This series was a labor of love, and it shows. The technical discussion, including which layers did what, was especially appreciated. Really fantastic work here.
I bought a 32X from the bargain bin right after it had been "discontinued." I'd had it with the crazy antics of SEGA by this point and could never figure out what they were bringing out for hardware or games. Really, they should have stuck with the Sega CD, which was powerful enough to run almost all of these games and some of them much better.
I love my 32X. While I can absolutely understand why it failed, I think today, in retrospective, it's a really nice addition to any Sega Fan's collection ❤️
Df retro is the best thing on this channel. Optimistic, fun, exciting and you can just tell how much passion and soul john puts into this work. If i were his boss I'd be having him do this first and foremost and save him for the more niche and cool modern games like nier automata.
32X is such a fascinating console to me from a business perspective. I mean Sega built such a powerful brand with the Genesis, but all their attempts to keep it alive (Sega CD, 32X) really tarnished that brand.
outsideredge the Sega CD didn't really tarnish Sega, it actually did quite well. The 32x on how they handled it as well as the transition to the Sega Saturn did.
The Mega CD is easier to understand in the context of Japan. In Japan, Sega were mainly competing with NEC's PC Engine for second place and they had just released a CD addon. The Mega CD was released in 1991 in Japan - much earlier than Europe. It made a little more sense as a product without the benefit of hindsight and given the competing products in 1991. The 32X is where they should have learnt their lesson, that fragmenting the MegaDrive market wasn't a good idea. SuperFX games were successful because they just needed the base hardware so all owners of the Snes could buy SuperFX games. Sega should have focused on SVP versions of Doom, Star Wars Arcade etc. for the MegaDrive by Christmas 1994.
Rich Davies Personally I think it was that bad. Even as a kid I looked at it with only mild curiosity. My friend had one and over the course of a year we probably rented and played most of its library. Didn't find a single "great" game. Thunder hawk was probably my favourite. Also, weirdly liked Ground zero, for reasons I'll never understand.
Fragmenting your own market is always a sketchy idea, and Sega did it twice with Sega CD and 32X. I remember reading that 32X was ordered by Sega of Japan to counter the Jaguar, which was really strange considering the real competition with Nintendo. Everyone wanted a Saturn. Every development studio would want to develop for the Saturn. So that left what 32X games there were to 'B' and 'C' teams, for the most part. It just seems like an idea that wasn't fully thought out. Sega itself said they over-promised and under-delivered.
It's worth mentioning that there is a modded version of Doom 32X that has all the extra levels ported over from the Jaguar version. Only 1 level refuses to load, and it works on real hardware using a flashcart.
Very well done DF Retro. Again I enjoyed seeing how the Genesis and 32X worked hand in hand in running the games. Star Wars the Arcade is one of my all time favorite 32X games. You forgot to mention it has more levels than the arcade with its 32X mode and it has 2 player co-op. As a Sega 32X owner I'm proud to say I have most of the games for the system. You did inspire me to take another look at some of those sports games. I would love it if a third party company released a proper Sega Neptune and better yet if someone released new 32X games or if they finished those unreleased games and released them. I know would buy them especially that X-men game. I love my Voltron of video game systems that is my Sega Genesis, 32X Sega CD combo. With this set up I have access to a lot of fun games and hopefully more people will be able to enjoy these games as retro consoles. At the end of the day it is all about having fun with these games. I would love to see the same treatment for the Sega CD but because there are so many games for the Sega CD it would be nice to see something on game developers that really pushed the Sega CD like Core. Again, keep up the great work!
We had a 32X SEGA CD combo growing up. My brief review of the games we owned. Virtua Racing Deluxe - Amazing. led me to buy all the Gran Turismo games. Motocross Championship - Honestly one of my favorites games to play co-op. Virtua Fighter - Kage was the best, only second to Jeffery. Primal Rage - The little velociraptor had a spamable move. Tempo - Loved the music. Had Loco Roco feeling to it. Star Wars - I was there for the battle of the Deathstar. Fahrenheit - Gave me nightmares. Never finished it. Supreme Warrior - My old man's game, I never got to play it. Metalhead - Wasn't fun. RBI Baseball - Compared to Mario baseball for the Gameboy, this was awesome. Digital Foundry, PLEASE do a SEGA CD version of this mini series. I remember having this Batman game that looked exactly like the cartoon.
I had the 32X (not the Sega CD)... I got mine dirt cheap (like $30) and it came bundled with Virtua Fighter. I also had Virtua Racing, Doom and Star Wars. So I probably had the best 4 games on the console. I wish Sega would have stuck with it another year and released some more games. I think with 5 or 6 more solid titles, it would have been a successful system. So close, yet so far.
I’m not sure I’d even ever HEARD of Tempo! I loved Bonk, so a new game from them sounds GREAT. The game is really appealing here in 2018, visually. I’d totally play it!
Motocross Championship had coop? How is that even possible as a racing game? So if you place 1st and the other places 8th, he'll continue as opposed to lose? Is that what makes it coop? I don't understand. (Yes, I played the game in 1994 or 1995, but don't remember everything about it)
Shadow Squadron was great; a strong favorite in my rather limited 32X library. And I loved how you could watch a replay of your entire performance if you wished. Very cool built-in feature.
I am sooooo glad these guys did this. I've always suspected that the Genesis displayed parts of the game but I wasn't sure. Now I know exactly how they worked together.
Every time someone makes a video without music credits baby jesus cries. Here is what my search looked like when I finally found the relevant song from the mech section. "get free get free get free" lyrics -lazer -vines -newton -shonlock -whissell -lana -leif -hawkboy Oh and the song is "macross VF-X2 - Hummingbird - Get Free
From what I understand, they simply converted the original MIDI data to a format usable by the Megadrive hardware. A proper conversion and reprogramming of the music would have produced a very different sound. So, yeah, the end result is that Doom on 32x sounds absolutely awful.
Being a young whippersnapper when the 32X came out, I missed out on the upgrade due to lack of funds. These uploads have given me a chance to see what might have been in my living room and I'm grateful for your hard work, John. Keep up the fantastic work and I eagerly look forward to new episodes.
