http://i.imgur.com/tE65vYl.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/Eyvbkld.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/7CssGz5.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/dhnP6BR.jpg
NEC 'Iron Man' vs Sega 'Giga Drive'
http://i.imgur.com/UVb4z2r.jpg http://i.imgur.com/g8jTYGE.jpg
They predates Saturn, 32X and NEC PC-FX, so I don't want to discuss those consoles for what they were in their time (1994) but rather, these earlier machines, had they launched as consumer game consoles in 1993.
Just to be clear, that's not an actual picture of the so-called Gigadrive. It's just a photoshopped System 32 board.
http://i.imgur.com/g8jTYGE.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/WQwdUuT.jpg?
That second picture is a System 32 board. EGM just made a fake picture to go along with the story (which I think they made clear in the article that it wasn't a real picture).
The so-called "Gigadrive" has never been mentioned in the Japanese media that I know of and I have a strong feeling it was just a publicity move by Sega of America. Kalinske mentioned several times that Sega and JVC were working on it together and that was before the X'Eye came out.
It is VERY odd, however, for Kalinske to be saying right around the time of the Sega CD release that Sega has a new console coming out in 1993. At least TRY not to scare people away from buying the Sega CD...
The morphing technology is the same as was built-in to the PC Engine and those morphing faces are from the developnent of Sapphire. The final game cycles through several different faces.
Yeah, I am aware that picture is simply a System 32 board with the words GigaDrive photoshopped on. The NEC Iron Man board was very real though, and the point was really for illustrative purposes to show two 32-bit boards that appeared in the early 90s, Even though the Hudson-designed Iron Man board was real, it did not show up "as-is" in the PC-FX console.
I think things would've been more interesting in 1993 with NEC and Sega going at it, along with an SNES CD-ROM with its final 32-bit specifications arriving in 1994. I don't think 3DO would've ever gotten off the ground at all, never existed. Sony, Philips and Nintendo would all put their differences aside. NEC's system would be for actual normal games like the PCE, not an anime'FMV system. a different landscape essentially. Iron Man would be a sprite monster with limited polygon capabilities. Sega's machine would rival it, minus any 3D, a not-too striped down System 32.