Philips about the CD add on they were going to make for Nintendo.
I think the 32X could have been a great budget option, but with the Sony Playstation looming Sega should have just gone all in on the Saturn and saved the money they spent on the 32X
agreed. In fact I think the Sega CD library is often underrated by most people.
I was so confused when this video started. I saw "MISTAKES WERE MADE" on the video art and thought this was a new MODERN VINTAGE GAMER video. However, it was a HISTORICNERD video... Which, is just as good if not better. A+
Thanks for the compliment! I was playing with thumbnails and the words made me chuckle a bit so I was like why not, I'll try that.
Same here
I just got to the video now, clicked it last night and I think I did the same thing
MVG is a child groomer on ResetEra.
Sega having no confidence in the 32X didn't help matters. I was heavily into Sega products throughout the 90s and loved my Genesis. I didn't even know the 32X existed because I never saw one bit of marketing advertising it. Finally one day in 1997 I was standing in the electronics section of Ames department store and saw a bunch of them on a top shelf almost out of sight and marked down to $20 each.
Twenty bucks for a new game console that comes with a free game? Sign me up! I still have it to this day.
I'll sign your face up to my fist 😂😂😂😂
The biggest mistake was not designing Saturn to accept 32X for more CPU power. If you're already programming a Saturn game to use 2x Hitachi SH2, you can make it 4x SH2 cpu. If you bought 32X already, you were much more likely to buy Saturn if you could still get 32X benefits!
Everyone wanted better hardware back then, but now we just want good games what a reversal to the whole industry.
I asked for a Sega Saturn for Christmas, and my mom got me a 32X instead because the store clerk told her it "plays 32 bit games" and she thought that meant it could play "any" 32 bit game.
"We have Saturn at home, Koga."
Poor moms... They really were the unsung soldiers of the console wars.
Please tell me at least you had a Sega Mega Drive/Genesis before your Mom got you the 32X!?!?! 😅
People don't understand that it takes years to make good games for a console. This means that if the 32X was released it could take 2-3 years before good games would actually come out for it.
If Sega had not even released the 32x and both Japan and the US put all their resources into making good dev kits and more games for the Saturn. Maybe the Saturn could have had legs in the west
Yeah in truth if they had 100 percent focused on the Saturn they probably could have achieved more with it.
Absolutely their priority should have been the dev kits. Things were wild in the 90s because tech was advancing so rapidly. While we normally associate SDKs with the API software stack, the internal Sega devs were talking about an Operating System. Saturn really needed a proper OS to handle task scheduling between the 2 CPUs and various chips. Coding to the bare metal was becoming too complicated.
Sega didn’t have very functional dev tools ready until SDK versions 2 and 3 in 1997-98. Saturn had an effective 3-year lifespan of 95-97 in the USA.
Sega's real plan was to do this, keep Sega Saturn exclusive to Japan while 32X remain exclusive to NA. Their plan only failed cause someone leak the Saturn to journalist oversea so by that point everyone oversea was like "oh so that's the real console, then what was the point of this 32X adapter?" After that Sega of America then make an announcement that says 32X is just a bridge between Genesis and Saturn, the Saturn is the actual main console and 32X is only here to offer experience to those who can't afford Saturn. Needless to say this didn't work and a lot of people who was waiting for the 32X never bought one and rather wait for the Saturn instead. This also cause third party devs to decide whether they should focus on the add-on or the main console, they prefer to just focus on the main console instead. Most of the loyal customers who decided to wait for the Saturn saying they saw that it also had a 32X style cartridge slot in there so by waiting they should be able to play both 32X, Genesis, and Saturn games. What they don't know is that the cartridge slot is for ram used only and not to play any kind of cartridge games thus when Sega reveal this those who wanted a Sega Saturn walk away and wait for the PlayStation instead. When the PlayStation launch, it outsell both the Sega 32X and Sega Saturn combined and then some, Sega had doom themselves from the beginning. From that point on Sega was losing money up til the day they got out of the console war.
This is my first HistoricNerd video, and my goodness what an impact! Excellent coverage and information which helps add more nuance to the common narratives surrounding Sega's decision making at the time, and the CGI (vector illustrations?) is phenomenal. You deserve way more subscribers than you currently have!
Thanks! I appreciate that. I get kinda obsessed with making scenes. So it's always fun to do. Down side I'm pretty slow at turning out videos.
What really sucked about the 32x is that you were playing these games, some which were 3D/Pseudo 3D, with a slightly upgraded NES controller. Sega couldn't even be bothered to include the 6 button pad with the 32x. Just one horrible mistake after the next.
Not including a 6 button is another one of those interesting choices. Sega went into this expecting a lot from average consumers
Did the 32X even come with controllers to begin with? I thought it was just the system and cables and not much else. I don't know if Sega ever eventually started selling Genesis systems with the Six Button Pad afterwards.
Not wanting to switch development and investment to a next gen console because sales were still strong on the Genesis? Huge mistake. The technology was improving so quickly back then, and the market and demand for videogames was growing so quickly, that they needed to be investing a lot into the development of the next gen console. A stop-gap measure like the 32X was always going to hurt the chances of their next gen console's success. They were way too fixated on short and medium term sales. They weren't thinking about the long game, and failed to comprehend that progress in hardware capabilities was advancing EXPONENTIALLY.
