Review of Retro Gamer's 32X "Retroinspection"

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

This is half right.

Anticompetitive companies don't come from nowhere, they need to be very good in the first place to gain the power to assert such tactics, and Nintendo was certainly no slouch there at all. Nintendo took a massive risk with the Famicom in Japan, but pushed hard and it paid off and they kept pushing and expanding, pulling well ahead of all the competition in Japan until they had established a monopoly through the success of their outstanding hardware and software (for the time) as well as good management/marketing.

Nintendo genuinely had THE best (and most advanced, innovative, etc) product on the market (hardware and software wise), and they jumpstarted video games into the mainstream in Japan.

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I think Nintendo's game quality is inarguable, but they took the revenue they earned from the Famicom and created monopolistic third party licensing contracts and a cartridge publishing empire, both designed solely to prevent competition. Actually, I will have to check, but I think that publishing empire may have been in place from the start, I do no that Nintendo never had any intention of letting anybody but themselves manufacture carts in Japan. That takes a totally different corporate culture and philosophy than companies like Sega had, and it shows in the products, the marketing, everything.

But to your point, let's say that the Famicom was the best out there at the time of its Japanese launch, by the time the NES launched nation wide in the States it wasn't anymore, but Nintendo had almost all of the third parties on exclusive 2-year contracts. My point was that the video game consumers have always supported the anti-competitive megacorps more than companies that innovate. I will also say that from the early NES days on, the consumer supported remakes and sequels, and familiar gameplay, a lot more than new games with equal to superior gameplay. This is pretty much concrete fact when comparing sales figures.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Sega (among others) was right there against Nintendo from day 1 with their own console, but their products were far less compelling than Nintendo's, and that gap widened as stronger software materialized. The Mk.III marked genuinely competitive (in many ways superior) hardware and some strong software, but by that point, Nintendo had already established their stranglehold on the market and ensured that their software support (as well as PR) would remain generally stronger than the competition. (Sega's marketing didn't do much to break through that either, a failing that was far greater in the US -where the SMS had a very real chance for competing with the NES of even ground- though European management/outsourcing ended up doing very well -much better than Nintendo in many ways)

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Just look at this recent Bayless interview, what did Sega do when the money came flooding in? They rented SGI machines and imported CD burners so they could make even better more unique games than they could before. All the way through the Dreamcast days I naively believed companies that focused on innovation like this, especially at great risk to their personal finances, would always succeed and win out in the end. I thought that their innovation would inspire even more innovation in hardware and software. In comparison to Sega in the early to mid 90s, companies like Nintendo and Sony stood out like a sore thumb to me.

It wasn't until more than a decade later that I realized nearly everybody else saw the opposite of what I did. I've also run into a lot more people who think Decepticons were cooler than Autobots and the Empire was cooler than the Rebel Alliance, and their reasons always are "well they're stronger and better "equipped." I've also since studied the history of ethical consumption in the US and Europe and realized that, even when backed by social welfare groups, it always fails. People seem to gravitate toward what is familiar, what other people are doing, and seek only comfort not change or "the new."

Hmmmmm I have never heard before about the Empire and Decepticons. I thought people liked them because they were bad guys. And during the 90's that is what Sega was pushing was a bad guy type image and it worked so well that Sony swagger jacked Sega. As for the monopolies that Nintendo had, I may be led on to believe that because Reagan was in the office he turned a blind eye to it for the longest. Verizon was able to buy Alltel in 2008. AT&T tried to buy Tmobile in 2011 and it didn't go through. So politics probably had a hand in why Nintendo was able to strong arm 3rd parties for so long. I think the MS could've stole a good chunk of marketshare from the NES if it would've been able to get good 3rd party support.

The Federal Government took Nintendo to court and convicted them for price fixing the NES though. I think most of that would have been during Bush's administration though. I'm not sure how much national politics was involved back then. I'm more interested in the grass roots evidence, people played games that were constantly of the theme of the individual against an evil empire/armada/dictator/aliens, but typically bought the games from companies that embodied that evil in practice.

