The 32x was bad hardware, it always had little potential and achieved pretty much all of it.
Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter were about the most complex games it could handle.

There's something charming about a console with a small library. You can get a satisfying collection of 5-10 games and that's basically all you'll ever need. The 32x is at least a lot more appealing than other similar small library consoles like the Jaguar.

Of course the problem is that you can have a 32x thread and you won't find any hidden gems. The entire library could be discussed in a thread with minimal shitposting in just about under 100 posts.

But yes it is shit on unnecessarily. I always say to those people to just let it go. People care about how it fucked over Sega, how it ruined the Saturn, how dumb of an idea it was, it's short life, etc. But none of that stuff really matters today. You don't have to suffer the consequences of betting on the wrong company, contributing to the failure or success of the console. You can just enjoy the games today. And some of them are good. If you have an emulator that supports it I don't see why you wouldn't have at least five 32x roms in your genesis/md folder.

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Unironically a good console. I love my 3DO

>>9750735
>at least five 32x roms
Knuckles Chaotix
Shadow Squadron (Stellar Assault)
Tempo
Kolibri
Metal Head
Those are the only five true exclusives I can think of. If you wanna count ports, then Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing, Doom, Blackthorne, Star Wars Arcade, Mortal Kombat 2, Space Harrier, After Burner, Star Trek: Starship Bridge Simulator

>>9750673
I feel the same for the sega cd. even tho its a very good ad on, gaycelebs shit on it idk why

>>9750984
Yeah, the CD is pretty cool but nec was already way ahead of them. I get that Sega wanted to do something new, but that new idea us really all people want to remember now despite Sega CD having quite a few more traditional games on CD.

>>9750824
3DO is special and I cherish mine too

Nobody gave a fuck about this back in the 90s

>>9751005
>sold 800k units in half a year's time
>"nobody gave a fuck about this back then"
how to say you weren't alive in the '90s without actually saying it

>>9751005
>bro thats what ecelebs said, trust me bro

>>9750981
>Chaotix but no DarXide
https://youtu.be/gwEih8efjVA

>>9751020
It sold 800k because sega dumped them for, like, $20.

>>9750981
there's also Cosmic Carnage and Zaxxon 2000

>>9751121
To be fair, it wouldn't have sunk that low and would have gotten even higher sales if SEGA hadn't rushed the Saturn. It needed more R&D time, make the VDP1 more powerful to handle 3D games on par with later PSX and the N64 so that it wouldn't need to be killed in '98 for the Dreamcast, etc. Fuck Saturn for killing SEGA. The 32X did nothing wrong.

>>9751173
You're full of shit, no amount of development would have made this add-on compete with the PS1 or N64. It was still running off of a Genesis with the overhead that implies.

>>9751185
No, the 32X as an add-on was fine, and did 3D better than what it was competing with at the time, which was the SuperFX, 3DO and Jag.

32X could probably even hold its own against early Playstation, until devs would tap into its potential later on in the system's life.

Developers like Capcom and Konami were all set to support the 32X. Why did Sega pull the plug and give up on it so quickly? Why did they have to rush the Saturn out the door when the 32X was more than competent and could have held its own for a few years, until the Saturn'd have had all its major kinks ironed out?

It was Saturn that needed more R&D time, it's not a real 5th gen system and has terrible 3D performance compared to the PSX and N64, hence why it had to be killed after ~4 years (along with the fact it was selling poorly).

Fuck Saturn, long live the 32X.

>>9751246
>No, the 32X as an add-on was fine, and did 3D better than what it was competing with at the time, which was the SuperFX, 3DO and Jag.
Those are all failures except SuperFX which didn't require any hardware purchases and which was also much cheaper and less capable. They were demolished by Playstation, which in its early years received a ton of ports from those platforms.
>It was Saturn that needed more R&D time, it's not a real 5th gen system and has terrible 3D performance compared to the PSX and N64, hence why it had to be killed after ~4 years (along with the fact it was selling poorly).
It was far closer than the fucking 32x.

>>9751246
>32X could probably even hold its own against early Playstation
Only in your imagination, the PS1 launched with Ridge Racer and BA Toshinden.

>>9750673
I think the hate it gets is mostly deserved, even if it was more interesting than other bombs like the Virtual Boy. I would say the Sega CD gets way more hate then it deserved, there were good games and neat ports on it and the FMV stuff was definitely appealing for the time. I think they should've supported the CD more instead of splitting resources with the 32X.

>>9751326
The hate it gets is more for what it represents than the platform itself. There's some decent games here. People hate it because of its role in killing Sega instead.

