
How do you take half a decade’s worth of critical and commercial success and flush it down the toilet? Easy – you release a device like the Sega 32X. At the start of the 1990s Sega was arguably at the height of its powers; the dawn of the decade saw the western launch of the popular Mega Drive console (Genesis in the States), which managed to gain both commercial and critical acclaim – much to the annoyance of arch-rival Nintendo. Such success was not to last, however; in less than a decade Sega’s position would be far less dominant and the firm would be forced to limp meekly out of the hardware arena.
Why this disastrous fall from grace occurred is very much open to debate, but if you keenly followed Sega’s fortunes in the middle of the ‘90s one thing is abundantly clear – the company took far too many risks when it came to video game hardware. The forward-thinking but commercially disappointing Mega CD represented the first indication that something was amiss, but many would point to the positively disastrous retail performance of the 32X as the real straw which broke the camel’s back.
Like the Mega CD before it, the 32X was a device which augmented the capabilities of the 16-bit Mega Drive, allowing it to perform the kind of 3D graphical tricks which would later become the mainstay of 32-bit consoles. However, by the time the machine was launched it was already being out-gunned by Sega’s own Saturn, and in less than 12 months it had been dropped from the company’s plans altogether. From an outsider’s perspective, the failure of the 32X was almost a foregone conclusion, so why did Sega choose to sour its relationship with the gaming public just months before it intended to release the Saturn? Scot Bayless – a Senior Producer at Sega of America from 1990 to 1994 – is the ideal man to shed some light on this turbulent time because he was there the moment Sega’s American division got the telephone call from Sega of Japan CEO Hayao Nakayama which resulted in the birth of the machine.
"We were at CES '94 in Las Vegas and Sega of America’s head of R&D Joe Miller asked a few of us to join him in his suite for a call he was expecting from Nakayama," remembers Bayless. "There had already been some discussion about an up-gunned Mega Drive with Hideki Sato and his Sega Hardware Team, but the essence of the call was that we needed to respond to Atari’s Jaguar and we needed to do it right away. Joe said he was confident the US team could come up with a design that would do the job, so Nakayama said 'get it done' and we were off to the races. Marty Franz grabbed one of those little hotel note pads and drew a couple of Hitachi SH2 processors, each with its own frame buffer. That's pretty much where 32X started."
The 32X – which at this juncture was known by the codename Mars – was actually one of two cartridge-based projects which were in development at the time; the other was known as Jupiter (as the more observant amongst you will no doubt have noticed by now, Sega had a habit of naming its hardware projects after planets in the solar system). "Jupiter started as a ROM-based unit with theoretical specs a bit like Saturn," explains Bayless. Although it was to be a more powerful machine on paper, the emergence of Project Mars meant that Jupiter was ultimately squeezed out of Sega’s strategy. "I think Sato was really feeling the cost control heat and the CD-based Saturn was hugely attractive from a cost perspective," continues Bayless. "Therefore, Jupiter was officially put to bed and Mars was born." From an engineering standpoint the machine certainly had a lot of potential. "The design of the graphics subsystem was brilliantly simple, something of a coder's dream for the day," says Bayless. "It was built around two central processors feeding independent frame buffers with twice the depth per pixel of anything else out there. It was a wonderful platform for doing 3D in ways that nobody else was attempting outside the workstation market."
Marty Franz – then Sega's Vice President of Technology – agrees. "We pushed really hard for the dual SH2 architecture," he says. "We really liked the Hitachi SH2 CPUs that the Saturn had and felt they were the star of the show. Putting two of them in a package with a good graphics buffer was a big advance at that time; it enabled software rendering tricks that were limited only by the imagination."
Despite Nakayama’s keenness to square up to the Atari Jaguar, the decision to start work on the 32X was far from straightforward and within the walls of Sega’s Japanese HQ there was much brow-furrowing over the project. This is largely due to the fact that in Japan the Mega Drive had finished in third position behind Nintendo’s Super Famicom (or SNES) and NEC’s PC Engine (known in the States as the TurboGrafx-16), and the consensus was that the company should plough all of its available resources into the 32-bit Saturn. However, Sega of Japan was savvy enough to realise that much of its current wellbeing was down to the incredible commercial performance of its 16-bit hardware in the West, and when Sega of America insisted that it was too early to pull the plug on this large market, Nakayama took notice. "The 32X was going to add additional life to the 16-bit Mega Drive market," Franz says. "This was good business for Sega, since that was where it was earning the most income." Bayless thinks timing had a lot to do with this decision, too. "There was consensus at Sega of America that making an add-on for Mega Drive was the right move," Bayless explains. "To really understand the decision, though, you need to see it in context. The 32X call was made in early January and Nakayama's mandate was to get to market by the end of the year. I think at the time he lacked confidence that Saturn would make it to market within 1994."
Although the Mars project was very much Sega of America’s baby, Bayless and his team were in constant contact with their Japanese counterparts. "The guys at Sega of Japan were great – especially Sato's team," he says. "We were all in super-double-secret-crunch-mode and nerves were wearing pretty thin. I remember one of our technical guys going completely ballistic over his dev kit losing one of its Hitachi SH2 CPU chips and then being told he'd have to wait two weeks to get a new part, but the guys in Japan were awesome. They worked their tails off to help us. We did however have a persistent problem with translations of manuals. Sega of Japan had a small localisation team in Tokyo, but those guys were completely slammed. So we started hiring translators in the Bay Area to help open up the technical translation bottleneck – with sometimes amusing results. The engineers in Sato's group were literally sending us the docs as they wrote them and then we were handing them off to contract translators in San Francisco. Technical Japanese is something of a hybrid of English and non-standard uses of Japanese language and orthodox translations can produce phraseology like: 'The cracker of remembrance receives a tickle from the command of stern ancestor accounting.' It was like a party whenever a new batch of translations came in; we'd read them over lunch and howl."
Although the 32X was meant to enhance the abilities of the Mega Drive hardware – which was half a decade old by this point, having launched in Japan in 1988 – it actually shared several similarities with the Saturn. At the heart of both machines were those aforementioned twin Hitachi SH2 processors, which were included to assist in the creation of complex 3D environments. However, despite sharing the same CPU setup the way in which the two devices utilised these chips was quite different. "Only the dual CPU architecture was lifted from the Saturn," explains Franz. "The rest was developed from scratch for the 32X. We had a short timeframe to develop the product and couldn't do much in the way of fixed function hardware development. We had to keep it simple to make the development timeline. We pushed for everything we could imagine that would enable great games in the development timeline we had."
