Original VR cartridge owner here - this was amazing back in the day. I dropped so many quarters in VR that having the Genesis version was fantastic. I dropped it when I bought the 32X version though.
I find it crazy they SVP chip was thought to be an expansion card, lead to the creation of the 32x (I wish there was more homebrew games for SVP or 32x) but man. Crazy the only major limiting factor of the genesis was color palette lol.
I really wish they would've used it more, or came up with a cost reduced way to make it less expensive so more games could've used it. Same with the Super CPU on the C64 man....The possibilities
Yeah it will always go down as one of the biggest bone headed tech decision in gaming history. Some one thought it would be an awesome idea and convinced all of upper management to approve to just double the colours of the Master system...
By that time, a $50-60 console created from scratch would outperform the Genesis. Perhaps that's what SEGA was afraid of--consoles that they couldn't see.
@@MaxAbramson3 As we saw with the 7th Gen, and definitely the 8th gen, custom hardware is not cost efficient anymore and consoles have died to be replaced by pc appliances with a walled garden and ease of use UI. PC has shifted with elements pushing it to do the same thing, especially with Steam OS. So I think Sega saw the writing on the wall, esp since Mobile is the biggest market atm.
@@gpturismo Mobile is now the fastest growing, but also now the single largest. A $99 smart phone Xbox might be the biggest money maker ever. If you get rich off that, send me my 5%.
Thks for the great video! I've followed the link and read the discussion about the SVP chip, it is indeed fascinating. I fell in love with VR after playing it at the arcade back in the day, and remember giving a kidney to bought an US imported copy for the Megadrive (mine was the Tectoy 1st model but labeled as MD 2, released wirh Sonic 1 in 1991) in 1994, I guess - I was married back then and had to hide the purchase from my wife, otherwise wouldn't be here telling the story. I still have this very cartrige, and also the JP, BR, and 32x's JP and US versions, so perhaps it is my most played racing game ever. Regards!
Play the Genesis port of Hard Drivin', then play Virtua Racing. It helps put it into perspective how much of an upgrade this chip was. It may be difficult to appreciate if you weren't there at the time of release.
I bought this at a Hollywood Video that was having a fire sale on all of their Genesis and SNES games for $20, because they wanted to make room for more PSX titles.
This was so impressive back then, and certainly helped Sega keep their hardware in the race (haha), but I did buy a Switch for Virtua Racing. It's incredible what they did with that thing, and it was like 7 bucks... 1080p, 60fps... Awesome stuff
@@rafaelantonio6765 It would have cost so much less they could have included a pack in title. Toss in, even back in the day the few people I knew who did have access to one, were complaining about the additional plug ins. Yeah, it wouldn't have been as pretty. But, it would have been so much cheaper that it wouldn't have fizzled after a small collection of games, AS WELL, it would have been such a simple project that SEGA of Japan wouldn't have taken a dump all over the project due to its fighting with the Saturn, especially with their early release with a poor launch line-up.
@@rafaelantonio6765 Basically, when you could buy a Model 2 for 100 bucks, and a 32x costs 150, the Sega CD (model 2) at about 150 still... how likely are you to go with that, or just wait for the Playstation selling for 200 in a year.
Note, the SVP chip did not need mixing cables, spacers, and the power supply the 32x needed. I think the mixing was used to enhance onscreen colors. It would have been cool if it were used as a Sega CD enhancer for memory and 3d games.
SH2-based SVP Lock On with extra RAM. That would've allowed them to draw 90,000 flat shaded polygons per second or 25,000 textured, Goraud-shaded. Plus there'd be 18 months to build up a proper library of games.
Sega should have made the svp chip a lock on cart And released it for $49.99 And had 6 games on release for $39.99. Each 1.virtua fighter 2.virtua racing 3.Star Wars arcade 4. Virtua cop 5. Doom 6.Daytona usa Then begged capcom to use the chip for its processing and memory to release their 2d arcaded games 1.street fighter alpha 2.x-men children of the atom 3.alien vs predator Then begged EA & other developers to remake or rerelease their 3d games using the chip to look and run better. ( faster smoother frame rate & more polygons) F-117 Night Storm F-15 Strike Eagle II F-22 Interceptor Hard Drivin' Kawasaki Superbike Challenge LHX Attack Chopper M-1 Abrams Battle Tank MiG-29 Fighter Pilot Race Drivin Star Cruiser Steel Talons Then release a 3d controler The 6 button modified with 1.longer handles a little thick for grip & comfort. 2. Two shoulder buttons. 3. A small analog stick on the inside of the dpad like sony’s controller (psvita size )
Honestly I can agree with that but just think about how much limitation the thing can take and try to think about what needs to be removed in order to keep the performance ahead of the super FX chip and yet so keep it playable But also allow for The games that come with the collection to be playable without the lock on add-on however some games will be forced to do it and verse show an error screen I guess finding a way to not get over$100 in buying short games for it might seem a little hard remember it was the 90s so trying to manufacture the chip and all which compatible games will take up a lot of money because it’s gonna have a lot of code in the cartridge meaning that it might go over 4 MB so they might have to order for even bigger of the cartridge meaning that it might be rising the prices from 100 to whatever number you think will come by inflation rates
I've been saying since the first rumors of the SVP Lock On cartridge were mentioned that SEGA should've spent the mid-90s developing games for the Sega CD+SVP. This made sense as a platform, though they would've had to have used Shadow/Highlight Mode and color mixing to break the 512 color barrier of their 1988 Megadrive/Genesis. The Sega CD's low cost per game, high memory capacity (600MB), and excellent audio complement the Genesis ability to draw great backgrounds at 60fps and the SVP's ability to draw foregrounds with 20,000 polygons/sec (almost 700 shapes at 30fps). And most AAA titles of the mid-90s could be ported to this platform with some downscaling of color and polygon count. Still, by Christmas of 1994, they could've brought to the price of the combined console down to $249, and $199 shortly thereafter, giving them a permanent $100 price advantage over competitors from SONY and NINTENDO.
Too bad it's the only game with that incredible CPU. Definitely Sega's answer to Nintendo's Super FX Chip on the Super NES. That game was INSANE for 16-bit standards.
