Happy Late Birthday To The Sega 32x
This is a copy of the script, the full video is out. So make sure to check it out to see extra stuff like commercials from the time, gameplay, more context specific jokes and stuff. You can watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtf9nP65noc
Howdy Earthlings, the fourth of December was the Japanese release date of one of gaming’s weirdest oddities, it’s real birthdate was the 21st of November as this addon came out in the US first. But the Sega 32x was an addon designed for the Sega Genesis (or Mega Drive for European audiences). This add on was designed to help the 16 bit genesis bridge the gap between it and 32 bit before their release of the Sega Saturn their dedicated 32 bit system. Shrimply, they knew the Saturn was coming soon and wanted Americans to experience 32 bit early to hold them over until they could get the Saturn. This is a really baffling decision because literally the day after the 32x was release they released the Saturn in japan. So why would someone buy it if they knew the Saturn wouldn’t be far off? It’s like Sega was asking consumers to buy hardware they’d throw out in a year. But it wasn’t even a year, just 6 months later the Saturn would be out. Not to mention they even tried to release the 32x in Japan and Europe after the Saturn’s release.
The Sega Saturn was an amazing system that had it's life cut short because of the 32x release. People didn't view the Saturn as an upgrade.
The reason Sega did this was likely in their long standing war with Nintendo. They were always trying to out do Nintendo by getting technology to the market first. Sega was always faster than Nintendo to ring in the next generation then wave it around in their face. Then Nintendo would come in a year or two later and do it better than Sega with better game releases. Sega had the hardware but Nintendo had the fans. The Genesis beat the Snes to 16 bit and got to brag about their system that had double the bits and more power than the NES. Their game gear was also full color and 8 bit which was better than Nintendo’s Gameboy. Besides, the game gear was terrible and rushed. The Genesis was great, but the Snes was around the corner and Nintendo had the games.
This is the Sega Genesis the system that the 32x slotted into. It was a 16 bit console just like the SNES and beat it to market by 2 years. Cheaper too.
There was one other good reason they release the 32x despite the Saturn being on the horizon. See, the 32x was going to use the same chip as the Saturn meaning developers could play with and practice development on similar hardware before they got the Saturn. Not a bad idea if the system was developed a year prior and had the time it needed to cook.
Now it was Sega’s time to get on to 32 bit before Nintendo could and rather than wait for the Saturn they rushed out the 32x. I’m going to avoid giving you the full history of everything Sega. But they released an add on before this called the Sega Cd and it could play FMV, you’ve probably heard of Night Trap, this was the Night Trap machine. Well each of these add ons had their own power source and brick and it was a bit of problem having all of these hooked up.
The Sega Cd was an attempt by Sega to squeeze some more power out of the Genesis. It played disc based games and CDs and could play video. Most of the games featured real actors more than it did graphically impressive cutscenes.
But what could it do? Well the 32x could play all of your original genesis games and it’s massive 40 game library of 32 bit games. I’ve said bit a thousand times, honestly it’s impossible to avoid when talking about Sega they emblazoned bits on all their hardware and it was their main marketing strategy for their systems.
Talking about Sega home consoles without talking about bits would be like talking about peanut butter and jelly without mentioning bread. Sega wanted you to know they had more bits and they didn’t care if you knew what a bit was. All you needed to know was more was better and that having more meant better games. It doesn’t even matter if their games were good or not, just that they had more bits. So what the hell is a bit? Well back in the day when games couldn’t display every color under the sun consoles would brag about how many colors they could display in the form of bits. More bits meant more colors. But it also meant what kind of processing they had. A 32 bit processor meant more power in every way. So as an example, 8 bit to 16 bit doesn’t sound like much of a leap but compare two games and it’s a pretty massive difference. That genesis was out before the SNEs and looked this good was huge. Now here is 16 bit versus 32 bit. It’s not a massive upgrade visually but you can see things like shading more clearly. But the 32x could also do 3d and had better sound.
Source: Retromantra YouTube
But Sega didn’t seem to get that advanced technology adopted too early can be worse than the previous generation of tech and clearly people weren’t impressed as this add on nearly killed Sega, in reality is was a bunch of back to back failures. The game gear was bad, the 32x was bad, the Saturn underperformed and the Dreamcast didn’t get any new titles for it’s first year. That many failures back to back can really destroy consumer trust. If bits mattered more, well Atari Jaguar had them both beat and is anyone talking about the jaguar?
Atari Jaguar claimed to be 64 bit but in reality it had two 32 bit processors. Tech nerds will also say that it was technically 64 bit because it had a 64 bit datapath.