@@powerfulaura5166 The Hardware base would be a nightmare if you wanted to see the true market. CPU (Manufacturer, generation, speed, bus speed, cache), Motherboard chipset (manufacturer, BIOS, family, bus speed, cache) RAM (memory size, speed, latency), IO (HDD interface type, speed, HDD size, HDD speed) Video card (bus type, manufacturer, chipset, memory size & speed, worst of all what resolution) Sound card (manufacturer, bus type, chipset with what cross compatibility, memory) and within each of those categories there are numerous options. The more narrow you make those selection the further from the truth you are, which is why PC comparisons are terrible.
My favorite things about DF: PC gaming and Retro throwbacks.
6 років тому+1
Well done video. I don't regret getting a 32X when I was a kid (bought with lawn mowing money for $30 at Toys R Us) and came bundled with Virtua Fighter. This was when it was already on the way out, so stores will trying to get rid of em to make way for the Saturn. I only ended up getting a few games (Doom, Star Wars and Virtua Racing) but I enjoyed em. I remember renting a few others (MK II, Cosmic Carnage and BlackThorne come to mind). Speaking of Blackthorne, that sucker is going for a lot of $$$ right now on eBay, so is World Series Baseball (as you mentioned). I ended up selling the 32X and games at a garage sale a few years later, and put that money towards a Sony PlayStation. I think that was the right move at the time. I still remember the 32X fondly, yes, it looked like a tumor on top the Genesis and it was annoying having to plug in an extra adapter and cord, but with a few more solid titles I think it could have been a success. Why didn't Sega release Virtua Fighter 2 or Daytona USA for it? It could have handled it. I guess they just wanted to concentrate on the Saturn.
CodeNameZ I know right I used to play on my ps2 at 240p. But nowadays people spend $1000 on resolution. Dang it , I just want a fun game, even if it was on ps2
I still play Nintendo 64, SNES, GBA emulation on my PC, I play all Steam games at High to Ultra/1080p but almost time, I play Final Fantasy Tactic Advance on GBA.
Totally Radical Dude I know right. Like I hate when people say "Gamers where always graphic whores remerber the bit wars" Than I usually say "Plz show me any SNES or Mega Drive commercial that talks about resolution. Before people compare games with they eyes they saw what looks better and usually if something looks better if was not such a big deal. But now they wait DF to tell the resolution of the game so gamers blow it out of porpotion"
It is only the Digital Foundry audience. There are true gamers outside our little bubble who barely know what frame rate is and are just enjoying the games on whatever system they own.
The ones (from what I've messed with in emulation at least) which I thought were pretty decent were the Super Scaler conversions, Virtua Racing and Star Wars. I'd never heard of Shadow Squadron, but that is one which would be right, right up my alley. A great round up, really enjoyed watching both parts!
I used to unfairly rip on the 32X port of Doom, until I realized that not everyone had a PC, let alone one that could play the original game. So yeah, lots of compromises were made, some were because of Sega's draconian deadline, but still a very playable port, and you can turn the horrible music off, which makes playing it less painful. Doom is all about fast and frantic action, and the 32X port does deliver on that. So its not a port without some redeeming qualities.
If this was the only way you could play Doom at the time, it was more than adequate. Nobody really had a Jaguar and the PlayStation wouldn't come out for another year. I had a lot of fun with it, I mean at it's core it's still Doom.
@@Alan_Chapman I had issues running Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat 2 in 1995 on my PC and ir was top of the line back then. It had a Pentium 133 with 128 MBs of RAM and 1GB of storage. Both games would run but they were a little laggy. It wasn't until I upgraded my video card in 1996 to the 3DFX Voodoo when I could play every game I had smoothly.
John I just want to thank you for all your awesome hard work, I find it very informative and entertaining, so I urge to not pay heed to naysayers, you are doing great work!
Good video, but you made a mistake with the audio for Stellar Assault: the "PWM" audio you're talking about is the PSG on the Mega Drive. The 32X actually does nothing with the audio, as evidenced by the VGM dumps of the game. You did this in the prior video as well. Basically, any time you hear square waves, that's the Mega Drive, not the 32X.
Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, Doom, and Shadow Squadron were my jams. I also owned Metal Head, but it was not the greatest reason to own the system. It's amazing what we put up with when we were limited to a handful of games a year.
Too bad so does many other people, hence they are ridiculously expensive. I would never pay those prices for that piece of shit. Should have bought when it was basically free.
MadFinnTech Actually I've seen some less pricey ones on eBay. Though I do see where it is costly. Just something that would be nice to try though sometime lol
Bought a complete in box one on eBay back in 2006 for $20. I use a model 1 Genesis, model 2 Sega CD, and this thing. Overall, it looks like a fucking tank but the 32x library isn't terrible.
Shadow Squadron is probably my favorite game for the system. It was Sega's answer to Star Fox, maybe it could have been more popular if it wasn't associated with a failed hardware addon.
Whoa, going from AVGN's so called video review/analysis (or rant, rather, and more about cables than the system itself) to this one is like going from looking at poop to eating a strawberry cake O_O Excellent video!!
That is why it is 8p alternating turns. If you get more than 1 in a room, we break the time space continuum. So if you are always looking, you may break reality.
Wrestlemania has a fun hidden joke if you saw your comparrison there were less people in the crowd. Somehow even they knew it wasn't worth the effort. Great to see this duo of episodes. Kolibri is literally the only reason I would get one. I mean if I did I would get a few more titles, but Kolibri is the reason
Enjoyed these videos while in quarantine. Thank you for being ridiculously comprehensive. I had one of these things as a kid (bless my parents) and it kinda just broke all the time.
The 32X will always be an immensely fascinating system to me. Apparently there were even planned ports of Darkstalkers and Capcom's Alien vs Predator that were announced but were never shown. Shame, too, as those games would have been amazing to behold.
I got my 32x as a gift from my uncle when he was getting rid of his games. I personally love it. I have Doom, Star Wars, VR Delux, Virtua Fighter, Knuckles, After Burner, Space Harrier, MKII and thanks to you just got Shadow Squadron. Honestly those are the only games I will ever get for it but it's still interesting to think what could have been. Great vids
John great work again. I'd love an analysis of Redzone / Zyrinx if you ever get time, that game still blows me away technically I'd love to know who they managed it
I had the 32X back in the day, and the games I remember playing the most were Mortal Kombat II, Space Harrier, Star Wars Arcade, Blackthorne, and Doom. I always ended up pissed playing Doom though, it would always randomly crash after I had made significant progress in the game. Blackthorne was great, and was a game I played all the way to the end and beat.