"Saturn was essentially a 2D system with the ability to move the four corners of a sprite in a way that could simulate projection in 3D space," adds Bayless. "It had the advantage of doing the rendering in hardware, but the rendering scheme also tended to create a lot of problems and the pixel overwrite rate was very high; much of the advantage of dedicated hardware was lost to memory access stalls. 32X on the other hand did everything in software but gave two fast RISC chips tied to great big frame buffers and complete control to the programmer. To be honest, there's a part of me that wishes Saturn had adopted the 32X graphics strategy, but that ship had sailed long before the green light call from Nakayama."
When you consider the state of the market at the start of 1994 then it becomes a little easier to see why the 32X ever came to be. The 3DO and Atari’s aforementioned Jaguar were breaking through and garnering some nervous glances from established firms like Sega and Nintendo; 16-bit games were beginning to look terribly outdated and something was certainly needed to keep the momentum going. Sadly, almost from the start things didn’t go according to plan for the 32X; the aforementioned similarity between the machine and its sibling the Saturn caused numerous headaches. "Early on, the Saturn launch date was uncertain," says Bayless. "There were a number of issues bearing on launch timing in the West and, while Sega of America was busily making software for Saturn, we weren't initially fixed on a launch date. Meanwhile, the 32X had to ramp up like a rocket just to hit its timing. So what happened is the two projects basically ran decoupled from each other, which is fine if there are no dependencies between the two; unfortunately there were tons. The systems used many of the same parts, so suddenly 32X was facing shortages because chips were needed for Saturn."
Bayless and Franz – along with the rest of the hardware team at Sega of America – were essentially attempting the impossible; they were trying to bring a hardware blueprint to life in less than a year and had to fight within Sega to get the resources to accomplish the task. To make matters significantly worse, Sega of Japan dropped a bombshell which essentially wrecked the 32X’s chances of any kind of success. "Saturn got its launch date: November of 1994 in Japan," remembers Bayless with a pained grimace. Rather than being the forerunner of the Saturn, the 32X now had to face the prospect of sharing the same release window as its 32-bit big brother. "Not surprisingly, word got out quickly in the West," continues Bayless. "US and EU consumers immediately started asking the obvious question: 'Why should I buy 32X when Saturn is only a few months away?' Sadly, the best answer Sega could come up with was that 32X was a 'transitional device' – that it would form a bridge from Mega Drive to Saturn. Frankly it just made us look greedy and dumb to consumers, something that a year earlier I couldn't have imagined people thinking about us. We were the cool kids."
The earlier-than-expected launch of the Saturn had thrown all of Sega of America’s already flimsy plans into complete and utter disarray, transforming the 32X from a life-saving blood transfusion for the Mega Drive into a cancerous tumour which would further erode the company’s standing in the global marketplace. As Bayless is keen to point out, the timing was horrendous. "Sega of America had a devil of a time convincing anyone that 32X made sense when Saturn was just around the corner. Imagine how much harder that would be to sell to the public if Saturn was already on store shelves?"
As well as boosting the performance of the Mega Drive, the 32X also had the ability to connect with the Mega CD to create more impressive CD-ROM titles – that was the hype communicated at the time, at least. In reality this hellish amalgamation of hardware didn’t live up to the propaganda and those games which were specially coded to take advantage of the setup were mainly poor FMV titles like Corpse Killer and Supreme Warrior. The controversial Night Trap also got a re-release which featured better quality video, but the gameplay itself remained identical to the Mega CD original. If the lack of decent games wasn’t enough to convince you to disassemble the towering Mega Drive/Mega CD/32X fusion then the fact that it required three separate power supplies in order to function – one for each component - most certainly was. Looking back, one can understand why Sega was so keen to create all-in-one consoles like the never-released Sega Neptune.
Despite the obvious setbacks, the 32X experienced a reasonably successful launch in the West. It hit American stores shelves in November 1994, retailing for the substantial sum of $159.99. Regardless of this hefty price tag the machine shifted its initial shipment of 600,000 units with ease; it was even reported at the time that demand had far outstripped supply. A similar story can be told of the European release, which is unsurprising when you consider how much power Sega still held in PAL territories at the time. However, despite this initial interest for the device on both sides of the Atlantic, demand quickly cratered thanks largely to a distinct lack of compelling software. Indeed, it could be argued that the 32X never really saw any games which could truly demonstrate its potential and give it a solid reason for existing. "Not to be too harsh, but the launch mix for 32X was horrible," laments Bayless. "Actually, it was non-existent. Some of the games were pretty good, but in context they needed to be amazing. Unfortunately for Sega, by the end of 1994 that context had become a whole lot more demanding. When PlayStation launched in Japan, any argument in favour of 32X just sounded ridiculous."
One possible argument is that developers struggled to co-ordinate the internal architecture of the Mega Drive and 32X correctly, which prevented them from truly pushing the console to its limits. "I don't think complexity was the problem," retorts Bayless. "By then, experience with Mega CD had taught us orderly ways of spreading the workload across the various buses and chips in the combined system. I think the real issue was timing; the games in the queue were effectively jammed into a box as fast as possible which meant massive cutting of corners in every conceivable way. Even from the outset, designs of those games were deliberately conservative because of the time crunch. By the time they shipped they were even more conservative; they did nothing to show off what the hardware was capable of."
Taking this chain of events into account, it begs one fairly obvious question: did Sega's technical staff ever have any faith in the project at all? "I think 32X was a great hypothesis," he replies. "But in execution it was disastrous. Aside from the obviously murky marketing message that crippled it before it even launched, everything about the device was rushed. Nine months from a cold start is a ridiculous timeline for launching a new platform; everything about it was slammed together at breakneck speed and the result was exactly what you'd expect. The hardware was flaky, the industrial design was questionable and the games were either late or buggy – or both."
Bayless is quick to point out that it wasn’t for lack of trying, and he himself dedicated a considerable portion of his time trying to make the 32X a viable product. "I spent weeks working with id Software’s John Carmack, who literally camped out at the Sega of America building in Redwood City trying to get Doom ported. That guy worked his ass off – he sweated blood – and he still had to cut a third of the levels to get the game done in time. What amazes me now is that with all that going on nobody at Sega was willing to say: 'Wait a minute, what are we doing? Why don't we just stop?' Sega should have killed 32X in the spring of 1994, but we didn't. We stormed the hill and when we got to the top we realised it was the wrong damned hill. Looking back now I'd say that really was the beginning of the end for Sega's credibility as a hardware company."