I first played this when I was 11 or 12 years old when it came out on the actual system and I of course rented it because there was no way my parents were dropping 90 to 100 bucks on a single game. At the time it blew me away and on a real CRT all the dithering you see here is completely smoothed out making it seem like there were more colors going on than what's actually there. Funny thing was at around the same time period there was also Virtua Fighter 2 at the video rental for Genesis that had me grabbing it and going to the counter but while I was waiting in line I looked at the back of the box and saw it was still 2D sprites. It's still an alright port but I was kinda disappointed that it didn't have an SVP chip lol 😄
there are much better ways to play virtua racing, particularly the switch version but I can’t help but come back to the mega drive version every so often, I just find it incredibly charming
I remember playing this in an arcade on holiday as a kid and loved it. No chance we'd ever buy the expensive cartridge though for our Mega Drive! Nice video :)
You sound a lot like Garfield from the 80’s cartoons. No disrespect intended whatsoever. I love your videos! I actually saved up and bought this cart back when I was 13 👍🏻
I LOVED Virtua Racing on the megadrive, it was awesome. It costed $64.99 at the time in the UK when average Megadrive games cost £39.99. My ONLY gripe was that they didn't try to create some additional courses. If they created 3 more tracks that would have been superb. Yes. The Nintendo Switch is the true best version.
Hind sight is always 20/20 when it comes to the SVP/32X scenario, but at the time, the case can be made than the decisions Sega took made sense. First is the price of the SVP enhanced games, Virtua Racing was $100 USD back then. Perhaps if the SVP chip would have found it's way into other games, they could have brought the price down just by the bulk order. But that never happened, and the SVP chip did nothing to enhance the color palette or audio. The 32X was a one time purchase of $159 that would enhance the games released for it above the Genesis titles; a larger color palette, could push more polygons, could scale and rotate sprites, and added 2 audio channels. These games were typically $10 more than the equivalent Genesis title. It seemed like a good idea to them. The problems with this approach was that it would splinter the userbase, and devs would always target the larger base first (which would be those that owned just the Genesis). The other issue is that Sega was releasing a 32 bit console that was not compatible with this Genesis add on, making it obsolete in a year or so.
Most gamers were excited about the rumored $49.95 SVP Lock On cartridge that SEGA had already developed, along with three Virtua series games plus DOOM, Star Wars Arcade, and Daytona USA. The only change I'd make would be to use a single SH2 RISC chip and VDP1 that was found in the Saturn, and increase the memory from 128KB to 512KB, but still release that in Spring of 1994--instead of November when they were right on the heels of the Saturn launch. With half the hardware, the addon would cost half as much to make and sell at just $80, also providing a pallette of 16.7 million colors and more effects. This "mini Saturn" could render 80,000 Gouraud shaded, textured polygons/sec and display resolutions as high as 352x240, and Sega CD+SVP games developed for it would run also on the Saturn, so third party devs would keep on making games for it into the late 90s, greatly expanding the Saturn's launch library. SEGA should've made the Sega CD + SVP as their platform for the mid 90s, allowing them to release the Dreamcast in 1998 for $299 and blow away the competition with its 5 million polygon monster.
I picked the game up for around £10 last year, mostly out of curiosity. I think it's really impressive and the handing is better than the Saturn version IMO. I have a real thing for flat shaded polygons, particularly on old systems... Amiga flight sims, Super FX games etc...
megadrive was ported by sega themself and developers had access to all game data and original source code but the saturn version was outsorced and saturn developers didn't get a line of the original code, all they get was by reverse engineering the model 1 game.
I wonder why the only Super Scaler games they chose for the 32x was After Burner and Space Harrier....why no Super Hangon, Super Thunderblade, Galaxy Force, Turbo Outrun....AB and SH look almost arcade like.
@@MrAxelStone That probably would've happened with the SVP Lock On, especially if they'd used the SH2 and increased the RAM. Third party developers would've had 18 months to make games before the PlayStation and Saturn hit the market. And SEGA would've sold a lot more Genesis/Megadrive consoles and Sega CD addons around the world, as well as being able to build up a game library that kept the company profitable during those rough PS1/N64 years.
I think I remember my dad renting it for us at blockbuster and then shortly after that we never talked about it again and then the next year the new consoles were out but he wasn't going to buy them for us because they were too expensive. Basically from 1995-1998 I only got to hear from dad how big the lines were and how excited people were during those Xmas months for these games and game systems. It seemed like the gaming consoles back then were still only a niche thing and even being able to play them at home was more of a Friday night, sleep over, summer vacation treat. Heck some kids were only allowed to play sports games and that was only on the weekend! No toys, church on Sunday and 1 hour of Sega or Nintendo hockey or Madden, etc.on Sat! Or they could maybe ride their bikes up and down the street. If the kid was lucky the parents would mellow out around 10th grade and get them a car lol.
I remember renting this cartridge back in the day to see what all the fuss was about. I thought it was ok ..until I got a 32x and Virtra Racing Deluxe. I like both versions but Deluxe is alot better in my opinion.
I enjoyed this game. Cost was kinda high but this chip was very capable. I guess the cost was why only this game had it, I guess they figured it was a big enough arcade hit to do it. As far as cost, I bet Nintendo ate the cost a little bit since it was kind of a showpiece to compete with stuff like 3d0 and Jaguar. They did it again with Starfox 64 when they included the rumble pack with that.
The fact that sega left this project behind was one of the reasons they died. Instead of moving on to the 32x, releasing the Saturn early, and then going on to the Dreamcast, they should’ve just made many SVP games, and ditch the 32X entirely. And if the Saturn released on time, they probably would’ve had a slight rep when the Dreamcast dropped. But now that I think of it, it feels like sega just wouldn’t belong in the modern world
Unfortunately, recent Sega leaks revealed that later Genesis titles were a painful financial loss. The same audience that left 8-bit as soon as possible and genuinely cared about SNES slowdown wasn't supporting demakes. Sega also had to pay way more for chips in bulk, compared to Nintendo and Sega. Then there's the brutal deal SoA struck with retailers...
I think what Sega should have done is make a SVP enhancement cart people could buy that new games could take advantage of instead of having every game come with them built in jacking up the price like how VR did. at least that way they could have continue to make games that were in the normal $30-$50 range instead of the $100 and higher range.
