The biggest /vr/ cope I've seen: The 32X didn't hurt SEGA

[Anonymous No.10048394]

I remember making a suggestion here that instead of a 32x, why not just do what Virtua Racing did and make special Genesis cart games? People talked down to me and said it wouldn't work...

But trying to offload inventory at $30 or if you can't do that, turn it into scrap, makes a lot more sense, right?

[Anonymous No.10048395]

>32x didn't hurt SEGA guys we swear but here is SEGA saying it did.

[Anonymous No.10048398]

It’s because the cope lets them maintain the illusion that SEGA was talented but unlucky and “deserved” to win, rather than pants on head retarded but got lucky at times (a strategy which crumbles over time)

[Anonymous No.10048408]

The cope is because Sega exited the console market, therefore they're the ultimate underdog and backing them is always cool. The narrative must follow that Sega never did anything wrong and it's all Sony's marketing budget (Because if you're a big corporation, you must handicap yourself), or consumers' fault for not trusting Sega (After they shat out poorly thought out and supported hardware one after another), piracy (Now this is just ignoring reality).

[Anonymous No.10048417]

>>10048398
the fact Saturn has no answer to Mario 64 says it all. Sega deserved to lose

[Anonymous No.10048435]

>>10048394
The 32x hurt Sega a lot. They wasted money and time on this failure when they should have instead focused more on making games for the Genesis. Using special chips as you say would have been a good idea.
32X was also quickly abandoned and its library was pretty bad and really small.

[Anonymous No.10048443]

>>10048417
Even if it somehow had that in the form of Sonic Xtreme, it wouldn’t have done shit. That game always looked so rough, it would’ve done more damage to the brand than anything. And even then it wouldn’t matter because the PS1 had leagues more games than the Saturn or N64 had in the west.

[Anonymous No.10048491]

Wonder what would have happened if sega had held off on the sega cd for a bit and made just one addon that combined the benefits of both? All the fmv games would have looked better like the 32x night trap instead of a grainy mess. Scaling, sprite rotations, transparency and an expanded colour palette along with cd quality audio and storage would have placed it well above the snes. Even dropping the 3d stuff that addon launching somewhere between the 32x and the mega cd time frame could have been huge for sega. It could have shipped symphony of the night or whatever bloodletting was exclusively on a sega system...

[Anonymous No.10048732]

The leak that proved SEGA lucked out with a few good arcade titles.

[Anonymous No.10048767]

>>10048394
>why not just do what Virtua Racing did
It seems like they tested the concept with Virtua Racing and decided it wasn't worth it. Nintendo did the same thing on SNES but with more games and a variety of different chips. Also note there are no N64 carts with addon hardware so they learned their lesson?

[Anonymous No.10048835]

>>10048417
Sega had years before N64 came out to make a Sonic game for Saturn and simply failed to do so.
The main issue with Sega is that they spent much of their first party career reacting to other companies' software and the few times they were ahead of the curve, they squandered that advantage.
Examples:
Nintendo make wildly successful Mario franchise.
Sega create Alex Kidd and the world yawns then Sonic (rather than creating something altogether new).
Square, Enix and Atlus create Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and Megaten, respectively.
Sega creates Phantasy Star.
Nintendo create Fire Emblem.
Sega create Crystal Warriors and the world yawns, then Shining Force.
Nintendo make wildly successful Zelda franchise.
Sega make Golden Axe Warrior and the world yawns then Soleil and the world yawns s'more.
Konami make Castlevania.
Sega make Master of Darkness and the world yawns.
Capcom make Final Fight and Street Fighter. Sega make the only reactionary game/rip off that I can think of that seemed more successful than the original, Streets of Rage. Then Eternal Champions as their answer to SF2 (much to my eternal lol).
But when they made a unique game (Virtua Fighter was the first 3D fighting game and it was released even before the Playstation itself was), they didn't lean into it nearly as hard as they should have. Same with Virtua On, Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio and more.
They habitually dropped the ball and while I like the unique games Sega made, as long as they kept reacting rather than simply acting, they were never #1 and never could have been.

[Anonymous No.10048872]

>>10048835
>they didn't lean into it nearly as hard as they should have
Dude, you serious? They spent the next few years furiously cloning Virtua Fighter. Fighting Vipers, Virtua Fighter Kids, Last Bronx, Fighters Megamix, Fucking Sonic The Fighters. They leaned into it harder than a decrepit old man leans into his cane.

[Anonymous No.10048910]

>>10048835
Phantasy Star was not a reaction to either Megaten or Final Fantasy, they were way too recent to have any influence to PS1 (FF1 came out 2 days before PS1). It definitely was a reaction to Dragon Quest, and a good one at that, it's one of the best looking games on the Master System.

[Anonymous No.10048934]

>>10048394
That anon who said the 32X was good enough to go against the PS1 and N64 is probably still seething

[Anonymous No.10048942]

Keep in mind that Sega was still king of the arcade and home consoles, because people kept playing Genesis until 97/98. There was tons of garbage on N64.

[Anonymous No.10048976]

>>10048835
>Konami make Castlevania.
>Sega make Master of Darkness and the world yawns.

Castlevania is obviously a clone of Ghost'n'Goblins, not the first of its kind.

