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I miss my 32X. I sold it after I got my Saturn. The only game I held onto was Chaotix, in case I ever got one again. Great episode, though. It's nice to see someone not being enraged towards the 32X. You have to do a Sega CD episode sometime in the near future hopefully.
Good to know that I basically have all of the decent to good 32X games. I'd like to complete the collection, but am in no hurry to pick up the various sports games and so forth.
Yeah, I have a little over twenty 32X+CD games and I doubt I will ever go for the complete set. I sold Spiderman Web of Fire over a decade ago because it does suck. The EA games are virtually the same as the Genesis versions. I'm not sure what else there might be that I would pick up. I'll pick up Brutal and NBA Jam Tournament Edition if I can find them for a low enough price. I also wouldn't mind finding boxes for Blackthorne and Tempo someday, my generic temp boxes are looking worse and worse.
Great video guys, you reminded me of how I feel about almost every game that came out in 1994 and 1995. Those were two very experimental years, I can see why somebody might play most games from those two years on any platform and feel it was "unfun" today.
Pretty decent episode... Star Trek Starfleet Academy Starship Bridge Simulator deserved a bit more, though; the episode doesn't actually show any gameplay at all, only the base and such. Ingame, you fly around in 3d space, doing missions, shooting at bad guys, etc -- it's a space combat game at heart, like those other three, just with some complexities to learn in the menu system (the ship-management elements). There's also a two player splitscreen versus mode which strips out all of the sim elements and is just a basic "fly around and shoot at eachother" game. It's okay.
Also, darnit, Motocross Championship is a fun game... it may not be "good", but it's actually kind of fun. Oh, Shadow Squadron is one of the best games on the system, right up there with Space Harrier and Virtua Racing Deluxe (which, yes, I absolutely agree are really great).
But yeah, great work! And yeah, it's good to know that someone else has also never gotten past that Super Star Destroyer level in Star Wars Arcade... yes, I've always gotten stuck there too. :)
Great review episode for the 32X, really hit on all the points and in fact all the games.
I would agree with Dave, I think it was not needed, and disagreeing with Joe, did help bury Sega.
Chaotix is definitely a love/hate game for me; it's a turd in so many ways, but it still has a charm to it. It is sad it's the only Sonic game on the system, if only the 32X lasted longer.
Anyways, great video. Would of liked you to have covered Fifa a little more, but I can understand why you didn't. No biggie.
I kinda wish they would've covered some of the unreleased games that you can play on the flash carts.
Joe- Mortal Kombat II on the 32X is a considerable step up from the Genesis version. Better graphics, A LOT more sound effects and voices, the opening cinema's back, etc. It's still lacking the proper endings, and the music is still dance/electronica-like remixes of the original MKII music, but the overall game turned out much better.
As for the 32X, yeah, it's a failed experiment, but it's one I'm glad to own. Its library may be small, and an unfortunate chunk of those games could easily be called garbage, but there are good games worth owning (some of which are exclusive to the add-on). So whether or not it bombed in the end, killed SEGA, or whatever, I still like the little add-on. Shadow Squadron, Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000, the SH/AB arcade ports, Kolibri, MKII, Metal Head, and others... even Doom (it was the first version of the game I got to play) gave me hours of enjoyment over the years, and if the 32X never came about, they wouldn't be a part of my gaming library today.
This is a point of view that I find pretty silly. I won't argue that it was ever needed, but it didn't help bury Sega. If that were the case, then the Virtual Boy and 64DD would have really damaged Nintendo. Game players are very forgiving. They'll buy something if there's stuff they want to play on it. People don't hold grudges. I doubt anybody at all chose not to buy a Saturn because they felt burned by the 32X. Instead they didn't buy a Saturn because Sega failed to make it appealing to them. I think a lot of people didn't buy the 32X because of the promise of the Saturn and Playstation coming in the future. The Dreamcast launch was huge. Biggest ever at the time and people had already been burned by the evil Sega CD, 32X and the Saturn. If gamers weren't as forgiving as they are, the Dreamcast launch would have been embarrassing. And people STILL buy Xbox 360s despite the incredibly high failure rate. Oh, and PS3s even when Sony manages to give your credit card info away. Gamers don't hold grudges. Only people who post on forums do.Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg2600
Virtual Boy was indeed a dud but the 64DD was never released in the states though. None of the Nintendo add-ons were released here so it's difficult to compare just the VB to the stuff that Sega had, 32X, SCD, Nomad. And let's face it the DC looked so much better than everything else when it came out. Plus the marketing was arguably the best ever IMO. Plus it was cheap as fuck.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Redifer
The 32x was the first major financial failure for Sega. The Game Gear and Sega CD were not absolute financial failures like the 32x. Donkey Kong Country and s Starfox were the motivating factors behind the 32x. It was purely a desperation move to keep the Genesis brand alive and worthy of competition. The money spent on the R&D, marketing, and manufacturing of the 32X should have gone to the Saturn. The 32x was an absolute commercial and consumer failure. I have one purely for the history and the handful of worthy gems. Other than that, the 32x is the trailer trash of my classic games collection.
Where did you get numbers on the 32X being a financial failure for Sega? How about the Game Gear and Sega CD not being financial failures?
The interviews on this very site have already settled why the 32X was created, to counter the Jaguar. Anything else is pure speculation.
Well if you want to say the 32X as a finacial failure began to cause Sega's woes (it didn't), then you need to attribute every single loss the company had to the same thing. That time an employee stole a bunch of pens? That happened before the 32X so that was probably the true beginning of Sega's downfall.
People LOVE blaming the systems for Sega's downfall when they should blame the incompetent management at Sega of Japan instead for not procuring the games people wanted to play on various systems and also manufacturing too many systems that could not logistically be sold. But keep believing the internet hype, guys.
To counter the Jaguar? Really? The last successful Atari gaming console was the 2600. Sega actually felt threatened by an unproven Atari console? The upcoming Saturn wasn't good enough? Oh don't tell me, the 32x price was cheaper then a Jag, so that was Sega's reasoning? No wonder the 32x died a fast death. Moronic business decisions, rushed software, and not enough money to sustain so many consoles st once. SOA probably was cash strapped that's why we got those shity cardboard boxes and shity black and white manuals for the Genny and 32x games. If the Jaguar was truly Sega's motivation to release the 32x then that explains a lot. Incompetency at its finest.Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath
I like how the 32X is so baffling that we can't agree on explanations for its existence.
Personally, I'm not convinced that it was created to counter anything. I think the clearest explanation was alluded to by Tom Kalinske in an old interview that someone posted here a while back. Tom said something about CD-ROM's superiority as a format over cartridges, which prompted the interviewer to ask him about the 32X. Tom's reply was basically that the 32X was a cheapo alternative to a real next-gen console. I think that kind of makes sense, if you're not anticipating a price war and you think the next-gen consoles are going to be expensive for a while, to have a cheap "lesser" option. You have your "low-end" offering in the (still supported) Genesis, your "high-end" offering with the Saturn, and the 32X as an "intermediate" product. I still don't think such a thing was needed, but I can see where they're going with that.