Collectors want this to be the future. Where consoles are generic cause each game has one built in. Gamers favor a software only model it's a mess still it's amazing to think Sega might have released an svp cart then you'd have a baby 32x
arcade games are each their own console, that's highly collectable. the app store is all software still collectible but not as prestigious. you can't brag about a bunch of software but can brag about objects@@Slash0mega
I snagged this for like 5 bucks when I was in Rhode island some years back Oddly enough there was this mysterious sheet of paper inside barely poking out the side of the console and to this day I have no clue what that was about
@@48hourrecordsteam45 Imagine that SEGA had used the Saturn's SH2, VDP1, and 512KB of RAM for the SVP Lock On. It would be about $80, but it could render 80,000 polygons/sec, Gouraud shaded, textured, with features turned on. It could also use better codecs for Sega CD FMV, cut scenes, and video CDs, similar to what we saw with the few 32X-CD games. These $60 carts would've been out by Spring of 1994 (instead of November), had a ton of games, and had 18 months on the market to develop games and limit pushers before the Saturn and PlayStation came out. This "mini-Saturn" would've consumed only about 4 Watts, so could run off the power from the cartridge slot, so it wouldn't need as many cables.
segas answer to starfox. ...but it was too late in the game. i wish they had tried to make a space shooter style game with this tech. it would been amazing and interesting. sadly no one could come up with something i guess. not even sega. 😔
The saddest thing to me is the 32x or the Sega CD probably could have done VERY faithful conversions of all the super scaler games... Galaxy Force, Afterburner, Outrun, Outrunners.... They did do Space Harrier and Afterburner for the 32x but could've done so many more and with relatively little effort.
It’s more that it was too expensive to make and too expensive to sell. It also wasn’t an answer, but more of an experiment. Nintendo made star fox profitable by only pushing just enough to make it that way. Sega could not answer in return and instead released what Nintendo could have done, but didn’t because they knew no one was going to buy a $100 cart.
@@ddespair starfox was fun. the super fx wasnt just a gimmick. the game is solid. the ost is amazing. the game was a sight to behold and experience back in the day. also its easy to pick up and play. the skills of argonaut and then miyamotos finish touch with adding the characters n the story made it complete. kinda huge part of it imo. ya nintendo took an interest in the project from the start. and even after they let go of argonaut they continued the franchise. im glad they did. huge fan of it. tho idk if it would have been as successful if it was just released as a generic space shooter. like some others out there u can find that tried to mimick starfox style. there is a proto of snes starfox called starglider. now out there for view its basically the same game without the starfox characters. it feels empty lol. but would have been neat but mostly forgotten if released as that game... anyhow. ya i wish sega at least attempted a starfox like franchise for themselves. they had a decent chip with svc but it was too expensive. ya crazy to pay 100 for a game. n on the aging console and when the true 32bit era was about to begin. which is funny since sfx and sfx2 was affordable. the latter was used in smw 2 yoshis island. sure they could have just used the 32x instead of chip but for some weird reason sega needed to prove a stock genesis can handle polys too. when 32x was a thing. but i rather a worthy game with the tech demo like starfox was. and also sega situation near the end of genesis life is kinda sad. and then 32x thing which caused drama with sega of jap and soon to be sega saturn. so many horrible decisions by sega of america at this time. thank god dreamcast at least got to see the light of day and had a decent run. but sadly it also faded away before its time. poor sega. ill always be a fan tho.
@@ssppeeaarr all of this bad decision and spending massive money during that period caused the dreamcast to die off so soon. Saturn mismanagement predicted the fate of the company and dreamcast.
That is interesting. Mine is not working either, but i was not the original owner. I purchased i while back, used, but the cartridge seemed in great condition, even with the cartridge conctacs looking like new, there was no sign the cart had been tampered or opened, sadly the cart didn´t boot, it only made some noises as if the cart was showing the sega logo but then, nothing., as time passed it got even worst, now the cart doesn´t boot or make any sound at all.
NOTE: The 32x has 2 hitachi sh2 cpus inside, both are clocked at 23 mhz and are 32 bit. The SVP is actually just a single Hitchi Sh2 clocked at 23 mhz and is also 32 bit.
@@Sus-- Strange that the SAMSUNG DSP could draw 20,000 polygons per second, but each 32X SH2 could draw 90,000 in software or 20,000 Gouraud textured and shaded.
Even more crazy is that the ps1 had a 33 mhz cpu, which is a lot slower than the 32x one. I’m still shocked that the 32x was clocked at 58mhz. That’s just insane.
Sega, in my opinion made two very big mistakes with the SVP chip that cascaded into a cacophony of very bad decisions. The first problem I see was the game chosen as the flagship for the SVP chip. While Virtua Racing was very popular asking 100 dollars for a grand total of 3 tracks wasn't a great move. No, Virtua Fighter or possibly Doom would have been far better choices for the first SVP game. The second issue was of course delivery of the SVP chip. Had Sega gone with a lock-on cart that came with Virtua Racing for 100 bucks that would have been much better. I believe this would have driven costs way down as well in the long-run.
@@bmx7596 If Wolfenstein 3D is possible on the Genesis then Doom is definitely on the table. There is a full port of Wolfenstein 3D available for the Sega Genesis that can be played without any enhancements. It reminds me of the Sega Saturn running Quake with a modified Power Slave Engine. Where there is a will, there is a way. If one utilized the SVP for 90% of the heavy lifting like Nintendo did with the FX I don't see a reason why it isn't possible. You would simply build Doom on top of the Wolf Engine (I have forgotten its name) then modify the Hell out of it.
@@Sinn0100 Yes doom is possible by Some toy story hacks that they used for the 3-D level but Wolfenstein 3-D could also help with that but we could use the toy story hacks since it renders a lot better so then eventually they could build a doom version on top of the same engine the Wolfenstein uses but yet so use some hacks from toy story to improve performance and keep it playable
@@Sinn0100 it could basically be like we use the SVP chip as a way to add more Contant but we can also choose to make the Svp chip render the polygons of the enemies but I’m pretty sure that will take up a lot of video and for both the level thing and the enemies so I think having 3-D enemies is probably not a possibility but it is possible to probably find some other sort of memory and the sound if you use the new two channels but it should use mostly the main Sega genesis sound chip because I don’t want it to sound like a 32X version or… We can find a way to make pre-recorded channels a possibility on the SVP chip so then eventually we could record every single instrument that most of the things use and then eventually have a second Genesis laying back down table but it will sound close to the original but I’m pretty sure I’m not thinking about places because we’re probably gonna go up a lot so having to take a genesis version be available is a good business decision so when customers afford a cheaper option
I don't know if I would have found this impressive back in the day or not since I didn't try out this port until much later in life. I know it wasn't possible for the system to run the game without said special chip, but the graphics are still really bad. The 32x version on the other hand is sooooo much better.
12 year old me absolutely did find it impressive. You're right that the 32x version looks a lot better but this was really, really impressive at the time.
I wish sega used a Hitachi custom DSP or a RISC Coprocessor. Most likely will be much cheaper than the samsung SVP chip. Imagine Virtua Fighter, Star wars arcade, outlaw racing, zaxxon motherbase 2000, and daytona usa all released on the genesis using the svp chip. Cancelling the 32x add-on.
