Virtua Fighter 2 should have been a 32X game and not a Genesis game

[kool kitty89]

Correction, if the 32X hadn't been released, it's quite possible that the Saturn wouldn't have bombed.

Right, I misspoke on that one... I meant if the Saturn hadn't bombed there would have been no reason for the Neptune to be useful in the late 90s. (in any case it would only detract from the MD -and potentially CD- in the budget market anyway)

As for the Saturn not bombing if the 32x wasn't there... maybe, maybe not. If they'd done nothing else different, I can't see the Saturn doing a whole lot better, but the very context of the 32x not being there implies better management/forsight/etc on Sega's part and thus implies better management in regards to the Saturn... assuming "not releasing the 32x" also includes "not releasing the older mars project" (the enhanced MD derivative).

I don't know what SoJ and SoA were thinking at the time, but apparently Mars was born at SoJ out of a combination of concerns from the slump on the US market (starting in '93 and not truly ending until the 5th gen was in full swing in late '96/97) on top of the unsettling hype and positioning of the Jaguar and 3DO in 1992 (we know today that they both flopped on the mass market, but back in 1993, that was not remotely clear -more extreme for the Jaguar which had the right price, a large developer sign-on list, an intense amount of hype with gaining investors etc). And on top of all that there were signs in late 1993 that the Saturn was not going to be ready for the 1994 release (so Mars could even have been important in Japan). And, of course, Sony and Nintendo both announced their nextgen entries in summer/fall of 1993.

But instead of deciding to push more Genesis/CD games to combat the slump (much safer from a profit/stability POV, more risky in terms of keeping their investors happy and continue growth with high revenue figures) or addressing the increasing nextgen competition with a streamlined and accelerated version of the Saturn (cutting out more problematic and expensive features to allow more definite production readiness and a reasonable price point as a mass market machine and not a high-end multimedia niche -and retaining comprehensive provisions for expansion of RAM -maybe more than that- to address the corresponding limitations of a cost effective 1994/1995 design). I'm not sure of the state of the Saturn in late 1993 (the time that any such redesigns would have needed to take place if they were still adamant about a 1994 Japan release).

And then there's the issues of marketing (one thing the lack of 32x/mars certainly would streamline), the odd software direction for the Saturn (especially first party -lack of key franchise installments like Sega Sports and Sonic at launch, let alone cancellation of stuff like the 3rd EC game -and odd lack of 32x games being moved onto Saturn, especially some higher-end ones like Shadow of Atlantis let alone the ones that were fully completed and released on 32x -it's not like the 32x stole them from the Saturn either... if we say delayed releases of such games on the Saturn that would be an argument, but a total lack is what we see -except Doom, but that's more than just a delay and was a port of the PSX game, not the 32x version -the 32x version may have actually performed a good bit better on the Saturn than the PSX derivative)


And then there's other stuff like focusing more on good development tools (regardless of the hardware complexity or cost, the tools were lacking for the mid/late 90s standards, and if nothing else, Sega should have gotten their asses in gear as soon as they realized what Sony was offering)

The theory you're laying out with that sentence structure is some real Twelve Monkeys Cassandra Complex shit -- that Sega released the 32X with the foreknowledge that the Saturn would bomb before they ever released it, with the added paradox of helping to guarantee the latter's failure through the former's creation -- Sega, yes, was some kind of idiot-savant, mad-genius clusterfuck of an arthouse posing as an electronics company, and the real nature of the dichotomy may have been East Versus West.

Well, not so much that sort of mess... but certainly a culmination of things that both led to the problems with 32x and Saturn as well as other things. (some dependent on events of 32x and Saturn, and others adding onto the situation -troubles in the arcade, shift in management, clash of regional management)

There's a lot that we know very little about though, including the true nature of the regional conflict.
It's pretty clear that the Saturn was not known to be released when it was by SoA or SoJ when Mars was initiated in January of 1994, though SoJ certainly wanted to release Saturn in fall of 1994, Nakayma had doubts it would be ready... Mars itself had a hell of a lot more to do with the market situation in North American and how Nakayma felt it should be addressed. (some have claimed that Nakayma overstepped his expertise in both SoA and SoJ management and push far to heavily on things he didn't understand -he understood the nature and dynamics of the Arcade market far more than the home console market, but as President and CEO he had the final say in all operations)

It's a real shame that Nakayma responded with Mars for SoA rather than something else... like letting them be part of the final revision of the Saturn hardware that was still under way at the time. Granted, SoJ had specifically declined previous offers to collaborate on nextgen hardware projects (the SGI proposal and initiated spec's "wish list" compiled from Imagesoft and STI programmers/development staff -albeit neither of those were calling for Sega specific hardware, one with SGI's chipset and the other with proposed collaboration with Sony -though SoJ could at least have taken the proposal for hardware specs/features under advisement with ongoing Saturn development), it would have been better late than never, but certainly better if SoJ had responded with such after the STI and/or Sony proposals. (ie directly responded by cutting SoA in on some of the development process of the Saturn in mid 1993 -SoJ did the reverse with Mars with SoJ engineers aiding with 32x design work in early 1994 and that was actually the start of a pretty strong relationship up until the formal announcement of the Saturn's launch date strained it -and eventually contributed to some SoA engineers leaving the company it seems)

Declining the Sony partnership may have been wise (no telling if Sega would have gotten screwed by the fine print -Nintendo nearly ended up as a glorified 2nd party on the SNES CD) and the STI chipset may haev been delayed as it was with Nintendo to a point where it would have been unacceptable for Japan and Europe (1996 was OK for North America, but Europe and Japan were ready to move on sooner -especially Japan).




