What 32X game would be impossible on any other system of the era?

the saturn was fine hardware wise only its price killed it at launch. but what about the seg cd?
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the saturn was an aweosme machine it qas just priced too much. hundre dbucks to psx at launch and launched with shitty lineup of titles.
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also sega had less marketing power and money since or during that gen and dreamcast.
 
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Wariat said:
couldnt the 32x leverage what the genesis had plus its extra two cpus tho? or it just had two in total to use?
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nd if devs used the cd couldnt they leverage all three at once like two or so games did?
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Yeah, it could, and so could the Jaguar, and the Saturn. The Jaguar's design has basically all the features of the Genesis plus the extra processors of the 32X built right into it. All three of those consoles had a Motorola 68k and two primary CPUs. The Jag's were separated into one with extra graphics extensions like 3D drawing commands and blitter and one with extra audio commands, but they both could also function as generic RISC processors such as when Doom used the "audio" chip to handle collision detection. The Saturn meanwhile had five other specialized co-processors (two graphics, two math, one disc access) on top of its two general purpose SH2s and 68k (which mostly does audio) bringing the total processor count up to eight.

The 32X was a mistake, Dyne is correct. Sega of America incorrectly believed the Jaguar posed a legitimate threat on the low end and decided they needed a low cost 3D capable device to slot in under the Saturn as a high cost 3D device. They realized it was a terrible idea shortly after launch between low sales and the Jaguar also failing miserably, but by that point the damage had been done and they lost a lot of trust and goodwill. I'm not going to say the 32X is the reason the Saturn or Dreamcast failed, they failed for a multitude of bad decisions and timing, but it certainly was a contributing factor.
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Wariat said:
the saturn was fine hardware wise only its price killed it at launch. but what about the seg cd?
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This is a bit of a misunderstanding by people. The PS1's supposed price advantage over the Saturn was a bit of a lie. The Saturn cost $399 but came with Virtua Fighter and internal memory, to get the equivalent on the PS1 you needed to buy a game and memory card separately bringing the price up to $379. In 1996 the Saturn was listing around $100 more than the PS1 still, but it was coming bundled with Virtua Fighter 2, Daytona USA, Virtua Cop, a lightgun, and a $15 coupon for any one Saturn game of your choice. Value wasn't really the issue with the console.

In reality the Saturn flopped because the early games were extremely unimpressive compared to the PS1, often times running at only 60% the framerate and featuring worse texture warping issues, and Sega pissed off several retailers at the start of the generation severely limiting its market penetration.
 
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so do you think in theory the 3x could have had and hndled all the games the jaguar got?
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"The 32X was a mistake, Dyne is correct. Sega of America incorrectly believed the Jaguar posed a legitimate threat on the low end and decided they needed a low cost 3D capable device to slot in under the Saturn as a high cost 3D device. "

the thing that makes no sense with this is that the cost of the 32x when you fctor in a genesis for new owners wouldnt it be similar to a saturn or jaguar not cheaper?
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also didnt they think the saturn was mostly a 2d device nad slapped 3d at the end?
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"In reality the Saturn flopped because the early games were extremely unimpressive compared to the PS1, often times running at only 60% the framerate and featuring worse texture warping issues, and Sega pissed off several retailers at the start of the generation severely limiting its market penetration."

but they were inpressive when compared to the 32x, jag and 3do werent they? and overall; it had way better rpgs and 2d games and platformers and even looked better than the equivalent on the n64 imo.
 