That's what many of us have been saying for years, though I think that the SH2 SVP Lock On would also need more RAM to really perform (256 or even 512KB or RAM). The SH2 was capable of drawing 90,000 flat shaded polygons per second (or 25,000 textured, Goraud shaded, reflected, etc), almost as many as the Virtua series arcade boards. SEGA already had six games made for the SVP Lock On, and they would've been much cooler with the higher performance of the SH2 SVP Lock On.
I'm not sure where that 60,000 polys per second number comes from, but it must be using the same (in a vacuum alterverse) math as Sony's tech specs for the PS1 and PS2. Virtua Racing was only 9000 polys per second, and they were not lit. The SVP did better at flat shaded polys than the Super FX 1 or 2, but it was not better than the 3DO, Jaguar or especially 32X. 60,000 polys per second is the recorded target rate of 1995 Saturn *and* PS1 games. Nice vidya, I just choked on my coffee when I heard that tech spec for the SVP and had to go look it up. I've always wondered how Virtua Racing SVP is so plentful and cheap today when it was so expensive at the time. It's like they made way more than they ever potentially sold at original retail.
I was reading it off the article at Segaretro.org so my apologies if they listed it there incorrectly. I just checked again to make sure I read it right. Not sure why they would have it listed there incorrectly. Ill try and be more careful.
They do have that number, I'm just not sure where it came from or why they post it so prominently. Then they have the actual number for Virtua Racing, and the peak performance at 10,000 right below it. Confusing.
@@gamecomparisons You are 100% correct. Its very strange. I sincerely do appreciate you pointing this out though. I kinda read that number off and never thought twice about it before.
Back when I could be bothered, I read lots of forum discussion about the SVP being super powerful, better than the 32X (because they hate, hate, hate, the 32X). It's probably from all of that conjecture. To say that the off the shelf DSP that's in the SVP is just as powerful as two Hitachi SH-2s should be truly shocking. I can't make heads or tails of the "math" in the footnotes on segaretro, it'd be nice if they had an explanation for what they are talking about there. Maybe they do somewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if the SVP could do 60k if it was all vector graphics like the original Atari Star Wars Arcade for example. With the Sony numbers it's always some never used in game polygon type, in a vacuum so to speak.
@@supermegagrafx64 Pretty much anything SegaRetro says in this area is complete and utter nonsense. The SVP isn't a GPU or anything like that. So trying to attach polygons per second to it is kind of silly. It's really just a DSP that can be used to do whatever advanced math you want it to do. For Virtua Racing they used it to help with 3D calculations and software render polygons. That said, I'd even raise my eyebrows at the 9000 Polygons/second claim. First the source SegaRetro is linking to for that says nothing about that at all. And secondly 9000/second would be about 600 per frame at 15fps. That seems pretty high for Genesis Virtua Racing as that's getting into early Saturn and PS1 polygon per frame counts and Virtua Racing on Genesis looks nowhere near that detailed.
Sega should have never abandoned this chip. It's one of the worst mistakes they ever made. Had the chip been more widely used and over time it would have gotten cheaper and cheaper. To bring home games it could not otherwise bring home, the extra cost was worth it to a lot of people. At a minimum, they wouldn't have lost the 10s of millions (or more) it did lose on the 32x. The 32x version of the game looks better, no doubt about it. But this version is very acceptable. The Genesis and its games continued to be available until 1997. This chip could have been continuously improved and refined to make it cheaper and faster. This was pretty much the norm back then. They could have not lost a lot of money chasing the 32x. IIRC, when Virtua Racer was in the arcade, it was like $1.50 or $2 a play. 2 bucks a play in 1992 was an expensive play. Expecting to pay a higher price for a decent home version was not unheard of. A lot of Genesis RPGs were selling for 100 bucks back then, at least in Japan (equivalent of 100 Dollars).
This game didnt even compare to the PC game called Stunts released in 1990 with adlib or soundblaster. I paid like 15 bucks for my copy back in the day . Unless you grew up with a rich family and owned a 25" TV , PC racing was better on a VGA monitor back in 1990 /1992
All the bad ideas came from the Japanese development devision!!! The Sega 32x chips should have been put in the Sega CD!!! Sega CD did not have any increase colors and had grainy ass graphics just like Genesis! Sega of Japan only relied on Sega CD sounds and memory! Sega CD only needed only 32x with 4 megabytes of ram! Sega of Japan development wasted millions of segas dollars!
Sega cd and 32x could have been skipped entirely. Saturn, honestly not sure what's worse having to program 3 cpu architectures(SH-2(having 2 cpus though, but I guess you can make one of them babysit the DSP and M68k and ?the main one drive the VDPs
@@niewazneniewazne1890 Sega CD has the same processor as Sega Genesis only difference is Sega CD has scaling of background and sprites through additional chips omething 32x already has. That's why 32x only.
The Sega CD was developed and released too early. It was released in 1991 in Japan, less than 6 months after the release of Sonic 1. Sega didn’t need an add on at that stage - the Genesis/MD was only just beginning to gain momentum in the PAL and NA regions. Now if they had released a 32 bit CD add-on in 1993 that could turn out half decent versions of Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter in 1994, that might have been a game changer.
Original VR cartridge owner here - this was amazing back in the day. I dropped so many quarters in VR that having the Genesis version was fantastic.
I dropped it when I bought the 32X version though.
The fact they did manage to accomplish this incredibly impressive 16-bit graphics on the Genesis is a miracle.
I find it crazy they SVP chip was thought to be an expansion card, lead to the creation of the 32x (I wish there was more homebrew games for SVP or 32x) but man. Crazy the only major limiting factor of the genesis was color palette lol.
I really wish they would've used it more, or came up with a cost reduced way to make it less expensive so more games could've used it. Same with the Super CPU on the C64 man....The possibilities
Yeah it will always go down as one of the biggest bone headed tech decision in gaming history. Some one thought it would be an awesome idea and convinced all of upper management to approve to just double the colours of the Master system...
By that time, a $50-60 console created from scratch would outperform the Genesis. Perhaps that's what SEGA was afraid of--consoles that they couldn't see.
@@MaxAbramson3 As we saw with the 7th Gen, and definitely the 8th gen, custom hardware is not cost efficient anymore and consoles have died to be replaced by pc appliances with a walled garden and ease of use UI. PC has shifted with elements pushing it to do the same thing, especially with Steam OS. So I think Sega saw the writing on the wall, esp since Mobile is the biggest market atm.
@@gpturismo Mobile is now the fastest growing, but also now the single largest. A $99 smart phone Xbox might be the biggest money maker ever. If you get rich off that, send me my 5%.