>>9751326
The virtual boy had some amazing fucking games, the library was mostly hits in that regard. It was just a shit device in technical terms. The 32X was technologically miserable and had a really hard to look at library, especially if you don't count games that had better versions elsewhere.

>>9750984
I feel like the sega cd in recent years has made somewhat of a comeback. I don't hear anybody shitting on it anymore. People realized it has a surprisingly large library beyond the meme FMV games everybody used to talk about.

>>9750673
>unfairly hated on
no one hated on it anon
we played the absolute shit out of ours

my dad made such a sad face when i told him how much all the old sega stuff was going for online

"i wish i never sold my sega swag"
im giving him a model1 with everdrive pro, when i told him about the cd compatibilty and complete retail library he specifically asked about the 32xCD titles kek

>>9751429
your dad sounds awesome anon, I'd have a beer with him.

>>9750824
3DO was good but not that good, it could have been magnificent.

>>9751440
DK32x when?

>>9751173
The Saturn's design was done before the 32X was even conceived. The Saturn hardware was fine for the time and more than enough to be competitive for 5th gen. Sega of America just needed to be doing their job and getting libraries, devkits, and software ready for launch instead of dicking around and funneling resources into a desperate attempt to keep an aging system alive.
> Fuck Saturn for killing SEGA.
The Saturn didn't kill Sega, 32X did.
>>9751246
>No, the 32X as an add-on was fine, and did 3D better than what it was competing with at the time, which was the SuperFX, 3DO and Jag.
SuperFX sure, Jaguar maybe, but hell no on the 3DO. 3DO curbstomps the 32X:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir7zVH59qj8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nju4I2ugYTk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kCSICSnQx8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8ZnNVZOVMI

>It was Saturn that needed more R&D time, it's not a real 5th gen system and has terrible 3D performance compared to the PSX and N64,
The Saturn hardware is fine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpcjkDDLoXM

Here is the entire 32X library, please point out a single game in here that shows this system was better equipped to go against PS1 in 1995 than the Saturn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzG-OAdbpC8

>>9751494
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir7zVH59qj8 [Embed]
Looks better than the Saturn.

>>9751494
>The Saturn hardware is fine:
lol no

>Here is the entire 32X library,
The other anon is wrong, the 32X was a piece of shit - but this argument is bad.
Nobody really gave the 32X enough attention to see what it was capable of.

>>9751504
Not really, Saturn Tomb Raider has a farther draw distance, actual Gouraud Shading for lighting (3DO build is flat shaded as 3DO can't do Gouraud Shading), and Saturn runs at a higher frame rate.
>>9751510
>lol no
lol yes. The Saturn hardware is more than capable enough to hold it's own for 5th gen. Are there some areas it's weak in? Sure, but the same is true for the other systems of that gen. It's far better than the 32X in every way possible.
>Nobody really gave the 32X enough attention to see what it was capable of.
It's far less capable than the Saturn. The thing is literally the same same 2 SH-2 CPUs as in the Saturn in the same master slave configuration on the same shared 32-bit bus. The only difference is they're clocked slower and have less RAM available and no kind of GPU so it has to do everything in software, including 2D stuff making it perform worse than even the stock Genesis and SNES.

Oh and for an added bonus, they used the rejected CPUs for the 32X so there's some fun bugs in them that aren't in the Saturn, further bottlenecking performance.

Would've been cool if the 32X were able to stick around. I'm curious what its full potential could've been, had devs become more familiar with the obtuse 32x+Genesis hardware combo and everything.

Also still a better idea to just have a hardware expansion and dedicated games for it rather than expensive as fuck individual carts with super-FX chips in each of them and shit like that.

>>9751552
From the homebrew scene the general consensus is your best chance of getting decent performance is to do as little as possible with the Genesis side and don't even try to touch the Sega CD side. Doom Resurrection is probably the most you can hope for from the system.

>>9751525
>Saturn Tomb Raider has a farther draw distance, actual Gouraud Shading for lighting (3DO build is flat shaded as 3DO can't do Gouraud Shading), and Saturn runs at a higher frame rate.
Sure.
But I meant the textures themselves look nicer.
> The Saturn hardware is more than capable enough to hold it's own for 5th gen.
Then why did most developers say the opposite?
>It's far less capable than the Saturn.
I didn't say otherwise.

>>9751560
>and don't even try to touch the Sega CD side
Why not?