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Wariat said:
so do you think in theory the 3x could have had and hndled all the games the jaguar got?
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"The 32X was a mistake, Dyne is correct. Sega of America incorrectly believed the Jaguar posed a legitimate threat on the low end and decided they needed a low cost 3D capable device to slot in under the Saturn as a high cost 3D device. "

the thing that makes no sense with this is that the cost of the 32x when you fctor in a genesis for new owners wouldnt it be similar to a saturn or jaguar not cheaper?
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also didnt they think the saturn was mostly a 2d device nad slapped 3d at the end?
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"In reality the Saturn flopped because the early games were extremely unimpressive compared to the PS1, often times running at only 60% the framerate and featuring worse texture warping issues, and Sega pissed off several retailers at the start of the generation severely limiting its market penetration."

but they were inpressive when compared to the 32x, jag and 3do werent they? and overall; it had way better rpgs and 2d games and platformers and even looked better than the equivalent on the n64 imo.
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No, the Jaguar and 32X had similar aspects, but overall the Jaguar was fundamentally more powerful and had the advantage of dedicated 3D commands in the Tom chip. There's also the issue of the Jaguar having four times as much RAM as the 32X.

Not necessarily, Sega planned a standalone unit called the Neptune that would have been a combined Genesis and 32X and price matched the Jaguar around the $200 mark, the 32X addon was intended as a budget upgrade path for people that already owned the Genesis. The Neptune just never happened because the system was such a catastrophic failure.

No, this is a misconception. The Saturn was always designed to handle both 2D and 3D. What happened was after seeing the PS1's early demos they quickly slapped on a second math co-processor and VDP chip to try and get it up to that same level. Without that it probably would have been closer to the 3DO in power.

Yeah, it was better than the 32X, Jaguar, and 3DO, that's why it sold significantly better than them, but it still fell woefully behind the Playstation and ultimately was a market failure.
 
so in all reality why would sega have even conceive of the 32x since it was even less powerful than the jag? I mean how did they hope it would comepte with it? sorry i didnt finish reading ur post ill finish maybe u answered this but it seems like it woudlnt make sense. also, do u think it was never put to its true potential or do u see one game that did push it to its limit or showed what could be done in theory on it that couldnt be on a pure genesis? going back to my original question.
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"
Yeah, it was better than the 32X, Jaguar, and 3DO, that's why it sold significantly better than them, but it still fell woefully behind the Playstation and ultimately was a market failure."

I dont know man in terms of sprites and 2d it seems better. like the 2d gae son it seemed best of that gen.
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Would you say on paper the 3do was better than jaguar?
 
Wariat said:
so in all reality why would sega have even conceive of the 32x since it was even less powerful than the jag? I mean how did they hope it would comepte with it? sorry i didnt finish reading ur post ill finish maybe u answered this but it seems like it woudlnt make sense. also, do u think it was never put to its true potential or do u see one game that did push it to its limit or showed what could be done in theory on it that couldnt be on a pure genesis? going back to my original question.
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"
Yeah, it was better than the 32X, Jaguar, and 3DO, that's why it sold significantly better than them, but it still fell woefully behind the Playstation and ultimately was a market failure."

I dont know man in terms of sprites and 2d it seems better. like the 2d gae son it seemed best of that gen.
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Would you say on paper the 3do was better than jaguar?
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I think the 32X was just the best they could do at the price point they wanted to target with the tools that they had. The Jaguar's main chips were entirely bespoke and designed entirely around the goals of the Jaguar. Sega of America more or less built the 32X with off the shelf parts tapping into the lower binned SH2 chips Sega of Japan rejected for the Saturn. They were flying solo without Sega of Japan's muscle so they didn't have the resources to make a custom chipset like the Jag (or the Saturn's VDP chips). It ended up weaker than the Jag, but I don't think they knew that it would be until the design was finalized, and even then the Jag's performance was much harder to pin down back in the day due to how complicated it was so it'd be hard to tell just how behind they were.

The Saturn does have a few disadvantages in 2D compared to the Playstation, namely in how flexible and easy to program the transparency effects are, and the fact that the workload needs to be correctly split between the two VDPs, but yeah it's generally the strongest. The problem is nobody cared in 1995. 2D was old news, 3D is what mattered most, and the Saturn was worse at 3D. There's a reason the N64 has like 4 2D games and 3 of them are fighters. Being the best at 2D simply didn't matter.