NFL Quarterback Club “...a step up from Madden titles of the era.” Damn straight and you’re welcome! Was all sorts of ready to grill you for omitting one of the early games I lead, but you saved yourself right at the end.
I absolutely LOVED Metal Head back in the day. I still play it on my emulator. Sure, it's a little slow and enemies can be braindead, but once you learn to run, and change your views, the game becomes much more fun and dynamic. In fact, I think part of the reason the frame rate is low, is to allow for the sprint ability. Either way, I don't think it got as fair a shake as it should have.
This was such a great series to see, and quite unexpected given how little love is shown for the 32x for many obvious reasons, which you touched on in part one. It was the beginning of the end of the trust gamers had for Sega, a sad situation since Sega of Japan wanted nothing to do with the 32x, focusing on the Saturn instead which would’ve been the right way to go about things over Sega of America’s approach. One game I was hoping to see here though, was actually the prototype of Doom on 32x. The prototype only features 2 levels, but oddly enough, it’s far more accurate to the PC version. While that sounds good, the results were horrible in terms of resolution and frame-rates, so the cuts that were made to the final 32x port make a lot sense as a result. Thank you for this video series!
I definitely have a soft spot for this add-on. I do wish more games went for the flat/shaded polygon look though for the performance reasons you described many times in these episodes. Stuff like Virtua Fighter, Shadow Squadron and Virtua Racing still hold up reasonably well, whereas games like Metal Head and Darxide do not.
I love John and this isn't really a bad thing but it's funny how much he likes to describe stuff with the word "little". "Cool little space shooter" "Sega's little device" etc.
The chain of events that happened with Sega’s consoles, they were asking to fail. It might be a hindsight thing but I feel the writing was on the wall with the 32X and then the Saturn. It definitely sucks because Dreamcast was amazing but they already dug themselves into a hole.
Every time I look through this system's library I realize... it honestly isn't a bad library of games! Very small, and maybe a lot of that effort and the releases should have gone to the Saturn... but there are a lot of actually decent games.
Good comprehensive video. 32X didn't have many games that were downright awful, but none of the 32X-exclusive games could be called great, either. Best cartridge port of MK2, Knuckles Chaotix and Tempo were worth playing to the end, MetalHead was a bit more fun than almost anyone seems to think, Virtua Fighter was damn impressive, FMV games for CD looked much better than before, Cosmic Carnage was an interesting and bloody fighter, Space Harrier and AfterBurner were almost perfect arcade ports, Shadow Squadron was a smooth space sim, Doom looked nice and had a lot of levels packed onto a small cart, Virtua Racing was a valiant effort with the benefit of extra tracks, and almost every Sega-licensed title had pretty dope music. 32X was worth the price if you already had a Genesis and certainly a better purchase than a Jaguar or CD-i or Virtual Boy.
Interesting how the developers of the Star Trek game used the extra 32X sound capabilities very well. if only the Doom & Star Wars Arcade developers had done the same the music could've been significantly better. Even Probe could've taken what they already had & upgraded MK2's music a bit, even though some of that was pretty cool already. Nice video!
Seriously, props to Adisak Pochanayon and his team at High Voltage Software for porting the arcade's 400.000 lines of Assembly to the Jaguar on a 4-month deadline. That's true, i spoke to Adisak himself (since he programmed White Men Can't Jump).
Some technical points for Doom32X not mentioned, the 3D window uses double wide or 2:1 shaped pixels in it's raster and the large Gun sprite is prerendered to 50% less width resolution likely to save memory. On PC much of these visual options are under the Detail setting. Yeah most people hate that music heh, no juice left with performance taking hardware priority. The color reduction is interesting as it isn't dissimilar to what is done on Amiga ports for a 64 color mode boosting performance higher than 256 color mode can manage.
Virtua Racing Deluxe was the best 32X game. The intro music was awesome and the game played brilliantly. Shame we had to wait 28 years for the definitive version on the Switch.
I owned this system back in the day at launch, and honestly, I was very happy with a lot of the games. I didn't personally consider it a failure in terms of game releases and value for price, and was disappointed that Sega killed it early. For me, it was worth it just to play closer-to-the-arcade versions of Sega's first party games like Space Harrier, Virtua Racing, and After Burner. Today, I actually prefer the 32x version of Space Harrier to the arcade one.
Ah yes. Memory limitations. Those really cripple a system. It's a big part of why the snes's theoretical graphical abilities rarely got used (that, and some awkward limitations and bugs). 256 colour per tile mode? Well, sure, but each tile takes up 64 bytes, meaning 1024 of them is 64 kilobytes. Oh. But we only have 64 kilobytes total. And we need a wholly seperate set of tiles for our 16 colour per tile second layer (well, you can technically share, but it's very hard to design right) Each layer needs 2 to 8 kilobytes for the tilemap too. Oh, and we need space for sprite data of course. So... We have 64 kilobytes, but need in excess of 100... Oops. Well, OK, fine. 256x224 can be done with 896 tiles. that's 57 kilobytes. We can use just a single background layer, so that's 2 kilobytes for the tilemap. that gives us 5 kilobytes for a handful of sprites. And of course, we can repeat far more tiles to bring down the memory usage... But still... 