When I first got into the Genesis a few years ago I HAD to have Virtua Racing. It's a neat experience.
Thks for the great video! I've followed the link and read the discussion about the SVP chip, it is indeed fascinating. I fell in love with VR after playing it at the arcade back in the day, and remember giving a kidney to bought an US imported copy for the Megadrive (mine was the Tectoy 1st model but labeled as MD 2, released wirh Sonic 1 in 1991) in 1994, I guess - I was married back then and had to hide the purchase from my wife, otherwise wouldn't be here telling the story. I still have this very cartrige, and also the JP, BR, and 32x's JP and US versions, so perhaps it is my most played racing game ever. Regards!
Thinking about it, this was genuine SEGA, living up to the original Genesis ethos of having the arcade experience at home.
Play the Genesis port of Hard Drivin', then play Virtua Racing. It helps put it into perspective how much of an upgrade this chip was. It may be difficult to appreciate if you weren't there at the time of release.
I bought this at a Hollywood Video that was having a fire sale on all of their Genesis and SNES games for $20, because they wanted to make room for more PSX titles.
This was so impressive back then, and certainly helped Sega keep their hardware in the race (haha), but I did buy a Switch for Virtua Racing. It's incredible what they did with that thing, and it was like 7 bucks... 1080p, 60fps... Awesome stuff
Totally agree. It was very impressive back in the day and the new version is a dream to play.
The 32x should have just been a Sonic and Knuckles lock on cartridge with an SVP chip in it.
nope processor clock is higher
@@rafaelantonio6765 It would have cost so much less they could have included a pack in title.
Toss in, even back in the day the few people I knew who did have access to one, were complaining about the additional plug ins.
Yeah, it wouldn't have been as pretty.
But, it would have been so much cheaper that it wouldn't have fizzled after a small collection of games, AS WELL, it would have been such a simple project that SEGA of Japan wouldn't have taken a dump all over the project due to its fighting with the Saturn, especially with their early release with a poor launch line-up.
@@rafaelantonio6765 Basically, when you could buy a Model 2 for 100 bucks, and a 32x costs 150, the Sega CD (model 2) at about 150 still... how likely are you to go with that, or just wait for the Playstation selling for 200 in a year.
Note, the SVP chip did not need mixing cables, spacers, and the power supply the 32x needed. I think the mixing was used to enhance onscreen colors. It would have been cool if it were used as a Sega CD enhancer for memory and 3d games.
SH2-based SVP Lock On with extra RAM. That would've allowed them to draw 90,000 flat shaded polygons per second or 25,000 textured, Goraud-shaded. Plus there'd be 18 months to build up a proper library of games.
Sega should have made the svp chip a lock on cart
And released it for $49.99
And had 6 games on release for $39.99. Each
1.virtua fighter
2.virtua racing
3.Star Wars arcade
4. Virtua cop
5. Doom
6.Daytona usa
Then begged capcom to use the chip for its processing and memory to release their 2d arcaded games
1.street fighter alpha
2.x-men children of the atom
3.alien vs predator
Then begged EA & other developers to remake or rerelease
their 3d games using the chip to look and run better.
( faster smoother frame rate & more polygons)
F-117 Night Storm
F-15 Strike Eagle II
F-22 Interceptor
Hard Drivin'
Kawasaki Superbike Challenge
LHX Attack Chopper
M-1 Abrams Battle Tank
MiG-29 Fighter Pilot
Race Drivin
Star Cruiser
Steel Talons
Then release a 3d controler
The 6 button modified with
1.longer handles a little thick for grip & comfort.
2. Two shoulder buttons.
3. A small analog stick on the inside of the dpad like sony’s controller (psvita size )
This would have been a much better idea than the 32X
Honestly I can agree with that but just think about how much limitation the thing can take and try to think about what needs to be removed in order to keep the performance ahead of the super FX chip and yet so keep it playable
But also allow for The games that come with the collection to be playable without the lock on add-on however some games will be forced to do it and verse show an error screen I guess finding a way to not get over$100 in buying short games for it might seem a little hard remember it was the 90s so trying to manufacture the chip and all which compatible games will take up a lot of money because it’s gonna have a lot of code in the cartridge meaning that it might go over 4 MB so they might have to order for even bigger of the cartridge meaning that it might be rising the prices from 100 to whatever number you think will come by inflation rates
@@idaholana I’m a bit confused .
Sega should have made better use of their lock-on technology
I've been saying since the first rumors of the SVP Lock On cartridge were mentioned that SEGA should've spent the mid-90s developing games for the Sega CD+SVP. This made sense as a platform, though they would've had to have used Shadow/Highlight Mode and color mixing to break the 512 color barrier of their 1988 Megadrive/Genesis. The Sega CD's low cost per game, high memory capacity (600MB), and excellent audio complement the Genesis ability to draw great backgrounds at 60fps and the SVP's ability to draw foregrounds with 20,000 polygons/sec (almost 700 shapes at 30fps). And most AAA titles of the mid-90s could be ported to this platform with some downscaling of color and polygon count.
Still, by Christmas of 1994, they could've brought to the price of the combined console down to $249, and $199 shortly thereafter, giving them a permanent $100 price advantage over competitors from SONY and NINTENDO.
Too bad it's the only game with that incredible CPU. Definitely Sega's answer to Nintendo's Super FX Chip on the Super NES. That game was INSANE for 16-bit standards.
I first played this when I was 11 or 12 years old when it came out on the actual system and I of course rented it because there was no way my parents were dropping 90 to 100 bucks on a single game. At the time it blew me away and on a real CRT all the dithering you see here is completely smoothed out making it seem like there were more colors going on than what's actually there. Funny thing was at around the same time period there was also Virtua Fighter 2 at the video rental for Genesis that had me grabbing it and going to the counter but while I was waiting in line I looked at the back of the box and saw it was still 2D sprites. It's still an alright port but I was kinda disappointed that it didn't have an SVP chip lol 😄
They threw away svp virtua fighter and it was done !
Ah Virtua fighter 2d I like that game
there are much better ways to play virtua racing, particularly the switch version but I can’t help but come back to the mega drive version every so often, I just find it incredibly charming
I remember playing this in an arcade on holiday as a kid and loved it. No chance we'd ever buy the expensive cartridge though for our Mega Drive! Nice video :)
You sound a lot like Garfield from the 80’s cartoons. No disrespect intended whatsoever. I love your videos! I actually saved up and bought this cart back when I was 13 👍🏻
I love this game ... I remember bring this game home, i played the F out of it.
