/vr/ - Retro Games

No. It was a mistake. They were trying to increase the Sega Genesis' lifespan and used it as a bridge between it and the Sega Saturn. They shouldn't even have released the Sega CD and instead they should have gone for the Neptune.

They used all their resources on the Sega CD and the 32X, two projects that were doomed for the start. They really shot themselves in the foot, and that caused a hemorrhage that kept bleeding well into the Sega Dreamcast.

Like a US Sega exec once said when referring to the 32X version of DOOM:

“I spent weeks working with Id Software’s John Carmack, who literally camped out at the Sega of America building in Redwood City trying to get Doom ported. That guy worked his ass off and he still had to cut a third of the levels to get it done in time.

What amazes me now is that with all that going on, nobody at Sega was willing to say "Wait a minute, what are we doing? Why don’t we just stop?” Sega should have killed the 32X in the spring of 1994, but we didn’t. We stormed the hill, and when we got to the top we realized it was the wrong damn hill.“
~ Scot Bayless, senior producer at Sega of America from 1990-1994.

Yes but not in the timetable that it came out. Had SoA and SoJ been able to coordinate the 32X could have been a good stopgap. Use it to sell Virtua Fighter 1 and a bunch of arcade ports in 1994 and leave the Saturn to cook for a year to refine it's hardware and launch it in fall 1995 with Virtua Fighter 2. That would have solved all the problems with both machines.

Yes.

>>9828339
The Sega CD came out in 1991. There's no reason they should have skipped that. It did reasonably well. The real problem was the Genesis's original architecture. Since it was the 1980s the expansion port was originally designed for a floppy drive so once the Sega CD came into the picture it wasn't the most elegantly designed. Same goes for the 32X. Unfortunately the Genesis just wasn't built to be all that expandable so all the add-ons were less effective at pushing the system than they could have otherwise been.

It's not like the 32X hurt the Saturn. The Saturn did that to itself.

>>9828363
That would have left the Playstation to run free for a year, with a huge market lead and developer lead time.

>>9828403
>That would have left the Playstation to run free for a year, with a huge market lead and developer lead time.

PS launched in the west in late 95, Saturn should have, too, but Sega execs were retarded

>>9828363

So, supposedly Symphony of the Night was the byproduct of a failed Castlevania game being made for the 32x by Iga... Imagine a world where a Symphony of the Night and Doom got proper releases around the original Saturn US lauch date in late 1995. Combine that with Virtua Fighter 2, Sega Rally, Virtua Cop, Panzer Dragoon, and an unfucked version of Daytona USA... That lineup would absolutely destroy Sony's launch lineup. Maybe the Saturn has a chance to survive until 97/98 when 3rd party developers really started releasing polished 3D games like FFVII and MGS.

Fucking sad how idiotic Sega suits were at this time.

>>9828339
technically no
but kolibri alone makes it worth it all

>>9828403
The PlayStation had a solid launch but it wasn't like the N64's. It took a bit of time to ramp up. Sega blindly entering a foot race with Sony was more of a mistake than taking its time and giving them the "win" of launching first.

>>9828363
>Had SoA and SoJ been able to coordinate the 32X could have been a good stopgap.
They did coordinate with each other. That's why the 32X exists. It came about because SoA didn't want to sell the Saturn so SoJ did what they always did and tried to support them by having a split market with the 32X in the west and Saturn in Japan.

In reality what should have happened is SoJ should have told SoA to suck it up and prepare to sell and launch the Saturn in fall of 1995 and not do the 32X at all. For what flaws the Saturn has, it's nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be and they had a far better chance of surviving 5th gen with the Saturn than they did with any 32X/Neptune based fever dream.

>>9828403
The PlayStation was still competing with the 3DO when it launched. Sega's reasoning to rush the Saturn out was due to the Mega Drive being completely finished in Japan and they wanted to get Virtua Fighter ported as soon as possible since that was their cash cow. They needed the Saturn because they had nothing else going on over there. In the US the Genesis had a much bigger install base so the 32X made more logical sense than it would in Japan. Sega's big problem was the markets were out of sync so what was good for one region was bad for another.