The 32X’s dismal reception killed off another piece of hardware which Sega had on the table at the time: Project Neptune. Clearly of the opinion that you can never have too many consoles on the market at once, the plan was that following the 32X’s release Sega would launch an all-in-one machine which pulled together the internal architecture of the Mega Drive and 32X to create a console which could play both software formats and win a straight fight with the Jaguar. This bold strategy came to nothing. "By the time Neptune got into serious discussion Sega CEO Hayao Nakayama was betting the company on Saturn," reveals Scot Bayless. "That, plus the fact that 32X was clearly going to fail made Neptune pointless."
By the time 1995 arrived the writing was on the wall for the 32X. Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske remained bullish, insisting that better titles were on their way, but Bayless feels he was making hollow claims. "We knew it was DOA. Everybody knew it, but nobody would say it. It's a phenomenon that's all too familiar in big companies; people are afraid to speak out against the company's public posture. They're afraid of hurting their colleagues. They want to believe in what they're doing, so they remain silent – but we all knew. I've never spoken to Tom about what was in his head at that point, but I suspect he knew as well. But what was he going to do? The chance to stop 32X had long since come and gone. He had to make the best of the situation he was facing and admitting publicly that 32X was a mistake just wasn't an option."
Kalinske didn’t have to make much of this bad situation for long; in 1996 he left the company he had so brilliantly taken to the top of the video game arena in North America just a few years before. Bayless had already beaten him to it, handing in his notice at the end of 1994. He admits losing faith in Sega as a whole, something which is hard for him to disclose, even after all this time. "Even now I feel bad admitting it because I genuinely liked and respected some of the people making those decisions," he explains. "When you look back at the hardware choices the company made between 1992 and 1995 it was like watching the death of the Hindenburg in slow motion. Just about every call the company made turned out to be the wrong one. Using cheap consumer drives in Mega CD, FMV games, positioning 32X as an orphan system, designing Saturn as a modified last-generation 2D system when clearly 3D was going to be the next big thing... even Sega's peripherals were stupid. Remember Activator? Sega VR? The company poured insane amounts of money and time into projects that simply didn't make sense, and consumers did what they always do. They voted with their wallets and stayed away."
Ultimately, the 32X is a mere footnote in the history of our beloved industry, but in the eyes of Bayless it represents an important lesson in how not to produce and position an item of video game hardware. "32X is a great case study in two things," he explains. "First, messaging; your number one job in marketing is to establish the value proposition. Even with all the rushed hardware and late software, if Sega had been able to convince people that 32X was really worth having it might have had a chance to succeed. But we never did that; we never managed to explain to anyone in any credible way what was so unique and worthy about 32X. The result is exactly what you'd expect in that situation: Sony ate our lunch. Second, honesty; not in the legal sense – nor in the public sense – but internally. I remember when I arrived at Microsoft in 1998 I attended an executive orientation briefing on my first day. The VP who met with us said, 'The one thing we demand of every one of you guys is to say what you think.' That attitude was what kept Microsoft vibrant, healthy and successful for more than 20 years. Sega, by contrast, lacked that ruthless cultural honesty. Nobody wanted to hurt anyone's feelings. Even when everybody knew 32X and Saturn were way behind the power curve, nobody was willing to stand up and say so. And it wasn't just the hardware; during the same period, Sega published some of the oddest games it ever released, games that were deeply flawed. Games that completely failed to connect to their imagined constituency. And all the while everyone was smiling and saying 'Gosh aren't we great?' I wasn't able to articulate all this at the time, but I know I felt it intuitively. I knew there was something wrong, that we were losing our way."
Today, the 32X is experiencing something of a renaissance as collectors dig into gaming's history in search of new experiences and challenges. Despite its tiny library of just 34 games (40 if you include those which also required the Mega CD), the 32X isn't a cheap machine to collect for, especially if you're after boxed and complete games. For some strange reason, Sega decided against employing the plastic cases seen during the Mega Drive era and instead used flimsy cardboard packaging; needless to say, this packaging hasn't stood the test of time and finding pristine, fully-boxed games at a reasonable price is getting harder and harder. The 32X unit itself is also rising in value as the years march on; not so long ago it could be obtained for relatively little on the second-hand market, but those days are gone. Another concern – especially if you intend to use the 32X along with the Mega CD – is that all three machines require their own power supply. Using the original Sega PSUs, this creates an insane amount of cables and, depending on the available power sockets in your setup, may not even be possible. Thank goodness then that modern alternatives are available.
Still, if you don't mind making use of flash carts like the Mega Everdrive, you can avoid paying through the nose for cartridges – while this might seem like a morally dubious means of experiencing the 32X's minuscule selection of titles, it's unlikely that many of its most notable releases will ever see any form of re-release; the surprisingly accurate ports of Space Harrier and After Burner have been rendered superfluous by the arrival of better versions on systems like the Nintendo 3DS, while primitive 3D games like Star Wars Arcade, Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing Deluxe – which were best described as mildly impressive back in 1994 – are underwhelming when viewed with modern eyes. Shovel-ware like Spider-Man: Web of Fire, Cosmic Carnage and Primal Rage was embarrassing even by the standards of the time, but there are some gems to consider, such as Darxide (by Elite Dangerous developer Frontier) Knuckles' Chaotix (a Sonic title in all but name) and Kolibri (a dream-like 2D shooter from the team behind Ecco the Dolphin). The only way to experience many of these forgotten titles is to own a 32X, or resort to emulation.
Ultimately, the 32X deserves its less-than-stellar reputation; it was a compromised product which, as Bayless says, should really have been put to bed before it launched – something Sega was brave enough to do with its abortive VR headset for the Mega Drive. Still, there's something fascinating about exploring the failures of a once-dominant company; it's why the Virtual Boy, which launched not long afterwards and is Nintendo's most notable hardware flop, remains equally compelling. The 32X may not have been Sega's last throw of the dice in the domestic hardware market – it struggled on with the Saturn and Dreamcast before finally throwing in the towel in 2001 and becoming a third-party publisher – but it was arguably one of its most costly and mortifying ventures.
Damien's feature previously appeared in a slightly different form in Retro Gamer magazine, and is reproduced here with kind permission.
This article was originally published by nintendolife.com on Wed 11th April, 2018.
Comments (116)
How SEGA wanted you to react to the 32X

How you actually reacted

"Mommy, what are those two SEGA machines doing?"
Old advertisements are weird.
Those 90’s Sega ads. 😂
Cheers for this,I'll have a read of this later. I owned and loved the 32X. Me and my mate were huge fans of Virtua Racing and Fighter in the arcades so to be able to play both of them at home was an incredible experience. They were pretty decent ports too, Virtua Racing especially. If memory serves me right, I got VR and Star Wars Arcade with it day one and later bought Fighter and Doom. As much as I loved it though I did think at the time, what on earth are SEGA up to.