I've said it before, but claiming any one thing led to Sega's downfall (especially a console) is a bit like saying the 5200 killed Atari Inc, or ET did, or Pac man... it was none of those things either (all were symptoms of the underlying management problems, but the biggest issue was in distribution with overinflated demand figures due to poor regulation -that was happening with other companies but especially Atari and their instability combined with a >70% monopoly on the market and then Commodore shaking things up with its price war drove the industry as a whole to be dragged into the 1983 crash -and panic/shortsightedness of the media and console manufactuers made things worse in several areas).
Likewise, Sega and Atari were both not finished after those huge problems either, even though there had been some exacerbating issues (Atari had a freeze on operations in late '83 weakening their computer market, Sega screwed up with a smooth transition from Saturn to Dreamcast in '97-99), but then made additional mistakes that sealed the final thing. (in this case, not very similar as Atari Inc itself was turning around due to the expert management of James Morgan, but Warner then decided to sell off the company assets and liquidate it in mid 1984 -which it did to Trammel Technologies LTD which became Atari Corp- and they did so in an incredibly harmful and sloppy manner -not even notifying senior Atai Inc management including Morgan himself until minutes until the final agreement was signed- that was exacerbated by the timing of 4th of July vacation; OTOH Sega had one last chance with the DC and they did a lot right, but pushed too hard in many ways for the position they were in, it may have been do or die but they were not in the same position as they'd been in 1989 against Nintendo and the heavy spending went too unchecked to really hold fast against the PS2's onslaught while still turning a net profit -they couldn't have gone too conservative but certainly could have tempered things better for a company in their financial position, they certainly got the software and marketing direction right for the US market with the DC... had that been the same for the Saturn they might have pulled out in the middle with that one in spite of the 32x/cost/other management problems -then there's some added things like expanding their PC market to supplement the DC, but this is already really off topic)

[kool kitty89]

hold on pal, I'll have to stop you right there. I'm talking about the Saturn playing 32X and Saturn CD games. Not Genesis, Sega CD, or 'Sega CD 32X' which you're about to talk about.

Then you're talking about Jupiter (or something more like Jupiter -maybe more cut down than the average context of "Jupiter" but similar in that it's a Saturn compatible low-cost cart based system), not 32x or anything like Mars/32x.

You're right I am imagining a totally different 32X, this 32X isn't a Genesis add-on, or standalone Neptune, what it is, it's a feature of Saturn.

Then don't call it "32x", call it something different like Jupiter, or a custom name. (Saturn Jr, Saturn lite, CartySat, etc, etc)

This is what I once thought Saturn could do back from the suggestions put out from my old '94-95 Game Informer mags but I later learned SEGA didn't go through with including 32X support in Saturn.

Again, you're not talking about 32x, you're talking about "Jupiter" or something Sega never even considered at all, and that's a totally separate subject. (honestly I was in favor of a low-cost Jupiter -say something in the Jag's price range- but then I got to thinking that it would be far cleaner and more attractive from a marketing/consumer standpoint and a profit making standpoint -especially in the long term- if they'd kept CD but still cut Saturn down substantially to the point of being at least $100 cheaper at retail -but retaining expansion for key areas -namely RAM- some other areas were really unnecessary an wasteful in general -the SH1, the huge SDRAM CD buffer, some of the audio features including the DSP, etc)

What surprised me the most was finding how the technical specs of the 32X was pretty much derivative of what the Saturn had on a large scale

No, not really at all. The SH2s were the only relation to Mars/32x at all, 32x was always a Genesis derivative... it was a video enhancement and CPU accelerator for the Genesis designed as an alternative to SoJ's planned integrated enhanced MD (and the original Mars design is largely unknown -some descriptions seem more like the SuperGrafx but they're so vague you could imagine a lot of different things and I for one would definitely like to know some real technical details on the design -especially whether it was crap as some imply or if ti was better thought out than the real 32x).

They could have designed a complementary low-end system for the Saturn, but that's not what Project Mars was about. Honestly I think that would have been a better idea than Mars, but not as good as a streamlined cheaper Saturn. (and just using the MD+CD -and maybe lower cost coprocessors- in the interim and in the parallel budget market)
A MD+CD derivative enhanced to 5th gen competitive spec would also have been interesting, but other than backwards compatibility and possible some added familiarity and R&D cost/time savings, it probably wouldn't have been a better idea than a fully new system with the same cost/design parameters. (backwards compatibility can be a nice gimmick though, and similar architectures would help facilitate ports -both to and from older systems, cut down or enhanced, on top of the aformentioned tradeoffs)

which begs the possibility that Saturn could have handle 32X games if SEGA went in that direction and completed the design of Saturn in that way. Most of the hardware is already there. You can read it right from the Wikipedia technical specs and compare it.

The Saturn could have handled Jupiter games if that's what you're saying... as the Jupiter concept (and what you describe) was built from the Saturn to reduce cost for a lower end userbase (and accelerated adoption) while retaining forwards compatibility and expandability to full Saturn spec via an add-on module. (again, I think it would have been smarter to take that a step further and cut down the Saturn about as much so it would be almost as low cost but retaining CDs -so much lower cost game production, prices, and high profit margins -enough to allow hardware to more feasible be sold at a loss anyway, maybe even enough to fully counter the cost of the CD-ROM drive... and a cheaper add-on that was nothing but a RAM board or maybe RAM+coprocessor would have been fare more easily adopted than a full CD addon -and in either case you'd also have the full high-end console with the add-on hardware integrated)

You're thinking of the proposed Jupiter console - it was supposed to be a Saturn without the CD+SH1, and without as much ram. It would play "Saturn" carts, while the full Saturn would play both the carts and CDs. That was only ever a proposal, and you're an idiot for calling it the "32X" as they're not remotely the same thing, and never were, even in proposals.