256 colour per tile mode is just begging for at least 128 kilobytes of VRAM. (incidentally, all the documentations shows the snes graphics chip has a 128 kilobyte address space, meaning it was designed for 128 kilobytes, but in the end only 64 was fitted. Explains so much.) OK, well what about the high resolution mode? 2 layers, 512x224 progressive, or 512x448 interlaced? OK, here we see an odd design quirk get in the way; sprites always behave as if the screen is 256 pixels wide. That aside, a 512x480 screen (maximum theoretically possible resolution) requires a 64x64 tilemap. That means 4096 unique tiles per layer to not have any repeating tiles. But... You only get 1024 tiles per layer max. So at best you have 2048 tiles total. You need 8 kilobytes for one tilemap, 16 for 2. The 16 colour layer then used 32 kilobytes for 1024 tiles, and the 4 colour per tile second layer would use 16 kilobytes. So including the tilemaps, we're at the 64 kikobyte memory limit now, and have NO sprites. (fortunately, sprites are made of the same tiles as 16 colour backgrounds). So we again, don't really have enough VRAM, and could benefit greatly from 128 kilobytes of it. (surprise, surprise.) Oh, but it gets worse of course. The 1024 tile per layer constraint is limiting us here. We kind of need 4096 tiles per layer. So what if we actually had capability that instead? Well... Now we need 16 kilobytes for tilemaps, 128 kilobytes for 4096 sixteen colour tiles, 64 kilobytes for 4096 four colour tiles... And... Our sprite data. How much sprite data can the graphics chip handle anyway, you might ask? Well, it has 2 banks of 256 tiles worth each. So at most 512 visible sprite tiles. Which is 16 kilobytes worth. You can however store more than that and remap the sprite bank memory locations each frame, which would mean you can cram animation frames or whatever in there with it. But 16 kilobytes is enough for most purposes... But notice we've now pushed the theoretical RAM requirements to 128 + 64 + 16 + 16 = 224 kilobytes. Not only is this nearly 4 times the actual 64 kilobytes installed, but it's also nearly twice the 128 kilobyte design limit of the PPU chip! (of course, going from 1024 to 4096 tiles per layer would alter many other things too.) And of course, if you were to take the upper limits of the chip's output capabilities and make it capable of that.... Well, 512x480 at 15 bit colour depth (snes is 15 bit at the output stage, ultimately), then you need 450 kilobytes per frame. And since you probably want a double-buffered image... 900 kilobytes. Oh, but storing 15 bits is awkward, so we store 16 bits instead, and thus we get 480 kilobytes, or 960 for double buffering. Meanwhile, the hardware in reality has just 64 kilobytes... Yeah, this era was a bit awkward. Clearly the 32x isn't likely to do high resolution modes, but 320x224 at 16 bits per pixel (remember 15 bits is awkward to store, so it's basically 16 bits with one bit being ignored) is still 140 kilobytes per frame. Yeah... Memory issues huh. XD Still, 256 available out of 280 needed is a lot better than 64 out of 960 or even just 64 out of 224... Clearly though, the early 90's consoles and their add-ons had a serious shortage of VRAM.
I'm glad you are covering Doom in the next episode of DF Retro. I hope you are also covering the Japanese version of Doom for the Sega Saturn because there has always been some myths about an improved performance of the Japanese version over both the North American and European versions, but mind you, I have both the European and the Japanese versions of Doom for the Sega Saturn and I have never noticed a sigle difference between both of them apart from a different music track sequence. Since you are an expert in doing framerate analysis I hope you will do one for either the North American or European version and another for the Japanese version and compare them to solve this matter once and for all.
![DF Retro's Failed Consoles: Sega 32X - We Play Every Game [Part One]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/mxJAI2omTsA/mqdefault.jpg)
This series was a labor of love, and it shows. The technical discussion, including which layers did what, was especially appreciated. Really fantastic work here.
I bought a 32X from the bargain bin right after it had been "discontinued." I'd had it with the crazy antics of SEGA by this point and could never figure out what they were bringing out for hardware or games. Really, they should have stuck with the Sega CD, which was powerful enough to run almost all of these games and some of them much better.
Editing yourself to look like you exist in an old sega FMV game was so dope imo lol
John is a legend fr
I love my 32X. While I can absolutely understand why it failed, I think today, in retrospective, it's a really nice addition to any Sega Fan's collection ❤️
Df retro is the best thing on this channel. Optimistic, fun, exciting and you can just tell how much passion and soul john puts into this work. If i were his boss I'd be having him do this first and foremost and save him for the more niche and cool modern games like nier automata.
"EA actually went the extra mile"
Now there's a phrase you wont hear anymore.
*hear
DAE HATE EA
Unless the sentence goes "EA actually went the extra mile to be completely scummy."
@@MegaFat1 lol. Putting extra effort into less effort?
Nintendo Switch: *Outsells the Xbox One*
EA: I sleep.
Sega 32X: *Bombs. Discontinued within a year*
EA: REAL SH*T???
32X is such a fascinating console to me from a business perspective. I mean Sega built such a powerful brand with the Genesis, but all their attempts to keep it alive (Sega CD, 32X) really tarnished that brand.
outsideredge the Sega CD didn't really tarnish Sega, it actually did quite well. The 32x on how they handled it as well as the transition to the Sega Saturn did.
The Mega CD is easier to understand in the context of Japan. In Japan, Sega were mainly competing with NEC's PC Engine for second place and they had just released a CD addon. The Mega CD was released in 1991 in Japan - much earlier than Europe. It made a little more sense as a product without the benefit of hindsight and given the competing products in 1991.
The 32X is where they should have learnt their lesson, that fragmenting the MegaDrive market wasn't a good idea. SuperFX games were successful because they just needed the base hardware so all owners of the Snes could buy SuperFX games. Sega should have focused on SVP versions of Doom, Star Wars Arcade etc. for the MegaDrive by Christmas 1994.
madmax2069 yeah I agree mate I don't think the Mega/Sega CD was *that* bad
Rich Davies Personally I think it was that bad. Even as a kid I looked at it with only mild curiosity. My friend had one and over the course of a year we probably rented and played most of its library. Didn't find a single "great" game. Thunder hawk was probably my favourite. Also, weirdly liked Ground zero, for reasons I'll never understand.
Fragmenting your own market is always a sketchy idea, and Sega did it twice with Sega CD and 32X. I remember reading that 32X was ordered by Sega of Japan to counter the Jaguar, which was really strange considering the real competition with Nintendo. Everyone wanted a Saturn. Every development studio would want to develop for the Saturn. So that left what 32X games there were to 'B' and 'C' teams, for the most part. It just seems like an idea that wasn't fully thought out. Sega itself said they over-promised and under-delivered.
Digital Foundry is one of the main reasons I pay for an internet connection.
RaceToNowhere
*Inserts porn related joke here*
Yay! I'm the first one to make this joke in internet history!! 😋
Subi_fan *Makes a racist joke*
DF is one of the only groups doing game journalism right as of now
It's worth mentioning that there is a modded version of Doom 32X that has all the extra levels ported over from the Jaguar version. Only 1 level refuses to load, and it works on real hardware using a flashcart.