Believing that the price of the console was more important than it having better hardware? Not entirely true. How good the hardware was relative to the price, mattered a lot, and, in order to stay competitive in the console market, they needed to accept that a next gen console was going to be significantly more expensive to make than the Genesis in order to be competitive. The people who designed the Saturn understood that, but the design itself was deeply flawed.
The one area where the Playstation had the biggest advantage over the other consoles was that it put a higher priority on making the system attractive to third party developers than any of the other sixth gen consoles. But, the Playstation was also the console which cost the least relative to how much it cost to manufacture, at least in terms of the launch price. Pricing it at 300 USD from day one helped it sell well, and was a great strategy, but it was a very expensive and risky strategy too. It wasn't cheaper because they used a cheaper design. In fact, I believe it actually cost more to make than the N64. The high failure rates of the disk drives earlier on added even more cost, because they were legally obligated to fix or replace them under warranty.
People would have been willing to pay more for a console if that console was demonstrably more capable than the others, but none of them ended up actually being more capable in every area, though the Playstation and the N64 stood out the most, though not in the same respects. None of the sixth gen console designs struck a perfect balance of hardware capabilities, but Sony came closest with the Playstation. An ideal sixth gen console design would have used a more advanced and more powerful GPU than the one used in the Playstation, one which supported things like mip-mapping and Z-buffering like the GPU of the N64 did, and, with a better designed memory system than the one in the N64, more similar to the memory system used in the Playstation (which used dedicated vram, and had lower memory latency), would have been able to have had even more powerful graphical processing capabilities than the N64, whilst also being easier to program for and to optimize performance for.
It's easy to say now with the benefit of hindsight, but the demand for ever more powerful and advanced videogame consoles was growing massively at the time, much faster than even Sony realized, because as gamers grew up, most weren't out-growing video games, and they tended to become willing to spend more money on them. What these console companies needed was someone higher up in the decision making process of the design of the system who better understood what type of hardware design would be best for game development, especially 3d games. Sony's design turned out to be the best, but only because Kutaragi barely managed to convince the CEO to side with him over the other executives at Sony, who were mostly not in favour of the ambitious and expensive nature of the Playstation's proposed design.
I don't think many people really thought about how fast the landscape was changing. People like trip Hawkins were trying to sell the 3do as the VCR home standard implying he thought he had a dramatically more time on the market. So it makes sense to me they'd be stuck in the head space of trying to sell the VHS tapes when DVDs are basically right there for lack of a better analogy.
Your documentaries are so good! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for stopping by and watching!
Good stuff man. Your channel is one of those that youtube refuses to send notifications for some reason, so I have to check directly on your channel for new videos. Glad I decided to check today!
Glad you checked it out! Yeah UA-cam has always been odd with notifications for me for what ever reason.
I bought the 32X for $3 in late 1996 when Caldor was still open. IMO SEGA should have released the 32X six months earlier in North America. Then release the Saturn about 2 years later. Another alternative would be to never release the 32X, have SEGA work w/Sony. If the SEGA Sony partnership didn’t fall through we would have had the SEGA Sony PlayStation 5.
Nintendo hid the SNES from the European and American markets for like 3 years. If Sega would not have released the saturn outside of Japan the 32X could have been a lot more popular. People were really digging it on release. Add Sega should pushed way more classic spritescalers besides afterburner, the 32X rocked those ports.
The 32X was much more capable and deserved better support than what it got. Developers didn't know just how to push it. If anyone ever needed a example of just how capable it truly was, all they have to do is look at the current 32X Resurrection. As it stands though, from a 1995/96 perspective, they should have stuck to porting over older arcade games and fighting games that were still considered relevant, and not been so stingy with ram size on the carts. The hardware could have handled arcade quality ports of proven Sega titles like Outrun, Turbo Outrun, Golden Axe, Altered Beast, Shadow Dancer, Moonwalker, Thunderblade, along with others like Super SF 2 Turbo, Final Fight, Alien vs Predator, Pit Fighter, Time Killers, Samurai Shodown, Fighters History, Survival Arts, Art of Fighting, World Heroes 2 Jet, 3 Count Bout, Mortal Kombat 3, in addition a better port of Primal Rage utilizing a larger ram size via bank switching, etc.
They should have also been much stricter on what original, non-arcade related titles were allowed to be released on the system. Games like BC Racers, Brutal, 36 Great Holes, NFL Quarterback club, etc should have never been released for it, as all they ended up being was filler titles that hurt the image of the add on being an arcade porting powerhouse. The marketing kept stressing it was going to bring the arcade experience home. That was never going to happen as long as they kept ignoring the plethora of arcade titles that could be ported over, in favor of upgraded sports titles and subpar original non-arcade titles released on other systems already.
💯 agree
I also agree; SEGA could've done much better. It's a shame, since I liked the Sega games...
Yep ! I still mourn the lost opportunity that was Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder not being ported.
It had the capability of doing more, yes, but that was NEVER gonna happen. How could it with the Saturn nipping at its heels.