Then, decades later people are still sold by the corporate media line that they will argue against facts in a forum that one company was "smarter" than the other because its products sold more. More Ford Focuses have sold than Honda Preludes, that doesn't make the Focus a better car. More Nike's have sold than Vibrams, that doesn't mean the Vibrams are a bad idea. More MacDonalds Burgers sell every day than any other fast food burger, that doesn't make the Big Mac a better burger.

Yet in the video game industry the 32X selling less than 1 million units before its discontinuation is "proof" that it never should have existed. Sega getting out of the game industry in 2001 was ineffably caused by the 32X. The Saturn getting bad mouthed by coders is somehow caused by the 32X. Most importantly, the 32X was obviously always going to "fail", because add-ons all ways fail. Nevermind that the magazines would_not shut up about upgrading the TG16, Genesis, NES and SNES for most of their lifespans. Everybody knew it was a bad idea, it is always a bad idea, and it will always lose money and confuse marketing.

Nevermind the add-ons that worked well, nevermind what the PCECD and Sega CD did for the industry prior to the 32-bit consoles making CD-ROM normal. Nevermind the add-ons that were integrated into an all new system launch, leaving the olders of previous hardware out in the cold, that "succeeded". Just ignore the RAM expansions that everybody wanted whenever they could get their hands on them. Forget about peripherals, those don't count. If it isn't the way Nintendo and then Sony did things, it was obviously the wrong way and was always going to fail. Branching out and forging new products through innovation never works and is a stupid concept.

Ah come on on sheath you are really pushing daisy's now. WTF is a Vibram lol never heard of that and McDonald's YUCK rat burgers. As for the 32X hmmm I will say this where was the football and basketball games at? Sega for reasons unknown to me gave us a golf game? I can find better fighters on the Genesis. Comparing Eternal Champions to Cosmic Carnage is like comparing a 2010 Camaro to a 2010 Malibu. I'll take the Camaro every single time. VR Deluxe, AB Complete and SH are about the only games that were better than there Genesis counterparts. And you can put Doom in that category. But look at the 3rd party support for the 32X and you can tell it was a determining barometer for the systems failure. The only big player was supporting the 32X hardcore was Acclaim and that's not really saying much given there quality in the first place. And what about the Virtual Boy which was Nintendo's equivalent to the 32X? It bombed worse than the 32X and it wasn't even an addon.

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Originally Posted by sheath

The Federal Government took Nintendo to court and convicted them for price fixing the NES though. I think most of that would have been during Bush's administration though. I'm not sure how much national politics was involved back then. I'm more interested in the grass roots evidence, people played games that were constantly of the theme of the individual against an evil empire/armada/dictator/aliens, but typically bought the games from companies that embodied that evil in practice.

Then, decades later people are still sold by the corporate media line that they will argue against facts in a forum that one company was "smarter" than the other because its products sold more. More Ford Focuses have sold than Honda Preludes, that doesn't make the Focus a better car. More Nike's have sold than Vibrams, that doesn't mean the Vibrams are a bad idea. More MacDonalds Burgers sell every day than any other fast food burger, that doesn't make the Big Mac a better burger.

Yet in the video game industry the 32X selling less than 1 million units before its discontinuation is "proof" that it never should have existed. Sega getting out of the game industry in 2001 was ineffably caused by the 32X. The Saturn getting bad mouthed by coders is somehow caused by the 32X. Most importantly, the 32X was obviously always going to "fail", because add-ons all ways fail. Nevermind that the magazines would_not shut up about upgrading the TG16, Genesis, NES and SNES for most of their lifespans. Everybody knew it was a bad idea, it is always a bad idea, and it will always lose money and confuse marketing.

Nevermind the add-ons that worked well, nevermind what the PCECD and Sega CD did for the industry prior to the 32-bit consoles making CD-ROM normal. Nevermind the add-ons that were integrated into an all new system launch, leaving the olders of previous hardware out in the cold, that "succeeded". Just ignore the RAM expansions that everybody wanted whenever they could get their hands on them. Forget about peripherals, those don't count. If it isn't the way Nintendo and then Sony did things, it was obviously the wrong way and was always going to fail. Branching out and forging new products through innovation never works and is a stupid concept.