Very well done DF Retro. Again I enjoyed seeing how the Genesis and 32X worked hand in hand in running the games. Star Wars the Arcade is one of my all time favorite 32X games. You forgot to mention it has more levels than the arcade with its 32X mode and it has 2 player co-op. As a Sega 32X owner I'm proud to say I have most of the games for the system. You did inspire me to take another look at some of those sports games. I would love it if a third party company released a proper Sega Neptune and better yet if someone released new 32X games or if they finished those unreleased games and released them. I know would buy them especially that X-men game. I love my Voltron of video game systems that is my Sega Genesis, 32X Sega CD combo. With this set up I have access to a lot of fun games and hopefully more people will be able to enjoy these games as retro consoles. At the end of the day it is all about having fun with these games. I would love to see the same treatment for the Sega CD but because there are so many games for the Sega CD it would be nice to see something on game developers that really pushed the Sega CD like Core. Again, keep up the great work!
We had a 32X SEGA CD combo growing up. My brief review of the games we owned.
Virtua Racing Deluxe - Amazing. led me to buy all the Gran Turismo games.
Motocross Championship - Honestly one of my favorites games to play co-op.
Virtua Fighter - Kage was the best, only second to Jeffery.
Primal Rage - The little velociraptor had a spamable move.
Tempo - Loved the music. Had Loco Roco feeling to it.
Star Wars - I was there for the battle of the Deathstar.
Fahrenheit - Gave me nightmares. Never finished it.
Supreme Warrior - My old man's game, I never got to play it.
Metalhead - Wasn't fun.
RBI Baseball - Compared to Mario baseball for the Gameboy, this was awesome.
Digital Foundry, PLEASE do a SEGA CD version of this mini series. I remember having this Batman game that looked exactly like the cartoon.
NOSfusion 👍
I had the 32X (not the Sega CD)... I got mine dirt cheap (like $30) and it came bundled with Virtua Fighter. I also had Virtua Racing, Doom and Star Wars. So I probably had the best 4 games on the console. I wish Sega would have stuck with it another year and released some more games. I think with 5 or 6 more solid titles, it would have been a successful system. So close, yet so far.
I’m not sure I’d even ever HEARD of Tempo! I loved Bonk, so a new game from them sounds GREAT. The game is really appealing here in 2018, visually. I’d totally play it!
And yeah, I’d love a SEGACD one too. I love the SEGACD and the Saturn.
Motocross Championship had coop? How is that even possible as a racing game? So if you place 1st and the other places 8th, he'll continue as opposed to lose? Is that what makes it coop? I don't understand. (Yes, I played the game in 1994 or 1995, but don't remember everything about it)
Shadow Squadron was great; a strong favorite in my rather limited 32X library. And I loved how you could watch a replay of your entire performance if you wished. Very cool built-in feature.
If only 32x cd had Plumbers don't wear ties...
That's my favorite game!!!1!
The DOOM episode will be a great way of looking at every piece of consumer hardware ever manufactured.
I am sooooo glad these guys did this. I've always suspected that the Genesis displayed parts of the game but I wasn't sure. Now I know exactly how they worked together.
OMG I love this channel so much. These guys' work is fantastic in every aspect. I love their deep analyses and also DF Retro. Quality stuff!
Every time someone makes a video without music credits baby jesus cries. Here is what my search looked like when I finally found the relevant song from the mech section.
"get free get free get free" lyrics -lazer -vines -newton -shonlock -whissell -lana -leif -hawkboy
Oh and the song is "macross VF-X2 - Hummingbird - Get Free
Why do people care about stupid video game music so much?
I remember when went 32x for sale, I was 12years...oh my god! I STILL WANT THIS!!!!
The best of the best of Sega!
@19:30 that detail of bam bam tripping over bret hart's legs is such a cool thing
midway knew their fighters
*_WHY IS DOOM FARTING, WHAT DID THEY DO TO THE MUSIC?!_* 😭
mjc0961 It was a rushed port to meet the launch of the 32x.
mjc0961 look up what it should've sounded like had they programmed the FM synthesis properly. Sounds pretty cool.
CodeNameZ And one of the best games I've ever played back then. Still remember the secrets too lol.
From what I understand, they simply converted the original MIDI data to a format usable by the Megadrive hardware. A proper conversion and reprogramming of the music would have produced a very different sound. So, yeah, the end result is that Doom on 32x sounds absolutely awful.
Being a young whippersnapper when the 32X came out, I missed out on the upgrade due to lack of funds. These uploads have given me a chance to see what might have been in my living room and I'm grateful for your hard work, John. Keep up the fantastic work and I eagerly look forward to new episodes.
My favorites will be Afterburner, Space Harrier, Virtua Racing, and Virtua Fighter. Good memories. I still have them.
I’ve beaten Slam City multiple times. It’s worth the effort for how ridiculous it all is. Scottie gives you a new pair of kicks at the end.
Let's do DOS games technology back in the day. That would be interesting to watch.
Yes please.
@@powerfulaura5166 The Hardware base would be a nightmare if you wanted to see the true market. CPU (Manufacturer, generation, speed, bus speed, cache), Motherboard chipset (manufacturer, BIOS, family, bus speed, cache) RAM (memory size, speed, latency), IO (HDD interface type, speed, HDD size, HDD speed) Video card (bus type, manufacturer, chipset, memory size & speed, worst of all what resolution) Sound card (manufacturer, bus type, chipset with what cross compatibility, memory) and within each of those categories there are numerous options. The more narrow you make those selection the further from the truth you are, which is why PC comparisons are terrible.
Dear god dos lol..basically theater of the mind and tons of keyboarding with green screen text :) ahh the good ol days
@@chrisbridston3438 LOL, you must be talking MDA or Hercules times.
Amazing work as always, John! And I'm super STOKED for the Doom episode. :D
My favorite things about DF: PC gaming and Retro throwbacks.
Well done video. I don't regret getting a 32X when I was a kid (bought with lawn mowing money for $30 at Toys R Us) and came bundled with Virtua Fighter. This was when it was already on the way out, so stores will trying to get rid of em to make way for the Saturn. I only ended up getting a few games (Doom, Star Wars and Virtua Racing) but I enjoyed em. I remember renting a few others (MK II, Cosmic Carnage and BlackThorne come to mind). Speaking of Blackthorne, that sucker is going for a lot of $$$ right now on eBay, so is World Series Baseball (as you mentioned).
I ended up selling the 32X and games at a garage sale a few years later, and put that money towards a Sony PlayStation. I think that was the right move at the time. I still remember the 32X fondly, yes, it looked like a tumor on top the Genesis and it was annoying having to plug in an extra adapter and cord, but with a few more solid titles I think it could have been a success. Why didn't Sega release Virtua Fighter 2 or Daytona USA for it? It could have handled it. I guess they just wanted to concentrate on the Saturn.