>>9828339
No. There's no reality where this made sense.

If SoA was worried that the American market was married to the Genesis, they should have made sure Genesis franchises had sequels on Saturn.

A lot of those late Genesis games like Ristar and Vectorman should have been pushed up to be 32X launch titles. When the thing came out the only game anyone cared about was Doom. Stuff like Star Wars Arcade and After Burner were quality ports but by 1994 they were a bit out of style.

>>9828548
The early Saturn library felt like they were throwing shit at the wall and seeing what would stick. They had like four different mascot style games that weren't Sonic.

>>9828370
>Yes.

The olny system with all the Model 1 arcade ports... Well, it has Virtua Fighter 1, Virtua Racing Deluxe, Star Wars Arcade. It also has some nice super scaller ports with After Burner Complete and Space Harrier. Honestly the 32x launched in lat 1994 in NA, and was discontinued by 1996. the 32x actually launched with a lot of third party support behind it. But those third parties bailed on the console by late 1995. the add-on has a lot of cancelled games.

>>9828413
SOTN was released in 1997, and Carmack was busy on Quake at that time. That was how they got Carmack at SOA office to do the 32X port, he had nothing to do between Doom's release and Quake starting development. There is a 0% chance of either game releasing near launch date.
And arcade games, I would not be as sure of their luster in the West.

>>9828339
Yes, but it should have had better support, it should have had arcade perfect ports of Mortal Kombat II (the probe one sucks) and UMK3 and Super SF2 Turbo and SF Alpha 2 and NBA Hangtime and maybe Virtua Cop for the Menacer owners.

In the end the 32X got a handful of decent ports like VR Deluxe and NBA Jam and that's it.
they should have pushed the games that Genesis owners desperately wanted superior versions of back then, but instead we got Cosmic Carnage.

>>9828339
Did this kind of thing ever worked? You buy a console to play games. Then to play some games you have to pay for additional stuff. It feels like scam and that's what in the end is. Not only it flopped but it tarnished sega reputation, and the lack of trust fucked up the saturn even more than the lack of games. It's the original sin, cut that shit out of history and sega would still be alive.

>>9828992
The PC Engine CD-ROM in Japan was plenty successful, so much so that many of the PC Engine's best sellers are CD games.

>>9828339
It should have been a Saturn expansion that enables Megadrive compatibility.

>>9829010
Fucking this right here, this is the least common answer yet the one that makes the MOST sense to me. Make an add on that lets you play genesis games on the saturn. Nobodys games are useless and it gets people hype for the new console AND you get all the backwards compat add on money.

>SNK a shell of their former self
>NEC a shell of their former self
>Sega a shell of their former self
>Even Nintendo, while not a shell, does not have the same feel as the SNES era

when you step back and look, the gaming landscape is depressing in a way that's difficult to describe. Like any industry, the lack of competition and increasing homogenization of companies just turns into a foot race to the bottom.

>>9829042
Here's my long-winded opinion.
Backwards compatibility isn't a feature to get your old systems' users onboard the new one, especially not in the form of an addon. They can just keep their old console, as the cost of the addon negates the saving they might make from trading in.
It's a feature to get other systems' users on your system. For example, PS2 BC to me seems to be more about enticing Saturn or Nintendo 64 users to buy a PS2 and see what they missed out on.

>>9829067
those users were missing out on having games

>>9828339
Nope, the Neptune should've been made with full support for MegaDrive in mind - and Saturn should be fully backwards-compatible with SN games out of the box via the near-useless cartridge slot

>>9828339
NeverKnowsBest started a documentary on the history of video games, and it seems like the gaming industry always has been a hype cycle followed by busts followed by one game that reinvigorates the entire industry

>>9829086
Do you really think the industry follows that pattern anymore? I legitimately think we're locked in for the big 3 we have currently from now until the heat death of the universe

>>9829090
I think this is a new age and the abundance of indie developers with a passion for the craft is too high for the entire industry to just give up like it used to, but eventually personal computers, VR, or something will shake up the current console wars.

>>9829083
Backwards compatibility with the mega drive would pretty much require grafting on an entire mega drive.