I LOVED Virtua Racing on the megadrive, it was awesome. It costed $64.99 at the time in the UK when average Megadrive games cost £39.99. My ONLY gripe was that they didn't try to create some additional courses. If they created 3 more tracks that would have been superb.
Yes. The Nintendo Switch is the true best version.
..just discovered your channel..love what i watched so far..you've earned a new subscriber..keep up the good work 👍
Hind sight is always 20/20 when it comes to the SVP/32X scenario, but at the time, the case can be made than the decisions Sega took made sense.
First is the price of the SVP enhanced games, Virtua Racing was $100 USD back then. Perhaps if the SVP chip would have found it's way into other games, they could have brought the price down just by the bulk order. But that never happened, and the SVP chip did nothing to enhance the color palette or audio.
The 32X was a one time purchase of $159 that would enhance the games released for it above the Genesis titles; a larger color palette, could push more polygons, could scale and rotate sprites, and added 2 audio channels. These games were typically $10 more than the equivalent Genesis title. It seemed like a good idea to them.
The problems with this approach was that it would splinter the userbase, and devs would always target the larger base first (which would be those that owned just the Genesis).
The other issue is that Sega was releasing a 32 bit console that was not compatible with this Genesis add on, making it obsolete in a year or so.
Most gamers were excited about the rumored $49.95 SVP Lock On cartridge that SEGA had already developed, along with three Virtua series games plus DOOM, Star Wars Arcade, and Daytona USA. The only change I'd make would be to use a single SH2 RISC chip and VDP1 that was found in the Saturn, and increase the memory from 128KB to 512KB, but still release that in Spring of 1994--instead of November when they were right on the heels of the Saturn launch. With half the hardware, the addon would cost half as much to make and sell at just $80, also providing a pallette of 16.7 million colors and more effects. This "mini Saturn" could render 80,000 Gouraud shaded, textured polygons/sec and display resolutions as high as 352x240, and Sega CD+SVP games developed for it would run also on the Saturn, so third party devs would keep on making games for it into the late 90s, greatly expanding the Saturn's launch library.
SEGA should've made the Sega CD + SVP as their platform for the mid 90s, allowing them to release the Dreamcast in 1998 for $299 and blow away the competition with its 5 million polygon monster.
I picked the game up for around £10 last year, mostly out of curiosity. I think it's really impressive and the handing is better than the Saturn version IMO. I have a real thing for flat shaded polygons, particularly on old systems... Amiga flight sims, Super FX games etc...
megadrive was ported by sega themself and developers had access to all game data and original source code but the saturn version was outsorced and saturn developers didn't get a line of the original code, all they get was by reverse engineering the model 1 game.
Sega shoulda pursued the SVP Chip, instead of makin the 32X
Sega made a boneheaded mistake and chose the 32x.
I wonder why the only Super Scaler games they chose for the 32x was After Burner and Space Harrier....why no Super Hangon, Super Thunderblade, Galaxy Force, Turbo Outrun....AB and SH look almost arcade like.
@@MrAxelStone That probably would've happened with the SVP Lock On, especially if they'd used the SH2 and increased the RAM. Third party developers would've had 18 months to make games before the PlayStation and Saturn hit the market. And SEGA would've sold a lot more Genesis/Megadrive consoles and Sega CD addons around the world, as well as being able to build up a game library that kept the company profitable during those rough PS1/N64 years.
Great channel man!
I think I remember my dad renting it for us at blockbuster and then shortly after that we never talked about it again and then the next year the new consoles were out but he wasn't going to buy them for us because they were too expensive. Basically from 1995-1998 I only got to hear from dad how big the lines were and how excited people were during those Xmas months for these games and game systems. It seemed like the gaming consoles back then were still only a niche thing and even being able to play them at home was more of a Friday night, sleep over, summer vacation treat. Heck some kids were only allowed to play sports games and that was only on the weekend! No toys, church on Sunday and 1 hour of Sega or Nintendo hockey or Madden, etc.on Sat! Or they could maybe ride their bikes up and down the street. If the kid was lucky the parents would mellow out around 10th grade and get them a car lol.
I remember renting this cartridge back in the day to see what all the fuss was about. I thought it was ok ..until I got a 32x and Virtra Racing Deluxe. I like both versions but Deluxe is alot better in my opinion.
I enjoyed this game. Cost was kinda high but this chip was very capable. I guess the cost was why only this game had it, I guess they figured it was a big enough arcade hit to do it. As far as cost, I bet Nintendo ate the cost a little bit since it was kind of a showpiece to compete with stuff like 3d0 and Jaguar. They did it again with Starfox 64 when they included the rumble pack with that.
Pros of nintendo super fx chip, they got a great cheaper deal with araganut than Sega with Samsung. Sega payed a lot of money to owned svp chip.
The fact that sega left this project behind was one of the reasons they died.
Instead of moving on to the 32x, releasing the Saturn early, and then going on to the Dreamcast, they should’ve just made many SVP games, and ditch the 32X entirely.
And if the Saturn released on time, they probably would’ve had a slight rep when the Dreamcast dropped.
But now that I think of it, it feels like sega just wouldn’t belong in the modern world
Unfortunately, recent Sega leaks revealed that later Genesis titles were a painful financial loss. The same audience that left 8-bit as soon as possible and genuinely cared about SNES slowdown wasn't supporting demakes.
Sega also had to pay way more for chips in bulk, compared to Nintendo and Sega. Then there's the brutal deal SoA struck with retailers...
Makes sense, the Virtua racing cartridge was 100 quid after all
I think what Sega should have done is make a SVP enhancement cart people could buy that new games could take advantage of instead of having every game come with them built in jacking up the price like how VR did. at least that way they could have continue to make games that were in the normal $30-$50 range instead of the $100 and higher range.
Collectors want this to be the future. Where consoles are generic cause each game has one built in. Gamers favor a software only model it's a mess still it's amazing to think Sega might have released an svp cart then you'd have a baby 32x
what?
arcade games are each their own console, that's highly collectable. the app store is all software still collectible but not as prestigious. you can't brag about a bunch of software but can brag about objects@@Slash0mega
thanks for taking apart your VR cart. Kinda pointless the (rudimentary) heat dissipation if there is no ventilation.
I am subscriber #512 on this video... After all this time.. The SNES and SEGA battle (technical specs) scars are still visible XD
I snagged this for like 5 bucks when I was in Rhode island some years back
Oddly enough there was this mysterious sheet of paper inside barely poking out the side of the console and to this day I have no clue what that was about
wow thats interesting. I wonder what that was for.
Either way it's a fun enough home conversion; the alternate camera angles with the six button pad def help my enjoyment
A $100 cart versus a $60 FX cart is a really hard sell.