Yeah, in that sense though it would still have been mainly about cutting costs, but probably a better idea than Mars or the 32x and something I favored for a while in hypotetical discussions, but then I got to thinking on just how much more cost effective the Saturn itself could have been with some modifications and better attention to cost and still keep the CD. (especially with RAM expansion rather than a CD-ROM expansion unit as the Jupiter would need)

The SH-1 is just one of those wasted/unnecessary areas. (in hindsight at least, it would have been smartest to focus on cutting out hardware that wouldn't make the Saturn look any worse -in actual games- compared to the PSX, especially in 3D, if removed, but even disregarding that there's still a fair amount of stuff that was unnecessary and didn't add much of anything to graphical or audio performance) And even in a bind, running short on time before the design had to be frozen for production the could have perhaps made some hacks like swapping the SH1 for the slave SH2 and allowing proper use as a coprocessor. (the 68k dual sound/CD management would have been smarter -especially re-using the MCD interface to save cost- but that probably wouldn't have been a last minute hack, but something they did from the outset -regardless of including backwards compatibility, reusing a select amount of older hardware could have streamlined development and saved R&D time/cost as well as production cost)

Of course, I mean that in only the kindest way. We're all idiots at one time or another.

Hmm, it's a bit odd, but Gamegenie's posts often remind me of Carmelandrews over at Atariage. (both with sometimes odd statements that are way off base from fact and others that seem normal or are pretty useful -and in both cases also startign threads with similarly inconsistent odd natures and sometimes leading to some pretty interesting discussions -remember it was gamegenie's thread that you ended up posting the dual Genesis VDP idea for a hypothetical saturn alternative ... and then it went off topic into what constitutes backwards compatibility and if the 360 is or not)

I don't mean that as offensive either, just an observation. (I've made the parallel before, but it didn't seem prudent to bother mentioning it, maybe it still isn't now, but whatever )

[gamegenie]

You're thinking of the proposed Jupiter console - it was supposed to be a Saturn without the CD+SH1, and without as much ram. It would play "Saturn" carts, while the full Saturn would play both the carts and CDs. That was only ever a proposal, and you're an idiot for calling it the "32X" as they're not remotely the same thing, and never were, even in proposals.

I wasn't thinking of Jupiter when I wrote this so it is interesting to know that there was a similar concept out there.

But hold on, you and kool_kitty are acting as if those other projects were finalized by SEGA and nothing else could be changed or modified to them. Even if I was talking about Jupiter, this is still all my hypothetical, there is nothing to say that SEGA wouldn't have expanded on the projects they were working, and since I started my hypothetical from the time period where the 32X was already out, I'm calling the the Saturn's ability to play cartridges (as well as it's CD) "32X", in 32X game mode since the 32X already exist and my hypothetical is a suggested effort by SEGA to blend 32X with Saturn to avoid the disaster they created in reality to many when they instead used the 32X as a stop gap and screwed many who bought a 32X to extend their Genesis life only to discover their upgrade only being supported for 1 full year.

So really my whole point is to stick around the 32X. If Jupiter happens to sound similar, than let it be, but this is all about how Saturn should have been in post 32X world.

I hope I've cleared the confusion that you two have of where I was going with this.

[Team Andromeda]

It's pretty clear that the Saturn was not known to be released when it was by SoA or SoJ when Mars was initiated in January of 1994,

SOA/SOE knew full well SOJ was pushing like crazy to get the Saturn out in 1994, SEGA America were were the 1st to show the Saturn hardware casing. And when you start to show off Hardware casing then most of the hardware design work is already done and finished.

Nakayma had doubts it would be ready... Mars itself had a hell of a lot more to do with the market situation in North American and how Nakayma felt it should be addressed. (some have claimed that Nakayma overstepped his expertise in both SoA and SoJ management and push far to heavily on things he didn't understand -he understood the nature and dynamics of the Arcade market far more than the home console market, but as President and CEO he had the final say in all operations)

Not true at all. For one Nakayma understood games, he was the 1 behind growing SEGA consumer division, and for another SEGA Japan were all focused on a 1994 launch date . But like with any hardware they is always doubts if the Hardware will be ready in time . That is natural , not many though the 360 would be ready, but somehow MS did it. Under Nakayma SEGA Japan had the best In-House teams in the business and SEGA Japan were just better than almost anyone for games (especially in the Saturn days)

It's a real shame that Nakayma responded with Mars for SoA rather than something else

SEGA insiders tend to say SEGA Japan wanted a Super Mega Drive, kind of like the Super Graff. 32X just grew on from there, and it was SOA that were more for the 32X they loved the idea.

declining the Sony partnership may have been wise (no telling if Sega would have gotten screwed by the fine print -Nintendo nearly ended up as a glorified 2nd party on the SNES CD) and the STI chipset may haev been delayed as it was with Nintendo to a point where it would have been unacceptable for Japan and Europe (1996 was OK for North America, but Europe and Japan were ready to move on sooner -especially Japan).

And there is no proof what so ever that SONY went to SEGA Japan with a chip-set , and do give me the Tom Bullshit; that man would spin anything to make it not look like it was his fault . I don't buy it for 1 second and do you know why ?.

If SONY went to SEGA with the PS chipset , SEGA Japan would have known the Tech spec's and what it would take the beat them. So very simple, and none of the staff would have been as shocked as they were , when SONY entered.


SEGA should have even been totally for the Mega Drive 32X or totally for the Saturn. That was the mistake SEGA made at the end of the day .

[Chilly Willy]

Actually, I love the 32X... the only REAL complaint I have is the low amount of SDRAM - 256KB is not really enough; the 32X would have been much easier to make ports of if it had 1MB of SDRAM. For a cheap add-on, it works rather well, but the lack of ram means you need to put more effort into ports than devs wanted to at the time.

[Da_Shocker]

Actually, I love the 32X... the only REAL complaint I have is the low amount of SDRAM - 256KB is not really enough; the 32X would have been much easier to make ports of if it had 1MB of SDRAM. For a cheap add-on, it works rather well, but the lack of ram means you need to put more effort into ports than devs wanted to at the time.

So how are those Jag ports comin?

[Chilly Willy]

So how are those Jag ports comin?

They're on the to-do list... just a "little" down the list a bit.

I really hope I can get to one or two of those before I forget.

[SDFcommander]

I actually liked the Genesis version of Virtua Fighter 2.

I just picked it up recently and I think its not bad at all. I can't wait to get the S Video Adapter from electrochip to really clean up the images. It is a shame that the game didn't come out on the 32X though.