It was a device that should have never gone past the planning stage.
@Confusion I totally agree with u
The disdain for Sega of America is clear when Sega of Japan sent a relatively raw recruit to America to solve such a large issue.
It speaks volumes for the lack of respect that Sega of Japan had for Sega of America and the internal dysfunction present in the company at the time.
This is a fantastic video. You did a great job taking all the recent interviews and information and putting them together into a cohesive narrative.
Thanks! I thought the interviews were so fascinating but it raised questions for me since Sega of America always told a different story. So I really ended up looking into the time line of events and then it kinda made more sense.
Nice! I thought I missed this! Great insight on the 32X, and impressive visuals as usual!
Thanks man. I spent probably more time making those than I did writing the script lol
@@HistoricNerd The editing is really solid, too. Its cool how you cut the video like it was a sega commercial.
@jongeo Thanks! That was kinda inspired a lot of the shots in the video. Kinda combed through a bunch of old commericals for shot ideas
@@HistoricNerd Historical Accuracy Nerd
At this time, both Nintendo and SEGA where doing whatever they could to promote their consoles. SNES almost had a CD add-on. SEGA actually did a CD add-on. They were just throwing whatever they could at the wall and to see what would stick.
The 32X was just that. They threw it at the wall and it didn't stick. Oh well, its okay. All of the companies were doing that.
Awesome video thank you! Really good script, loved the homemade CG! I hope to see more content like this from you in the future! If I may suggest an improvement: there was something "odd" with the voice over, sometimes it was not very "clear", maybe the mixing level or something like that? Anyway, GREAT CONTENT!
Thank you! Yeah I find i can never quite get the mix 100%, what were you listening with if you don't mind me asking. I check the mix on multiple devices but I often miss something.
@ no problem, happy to help! I was listening on PC via AV receiver. It sounded like speech was somehow “muffled”, it got kinda lost in the background sound. Maybe speech track just needed more volume?
Still enjoyable anyway, but required a little more focus from the viewer to not loose any word. I see a lot of proficient UA-camrs in the comments, maybe someone could jump in with some hints.
I loved my 32x! Despite its commercial failure. I was really happy with it when it launched. Bringing home an almost arcade perfect version of Space Harrier and After Burner was a great feeling at the time. I really loved all the early polygon stuff too like Star Wars.
32x Afterburner I still love playing
Americans often forget that there is world outside the US... Sega is a Japanese company and like any other company, you look at business through your own market, even when you have international ambition (and we all do it - we all think our religion, our rules and our God is the only truth, but we forget that 95% of the humans worship a different God and/or obey different rules - for example). You can't understand Sega without understanding the Arcade culture in Japan. It is easy to pick the winner from a History book, it is a different story when you are on the battlefield. The Neo Geo may not have been a huge commercial succes but it was a huge marketing success; back in the days, and I lived them, everyone dreamed of owning a Neo Geo, even in Europe. So, having the Saturn focused on 2D and Arcade games was not a bad bet when it was made... It became one, yes, but it was not a mistake, just a bad decision (a lack of vision).
@@migueldias8546 Yep Americans must have forgot about the rest of the world when they went to Japan and founded SEGA.
@@generalleoff Foreigner investors? What a novelty. It was still a Japanese company, operating from Japan. Your point only explains why Sega Japan was always too complaisant with its counterpart in the US...
@ it was an American company that serviced US military bases in the region. Imported among other things arcade machines into Japan. The arcade culture of Japan was kick stated by Americans following the war. Japanese culture obviously spun that in their own direction but it was nevertheless an American influence. Much like Anime was influenced by Disney.
I think Add-ons, by definition, are destined to fail. Look at the Kinect even. That sold really well but pretty much no one views that add-on as a success.
People want to either keep their old machines or buy new ones. They don’t want some kind of micro bump.
Yeah it'd be really hard to pull off a successful one for sure. Since consumers would still be mad that they get locked out of later games releases. So that would have to be an extremely hard gap to balance.
@ Yeah, good point. It just leaves a bitter taste in people’s mouths who don’t upgrade and doesn’t do enough if you do pony up.
But all that’s moot now. The difference between generations is almost non-existent at this point. Never in the history of video games have we had two generations with so much cross over. Even now, I don’t feel I’ve played “9th gen games”. I feel like I’ve played “better looking 8th gen. games”.
The demarcation line between generations has basically disappeared. Just look at the PS5 Pro. I’ve never been less motivated to buy something in my life.
congrats on finally releasing this, i know it's been a long time coming!
Thanks man! Yeah the last couple of months of working on and off. I'm decently happy with how it came out.
I never wanted this crazy system back then BUT I am glad I got one now.. I love the Sega Frankenstein system of 32x and Sega CD
@@allanau I personally really enjoy it. But I can understand the hate from some folks.
@@HistoricNerd It's honestly something that's more interesting as a novelty thing I'd find. If you can find it for cheap and in good working condition, it's certainly worth adding to your collection of genesis stuff.
First time seeing one of your videos. Im impressed. Great job
Great video. I already knew all about it, but the video gives a very good overview. SEGA even still supported the Master System at the time. I didn't have a 32X at the time, but nowadays, I have all European releases, plus most US region free exclusives.