>>9751590
>But I meant the textures themselves look nicer.
Probably because the 3DO port is using data from the PC version while the Saturn version released earlier than the other versions with non final textures.
>Then why did most developers say the opposite?
Because they were given garbage tools and documentation from Sega of America? Because saying so sounded better than "Sega of America fucked up and this thing has no install base out side of Japan. It would be a waste to dump resources into it"?

Japanese devs didn't really seem to have any issue getting decent performance out of the system and the homebrew scene has shown the hardware was more than capable.
>>9751593
Because it's an even buggier mess and the DMA features to send data back and forth between the two systems don't even work.

>>9751605
>Because they were given garbage tools and documentation from Sega of America?
Right, because that's how it was done in those days.
Sony distinguished themselves by providing great tools and documentation, Sega did not.
This isn't SoA's fault, SoJ didn't provide shit either. At least at first. And they had the Saturn longer so they should've already had shit prepared.

>>9751614
>Right, because that's how it was done in those days.
Sega of America fucked up even harder than what was normal for back then. The time and resources that should have been going into getting that stuff ready was instead going into 32X stuff. So US based devs that were wanting to start working on Saturn games weren't even given manuals that were English until months into development. And the ones they did get with English weren't fully translated either. And even worse they didn't even get hardware until a few months before launch.
>SoJ didn't provide shit either. At least at first.
They provided better stuff than Sega of America as it was at least in a language their devs could understand. But they were also splitting their resources to try and help Sega of America out with the 32X. A good chunk of 32X games were made by Sega of Japan.
>And they had the Saturn longer
They had the Saturn and knew about it just as long as Sega of America did. Sega of America was in the loop and was given the opportunity to give input the entire time. Instead of doing their job they cried about it until they got their 32X.

>>9750673
30fps 2d games, the best thing the 32x could do was sprite scaling but so could the CD but Sega never used it for that.

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>>9750673
I have a 32X along with Chaotix, Virtua Racing and Star Wars. There's nothing wrong with the 32X per se, but it's nothing amazing to write home about either. I like mine. I bought it to play Chaotix which I ened up really enjoying. But everything on the 32X can be done by the Saturn, and I genuinely do think that Chaotix (along with every other 32X game) should have been a Saturn title. But there's nothing wrong with the 32X itself.

Keeping in line with the thread topic, I also have a Virtual Boy and I really feel like that one wasn't given a fair chance. Whenever I read about why it failed the reasoning I'm given is that the black and red screen was ugly, and that the 3D effect caused headaches. But that just soundike bullshit from someone who's never played one. I have never gotten an headache from playing the Virtual Boy, and the red/black display is certainly better than the unlit black/green display of the Game Boy. I wouldn't want it from modern hardware but in the mid 1990s it was fine.
I have a few games for it and they're all pretty good. I have Jack Bros, Wario Land, Mario Clash, Mario Tennis, Panic Bomber, and V-Tetris. Of the games I have, I would say that Mario Tennis is the weakest of the bunch but it's not bad it's just simple. I've heard good things about some of the games that I don't have, so I plan to pick up more eventually.

I don't know exactly why the Virtual Boy failed, but I don't think it had anything to do with headaches and I think anyone who says that has probably never actually played with one.

>>9751468
its complicated

>>9750673
>already have CD-based add-on for Genesis
>DUDE LET'S FUCKING GO BACK TO CARTRIDGES LMAO

Why was Sega run by retards?

>>9751840
cant you do both?

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The best handheld died too soon

Rip old SNK

>>9751918
>best
>games looked like shitty gbc games
>no light
>no games
only good things about it were the switches and the dreamcast connection thing

>>9751902

The 32X could in theory have fully CD based games but imagine the transfer rate to fill the RAM on all 3 consoles. Loading times would have been 2-4x as long. I do wonder what the Tomb Raider hack will do when fully optimized since Doom now runs faster than the Saturn port. Reading the docs on the doom source shows that if the textures are kept under 2kb (which is only half of the N64) per surface it can quickly scale and draw them.

>>9751927
>The 32X could in theory have fully CD based games but imagine the transfer rate to fill the RAM on all 3 consoles.
The main issue is that you have to do this convoluted song and dance to transfer data back and forth between the systems as the DMA feature between 32X and Genesis barely works, and the one between 32X and Sega CD flat out doesn't work at all to the point that Sega erased all mention of it from the final document revisions.

