Today, let's take a nostalgic trip down memory lane with a little "What if...?" scenario. Remember the Sega 32X? It was this ambitious add-on for the Sega Genesis that aimed to catapult the beloved console into next-gen territory. While it didn't quite hit its mark, it left us wondering: what other classic consoles could have benefited from a similar leap forward?
Let's imagine—what if the N64 had gotten an "N128" upgrade? Could it have kept up with the PS1 and Saturn in that fierce console war era? Or maybe there’s another platform itching for a second wind, like the SNES or even the beloved Game Boy!
What other consoles do you think should've received their own "next-gen" add-ons?
It was cool but way too expensive for what it did when it launched. I picked it up along with lots of its games when it hit the discount rack and really enjoyed it. There were also SegaCD-32x games that were also on the clearance rack. It pointed out to me how much development fragmentation was occurring at that time in the console wars.
The thing is, the 32X in isolation isn't bad! The games were actually pretty decent, especially for the time in which they were released. The real problem was Sega's attention was divided among the Sega CD, the Saturn, and the 32X. This confused consumers and manufacturers alike with everyone sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what would "win". Meanwhile, Sony was about to drop the Playstation and that single platform with more focus totally destroyed a distracted Sega.
As another example, the Saturn is actually great as a 2D console. The 3D stuff was more or less shoehorned in / talked up once the Playstation started to get some hype.
If Sega had JUST released the 32X and got the full force of the company behind it, history might have played out quite differently.
This statement isn't universally true. There were some fantastic games that really used the hardware like Shadow Squadron or T-Mek. However there were also games that barely used it, but slapped the 32x logo on the game offering little to nothing of added effects or gameplay. Primal Rage was one of these. The only 32x anything used was a side scrolling background. The made game was the same 2D fighter from Genesis. Many of the SegaCD/32x games were this way too.
Again I was buying the games on the cheap, but if I'd paid full price for Primal Rage and only got that slight background effect, I would have been very disappointed.
Sure, it wasn't universally true, but consider if all the games that landed on Saturn, Sega CD and 32X instead landed just on the 32X. You would have had a lot more decent titles on the 32X to choose from, and the power of Sega promoting a single platform and vision would have probably brought even more studios and publishers onboard, because it would seem like a better investment.
Making games for a home console was crazy expensive back then, and unless companies were confident in the platform, they just wouldn't do it. Check out the difference in quality between Atari 2600 shovelware vs. early NES titles.
The problem with a platform with limited titles is it makes the stinkers really stick out. Look at the Jaguar -- very few "killer apps" to be remembered.
SegaCD was solving for a different problem that 32x didn't solve. Back then data storage was EXPENSIVE because it was in ROM ICs in cartridges. Each requiring expensive components and assembly. CDs solved the data storage problem making storage dirt cheap and very fast to reproduce.
The Genesis platform was a 5 year old console platform when 32x was released. The days of getting 8+ years out of a hardware platform were gone with the Famicom/NES. Technology had evolved quite a bit and the underlying Genesis platform was not up to competing with N64 which would arrive just 3 years later.
I don't disagree, but Genesis's issues were too many, even compared to Saturn. Genesis, even with SegaCD and 32x couldn't compete with Saturn, certainly not with N64 or PS1.