I've watched a lot of 32x focused documentaries and historic shorts in the past and congrats this is by far the best one I've seen to date absolutely brilliant work
Thanks! I was pretty happy that a bunch of new information dropped in the last year and half. It really opened up more of the story. I'm sure there is more information that will come out later though. I probably spend more time gathering notes than I do editing sometimes.
The 32x was alright back in the day, I had one and enjoyed it. Especially doom. I had all sega systems growing up and liked all. I don't go by what popular opinion is, just what I find enjoyable personally.
Excellent presentation.
Glad you liked it!
@@HistoricNerd I watched a few of your programs. I'm an older gent so seeing this kind of material from an older chap is refreshing. Usually it's a kid or a young person and I just can't click or connect. I assume it's the age differences honestly. Have a good one! 😁
@therant3837 it's funny to think I started this channel when I was in my 20s over well 10 years ago now. Been a fun ride so far though. Glad I connected with you.
@@HistoricNerd Yeah I'm in my 40's so I grew up with these consoles, ya know? I remember when Nintendo Power first came out. I remember the very first issue that's worth some coin nowadays. I even remember when Metroid first came out and there was an art contest Nintendo Power held concerning Samus and ALL of them depicted Samus as a man. What a time to be alive. The promotional tools companies used back then were just phenomenal, and brother they WORKED. What made Nintendo such a power house was their promotional content. I even remember when you could call a 1-900 number to Nintendo Power to get hints and secrets to games like The Legend of Zelda. There was no PRIMA or Bradey Games Guides or... you know.... internet that I'm aware of during the 1980's. And yes.... I eve remember the Turbo Graphix 16.... that I knew of only one person owning. Kinda like the SEGA Genesis let alone the SEGA CD. I only knew TWO people who had a Genesis and ONE who had a SEGA CD. Nintendo was definitely the power house during those days.
Welcome back, Ian. Another banger.
I bought everything Sega threw at me as a teen. After the 32x, I truly thought Saturn would be the white whale and bought it close to launch in May. The magazine hype was so crazy at the time... Only to later feel so betrayed and disgusted when they pulled the plug on that early too. At that point, I was done. To this day I've never spent any time with actual physical Dreamcast hardware.
I'm hoping one of these days I'll eventually get over myself. 😂
Thanks man! Always happy to release another video. Yeah 32X was either fun or kinda just left people with a real bitter taste. Which seems to reflect people's souring feelings towards Sega at the time. Thanks for sharing your experience man.
I still remember getting the 32x on my 17th birthday, along with Doom. My reason for wanting the 32x however, was because i wanted Mortal Kombat 2, and I wasn't disappointed when I finally got it. I still own my 32x to this day and I still play it, along with the sega cd. I was always a sega fan and was so disappointed that sega went under the way they did. Kid's these days will never understand the console wars of the 90's. What a time to be young!
I have a terrible idea. No, I have a better terrible idea.
34:24 Whoa! Up until this point, I thought for sure you were using an AI voice of Patrick Warburton. 🤣 Awesome video!
@@razcarsey6635 haha 😆
HAHA ME TOO!
This was an excellent video. Great job!
Sega had too many Irons in the fire. They were still supporting the SMS, GG, Sega CD, Mega Drive, released the Nomad, Pico and considering the Neptune all while trying to launch a next gen console. Not to mention whatever that had going in the arcades.
As a Sega fan, I enjoyed and appreciated the cool concepts but in less than 2 years, EB was selling new Nomads for 40 dollars and 32 X for 20. For the time, a handful of games were impressive but in hindsight the 32 X seemed more like a tech demo. Look what we can do, nevermind if we should.
32X would’ve sold better if SEGA had the balls to name it 32seX. It would fit the edgy 90s marketing better.
lol that's good! I get what you did here.
@@generalleoffdamn ouch lol
$49.95 SVP LockOn with its 6 arcade hits would've made SEGA a couple billion and given the Saturn two years to build up a library.
Parents wouldn’t have bought it
What are you? 13?
Seeing the transition from the TV to the PC reminds me how cool it was to see the Dreamcast run in a much higher resolution on a product most people already owned, instead of making people buy HDTV’s like when the Xbox 360 came out.
In the mid 90's Sega was doing the most and many of their good systems caught strays because of their reckless shootout against the Playstation. I was alive back then and I can tell you in late 1996 when Sega announced they were discontinuing the Game Gear, Genesis, and 32X in the US to focus solely on Saturn we were mad as hell because many of us were still buying new games like Vectorman 2 and playing on those systems without making the leap to Saturn yet because of it's price. I did buy a 32X with DOOM but because the kit only had a cable for Genesis Model 2 and not the Model 1 which was the Genesis I had, I was forced into returning it for a refund. Had they stuck to their original plan of releasing the Saturn in late 1995 or 1996 and not discontinued their older systems, I think all of them would have benefited greatly and fed off of each other including the 32X probably for the rest of the decade. They also should have released more Arcade titles to 32X like Shadow Dancer, Quartet, Alien Syndrome, Power Drift, etc. I felt so insulted after Sega killed off the Game Gear only for Nintendo to swoop in 2 years later with the Gameboy Color and it still wasn't backlit or graphically impressive as the Game Gear.