[Anonymous No.10048983]

>>10048942
>because people kept playing Genesis until 97/98
Lmao. Autistic Bongs still play Amiga until 2023, do you see anyone claiming Commodore is still king of the home computer?

[Anonymous No.10048985]

>>10048394
>I remember making a suggestion here that instead of a 32x, why not just do what Virtua Racing did and make special Genesis cart games? People talked down to me and said it wouldn't work...
It wouldn't work because the costs were too high. Virtua Racing was a $100 game. The SNES had a potato of a CPU so it loaded a bunch of chips onto carts to account for that. The Genesis wasn't seriously lacking in horsepower so any chips that you put into a cart would need to be quite significant. And to do anything akin to a 32X, like adding more colors, would require the cartridge have it's own A/V out just like the 32X, which would be bizarre.

[Anonymous No.10049003]

>>10048394
In a vacuum, a 32X isn't a terrible idea. Its kinda like upgrading a pc. Take your old hardware, add this to it for stronger graphics and processing abilities. Then later on release a pre-built (Sega Neptune) with the upgrade built in. It makes more sense then just a CD add-on, its essentially letting you upgrade your current system for cheaper then a new system.

The problem, is it needs to be released in a point of time where next gen isn't already ready. If the 32X had been released in 92 or 93 and was designed to offer a semi comparable alternative to the Jaguar and 3DO, it makes some sense. Releasing it when the Saturn and PS1 were out, was kinda a doomed concept.

I do think maybe it could have worked also in regions of slow adoption rates, so like say if instead of the Master System, Brazil super took to the Mega Drive and the PS1 wasn't going to be released in large quantities, maybe a 32X deal would have been more adopted. I think thats what SoA expected in the US, big potential genesis owners user base, but too many options on the market that they might as well get a whole new console.

[Anonymous No.10049009]

>>10048443
It absolutely would have done something being a totally new and anticipated Sonic game, but it would not have been as big of a must play as Mario 64 or even Crash. If anything, a bunch more consoles would have sold in Christmas 96.

[Anonymous No.10049027]

sega lost

[Anonymous No.10049045]

>>10048976
>Castlevania is obviously a clone of Ghost'n'Goblins
Eh, maybe. I personally wouldn't go that far, but I could understand why someone else might.

[Anonymous No.10049054]

>>10049045
It has the same basis of weapon based action-platfoming, focusing primarly on the action part but with the occasional deadly pit jumps and moving platforms while dodging/killing flying enemies, it has the exact same jump (stiff arc, no momentum), the horror theme, you can acquire new weapons along the way, and if that wasn't enough, they even took the goddamn money bag drops that give points at which point the devs were like "we're not even trying to hide it anymore".

And if that's STILL not enough, look at the sequels: the second GNG lets you attack in any of 8 directions, surprise, CV4 does it too. Then in Super GNG you get extra movement abilities and the ability to upgrade weapons, surprise, CV Bloodlines does the same thing.

CV1 is just GNG, with a theme and lore mixing elements from Hammer horror movies and Vampire Hunter D.

[Anonymous No.10049061]

>>10048394
>that feeling when Hayao Nakayama walks in and slaps the living shit out out of the managers at Sega of Japan every week.

[Anonymous No.10049073]

>>10048417
saturn had tomb rider, until it didnt have it anymore. but yeah i get your point

[Anonymous No.10049081]

>>10049061
Sega should make a side Yakuza parody where Nishiki has to try and straighten out Sega in both Japan and America during the 32X/Saturn years when Kiryu is in prison.

[Anonymous No.10049082]

>>10048395
>>10048394
No one on /vr/ has ever said the 32x "didn't hurt Sega". You are arguing with people you made up in your head.

[Anonymous No.10049083]

>>10048976
Even so, it's not like GnG was ever as big as Cv. I mean... Hydrox came out before Oreo but if you see a similarly shitty chocolate-ish sandwich cookie, you're not gonna call it a Hydrox rip-off. It's an Oreo rip-off, because Oreos are a far more successful product.
And that's coming from someone who loves the GnG series, what little of it there is.

[Anonymous No.10049095]

SEGAte

[Anonymous No.10049161]

>>10049083
>Even so, it's not like GnG was ever as big as Cv.

It was, GnG was definitely a lot bigger than Castlevania, the problem is that the series lasted from 86 to 91 and from there that was it while Castlevania managed to become a household name.

[Anonymous No.10049170]

>>10049161
I don't know what happened with GnG.
The first one was a highly influential classic.
The second one was a huge improvement and another big success.
The snes one was also a big success (I remember reading that it sold more than one million, great numbers for the time).
And then... nothing more for years.

[Anonymous No.10049181]

>>10049170
they tried to capitalize on Red Ameerer being more popular than the protagonist and having his own series but that didn't work that well and seemed to have given up on that afterwards while there were new series to focus on (Resident Evil) and that style of gameplay wasn't trendy anymore

then they tried to make a come back on PS2 but calling it a different name, a super generic name too, didn't help

[Anonymous No.10049202]

>>10049082
I hear this defense for the CD, never heard it for the 32X.

[Anonymous No.10049203]

>>10048395
>Sony's software looks better than ours. This is driven by the fact that our software looks like shit.

