X-Men
Image: Marvel

The Sega 32X has to be one of the most infamous missteps in the history of the company. Released at a time when Sega should have been focussing all of its energies on the Saturn, the add-on was intended to bridge the gap between the 16 and 32-bit generations, giving existing Genesis / Mega Drive owners the chance to augment the power of their ageing consoles – but all it did was create confusion and stretch Sega's already strained internal development capabilities to its limit.

The 32X does have some decent games, of course, but it was a commercial disaster and was quickly abandoned by Sega – but not before a team of former Amiga demoscene developers got started on a title which could have given the platform a shot in the arm.

Sega already had a pretty cool 1993 X-Men title on the Genesis coded by Western Technologies Inc, so it made sense to continue the relationship with Marvel and produce another, more technically impressive offering on the 32X. The Danish studio Zyrinx (Subterrania, Red Zone) had already impressed on Sega's 16-bit system and got to work on what would be called X-Men: Mind Games.

You can view an excellent history of the game below, but we're hardly straying into spoiler territory by telling you that it never saw the light of day. A prototype exists that hints at the kind of graphical power on display, however; the 32X, like the Saturn, was certainly good at throwing around 2D sprites.