Great video!! I went all in on sega saturn and subsequently sega dreamcast. At the time rumors of sega 64x boosting saturn to model3 capabilities was fun to dream! The dreamcast was a great machine ; a great one for sega’s final. Sega forever!
Make sure to give THUMBS UP !
@@tangreen7267 thanks man!
@@HistoricNerd , you rock, thanks for taking the time to make this for all us HistoricNerds.
Excellent documentary! Imagine if Sega had released the Neptune in 1990 or 1991. It would’ve been glorious.
Bravo! Such a great video! I love your content!
Thanks, appreciate that
Great video man, top notch CG too. I'm hopeful that the homebrew dev community turns their attention towards "Mars" to show us what might have been. Really talented folks out there.
I must have picked up my 32x in Summer of 95, I know I had no interest in a $399 Saturn. Only ever bought 2 games at retail, Star Wars Arcade and VR Deluxe. Then the PlayStation came out at $299 that fall and curbstomped anything on Saturn at the time, ending my almost 10 year run of Sega exclusivity from the master system days. I was a ride or die Sega fan too, but they totally screwed the pooch around that time.
@@DontCallMeScooterrr @DontCallMeScooterrr thank you! Spent a while making the scenes. I'm very hopeful that some Indy devs will make some really cool stuff for the platform. With what they accomplished with doom I'm very optimistic. Even the initial demo scenes were pretty awesome. I didn't grab a 32x until way later but I always liked it.
Very nice video ! Well done
Thank you! Appreciate you stopping by to watch.
I thought I had seen all there is to see about the 32x, I put this video on thinking I'd click off after five minutes.
New sub, here, friend. I was genuinely impressed with the production, information, and presentation. I look forward to going through these videos.
Thanks! Glad I hooked you. I will try to find new information. But at the very least I try to be visually interesting. Thanks again.
The Genesis could not keep of with the SNES, that's why there was multiple add-ons to keep it on life support.. When growing up, most kids had an SNES, while there was a few that had the Genesis.. I noticed the kids that had the Genesis had an NES prior, and when the Genesis came out, they switched over.. I waited and bought the SNES, and at some point in 1995 I found a Genesis in a junk pile on the side of the road.. It actually worked with the power button a little mess up, but was still able to get it to turn off/on, I'm pretty sure it was just the plastic arm inside was off track to move the actual power switch on the PCB board.. I believe I still have this unit somewhere in storage..
I don't think people realize how amazing the 32x was. When you see Doom Resurrection the hack of the 32x version of Doom that makes it run in full screen at a solid frame rate with tons of extra features you really can see what Sega was thinking.
Here in the States for about $300 you could buy hardware that could run Doom as well as an entry level 486 that would have set you back $2,500. Mind you about 800 of that was probably the hard disk drive but you're still talking about almost $2,000 worth of hardware versus $300 worth of hardware and all in '90s dollars
It was capable of so much more than what we were given at the time, so it really is a shame it was rushed so haphazardly. I think if it had gotten a bit more time in the oven we could have gotten some seriously great titles.
Hackers have proven what "Doom 32x" could've been; now let's see the vastly improved (and complete) version of "Cosmic Carnage".
@@HistoricNerd I don't think rushing was the problem it was just too early and 3D graphics programming
@@jeremygregorio7472 you're most likely correct in this case. I'm just thinking in terms of how some ports were rushed to it without really pushing the hardware is where my thinking was at.
$2500 relative to when? There were Pentium 90MHz systems in late ‘94 (when 32X was new) that were priced at $2500. This can be easily looked up on Google Books; the October 11 1994 issue of PC Magazine has several ads confirming it.
gran reportaje, y parte de la historia que debe ser estudiada, no como fracaso si ver las causantes de por algo que tenia potencial no despego correctamente, que gracias a este video queda una reflexión mas clara.
Thank you! I hope Google translate did what you wrote justice. I've thought about doing a what if video in terms of explaining what could have happened provided it was supported properly.
I had the gen1 Genesis, so when I got my 32X home, I found out I had to call Sega and order a separate cable to use it. Pre internet, that was difficult at best.
Another awesome video ian.
@@lostgemini2000 thanks!
31:34 Blaming the retailers is BS. This has to be clear. We are NOT talking about new rules - we are talking about rules everyone knew and agreed on. But when you work for Capitalistic companies you know how motivation works, especially for the Sales team: it is all about bonuses! And that's what killed SoA. It is a story of GREED! They were very happy to hit those bonuses the years before. And when things go the wrong way, you (the saleman) just move on to another company... Who cares?
Capitalistic companies? Greed? You don't think that greed, corruption, and bad decisions exist under socialism? Worse even?
@@MaxAbramson3 (Do you even know what is Socialism? Because you are American, I doubt it. You may believe the Democrats are the Left, and they are if you are American because they are at the left of the Republicans but if any Democrat was in Europe, he/she would be a right-wing party with some of them being centrist, maybe... Greed is a primary instinct, it has nothing to do with political systems. It exists in any system. I would argue that Capitalism makes it easier to be greedy but that is an opinion that would need to be tested and documented. And no matter what, you can't forget the human factor. This is why Communism could be a fantastic concept if we were robot but can't never work with humans..). Are you really surprised sales people will do whatever they can to get a financial bonus? In what reality are you living???