It would have been nice to see just what they could do with the added power and storage of the 32X and Sega CD. It just might have been enough to make a really good version of Virtua Fighter 2. I guess we would never know.

I do have to say that when I had a Saturn, that version of Virtua Fighter 2 was a reall, really good game.

[kool kitty89]

Hey, another though: also moot for 1996, but a Sega CD port (also using 2D stuff) could have been interesting too... probably much smoother animation for the characters and arcade quality/arranged sound/music, but even more interesting could have been including CD streamed backgrounds somewhat like Bram Stoker's Dracula, but catering to the VFII style... maybe even suporting dynamic scaling for the BG relative to the character perspective, or just scaling the characters themselves. (one problem with scaling in general is that dithering becomes far less effective when zoomed in -and also artifacts worse at more modest scaling)
Lots of neat possibilities there though. (if they did stream the BGs, that would leave all the more room for character animation and audio samples, even more with compression of either or both)

I wasn't thinking of Jupiter when I wrote this so it is interesting to know that there was a similar concept out there.

OK, but calling anything like that "32x" or "Neptune" was confusing, and the additional discussion I expanded on above still applies. (ie such a low-end cart based system could have been a worse idea than simply a lower cost Saturn as standard -with things other than CD being added on later, namely more RAM)

But hold on, you and kool_kitty are acting as if those other projects were finalized by SEGA and nothing else could be changed or modified to them.

No, I was listing a multitude of practical possibilities, a range of those that could have been done, some more last minute hacks than others (ie Sega changed their minds at the very end of '93 or the beginning of '94, the earlier the change, the more efficient and comprehensive the possibilities).

There's also considerations like keeping the Japanese launch date as SoJ would not want to compromise that, though you could certainly argue that it would have benefited them overall if they put North America above all other markets. (there were more issues than that though, including general aims on profitability and stability on the market and within the company) Some have argued that Sega should have scrapped the Saturn as it was and pushed for a more advanced and cost effective design for a '95/96 release rather than '94/95. (something closer in concept to the Dreamcast, but with older tech, preferably something also able to reasonably compete on a direct price level with the PSX, or at least make the added expense worth it)


But say you take a hypothetical perspective of early 1994, SoJ had already tasked SoA with the mars project while pushing the Saturn on their end... options are somewhat limited, especially depending on the total amount of knowledge SoA has for overall plans of Saturn and whether they fully understood what the 32x/Mars was expected to do.

In any case, by that point, anything like modifying the Saturn design fundamentally (let alone cutting SoA in on those decisions). Anything like the Jupiter was off the table, apparently they were also not interested in pushing the MCD/MD as is with more software or offering a cheap/bare bones counterpart to the CDX, or investing more purely in advertising for the MD/CD... or more on-cart enhancement (both enhanced games and cost cutting measures like decompression ASICs), or more modest alternatives to the 32x (SVP cart, SH2 cart, etc) or other things.

However, it's also still unclear what the actual plans and mindset were for SoA and SoJ at the time and what exactly drove all of these decisions. It's at least clear that SoJ initially planned an all-in-one enhanced MD for the January 1994 Mars proposal, but what that exactly was is unclear. (you can be damn sure it would have been compatible with the MD and totally incompatible with the Saturn) It could have been better than the MD or worse, it's really unclear. (what would have been really interesting is if they could have managed something that could make full use of the Sega CD with fewer bottlenecks than the MD or 32x+CD for that matter... but I'm not sure if the Sega CD's interface would have allowed that without excessive workarounds in hardware or software...)
In any case that would still split the market in a negative way with the Saturn coming in... but if it was no more expensive than the 32x it would have been a cleaner solution in general. (re-using some of the Sega CD's hardware could have been interesting too, a bit wasteful if used with the CD, but if they locked it out when used in the CD -or locked the CD's side out in enhanced mode, they could have removed the redundant hardware in a duo console for much better cost efficiency) What might have been interesting is something part way to the Saturn alternative Chilly Willy proposed... dual MD VDPs feeding into a pixel combining ASIC with RAMDAC providing enhanced palette support (larger master palette, more indexes, maybe alpha blending/translucency support, plus combining pixels and layers in various ways) and on top of that have dual VRAM backs for each VDP to avoid contention (and also effectively allow double buffering), maybe have a double CPU speed mode, more CPU RAM (and switch to cheaper DRAM), maybe add the SVP or DSP from the Saturn or an SH CPU and/or a derivative of the Sega CD ASIC plus the Ricoh sound chip with more wave RAM (maybe use DRAM with a bit of added logic to support the necessary interfacing).

I think that could have been better than the 32x if pulled off well, but the only context that such a comprehensive replacement (like the 32x itself) is if:
1. The Saturn was considerably delayed by a year or more OR
2. Such an enhanced MD that was so capable that it was expanded to (and forwards compatible with) the full nextgen console... (which would be the duo derivative) but that would require the Saturn to have been designed totally differently. (and if the Super MD+normal MCD was to be fully compatible with the Duo system, that would mean no enhancements to the CD Drive at all, otherwise it would mean a new Super MCD, which would complicate things -the 1x speed drive probably wouldn't have been a horrible handicap and probably better than further market confusion, but not without faults... though in any case it might have been preferable to at least release a cut-down MCD specifically designed to be mated to the Super MD and thus removed the redundant hardware to save cost)
And there would be a point where it would again make far more sense to drop any cart/add-on system and go straight for the pure CD-ROM console again. (in this case with MD/CD compatibility somewhat like Chilly Willy's suggestion -I still favor a design that skimps on some areas that are easier to expand and leave that for later add-ons and upgraded complete systems -namely RAM- in favor of a low launch price)

Even if I was talking about Jupiter, this is still all my hypothetical, there is nothing to say that SEGA wouldn't have expanded on the projects they were working, and since I started my hypothetical from the time period where the 32X was already out, I'm calling the the Saturn's ability to play cartridges (as well as it's CD) "32X", in 32X game mode since the 32X already exist and my hypothetical is a suggested effort by SEGA to blend 32X with Saturn to avoid the disaster they created in reality to many when they instead used the 32X as a stop gap and screwed many who bought a 32X to extend their Genesis life only to discover their upgrade only being supported for 1 full year.