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QFT

Many people hear just can't handle the truth, and will argue against it until they are blue in the face. The 32X had a better launch than the Saturn and stayed ahead until SEGA killed it to FORCE people to buy the more expensive Saturn. Instead we switched ships. Add-ons HAVE been successful, regardless of how the nay-sayers whine. The CD add-on for the PCE was FAR more popular than the PCE ever was. The SEGA CD might not have been AS successful, but it certainly meets any criteria for success you can posit. Nay-sayers point to the N64DD as a "failed" add-on, neglecting the huge call for the add-on by N64 owners as well as the fact that it never actually shipped. How can something be a failure if it never appeared in the first place? If you consider R&D projects that never ship "failures" then you have to consider things like the alternate Dreamcast (the one with 3dfx video) another SEGA failure.
:roll:

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Originally Posted by Da_Shocker

Ah come on on sheath you are really pushing daisy's now. WTF is a Vibram lol never heard of that and McDonald's YUCK rat burgers. As for the 32X hmmm I will say this where was the football and basketball games at? Sega for reasons unknown to me gave us a golf game? I can find better fighters on the Genesis. Comparing Eternal Champions to Cosmic Carnage is like comparing a 2010 Camaro to a 2010 Malibu. I'll take the Camaro every single time. VR Deluxe, AB Complete and SH are about the only games that were better than there Genesis counterparts. And you can put Doom in that category. But look at the 3rd party support for the 32X and you can tell it was a determining barometer for the systems failure. The only big player was supporting the 32X hardcore was Acclaim and that's not really saying much given there quality in the first place. And what about the Virtual Boy which was Nintendo's equivalent to the 32X? It bombed worse than the 32X and it wasn't even an addon.

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You hate Cosmic Carnage and Fred Couples Golf, and think a well reviewed third party title is worthless if it didn't run 100% on the 32X hardware, I get it. As for the Virtual Boy, because it failed should we be convinced that 3D glasses are stupid and should never work for gaming? Was Nintendo greedy and dumb for releasing it at all?

The third party support for the 32X is a great indicator that more support was hot on its heels. Also, the fact that all of the third party games are multi-platform could be considered a good thing. For one thing, most of them are fairly well regarded games on any platform, regardless of how much they used the 32X's hardware. As third parties shifted to full scale PS1 and Saturn development they would have been down porting from those sources rather than the SNES and Genesis. All Sega or some other party needed to do was create a decent porting engine from Saturn and/or PS1. One of the 1995 third party dev kits for the Saturn and PS1 would be prime candidates. This level of support would have made the 32X library great in less than a year or two and would have cost developers very little in their support.

Oh, and you are absolutely right, Vibrams are laughable and nobody likes them because they aren't popular with the masses.

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Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

QFT

Many people hear just can't handle the truth, and will argue against it until they are blue in the face. The 32X had a better launch than the Saturn and stayed ahead until SEGA killed it to FORCE people to buy the more expensive Saturn. Instead we switched ships. Add-ons HAVE been successful, regardless of how the nay-sayers whine. The CD add-on for the PCE was FAR more popular than the PCE ever was. The SEGA CD might not have been AS successful, but it certainly meets any criteria for success you can posit. Nay-sayers point to the N64DD as a "failed" add-on, neglecting the huge call for the add-on by N64 owners as well as the fact that it never actually shipped. How can something be a failure if it never appeared in the first place? If you consider R&D projects that never ship "failures" then you have to consider things like the alternate Dreamcast (the one with 3dfx video) another SEGA failure.
:roll:

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What you don't understand is that all of those instances aren't facts because I don't understand how they fit into the discussion. My opinion is more important than these examples anyway.

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Originally Posted by sheath

Then, decades later people are still sold by the corporate media line that they will argue against facts in a forum that one company was "smarter" than the other because its products sold more. More Ford Focuses have sold than Honda Preludes, that doesn't make the Focus a better car. More Nike's have sold than Vibrams, that doesn't mean the Vibrams are a bad idea. More MacDonalds Burgers sell every day than any other fast food burger, that doesn't make the Big Mac a better burger.

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Hitler and Stalin got millions of devoted citizens and soldiers... I always thought that meant they were among the best leaders ever...
But my world is falling apart now... Damn you, sheath!