[Anonymous No.10049286]

>>10049170
>>10049181
It's also worth noting that Capcom went in big on arcade development following the success of Street Fighter II. That was fine in the early '90s when console games were relatively inexpensive to produce and arcades were generally in good health. By the mid '90s, however, this plan didn't really work and Capcom pivoted to Resident Evil and Mega Man because that was what was making money.

[Anonymous No.10049373]

>>10048835
This is partially related to the fact that Sega wanted to make sure you could play games of all the popular genres on their consoles, but didn't have enough third party support. The absence of Square and Enix forced them to make their own tactical games, their own jrpgs, their own action rpgs...
I still disagree in some points. Sonic was very different from Mario and was a huge success, aside from having very innovative physics.
Most Alex Kidd games were pretty bad, but the first one was quite solid and had enough personality of its own. I don't think the character had enough appeal though if their goal was to compete against Mario.
Streets of Rage was clearly inspired by Final Fight, but they're such great games I don't really care. The first FF was an important game, but the sequels were mediocre. Shining Force is kinda the same, they play similarly to FE, but they were very well done games. SF2 is considered one of the best tactical games of the 16 bits generation and had its own personality, more focused on exploring, fairy tales motifs, turns being determined by the agility of the characters... Maybe they could have made something more different from FE, like the very innovative Tactics Ogre LUCT, but they needed to make tactical games anyway, i'ts not as if the genre was created by Nintendo.
Golden Axe Warrior and Master of Darkness are certainly blatant clones, although they're not bad games.
Soleil was great and had its own personality, I think it deserves more recognition.

[Anonymous No.10049415]

>>10048767
There was a few cart add ons but for japan online and come on man how can you forget hey you pikachu.

This leak is great it really shows how retarded SoJ was/is and how desperate SoA was to grab onto something anything praying it could make money. Really fun reading this hope we get more leaks from companies. The 90's were crazy with how fast tech was moving prices going down. So many companies getting rekt and pushed out the market.
>>10048872
So god damn cringe remaking the same game a dozen times by just slapping on some diffrent models and charging people top fucking dollar as if its new when its just a simple new rom/iso wtv.

[Anonymous No.10049419]

>>10048395
>and sega cd
sega lord x btfo

[Anonymous No.10049494]

>>10049161
Pretty sure GnG was completely forgotten about by the time Castlevania came out.
I knew literally no one who owned the sequels besides me and my brother.
But every kid I knew had at least one Castlevania game.

[Anonymous No.10050331]

>>10049082
You don't post on this board enough

[Anonymous No.10050352]

>>10048942
>because people kept playing Genesis until 97/98.
3rd world Brazilians isn't any indiction that the Genesis was a long lasting system, especially when the PS1 was released. It got outdated the moment PS1 released and everyone and their mod realized they could get games for cheap if they hacked it.

[Anonymous No.10050445]

The ultimate problem is that the 32X was a reaction to the Atari Jaguar. Which no one knew was going to be a piece of shit. Conversely, the 32X was a piece of shit that poisoned Sega long term.

I wonder if Sega would have been better of spending extra on the Sega CD graphics hardware, so the games didn't look like mildly overclocked Genesis ports.

[Anonymous No.10050486]

>>10048394
I don't think the 32X hurt SEGA as much as the Saturn did in the west. A fully realized Neptune would've had a proper Sonic game alongside other popular Genesis IP's. It would've balanced things out instead of leaning too heavily on arcade ports like the Saturn did.

The real question is, why did SEGA bother with 32-bit at all? They could've easily just extended the SEGA CD to 1996 and made a super-powered 64-bit Saturn instead, with a 3D Sonic game and NiGHTS as launch titles. That would've carried them all the way through to 2001 when they could release a truly next-gen Dreamcast. 32-bit in general is what hurt SEGA the most in the long run, both 32X and Saturn. Imo the 32X is just the lesser of two evils.

[Anonymous No.10050519]

>>10050486
I lived in a couple different states in the 90s, you didn't really see sega cd stuff anywhere. Maybe half a display at blockbuster, same with the saturn.
Genesis sure but everything after that wasn't even available widely.
I had a friend who had sega channel and when he complained about his connection playing up they sent him a 32x for free

[Anonymous No.10050618]

I'd like to know what Sega did with the 215k copies of Sonic And Knuckles they were sitting on.

[Anonymous No.10050623]

>>10050618
regret the fact that they didn't make a complete Sonic 3 and split it into 2 games

[Anonymous No.10050627]

>>10049419
Sega LARP X feels like a parody of /vr/. He hits every single meme. Oh the addons were cool, the Saturn launch was hype, can't have enough of them arcade games, etc.

[Anonymous No.10050628]

>>10049082
Yeah I'm confused. I've seen the opposite posted way more often. People pretty readily attribute it as one of the major factors in their decline along with some of their other questionable R&D projects.
Parodies do this as well like AVGN, and now obviously even SEGA itself saw it as an issue so I don't know where this claim of defense is coming from.

[Anonymous No.10051465]

>>10048835
>they didn't lean into it nearly as hard as they should have.
Why should they lean into a game that makes their graphics look worse than playstation?

