Digital Foundry (Official Thread)

[Gryson]

I was the envy of my friends when I had a 32x back when it was new because it was the only way to play Doom without an expensive powerful PC. We'd spend hours at a time playing it I remember. I believe the Jaguar had a version at the time as well, but I only knew one kid who had a Jag and he didn't have Doom. I also had Star Wars and Virtua Racing at the time, and was very happy with it. I was disappointed of course when Sega pulled the plug early on it, but as a stop-gap before the Saturn release, it served its purpose, and I definitely got my money's worth out of it.

I know that it's become fashionable on the interwebz to hate on the 32x over the years, but it was never intended to be a major console, even to the extent of the Sega CD. The Saturn was on the way, so the 32x was meant to be short-lived from the get go. And most of us who had it when it was new (I assume) had a blast with it. And the fact that it had that good of a Doom port at a time when it was essentially high end PC or nothing to play it was a massive boon for its owners.

Yeah that sounds like my story. I played Doom endlessly, and also played 2-player Virtua Racing with my brother a ton. I also loved Metal Head (it gets a lot of hate these days but was super awesome to me at the time) and Shadow Squadron. Star Wars was impressive but probably got the least amount of play time. I rented a few other games which were OK, but I felt like I got more than my money's worth from those 5 games.

I also never really expected the 32X to be a long-lived console or anything. I don't even really think I considered it a 'console.' It was just an add-on that would let me play a few awesome games while waiting for the PS1/SS releases.

[Blades]

Yeah the entire world is wrong, but you're right.

Not everyone, but it's just so hard to weed through the stupid ones.

[KitsuneNight]

I am bothered when someone who has an american (or could be canadian) accent refers to the sega genesis as the megadrive through out the whole video.
But he calls it the Sega 32x and not the mega 32x.
Great video, but that is my nitpick.

oddly enough i had that nitpick too
he seems to mix his terminology a lot and i cant place the accent

[KitsuneNight]

The game is a bad joke in many aspects but gets a free pass because it's supposed to be related to Sonic.
Color use is shitty, to say the least; tile work is very poor. Mostly empty levels, messy design, bonus levels look buggy, etc. Just plain terrible.

i wouldnt word it that harshly but what i played of chaotix wasnt all that great
messy level design annoying rubber banding physics
ugly headache inducing color design

more hype less substance

[Gogogadget]

I know that it's become fashionable on the interwebz to hate on the 32x over the years, but it was never intended to be a major console, even to the extent of the Sega CD. The Saturn was on the way, so the 32x was meant to be short-lived from the get go. And most of us who had it when it was new (I assume) had a blast with it. And the fact that it had that good of a Doom port at a time when it was essentially high end PC or nothing to play it was a massive boon for its owners.

You have to admit though, what a horrible marketing strategy that is.

Releasing a stop-gap when everyone knows you have a hot new powerful system on the horizon, then dividing up your games between the two platforms because one isn't ready for release yet. Like what was the actual gap, a year or so?

Flooding the market with a ton of different machines with different games has been done by a few companies in the history of video games, and it hasn't worked at all once

[KitsuneNight]

You have to admit though, what a horrible marketing strategy that is.

Releasing a stop-gap when everyone knows you have a hot new powerful system on the horizon, then dividing up your games between the two platforms because one isn't ready for release yet. Like what was the actual gap, a year or so?

Flooding the market with a ton of different machines with different games has been done by a few companies in the history of video games, and it hasn't worked at all once

less then a year the saturn was released a month EARLIER in japan in 1994 when the 32X was unveiled
and the western release of the saturn was 6 months later because sega jumped the gun

but even if they didnt jump the gun it would have been just 9 months later

[Gogogadget]

So then why not just spruce up some of those 32X games and release them on the Saturn... like VF and VR but oh they did but

What the actual fuck Sega

[KitsuneNight]

So then why not just spruce up some of those 32X games and release them on the Saturn... like VF and VR but oh they did but

What the actual fuck Sega

sega was literally at ods with themselves in the mid 90's
SOA wanted to go one direction SOJ the other
and both sides believed they were responsible for the over all success of sega ( SOA believed their marketing was key SOJ believed it was their games that were key both ignoring that it was both )

SOA wanted the 32X and SOJ wanted the saturn to be the future
and sega didnt stop being fractured untill the dreamcast and even the lead up to that was fractured ( SOA favored a 3DFX chipset for the dreamcast if i recall correctly)

sega from 1993 till late 1998 was a deeply fractured company and the 32X and saturn are the victims of that

the 32X could work if it wasnt so half baked and dropped with in a year and the saturn was allowed to be developed further for another 18 months
but hindsight is 20 20

[Team Andromeda]

The only games that even look remotely impressive are the polygon based games, everything else may as well of just been an MD game to begin with, at least the Sega CD can boast about having redbook audio.

That was the trouble, its best games made next to no use of the Mega Drive hardware, so why even bother to make it an add-on for the Mega Drive. It was all so pointless and speaking of the Mega CD, Sonic CD-DA and even PCM audio leads the audio to Chaotix standing

[KitsuneNight]

That was the trouble, its best games made next to no use of the Mega Drive hardware, so why even bother to make it an add-on for the Mega Drive. It was all so pointless and speaking of the Mega CD, Sonic CD-DA and even PCM audio leads the audio to Chaotix standing

cause cheaper less hassle and there was already a next gen console gearing up in the saturn
the 32X really was badly handled and sega 94-98 really is a humongous clusterfuck

[ndiddy]

less then a year the saturn was released a month EARLIER in japan in 1994 when the 32X was unveiled
and the western release of the saturn was 6 months later because sega jumped the gun

but even if they didnt jump the gun it would have been just 9 months later

Yeah, no idea why Sega released the 32X in Japan. Even though it came out after the Saturn, it was $150, games cost $80 each, and it didn't even come with stereo AV cables. It wasn't a very good purchase. However, the game box art was way better than in the US, here's the Chaotix art for example:

[Gogogadget]

I'm gonna go with that cover art being terrible, sorry.

And yeah, Sega was an absolute joke of a company from 1994 onwards, it's like they had a competition to see who could shoot themselves in the foot more.

Honestly, i'd attribute every single bit of Sony's success with the Playstation 1 to Sega trying to kill themselves and Nintendo forever delaying their next-gen system and then falling asleep at the wheel as soon as it actually launched

[Black_Tiger]

I'm gonna go with that cover art being terrible, sorry.

And yeah, Sega was an absolute joke of a company from 1994 onwards, it's like they had a competition to see who could shoot themselves in the foot more.

Honestly, i'd attribute every single bit of Sony's success with the Playstation 1 to Sega trying to kill themselves and Nintendo forever delaying their next-gen system and then falling asleep at the wheel as soon as it actually launched

Nintendo screwed up by showing up late two generations in a row.

[ndiddy]

I'm gonna go with that cover art being terrible, sorry.

I know it's kind of off-topic but people like you are why the US got bad video game covers.
I bet you think this looks better than this too.

[Gogogadget]

I'm not even fucking American

and yes, see how it says Puzzle Game at the top of the US cover, that gives a hint of the content in said game as opposed to anime girl with blobs that could literally be anything but it's the internet and the internet has a total hard-on for anything Japanese so I understand