Jupiter and Saturn predated the 32x project... Mars may have stemmed from an older project (it's unclear, might have been a competitor to the SGX at one point or something along the lines of a rejected Saturn competitive proposal, but it was brought to SoA in a different context in January of 1994 and scrapped in favor of the add-on alternative that commenced in design almost immediately thereafter), but in any case, the 32x came after the Saturn and after the Jupiter proposal. ("Jupiter" as the media labeled it was never presented to SoA as such in any case, but an internal idea at SoJ that was dropped in favor of the Saturn alone)

In any case, the plan was to support the 32x for 3 full years to bridge the gap to the Saturn... and regardless of how conflicting that would have been under better circumstances, what ended up happening was far worse in any case. And that exacerbation was indeed marketing/management related, so some of your previous statements would fit there (especially the Saturn's release date and general marketing and software management in 1995... or even afterward), lots of other variables though.


----I do agree that with better management the 32x/Saturn (as they otherwise historically were) could have been far more successful. (and while not directly compatible, some smart programming practices could have favored relatively efficient multiplatform development between Saturn and 32x)
----I also agree that a more "Jupiter" like low-end complementary system to the Saturn would have been better than the 32x (leaving the MD/CD in the lower end only).
----However, I don't think that that was the best idea either, a more streamlined Saturn would have been better than any of the above options (regardless of any sort of backwards compatibility). -Again, this school of thought grew out of the Jupiter idea after having pointed out several times that it would seem odd (and drive stigma) if Sega went back to carts after pushing the CD and while preparing to push the Saturn, so I thought: instead of offering the Jupiter (cut down, no CD) and a CD+RAM add-on to reach full Saturn spec, why not keep the CD as well as cutting the design back and having that add-on limited to RAM or maybe RAM+coprocessor.

[kool kitty89]

Actually, I love the 32X... the only REAL complaint I have is the low amount of SDRAM - 256KB is not really enough; the 32X would have been much easier to make ports of if it had 1MB of SDRAM. For a cheap add-on, it works rather well, but the lack of ram means you need to put more effort into ports than devs wanted to at the time.

Oh, I think it's neat too, underrated in general and certainly fun... but lookign at it from a gamer/retro enthusiast perspective is not the same as getting into the historian mindset on top of trying to consider what the smart business/marketing moves would have been from the time.

Even trying to look at it from the context of early 1994, it really doesn't seem to make that much sense, and that's what I'd definitely like to know more about what exactly led to the development as such.

Ignoring the multitude of other issue, there are some fundamental design weaknesses as well, and you've pointed out the biggest one several times: lack of hardware acceleration and very limited RAM.
It seems like it would have made a lot more sense to drop one of the SH2s in favor of some combination of better hardware acceleration (and perhaps more RAM -let alone a more comprehensive and fully asynchronous design more like the MCD using DRAM and independent clock speeds -25 MHz SH2 with 32-bit 80 ns DRAM on a 12.5 MHz bus could have been nice -might have been cost effective enough to allow 1 MB via 2 of the 256kx16-bit DRAM chips used in the MCD, plus 12.5 MHz framebuffers like MCD word RAM), but some of that would be up to time constraints, let alone access to other Sega hardware/engineering documents (and perhaps consultation from the related engineers).
Re-using parts of the MCD might have been a good option: using a modified version of the ASIC tweaking the DRAM interfacing to operate at the different address range and support a 32-bit bus, maybe retain the ricoh chip or eliminate that interface in favor of the simpler PWM, preferably integrate the Super VDP logic onto the same chip (you could afford to drop some features like the fill function and RLE mode), tweak the blitter to work better with 8-bit and maybe 16-bit pixels (maybe even some sort of color look-up support for lower depth textures -othewise you'd have to do that in software), and other things like adding an SSP1601, or better, the DSP from the Saturn. (actually with a powerful DSP and a beefed up ASIC, you might be able to make do with a fast 68k in place of the SH2 or SH1, or even the MD CPU alone for game logic/AI and use the DSP+ASIC for all rendering/3D math, etc -albeit DSPs are trickier to program than CPUs, so that would be a significant consideration in favor of an SH2 or even SH1 over a DSP -even if the DSP was nominally more useful for graphics acceleration)

Or maybe even use a cut-down derivative of the Saturn's VDP1 integrated with display logic (again, like the Super VDP sans fill/RLE, actually that would match very well with VDP1 other than lacking the 24-bit palette for 256 color mode, otherwise it's all 15-bit RGB anyway and not any worse off), but that's probably a good bit more costly than a derivative of the more primitive MCD ASIC. (albeit depending how much you enhanced the MCD ASIC and how much VDP1 was cut down, they'd get closer and closer anyway)

If they really wanted to push something that favored cross platform development with the Saturn, the closer to VDP1, the better. Hell, in the context of the Saturn DSP, even if tougher to program for, having it in the 32x could have meant better programming practices with it on the Saturn. (especially if the otherwise more limited resources forced developers to push it more... or for Sega to push more tools/support for it for that matter -or at least more example code for broader implementation for more than point plotting/3D math -stuff like decompression, maybe help with z-sorting, ray-casting, etc -or rasterization for that matter, though that's more for a VDP in line with the MCD ASIC or for cases where quads were really unattractive)




One thign I'm interested in is knowing the real story about what the originally planned Mars design was. (the one Joe Miller supposedly rejected)
Hell, at a certain point a standalone system could have been much more cost effective than an add-on, especially if the price range was still pretty close to the add-on, or even if a bit more expensive (say $200) could be worth it for the attraction of new buyers and convenience all around. (in that case there was potential for some of the neat stuff you suggested for a Saturn alternative, but on a more modest scale -albeit I just went off onto that subject in my response to gamegenie )

[kool kitty89]

SOA/SOE knew full well SOJ was pushing like crazy to get the Saturn out in 1994, SEGA America were were the 1st to show the Saturn hardware casing. And when you start to show off Hardware casing then most of the hardware design work is already done and finished.