I think you highlighted sega's strength and weakness: their courage to throw shit against the wall to see if it would stick.
That's something I really miss in this era of consoles.
It's so fun coming to the Modern Vintage Gamer channel when he talks about how mistakes were made...
Oh, wait...
YO! Is like all your 3d videos made in unreal engine 5 or something?
They look so well done
@@jeremybreau2482 Thank you, I spend too much time playing with renders. I Primarily use blender actually with some After effects. Although unreal could probably render faster I'm not as familiar with Unreal sadly.
Price was a big deterrent they should have sold it for the price of a game cartridge and included a free game with it as well
Something I don't see talked about much in these discussions is how unreliable the 32X was and how it soured many people on future Sega hardware purchases.
My family bought a 32X, and it lasted all of a few months before stopping working entirely. This was the days before the internet, and there was no easy way to get information about repairs or warranty service. It just became an expensive paperweight, and the games we had purchased for it became useless. As a very young kid it was a bitter disappointment.
The 32X had a lot going for it hardware wise. It's a shame that Sega badly & completely shot themselves in the foot with it. Not going to blame specifically SoJ or SoA but the company as a whole.
I remember back then being interested in the 32X before it's release. I took a wait & see approach directly after it's launch in part due to the launch of the Saturn in Japan, which is something my friends and I were aware of as we were online with services like Prodigy, AOL and Compuserve. I'm still glad that I did wait & see on the 32X! At the time I was quite happy with the SNES and my 486 PC with a 2X CD-ROM drive for the rest of my games.
I would agree that Sega so badly botching the surprise early Saturn launch in 95 eroded away what interested my friends and I had in Sega consoles. Sure, we absolutely loved to play Daytona USA, the local mall had an 8 player linked setup from shortly after that game launched until well into 1996, maybe even 97.
After the Saturn launched for games in the home it became only the PS1, the N64 (mostly for 4 player games!), the SNES for older stuff and especially the PC! In the mid to late 90s as my best friend and I lived next door to each other. We had a 10Mbit 10base-T coax network setup between the houses which lead to fairly routine up to 8 player LAN games until we all went off to various colleges in 1998. After the 32X was released none of us ever bought another Sega console again.
We didn't trust Sega to support any newer console well enough to justify the cost. While it may seem like we were well off since we had PCs and the like that's mostly because all of us had jobs through HS.
Thanks for sharing your story. I was loosely aware of the 32x when it came out as we rented it once and I thought primal rage was cool, but we never rented 3d games for it at the time which would probably have made it seem more impressive at the time. I was a Sega kid but didn't care for the Saturn so jumped to the N64 and didn't come back to Sega until the Dreamcast.
So where does the SVP chip fit into all of this? I was under the impression that it planted the seeds for the 32x. Because the Virtua Racing Genesis cart cost so much back in the day, Sega didn't want to release a lot of SVP $99 titles and went with an add-on.
Excellent video, and the first of your videos I've seen, so at risk of saying something you've probably read before, you sound a lot like Patrick Warburton lmao
Thanks for stopping by and checking out the video. Or dare I say squeak squeaker squeak squeaken. Yeah I've heard that before 😂
Yeah, the story that it was mostly Sega of Japan's bidding is what I've heard for the longest time. There's a saying that divided house cannot stand. Well, Sega had that divided house for the longest time, then when they did decide to work together it was disastrous. Not that the retailers apparently didn't help, forcing Sega to manufacturer more units than they would have liked it. Yikes.
This makes me think that because the two different markets were behaving differently towards the Mega Drive.
The 32X should have been left to the American market while the Sega Saturn in Japan amassed its own Library and when it finally would come out it would have huge software support.
The Sega Saturn was the earliest of the consoles that gen releasing before the PS1.
The Sega Saturn could have been released at the same time as the N64 without losing anything.
Also since the 32x has so much in common with the Sega Saturn hardware they could have had an upgrade path for 32x carts on the Sega Saturn.
They also would have had more time to make the Sega Saturn more Arcade like and powerful.
Back then Sega vs Nintendo was huge.
If that happened I believe Sony would have simply been a footnote in the console history.
As the only reason the PS1 overtook Nintendo and Sega was because it was seen as more powerful compared to the Sega Saturn and people made their choice.
My Genesis, CD, and 32X are still a throuple after all these years. It's important to be friends first, for it to last. 😀
It wouldn't be as bad for 3rd party devs if each system didnt have it's own language and architecture. If you are going to have versions of your hit game on multiple consoles, ease of porting is crucial. 32X at leas fed off the Genesis, while Saturn was insanely difficult to program for, which was it's major downfall.
That, and the infamous "shot heard round the world" from Sony that panicked Sega and started the downfall....
"$299."