Great episodes! I love these types of shows completely covering every aspect of a niche platform.
1994
"This game looks so cool, it is like real life
2017
" Ewww only 900p"
CodeNameZ I know right I used to play on my ps2 at 240p. But nowadays people spend $1000 on resolution. Dang it , I just want a fun game, even if it was on ps2
Totally Radical Dude yeah. It's sad. I know right
I still play Nintendo 64, SNES, GBA emulation on my PC, I play all Steam games at High to Ultra/1080p but almost time, I play Final Fantasy Tactic Advance on GBA.
Totally Radical Dude
I know right. Like I hate when people say "Gamers where always graphic whores remerber the bit wars"
Than I usually say "Plz show me any SNES or Mega Drive commercial that talks about resolution. Before people compare games with they eyes they saw what looks better and usually if something looks better if was not such a big deal. But now they wait DF to tell the resolution of the game so gamers blow it out of porpotion"
It is only the Digital Foundry audience. There are true gamers outside our little bubble who barely know what frame rate is and are just enjoying the games on whatever system they own.
The ones (from what I've messed with in emulation at least) which I thought were pretty decent were the Super Scaler conversions, Virtua Racing and Star Wars.
I'd never heard of Shadow Squadron, but that is one which would be right, right up my alley.
A great round up, really enjoyed watching both parts!
I spat out my Earl Grey tea when John said Wrestlemania Arcade was the best wrestling game ever.
Fully outraged.
Well personal opinion, obviously. I don’t even rememuthe game, but it looks pretty good to me.
WCW/NWO: Revenge. My friends and I would spend entire weekends playing this game.
I used to unfairly rip on the 32X port of Doom, until I realized that not everyone had a PC, let alone one that could play the original game. So yeah, lots of compromises were made, some were because of Sega's draconian deadline, but still a very playable port, and you can turn the horrible music off, which makes playing it less painful. Doom is all about fast and frantic action, and the 32X port does deliver on that. So its not a port without some redeeming qualities.
If this was the only way you could play Doom at the time, it was more than adequate. Nobody really had a Jaguar and the PlayStation wouldn't come out for another year. I had a lot of fun with it, I mean at it's core it's still Doom.
It certainly plays like Doom, which is more than can be said for the SNES port.
I wouldn't have minded this. I played DOOM for 2 years on a 40MHz 386DX with no sound card before I dropped a 486 chip and Soundblaster 16 in it.
@@Alan_Chapman I had issues running Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat 2 in 1995 on my PC and ir was top of the line back then. It had a Pentium 133 with 128 MBs of RAM and 1GB of storage. Both games would run but they were a little laggy. It wasn't until I upgraded my video card in 1996 to the 3DFX Voodoo when I could play every game I had smoothly.
you know you're in for a bad time when night trap is described as "the best of the lot"
John I just want to thank you for all your awesome hard work, I find it very informative and entertaining, so I urge to not pay heed to naysayers, you are doing great work!
Daaamn, with that suit John looks like a 90's game executives going abroad trying to make a deal. Full commitment there John!
It was a weird Frankenstein of a console. Awesome deep dive as usual.
Shadow Squadron is a legitimately awesome game, by far my favourite 32X game.
Excellent video. DF has a knack for clear and concise commentary, and everything segues logically.
The music with just the 32x in Shadow Squadron sounds very Sega Master System-like. I like it!
Holy crap Night Trap for the Mega CD Megadrive 32x looks so cool! If there wasn’t a HD remake on steam nowadays, that’s how I’d be replaying it.
There's a Switch version if you're interested
Good video, but you made a mistake with the audio for Stellar Assault: the "PWM" audio you're talking about is the PSG on the Mega Drive. The 32X actually does nothing with the audio, as evidenced by the VGM dumps of the game. You did this in the prior video as well. Basically, any time you hear square waves, that's the Mega Drive, not the 32X.
Speedy
Stellar Assault looks GREAT!
Man, I had the Star Trek game on SNES. It was one of the best Star Trek game ever.
Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, Doom, and Shadow Squadron were my jams. I also owned Metal Head, but it was not the greatest reason to own the system. It's amazing what we put up with when we were limited to a handful of games a year.
Strange being I want a hands on the 32x thanks to DF and AVGN
Too bad so does many other people, hence they are ridiculously expensive. I would never pay those prices for that piece of shit. Should have bought when it was basically free.
MadFinnTech Actually I've seen some less pricey ones on eBay. Though I do see where it is costly.
Just something that would be nice to try though sometime lol
Bought a complete in box one on eBay back in 2006 for $20. I use a model 1 Genesis, model 2 Sega CD, and this thing. Overall, it looks like a fucking tank but the 32x library isn't terrible.
Devin Money are you against Emulation? Good way just to feed your curiosity
runadumb Not at all, just want to see it in person is all.
I loved both of your 32x videos. Great work.
Shadow Squadron is probably my favorite game for the system. It was Sega's answer to Star Fox, maybe it could have been more popular if it wasn't associated with a failed hardware addon.
Whoa, going from AVGN's so called video review/analysis (or rant, rather, and more about cables than the system itself) to this one is like going from looking at poop to eating a strawberry cake O_O Excellent video!!
Gotta love that Macross VFX 2 title BGM for the mech games section.
But John, what do I do if I'm always looking for Fred Couples?
That is why it is 8p alternating turns. If you get more than 1 in a room, we break the time space continuum.
So if you are always looking, you may break reality.
Oh god the flashing blue lights on the Zaxxon: Motherbase 2000 ships hurt my eyes.
Wrestlemania has a fun hidden joke if you saw your comparrison there were less people in the crowd. Somehow even they knew it wasn't worth the effort.
Great to see this duo of episodes. Kolibri is literally the only reason I would get one. I mean if I did I would get a few more titles, but Kolibri is the reason
Enjoyed these videos while in quarantine. Thank you for being ridiculously comprehensive. I had one of these things as a kid (bless my parents) and it kinda just broke all the time.
I'm really loving Ray of illuminati as the background track for the wwf raw segment. It really adds a sense of urgency
I miss those photorealistic lowres games! And bring me back the rock of 90s!
The 32X will always be an immensely fascinating system to me.