>>9828413
>IV, Rondo and SOTN background and graphics
kino

>>9829128
Akschually upper middle is Dawn Of Sorrow.

>>9829130
Fair enough, I didn't recognize it because the only igavania I played was SOTN, some day I will play the GBA/DS games.

>>9828339
Play the games. The best answer for any question like this is to just open up any emulator of choice and just play them, and that will answer your question. Same for SEGA CD, 3DO, Saturn, etc.

>>9828370
>>9828384
>>9828576
>>9828557
>>9828514
These anons know what they are talking about.

>>9829106
No no I didn’t mean the industry to crash, I don’t think it ever will again, I meant the Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony triumvirate being modified in anyway. I think it’s too expensive and too complex to enter the hardware space anymore. This is what we have, for better or worse.

>>9828992
Other anon already mentioned it, but SEGA was not the first console to do this. NES had Famicom Disk System and TurboGrafx had TurboGrafx-CD. Also while not technically an add-on I would argue that Game Boy Color is basically in the same category. N64 also had an expansion pack, and even Saturn had the 4MB RAM cart.

>>9829190
Almost forgot the N64DD which is even more bizarre.

>>9829187
From a purely monetary perspective, Microsoft could become a third party developer. The hardware side never seemed too successful financially.
From Microsoft's perspective, Xbox exists to be a pain in everyone's asses, forever, and the price is worth the pain. OG Xbox started because Bill Gates asked Steve Ballmer if he'd like Sony to dominate home entertainment, he said no. Satya Nadella seems to agree.

>>9829201
This made more sense when it was designed but it got so delayed that it was obsolete upon release. Nintendo even tacitly acknowledged this by selling it only through mail order. It would have probably have been canceled but since they already had it done they tried recouping what they could fully knowing it was a dead end.

>>9829232
>Xbox upon it's birth: why do I exist? what was I created to do?
>Ballmer: You exist to inflict pain, nothing more, nothing less

>>9828982
The 32X could have had some great Neo Geo ports. MKII wasn't bad but it was clearly a rush job. A little spit and polish added to the Genesis version as opposed to a dedicated version.

I mean Shadow Squadron is cool...

>>9828975
>thinking that SOTN would have still come out in 97 if the team wasn't scrapped and reassembled in 95

I'm guessing the game would have come out mid 1996 the latest if it started and continued development on the Saturn

>That was how they got Carmack at SOA office to do the 32X port, he had nothing to do between Doom's release and Quake starting development

Saturn came out the same exact time (November 1994) in japan, the timeline was the same. If they had him in there working on the Saturn instead of the 32x it would have been a much better investment. I'd imagine Carmack would have had fun with the Saturn's strange achitecture.

>>9829869
The 32X version of MKII doesn't even have the ending pictures, Probe were such shitty devs.

>>9829869
The 32X is too slow for large background scaling and scrolling, and the Genesis can't do scaling. It's why MK2 only has 32X does the sprites, it would literally crumble if it had to do background. Neo Geo is a no.

>>9829987
The Sega CD can do scaling though. It's kind of silly and only a few games did the CD/32X combo but that option was on the table.

>>9829987
Are you sure the 32X is too slow? It has twin SH-2s. The Genesis could largely remain idle and handle the GUI and some lesser elements while the 32X does most of the work.

>>9830108
Software scrolling is slow as shit. There's a reason having it in hardware was an essential feature for 2D consoles.

It should have been made in a manner that made porting to and from saturn trivial with licensing perks/discounts enticing devs to make more cross gen games, which would let the publishers sell their saturn versions as "Saturn enhanced". Add in a reasonable price point, a program that let's kids mail in 32x games for their saturn counterpart for a discount, and marketing the 32x as a companion to the saturn rather than an alternative and maybe it looks like less of a commercial failure. But anything sold that late a console lifespan is destined for small numbers unless it was forward compatible. Bridge consoles/add ons are a meme, just suck up the last year or two of poor hw sales and get ready to enter the new gen.