32X launch
U.S. launch: November 21, 1994
Doom
Star Wars Arcade
Virtua Racing Deluxe

Saturn launch
U.S. launch: May 1995
Virtua Fighter
Panzer Dragoon
Clockwork Knight
Bug!
Daytona USA

No way in hell is the 32X launch better than the Saturn.


Cosmic Carnage looks like it could run on a stock Genesis. There is an older Sega arcade game that looks better than it. As for the the addons uhm how did the Turbo CD Rom fare in the US? Oh yeah it BOMBED. And what about Kalinske's thrashing the N64 because it used carts, then in the same interview praising the cart based 32X. If that wasn't an oxymoron then IDK what is. 3rd parties weren't committed to the cart format that the 32X depended on. That is probably one reason why the 3DO had better 3rd party support than the Jaguar.

How well did the Jaguar sell? Making consoles is clearly a bad idea. That's what you just did with the Turbo CD. Can't you see that anecdotes don't make your point for you? The fact is that the PCE/Turbo CD and Sega CD, or more specifically development for these add-ons, prepared the industry for what happened with the Saturn and PS1, the full switch from cartridges. Read the recent Bayless interview and see how much money they had to spend to even be able to use CD-ROMs. It would take an unbearably long alternate history thread to even begin to parse what the Saturn and PS1 would have looked like if the PCE/Turbo CD and Sega CD never existed.

The 32X launch doesn't need to be limited just to what came out on the DAY of its launch. The Saturn literally had one game released over the summer of 1995 after launch, the 32X had these games by the end of 1994, a little over a month after its launch and definitely within the launch window.

After Burner
Cosmic Carnage
Doom
Mortal Kombat II
Shadow Squadron
Space Harrier
Star Wars Arcade
Virtua Racing Deluxe

Digital Press includes RBI Baseball '95 and Star Trek Academy, but I think they must have been in '95. Shadow Squadron might have been January if I recall correctly.

Compared to the Saturn launch:
Astal
Virtua Fighter
Clockwork Knight
Daytona USA
Panzer Dragoon
Romance IV: Wall of Fire
Shinobi Legions

June 1995
Virtua Racing

Say what you want about the 32X's lineup and how the games use the Genesis hardware doesn't work for you, the games generated near universal good press for the add-on and for Sega in 1994. The Saturn launch, by contrast, created extremely mixed press at best, with EGM on the positive side of things and Next Gen/Edge the polar opposite. Also, at least some of the 32X launch games showed off what the system was capable of, the Saturn's 3D launch games made the impression, that will last forever, that the Saturn wasn't "good at" 3D and didn't have "very good games".

Here's an anecdote for you that doesn't prove a thing, I had been an early adopter of the Genesis, Sega CD and 32X up to that point, and I decided to wait on the Saturn until November of 1995 based on the games I saw.

You just answered your own question both the SCD and the PCECD used cd roms. The 32X used CARTs as it main delivery media. They SERVED a specific gaming purpose that ushered in the cd rom era. The 32X didn't. The 32X was suppose to have a 4 year lifespan but given how limited 3rd party support was on the N64, I don't see developers sticking it out for the the 32X. Yes the 32X was cheaper than the Saturn and PSx but it's delivery medium wasn't.

As for the launch games I will point out that Panzer Dragoon looked as good as ANYTHING on the PSx and looked better and sounded a helluva lot better than anything on the 32X. I have stated plenty of times that I was about as gung ho dead, dead set as you are on the 32X being some great piece of hardware that got pissed on by the media. It wasn't until I actually bought the system and started playing the games that I saw how mediocre the system was. I was anticipating MKII to take a royal shit on the SNES version. I'm glad that I didn't pay 64.99 for that game and only 15 dollars for it because it sure as hell didn't live up to what I thought it was going to be. Sega hyped the hell out of the 32X and failed to deliver. Where was NFL 95 oops they gave us golf and they gave the Saturn golf too. To this very day I don't ANYBODY that plays golf games. Note even EA's Tiger Woods games but I knew plenty of people that played Madden and Joe Montana games. Then the ports of 2 extremely old arcade games which wasn't going to sell any units. Wouldn't it make sense to port Outrunners or Revenge of Death Adder. Sega saw fit to shoe horn Outrunners on the Genesis (a horrible port at that) but not on the more capable 32X. Make's no sense whatsoever.