[Anonymous No.10051534]

>>10050486
>The real question is, why did SEGA bother with 32-bit at all?
Because 16-bit was dead. This is extremely evident from the inventory reports in the recently released documents. They were sitting on over 1.5 Million Genesis games and another 1 Million Game Gear games with barely any open orders for them. Sonic and Knuckles for example they had over 215k copies sitting in a warehouse with no one ordering them. Sega CD while not as high of numbers still had a bit of inventory sitting with no one ordering it. 32X was a complete disaster with half of it's original production run of hardware from 1994 sitting in warehouses with no one ordering it and most of it's games sitting with no open orders either.

For all the mistakes Sega of Japan made, none of them are as damaging as the ones Sega of America made. It was time to move on from 16-bit. Sega of Japan got this, Sega of America didn't. If Sega of America was on the same page as Sega of Japan and started prepping for Saturn and not bothered with the 32X and wasting resources on a dying legacy console, things could have been very different.

The big issue with Saturn in the west was the lack of western produced and focused software. Sega of America focused all their development efforts and encouraged US third parties to focus their efforts on 32X instead of Saturn. So when 32X failed and they had to rapidly change gears to Saturn they had nothing ready and were significantly behind the competition. They never recovered from that.

[Anonymous No.10052220]

>>10051534
While this is all true, the 32X or a sub-Saturn 32-bit console would have been forced onto SoA by Hayao Nakayama anyway, because he was worried about the Jaguar doing well, and that SoA wouldn't have the Saturn for Christmas '94.

[Anonymous No.10052268]

>>10051534
Sega of America was never a big developer of games

[Anonymous No.10052328]

>>10051534
16-bit was definitely not even close to dead in 1994 when Sonic & Knuckles, Ecco 2, Dynamite Headdy, Castlevania Bloodlines, Mega Man X, and Donkey Kong Country were released. Do people really believe this?

[Anonymous No.10052510]

>>10048395
This slide pisses me off because it stinks of someone who doesn't play games, doesn't think about games, and maybe listens 1 or 2 people at most who do think in terms of games.

is this slide a stand alone? or does each bullet point get expanded on in the leak?

[Anonymous No.10052535]

>>10050445
>a reaction to the Atari Jaguar. Which no one knew was going to be a piece of shit.
>>10052220

this is true, more than one company and more than one press outlet thought Atari was potentially a big dog coming back into the yard. At the time, the original children who knew Atari were grown up and had memories of before the Atari crash and how utterly massive the 2600 was at the time. There was still arcade brand recognition kicking around too.

[Anonymous No.10052547]

>>10048395
Sony's "considerable equity" from consumer electronics is one of the biggest understatements I've ever seen.

[Anonymous No.10052552]

>>10049082
I've never heard this before either to be honest. Almost everybody admits the 32X was a flop

[Anonymous No.10052562]

>>10048395
The question isn't did 32X damage SEGA's equity but how much more did it damage than Saturn. Selectively picking a slide from before Saturn's launch tells us nothing and reveals that this is just another desperate attempt at another "Saturn did nothing wrong!" thread

You could've just made a regular Saturn thread instead but decided to launch an attack at 32X for no reason. Why?

[Anonymous No.10052574]

>>10048417
Nights is cool and everything but they really didn't have a title that made you buy a saturn. We only got one when it was marked down and came with three games. good games that had a broad arcade appeal, sure, but still nothing exciting since you could easily just go play the superior arcade versions. Add in the reluctant parents after cd and 32x or just burned sega fans and it's an uphill fight. Why the dreamcast is more fondly remembered is what I don't get.

[Anonymous No.10052586]

>>10052574
>Why the dreamcast is more fondly remembered is what I don't get.
Maybe because it had an actual Sonic game, and better games in general

>Crazy Taxi
>Jet Set Radio
>Rayman 2
>Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
>Marvel vs. Capcom 2

They didn't even have to try really

[Anonymous No.10052594]

>>10052574
>Why the dreamcast is more fondly remembered is what I don't get.
What could it possibly be?

[Anonymous No.10052604]

>>10049081
That could be hilarious

[Anonymous No.10052612]

>>10052574
Dreamcast had multiple good games, a release schedule for more games, was cheaper and had great graphics for the time. The Saturn didn’t really have an identity ever

[Anonymous No.10052624]

>>10052586
>Maybe because it had an actual Sonic game
A decent game but frankly the dreamcast needs a lot more
>better games in general
Now that's a good joke

[Anonymous No.10052681]

>>10049202
The CD was the kind of hurt they could have walked off and bounced back from. Following it up with the 32X was just doubling down on being retarded.

[Anonymous No.10052783]

>>10049202
Sega CD had a better library than 32x. Sonic CD, Snatcher, Lunar series, Popful Mail, Shining Force CD or the best versions available of popular games at that time like Earthworm Jim, Final Fight or Mickey Mania. It could also be used to play music albums.
It was a failure, but one they could recover from, specially because it didn't represent two or three failures in a row.

[Anonymous No.10052842]

>>10052328
Sales for 16-bit anything fell off a cliff after 1994. Cranking out great software doesn't really matter at that point because most people are fatigued over 16-bit games and those games are only selling to die hards.

[Anonymous No.10052849]

>>10052510
>because it stinks of someone who doesn't play games, doesn't think about games, and maybe listens 1 or 2 people at most who do think in terms of games.
Welcome to the business world.