>>9830276
I don't know if that would have worked back then. Not because they couldn't do it but because the sentiment at the time was that a next gen machine needed to look sufficiently next gen. If there was even a hint that the games could be done on the SNES and Genesis the system got laughed at. That's what ruined the Jaguar out of the gate. And it's why Sonic 3D Blast on Saturn was seen as kind of pitiful.

Now here's how the 32X could have succeeded...

>>9830361
The amount of thermal energy this board produces endlessly debating how sega could have or should have won could probably power a small village, I keep thinking there's no way we can rehash this anymore there's nothing left to discuss and here comes another PhD in Seganomics to break down their 15 point plan for how Sega could juggle 17 platforms to success over Nintendo

>>9830348
That's fair, but I do think there could be a way to do it. Maybe drop stock genesis support for Sega CD and Saturn only and make a saturn cart adapter? Idk. It probably would do way better with an indie scene that could fill the gap of 2D games

>>9828339
Objectively? No. Not as an addon and not quite as late as it was made. It did more damage to Sega than it did good.
It is a pretty cool little thing and its game library is fairly decent though. Beats Atari Jaguar and even 3DO, not to mention other oddballs of that generation like Amiga CD32 and PC-FX.

>>9830629
I really like this idea, mainly because it would've meant more SEGA CD games and less standard carts, which while affordable are a lot less impressive and interesting to look at

>>9831280
Idk if 32X is better than 3DO. Forty games is still a really small number. If anything the 3DO is more comparable to SEGA CD anyway

>>9831301
>Idk if 32X is better than 3DO. Forty games is still a really small number.
3DO got much more shlock IMO. And most of it's multiplatform I would rather play on other systems, especially games ported from DOS, like Alone in the Dark and Star Control 2.
It might be more of mine problem with it though.

>>9831301
The Sega CD only sold 2 million units though. That's not terrible but there were 30 million Genesis consoles. So only about 1 out of every 15 Genesis owners had one. Plus several Genesis variants like the Genesis 3 and Nomad weren't even compatible with it.

I think one of the biggest issues was that while the Genesis itself plummeted in price the Sega CD, 32X, CDX, etc. were all pretty expensive. So it was hard to get people to invest in the shit on top of the base unit which they could have for as low as $50 in the mid-90s.

>>9828339
No, it's a piece of shit that can't even do 2D games natively without heavily leaning on the Genesis hardware.
>>9828362
>They shouldn't even have released the Sega CD
>They used all their resources on the Sega CD
How many times do you retards need to be reminded that Sega CD was developed four years earlier and as a response to the PC Engine CD? It also wasn't the bombed everyone memes it as, it sold a couple of million units and had at least 2 dozen or so games for it along with some real killer apps (Sonic CD, Snatcher), which is more than you can say for 32X and its half dozen curiosities (Virtua Racing).
>>9831364
>>9831280
3DO has more games and more exclusives than 32X. It isn't even contest that's a marginally better system than Sega's tumor add-on.
>>9831384
>Plus several Genesis variants like the Genesis 3 and Nomad weren't even compatible with it.
Are you retarded? Genesis 3 was a late 90s (as in, way past CD's relevancy) variant meant for literal poorfags who wanted to play games but still couldn't afford a 32 bit system and Nomad was a fucking handheld no one cared to pug into their TV. CDX could be jerry-rigged to run it, and other models in 1994 (1 and 2) were compatible with it.

>>9831416
Sega CD sales don't exactly highlight it's success either. CD had some legit better versions of games on it and was OK. I get why people think it's a mistake, it's a discussion worth having, but ultimately I don't think the CD was a bad move. Really, I hate to use sonic as an example, but it's an easy go to. You can look at Sonic CD and Knuckles Chaotix. Sega fell into the trap of needing more power and bigger numbers, but it matter more what developers do. Sonic CD is a solid game and exclusive experience on the CD, it felt like sonic but with more. Chaotix, felt like a genesis game with overly busy visuals. Games really make the console, and you didn't really need sega CD for the best sega game experience.

Id say the CD was just too ahead of its time, and Sega didn't have the properties to develop for it. This would all be a different conversation if Final Fantasy 4 was ported to Sega CD with cut scenes. That's the type of thing that would have really given it more life. The expense of having a CD based console at that time was too high. 32X was a bad move though. Not virtual boy bad, but bad.