So your best bet is to either give all three systems some task they can just go off on their own and do with out bothering each other, or just completely ignore everything but the 32X hardware. The former is difficult to do effectively because what you can give those systems to do on their own becomes very limited.
> I do wonder what the Tomb Raider hack will do when fully optimized since Doom now runs faster than the Saturn port
32X Doom always ran faster than Saturn Doom because Saturn Doom is ported in the most pants on head retarded way. You could take Doom 32X Resurrection and compile it to run on Saturn and get similar if not better performance than what it does on 32X.

The same would carry over for any 32X homebrew. There's nothing special about the hardware, it's just the same 2 SH2 CPUs but clocked lower with less RAM. It's all software rendering, so anything you can do on it you can do on Saturn just as well.

>>9751950
>>9751927
A few Sega CD games had a 32X add-on that gave higher quality video.
If I understand it correctly, it only used the 32X cpu and output, the CD wrote to a shared memory so the 32X could read the contents of the CD. Not really juggling systems, it was just a 32X game that could read from the CD.

>>9752012
>A few Sega CD games had a 32X add-on that gave higher quality video
And they're all FMV games because that's about the most you can do. The Sega CD is doing most of the work and just sending the final video frame data to the 32X to draw with it's higher color count.

Trying to do anything else when you'd have say Memory sitting in the Sega CD's RAM that the 32X needed to access (Textures, sprite data, 3D models, etc.) while it's rendering just wouldn't work. The DMA feature you'd need to make it work is broken and it would be too slow to try and transfer it manually.

>>9751974
>Knuckles Chaotix
>B
Wat? That game isn't even finished and has the worst level design of any Sonic game.
Not to mention the shitty ring-band gimmick.

>>9750673
I wish the 32X came out like... 2 years earlier. Had potential for some insane 2D games and aesthetic ultra low poly early 3D.

>>9751494
Burning rangers looks like shit. Nights looks great but not in a "wow this must be a fucking super computer" kind of way. And the machine was $100 more than the PS1. It was a trainwreck. How do you market that? A less ambitious more expensive product

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>>9751246
>No, the 32X as an add-on was fine, and did 3D better than what it was competing with at the time
Sega Saturn release date: November 22, 1994
32X release date: December 3, 1994
PS1 release date: December 3, 1994

>>9752328
Saturn and PSX were not out yet in Burgerland, dumb frogposting zoomer.

The 32X was intended for western audiences, and in 1994, it was going up against Super Nintendo (SuperFX), Jaguar and 3DO.

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>>9752351
Just admit that you didn't know when the 32X was released. anon.

>>9750673
I'd argue this thing isnt shit on enough, if theres a single piece of hardware you can blame the most for Sega's death in the hardware market it's this thing.

>>9752351
>Super Nintendo (SuperFX)
They already had an answer to that, and that was the special chipset in Virtua Racing. The special chipset in Virtua Racing is what the 32X was based off. The idea was that they could sell an addon once instead of including the special hardware inside each game. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it wasn't .

>>9752351
>apparently thinks the 32x released in 1993
>calls other people zoomers
cringe

>>9752351
>intended for western audiences
Different products for different markets was an antiquated concept already even back then. These companies did business worldwide and the media kept consumers updated on the developments overseas. Nobody was gonna want the 32x the moment they read about the Saturn in a magazine.

>>9752356
Just admit you don't know what you're talking about and are a retarded underageb&.

How is an America-oriented system (the 32X) going to compete with systems which aren't even out yet in the US (such as PSX)?

>>9752360
>but it wasn't .
It was. The problem was Sega shitcanning it, rather than giving it at least another year on the market and delaying the Saturn until it could suck less. But, that's Sega for you.

>>9752362
Never said the 32X came out in '93.
Reading comprehension, you fail it.

>>9752364
Market-exclusive products were a widespread thing all the way until the mid-late-00s. Think of all the early-00s fancy pseudo-smartphones that were Japan-exclusive. And media often didn't report on market-exclusive products because, why would they? You won't be able to buy it, so it's just wasted ink.

The problem is, in 32X's case, the issue was exactly opposite. Namely, it was known that Saturn was a) a global product; b) better than the 32X. So people had the choice between 1. waiting for the Saturn; 2. buying yet another add-on for their tired old console, an add-on which had a good likelihood of seeing only limited support, as per the Sega CD's history. So a lot of people chose to wait.

>>9752364
>Different products for different markets was an antiquated concept already even back then.
Yet, to this day, we still have Japan-exclusive video games.

>>9751473
At $700 it fucking should have been.

>>9751440
I know it's running at 10fps (and in a fairly empty area at that), but imagine how blown everyone's minds would have been if a fullblown 3rd person platformer like Tomb Raider had hit the 32x. Hell, even Tomb Raider itself if they simplified the graphics/level size/whatever is causing it to chug so hard and released it on the console.