[Anonymous No.10052876]

>>10052220
>the 32X or a sub-Saturn 32-bit console would have been forced onto SoA by Hayao Nakayama anyway
This is missing context. The worry about Jaguar and other new consoles like 3DO and PS1 from Sega of Japan and pushing for a new console came about because up to this point in time Sega of America was 100% aware of the Saturn and 100% against selling it. They were convinced Genesis still had life and new 32-bit systems were too expensive. The push from Japan came about because Japan finally went "Ok, if you're not going to sell Saturn then what are you going to do to counter this new competition coming out?" which is a 100% valid point to make.

If Sega of America had simply been on board with Saturn from the start this concern and push from Japan wouldn't have happened. In that position they probably could have pushed to release Saturn in the US in 1995 like Sony and originally Nintendo were planning with their new systems and been more prepared with better software and developer support lined up.

>>10052328
The games weren't selling at full retail price. They were being sold at discounts and in many cases bundled together for free with consoles by retailers along with buy one get one free kinds of promotions. The games weren't moving at full retail price without these kinds of promotions which made it hard for retailers to justify ordering large quantities of them. That pretty much made it so the actual revenue from the 16-bit market was falling rapidly due to market saturation. This is why Sega of America still had a shit ton of inventory for games and hardware from 1994 well into 1996. This is the big reason why Sega took a massive loss in FY98 because they liquidated all that stock by dumping it to resellers like Majesco who dumped it on the market for dirt cheap. While Majesco did reprint some games and hardware, a lot of the early stuff they sold was new old stock they got from Sega.

[Anonymous No.10052891]

>>10052783
I can tell from this post that you've actually played the games. Plenty of people are quick to call both add-ons bad just because Night Trap and Sewer Shark exist, that's totally not the case

>>10052842
Not sure what decade you were born in anon but I saw SNES and Genesis stuff all over the place well into the mid-90's. You read an article online that told you sales were going down, doesn't mean it was true at all. And once again this is completely undermining the success of the SNES which was around until 1996 when the N64 hit and was still selling well even after. You really think the Saturn did better than the SNES in North America?

[Anonymous No.10052893]

Sega lost, for better or worse (worse really) Nintendo and Sony won. we don’t need 12 of these threads a day or week, sega is never coming back, there will never be a dreamcast 2. The how could sega have won bullshit is bordering on schizo delusion at this point.

[Anonymous No.10052909]

>>10052893
It's not even SEGA fans making these threads but cuckoo Saturn fans who hate every other SEGA console, see >>10048395 >>10052624

[Anonymous No.10052914]

>>10052891
> You read an article online that told you sales were going down, doesn't mean it was true at all.
Just because you saw games in stores doesn't mean they were actually selling at full retail price and bringing in good revenue for companies like Sega and Nintendo. And used games like what's pictured definitely don't help that situation. There's a reason why Sega had tons of unsold inventory of games that were without a doubt high quality like Sonic and Knuckles with no open orders. It's because they weren't selling as well as expected because the market was saturated.

There's a difference between games being on store shelves selling at massive discounts vs companies actually making money off those sales.

[Anonymous No.10052916]

>>10052914
>There's a reason why Sega had tons of unsold inventory of games that were without a doubt high quality like Sonic and Knuckles with no open orders. It's because they weren't selling as well as expected because the market was saturated.

[Anonymous No.10052920]

>>10052916
bro, it's 2023. fuck sources and citations. clickbait articles is more interesting

[Anonymous No.10052926]

>>10052909
I like all Sega consoles, I didn't make the thread, Saturn is just better than Dreamcast but Dreamcast had the potential to be better.

[Anonymous No.10052931]

>>10052920
Unironically true for me, sourcefags are boring and ruin discussion, discourse obsessed with sources gives you reddit

[Anonymous No.10052934]

>>10050445
>Sega CD graphics hardware
The genesis graphics hardware was completely unexpandable. There was little the Sega CD could do to enhance the Genesis beyond what it already does.

[Anonymous No.10052936]

>>10052931

there's nothing wrong with spitballing, but mofos confusing that with actual facts are literally no better than shit tier YT millenials talking about /vr/ like they know anything.

[Anonymous No.10052940]

>>10052916
Page 39 of this document:
https://segaretro.org/images/8/8c/SegaFY1997BrandReview_US.pdf

Has on hand inventory and open orders for all their systems as of April 1996. The biggest offenders are Genesis, 32X, and Game Gear. Those all have an excess inventory of over 1 million units on hand with maybe 10k-50k open orders. Saturn and Sega CD aren't perfect either, but they're not nearly as extreme.

[Anonymous No.10052957]

>>10052934

in hindsight, I kept looking at the segaCD and its specs and wondering several things. Beyond being a cdrom drive it had a bunch of other things on it.

>motherboard that was basically a-whole-nother genesis, complete with ram and upclocked cpu
>a sound engine with multichannel pcm capabilities
>a graphic subsystem with some SNES-like rotation and scaling effects

Why didn't they just make a 'super genesis' that was CD based and backward compatible instead of something that supposedly expanded the genesis, but didn't? There was enough silicon in the damn Segacd to be its own system. For the cost, why chain it to only your Genesis customer base at that point?