OK, but can you explain the actual plans and/or mind set of SoA and SoJ in regards to how/way the Saturn and 32x were developed and managed as they were?

There's too much left open ended for me to be satisfied with any of the answers I've seen from any source. Even direct interviews (mainly with SoA staff given the lack of interest SoJ staff/former Staff have taken in responding to retrospective articles/interviews/historians/etc), but even then things have to be taken with a grain of salt for a number of reasons (self interest, hazy memories, 2nd/3rd hand accounts, etc) Albeit some of that open-ended stuff could be addressed (in part) with repeat interviews and cross-checking that with other SoA employees. (be it management/engineering/programming/etc, someone involved at least -Joe Miller was involved with a fair amount of stuff, so he would certainly be interesting to hear from)

There's unanswered technical questions (Joe Miller would be the first I'd think of for that) as well as various marketing/management related stuff.

Among the odd things is: did Sega consider pushing more software and marketing (like Nintendo did) in the face of the slump as an alternative to the hardware related solution? (albeit the 32x was also spurred by hype/competition from 3DO/Jaguar and not just the slump)

Other things would be the exact reasons for managing the 32x and Saturn as they did, and who was making the calls on some of the decisions. (ie did SoJ really force SoA to launch the Saturn prematurely -among other claims)

Not true at all. For one Nakayma understood games, he was the 1 behind growing SEGA consumer division, and for another SEGA Japan were all focused on a 1994 launch date . But like with any hardware they is always doubts if the Hardware will be ready in time . That is natural , not many though the 360 would be ready, but somehow MS did it. Under Nakayma SEGA Japan had the best In-House teams in the business and SEGA Japan were just better than almost anyone for games (especially in the Saturn days)

Yes, but understanding games is not understanding how to sell them or how to make people take interest in them:
you could have amazing games that just didn't mesh with the mass market appeal or weren't marketed right, and you could have mediocre/average games with strong mass market appeal (maybe some critical gimmick) that not only would go on to be huge sellers, but also long-lasting killer apps still recognized today.

I've gone further on this before and really don't care to repeat it again with specific examples.

SEGA insiders tend to say SEGA Japan wanted a Super Mega Drive, kind of like the Super Graff. 32X just grew on from there, and it was SOA that were more for the 32X they loved the idea.

Yeah, we don't know what the original Mars design was (some things indicate something like the SGX, but they're so vague it's not remotely definitive). That's actually one thing Joe Miller could confirm since he was the one (apparently) who shot down that very idea in favor of an add-on instead.
Supposedly SoJ presented said "Super MD" along with the Mars proposal in January of 1994 (at the beginning of the winter CES) via a teleconference.

And there is no proof what so ever that SONY went to SEGA Japan with a chip-set , and do give me the Tom Bullshit; that man would spin anything to make it not look like it was his fault . I don't buy it for 1 second and do you know why ?.

That's another thing Joe miller could confirm... but if you actually read what I claimed and the related article/interview from Tom, it had absolutely nothign to do with a chipset (the SGI offer did, but that's another story -also something to ask Miller).

The deal with Sony was supposedly that they got together (Imagesoft and STI headed by several executives plus Miller -STI's chief engineer) to compile a sort of wish list of hardware features for a nextgen multimedia system (ie a superficial hardware feature set) based on the experienced games with the MCD development both houses had done and write it in a way that wasn't just techese but also understandable by general management.
In addition to that they supposedly drew up a rudimentary proposal for a partnership between Sega and Sony over such a proposed hardware design. (supposedly the basic plan was to split hardware R&D and marketing/production/distribution costs as well as sales while retaining separate rights to publish for the system... albeit there's no mention of how 3rd party licensing would have been managed -if it was anything like Sony's deal with NCL some years earlier it would have meant full control over 3rd party licensing/royalties for Sony and Sega only having control over Sega published stuff -be it 1st/2nd/3rd party developed)

I honestly think such a deal could have turned sour for Sega (albeit maybe not too bad given what actually happened -maybe just forcing them into the 3rd party/software side much sooner, but without all the losses and damage to the company -and retaining the growing STI). However, that list of features should still have been of interested to SoJ and could/should have been compared to what the Saturn had.

The SGI chipset was a bigger missed opportunity, though from SoJ's perspective the delays in development (if things went as with Nintendo) could have been unacceptable, let alone the fact that SoJ had impressive hardware engineers of their own and the capabilities to push that sort of hardware themselves. (which they didn't in any case as the Saturn veered off in a different direction though they were also already pushing for heavy outsourcing with arcade hardware design, so SGI's proposal shouldn't have been out of the question as such -they also outsourced a good chunk of the Dreamcast as such)

If SONY went to SEGA with the PS chipset , SEGA Japan would have known the Tech spec's and what it would take the beat them. So very simple, and none of the staff would have been as shocked as they were , when SONY entered.

Again, I never claimed that was the case. Hell, Olaferson's software team may not have even known any details about the PSX at that point, it may have been just the opposite (ie the PSX actually had some tweaks based on contributions from the results of Imagisoft/STI's "wish list" -the multimedia support of the PSX reflects a vague possibility of that).