I got a 32X later on for really cheap and enjoyed it a lot. I remember playing Star Wars on it and being very impressed.
Just getting in before the usual QQcrew about an everdrive being in a screenshot
Wow... those adverts. So 90s. So Sega. Obviously didn't help push sales of the unit.
Should of not bother with the 32x and just used that time and money on the Saturn instead.. having said that the 32x is not as bad as the Virtual Boy (as in it didn't give people headaches )
Great read. Thanks
I've read various articles and interviews on this topic, so I generally knew about all this. But it was a pleasure to read this thorough compilation of the factors behind the machine's development and failure. One of the big factors behind Sega's problems was the disconnect between the regional branches. 32x was not important to Sega of Japan and it was treated as unimportant, but that caused problems for the west. After reading up on the hardware, I do have an appreciation for the design approach behind it. Very good piece, Damo. I enjoyed it very much and it was a quick and easy read as well.
At the time it had the best version of Virtua Fighter by quite some distance. And of course it had Knuckles Chaotix which has never been rereleased. But man the 32X needing a seperate power source to the base Mega Drive was painful.
I loved it. It was crap but I loved my mega drive. 32X and Mega CD tower!
I still have my 32X in my loft with my MegaCD!! it might not have been a success but for me at the time it gave me Doom, Virtua Racing and Star Wars Arcade.
""There was consensus at Sega of America that making an add-on for Mega Drive was the right move,""
No, there wasn't. SoA upper management didn't want it at all - they made the best of a bad situation.
"Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske remained bullish, insisting that better titles were on their way, but Bayless feels he was making hollow claims"
Uh, yeah, and we already know that based on what Tom's said in Console Wars.
"Kalinske didn’t have to make much of this bad situation for long; in 1995 he left the company he had so brilliantly taken to the top of the video game arena in North America just a few years before."
He left in 1996. Was any research done for this article? Let's see:
"This feature previously appeared in a slightly different form in Retro Gamer magazine, and is reproduced here with kind permission"
Ah, so it's a copy and paste for clicks. Nice.
"Sega, by contrast, lacked that ruthless cultural honesty. Nobody wanted to hurt anyone's feelings. Even when everybody knew 32X and Saturn were way behind the power curve, nobody was willing to stand up and say so."
This is proof Scot Bayless was a low man on the totem pole. Sega of America and Tom Kalinske in particular were working with both Sony, and later Silicon Graphics, to get a more powerful alternative to the Saturn.
Articles like this do no one any good, as they just contribute to the BS out there about gaming history. Shameful performance by NintendoLife here.
A Good read. The whole thing that led to Sega exiting the console market is all Sega of Japan’s fault. Too thick and pig headed to work with SOA and gave them nothing but resistance at every turn!
Wow, had never heard of the 32X...
I’m going to be that guy and leave this here for Damien. Great article, but just a touch too much “which”.
http://grammarist.com/usage/which-that/
@Blister
really?
i remember it but only had up to a sega cd. i did get a 3DO and a buddy of mine had the tg16 stuff with a jaguar/jaguar cd.
man those were the days. now gaming is just so boring. here's clone pc, have fun! bleh.
Ah, the clunky forefather of what is now referred to as a mid cycle console refresh!
I had the 32x with the MD/MCD1, loved Star Wars Arcade, and VR, although the uk Plug situation was a nightmare - you needed 3 of the big Sega Plug Adaptors, that were too big to plug in next to each other on a 4 plug extension
Edit: And WTF were those metal clips?
As poorly timed as the 32x was, I can't help wondering who thought a CDROM add-on for a console with 64 colors was a good idea? I'm glad Nintendo came to their senses before releasing their abomination.
Top three phrases heard by every single 32X owner in the 90s. ‘Why'd you need ALL those plugs?´. ´Look at the mess you've made´. And of course everyone's favourite ´You'll blow up the house´. And an honorary award to ´What's with all the wires?´
https://www.destructoid.com/--482195.phtml
This reminds me of a blog I wrote about how much of a pain it is to set up the Sega Trio. It’s got detailed instructions on how best to hook everything up so you get the best possible quality. I linked to it above in case anyone wants to read it.
@Gerald Those are RF (radio frequency) shields. The FCC required them even though they did absolutely nothing and were completely pointless.
@Branovices
Me too. I grabbed a 32X from Toys R Us or K-B Toys for $19.99 and also got Doom, Kolibri, Corpse Killer for like $5 each. I got some use out of it alongside the Genesis and Sega CD.
@Blister wait for real?
Ah yes, the 32X, what is quite possibly the most unreliable gaming hardware ever made. Legend has it that a lot of them didn't work straight out the box when they were new. I know these days it is nearly impossible to find one that works.
Can't say anyone is really missing out on much. It only had one interesting Knuckles game and not much else that wasn't better played elsewhere. It is easily one of the worst consoles ever made, could be the absolute worst considering how unreliable it was.
I actually still have a 32X (and Sega CD) hooked up to my Genesis and enjoy it quite a bit. The game library is a little on the small side but games like Virtua Racing Deluxe and Virtua Fighter still hold up really well, and the 32X definitely had the best home console port of Mortal Kombat II and a few other multiplatform titles. The 32X was a total failure commercially speaking but it still has a lot to enjoy for retro gamers interested in going back and exploring it.
@Sakura7 The plug situation was so ridiculously bad that Sega wound up releasing an official power strip for the Genesis designed for adding a 32X and Sega CD.
The funny thing about all this is how the Sega CD actually worked and it was actually a great platform that had a lot of great games. It wasn't until Sega released the CDX that they finally had a console designed around Sega CD, but most people were using the Genesis attachment.
@Ralizah
Especially the ones driven by...that...
@joey302 Nobody should ever blame Sega of Japan for the downfall of Sega during this period. It was all Sega of America that caused Sega's downfall during the mid-late 90's. Sega of America was always responsible for all of the bad decisions that happened with Sega during that period, and they made the 32X, one of the worst pieces of gaming hardware ever developed, when Sega of Japan was working on the Saturn.
I think the Saturn vs the 32X says everything that needs to be said about Sega of Japan vs Sega of America. Sega of Japan was responsible for everything that everyone loved about Sega, while Sega of America was responsible for everything that everyone hated about Sega.
@10-zx Hah. Reminds me of that commercial where the mouse was humping a Game Boy Micro. Amazing when you consider how many different people are probably involved with greenlighting an idea from conception to airing.
@Ralizah
Truly. I can't fathom what they were thinking with the mouse commercial. Now couple that with "Touching is good.", "The second best thing to do in the dark.", and the Nintendogs commercial. There was very clearly something wrong with Nintendo in the mid 2000's. Wasn't until the Wii did they clean up their act.