Great video. I was already a PC gamer when the 32x came out, so had zero interest then, but rediscovered it when I went down a deep retro collecting rabbit hole during COVID. My aim was/is to collect all hardware that had a Doom port, and of all the systems I’ve collected, this Frankenstein system remains my favourite to pull out and play, just due to sheer audacity of it. You raise a great point in the “post credits” about how this was kinda pro consumer that hasn’t happened again since. Imagine if something like this happened today, and instead of releasing the PS5 Pro, Sony released a Pro Plus expansion pack instead!
Thanks for checking out the video. Ive been fascinated with the 32X for a while. It's in such an odd place in terms of what it is and offers. The post credits were fun to shoot because there are so many fun what ifs about that I honestly could have rambled about for a while.
What killed the 32x was Donkey Kong Country and Snes games that used chips that allowed better graphics.
At the time, I thought it would be better to rent Star Fox from the video store and have 3D graphics than to buy an accessory to have something similar.
I was heavily into Sega back then. But the best add-on to the Genesis was a SNES. Sega CD barely added colors and the 32X added “mode 7” when it was too late. I missed out on a lot of amazing SNES games due to the console wars 🤣
I was a Nintendo only gamer back then (at least as far as buying systems. I would still play on friends' Genesis systems) and while I liked some of what Sega was doing, it felt like they were pushing things out too fast and not supporting them enough. While I thought the Sega CD was incredibly cool, it never seemed terribly well-supported and the 32X seems like more of the same. Looking back I can have a greater appreciation for all that Sega did both for pushing boundaries as well as the gaming industry as a whole. The video was well researched and well produced, by the way.
Thank you! Appreciate the compliment. Sega was always unique in the were clearly throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticker.
I wonder whether 32x would have been given the green light had SOJ known of the impending losses at SOA when it was first planned and developed. I suspect not.
When the empassioned please of SOA to Irimajiri regarding prolonging the 16 bit market, SOA will have still been flying high, pre stock buy-back, and hence will have had significant bargaining power in discussions with SOJ
The 32X should of been a standalone successor to the Genesis released in late 1993 and the Sega CD should have never been released. It should of also had a 2X CD-Rom for cartridge/CD/or combo games and an enhanced chipset with 68000 at 16mhz (Genesis compatibility/easy arcade ports) and 4 SH2s with 1 meg ram and 512kb vram. Retail for 299.99 and come with 6 button controller and first party developed Virtua Racing 2/Genesis compilation as CD-Rom pack in title. Don't call it 32x though call it Sega Giga Revolution! They should of either done that or not released the 32X/Sega CD and released the Saturn in America in late 1994 with a full launch line up and cartridge games as well with more cartridge/CD-Rom games when necessary. Saturn pack in game would be same as fictional Revolution.
That was the original plan, they were going to release it as the Sega Neptune. By the time it reached prototype stage the Saturn was already getting close to launch so they decided to drop the Neptune and turn the 32x into a Genesis addon instead. They should have just cancelled it completely and concentrated on the Saturn.
@@_Thrackerzod They could have just launched it in late 93 and waited till late 96-97 to launch the Saturn with beefier hardware. Just look at all the cool fan made MSU-MD mods they have for the Genesis and 32X classics. That's what a 32x/Neptune with 2x-Cdrom could do. Cool stuff imagine 32X arcade level Golden Axe with symphony music.
I would like to say that any console can be amazing. Even a 32-bit add-on for a console. All you have to do is sit down and develop a cool game for it.
At the time 32 bit systems were coming out and the Genesis user base was big. So they offered an add-on in case you wanted to get in on the next gen systems.
However, you need the software to make any system great and they didn't give the developers enough time to make any good software. So it was a powerful add-on, but with no games. Thus nobody bought it.
Its up to the homebrew community to make games for it now.
still have mine I bought brand new... still love it
I scored mine a bit over a decade ago. I really enjoy it.
pretty average games for it, but i love the story behind it to the point i would actually display 1 on my shelf!
My god do I love the 32X. It had so much potential that sadly was never achieved.
I happily and proudly own every 32X game CIB.
As much as I love the Mega CD, I still feel like the 32X was a better add-on than the Mega CD in theory, with how much it enhanced the MegaDrive experience over what the Mega CD provided.
I also still feel that if Sega had enough available at launch for pre-orders (they didn't, as over one million pre-orders had been placed, and they could only deliver roughly 500 thousand), and if they hadn't launched the Saturn in the USA four months early in May 1995, the 32X would have had massive success in the USA at least.
I am a proud 32X fanboy, and nothing will ever change that.
@HistoricNerd I am a lifelong Sega historian, and even I learned some things from this video I never knew before. Thank you for your work.
I'm always Glad there are more 32X fan boys out there. Love the console. I was pretty excited when new information came out about the 32x especially from the Japanese side of the house which really answered some questions I always had.
Idk why, but every time I see the 32x all i can think of is avgn saying. "its on life support"
The 32X had a few cool exclusive games on it, but yea it wasn't necessary, considering that the Saturn was on it's way in less than a year at the time.
4:59 That sounds like these pro versions of today's consoles.