[Anonymous No.10053017]

>>10052783
The Sega CD used JVC to manufacture the CD-drive. This partnership lasted all the way to the Dreamcast, JVC working exclusively with Sega. Them getting in early with the Sega CD probably helped forge that. If Sega never got into CD gaming until the Saturn, who knows, maybe Nintendo or NEC would have snatched the partnership from JVC instead.
Good things can still happen from failures.

>>10052957
Sega CD was almost certainly a reaction to the PC-Engine CD.
The CPU upgrade was needed because the Genesis CPU couldn't handle both gameplay and loading from the CD. The RAM upgrade was done because NEC was planning on releasing the Arcade Card, which upgraded the system with more RAM.
The PC-Engine CD expansion system was actually a pretty good success in Japan and extended the lifetime of the system, Sega must have thought they could do the same.

[Anonymous No.10053045]

>>10052934
>>10052957

Sega was close to the mark with the Mega CD. They needed its GPU to expand its color range to 256 and to genlock its video output with the MD like the 32x does. It could act as a more colorful foreground or background layer to the MD's video output with its larger RAM for increased sprites (assuming a sprite engine) or dual framebuffers (assuming full frame drawing). Basically a less powerful 32x released in '91 with the benefit of massive storage and beefed up RAM resources.

[Anonymous No.10053048]

>>10053045
Forgot to mention that such an add-on would output more colors than the SNES could at up to over 300 on screen, but I guess less than the PC-Engine.

[Anonymous No.10053084]

>>10053045

Thats the problem. With as much as the SegaCD has and went into production with, yes hindsight is 20/20, but the damn thing is just about a console all its own.

Why chain the thing to people who owned a Genesis?

[Anonymous No.10053103]

>>10053084

Yeah, that's a succinct way of putting it. So for the Mega CD, it's either don't release it at all and wait for the Saturn with a full generational power leap, or alternatively go the NEC route for its PC-E CD and just add a bare-bones CD add-on with the cheapest possible MCU for data transfers and like 128kb of RAM as buffer.

[Dave No.10053110]

Sega Saturn sucks major ass. Just look at games like Panzer Dragoon Saga, looks absolutely vomit inducing.

[Anonymous No.10053117]

>>10052940
>Sales Goal: 4,471,000
>Cumulative Demand: 83,986

[Anonymous No.10053121]

>>10053117
But look at that 30k shortage it's a sign people clearly want it!

[Anonymous No.10053135]

>>10053084
>>10053103

i mean, if keeping the Genesis and its library relevant for a little while longer was important as a strategy, ok fine thats valid.

But they used a 68k cpu upclocked, how much more work would it have been to make sure there was a 'genesis mode' ,add a cart slot to the SegaCD to give IT the backwards compatibility? You could even have the color count upped like >>10053045 wanted.

The damn thing was $300 in early 90s money on launch, in hindsight it should have been pretty obvious that was too damn much money for an expansion that needed the $150 Genesis to even be used. That means cost of entry to the new platform is $450, or limited to your Genesis console base.

And don't tell me Sega couldn't have come in at $350 or less for a standalone system that was a big improvement at the time. and would have left the Turbografx CD in the dust at the time too.

[Anonymous No.10053161]

>>10048732
>The leak that proved SEGA lucked out with a few good arcade titles.

Let's not kid ourselves, a lot of Sony's position is utter luck too. Mostly in terms of the competition being idiots and letting them steamroll the generations.

Sony was going up against what were at the time THE two most well known names in gaming. Nobody else since had made a ripple, at least not in the US. And they were known for their electronics, not making games.

However, SEGA fucked up just about every way they could after the Genesis, and even that is arguably just them being lucky. Nintendo meanwhile burned many bridges going into the N64 and lost support form many major developers that made some of the most well known games on the NES/SNES like Square or Capcom among others.

By the PS2 SEGA was dead as a hardware company and Nintendo was still fucking up with the GameCube and barely getting some support back in the form of lip service (Capcom 5 anyone?). MS was a newcomer that nobody had any faith in and Japan outright rejected.

When Sony got cocky the gen after that, well, people still meme about that launch to this day.

Not saying it was ALL luck, they also made a lot of good calls.. and some underhanded deals, but they would not have gotten anywhere near where they did if both SEGA and Nintendo didn't fuck up in the 5th and 6th gen and nobody cared about MS in 6th gen. (Well, SEGA was fucking up by the 4th gen...)

[Anonymous No.10053194]

>>10053117
I don't think you grasp the reality of the situation, anon.

We are killing Sony. We are going to win in America.

[Anonymous No.10053205]

>>10052957
>Why didn't they just make a 'super genesis' that was CD based and backward compatible instead of something that supposedly expanded the genesis, but didn't?
Because they did, but by that point Japan was already about to force Saturn on the world. Neptune was also in the works for 32X but got canned for the same reason. Both of these would've been way cheaper and easier to produce games for than Saturn.

[Anonymous No.10053207]

>>10053194
Panzer Dragoon is the key to all this. It's a stronger game than we've ever had before.