3DO vs Jaguar is an interesting one. Going purely by specs it's a mixed bag, but the interesting thing is the 3DO required all games to be programed in a higher level language than other consoles because it was a media standard, not a specific piece of hardware, so coding in raw machine code or assembly could cause issues between the different machines (Panasonic, LG, and Sanyo all had their own 3DO consoles) and unfortunately that language slowed the machines down quite a lot. However, the 3DO did have hardware accelerated 3D, while the Jag had software 3D aided by a few specific extra CPU commands, and that was ultimately the deciding factor that pushes the 3DO ahead in 3D games. In 2D games the Jag had similar if not more potential, but it was rarely utilized due to how complicated the machine was.
 
but nowadays plenty do plenty miss those days and 2d games hence why retro gaming is so popular. i actull was one of the only kids or teens at the time who wanted 2d not 3d as i got into gaming late like late 90s as my step dad wouldnt let me get a system besides a gameboy so when i discovered rpgs on the snes the n64 was out if i recall and i was one of those few the proud the few into 2d back then.
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Also, I want to ask you: have you played virtual fighter on the 32x? Do you that could be done on a pure genesis? with a chip.
 
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what about the sega cd. lets talk about it. Do you think besides fmx and better sound capabilities, it allwoed for games not possible on a regular genesis with a cartrige chip to work? like slipheed or zaxoon would they be possibly without the added memory and processing power of the sega cd?
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I personally think if the sega cd wasnt discontinnued it could have had a nice life. it had potential.
 
Wariat said:
but nowadays plenty do plenty miss those days and 2d games hence why retro gaming is so popular. i actull was one of the only kids or teens at the time who wanted 2d not 3d as i got into gaming late like late 90s as my step dad wouldnt let me get a system besides a gameboy so when i discovered rpgs on the snes the n64 was out if i recall and i was one of those few the proud the few into 2d back then.
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Also, I want to ask you: have you played virtual fighter on the 32x? Do you that could be done on a pure genesis? with a chip.
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It almost was on Genesis with the SVP chip actually. I think it definitely would have been possible, but it wouldn't have been nearly as nice looking as the 32X version, and probably would have been at a lower framerate. You can compare Virtua Racing on Genesis to Virtua Racing Deluxe on 32X to see how the SVP actually compares to the 32X.
 
Do you think soulstar could have been done on the snes or genesis?
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The Saturn verison of vf seems way out of the league tho when comapred to the 32x version no?
 
SoulStar couldn't have been done on the Genesis or SNES, the Sega CD has hardware accelerated scaling and rotation capabilities. The SNES can scale and rotate background tiles through Mode 7, but the Sega CD can scale both tiles and sprites both of which are used very heavily in SoulStar. The SNES may have been able to mimic parts of it, but only parts.

Saturn Virtua Fighter is a much higher polycount than the 32X version, but it has a lot of clipping issues due to being rushed. I actually think the 32X version is the better game. It's lower poly but the polygons are more stable and it feels a tad less laggy. They got to take their time with the 32X port and it shows. Virtua Fighter Remix though has texture mapped polygons which is something the 32X would really struggle to do at a high framerate. Were you to attempt to do something like that on 32X it'd likely be unplayably slow for a fighting game.
 
yea but star fax 2 the unreleased gme ws kinda impressive as it had the n53 level boss layout freeroam. i wish they relesed that as the snes star fox not the original.
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was the sega cd more impressive on paper not just the fact it had cd than the 32x?
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like would the seg cd have been able to handle virtual fighter?
 
No, the Sega CD was very much a sprite based machine. Its CPU is a little faster than the one in the Genesis, but it's still nowhere near capable of generating polygons with any sort of speed. It just has dedicated hardware for scaling and rotating 2D assets around the screen, allowing it to do "2.5D" games similar to the SuperScaler arcade titles. Space Harrier and Afterburner probably could have had ports somewhat close to the 32X, but Virtua Fighter wouldn't be possible.
 
dude watch this video and games like the legend of heroes series actually seem to look worse on the Saturn then the genesis:
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SO going back to what you said, do you think there was some untapped capability somewhere in there the the 32x gave to a genesis game that couldn't be done on a genesis? say a texture map say a couple nor polygons on a game like you said I believe you admitted to it with virtual fighter or virtual racing?
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or you feel it was a complete waste unlike the Sega CD?
 