@ sheath = I attempted a response to you earlier but whilst doing so also attempted to erase something with Backspace and left the page; not redoing it.

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Originally Posted by Da_Shocker

As for the launch games I will point out that Panzer Dragoon looked as good as ANYTHING on the PSx and looked better and sounded a helluva lot better than anything on the 32X.

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And it moved fast and smooth for so early a title on either system. Only Sega should probably have made it finishable on Easy to draw in a larger crowd.

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Sega hyped the hell out of the 32X and failed to deliver. Where was NFL 95 oops they gave us golf and they gave the Saturn golf too. To this very day I don't ANYBODY that plays golf games. Note even EA's Tiger Woods games but I knew plenty of people that played Madden and Joe Montana games.

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I play golf games. Actually I always try sports games; it's not that I don't usually play them because they're sports, it's that they're usually shit (rhymes with EA). However in the 6th gen Tiger Woods took off, some of those are very good and very quick playing, say a 1P round of 18 in fifteen minutes. It fell back off with the 7th gen, though Madden seems better.
@ Saturn golf = only that VR game that's also on PS is any good at all, mostly they're unbelievably inept. And the suckiest part is Gameday was strong right out the gate.

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Then the ports of 2 extremely old arcade games which wasn't going to sell any units. Wouldn't it make sense to port Outrunners or Revenge of Death Adder. Sega saw fit to shoe horn Outrunners on the Genesis (a horrible port at that) but not on the more capable 32X. Make's no sense whatsoever.

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This. At best Afterburner and Space Harrier should've been together on one cart. And some lightgun games, who cares what, it's not exactly the most imagination or programming intensive genre, especially considering the Genesis got shortchanged on them.

I remember when DKC first came out and the first thing that came to mind was how great a Sonic game would look using SGI and on the 32X. And then Sega gave us Chaotix. Nintendo set the bar high and they could smashed it but they gave us Chaotix whoopdefuckin do. Another epic failure on Sega's part.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Nintendo took a massive risk with the Famicom in Japan, but pushed hard and it paid off and they kept pushing and expanding, pulling well ahead of all the competition in Japan until they had established a monopoly through the success of their outstanding hardware and software (for the time) as well as good management/marketing.

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Famicom's software was awful for the time, 1983 games were all available on other, older systems, and were often better on the other, older systems, 1984's software still had them trailing by a mile, and it wasn't until 1985 that their software even remotely compared to C64/Spectrum/MSX, or even A8, Beeb, or Colecovision IMO.

Famicom gained a stranglehold in Japan due to price, a lack of existing competition, and good marketing.

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Originally Posted by Da_Shocker

I remember when DKC first came out and the first thing that came to mind was how great a Sonic game would look using SGI and on the 32X. And then Sega gave us Chaotix. Nintendo set the bar high and they could smashed it but they gave us Chaotix whoopdefuckin do. Another epic failure on Sega's part.

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That was my feelings on that game. I was expecting a Sonic game that blew away DKC... and got something that barely exceeded regular MD Sonic games. :(

The ONLY thing they do with the 32X is make sprites rotate and scale as they appear... big effin whoop. You don't need that effect for a Sonic game. They took a MD game and added one useless effect and passed it off as a 32X Sonic game. If it wasn't for the special stages, I'd have been royally pissed off. The special stages are the only parts of the game I prefer to play... if they had taken the special stages and made them a little more diverse, that alone would have made a better game than Chaotix!

Here is everything I could find on the 32X, outside of mail order catalogs from EGM's December 1994 issue.

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/...94_dec_014.jpg

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/...94_dec_016.jpg

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/...94_dec_022.jpg

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/...94_dec_024.jpg

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/...94_dec_056.jpg

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/...94_dec_171.jpg

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/...94_dec_190.jpg

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/...94_dec_191.jpg

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/...94_dec_192.jpg

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/...94_dec_193.jpg

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/...94_dec_196.jpg

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/...94_dec_197.jpg

http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/sites/...94_dec_232.jpg


There is also a ton of pages dedicated to the 3DO, Jaguar and Sega CD in this issue, even some that feature the CD-I.