Don't Forget The Sega 32X Turns 30 This Year, Too

It was a little more than just "32X bad" coming from Japan. There was a full-blown war between Sega of Japan and Sega of America. That ultimately lead to the downfall of Sega.

Sega dropped the ball and didn't see Sony coming out of left field and had to jury-rig the original design of the Saturn and the rest is history. Sega got too big for the boots and high on their own farts.

To think this came out the same time as the psx is quite amazing, when the Saturn was incoming, not to mention the N64, CDI, jaguar and 3do. I wished I had more money at this point in gaming as it was great for a gamer, although you knew not all those consoles were going to last and you hedged your bets to which one you thought would succeed. My brother placed our console budget on the cd32... That basically meant no more consoles until I could buy them myself after that point!

The psx was a bit of an underdog that really grew with time, but also heavily helped by the second hand market and the release of less expensive versions of the system, not to mention chipping and all that brought. I sold my psx to buy a Dreamcast, that was brilliant until it wasn't! Psx I had so many games, some were duds though. Interesting time for gaming though, very saturated and that generally means when the bubble bursts there is a lot of debris after. Somehow, the N64 still carried on through too!

Apart from Knuckles' Chaotix, are there any other games worth playing from the 32X? Legit question.

@HammerGalladeBro Shadow Squadron is pretty fun, actually! Definitely my favorite 32X game, although that's a pretty low bar, admittedly. Definitely well worth a play, but not a system seller by any means.

@HammerGalladeBro I don’t have many games for it, but Virtua Racing Deluxe is a really great time on 32X. Tempo is fun as well.

This is one I have conflicted memories over. I had the Mega Drive and Mega CD, Gen 1 variants. So I was well in the Sega camp at this point. I had been reading all the magazine articles I could about the 32x, including those first impressions of Virtua Racer and Star Wars Arcade.

I was so eager to get one, but from memory the release date was so vague in the UK, I kept trying to get my name on one with local stores, but they couldn’t confirm the date of release, or were not getting solid info from their supplier.

It was all frustrating, and as a 12/13 year old I lost interest/faith it was going to release, I eventually moved onto the PS1 a year later after playing Wipeout at a friends house.

I was always aware of the Saturn in the background, but that never grabbed my attention, for some reason.

I always was a big SEGA fan and loved my Mega-CD, and I read all about the 32X and wanted it. But my head was turned by the 3DO and games like Need for Speed and Crash and Burn (what it looked like!). I loved driving games and these new systems looked far ahead of Sega. My head was turned! After 3DO burned out, I picked up a second hand PSX and started a long association. But I did go back and scratch that itch in 2000 with the advent of eBay and I love my 32X and my Tower of Power to this day! Virtua series is my favourite, but I like After Burner and it did have the first console port of Doom as well as a few other good titles. It was the wrong answer at a time of such rapid evolution, but I still think it is impressive as an expansion to the fourth generation MD/Genesis. If there was more time to exploit what it could do, I think it could have given us more faithful arcade conversions which I would have loved! And exploited the companion CD drive too for game size and cheaper prices.

I do try to love my 32X, I honestly do, but every time I set it up and try to play a game, I come away disappointed.

Apart from playing Virtua Racing that is. That's ace.

If Saturn had been able to play Genesis and 32X cartridges, there would've been more incentive to develop 32X games as a way for publishers to hedge their bets. With more games available, consumers would have more reason to own a 32X. And the backwards compatibility would've made the Saturn more appealing to existing customers as well.

It's still doubtful the add-on would've been highly successful (add-ons never are). But keeping an older platform on as a third pillar, with enhanced games and backwards compatibility is something Nintendo had success with during the overlap between GB/GBC/GBA and between GBA and DS.

@Blofse I think PSX could be better described as a dark horse than as an underdog. An underdog you expect to lose based on their history. A dark horse comes out of nowhere and wins.

To me, while the 32x was certainly a contributing factor to Sega's demise, it absolutely was not the only one. As a hardware manufacturer, Sega died by a thousand paper cuts. Most of them inflicted due to their own mistakes

Virtua Fighter was a very good port. I also still have Night Trap 32XCD, the video quality is very much improved. Doom was disappointing, but there is now a very good Fan Made Patch update that significantly upgrades it.

@Sketcz Chaotix is a great game once you get into it, there is definitely a point where it starts to "click" and it becomes a lot more fun after that. Unfortunately that point is quite a long time in, and you'll need significantly more patience than most people have to get there. I am a big fan of brutally hard physics platformers though, so maybe take my opinion with a grain of salt!

I've read that the stuff about a war between Sega of the East and West is overblown - that there were squabbles, but nothing like the drama played up in the popular history. Who can say though, eh?

I really don't feel the 32X should have been released. Time and money should have been spent improving the capabilities of the Saturn.