...Jeez...
After almost 30 years they still haven't realize that the reason the 32x failed was the 32x itself. He said in the interview that they rushed to develop a new project to compete with the Atari Jaguar. With the what? Who in the Nine Divines played the Jaguar in the States? Really they were that many that bought the Jaguar that SEGA got scared of it and put all their effort and money into developing an add-on that cost as much as a new console itself? Instead of figuring out why Nintendo sold 30 million SNES units they focused on Atari's failure. They did invest after all into the 32x but they stopped supporting it to release the SEGA Saturn which still as the interviewee says wasn't not fully 3D capable unlike the PS1. I really cannot and will not believe these people and how unprofessional they were. Kudos then for conducting due diligence reports on the Atari and not Nintendo and Sony.
@JayJ
I feel like you've got Japan and America the wrong way round through that whole post. Even the 32X was Nakayama's idea.
@10-zx Where are those days? Miss them...
@JayJ Nothing could be further from the truth, and your comment is bad.
@TheWhiteFalcon Anybody who tries to put the 32X on a pedestal or defend Sega of America is somebody who has no real knowledge of how everything really went down, and should be ashamed.
@RedMageLanakyn
HaHa. So right~
@electrolite77 You couldn't be more wrong, Sega of Japan wanted to have nothing to do with the 32X, it was entirely a product of Sega of America. It is no secret how Sega of Japan was busy developing the Saturn at the time while Sega of America was focused on the 32X. The only real issue is the lack of communication between the two, if Sega of Japan was working more closely with Sega of America I doubt the 32X would have ever gone beyond the concept stage.
@subpopz I would personally love to see some of the old ads you spoke of as am sure a lot of others would be.
My 32X overheated and after an hour of playing, the graphics blurred. I was told it was because I had the original, larger Megadrive. Great.
@JayJ think the jaguar Cd attachment is even more unreliable if you can believe that. Also that amstrad console the GX4000 is also meant to be a time bomb
what a steaming pile of peripherals
If we ever invent time travel the first thing I’ll do is go back to ~1993 and tell Sega to dump the 32X and Saturn and to convert their Model 2 arcade board into a home system. If Sega had launched that with arcade perfect ports of Daytona and Virtua Fighter I would imagine the PlayStation 1 would have been Sony’s only foray into gaming and we’d all be playing on the Dreamcast 4 at the moment.
@Mr_Pepperami ha ha, I have a Jaguar with CD attachment all boxed in my loft. Those designers sure had a sense of humour to put something in the market that looks like a toilet seat lol
Great read, thanks. I plan to get a Mega Drive and Everdrive at some point for Master System and Mega Drive Games. Might get a 32X too if my curiosity is high enough when the time comes.
Luckily I already have a small collection of Mega Drive power supplies, thanks to them seemingly being able to power pretty much every Japanese retro console I have! Shame you can’t plug them in next to each other in the same power strip though as they’re so big!
@JayJ While SoA was responsible for the 32x being made, it's failure, just like every other Sega mistake, was the fault of SoJ. SoJ hated the changes SoA made to Sonic, which made him a worldwide success. If it were up to SoJ, Sonic would have had a human girlfriend..... wait, why does that sound familiar?
Also, the Mega Drive/Genesis was a massive hit in America and Europe, largely thanks to SoA's marketing and packing Sonic 1 with the system, a move SoJ's board vehemently despised. Guess what? The Mega Drive was a failure in Japan, so SoJ pushed development of Saturn, which was a bigger hit than the Mega Drive only in Japan, but it was still only a modest hit there. Then SoJ forced SoA to surprise release the Saturn early in the US with only 6 games and a stock shortage that only pissed off retail partners that refused to carry the Saturn as a result. This was all on Sega of Japan, not Sega of America. If it weren't for Tom Kalinske, the Genesis would have been a failure, too.
Despite the failure of the 32X, I would much more argue that the choice to release the Saturn earlier than originally announced, with so few games, at such a high price, has muuuuuch more to do with Sega's fall from grace. Then the fact that the Dreamcast was again underpowered and outclassed by PS2... well that was the nail in the coffin.
The 32X could have worked, and could have worked well, had it been properly supported and not dropped by the company and forced to compete with their own Saturn.
I kind of resent the 32X because I think its failure was the reason that we don't see console add-ons today. Had the Wii U been an upgrade or add-on for the Wii, instead of an entirely new device, it might have succeeded.
@sword_9mm
I agree 100%
And this is the kind of thing that led to the death of the Sega as a hardware manufacturer ultimately.
@Gerald it totally does look like a toilet seat on top of the Jag. Brilliant stuff, surely someone at headquarters could see it??
Poor Sega. Was nice while it lasted.
Were there any console add-ons that were successful? TG16CD, SegaCD, 32X and Jaguar CD were all disappointments. Yes, there were some good games released for them, but not many.
Being a UK-based site, I know why Damien says "Mega CD", but why is Scot Bayless quoted as saying that considering he is from Sega of America? Since we had the "Genesis" rather than the "Megadrive" Mega CD wouldn't have made much sense over here, hence why it was termed "Sega CD" instead. Are these typos on Damien's part, or did Bayless really refer to the CD attachment as "Mega CD"?
Nintendo should have looked at this system and the outcomes before launching the Wii U. The Wii U is basically an add on with a confusing name and a lack of game support. Guess what? It's Nintendo's biggest commercial fail (that or Virtual Boy). History repeats itself!
I remember renting a 32X for my MegaDrive one weekend and playing Doom with my friends. I was actually pretty impressed with the unit and would have bought one if I'd had the money.
Even though it was criticised as a huge failure over the years you can't argue that it hasn't become one of the cooler retro systems to collect.
I love reading articles like this, as I grew up during this era of gaming. My first system was an NES back in 1986, and then just expanded from there. I loved my Sega machines, especially Sega CD and Game Gear. Sadly, as much as I wanted a 32X, I never got around to getting one. Opted for Saturn and Jaguar instead (was lucky to have tech head father). Looking back I think I would have enjoyed the 32X more than the Jaguar, but I thought for sure Atari was making a full return, lol. Still vastly enjoyed Alien Vs Predator, Doom, and Kasumi Ninja.
Oddly enough the game I wanted to play the most, Cosmic Carnage, was probably one of the worst on the system, or so I hear. Was really into the bloody fighters at the time, MK, Kasumi, Time Killers arcade, and CC looked like a nifty addition to that line up.