Again, all (supposed) collaboration was between Sony's North American software branch and STI/SoA.
Hell, in Kalinske's intervew he stated that he/they didn't even think/know that Sony had a hardware division dedicated to video game console design... though maybe that was true in any case as the hardware design was technically contained within the computer development sector or some sort of general "advanced technologies" department. (ie general purpose R&D for pushing new/innovative stuff not necessarily directed by any hard specification -I know some firms have such divisions, Atari Inc certainly did)
For that matter, the PSX's design very well may not have started as a game machine at all, but a computer or some sort of set-top box/multimedia unit before being shifted more specifically to a game console. (ie some sort fo culminating long-term project -or a number of separate projects, maybe some computer related and other media/entertainment related, that later shifted to video games --obviously Sony had been working on the Nintendo related video game stuff since the late 80s and into the early/mid 90s before abandoning it, but that doesn't counter any of the above -ie the PSX hardware could have been and probably was parallel to the Nintendo CD based hardware)
We do know for a fact that Sony had already licensed the R3000A for other designed and had been working on several prototype designs using that CPU in various configurations (workstations, embedded systems -among them some high-performance low-cost laptop designs, etc). Actually it came up in passing conversation a while back that my dad was actually involved on some level (others in his company more so) on a consulting level for an R3000 based laptop design in the early 90s that never made it to market. (apparently it was RDRAM based, so probably not directly related to the PSX -unless that IS RDRAM based, but I thought it was all EDO or SDRAM maybe with dual ported VRAM -I know the N64 and PS2 used RDRAM)

SEGA should have even been totally for the Mega Drive 32X or totally for the Saturn. That was the mistake SEGA made at the end of the day .

Except it was clearly not going to be that from its inception. The 32x and Saturn were always posed as parallel designed, though the planned implementation/marketing may have been very different at SoJ than what SoA did. (if it had been the primary system, it needed more power and greater overall design efficiency -the Super MD may have been a better idea in that respect, or at least something more like what Chilly Willy proposed but cut down to a cart system)

If SoJ didn't want the 32x and Saturn being released together, they should have halted it as soon as the Saturn became definitively viable for the fall '94 release. (which should have been shortly before the June CES where 32x was formally announced -which maked a point of no return or at least considerable problems and negative PR if they canceled the just announced new system -short of some deft marketing to hype the Saturn to blow that over)
Additionally, if SoJ had capped the 32x at an early date as such, it might have still been feasible/attractive to push a lower cost add-on (ie a hacked up 32x, maybe drop the Super VDP and 2nd SH2 in favor of just the SDRAM and SH2+interface logic+PWM, maybe retain the framebuffers as word RAM or at least 1 if the SDRAM couldn't be directly interfaced with the 68k easily enough)... or just push the MD+CD alone... and maybe push out a low-cost counterpart to the CDX. (ie something $200 at the time the 32x would have launched)

[Team Andromeda]

OK, but can you explain the actual plans and/or mind set of SoA and SoJ in regards to how/way the Saturn and 32x were developed and managed as they were?

The mind set is very easy... SEGA Japan were desperate to get rid of the Mega Drive and beat NCL to the Next Generation Market in Japan (as well as NEC ect) While SOA/SOE were more than happy to build on the Mega Drive user base in Japan.

There's unanswered technical questions (Joe Miller would be the first I'd think of for that) as well as various marketing/management related stuff.

I really don't know why you keep banging on about Joe Miller . The only man that can really answer 'all' the Consumer Hardware questions is Hideki Sato

Yes, but understanding games is not understanding how to sell them or how to make people take interest in them

That's why 1) you have a PR Team, and 2) the PR dept is totally septate from the Development team.

Yeah, we don't know what the original Mars design was

The Mars design was more or less the 32X. And a simple clue is in its name, were at the SOJ were naming various SEGA Development Teams and Hardware after Planets or Star's .
If we're taking of the Super Mega Drive (not its real name) then I guess it would have been much like a Super Graxf or what the Wii was over the Cube (speeded up CPU's ECT) maybe with a far bigger colour pallet too .

That's another thing Joe miller could confirm

Again Try Hideki Sato.

The deal with Sony was supposedly that they got together (Imagesoft and STI headed by several executives plus Miller -STI's chief engineer) to compile a sort of wish list of hardware features for a nextgen multimedia system (ie a superficial hardware feature set) based on the experienced games with the MCD development both houses had done and write it in a way that wasn't just techese but also understandable by general management.

Is this the bullshit from the likes of TOM ?; who just can't admit he called it wrong by backing the 32X?. It's load of all tosh
SONY Japan would be in charge of all Hardware developments , and at the time SONY Computer Entertainment had to share with SONY Music, with only a small number of staff working on the Project ; so they couldn't work on Multi projects for starters and that Team was working on the PS-X (that was the only console Hardware project at SONY Japan) And for another , if SEGA did know what SONY was working on, did get to see their Chip Set 1st, they would have known exactly what do, to bet the chip set after they turned it down, that is just plain common sense; SEGA didn't. So its very bloody obvious they never got to see the PS-X chip set

Except it was clearly not going to be that from its inception. The 32x and Saturn were always posed as parallel designed,

And that was the mistake, It should have been 1 or the other from the start.

[kool kitty89]

The mind set is very easy... SEGA Japan were desperate to get rid of the Mega Drive and beat NCL to the Next Generation Market in Japan (as well as NEC ect) While SOA/SOE were more than happy to build on the Mega Drive user base in Japan.

Except it was SOJ who pushed project Mars in the first place... and SoA who'd already pushed at least 1 substantial proposal for a nextgen console (even if it wouldn't have necessarily matured until '95/96 -which would have been fine by SoA's standards )

I really don't know why you keep banging on about Joe Miller . The only man that can really answer 'all' the Consumer Hardware questions is Hideki Sato

Yes, but he won't talk... Melf (Ken Horowitz) already addressed this, he's tried many times to get interviews with a number of Japanese staff/former staff, but none have any interest at all. (he did write a short article on him here: http://www.sega-16.com/feature_page....0Hideki%20Sato though reading through it it seems to have a fair amount of technical errors that are common to a number of things -the most obvious being the claim that the MD hardware was related to the System 16 when it is pretty much nothing alike and was a new design with only superficial similarity -it's ttuff like that that gave me a bunch of wrong ideas before I actually dug into greater detail within the homebrew dev community and others who have a detailed technical understanding on the subject)


Plus, Miller would have had access to things going on at SoA that SoJ might not have known the details about. (like the SGI deal -and the actual state of the Hardware at SGI in 1993, or the Imagesoft partnership)

Sato would be (as is) top on the list of desired interviews, but everything has turned up dry AFIK while Miller has agreed to an interview with the concession that he not have to discuss the 32x. (which might also nix anything related to the "Super MD" as you call it, or original Mars proposal as other sources have referenced it as)

That's why 1) you have a PR Team, and 2) the PR dept is totally septate from the Development team.