>>9831280
>32X
>its game library is fairly decent though.
Is this ass backwards idiot day? It was more miserable than the virtual boy's.

>>9831709
It has about 10 good games. At this point there's no reason to play most of them since there are better versions now but at the time they did the job.

>>9830393
Lmao.

Let's be real, some times the dumbest things are the coolest and the smartest thing is boring.

That's why nobody gets over sega, it's the coolest and weirdest and also fucking dumb.

>>9831416
Wrong. Try again.

>>9831416
3DO has more games/exclusives, but they're equally as shit as the games 32X has to offer. Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo seems arcade perfect at first yet it's really compromised, Crash 'n Burn is a pretty crappy racing game that constantly loads data from the disc...try again, anon

>>9833702
Sega has a lot of neat things in it's history because it was all over the place. There are about a dozen different machines that play Genesis carts because they had no discipline. I don't think anyone seriously thinks the 32X or Saturn would have "won" anything. But it's possible for them to have been less embarrassing.

>>9833862
It doesn't help that a lot of the better 3DO games migrated to the PS1 once it became apparent it wasn't going to last.

>>9833871
To PS1 (One port is virtually unplayable since they sped it up and broke the controls) and Saturn, but yeah. The 3DO was basically the SSFT2 and Gex machine...oh, I guess it was good for Wolfenstein 3D too

>>9833871
NFS1 is still the best on 3DO though.

>>9833862
It has a lot more than just those. Lots of rail shooters, racing games, other fighting games (32X's own Primal Rage, nearly arcade perfect Samurai Shodown and Sailor Moon come to mind), puzzlers like og Bust-A-Move with remixed music. A lot more than just Gex and FMV games, just like SEGA CD is more than just Sonic and FMV games. Heck it even has a Policenauts port, so it at least has some merit

>>9833884
The thing I realized is that the 3DO wasn't really competing with the PS1 and Saturn, but with the SEGA CD itself. They shared a lot of games, especially the FMV-heavy ones like Starblade and Dragon's Lair, but they actually ended up performing better on the 3DO due to the more powerful hardware. Interesting that it was sandwiched between the SEGA CD and 32X as well, almost like a would-be SEGA CD 2 or something. I can't help but be fascinated in this system for that reason alone

>>9831709
>there's no reason to play most of them since there are better versions now
This reminds me there is a Dreamcast infographic floating around that shows games like Sonic and Crazy Taxi as multiplatform, which kind of makes sense in current year, but I feel like it kind of misses the point of what the Dreamcast was like when it was actually around. You could also make a case for all of Saturn's arcade ports being playable on MAME nowadays, but again I feel that kind of misses the point of what it was like when there was no MAME and it was either the console or going to the arcade.

>>9834136
Yeah, the PS2 with it's wealth of arcade perfect ports and collections obsoleted a lot of shit but it's silly to not put things in context of their time frame.

>>9834168
Are you talking about sega ages stuff?

>>9834174
That as well as Neo Geo, Capcom, etc.

>>9829190
>Game Boy Color
Literally the 32X/Neptune but done right

>old hardware which allows for full BC
>married with new/upgraded chips which enhanced specs beyond what the original could do
>graphical improvement could literally be seen the moment you boot the system
>all in a new SKU w/ attractive form factor that made you want to chuck the old system

Had SEGA saved the CD and 32x tech for a Genesis successor that also allowed them to bring their old catalog forward they would have given consumers all the reason in the world to upgrade and keep their momentum going.

>>9835521
Meh, the Game Boy Color was still kinda half assed. All those back cartridges you see around have compatibility for both the B&W and Color models, but they don't take full advantage of the latter's capabilities

>>9835521
*black cartridges. Here's one of them

>>9835521
The Saturn was just too different architecturally from the Genesis for that to work. They could have done it externally but a version of the Power Base Converter for the Saturn would have to be like a Super Game Boy and come with a Genesis/Sega CD inside of it. That still probably would have been helpful to have available but the Genesis was heavily discounted so anyone who wanted one could get it cheap enough that buying a Genesis and PS1 separately would be about the same price as a Saturn.