Question, anyone here remember General Chaos on Gen, or am I the only one in the world that played it? 😆
I bought the SEGA CD basically after it failed to sell and had a revision. 32X I bought used from someone in the newspaper, ha ha. I should have just waited, because it dropped in price a lot too months later. I enjoyed my time with the stuff though, CD more than 32X obviously. I ended up selling the stuff a while later for something else, can't remember what. Maybe a PlayStation or N64.
I loved the idea of 32x and Sega CD at the time. In my kid brain back then, I was like "upgradable consoles are the future!". And then I got them both and was just like "nahh, this is just dumb".
@Mr_Pepperami Oh wow the Jaguar CD, now there is something that is both obscure and terrible and arguably more so than the 32X, quite the feat.
@Maulbert lol @ trying to make an argument that the 32X was anything besides a bad idea from the division of Sega that was always responsible for the bad decisions: Sega of America.
There is no way that you can honestly blame the failure of the 32X on Sega of Japan, who was opposed to the idea. The 32X was a failure by design. It's add-on nature was stupid and poorly thought out. It was far too complicated, it only offered a marginal improvement to the graphics, it has awful sound quality that did nothing to improve upon the standard Genesis sound, it was just a bad product that was honestly doomed the minute it got greenlit.
It's interesting that Bayless is blaming the failure of the 32X on the marketing. If only the marketing had been better...
In reality, the lesson to learn from the 32X is that hardware add-ons cannot work. The reason for this is that software developers will always opt to make their best games for the larger install base because that's where the best potential for profit lies. The 32X never got great games, and I doubt the rushed launch was the only reason. It's a lesson that Microsoft failed to learn with the Kinect. You should never split your install base.
The Mega CD and 32x were too expensive for me as a kid, and only add-ons too. Imagine if Sega had got their [removed] together and combined the Saturn and the 32x? Sonic games would probably still be bad though.. :'-(
@JayJ Thank you. Over the past recent months I've been seeing comments bashing SOJ and glorifying Kalinske, just because they read one biography, "Console Wars", which is based on one side of this story. I'm not saying that "Console Wars" is a bad book or anything, but using it as an only source for an argument is pretty biased in my opinion and I'm glad someone spoke up about it.
Finally, I've been waiting years for this article! Although, it's disappointing that you had to copy someone else's article instead of writing your own.
Anyway, there's no denying that the business strategy was horrible and the library is abysmally small, but the 32X is actually a pretty good system, especially given the rushed development. As mentioned it does 3D graphics better than the Saturn, the "backwards compatibility" (so to speak) with the Genesis is a nice feature, and it does have some really good games like "Star Wars Arcade," "Knuckles Chaotix," "Virtua Racing Deluxe," and the very first near-perfect console port of "Space Harrier." I've always enjoyed my 32X.
In fact, if Sega had dropped the idea of the Saturn and given the 32X a full development period towards a Holiday 1995 release, it may have actually competed decently against the PlayStation and N64, which in turn may have prevented the rushed release of the Dreamcast and allowed it compete in the next generation with somewhat better specs and DVD playback, and then who knows where Sega could be today? Of course, this is highly hypothetical and ultimately unlikely, but I do think they would've been even better off putting all their eggs in the 32X (with its better 3D capabilities and pseudo backwards compatibility) than even if they had put all their eggs in the Saturn.
@JayJ Probably the majority of 32X failures can be easily fixed by opening up the case and simply reattaching a certain ribbon that sometimes comes loose, no mechanical, technical, or engineering expertise required. I once fixed mine that way.
As for the games, you are highly underrating the gems it did have. Besides the Knuckles game, "Star Wars Arcade" was amazing at the time and still holds up decently well today, while it has a number of highly accurate arcade ports that were unmatched outside of the original arcade versions at the time. Also, as an experienced owner, the nature of the system is not too complicated, and the graphics are much better than those on the Genesis.
Meanwhile, how can you possibly say everything was Sega of America's fault, when it was Sega of America who suggested teaming up with Sony and Sega of Japan who turned Sony down?! That was the very worst business decision Sega ever made, and that was all the Japanese branch's fault! Also, why are you ignoring the part of the article that explains that the 32X project was only greenlit in the first place due to SoJ's orders? If the Japanese branch had truly hated the idea, they would've ordered the discontinuation of the project themselves.
@samuelvictor thanks for the heads up. How much of a pain is it to unplug the 32X to then pop the Mega Everdrive into the Mega Drive slot? I was expecting to have to do that to play even MD games anyway. Does it involve changing RGB/Video cables?
You know, I think a large part of the issue with the feuding branches of Sega and the fact that people wouldnn't speak up about bad company policies is simply due to cultural differences between Japan and the West.
In the West, a greater emphasis is placed on the individual, and people are taught to show initiative and speak out when needed; whereas in Japan the culteral emphasis is on the group, and people are taught to be more compliant and follow the company line. Naturally, as a Western company, Microsoft allows their employees to be more outspoken.
What's the link to this one Damo?
@BulbasaurusRex The reason they didn't see eye toi eye is exactly cultural differences but not between people between design aesthetic.
@Nintendofan83
The Wii U was a poorly designed console, no doubt about that, but I do think it's unfair to say it was simply an add-on. It was more than that, but Nintendo blundered big time with its messaging. People should've been able to tell the gamepad wasn't just an expensive accessory for the original Wii but Nintendo's marketing team, which did an excellent job in the Wii era, failed to get that across somehow. I wouldn't put it in nearly the same category as Sega's Genesis/Megadrive add-ons though. Took any and all goodwill the company had, threw in the garbage and there was no chance of regaining consumer trust. Nintendo's failures haven't sunk it.
@TheWhiteFalcon A guy who was in the room when the call came in from Japan to make the 32X and was intimately involved with its design and production isn't a trustworthy source in your eyes?
Erm, OK...
Look, I can appreciate you being passionate about Sega (I'm the same - I'm probably more of a Sega fanboy than a Nintendo one) but if you can't see when the company has made costly mistakes then it's nothing more than blind devotion - it is possible to still like a company and acknowledge when it slipped up.
Or maybe you occupy an alternate universe where the 32X was a success?
As an owner of a Master System, Mega Drive, Saturn and Dreamcast I kinda feel like I should seek out a Mega CD and 32X to complete the Sega set. The 32X goes for a lot these days though!
@samuelvictor Oh, it's possible - but sadly region-locked games (of which there are a few) won't work on this setup. Virtua Fighter and Star Wars run fine, but Virtua Racing refused to boot.
@YANDMAN The link to what?
Despite being a failure, if I had the money I'd totally buy it, along with several games.