Between that and stuff like the Unreal port on the Saturn its always amazing to see what some random dude is capable of doing with ancient hardware when we've had almost three decade's worth lf time figuring it out.

>>9752558
Would have made a good swansong for the console if it had lasted until 1996.

>>9750673
The 32X was a bad idea from Sega Of America. They should have focused on the Sega Saturn.

It was a buggy piece of shit. I tried playing through pitfall on kega fusion and it always crashed on the mine cart stage. I posted on the forum about it and Steve Snake said the system was doing something unemulated and “very evil” but would not specify what

>>9752295
>Burning rangers looks like shit.
The game was very much rushed and released without getting the final optimization and polish pass (same is true for a lot of late Saturn games). Some levels got more attention than others, with the last 2 levels being the more polished. And those look just fine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQZlpVsXkB4

> Nights looks great but not in a "wow this must be a fucking super computer" kind of way.
Again, it looks fine for the time. As for a "Wow this must be a super computer" they had that kind of software around the originally planned Fall of 1995 launch, and could have had more ready had they not fucked around with the 32X.

Virtua Fighter Remix would have been a good counter to Toshinden. Daytona USA could have had more development time to polish it up to be a better counter to Ridge Racer (and Sega Rally was right around the corner), Panzer Dragoon was also a good unique game to show off the system. Throw in some more polished Saturn versions of games that were wasted on 32X and you'd have a pretty good launch to go toe to toe with the PS1.

Not fucking around with the 32X also helps third party Saturn games as now Sega of America is actually focusing on getting Saturn tools, documentation, etc. into developers hands back in 1993/1994 instead of trying to rush it all out in late 1994, early 1995.

>And the machine was $100 more than the PS1.
By the time the PS1 came out in the US the Saturn's price had dropped to $349 with a pack in game (PS1 had no pack in), and 2 weeks after PS1 launched they released a package with no pack in game for $299. Both PS1 and Saturn cost about the same to make in 1994 when they launched in Japan. Falling RAM prices and the first board revisions helped both drop their prices. The problem was Sega panic launched the Saturn in May of 1995 to try and sweep the failed 32X under the rug, so those new revisions and falling RAM prices hadn't really happened yet.

>>9752295
>A less ambitious
>sega rally
best racing game evar fuck u

>>9752707
Wrong. The 32X should've been focused on by SoJ, the Saturn should've been skipped and a 3dfx-powered Dreamcast should have been released in 1997 as Sega's true fifth gen contender, with 32X being a stopgap.

Not only would they not have had to go out of the hardware business, but they would still be the same old classic Sega, before Sammy bought them out and raped them hard.

BONUS: a 32X-based handheld released in 1999 for portable 3D gaming which btfo's Gameboy, furthering Sega's success.

here comes the blackbelt autist who is actually a huge n64 fanboy.

>>9753152
>Wrong. The 32X should've been focused on by SoJ
Sega of Japan did focus on 32X, that's where some of it's better games come from.
>the Saturn should've been skipped
Without the Saturn there is no SH-2, without the SH-2 there is no 32X. Without the SH-2 there is no SH-3 or later SH-4 to power your Dreamcast.
> 3dfx-powered Dreamcast should have been released in 1997
And would have been retardedly expensive. Do you have any idea what voodoo card cost in 1997? They launched at $299 at the end of 1996, and were maybe $199 by the end of 97. They weren't cheap by any means and were way too expensive to go into a video game console.
>with 32X being a stopgap.
For that to work the 32X had to actually sell, but it didn't. It was dead on arrival.

>>9753167
>For that to work the 32X had to actually sell, but it didn't. It was dead on arrival.
Not him, but part of the reason it was DoA was the imminent Saturn. If Sega didn't have anything else on the horizon, it might have done better.

>>9753173
no, genesis sales were in steep decline after 93, that's the point where nintendo turned the tide and anything associated with genesis wasn't going to have any legs

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im surprised anyone hates the sega cd. having the best version of earthworm jim and sonic cd on the same console is fucking king to me. Also combining it with the model 2 sega genesis makes it top fucking tier.
that said paying $350~ for the combination is fucking retarded though

>>9753173
Which is why the 32X idea as a whole is so retarded. Saturn's design was already finalized with games in development before the 32X was even a napkin scribble. And the 32X's main selling point of its design are it's 32-bit CPUs, which are the same 2 SH-2s as in the Saturn because the SoA designers liked that part of the Saturn's design. So if you want to get rid of Saturn, you inevitably get rid of the 32X because without the Saturn the SH-2 no longer exists.