Oh the 32X definitely added to the potential of the Genesis, the problem is that it was 1994 and the device was $160, and what it added was still worse than the competition. For $200 you could get the more powerful Jaguar and even then barely anybody wanted one of those, and if you waited another year you could get a Saturn or Playstation, both of which were already out in Japan by the time the 32X launched and had been shown off in gaming magazines.

It was simply too little, too late, for too much money.
 
if it had only cost 50 bucks you think it could have succeeded?
 
Out of the titles I got to personally try at the time, for the question of the topic, for me it was Mortal Kombat II. Reason being, 1.) more color and larger sprites compared to the SNES or Genesis. 2.) Sound, more voice samples from the arcade and music if I remember correctly. It was the best way to play a better port of MKII at the time.
 
There are any?

32X’s whole deal was to be cheap as a 32 bit upgrade, so it’s really not capable of anything than no other system could do.

It’s no Saturn.
 
what im saying at the time. or at its release or at least when compared to the system it was augmenting at default.
 
Wariat said:
what im saying at the time. or at its release or at least when compared to the system it was augmenting at default.
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I know what you mean, and I still maintain: 32X was already outclassed when it released.

That doesn’t mean it couldn’t do anything cool! It just didn’t have anything it could do that no other system could.
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I mean, aside from this:
 
I think its stride wasn't reach. Meaning we never got to see what it could do.
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that guy in the video above contradicts what ferric has been saying here. he claims it also had. gpu?
 
Wariat said:
I think its stride wasn't reach. Meaning we never got to see what it could do.
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that guy in the video above contradicts what ferric has been saying here. he claims it also had. gpu?
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I mean, it HAD to have a GPU. You can’t have only CPUs, you have to have SOMETHING who’s job it is to display graphics.
 
Wariat said:
the genesis already had one tho.
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So, the 32X features its own GPU for 3D intensive tasks, but from what I know that GPU also allows for the expanded color options the system had.

Given time to think about this thread, the 32X’s job could best be described as “giving the Genesis the tools to hang with the current batch of systems”. It wasn’t going to out perform, but that wasn’t its job. It’s whole point was to match the current climate of systems, with the added benefit of outdoing the Super Nintendo.

Which, actually, yeah. The 32X far out performed the SNES when it came to moving around 3D objects very fast. It also had even greater sprite scaling and warping abilities than the SNES had. Some of the best games on 32X come from SEGA’s arcade library. Their superscaler ports of Space Harrier and Afterburner, and their CG Board ports of Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter stand as brilliant bright spots in an otherwise dark library.

Another showpiece of the system’s lost potential comes from this unreleased game right here:

I totally think the Saturn and PlayStation could have done this kind of game too (a friendly reminder that the 32X and Saturn launched on the same day, just one being in Japan and the other in the U.S.), but this is very impressive for 32X and is the kind of game that ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT exist on fourth gen hardware. I think the 3DO had a chance of doing this kind of game too, but 32X still shows its power here.



Perhaps, at the end of the day, that in-lies the problem: 32X was such a poor idea and was pushed aside so fast that we never got to see the hardware flourish. Even its best games were merely ports. I don’t think the hardware is hiding tons of extra power anywhere, but I do think we were robbed of getting to see a highly talented developer make the hardware do things it was never supposed to.
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Another thing to mention is that I’m underplaying how important CPUs are, and the Genesis already had an awesome one: the Motorola 6800. That CPU was in other devices, but that played to the system’s benefit, because that meant it was a more understood piece of tech. Magic could happen. The same year 32X dropped, THIS GAME came out on the base hardware:
I think it’s possible for the 32X to have been able to have 6800 code that would then run in parallel with the Hitachi SH2 CPUs, which would have had something impressive up its sleeve. But that would involve multithreading, which is not something anybody wanted to do at the time… or even now. That’s the kind of hot water the PS3 got itself into a decade later.
 
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