Right
Imagine a 50 dollar lock on cart
And a list of games on release day for 39.99 each
Virtua racing
Virtua cop
Star Wars arcade
Also, $80 FX-2 cart, I wish Hitachi revised the svp chip using there own tech.
@@48hourrecordsteam45 Imagine that SEGA had used the Saturn's SH2, VDP1, and 512KB of RAM for the SVP Lock On. It would be about $80, but it could render 80,000 polygons/sec, Gouraud shaded, textured, with features turned on. It could also use better codecs for Sega CD FMV, cut scenes, and video CDs, similar to what we saw with the few 32X-CD games.
These $60 carts would've been out by Spring of 1994 (instead of November), had a ton of games, and had 18 months on the market to develop games and limit pushers before the Saturn and PlayStation came out.
This "mini-Saturn" would've consumed only about 4 Watts, so could run off the power from the cartridge slot, so it wouldn't need as many cables.
7:10 sorry bro i got excited and couldnt help myself...ill clean up
I have it! and think its class!
segas answer to starfox. ...but it was too late in the game. i wish they had tried to make a space shooter style game with this tech.
it would been amazing and interesting. sadly no one could come up with something i guess. not even sega. 😔
The saddest thing to me is the 32x or the Sega CD probably could have done VERY faithful conversions of all the super scaler games... Galaxy Force, Afterburner, Outrun, Outrunners.... They did do Space Harrier and Afterburner for the 32x but could've done so many more and with relatively little effort.
It’s more that it was too expensive to make and too expensive to sell. It also wasn’t an answer, but more of an experiment. Nintendo made star fox profitable by only pushing just enough to make it that way. Sega could not answer in return and instead released what Nintendo could have done, but didn’t because they knew no one was going to buy a $100 cart.
@@ddespair starfox was fun. the super fx wasnt just a gimmick. the game is solid. the ost is amazing. the game was a sight to behold and experience back in the day. also its easy to pick up and play. the skills of argonaut and then miyamotos finish touch with adding the characters n the story made it complete. kinda huge part of it imo. ya nintendo took an interest in the project from the start. and even after they let go of argonaut they continued the franchise. im glad they did. huge fan of it. tho idk if it would have been as successful if it was just released as a generic space shooter. like some others out there u can find that tried to mimick starfox style. there is a proto of snes starfox called starglider. now out there for view its basically the same game without the starfox characters. it feels empty lol. but would have been neat but mostly forgotten if released as that game...
anyhow. ya i wish sega at least attempted a starfox like franchise for themselves. they had a decent chip with svc but it was too expensive. ya crazy to pay 100 for a game. n on the aging console and when the true 32bit era was about to begin. which is funny since sfx and sfx2 was affordable. the latter was used in smw 2 yoshis island. sure they could have just used the 32x instead of chip but for some weird reason sega needed to prove a stock genesis can handle polys too. when 32x was a thing. but i rather a worthy game with the tech demo like starfox was. and also sega situation near the end of genesis life is kinda sad. and then 32x thing which caused drama with sega of jap and soon to be sega saturn. so many horrible decisions by sega of america at this time. thank god dreamcast at least got to see the light of day and had a decent run. but sadly it also faded away before its time. poor sega. ill always be a fan tho.
@@ssppeeaarr all of this bad decision and spending massive money during that period caused the dreamcast to die off so soon. Saturn mismanagement predicted the fate of the company and dreamcast.
I remember lending mine out to a relative and they said it just stopped working.
That is interesting. Mine is not working either, but i was not the original owner. I purchased i while back, used, but the cartridge seemed in great condition, even with the cartridge conctacs looking like new, there was no sign the cart had been tampered or opened, sadly the cart didn´t boot, it only made some noises as if the cart was showing the sega logo but then, nothing., as time passed it got even worst, now the cart doesn´t boot or make any sound at all.
You got a cool voice, but you narrate like drunk history.
I dig it
I'm your 800th subscriber!
NOTE: The 32x has 2 hitachi sh2 cpus inside, both are clocked at 23 mhz and are 32 bit.
The SVP is actually just a single Hitchi Sh2 clocked at 23 mhz and is also 32 bit.
Oops.
Realised it actually has a Samsung dsp core at the same clock speed
@@Sus-- Strange that the SAMSUNG DSP could draw 20,000 polygons per second, but each 32X SH2 could draw 90,000 in software or 20,000 Gouraud textured and shaded.
i know.
But even the 32x graphics still need t9 ge5 squeezed into 64k of ram and 64k of vram.
Typo I meant to say “to get” lol
Even more crazy is that the ps1 had a 33 mhz cpu, which is a lot slower than the 32x one. I’m still shocked that the 32x was clocked at 58mhz. That’s just insane.
Sega, in my opinion made two very big mistakes with the SVP chip that cascaded into a cacophony of very bad decisions. The first problem I see was the game chosen as the flagship for the SVP chip. While Virtua Racing was very popular asking 100 dollars for a grand total of 3 tracks wasn't a great move. No, Virtua Fighter or possibly Doom would have been far better choices for the first SVP game.
The second issue was of course delivery of the SVP chip. Had Sega gone with a lock-on cart that came with Virtua Racing for 100 bucks that would have been much better. I believe this would have driven costs way down as well in the long-run.
I read where Randy Linden said Doom would be impossible on the genesis because of its layers even with an enhancement chip.
@@bmx7596
If Wolfenstein 3D is possible on the Genesis then Doom is definitely on the table. There is a full port of Wolfenstein 3D available for the Sega Genesis that can be played without any enhancements.
It reminds me of the Sega Saturn running Quake with a modified Power Slave Engine. Where there is a will, there is a way. If one utilized the SVP for 90% of the heavy lifting like Nintendo did with the FX I don't see a reason why it isn't possible. You would simply build Doom on top of the Wolf Engine (I have forgotten its name) then modify the Hell out of it.
@@Sinn0100 Yes doom is possible by Some toy story hacks that they used for the 3-D level but Wolfenstein 3-D could also help with that but we could use the toy story hacks since it renders a lot better so then eventually they could build a doom version on top of the same engine the Wolfenstein uses but yet so use some hacks from toy story to improve performance and keep it playable
@@idaholana
Interesting...I'd love to see it!