>>9751974
there's also like a billion protos that never saw the light as finished products, seriously there are as many unfinished games as official releases

>>9753192
There's a difference between games that were actually in development with prototypes, and fan theories.

should have been a consolized System32
that way you can easily port games like GA Death Adder, Spiderman, Sega-Sonic, Arabian Fight, etc
that way you already have a solid library, just make it a powerful 2D machine and let the Saturn focus on being 3D

>>9753180
What makes it the best version of Sonic CD? hasn't there been a shitton of ports since then?

>>9753201
But 2D was not our future. Making Saturn more 2D-capable than 3D is what killed it, couldn't stack up against the PSX and N64.

>>9753215
>what makes it the best version of sonic cd?
I was gonna respond with some sarcastic funny man comment, but i never even said it was, i just didn't use a comma like a retard. Apologies.
Nah it just has the best version of earthworm jim special edition, it's just a straight perfect port of the game. Sonic cd's best version if you're wondering, i THINK is just the PC version. But really the gems collection port is fine too, i grew up on that one.

>>9753220
that's my point, Saturn fucked up by focusing too much on 2D, by making the 32x a 2D beast they could have shifted the Saturn focus to pure 3D, because lets face it, there's no universe where both the Saturn and 32x are hits, the best you can do is giving the 32x some niche and let the Saturn take the spotlight so they don't cannibalize each other

>>9753220
The Saturn was designed to do 3D from the Start. It's why the SH2s were chosen, why there's a DSP in the SCU, why VDP1 has 2 hardware frame buffers and can do things like Gouraud Shading, untextured polygons, wire frames, and distorted sprites (textured quads), etc. The main choke points in the design are the split main memory on a shared 32-bit bus, and VDP1's fillrate.

>>9753236
Nobody said it wasn't. It was too 2D focused and not 3D focused enough, though.

>>9753235
> Saturn fucked up by focusing too much on 2D
Again, Saturn was designed to do 3D from the Start.
>the best you can do is giving the 32x some niche and let the Saturn take the spotlight so they don't cannibalize each other
No, the best you can do is get Sega of America to stop bitching and start doing their job back around 1992/1993 and prep for a US 1995 Saturn launch. In this scenario 32X doesn't even make it to the napkin scribble stage and never exists. What games were made for it get distributed between Saturn, Genesis, and Sega CD, whichever system is a better fit at the time. Saturn launches in the US in fall of 1995 with a much better showing and is able to establish a solid 2nd place.

>>9753246
>It was too 2D focused
The only 2D focused part of the entire thing is VDP2. All the other non-audio related hardware was chosen solely for doing 3D.

>>9753251
VDP1 is also a bad fit for 3D games. It can do it but with inefficiency and limitations in the form of overdraw, and with bottlenecks in the form of fillrate.

>>9753252
Yes, the fill rate is low, that doesn't mean it's a bad fit for 3D. It simply means they needed to make it faster. Which maybe they could have done that in early 1994 if they didn't have to split resources for the 32X.

In practice as it is though it simply means that culling becomes a lot more important to avoid hitting the fillrate limit.

>>9753180
The hatred for the Sega CD is massively overblown, but it all comes down to the way it was marketed at the time. The only kinds of games Sega wanted to advertise for the system were jun FMV games that are beyond unplayable today, and even the better ones of the bunch have slightly more modern ports that "play" much better just due to being able to show FMV footage at a higher resolution.

It also doesn't help that many of the games that aren't FMV games for the system are just Genesis ports with CD soundtracks, Earthworm Jim being an example you yourself brought up.

>>9753257
>It simply means they needed to make it faster.
Given that this is mostly an issue for 3D games, that means focusing more on 3D.

>>9753262
technically EWJ is a PC port, it's everything the PC version had including the redbook audio soundtrack. which is why it's still the best one, because it's just the pc version.
*I could be wrong but i T H I N K the special level paths are exclusive to special edition too.

>>9753269
>Given that this is mostly an issue for 3D games, that means focusing more on 3D.
It's not, it impacts 2D games as well as it means there's less sprites you can draw on screen at any given time. It's not a 3D specific issue. The chip just needed to be a bit faster.

>>9753276
The number of 2D Saturn games where VDP1 fillrate is an issue is small. Bullet hells like Dodonpachi and shit ports like SotN are all I can think of. Large 2D objects can mostly be drawn on VDP2 instead.
The fillrate Saturn had is sufficient for 2D, but a limitation for 3D, and making it faster would be a change that disproportionately improves 3D.

