Retro Games Analysis Technical Discussion *spawn*

I loved my 32x


My dad was watching me and took my to toys r us and there on sale for $50was the 32x and games were $10-$20 each. So my dad was like why not and grabbed it for me and a few games. I loved Virtua racing , after burner , Knuckles , MK2 , star trek , virtua fighter . star wars and wwf were all games I ended up owning for it. Oh and I ended up getting the 32x version of night trap that required the genesis/sega cd/ 32x to work lol. That was a good year for me because the saturn came out later that year and I got that for my birthday.

I still ahve my tower of power in my parents basement.

I think a lot of the games looked better than their counter parts on other consoles however there just wasn't enough content and was priced too high. I wish we got to see people use all 3 systems a bit better
nice story. iirc I played Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter. I love to see my friend play Virtua Racing, he had the game soooo mastered that he was constantly beating his own records. Virtua Racing on the 32X had like 3 tracks, iirc, but those have a mirror mode, which worked wonders for that title. Beating your times was the most engaging aspect of a spectacular game but without too much content.

What I found most captivating of the 32X is how cool it looked on top of the Megadrive, it inspired extra power. Both the original Megadrive and the SNES -I only saw the european version- were imho among the most beautiful console designs to date.
 
nice story. iirc I played Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter. I love to see my friend play Virtua Racing, he had the game soooo mastered that he was constantly beating his own records. Virtua Racing on the 32X had like 3 tracks, iirc, but those have a mirror mode, which worked wonders for that title. Beating your times was the most engaging aspect of a spectacular game but without too much content.

What I found most captivating of the 32X is how cool it looked on top of the Megadrive, it inspired extra power. Both the original Megadrive and the SNES -I only saw the european version- were imho among the most beautiful console designs to date.
The best was the gen 1 sega cd with the gensis on top and then the 32x 1713064808448.png

I still have this set up.
 
Interesting times but what a mess Sega was creating with so many hardware add ons they had to support.
 
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It goes deep into how Mario 64's physics, animations, and gameplay works with beautifully demonstrated examples and clear explanations. It's simply incredible how much work must have went into creating this.. and thus it really deserves a viewing!

 
I think they proved they didn't really have to support them.
all the companies had poorly supported add ons

Nintendo had the power glove and power pad.

Sony had the eye toy and then move and then psvr 1 +2 . Oh and the modem and hard drive for the ps2

MS had kincect and the hd-dvd add on.

I am sure I am missing a bunch from these companies also
 
Nintendo had the power glove and power pad.
Power pad, yes. But the Power Glove, contrary to popular belief, was a 3rd party controller manufactured by Mattel but designed by AGE, the company formed by the founders of the Mego toy company after they went bankrupt. Though officially licensed, it's not a Nintendo built product, and doesn't even claim to be on the box, nor in the advertisements.

Other than the power pad and PS2 HDD, I'm quite sure all of those other add ons got more support in terms of released games than 32x. But technically, PS2's HDD had the ability to back up memory cards and create virtual memory cards that some games (but not all) could access directly, so perhaps in that case there are more games that support it than 32x.
 
Nintendo learned their lesson ages ago. Move and the Eye Toy weren't add ons. They were normally priced peripherals. And pretty great too.
PS VR is somewhere there. An expensive peripheral with better support and a justifiable experience than the 32X or Sega CD.
Sega was designing actual add on upgrades. Overpriced, impractical, dead on arrival. With barely any software to justify the purchase for a supposed better experience
 
I remember that ad in french magazines

 

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I think it's also important to understand what Sega was trying to do back then. They essentially created the tiered console generation, with 332x being the PS4 Pro of the Genesis. And while I do agree that Sega could have done more with it, or supported it longer, or marketed it better, it does have more exclusive games than the PS4 Pro has. So by that metric, and I'm told daily about how important exclusives are, 32x was better supported than PS4 Pro.

I'm only half joking.
 
Power pad, yes. But the Power Glove, contrary to popular belief, was a 3rd party controller manufactured by Mattel but designed by AGE, the company formed by the founders of the Mego toy company after they went bankrupt. Though officially licensed, it's not a Nintendo built product, and doesn't even claim to be on the box, nor in the advertisements.

Other than the power pad and PS2 HDD, I'm quite sure all of those other add ons got more support in terms of released games than 32x. But technically, PS2's HDD had the ability to back up memory cards and create virtual memory cards that some games (but not all) could access directly, so perhaps in that case there are more games that support it than 32x.