>>9835535
The black cartridges aren't really Game Boy Color games. They're original Game Boy games that are forward compatible. It was a replacement for the earlier Super Game Boy enhanced carts once the SNES went defunct.

>>9835561
The Saturn also has a (cheap) variant of the 68000, so they could've still done that. Just make a sort of power base converter that included the Mega Drive's graphics chip and that's it, nothing else to inflate costs

>>9835576
There's a lot more to system integration than just having the chip. It needs an entire world of IO and memory surrounding it it.

For starters, the 68kec in the Saturn doesn't even have access to the cartridge bus.

Really the Saturn should have followed the same logic as the Genesis. The Genesis was like a consumer version of the Sega System 16 scaled down to be affordable but still competent enough to allow for decent (for the time) arcade ports. The Saturn should have been the same deal except using the Model 1 as a starting point.

>>9835616
The Model 1 was even weaker than Saturn as is, it can't even do textures.

>>9835616
The System 1 has a different way of rendering quads when compared to the Saturn, plus it's better at polygons and is pretty shit at textures. If anything, they should've added the 3D hardware at the beginning and ironed out all the bugs, along with giving better development kits

>>9828339
No but i appreciate its existence anyway

>>9835627
Yeah, that's why I said starting point. Unfortunately it's not as easy because the Model 2 was way too advanced. Scaling that to a consumer console was probably flat out impossible at the time so they'd have to use the Model 1 and then beef up certain things.

Saturn had some questionable hardware decisions, but that's not really what went wrong with it. If it didn't launch with no software, alienate retailers, and alienate developers due to crap dev tools then it would have caught on. These factors were different in Japan, which is why it saw more success there.

>>9835653
The Model 1 can display around 180,000 polygons per second, which was a lot for 1992, and the Saturn is a little below that

>>9835694
Alienating retailers was arguably the biggest fuck up that doesn't get enough attention. Almost every other decision that's attributed to it's failure, from the anti-2D policy to the lack of a Sonic game, is second to the fact that Sega royally pissed off every major retailer. All these chains had their own logistics to deal with and here comes Sega dropping something on their doorstep in May that they weren't planning to have to sell until September. Shelf space needed to be made, marketing materials needed to be printed, some stores hadn't gotten orders in yet so saw their competitors selling merchandise before them. I'm pretty sure Kaybee or some other chain flat out refused to stock the thing because of it. In the modern world where things come out digitally it might be cool to drop that on consumers but you can't do that when everything is brick and mortar.

>>9835694
The Saturn got lucky in Japan because NEC shit the bed with the PC-FX, leaving a void for Sega to fill. Had the PC-FX been remotely competent the Saturn wouldn't have done any better than the Mega Drive.

>>9835787
Except the PC-FX was doomed from the start anyway, because NEC wasn't willing to invest any fucking money in the development and they left everything in the hands on Hudson Soft

>>9835807
NEC's handling of the TurboGrafx line almost makes Sega look competent in comparison.

>>9835817
This autistic man was supposed to be the Turbografx's mascot in America, yuck...anyone wants to play some FEKA instead?

>>9829201
>>9829469
>use 64MB but never a zip-cart 100MB
Why?

>>9835985
I think it was actually a limitation of the system itself, 64MB was the cap for cartridges at the end of the system's life and both the cart port and the Expansion Port are practically identical barring some pin rearrangement

>>9835828
Johnny turbo could out fap any of us

>>9836156
The Nintendo 64 literally has a 32-bit CPU, which means it can address about 4GB of memory (Same thing as the DS, PSP, etc.). They could've gone up to 128MB or even 256MB, but why bother when cartridges were already expensive as is?

>>9835576
And the ym2612, and the z80, and the various other support chips. The "power base" converter would be like 90% of a standalone console.You people need to give up on this retarded idea of the Saturn being in any way backwards compatible with the genesis.

>>9828339
Not really.
It and the Virtual Boy were rushed out the door just because people got antsy about the Jaguar and 3DO claiming to be the next big generational leap.