>>9753285
>But it would help 3D more!
But it still doesn't change the fact that it's not a 3D specific issue. It impacts both 2D and 3D rendering the same. It's not a result of focusing too much on 2D and it's disingenuous to frame it that way. It's more just not realizing that fillrate is king for frame buffer rendering (what VDP1 does), regardless of if it's 2D or 3D.

>>9753302
Making design decisions that favor 3D more than 2D is focusing on 3D. This isn't rocket science.

>>9753310
>Making design decisions that favor 3D more than 2D is focusing on 3D
Except it doesn't really favor 3D more. At the end of the day we're just increasing how many pixels per second it can draw to the frame buffer. That will improve both 2D and 3D performance equally.

Keep trying to cling to the old meme that "Saturn was designed for 2D not 3D!" though. It won't change the fact that the person who designed the thing has thoroughly debunked that.

>>9753316
>Except it doesn't really favor 3D more. At the end of the day we're just increasing how many pixels per second it can draw to the frame buffer. That will improve both 2D and 3D performance equally.
3D games draw more pixels to the framebuffer than 2D games. 2D games on Saturn don't come close to this limit.
Having a DSP will also improve matrix multiplication in 2D and 3D games equally. But only one kind of game multiplies lots of matrices so it clearly is biased towards those.
>Keep trying to cling to the old meme that "Saturn was designed for 2D not 3D!" though.
You keep putting forward this strawman even though nobody has taken this position ITT.

>>9753326
>3D games draw more pixels to the framebuffer than 2D games
They can, it doesn't mean a 2D game can't be impacted by it.
> 2D games on Saturn don't come close to this limit.
Do you know what the limit realistically comes out to? It's less than 700 16x16 sprites per frame at 352x224. You can very easily hit that in certain games, especially if you try to do things like gouraud shading or transparency with them or god forbid run in higher resolutions.
>You keep putting forward this strawman even though nobody has taken this position ITT.
You took this position at the start of this discussion by saying they focused too much on 2D which isn't true.

>>9753337
>It's less than 700 16x16 sprites per frame at 352x224.
In other words, a buffer literally filled with sprites twice over, before even considering VDP2 planes.
Which is why it is an issue for Dodonpachi (which is known for having absurd numbers of sprites) and SotN (which draws many background objects on VDP1 due to porting complications) but otherwise few 2D games.

I think English may not be your first language.

>>9753352
>In other words, a buffer literally filled with sprites twice over
Or a buffer filled with polygons twice over? VDP1 doesn't care if it's 2D or 3D, it's still drawing a pixel to a frame buffer. You still have the issue of half transparency cutting the fill rate down to 1/6 of that in both 2D and 3D, as well as Gouraud shading having a slight impact. And in both 2D and 3D you don't have enough fill rate to fill the entire frame buffer in higher resolutions like 640x448i.

It impacts both the same due to an issue of not realizing frame buffer rendering requires high fillrate for both 2D and 3D. Why do you think games like Galaxy Force II and Power Drift only run at 20-30fps on Saturn? It's because there's not enough fill rate to handle all those 2D sprites.
>SotN
This game's performance issues aren't VDP1 fillrate related. It's because the game is doing a ton of shit during Vblank it doesn't need to do. If that logic takes longer than Vblank, the performance tanks.
>I think English may not be your first language.
I think you just don't want to admit you were wrong in your initial claim. So instead you're now moving goal posts and grasping at straws.

>>9753368
>Or a buffer filled with polygons twice over?
That's many times more likely, given that there's overdraw, your occlusion is never perfect, and you are much less likely to be able to use VDP2 planes to fill the rest of the screen.
Half transparency is also a greater issue for 3D because it's free if the other blend target is another VDP2 plane.
And Gouraud shading is clearly also more of a 3D problem. Maybe if Saturn was like Playstation, and emphasized 3D more, it could also have fast Gouraud shading.

File: VDP1FillRateLimite.png (233 KB, 720x480)

233 KB PNG

>>9753391
>It's more likely in 3D!
What if I have a large 2D boss made of a lot of interconnected moving sprites that has an attack where it breathes transparent fire over most of the frame? You can easily hit the limit in 2D games as well. Attached is what 730 16x16 sprites looks like on VDP1. If you go above that amount you start to get flickering if you're in 1-cycle mode because VDP1 can't keep up at 60fps. If you're not in 1-cycle mode you get slowdown as again VDP1 can't keep up and needs more time to finish drawing the frame. It's really not as much as you think.