I didn't know the power glove was a third party product. Nintendo even put it in their movie the wizard . I guess we can throw rob the robot in

The Playstation Eye only had 9 games



The playstation hard drive and modem


Looks like in the usa there were 27 titles in the usa although the b ulk of them are the same sports games but different years

In japan there is a hell of a lot more


The move is pretty similar it has a 135 total games. Bu looking at the list 12 of them are just dance games


I wouldn't say any of these actually got much more support than the 32x and if we are using weird metrics then the hd-dvd add on from Ms was very successful since there are 600 titles released on it. I doubt any of us will really claim it was all that sucessful
 
I think it's also important to understand what Sega was trying to do back then. They essentially created the tiered console generation, with 332x being the PS4 Pro of the Genesis. And while I do agree that Sega could have done more with it, or supported it longer, or marketed it better, it does have more exclusive games than the PS4 Pro has. So by that metric, and I'm told daily about how important exclusives are, 32x was better supported than PS4 Pro.

I'm only half joking.

I think for Sega had to choose one the 32x or the sega cd. The 32x would have also had a better chance of succeeding if it came out a year early.

Ultimately I think it was a missed opertunity for Sega not to have ported their first party games from the 32x to the sega saturn. There were some decent games like Knuckles , star wars arcade , virtua racing and so on. They could have put a few on a disc and called it the 32x collection
 
I remember that ad in french magazines

Love those 90s ads.

Sega had the tendency to oversell their console upgrades as these game changing super duper devices that everyone needed, while they were no where as exciting as they were promised neither in capability nor content. The things costed R&D, costed a lot to make, and were too expensive to sell, and yet they didn't have the power nor the launch games.

I remember how impressed and excited I was for the Sega CD and 32X when I was young when seeing ads and reading about them, but reality hit hard. Sega CD especially. It barely upgraded Genesis' visual output. But it was great with interactive videos that were not fun to play.
 
I think it's also important to understand what Sega was trying to do back then. They essentially created the tiered console generation, with 332x being the PS4 Pro of the Genesis. And while I do agree that Sega could have done more with it, or supported it longer, or marketed it better, it does have more exclusive games than the PS4 Pro has. So by that metric, and I'm told daily about how important exclusives are, 32x was better supported than PS4 Pro.

I'm only half joking.

it was not really the same, because as you said, 32x only had exlusive games not compatible with the genesis, AND, it released at the same time as the next gen console sega saturn. Plus, you'd still need a genesis to play 32X games, it was not standalone, though they had a plan to release the Neptune, but it never came out.
Sega released so many consoles at the time, it certainly did not cost as much R&D as today i guess.
Multi Mega, Wonder Mega, Nomad, etc...
 
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Slight correction. PSEye was the PS3 version, that didn't get supported. However, you first mentioned EyeToy, the PS2 peripheral, which had more games and added functionality in other games. Overall it didn't get much different than 32X it seems, although it sold much, much better.

The move is pretty similar it has a 135 total games. Bu looking at the list 12 of them are just dance games
Still a big improvement on 40 games max for 32X, with less than 30 released outside NA. Of course, no-one's specified a metric/standard by which success is being measured, so all these arguments are pretty floaty. Overall peripherals tend not to get great support. what likely sets 32X apart is the level of support it got didn't much justify the cost - even if Move or EyeToy were no better supported, they cost a fraction of the 32X and so had proportionally better value for the content they did get.
 
Slight correction. PSEye was the PS3 version, that didn't get supported. However, you first mentioned EyeToy, the PS2 peripheral, which had more games and added functionality in other games. Overall it didn't get much different than 32X it seems, although it sold much, much better.


Still a big improvement on 40 games max for 32X, with less than 30 released outside NA. Of course, no-one's specified a metric/standard by which success is being measured, so all these arguments are pretty floaty. Overall peripherals tend not to get great support. what likely sets 32X apart is the level of support it got didn't much justify the cost - even if Move or EyeToy were no better supported, they cost a fraction of the 32X and so had proportionally better value for the content they did get.
I apologize for not knowing all the different Sony eye products :)


I was just pointing out that every company has a bunch of products that were DOA. Didn't xbox have a 360 camera that only had a handfull of games like uno also ?
 
The Kinect, MS originally said the Kinect would be a required component of the console, and that it would not function unless the peripheral is connected. The requirement proved controversial among users and critics due to privacy concerns, prompting Microsoft to backtrack on the decision.
 
The Kinect, MS originally said the Kinect would be a required component of the console, and that it would not function unless the peripheral is connected. The requirement proved controversial among users and critics due to privacy concerns, prompting Microsoft to backtrack on the decision.
That was on XBOne. Kinect on 360 was hugely successful, same as EyeToy on PS2. The trouble with both was with their successors!
 
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