And it's also absolutely critical that those are managed such that they can mesh well without conflict as well as have feedback between the different divisions. (which is why good upper management can be so critical as well)

Having a company that just makes hardware and software and then throws it out to marketing to sell is hardly an efficient or realistic business model. (it may allow more freedom for innovation, but innovation without tempered business/marketing sense is no good in such business... unless you've got a dedicated "think tank" like R&D division and the money to fund such -which then feeds back into the mass market divisions)

The Mars design was more or less the 32X. And a simple clue is in its name, were at the SOJ were naming various SEGA Development Teams and Hardware after Planets or Star's .
If we're taking of the Super Mega Drive (not its real name) then I guess it would have been much like a Super Graxf or what the Wii was over the Cube (speeded up CPU's ECT) maybe with a far bigger colour pallet too .

That's something I'd like to have an answer to, there's quotes and paraphrasing from Joe Miller that points to SoJ being siad "Super MD" to the table in the January of 1994 meeting... and that Miller said it was no good and that an add-on would have been much better which subsequently led to the rudimentary 32x concept shortly after (still during the winter CES). However, there's also reference to the SoA team also considering several alternatives before definitively settling on the dual SH2+bare bones PWM+framebuffer design.

Is this the bullshit from the likes of TOM ?; who just can't admit he called it wrong by backing the 32X?. It's load of all tosh

That's a big fat assumption right there, but I agree that you can't simply take Tom's interview at face value, and that's why cross-checking is needed, and then additional interviews on both sides to compare.

SONY Japan would be in charge of all Hardware developments , and at the time SONY Computer Entertainment had to share with SONY Music, with only a small number of staff working on the Project ; so they couldn't work on Multi projects for starters and that Team was working on the PS-X (that was the only console Hardware project at SONY Japan) And for another , if SEGA did know what SONY was working on, did get to see their Chip Set 1st, they would have known exactly what do, to bet the chip set after they turned it down, that is just plain common sense; SEGA didn't. So its very bloody obvious they never got to see the PS-X chip set

Nope, nothing to do with Sony Japan at all, totally an American thing. The whole thing was (supposedly) done directly between SoJ/STI and Imagesoft and there was never, ever any actual hardware, just loose specs (wish list is my analogy) put down so that upper management could also understand it.
In addition to that there was a loose proposition to collaborate on such a project if they could get support from the Japanese parent companies.

Olaferson then took the proposal to Sony management and they gave a general positive response to move forward, but SoJ did not.

Joe Miller and Olaf Olaferson should be able to confirm or debunk it.

And that was the mistake, It should have been 1 or the other from the start.

OK, so SoJ was the first to make that mistake. But it obviously snowballed from there and was conglomerated with other problems starting at both SoJ and SoA from 1994 through 1998 (or later for a few things) and of course Sony giving them no mercy. (if not for that extreme competition they probably could have done quite well given the alternate competition all making mistakes... albeit some of said mistakes were caused by Sony -ie 3DO dropping out and NEC's knee-jerk with the PCFX -probably exacerbated by their increasingly shaky position on the computer market which they'd previously dominated -in some respects not totally dissimilar to Sega's arcade market falling out)


Though I'd still be interested in more details and hard facts on the issue.
It's pretty damn clear that "established history" on such a subject can be riddled with skewed information, myths, and outright lies. (Atari is a prime example... it's damn amazing how much was disproved of the previously held "facts" on Atari history and only some of that is due to Nolan's considerable lies and self promotion -I doubt Kalinske is as bad as Nolan in that respect, but I wouldn't rule it out either... I would rule it out for Katz though given what I know of him)

[chameleon]

@kool kitty89

I really like SVP, the chip itself and the concept of addon enhancement chips. I just point there was lot of potential in MD+CD, and maybe even able to acomplish similar tasks than MD+SVP.

anyway, CD launch was too early from my point of view. if it was done just to compete with Nec CD / Duo in Japan then it wasnt needed. but the real competition was the SNES, and from that aspect, I think SEGA was aware of that. but SEGA underestimated MD capabilities. the fact is GEN/MD sold pretty well in EU and US from 91->93. So a CD add on was not the priority in 91, at least in market dominance terms.

@Team Andromeda

agree about the 32x/Sat in parallel. and it also confuses the market, in that time I remember my friends thinking that MD+32x+CD = Sat
from what I read, SEGA didnt know about the PSX power, at least when the first Sat was designed arround 1994 (the version with just 1 SH1 CPU). but as kk89 stated, SEGA did know PSX HW specs by 32x launch.

so in that scenario, SEGA already had a complete Sat redesign, at least on paper. they KNEW the battle was going to be against SONY with high end new technology. so why to mantain the pretty old tech with all the flaws of the ancient MD design?

my preferred sceranio is a late CD release in 1993, with decent DSP (a 10Mhz SVP was possible on that time) + RAM. drop the 32x thing and go for a fairly polished Sat in 1995: 1cpu (sh3 was available) + enhanced DSP, similar style to what SONY was doing.

PD: didnt know about the posibility of a SEGA+SONY partnership, interesting to know. if you have more info please share

[Chilly Willy]

so in that scenario, SEGA already had a complete Sat redesign, at least on paper. they KNEW the battle was going to be against SONY with high end new technology. so why to mantain the pretty old tech with all the flaws of the ancient MD design?

The difference was that SEGA was trying to maintain their high-price arcades. If they made a cheap GOOD 3D home console, they may have felt it would cut their income from the arcades. Sony had no such reason to hold back on a home console and didn't.