@@Sinn0100 it could basically be like we use the SVP chip as a way to add more Contant but we can also choose to make the Svp chip render the polygons of the enemies but I’m pretty sure that will take up a lot of video and for both the level thing and the enemies so I think having 3-D enemies is probably not a possibility but it is possible to probably find some other sort of memory and the sound if you use the new two channels but it should use mostly the main Sega genesis sound chip because I don’t want it to sound like a 32X version or…
We can find a way to make pre-recorded channels a possibility on the SVP chip so then eventually we could record every single instrument that most of the things use and then eventually have a second Genesis laying back down table but it will sound close to the original but I’m pretty sure I’m not thinking about places because we’re probably gonna go up a lot so having to take a genesis version be available is a good business decision so when customers afford a cheaper option
I don't know if I would have found this impressive back in the day or not since I didn't try out this port until much later in life. I know it wasn't possible for the system to run the game without said special chip, but the graphics are still really bad. The 32x version on the other hand is sooooo much better.
12 year old me absolutely did find it impressive. You're right that the 32x version looks a lot better but this was really, really impressive at the time.
I never played Virtua
Racing on the genesis I played it on my32x
I wish sega used a Hitachi custom DSP or a RISC Coprocessor. Most likely will be much cheaper than the samsung SVP chip.
Imagine Virtua Fighter, Star wars arcade, outlaw racing, zaxxon motherbase 2000, and daytona usa all released on the genesis using the svp chip. Cancelling the 32x add-on.
That's what many of us have been saying for years, though I think that the SH2 SVP Lock On would also need more RAM to really perform (256 or even 512KB or RAM). The SH2 was capable of drawing 90,000 flat shaded polygons per second (or 25,000 textured, Goraud shaded, reflected, etc), almost as many as the Virtua series arcade boards.
SEGA already had six games made for the SVP Lock On, and they would've been much cooler with the higher performance of the SH2 SVP Lock On.
I'm not sure where that 60,000 polys per second number comes from, but it must be using the same (in a vacuum alterverse) math as Sony's tech specs for the PS1 and PS2. Virtua Racing was only 9000 polys per second, and they were not lit. The SVP did better at flat shaded polys than the Super FX 1 or 2, but it was not better than the 3DO, Jaguar or especially 32X. 60,000 polys per second is the recorded target rate of 1995 Saturn *and* PS1 games.
Nice vidya, I just choked on my coffee when I heard that tech spec for the SVP and had to go look it up. I've always wondered how Virtua Racing SVP is so plentful and cheap today when it was so expensive at the time. It's like they made way more than they ever potentially sold at original retail.
I was reading it off the article at Segaretro.org so my apologies if they listed it there incorrectly. I just checked again to make sure I read it right. Not sure why they would have it listed there incorrectly. Ill try and be more careful.
They do have that number, I'm just not sure where it came from or why they post it so prominently. Then they have the actual number for Virtua Racing, and the peak performance at 10,000 right below it. Confusing.
@@gamecomparisons You are 100% correct. Its very strange. I sincerely do appreciate you pointing this out though. I kinda read that number off and never thought twice about it before.
Back when I could be bothered, I read lots of forum discussion about the SVP being super powerful, better than the 32X (because they hate, hate, hate, the 32X). It's probably from all of that conjecture. To say that the off the shelf DSP that's in the SVP is just as powerful as two Hitachi SH-2s should be truly shocking.
I can't make heads or tails of the "math" in the footnotes on segaretro, it'd be nice if they had an explanation for what they are talking about there. Maybe they do somewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if the SVP could do 60k if it was all vector graphics like the original Atari Star Wars Arcade for example. With the Sony numbers it's always some never used in game polygon type, in a vacuum so to speak.
@@supermegagrafx64 Pretty much anything SegaRetro says in this area is complete and utter nonsense. The SVP isn't a GPU or anything like that. So trying to attach polygons per second to it is kind of silly. It's really just a DSP that can be used to do whatever advanced math you want it to do. For Virtua Racing they used it to help with 3D calculations and software render polygons.
That said, I'd even raise my eyebrows at the 9000 Polygons/second claim. First the source SegaRetro is linking to for that says nothing about that at all. And secondly 9000/second would be about 600 per frame at 15fps. That seems pretty high for Genesis Virtua Racing as that's getting into early Saturn and PS1 polygon per frame counts and Virtua Racing on Genesis looks nowhere near that detailed.
Oooh 15 fps...
Sega should have never abandoned this chip. It's one of the worst mistakes they ever made. Had the chip been more widely used and over time it would have gotten cheaper and cheaper. To bring home games it could not otherwise bring home, the extra cost was worth it to a lot of people. At a minimum, they wouldn't have lost the 10s of millions (or more) it did lose on the 32x. The 32x version of the game looks better, no doubt about it. But this version is very acceptable. The Genesis and its games continued to be available until 1997. This chip could have been continuously improved and refined to make it cheaper and faster. This was pretty much the norm back then. They could have not lost a lot of money chasing the 32x.
IIRC, when Virtua Racer was in the arcade, it was like $1.50 or $2 a play. 2 bucks a play in 1992 was an expensive play. Expecting to pay a higher price for a decent home version was not unheard of. A lot of Genesis RPGs were selling for 100 bucks back then, at least in Japan (equivalent of 100 Dollars).
This game didnt even compare to the PC game called Stunts released in 1990 with adlib or soundblaster. I paid like 15 bucks for my copy back in the day . Unless you grew up with a rich family and owned a 25" TV , PC racing was better on a VGA monitor back in 1990 /1992
The genesis has 64 kilobytes or memory.
Stop roasting it.
All the bad ideas came from the Japanese development devision!!! The Sega 32x chips should have been put in the Sega CD!!! Sega CD did not have any increase colors and had grainy ass graphics just like Genesis! Sega of Japan only relied on Sega CD sounds and memory! Sega CD only needed only 32x with 4 megabytes of ram! Sega of Japan development wasted millions of segas dollars!
Sega cd and 32x could have been skipped entirely.
Saturn, honestly not sure what's worse having to program 3 cpu architectures(SH-2(having 2 cpus though, but I guess you can make one of them babysit the DSP and M68k and ?the main one drive the VDPs
@@niewazneniewazne1890 Sega CD has the same processor as Sega Genesis only difference is Sega CD has scaling of background and sprites through additional chips omething 32x already has. That's why 32x only.
The Sega CD was developed and released too early. It was released in 1991 in Japan, less than 6 months after the release of Sonic 1. Sega didn’t need an add on at that stage - the Genesis/MD was only just beginning to gain momentum in the PAL and NA regions. Now if they had released a 32 bit CD add-on in 1993 that could turn out half decent versions of Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter in 1994, that might have been a game changer.
Starfox was 85
No it wasn't. It was February 21, 1993.
@@michaeldemers2716 I think he's talking about he price...
@@zacnewtro9952 Ohhhhhhh........Right. That's expensive!!!!!!! Ouch.
1993