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Already feeling the squeeze from the SNES' growth to dominance everywhere but Europe and Brazil, Sega wanted to snatch back as much revenue as possible. This was a bad idea, as focussed work on a solo next-gen system to really rock the 32 bit generation would have likely seen Sega supercede Nintendo by miles, possibly even in Japan. As it happens, Sega seperated their focus into several distinct projects as a way of updating their customers to the next generation without needing the purchase a whole new console and the 32X was born, however for it's high price and release time (A year before Saturn) it seemed people were more than willing to wait for the next generation to arrive by itself.
The 32X in itself was not particularly nice to look at, not helping it's sales reputation. It was a mushroom shaped monstrousity which was so bulky it even had balance issues in a Mega Drive II from time to time, let alone in smaller consoles such as Multi-Mega. While Mega Drive games could be played through it easily, certain titles such as Virtua Racing and the Power Base Convertor (for Master System gaming) were unusable with the latter making the bulk of the system extremely huge. It also had problems in design as to it's fitting into the Mega Drive II, and so it came packed with metal spacers to cover up and support the areas where the hardware would be exposed, these spacers didn't fit onto the Multi-Mega however. The system also had some Mega CD 32X titles, which combined the use of the 32X and Mega CD to allow for much higher quality games. For example the Mega CD 32X game release of Night Trap sported 32,768 colours over the standard 64 colour palette the Mega CD alone offered. The 32X also had a Q-Sound subsystem, which gave a massive boost in audio quality to any 32X games which took advantage of it. Unfortunately very few games took advantage because to tap into it was a difficult system to program for, and it didn't help that Sega rarely gave any recognition to it even to third party developers. The 32X was actually quite a nice console in terms of some of the games it had. Games like Knuckles Chaotix and Star Wars had a quality feel to them which felt like the top grade of 2D gaming in places. What a shame then that these weren't developed for the Saturn, and the effort sof the 32X weren't put into that project, because if you're lucky enough to get hold of a 32X with some titles you'll probably find it quite rewarding to play. Specifications Processor: Two SH2 32 bit RISC processors with a clock speed of 23.011 MHz, approx 20 MIPS each Video RAM: Two linear framebuffers with support for RLE compression and an overdraw mode to simplify compositing objects with transparency. All scaling, rotation, and 3D operations are performed in software on the SH2 processors. ROM (BIOS): 3 Kb Color depth: 32,768 simultaneous colors on screen at standard Mega Drive/Genesis resolution. Video output can overlay Mega Drive/Genesis graphics or vice versa. Mega Drive/Genesis video effects such as shadow or highlight do not affect 32X video. Memory: 256KB (2 MBit) program RAM and two 128KB (1 MBit) framebuffers. Audio: Stereo 10-bit PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) mixing with Mega Drive/Genesis sound for a total of 12 audio channels of varying capability, 22 with the addition of a Mega-CD/Sega CD. I/O: Same as Mega Drive/Genesis. Storage: 32X cartridges are fundamentally the same as Mega Drive/Genesis cartridges with some small differences in the plastic casing. A few CD-ROM games were developed that also required a Mega-CD/Sega CD. Compatibility: Compatible with Mega Drive/Genesis models 1 and 2, JVC Wondermega/X'Eye and the Multi-Mega/CDX. The 32X does not work with the Genesis 3 which lacks some of the necessary interface logic. Size & weight (more or less) : 107x205x110 mm 495 gr |
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