But we're talking about a lot of money, even more for complete games, and I'm not willing to spend it, so it will have to be if I win the lottery, in which case I'll buy a villa and have lots of space for my current systems along with a basement with arcade cabinets and a pool table. Then I'll be able to buy a 32X with games, and a Virtual Boy. And more Mega-CD games, because they're expensive too and I only got a handful back in 2009-10, when the peripheral and some games were still relatively cheap on eBay.
I was there is the late 90s as owner of a Megadrive when Sega started coming out with hardware piece after hardware piece. I didn't like it no one that I knew liked it. It felt old, cheesy and a disservice to loyal fans.
Megadrive was at its peak in Europe, all they had to do as keep those consumers happy with more games and output a single truly next gen console, a real successor.
When me and my brother a few years latter contemplated the possibility of going Playstation or Saturn the choice was clear. We didn't trust Sega and Sony's software lineup was way more robust and next-gen.
Years latter my brother got a Dreamcast. Now that was a proper machine, loved it to death and is looking back my favorite console in large part due to the controller (VMU rocked) and amazing games. However it suffered with Sega's past choices and most preferred continuing with Sony offering as the writing was on the wall: Sega was going down, fast.
Final note, thanks for the article. Though a Nintendo focus site I love your retrogaming articles and hope you continue to published them with the current (outstanding I should say) quality.
@BulbasaurusRex Lol @ trying to downplay the severity of the 32X's hardware failures. If it was so easy to get working, why was it notorious for not working? Why did AVGN have an entire episode dedicated to the 32X that mainly involved him ordering the thing, getting ones that were broken, and trying to get a hardware expert to fix one for him and get it actually working, which apparently turned out to be quite the project.
There is just no honest defense for the 32X, it is like trying to defend the Virtual Boy. At the end of the day, even if you are a fan of failed and obscure game consoles, you gotta admit how it had some serious faults that can't be ignored or simply brushed over or otherwise simplified.
As for Sega of Japan, there is a very good reason why they never endorsed the 32X or wanted to contribute anything to it, all while Sega of America was really big on trying to market it. Anyone who knows about Sega at the time knows how Sega of Japan was trying to develop a new console while Sega of America was trying to keep the whole upgraded console thing going. It was a part of their whole plan, Sega of America didn't even have anything to do with the Saturn because of it, and the Saturn wound up selling quite poorly in the USA while it sold quite well in Japan.
In the end the way things went down speaks volumes about what was going on. Sega of Japan was focused on making something better, I mean they are the people who originally developed the Mega Drive after all, and they later developed the Dreamcast, so it is pretty safe to say that they were responsible for everything good that Sega was known for.
In comparison Sega of America was known for... Genesis marketing and the 32X. Sega of America was great at marketing a 16-bit game console, but they were terrible at developing new hardware.
@BulbasaurusRex I wrote the original piece for Retro Gamer - I haven't copied anyone
@samuelvictor Oops, thanks for stepping in for me!
@JayJ Most people who complain about 32X failures just don't know about the easy fix. Whatever happened with AVGN must've been with a rare failure of a different cause.
Sure, SoJ gave up on the thing early, but only after ordering SoA to make the thing in the first place and then not pulling the plug when they had the chance, effectively hanging the NoA marketing team out to dry.
Anyway, the 32X was indeed a big mistake, but the Saturn was just as big of a mistake. SoJ made the terrible decision to turn down Sony and then tried to make a 2D console somehow work when 3D graphics were now all the rage. Even the 32X had better graphics than that thing! The only reasons the Saturn wasn't as ill-fated as the 32X are because it had a full development cycle and was actually left on the market for a few years rather than being pulled after only a matter of months. If the 32X had been fully developed (which would've ironed out those hardware issues and given it even better specs) and given the same amount of time on the market, it would've easily surpassed what the Saturn was able to accomplish.
I bought a 32X and I will say why. I bought it for 100 pounds and virtual racing was 70 on the megadrive and 20 on 32X. same with mortal kombat 20 on 32X, 60 on megadrive. And i also bought star wars and space harrier for 20 pounds each. So i saved money on the megadrive games and got better version by getting a 32x instead result lol. I only ever bought them 4 games and then next year picked up a Saturn.
@Qun_Mang
Well, to possibly answer my own question (about Scot's use of term "Mega CD" despite working in a country where it is called "Sega CD") it is either:
1) Typos on Damo's part, or
2) Scot's replies used the terminology of the interviewer.
In a 2012 interview Bayless used the expected "Sega CD" term:
http://www.sega-16.com/2012/03/interview-scot-bayless/
I guess @Damo didn't see my question.
@Qun_Mang The feature was originally published in a UK magazine (Retro Gamer) and Scot, therefore, used UK names for all of the systems (Mega CD, Mega Drive, etc).
You also have to remember that Scot may well have referred to these systems by these names back in the day, given that he was dealing with "the mothership" in Japan on a daily basis, and they were also called Mega CD / Mega Drive there.
The US is the odd one out
@Damo It seems we always are.
So #2 it is then. I agree that he would have been well familiar with the "mega" terms given the reason you stated, and it is possible that despite the Genesis/Sega CD terminology here, they still may have used the original terms internally alongside the US terms.
By the way, that was a quick response- always helps to @ somebody than just hope they happen to see your comment.
@Damo Because most of the info in here directly contradicts what we now know. You, being a modern "Journalist", couldn't be arsed to do any research and merely reposted an article for the clicks.
The one thing that isn't mentioned above, and it's something I personally thought was a major turn off with the machine, was the utterly fugly look of thing. Which cool '90s kid in their right mind would seriously want to have that stupid mushroom sticking out of their pretty slick-looking Genesis/Mega Drive system. I mean, seriously, who honestly thought that was an acceptable product design. It's just as bad as (in fact, it's even worse than) the stupid Jaguar toilet seat add-on:
Good product design does actually matter to a lot of consumers. Many people really do want consumer electronic devices that just look slick and sexy--despite what some ignoramuses and naive people might have you believe.
I genuinely believe one of the biggest reasons a whole lot of people never picked up a 32X was honestly just because it looked utterly ridiculous and they wouldn't want that mushroom-turd sitting under their TV. And nothing about it at the time convinced them it was worth looking like a twit with bad taste.
@TheWhiteFalcon Please elaborate. What "do we now know" that in any way contradicts the comments in this piece? Give examples, please.
@Damo How is this system relevant to Nintendo.
@impurekind Agreed, they should of released the neptune and made the 32x and stand alone system.
@YANDMAN Sega and Nintendo were fierce rivals; it's almost impossible to separate them during the 16-bit era. More recently, Sega has worked closely with Nintendo, making the history between the two former rivals interesting to younger gamers who weren't around to witness the war between the SNES and Mega Drive / Genesis.
