What about the NTSC snes that was drab compared to japanese and PAL EDIT - Original, SNES mini looks awesome
The 32X actually had a few pretty decent games on it. Many of them I haven't played for years, but I've been playing Shadow Squadron lately (I think it was called Stellar Assault in Japan) and I think it's a pretty good game. Awesome music, simple but aesthetically pleasing graphics, and enjoyable gameplay. Virtua Fighter wasn't bad either. It uses fewer polygons than the Saturn version, but it lacks the background issues as well as the terrible camera in the Saturn version. In any case, it's miles better than the shitty Genesis "port" of Virtua Fighter 2.
I always thought it was a pretty machine. To me the gamecube looked ridiculously kiddy (mainly because it looked like a lunchbox to me) and the PS2 looked ugly as hell to me.
There were many lans I went to where the next morning, during clean up, we would stack all of our Xboxes on top of each other and make a tower. Then we'd snap a pic and post it on MySpace. Some of our towers got to be close to 5 feet tall. I think it was diddydon, a member here who used to post more a year or so ago, had a picture of huge towers of Xboxes.
Gran Turismo is a Sony 1st Party title isn't it? FF7 wasn't on N64 due to poor licensing practices, high cost of Carts, etc. It's not a stupid topic to think about. I think the 32X is a very interesting idea and concept. It would have been nice to see more of what it was capable of with some more game releases. Plenty of what-ifs like the SNES CD are also interesting to think about. But usually the way things went make sense and some of the what-ifs never would have made sense.
I'm surprised this thread lasted this long... I think there are 5 older "what if" topics that talk about how things might have been have Sega not exited out of consoles and the 32x succeeded... same old stuff...
It is now but way back when, Digital Polyphony were not strictly 1st party party devs, they were just a coding house who primarily worked for Sony, a bit like HAL Laboratories were to Nintendo, not quite in-house but not exactly 3rd party either.
In my alternate reality CyborgClinton is still the president, the economy isn't in the shithole, teabaggers were killed by a virus they originally created in the 80s to kill gays and black people (Irony!) and I'm not wasting my time talking about alternate realities on a forum. But alas, I'm in universe B now, and man does it feels like a B... So yeah, had the 32X being properly supported my guess is that Sega wouldnt have gone ahead with that shitty HW on the Saturn that a beaver put together in 2 days after the original Saturn team commited suppuku because the PSX had way better stuff under the hood and they had only 2 months before launch Sega really dropped the ball by launching the 32X here when the Saturn launched in Japan, they should've released it in mid 1994 at the latest, then keep working on the Saturn until they had something that didnt look like a Snes FX game About Nintendo, the Virtualboy was beyond salvation, the idea was too advanced for the tech of the time. The 64DD was constantly delayed, that was the only problem it had.
The only problem? The 64 Mbyte capacity seems like a problem to me. Also I'm not sure it could stream data fast enough or have enough memory to do a non-downgraded Killer Instinct port which I would have liked to see. I do agree that the Saturn could have used a bit less complex design, such as a single CPU rather than two that was as powerful or more so than the PS1. Also the 3D hardware needed that perspective correction and probably other enhancements. More time might have really helped.
Dream 32X: One SH2 CPU with 32 bit access to SDRAM (the real 32X uses a 16 bit bus) The VDP1 (sprite chip) from the Saturn At least 1MByte of SDRAM instead of the paltry useless 256KB it came with Four or Eight PWM stereo channels instead of one. The frame buffer on the 32X is fine, but limited by how good your SH2 skills are. Also, no CPU can compete with a dedicated graphics processor (given similar level... clearly a modern quad core x86-64 can outperform old GPUs). Just replace one of the SH2s with VDP1. The PWM on the 32X is okay, but having one stereo channel means you need to mix the audio in software. Having four or eight PWM channels handled by the 68000 would have been better. The SDRAM on the 32X really needed to be bigger. 256KBytes wasn't enough to do games of the time without severe hacks. Everything else released in 94/95/96 had 2MBytes or more.
Whats tragic about it is that Nintendo did with FX games on the Snes what Kalinske wanted to do with the 32X on the Genesis I remember in 1996 16bit consoles were still outselling 32bit consoles because those were too expensive and didnt have that many games. Kalinske knew this, which is why he saw that the best course of action was to extend the life of the Genesis as much as possible, and the 32X was more cost-effective than launching each new game with extra HW like Nintendo did. The Genesis was dead after 96, while nintendo kept making Snes consoles 'till 99 IIRC, and games until 2001 When Sega went ahead with the Saturn and killed their other consoles they handed their half of the 16bit market to Nintendo in a silver platter, nuff said
I think you'll find you're wrong there, I can't think of a single new title released after '97 or '98 at the very latest. They may have still been manufacturing the odd unit or two but that's all, or releasing older software in non first-world markets like Central or South America but that's as far as it will have gone, much the same as SEGA were still shipping 8 and 16 BIT titles to countries like Brazil. Christ, in 2001 the N64 was virtually dead in the water, never mind its predecessor :lol:
SNES games in the US were released after the 32bit systems came out, in 1994, 95, 96, and maybe a few in 97? Super Famicom had some later than that. But it's not just about games as it is supporting and marketing the system. CW, I think you're right that the 32X just wasn't the right mix of hardware to make a serious go at it. Maybe if SEGA in japan had been supportive of the idea it would have been better. Just look at Nintendo during the N64 era. It didn't dominate. But they did well thanks to money gained from the SNES that players were still interested in after the N64 came out and also from the Gameboy and particularly the Pokemon craze. Sega didn't seem to support the Sega Genesis in the same way and also let the Game Gear disappear. They should have re-released it like Nintendo did with the Gameboy but by using more modern technology to try and drastically improve its form factor, power usage, and screen. Instead they gave Nintendo near complete dominance of the 16bit and portable arenas thinking the 32bit arena was all that mattered I guess. Generally I don't know if giving the Genesis a "32bit & 3D" upgrade was an idea worth investing in. While games like Star Fox and Virtua Racing were cool to see on the 16bit platforms I think combating the aging Genesis by outfitting it with a VDP and Sound upgrade would have made more sense and been cheaper and easier to support. In the US atleast they hade a huge market share with the Genesis. They didn't need to try to completely blow away the SNES or try to drag the Genesis into the 32bit generation.