PS1 on the other hand is able to do this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOtroPbOWOE

It's not a 2D vs 3D issue, it's just a pure fillrate issue that impacts both.
>Half transparency is also a greater issue for 3D because it's free if the other blend target is another VDP2 plane.
No it's not, it's just as big of an issue in 2D games which is why so many 2D games still use meshes. If you want to do those kinds of effects like PS1 2D games do where they stack transparencies on top of each other you'll have a really difficult time.
>And Gouraud shading is clearly also more of a 3D problem.
No it's not. Do you realize how many 2D games on PS1 and Saturn used Gouraud Shading to make things look prettier?
>Maybe if Saturn was like Playstation, and emphasized 3D more, it could also have fast Gouraud shading.
It already does Gouraud shading faster as it's additive blending vs multiplicative. The issue is more that VDP1's fillrate is slow overall for everything.

>>9753262
>It also doesn't help that many of the games that aren't FMV games for the system are just Genesis ports with CD soundtracks, Earthworm Jim being an example you yourself brought up.
The Sega CD/Windows version of Earthworm Jim has an exclusive level.

>>9753252
VDP1 is bad in general, not just bad for 3d.

>>9753450
What demo is referenced in your picture there? And just how many sprites are being drawn in that ludicrously wasteful V shape at the bottom?

>>9753730
NTA, but I counted at least 68 individual bubbles that are not part of that v shape. There's probably some offscreen or being drawn so close to another that they look like a single bubble.

File: fillrate.webm (2.2 MB, 330x240)

2.2 MB WEBM

>>9753730
This demo:
https://github.com/ijacquez/libyaul-examples/tree/develop/vdp1-balls
>That V shape is wasteful!
Sure, but it's not an uncommon thing to see done in 5th gen 2D games. You see similar things done in SotN for various different effects and bosses. In total there's 730 balls being drawn in that demo.

The point is, VDP1's fillrate is an issue for 2D and 3D. It's not a 3D specific issue.

>>9753152
Keep dreaming. Saturn sold way more units than the failed 32X.

>>9753950
>add-on that got the shaft after 6 months was beat by a system that was supported for four years
WOW, NO FUCKING SHIT IT DIDN'T SELL AS MUCH?

The point is, 32X would have been far more successful had it not had to compete with and prematurely get killed off by the Saturn, due to the Saturn not existing in that timeline.

>>9753970
The 32X was a bad idea to begin with. The fact that you have to deal with so many wires & an extra plug in the shape of a brick is more than enough reason to not produce the 32X.

>>9754083
The Atari Jaguar was coming to eat Sega's lunch.
Without the 32X holding the gates, Atari would have been king of the console market.

>>9750673
It would have been great for great 2D ports like Street Fighter Alpha and just made it a premium 2D machine or for super scalers. I think after Doom most people weren't interested in non textured 3D anymore.

>>9752558
I read about the recent doom port on 32x and they said a lot of slowness is caused by slow access to ram but in another thread they said ram was a major cost of the saturn so maybe not much could have been done.

>>9753176
A lot of shovelware was starting to flood 16 bit around that time with sports games and crap.

>>9753285
From what I understand that part of the saturn is like an msdos pc video card which could be why metal slug has slowdown.

>>9751743
VB is great and I never got a headache either, I always hear that stuff from people who never played it. You have to play it to know what the 3D effect does but now its been outdone by VR and the 3DS.

>>9751974
32X has such a nice vibrant look to it, even pc dos 256 colour 2D games were rated well at the time. It was a bit overpriced costing over double the base system. I think it might actually be possible to make something run on 32X without the genesis.

>>9754094
There's no way you actually believe this. The Jaguar was notoriously hard to develop for, as well as having an awful controller, and having no games. It was about as DOA as the Apple Pippin. The 3D0 had a better shot than the Jaguar.

>>9753970
>The point is, 32X would have been far more successful had it not had to compete with and prematurely get killed off by the Saturn.
The original point of the 32X was for it to be Sega's main system in the US and EU until about 1996/1997, and then launch Saturn when it was cheaper, with Saturn being the primary system in Japan starting in 1994. But 32X failed out the door without the Saturn doing anything to it. No one wanted the thing. They wanted to wait and pay more for better systems like the PS1. In that realistic scenario the Saturn is by far the better system to launch.

>Saturn not existing in that timeline.
If the Saturn doesn't exist neither does the 32X. The SH2s only exist because Sega chose to go with them for the Saturn. The 32X uses them because it was a part of the Saturn design Sega of America liked.