Apparently there were even planned ports of Darkstalkers and Capcom's Alien vs Predator that were announced but were never shown. Shame, too, as those games would have been amazing to behold.
I like how you use one of the DJMAX song in the background on WWF game
I got my 32x as a gift from my uncle when he was getting rid of his games. I personally love it. I have Doom, Star Wars, VR Delux, Virtua Fighter, Knuckles, After Burner, Space Harrier, MKII and thanks to you just got Shadow Squadron. Honestly those are the only games I will ever get for it but it's still interesting to think what could have been. Great vids
John great work again. I'd love an analysis of Redzone / Zyrinx if you ever get time, that game still blows me away technically I'd love to know who they managed it
You need to throw Sub-Terrania and other Zyrinx titles there ;)
John thank you for making such a great series. I love watching these videos every time they come out. Can't wait for the next episode!
I approve of the use of Darius Burst songs in the background! 👌 DF Retro on the Darius series next, please? :D
I hear the DJ max music you put in. I approve of all your vids DFretro
I WAS ABOUT TO SAY DID THEY JUST PUT DJMAX MUSIC IN THIS
I had the 32X back in the day, and the games I remember playing the most were Mortal Kombat II, Space Harrier, Star Wars Arcade, Blackthorne, and Doom. I always ended up pissed playing Doom though, it would always randomly crash after I had made significant progress in the game. Blackthorne was great, and was a game I played all the way to the end and beat.
WWF Raw was a great game! Back when it was released, it was a great game for parties and multiplayer!
NFL Quarterback Club “...a step up from Madden titles of the era.” Damn straight and you’re welcome!
Was all sorts of ready to grill you for omitting one of the early games I lead, but you saved yourself right at the end.
Can't wait for the Atari Jaguar Special. I've still got mine in a storage bin with a copy of doom with its original box art and manual.
These videos are so well done. So much research and data here, love it.
I absolutely LOVED Metal Head back in the day. I still play it on my emulator. Sure, it's a little slow and enemies can be braindead, but once you learn to run, and change your views, the game becomes much more fun and dynamic. In fact, I think part of the reason the frame rate is low, is to allow for the sprint ability. Either way, I don't think it got as fair a shake as it should have.
If you love Metal Head, you'll absolutely ADORE Iron Soldier on the Atari Jaguar ;)
This was such a great series to see, and quite unexpected given how little love is shown for the 32x for many obvious reasons, which you touched on in part one. It was the beginning of the end of the trust gamers had for Sega, a sad situation since Sega of Japan wanted nothing to do with the 32x, focusing on the Saturn instead which would’ve been the right way to go about things over Sega of America’s approach.
One game I was hoping to see here though, was actually the prototype of Doom on 32x. The prototype only features 2 levels, but oddly enough, it’s far more accurate to the PC version. While that sounds good, the results were horrible in terms of resolution and frame-rates, so the cuts that were made to the final 32x port make a lot sense as a result. Thank you for this video series!
You can't sneak that Senko no Ronde music past me, John. I'm too smart.
I definitely have a soft spot for this add-on. I do wish more games went for the flat/shaded polygon look though for the performance reasons you described many times in these episodes. Stuff like Virtua Fighter, Shadow Squadron and Virtua Racing still hold up reasonably well, whereas games like Metal Head and Darxide do not.
Oh John should bring the shirt and sports jacket back. Looking slick.
I love John and this isn't really a bad thing but it's funny how much he likes to describe stuff with the word "little". "Cool little space shooter" "Sega's little device" etc.
Another great DF Retro John and roll on September and your Console Doom DF Retro.
DOOM was my favourite game at the time. In fact I bought 32X for DOOM. 32X delivered a true 3d experience in a market saturated with side-scrollers.
The chain of events that happened with Sega’s consoles, they were asking to fail. It might be a hindsight thing but I feel the writing was on the wall with the 32X and then the Saturn.
It definitely sucks because Dreamcast was amazing but they already dug themselves into a hole.
Every time I look through this system's library I realize... it honestly isn't a bad library of games! Very small, and maybe a lot of that effort and the releases should have gone to the Saturn... but there are a lot of actually decent games.
I loved this. I wish there were more games
kinda wondering how many episodes John must make if he want cover all games from successful console. Great video, next we need Phillips CD-I
"Coming this September to DF Retro-"
_Picard commercial plays_
Wow, that's a big get for Digital Foundry.
that sweet macross vf-x2 opening song :D
any hope for a macross games retrospective series?
Good comprehensive video. 32X didn't have many games that were downright awful, but none of the 32X-exclusive games could be called great, either. Best cartridge port of MK2, Knuckles Chaotix and Tempo were worth playing to the end, MetalHead was a bit more fun than almost anyone seems to think, Virtua Fighter was damn impressive, FMV games for CD looked much better than before, Cosmic Carnage was an interesting and bloody fighter, Space Harrier and AfterBurner were almost perfect arcade ports, Shadow Squadron was a smooth space sim, Doom looked nice and had a lot of levels packed onto a small cart, Virtua Racing was a valiant effort with the benefit of extra tracks, and almost every Sega-licensed title had pretty dope music. 32X was worth the price if you already had a Genesis and certainly a better purchase than a Jaguar or CD-i or Virtual Boy.
Interesting how the developers of the Star Trek game used the extra 32X sound capabilities very well. if only the Doom & Star Wars Arcade developers had done the same the music could've been significantly better. Even Probe could've taken what they already had & upgraded MK2's music a bit, even though some of that was pretty cool already. Nice video!
"Well done High Voltage!" Something you'd never hear now. Also, I hope you can get your hands on the Jaguar version of NBA Jam.
Seriously, props to Adisak Pochanayon and his team at High Voltage Software for porting the arcade's 400.000 lines of Assembly to the Jaguar on a 4-month deadline. That's true, i spoke to Adisak himself (since he programmed White Men Can't Jump).
Farhnenheit looks... interesting. I've always missed firefighting games in the last couple of decades.
There is "Real Heroes: Firefighter" on the Wii and it is a fairly decent game that can be picked up dirt cheap.
Burning Rangers count?
You absolutely have to look at the TI Calculator version of Doom!
Most memorable experience with the 32X was when me and my friend smashed one up with a sledgehammer and then set on fire. Good time's with the 32X.