>>9829124

Not really, There was a 68k cpu in the system, both VDP chips could handle the rendering duties and the sound chip had FM capabilities. At least it would have needed an adapter for the cartridge slot and a boot disk.

>>9836607
>3DO and jaguar mogged multiple companies into making retarded decisions and then crashed their own planes with no survivors

What was their end goal

>>9836607
The Virtual Boy wasn't rushed. Nintendo just hit a wall when they realized that making it full color was not financially sensible but leaving it red meant eye strain so they didn't want people staring at it too long. So they compromised.

>>9836697
That generation had a bunch of false starts because the SNES and Genesis were punching way above their weight class. And technology was moving so quickly in the 90s that a system launched in 1993 was hilariously underpowered compared to one released just a year later.

>>9836691
The saturn vdp very different to the genesis vdp. Not even remotly compatible. Saturn sprites are framebuffer based. Also fm capabilities does not mean ym2612 compatible they are very different.

>>9836697
they focused too much about power and not enough on games, and some retards made the same mistake.

>>9828339
I find it absolutely dogshit that you can't get sound through it if you are using a Genesis 1 model. You need to get an extra cable to connect the monoaudio that comes from the headphone jack.
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!

>>9836923
That's the Genesis 1's fault. It was too bespoke.

>>9828339
Yes. Someone has to make the mistakes. It's a valuable function of the market that helps technology move forward. It's too bad the (financial) punishment is very harsh, but at the same time, it's a determinant component of this mechanism. The overall result is positive, even if you think the current homogenization of hardware constitutes a hellscape we can't wake up from. This is what the market pushed towards. On a personal note, I love the 32x. It encapsulates a brief moment of the nineties where I was very happy.

>>9829232
>>9829187
The X Box, Minecraft, Sea of Thieves, etc. exists to funnel users into the X-Box ecosystem. They need the X-Box as a baseline, but I imagine it won't be a hardcore focus. Like a more successful 3DO or Atari VCS.

>>9838472
>I love
Sorry zoomgpt. NPCs aren't capable of love.

>>9839220
He loves you and you love him back.

They should have committed to the MegaCD that was a fine platform that deserved more. The Megadrive had momentum.

>>9840910
Unfortunately the Sega CD didn't boost the color palette which was the Genesis's biggest issue. Back when most people were still getting their info from print magazines, screenshots of Sega CD games didn't look that much better than regular Genesis carts and still often looked worse than SNES games. The Genesis had a few advantages over the SNES but still images was not one of them. Had the Sega CD added a better VDP (no idea how that would have been possible but for the sake of argument) then things might have been different.

>>9841469
The color palette throttling the Sega CD's capabilities is what makes me curious about how a SNES CD might have looked. It always seemed to me that the SNES had more to gain from a CD addon than the Genesis.
For what it's worth, Sega did try to improve the Genesis' graphic capabilities with the Sega CD. The included ASIC could do mode 7 type rotation/scaling and was actually more flexible since it wasn't restricted to a single background layer.

>>9841653
https://youtu.be/ug-CyGXMabg

Thanks to Ben Heck we know for sure that the SNES CD was like the Turbo CD. Just a bog standard CD player grafted onto a stock SNES with no extra enhancements. A pure format change and nothing more.