This failure left us with just 40 titles for the 32x and like the game gear before it, it was mostly ports of previous systems. Being the tech of the future doesn’t matter if all it does it play last gen’s games. But this was not only a bad idea for the current gen but it also discouraged people from buying the next gen. “I already invested almost 600 dollars on my genesis with the Sega CD and 32x, why would I upgrade to the Saturn?” As well as the inverse of “Why get a 32x plus the other 400 bucks of equipment when I can wait for the Saturn. Just a year later and the N64 came out. It was 64 bits, 3d, and half the price of the Saturn and a third of the 32x plus genesis and CD.
So what amazing games did the 32x get before it was dropped a year later? Don’t worry, I won’t be talking about all forty. Just the exclusives.
The Amazing Spider Man: Web Of Fire is the last game released for the system. Unfortunately for Web of Fire it released after Sega had already announced that they’ll no longer be supporting the 32x. Those who did play it said it was an ugly flat game that looked worse than 16 bit. Gameplayers also said that it was the millionth thing wrong with the game industry. Despite that, it sells for 650 dollar used proving that rare games don’t mean good games.
Cosmic Carnage, some of the best fighters on the system were ports from other consoles or where later ported elsewhere. Cosmic Carnage is a 32x exclusive that lived and died on the system. Despite the 32x having a broadened color palette Cosmic carnage opted for the darkest, drabbest, and ugliest color palette. Although the spritework itself is good. The story is about a space prison ship that recently had a mutiny where their captors were killed and the life support dwindling. They hail a military ship and then ram into it. Only 4 passengers from the military ship and the prison survived and they have to fight each other to be the one who uses the single remaining escape pod.
There’s a sexy snake lady and a knock off xenomorph so that’s cool. The coolest feature of this game is the equipment though, each military character has 6 pieces of equipment to choose from, a light and heavy form of arm, chest, and leg armor. Heavy allows for heavier hits, and light means being faster but as damage is taken they break off Senran Kagura style changing their performance and even their combos. Stylistically it’s very strange many moves cause attacks to zoom towards the camera and makes me feel like I forgot my 3d glasses. Overall, it’s not the worst thing I’ve played but I won’t be recommending it to anyone.
Darxide, you’ll never see a physical copy of this one as long as you live. This is the most expensive 32x game out there costing more than 1,200 dollars loose. You could buy a new gaming pc for that much. This is also a european exclusive release. It’s a space flight and combat sim that looks ugly, dirty, and crunchier than that sock you keep hidden. But at least it’s 3d, I guess? It runs slow as well being very similar to a powerpoint presentation, so despite being on more advance hardware than starfox 1 and two it looks worse and plays worse. This one is so rare in part because of it’s exclusivity but like web of fire it came in late.
Golf Magazine: 36 Great Holes Starring Fred Couples, wow 36 great holes? I wonder if mine is in there? Golf too, so I’m excited to be stroking it near 36 of the greatest holes, even if it means Fred Couples has to watch. Graphically this one isn’t too bad, the intro has fmv on a cartridge which is kind of nuts and the golfer looks pretty realistic for being made of pixels. The magazine on the menu also looks great the photo being nearly perfect. You can even make a sort of custom golfer using a selection of characters, pants, shirts, and clubs. It tracks your stats and it over all looks like a pretty decent golf game. Lots of modes, and lots of courses. It’s a surprisingly feature rich game. But just by being on the Sega Tumor you’d have an easier time playing literally any other golf game.
Knuckles Chaotix, wouldn’t be a sega system without a sonic game. Sorry folks, this Sega system does not have a Sonic game. Not even a genesis port. All you get is Knuckles. At least Sega thought this one was good enough to get ported to future systems. It’s also a direct sequel to Sonic and Knuckles 3 and features an expanded cast of Knuckles, Vector the Crocodile, Espio the chameleon, Charmy bee, and mighty the armadillo and all with unique ways to get through the map. Knuckles glides and climbs wall, Espio can cling to ceilings and walls, vector can boost and climb walls, Charmy can fly and hover, and mighty can wall jump. Other than that the game plays similarly to sonic. Other than you’re connected to a second character by a leash, rather than entirely slowing you down this leash works like a rubber band allowing you to do some tricks to take advantage of the momentum. But you can still get them stuck on the environment making progress impossible unless you pay the game ten rings to teleport your partner too you. If you want to play something like this without the tether I’d suggest Sonic Heroes. Other than that this is probably the prettiest classic sonic game, bright, beautiful sprite work and super colorful with lots of detail.
Kolibri, do not be fooled by this box art. Whatever it is you were expecting IS NOT IT! You might think, aw cute this looks like a relaxing game about a hummingbird. It’s actually a shmup, your hummingbird FIRES LASERS. The story is kind of bonkers not that you’d ever know it from playing the game because the story is detailed in the manual and not told to you. Deep inside earth there is an ancient magical crystal that empowers the earth with it’s life force. Allowing the earth to give life. The crystal isnt from earth though but crash landed here from the explosion of a nearby planet that was once blooming with life too. Once lodged in the earth’s core the earth began to create life, for millions and millions of years. But for every good energy there must be a bad and evil one.