[Anonymous No.10053213]

>>10053205
Sounds like this needed to come out in 92

[Anonymous No.10053215]

>>10052957
If you want to see some really cool stuff running on SEGA CD, check out the Core Design games. AH-3 Thunderstrike, SoulStar, Battlecorps all make extensive use of the sprite scaling feature to create convincing 3D environments. Other games like Starblade and Silpheed use FMV technology to do it but it still looks great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0NDUj3QBdA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rObi13jlNy4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdBd5EP-09o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Crjgu2aE1QE

My personal favorite out of them is Starblade even though it is technically just an FMV game

[Anonymous No.10053267]

>>10053205
>>10053213


no they didn't, that thing has the exact same limitations as the regular platform. A super genesis wouldnt just be all of that in the same damn box, its still hamstrung by the same limitations. What was suggested was completely different than what this thing represents, the only thing in common is that consumer gets onto platform with one machine.

[Anonymous No.10053285]

>>10049054
The actual level design is quite different. Castlevania focusing on a melee weapon instead of ranged changes a LOT. And as you said the horror aesthetic is different, Castlevania drew far more from classic horror movies while Ghosts n Goblins dealt primarily with demons and the undead.

[Anonymous No.10053659]

>>10052957
The sega-cd is missing all the genesis hardware.
vdp, ym2612, psg, z80
The cd subsystem needs its own processor, so you would still need a second 68000.

[Anonymous No.10053681]

>>10053659
>The cd subsystem needs its own processor, so you would still need a second 68000.

does it? name the dedicated processor in the PSX that does this.

Even if this is true, there is nothing that says it needs to be a 2nd 68000. It could be almost anything, including some extra pins on a custom made 68000 for the main cpu..

[Anonymous No.10053701]

>>10053681
>name the dedicated processor in the PSX that does this.
Not him, but the playstation does use a MC68HC05 for this purpose.

[Anonymous No.10053901]

>>10053017
>Nintendo or NEC would have snatched the partnership from JVC
Nintendo partnered with Sony then with Sony's archrival Phillips. Those partnerships eventually resulted in the PlayStation and the CDi "games"

[Anonymous No.10053918]

>>10050623
>regret the fact that they didn't make a complete Sonic 3 and split it into 2 games

IIRC they were required to ship Sonic 3 when they did because of some tie-in advertising deal with McDonalds

[Anonymous No.10053927]

>>10052842
1994 was segas strongest year by far in terms of software sales and that sales momentum carried into 1995. Almost all of the top 10 best selling genesis games were released between sept 1993 and christmas 1994. Console sales in 1994/1995 included bundled older sonic games which padded their numbers as well.
Pic related is spring 1994 EB flyer with 6 dedicated sega genesis pages. MK and NBA jam went on to sell over 3 million carts by 1996. Sonic 3 and aladdin sold even more.Throw in all the EA 94/95 sports titles and you had a large library of mid 90s genesis games selling over a million copies.
More genesis consoles were sold in 1995 than there were consoles sold from 1989-1992 combined.

[Anonymous No.10053953]

>>10053927
Then we follow up with Christmas 1995 flyer and you can see the love is gone. The genesis was downgraded from 6 dedicated pages the previous year to 1 and the third party support for the console had vanished at this point going into 1996. New games were still full price but they were few and far between. 1996 was when the games binned aggressively.

[Anonymous No.10053967]

>>10050627
I don't agree with anything he says, though he's oddly more down to Earth than other Saturn fans when it comes to things like PS1 ports. Also like that his 3DO video a lot

[Anonymous No.10053973]

>>10053967
Meant to say *everything he says, not anything

[Anonymous No.10054135]

>>10049202
>I hear this defense for the CD, never heard it for the 32X.

I often heard that the 32x sales started off well enough and it had a lot of third party support. But Sega announcing the Saturn early, helped kill the 32x quickly. The Sega CD wasn't the biggest success for Sega, and at the price it was sold at. I guess they were hoping for more than 2-3 million Sega CD units sold. They re-released the Sega CD multiple times, and even as combo units.

[Anonymous No.10054172]

>>10052940
>>a sound engine with multichannel pcm capabilities
>>a graphic subsystem with some SNES-like rotation and scaling effects

The Sega CdDhas a motorola 68000 at 12MHz, a RIOCH 8-channel PCM chip, and a ASIC chip used for mode-7 like playing fields as well as scaling sprites. Batman & Robin game makes good use of the Sega CD hardware:
https://youtu.be/U1Z0Pgkkv30?t=1290


AH-3 Thunderstrike also uses the scaling well:
https://youtu.be/w0NDUj3QBdA?t=51

[Anonymous No.10055187]

>>10053117
It gets even worse. Apparently while Sega of America sold a lot in 1993 and 1994 to retailers, what didn't sell at retail ended up being returned and refunded and sitting in inventory at Sega of America:

https://www.segasaturnshiro.com/2023/07/10/irimajiri-clears-the-air-regarding-soa-saturn/
https://mdshock.com/2023/07/10/irimajiri-speaks-out-about-the-saturn-the-32x-and-soas-financial-troubles/

Basically they'd sell a ton to retailers and make a lot of quick money, but then in a year or so a lot of it would be returned back and they'd lose a ton of money. So all the money they made in 1992, 1993, etc. all went down the drain come late 1994 to 1996 due to overstocking, underselling, and unsold inventory being returned.

[Anonymous No.10055439]

>>10055187
It's insane how much of Sega of America's legacy is cooking the books. At this rate, we'll find out that Sega never had a majority of the 16 bit market in 92 next week, lol.