>>9828362
>No. It was a mistake
this. rest of the post is shit
>>9828363
>the 32X could have been a good stopgap
and who would want that shortgap?
>>9828370
>Yes
no
>>9828384
>It's not like the 32X hurt the Saturn
in the end SoJ hurt Sega
>>9828524
>In reality what should have happened is SoJ should have told SoA to suck it up and prepare to sell and launch the Saturn in fall of 1995 and not do the 32X at all. For what flaws the Saturn has, it's nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be and they had a far better chance of surviving 5th gen with the Saturn than they did with any 32X/Neptune based fever dream.
this
>>9828531
>The PlayStation was still competing with the 3DO when it launched
3DO competing, it wasn't
>>9828535
>No. There's no reality where this made sense.
this
>>9828548
>If SoA was worried that the American market was married to the Genesis, they should have made sure Genesis franchises had sequels on Saturn.
this
>>9828549
>A lot of those late Genesis games like Ristar and Vectorman should have been pushed up to be 32X launch titles
no
>>9828576
>Well, it has Virtua Fighter 1, Virtua Racing Deluxe, Star Wars Arcade. It also has some nice super scaller ports with After Burner Complete and Space Harrier.
and?
>the 32x actually launched with a lot of third party support behind it
wasn't a lot
>>9828982
>Yes
no
>>9828992
>it tarnished sega reputation, and the lack of trust fucked up the saturn even more than the lack of games. It's the original sin, cut that shit out of history and sega would still be alive.
this
>>9830348
>That's what ruined the Jaguar out of the gate
the lack of money ruined atari
>>9831280
>It did more damage to Sega than it did good.
true
>>9831280
>Beats Atari Jaguar
no
> and even 3DO
no
>Amiga CD32
obviously
>PC-FX.
can't tell
>>9831416
>No
true
> it's a piece of shit
that's a bit harsh
>>9831709
>It was more miserable than the virtual boy's
it wasn't
>>9833378
>At this point
well zoom zoom

>>9828362
A producer is not an executive. The Sega CD was not successful but it wasn't a bad idea. The problem was that everyone thought FMV was the future, turns out it wasn't.

>>9828363
What? The 32X is literally a design compromise reached by both offices. This is well documented.

>>9828413
Igarashi was not the director of Symphony, Toru Hagihara was. This is well documented, Igarashi just uses his reality distortion field to pretend he created Symphony in the same way Inafune pretends he created Mega Man. They're grifters.

>>9828514
The only correct post in this thread

>>9828524
This is wrong. America felt the Genesis still had legs, Japan proposed an add on with a painfully stupid design, US redesigned it. Eventually Japan decided to move forward with the Saturn and deprioritize the add on.

>>9830108
You don't understand how the hardware design makes it difficult to efficiently do what you're suggesting. The ports would have been better than Genesis but nothing close to arcade perfect.

>>9835627
The Saturn's only real advantage over the Model 1 is cost. Model 1 runs circles around the Saturn in real world performance. Model 2 absolutely mogs it

Should have been the card add-on.

>>9828339
It could've existed, if the Saturn is pushed back 1-2 years to give it a non-retarded design that can actually do 3D graphics.

>>9828531
>Sega's big problem was the markets were out of sync so what was good for one region was bad for another.
SoA was definitely a bit TOO gung ho on the Genesis. Yes, it was stronger in the west than it was in Japan but it didn't have the future they thought it did. The tail end of the Genesis was not that productive. They kept putting out games but none of them really stuck. What would have been a better strategy is if they said to SoJ something like "Ok, we'll focus on Saturn but in exchange we want sequels to our Genesis IPs like Vectorman and Eternal Champions as soon as possible."

>>9842191
That's the original Sony SNES CD.

They were designing a second model with Philips that also had improved hardware, 1.5 megs of memory, a 21MHz independent CPU, a built-in adpcm encoder, etc. The specs were complete by 1993.

>>9843405
Seems way too late. If the specs were done by 1993 then 1994 is the earliest it would have been out. You're in 32X territory at that point. Nobody would buy it. The issue is that a CD player was still kind of expensive back then so you'd have to charge essentially the cost of an entire console for the add-on. It also would have caused a nightmare for the games because you just know a bunch of shit that came out on the SNES would have been SNES CD titles instead, making them less accessible and probably costing $1,000 a piece today.

>>9828339
No. This is why I hate Sega Of America.

>>9842954
Zoomer take. Model 1 has no texturing capabilities.

>>9828339
No

>>9830393
>over Nintendo
you ninties ars genuinely retarded. Nintendo was dead in the home console market before 2006 and shot themselves in the foot (once by making the SNES underpowered, twice by whatever the fuck they did with the N64 and the third time with the mini CDs on the Gamcube) by basically eliminating third party developers on their home consoles. The battle was always between Sega and Sony, Nintendo's franchises were much stronger and could sell units on their own.