The crystal’s twin corrupted by the radiation from it’s planet’s explosion, it wandered space continuing to build its dark energies until it was time to crash into earth. Out poured the dark energy corrupting the earth but by this time the wonderful life giving stone was losing it’s power. Until one day a humming bird named kolibri encountered it, with it’s last breath it gave Kolibri their newfound powers, to shoot sick ass lasers! As kolibri you need to cleanse the earth of it’s newfound corrupter by shooting bird lasers. As a bonus the manual also gives us instructions on how to make a hummingbird feeder and tells us all about humming birds. Like did you know hummingbirds need to ear every 15 minutes to stay healthy? Honestly, this game sounds nuts and I don’t want to spoil myself on it.
Metalhead is a game where you play mechs called Metal heads. The game is full 3d, features voiceacting, and plays metal music. So it’s a game called metal head where you play metal heads, which are metal mechs, and the game plays metal music that will please humanoid metalheads. The game also features some very funny character stills that look like really blurry photos as bad pngtubers. The faces are kind of terrifying honestly, this could be marketed as a horror game from how uncanny it is. Graphically it’s very much like darxide, it’s good for the hardware but ugly, muddy, and drab. It’s apparently not a terrible game so maybe the weirdness isn’t a waste.
Motocross Championship is a motocross racing game that’s 2d characters on a 3d stage. It’s genuinely pretty awful to look at, ugly brown environment, ugly graphics, it doesn’t look like much of an improvement over 16 bit racers. It also has the lap, time, speed, and position taking up the entire bottom third of the screen for the entirety of the race. This reduced screen space means turns are constantly sneaking up on you.
RBI Baseball ‘95, I really don’t like sports games so in terms of how it plays I’m the wrong person to ask. But graphically speaking, the game looks absolutely nuts. The sprites are outstanding. But team selection sucks as it’s most raw text menus looking more like a spread sheet. The game has no music, but does have some light voice acting and crowd cheering. Honestly it just looks boring.
Shadow Squadron, is a space flight sim that looks surprisingly similar to starfox. It even runs at a decent frame rate unlike starfox. The graphics aren’t anything impressive, it’s like a darker starfox. It’s just missing interesting characters and story. It’s also pretty short, it’s possible to play this in one sitting.
Tempo, is an action character platformer that is just the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. The game is bright, colorful, and the sprite work is perfect. It even has a banging sound track. The game is just so visually impressive looking like a lost gba game brought to modern hardware. IT also makes good and frequent use of 3d with weird and trippy backgrounds and claymation looking bossfights. I 100% vibe with this aesthetic too, I really don’t like platformers but I’m really wanting to play this one on stream some time. Tempo is an interesting platformer too having a combination of features from other platformers making it a unique experience.
Tempo is a grasshopper and can hover jump, double tap to dash, kick, the kick can be used to wall jump, jump on enemy heads, and a snap attack that stuns enemies. Best of all in my opinion is you get a health bar instead of a one hit death game like many of the platformers before it. If it turns out you like this one there is 2 other tempo games but they were both released for other systems that didn’t do well like Tempo JR for game gear, and Tempo 2 for Saturn. Maybe if we beg hard enough we can get Sega to bring this one back in a collection and see if we can’t revive him.
Zaxxon’s Motherbase 2000 is the 12th and final exclusive on the 32x. ZM is a very odd shmup. It’s normal in the sense that you play a spaceship shooting up all the things that come towards you but where it get’s weird is it’s perspective. Rather than opting for horizontal or vertical scrolling they chose the secret third option, diagonal scrolling. It has neatly designed backgrounds, simple starfox like 3d graphics, and a weird angle that result in a very cramped feeling game. But what is unique about this game is the hijacking system. Your ship can jump onto enemies and hold them hostage while stealing their abilities. They managed to combine kirby and shmups and it’s a very wild thing to see let along play. This jump can of course also be used to avoid enemy attacks. The weird perspective might make for a difficult game for those used to conventional shmups, but it’s not horrible.
That’s it for all of the exclusives on the 32x, everything else was a port. The system had few exclusives and in most cases, anything that was exclusive on it died on it. Is there anything that is a must play? Not really. Tempo looks cool but also hurts my eyes, Zaxxon has a neat gimmick, and Kolibri looks very cute. I’ll probably check those out in more detail, if there is any of these games that you want to know more about let me know and maybe I can make a dedicated video to it. Also consider following, I have an article in the works similar to this on the game gear, featuring my actual game gear.