[Anonymous No.10055447]

Sega could have released Virtua Racing as a passthrough cart with a special port, you could enjoy your game and then other specific games could plug in a-la the 32x. Much cheaper and smarter, imagine eventually a combo with CD, Sega are idiots.

[Anonymous No.10055469]

>>10053267
It's better than a stand alone CD player

[Anonymous No.10055473]

>>10052940
>X-Perts
Never heard of it.

[Anonymous No.10055480]

>>10055187
This should be it's own thread desu, some huge bombshells in this article, like Irimajiri insisting that Kalinske was forced to resign rather than choosing to resign like he insists he did.

[Anonymous No.10055481]

>>10049054
If you look at the Castlevania arcade version, Haunted Castle, it's nothing like Ghouls 'n' Ghosts.

[Anonymous No.10055492]

>>10049009
I think the Genesis probably did well in 96 because my first console I got for my birthday November 1996. And it was the smaller Genesis with Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles packed in, I still remember the box had the Sonic 3 Angel Island type art. I’m betting they sold that for like $100 so it probably did decent. I got an n64 the next year but still played the shit out of genesis for years to come. Then by like summer 98 I think it was Pokémon central which I had a big red gameboy. No one I knew growing up had a Saturn

[Anonymous No.10055493]

>>10055187
Tedbros……

[Anonymous No.10055535]

>>10052940
Sonic & knuckles (along with Sonic 3) was a pack in game with the Genesis in 96 I got it for my birthday. I commented this to someone else just a few minutes ago

[Anonymous No.10055565]

>>10055535
Making Sonic & Knuckles a pack-in was a smart move considering how many unsold copies they had in the warehouse.

[Anonymous No.10055618]

>>10053701
fair enough, but thats an 8-bit controller, right?

Whats to stop the Z80 from serving that double purpose?

[Anonymous No.10055716]

>>10055618
Maybe Sega had a pretty good volume deal on 68000 from Motorola and it wasn't such a big expense to add a 12MHz part into the CD. Use your imagination.

[Anonymous No.10055726]

>>10055716

but the point of the thought exercise was to make the MegaCD a standalone console.(And make that genesis compatible instead) A cheap volume deal on 68ks only makes the idea better than what they actually did.

[Anonymous No.10055889]

>>10055473
It's an Eternal Champions spinoff game and it's known as one of the worst Genesis games to have ever released, and one that would be published and marketed by Sega of America themselves. It has a shortage because it would be released after a couple months, so they had no supply at that point in time.

[Anonymous No.10055928]

Gamers killed the industry themselves going with the PS1 and dick riding trash PS1/PS2 games over Sega and Nintendo. I would LOVE to see what N64 and Saturn library would have looked like.

N64 was best that gen

No respect for playstation

[Anonymous No.10055931]

>>10055928
You turn around and betray Sega and Nintendo for some trash newcomer who sold out 2 poopwest

[Anonymous No.10055953]

>>10048398
Sega WAS talented but was also unlucky enough to have complete retards on board.

[Anonymous No.10055958]

>>10048835
Nintendo makes Mario Kart, Sega makes Sonic Drift and the world yawns.

[Anonymous No.10055993]

>>10055953
The majority of the talent was in the Japanese branch. If you look through the games that Sega of America actually developed (not the ones they took credit for, the ones they actually made), they're all pretty much pure garbage save for one or two ok ones. And no I'm not counting Sonic 2, 3, and Knuckles. Those were pretty much made by a mostly Japanese team who just happened to be sitting in the American offices for a few years.

[Anonymous No.10057317]

>>10052328
could argue from a japan standpoint, the md and pce were well in decline by 94
saturn and ps also both launched in 94

[Anonymous No.10058302]

Americans confirmed for dragging down SEGA?

[Anonymous No.10058379]

I feel like everybody is gaslighting each other. The conversations I was having (and yes, I posted in your thread) wasn't that the 32x didn't kill sega, it's that you can still find enjoyment out of it anyway. Other people were just arguing that the Saturn was the real death blow, not that the 32x didn't hurt. I don't think anybody actually thinks that the 32x was a purely neutral business endeavor for sega, they only ever argue what their personal opinion of the console was or they argue that it wasn't the only thing that killed them.

[Anonymous No.10058498]

>>10058302
I wouldn't go as far as to say that SEGA of America was completely responsible for SEGA's downfall but their decisions played a much greater role in their eventual exit than certain SoA figures (e.g. Kalinske) and most "gaming historians" have been saying.

[Anonymous No.10059276]

>>10048835
>crazy taxi has 3 games and a mobile phone spin-off.
>jet set radio had a sequel that sold as well as you'd expect on a console that flopped in japan and were poor enough to cancel a 3rd game.
>virtural on had 4 games and a crossover game with an anime.
you're right in some places as sega is basically "the sonic, persona & yakuza company" at this point but sega hardly was ignoring their franchises i mean fuck, they're still making house of the deads and shenmue was the foundation for the entire yakuza franchise..

[Anonymous No.10059313]

it was 32x, nomad and the lack of good sports games what made sega saturn not being succesful as psx, read the maketing pdf from 1996.

Sega sports REALLY dropped the ball.