I adored Sega growing up, but the 32x just didn't impress me, and was more excited to wait for the Saturn. Sega was ahead of the industry once again, but wasn't at the right time. This was the ps5 pro version of the Genesis. It was like a Genesis pro. Or you could say the 32x was a Series S, as the Saturn was the Series X😅
You got Wrestle With Gaming to do a voice over! nice!!
I lost hope in Sega then. I walked into Electronics Boutique and saw the Saturn I shook my head. I eventually bought a JP Saturn and modded it so I could play US games, but then the Dreamcast.... I sometimes am shocked they are still in Business.
Saturn + Virtua Fighter + the ability to save your game (built-in)
= $399
PS1 + game (full price) + a memory card to save ($25)
= $380 - $390
.. literally a 10 to 20 dollar difference.
It's not this "avalanche price difference" that almost everyone says it was.
And it's extremely common for the established brand to be a few bucks more.
And thats exactly the situation here.
The actual problem was people not doing 2 seconds worth of math,
and instead regurgitating some person on a forum saying things like "the Saturn is at a suicidal price!"..
So $10 or $20 makes the difference between "perfect best price ever" and "dooming themselves with such an outrageous price"...?
Just sayin
DooM 32X is GOATed Doom SNES was a Joke but had a Rad Communist Red Cartridge.
32X should've released a year earlier. With Sonic 3 and Knuckles as a release title.
So many fun what ifs when talking about the 32X
Nice job HN.
*Finger gun
*finger guns back
Thanks man! Glad you could stop by
@generalleoff Hit
*Raises controller
It paved the way for the 32X - powerful hardware in a confusing architecture and bad programmer's documentation.
If you look at Doom32X Resurrection and Sonic R you'll get what I mean.
If Sega went all-in on either the Saturn or Neptune (with carts able to go to at least 64 megabits), they easily could've been in a much better position for when Dreamcast's time came. But since they divided their forces, they ended up killing themselves. Sad, as I was jacked to get a Neptune eventually after seeing the pic of it in EGM
30 years... we're as far from the 90s as the 40s were from the 70s
Urg, I'm old lol
I viewed the Sega CD and 32x as a gooseegg anyway, and instead opted for the Saturn 😅. Had Sega released the Saturn ANY SOONER, it would've been almost a waste of time, because the N64 was hitting its stride, and the Ps1 was the "new kid on the block" , as far as manufacturer. They HAD to do it
For the 32X to be divisive, would require that a decent number of people consider it a success. It's not. It's an absolute failure by every possible metric. Which doesn't mean it's not worth having in a collection. I have one and enjoy the fact that is has 5 or 6 unique good games that don't have ports on any other system. But still it's really not divisive. The library is small and doesn't have "must-play" games.
I actually like the idea of 32x and on paper it's hardware was really good - 2× SH-2 32-bit RISC processor @ 23 MHz . While Playstation 1 had MIPS R3000A-compatible 32-bit RISC CPU MIPS R3051 with 5 KB L1 cache, running at 33.8688 MHz. . So in theory Sega genesis with 32x could have had decent 3d games and perfect Arcade ports with lots of colors and no slowdowns. But unfortunately Sega screwed up. If they focused on 32x and Sega CD a bit more in terms of games and gave them more time before releasing Saturn then the things could have been a bit different.
Great video
Glad you enjoyed it!
Sega of America should never have become involved in system designs. They were incompetent.
They should have shelved the 32x and redevelop it as the Neptune. Not release the Saturn at all.
An indie tomb raider version for the 32x are out there, just think if they can released this on 32x CD version.
Kalinske Team's plan was to stick with the Sega CD + SVP ($50), already ready with 6 hit arcade games for release just two months later in March 1994. That would've cleared out the Sega CD inventory and brought in $1-2 billion in revenue in 1994 that SEGA desperately needed--rather than $1-2 billion in hardware, games, and inventories just sitting around in warehouses.
They really dropped the ball in the face of the Saturns initial delay. They really should have hammered out their time lines better and things might have been a lot less chaotic.
@HistoricNerd Sega CD + SVP was the roadmap that everyone was on, and would've held up until 1996 when PS1 hit it's stride. SEGA would still have leading marketshare until FF7, MGS, and GT.
Sonic Roboblast 32X has arrived.
@@metronome8471 I need to live stream that.
It's really interesting for me looking back at how much I genuinely anticipated the 32X, but I never got to own one! I think it was just too close to the PS1 and Saturn, both of which I bought on day 1. Im trying to remember what made me just forget about the 32X. I wanted so many games for the add-on. It may have been the motocross game. I remember that being so bad that it broke my heart. Doom as well. Then Doom on PS1 was absolute perfection. Id love to pick a 32X up now but the prices are ludicrous!
Oh man, I fell victim to the ads back then as well except it was rise of the robots. I was so excited for that game.... mistakes were made. The 32X really did get buried.
@HistoricNerd Man, I would do anything to go back and experience it all over again. I loved this time in gaming... its probably my favorite time of my life, the mid-90s. Music was great, the movies were awesome, and the games were just incredible, at home and the arcade.
@@HistoricNerd and yeah Rise of the Robots was awful. Is that the worst 32X game you think?
@LukeDodge916 strangely enough that's about the only console it didn't get a port to. I think cosmic carnage is probably my least liked game on the system.