I'm assuming the majority of readers appreciate these looks at the wider history of the games industry - if you'd rather not read them, don't read them. Simple.
@sword_9mm @gatorboi352 ...yes, honestly I hadn't heard of the 32X. And I'm definitely old enough that I should have!
I guess growing up the the UK at that time my gaming was more home computer focused (Acorn, PC) and I didn't have much exposure to consoles. Still, I'm a bit embarassed of my ignorance...
@subpopz Or you can download the scans from Retromags and save from digging the magazines out and scanning them
@Dm9982 yep! General Chaos was fantastic!
@Damo Obviously i don't read them. I just find it odd the amount of space and time given to non Nintendo systems on a Nintendo site historical connection or not. The company of which this site represents has such a huge and rich history that it could supply an almost endless amount of interesting articles that would educate many a younger player.
@YANDMAN I challenge you to find another Nintendo-focused site which has as many pieces on the company's history, consoles and games as we do.
In the hardware classics series we've covered the Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Advance, SNES, Virtual Boy, N64, Game & Watch and many more besides.
Then we've got various history pieces and making-ofs:
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/02/month_of_kong_the_making_of_donkey_kong_country
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/06/feature_the_making_of_body_harvest
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/02/month_of_kong_the_making_of_diddy_kong_racing
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2010/03/feature_the_making_of_the_nintendo_game_boy
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/02/feature_shining_a_light_on_ikegami_tsushinki_the_company_that_developed_donkey_kong
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2012/12/feature_the_making_of_star_fox_adventures
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2010/02/feature_the_history_of_the_nintendo_game_and_watch
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/06/feature_the_making_of_street_fighter_alpha_3_upper
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2010/03/feature_the_making_of_the_nintendo_virtual_boy
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/12/feature_the_making_of_red_alarm_the_virtual_boys_answer_to_star_fox
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2011/05/feature_the_making_of_super_play_magazine
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2010/09/feature_how_colecovision_became_the_king_of_kong
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/02/month_of_kong_whatever_happened_to_donkey_kong_racing
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/04/feature_heres_what_pro_players_want_from_super_smash_bros_on_switch
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/03/feature_the_tragic_story_behind_the_man_who_helped_create_tetris
That's just a handful of pieces, found in 10 seconds of searching on the site. I could dig out many, many, many more.
The vast majority of content on this site is directly focused on Nintendo's history; perhaps you missed a lot of these pieces, I don't know - but to suggest we're somehow ignoring the company's history by occasionally (and it is VERY occasionally) taking a sideways glance at other events in the industry (which will have had an impact on Nintendo at the time) is puzzling, to say the least.
@Mr_Pepperami The GX4000 itself is fine, just don't use the original PSU!
I love that French ad up top. I like to call it "Fifty Shades of Fail."
I actually owned a 32x for about two weeks.....and realized there were no games for it. I bought it cheap. At Toys R' Us.
Like a fail within a fail within a fail....
@Ralizah And new advertisements are less weird? At least those were creative. Well, ok, that French one is just weird....
@NEStalgia In general, I think so. Take a commercial like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-qBkWerZDg
That would never air today. And I could point to a LOT of really weird old video game advertisements and say the same thing.
Of course, a distaste for eccentricity probably goes hand-in-hand with decreased creativity, too.
@Ralizah Ok, yeah, that one's pretty bad. The print ad above wasn't half that awful. But I wouldn't say it wouldn't air today....certainly not with such poor production values....and a lot of the video cuts were very 80's. But plenty of equally awful/weird advertisements run today. They're not better, just costlier!
@jawessome Man I’ve been hoping ever since VC became a thing on Wii that General Chaos would once again grace us with presence, but alas no. Would be a great portable game. And I’m still irked that UN Squadron was a UK only release on Wii VC. Loved that game as well back in the day.
@Dm9982 its a shame the 2013 Kickstarter by one of the devs fell short of its goal..
@Jawessome Crap! I missed that.... I woulda supported. I’ve still got my original hard copy of General Chaos, but no Genesis currently to play it on. Lol! Been debating on getting an old system, an AtGames retro remake, or a Retron multi system. Probably go with a Retron once I get some extra funds!
@Dm9982 I was debating between a modded Sega Nomad and a Retron 5. Went with the latter and have no regrets. Got an 8bitdo wireless receiver and their wireless SNES controller and its nostalgia heaven.
@Jawessome Thanks for the info! The 5 is HD and does NES/SNES/Gen correct? And awesome to know 8bitdo works with it!!
As a child that had a genesis,game gear and nomad I had to have 32x and that odd ad campaign sold me especially that ad where the kid is confused that the genesis & 32x are about to make sweet sweet love but sadly I don’t remember getting many games for it and I quickly moved on to the Saturn because as a child I was a soulless monster that loved them and leaved them.
@Dm9982 yes on all counts. You can even use SD cards to add fan translations / patches to games.
@MeatSauce 😆
@Jawessome - Sweet!!
@Dm9982 it does. There's no native setting to have the bluetooth pair with the console so you'll need to splash out on a wireless adaptor. Well worth it though. Otherwise, it has NES, Genesis and SNES controller ports if you want to use your original controllers.
My 32X Collection is rather small. It includes Cosmic Carnage, Doom, Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, Star Wars Arcade, NFL Quarterback Club, Primal Rage, & Motocross Championship. At one time, I owned Knuckles Chaotix, but it was a used copy which would not load that I immediately returned to my local game store.
@JayJ I love the console, though it only cost $19.99 when I got one.
Great great article Damo - unlike many of your readers I only visit this site because of it’s first class retro content.
@BalloonFighter I think the only successful console addons were the ones that leveraged a pre-existing library (Super Game Boy, Game Boy Player, Power Base Converter)
And I suppose the Famicom Disc System did pretty well for itself too. But that's about it.
@Gerald The clips were required by the US Federal Communications Committee (which regulates all radio-spectrum-based communications) to act as additional shielding against interference since the 32X unit is a powered device. Aren't really necessary, to be honest.
@tstorm The PC Engine CD-ROM did pretty well in Japan. But that's one of the things that was different between that market and western markets. Indeed, it was its success that prompted Sega of Japan to push for the CD. Add-ons were more accepted there, but never sold well in the west, outside of some controller accessories and adapters. Yet another reason why the 32X was an absolute mistake.
@JayJ You get it right at the end. The biggest issue was the lack of communication between the branches, especially as to how far along the Saturn development was, and when it would be released. Had they known, SoA would never have suggested the 32X in the first place.
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