Doom was the only game I had for 32X...and I think was the first FPS I ever played...so I loved it. Raw definitely doesn’t suck...loved that on SNES
It will be 40 min of pleasure!!! Thanks!
I think you should do a Sonic Team Saturn retrospective. NiGHTS, the 3D stages in Saturn Sonic 3D, Sonic Jam and Burning Rangers!
Some technical points for Doom32X not mentioned, the 3D window uses double wide or 2:1 shaped pixels in it's raster and the large Gun sprite is prerendered to 50% less width resolution likely to save memory. On PC much of these visual options are under the Detail setting. Yeah most people hate that music heh, no juice left with performance taking hardware priority.
The color reduction is interesting as it isn't dissimilar to what is done on Amiga ports for a 64 color mode boosting performance higher than 256 color mode can manage.
32X a ... "Under cooked Sega Saturn" ... I like that :)
Love the jump in production values for these df retro videos
Wow, Joe Flanigan from Stargate Atlantis is in Surgical Strike? I looked up IMDB and this was his first ever credited role!
Bishop walking like he's cacked his pants there.
Virtua Racing Deluxe was the best 32X game. The intro music was awesome and the game played brilliantly. Shame we had to wait 28 years for the definitive version on the Switch.
This has been the absolute best of DF. Roll on the Jaguar video!! 😊👌
Second episode of my favorite new YT series. Love you DF and can't wait for the next console in this series (Please be 3DO).
DF Retro is the best reason to subscribe to this channel
I owned this system back in the day at launch, and honestly, I was very happy with a lot of the games. I didn't personally consider it a failure in terms of game releases and value for price, and was disappointed that Sega killed it early. For me, it was worth it just to play closer-to-the-arcade versions of Sega's first party games like Space Harrier, Virtua Racing, and After Burner. Today, I actually prefer the 32x version of Space Harrier to the arcade one.
Ah yes. Memory limitations.
Those really cripple a system.
It's a big part of why the snes's theoretical graphical abilities rarely got used (that, and some awkward limitations and bugs).
256 colour per tile mode? Well, sure, but each tile takes up 64 bytes, meaning 1024 of them is 64 kilobytes.
Oh. But we only have 64 kilobytes total. And we need a wholly seperate set of tiles for our 16 colour per tile second layer (well, you can technically share, but it's very hard to design right)
Each layer needs 2 to 8 kilobytes for the tilemap too. Oh, and we need space for sprite data of course.
So... We have 64 kilobytes, but need in excess of 100... Oops.
Well, OK, fine. 256x224 can be done with 896 tiles. that's 57 kilobytes. We can use just a single background layer, so that's 2 kilobytes for the tilemap. that gives us 5 kilobytes for a handful of sprites.
And of course, we can repeat far more tiles to bring down the memory usage...
But still... 256 colour per tile mode is just begging for at least 128 kilobytes of VRAM.
(incidentally, all the documentations shows the snes graphics chip has a 128 kilobyte address space, meaning it was designed for 128 kilobytes, but in the end only 64 was fitted. Explains so much.)
OK, well what about the high resolution mode?
2 layers, 512x224 progressive, or 512x448 interlaced?
OK, here we see an odd design quirk get in the way; sprites always behave as if the screen is 256 pixels wide.
That aside, a 512x480 screen (maximum theoretically possible resolution) requires a 64x64 tilemap.
That means 4096 unique tiles per layer to not have any repeating tiles.
But... You only get 1024 tiles per layer max.
So at best you have 2048 tiles total.
You need 8 kilobytes for one tilemap, 16 for 2.
The 16 colour layer then used 32 kilobytes for 1024 tiles, and the 4 colour per tile second layer would use 16 kilobytes. So including the tilemaps, we're at the 64 kikobyte memory limit now, and have NO sprites. (fortunately, sprites are made of the same tiles as 16 colour backgrounds).
So we again, don't really have enough VRAM, and could benefit greatly from 128 kilobytes of it. (surprise, surprise.)
Oh, but it gets worse of course.
The 1024 tile per layer constraint is limiting us here.
We kind of need 4096 tiles per layer.
So what if we actually had capability that instead?
Well...
Now we need 16 kilobytes for tilemaps, 128 kilobytes for 4096 sixteen colour tiles, 64 kilobytes for 4096 four colour tiles...
And... Our sprite data.
How much sprite data can the graphics chip handle anyway, you might ask?
Well, it has 2 banks of 256 tiles worth each.
So at most 512 visible sprite tiles.
Which is 16 kilobytes worth.
You can however store more than that and remap the sprite bank memory locations each frame, which would mean you can cram animation frames or whatever in there with it.
But 16 kilobytes is enough for most purposes...
But notice we've now pushed the theoretical RAM requirements to 128 + 64 + 16 + 16 = 224 kilobytes.
Not only is this nearly 4 times the actual 64 kilobytes installed, but it's also nearly twice the 128 kilobyte design limit of the PPU chip!
(of course, going from 1024 to 4096 tiles per layer would alter many other things too.)
And of course, if you were to take the upper limits of the chip's output capabilities and make it capable of that....
Well, 512x480 at 15 bit colour depth (snes is 15 bit at the output stage, ultimately), then you need 450 kilobytes per frame.
And since you probably want a double-buffered image...
900 kilobytes. Oh, but storing 15 bits is awkward, so we store 16 bits instead, and thus we get 480 kilobytes, or 960 for double buffering.
Meanwhile, the hardware in reality has just 64 kilobytes...
Yeah, this era was a bit awkward.
Clearly the 32x isn't likely to do high resolution modes, but 320x224 at 16 bits per pixel (remember 15 bits is awkward to store, so it's basically 16 bits with one bit being ignored) is still 140 kilobytes per frame.
Yeah...
Memory issues huh. XD
Still, 256 available out of 280 needed is a lot better than 64 out of 960 or even just 64 out of 224...
Clearly though, the early 90's consoles and their add-ons had a serious shortage of VRAM.
I'm glad you are covering Doom in the next episode of DF Retro. I hope you are also covering the Japanese version of Doom for the Sega Saturn because there has always been some myths about an improved performance of the Japanese version over both the North American and European versions, but mind you, I have both the European and the Japanese versions of Doom for the Sega Saturn and I have never noticed a sigle difference between both of them apart from a different music track sequence. Since you are an expert in doing framerate analysis I hope you will do one for either the North American or European version and another for the Japanese version and compare them to solve this matter once and for all.