The Sega 32X Experience

The Sega cd was worth every cent, the 32X not so much. Major let down!

Great analogy. What a quality video.

if the 32X was released in 1993 it would have been different

Almost 30 years later, Sega can make up for their error in a way by releasing the NEPTUNE Mini- the scrapped Genesis/32X hybrid pictured in several game mags back in the day. It looked sleek & it could have 20-25 Genesis games, 15-20 32X games & a handful of Sega CD games. I'd pay $250-$300 for it easy. That would be a good intro before the Saturn & Dreamcast Minis to finish things off.

I really wish the 32X had achieved it's true potential when it originally released.

Enjoyable video and instructive thank you find me somebody that knows their history👍👍👍

Can anybody help me? Big advocate for the 32x love the gaming experience best game by far space Harrier and Star Wars.... have the purple and black case 32x without £50 logo.
Desperately trying to find a manufacturer of the protective casing not acrylic so I can put this amazing machine on display but cannot find a manufacturer of a casing for it?.... have been talking to lots of 32x owners and can find a collapsed 32x casing but not for my box can anybody guys me to a manufacturer that will produce one of these so that I can put this pride of place look forward to any information that any nerd like me can you give in assistance with my hunt.

I bought 32x about 4 months after it's initial release, and to say I was disappointed is quite the understatement. Funny thing is, when I bought it and got home, I sat there reading the back of the system box, and believing that combined with my Sega CD, I would never need to buy another system and I was on top of the world. Needless to say, I was truly devastated when things played out how they did. But I got over it and moved on to Saturn the next year. And I still always loved my Sega CD. The only Justice was, when the 32x was discontinued, and all the games were on clearance, I was able to buy the whole library and still have that complete 32x game library on my shelf today. 90% of the games I bought brand new on clearance for $10 or less, never even thinking that in the future they would have any resale value. Probably the best investment I ever made in the 90s, and it was completely unintentional. At the time I bought them though, I did feel great about getting so many games for next to nothing, because it offset the fact that I felt ripped off buying the system at full retail, not to mention full retail Doom and Star Wars. With tax, it was almost $300. But Doom was a good port. Keep up the good work.

Would've been nice if 3rd party companies like Capcom, SNK, Konami and Treasure took a stab with the 32X an RPG for this add on would've been nice.

I still can't believe how Sega did me so dirty and yet I still wish they was around. I had doom knuckles chaotix and Virtua fighter and Virtua and racing. Only to discover that Sega had prematurly stopped supporting the add on. Hell they prematurly killed the staturn. And Dreamcast too. I dont know
Why I still love Sega gueSS Its because of that lil blue bastard sonic. Sega really owes a lot to sonic they the only reason they still alive today is cause of sonic

Wish it had been a sega Neptune instead could have been better fine turned and i feel like more developers would have backed it for a bigger game library

Biggest piece of junk - still feel bad for conning my folks into buying one for me.

Any loyal Sega fan would’ve been consistently kicked in the balls every 2 years. The 32X stopped in 1996, the Saturn in 1998, and the DC in 2001. Any loyalty from the Genesis era was well and truly lost. Millennial & Gen X gamers do not forget what Sega did and may still not have forgiven them for the triple whammy gut punches they delivered.

I'm glad I never got swindled by sega. I got the Genesis shortly after release. Then the dreamcast after it got canceled. I bought a used saturn for 25 dollars years later but never played it much. I didnt know how many great imports were out for it in 2001.

32x was my introduction to Doom

The 32x was such a cool concept

If only 32x had better titles. It had the strength

Is there a good Sega 32x emulator out there on PC or Android?

The home-brew community should really go to town on expanding the library of the 32X. It would be MEGA fun!

Never even heard of the 32x. I went from sega genesis to sega cd-x and then the dreamcast later on.

Let's just dwell on how short that glimpse of Cosmic Carnage was at the end in the ad.

man, i think all sega fans thought the same, if sega can have more suppot on 32x and more games, it could been a cool device for sure, i believe ultimately it was using the same cpu in the saturm anyway, for sure they can use the hardware for much better games

Ah man seeing a new eternal champions game on the back of the sega saturn box and never hearing anything else was a good kick in the nuts from sega to me

I had this thing when it was new and I hated it...but then again I only had a handful of games, and two of them were Spider-Man: Web of Fire and Brutal: Paws of Fury.

When it first came out I wanted one so bad I talked my grandma into buying me one like 2 weeks after they came out. I was never regretful but disappointed with the support it got. I thought it was capable of so much more especially since I already had a Sega CD too. The 32xcd combo seemed like it had potential.

32x had potential.

Soothing video as always Sega lord X !

Any system that provides a solid port of SPACE HARRIER cant be all bad

I was that ONE idiot that bought a 32X but never actually bought any games for it so I never even played it - sigh-

Worst part is I have no idea what happened to it over the years of moving from apartments to house when I was younger and I’d imagine that my mom probably threw it out at some point

- double sigh-

Tom Kalinski worked against Sega Japan? Seems he didn't get it that the future belonged to the Saturn. What a sad end for Sega.

At least Nintendo didn’t screw their customers like Sega did with the 32X. They squeezed as much as they could out of the SNES instead of doing ridiculous add-ons.

I love these videos! I feel he's a bit of a masochistic though. He talks about how much he loves Sega, and lots of the videos are about how bad Sega screwed fans over or how they got kicked in the balls, but hey the Genesis was great, and every system after that had a few great games! J/K

You lived the life I wanted. I still wish I could own a 32x to this day. I do miss my genesis after it was stolen... But I watch your channel to relive my youth and live vicariously through your experiences. Thanks for the videos!

Looking back it was Sega America that killed Sega as a console maker

Sega of America's marketing was pretty much Michael Bay dressed as Poochy from The Simpsons.

Sega got a big leg up releasing the Genesis when the only other thing around was the NES, building a ton of goodwill. The SNES was too limited in processing power to be a Genesis-killer, but the SNES's color and sound did instantly make Genesis's library look very dated in comparison. Around the time Nintendo, Konami and Capcom were blowing us away with stuff like Super Metroid, Link to the Past, Super Castlevania IV, Axelay, and all but arcade-perfect renditions of Street Fighter II and Final Fight, Sega had a big marketing push for Chakan the Forever Man, a game that looked and played like a complete piece of junk next to its SNES contemporaries. When the SNES hit the shelves, Sega would have been wise to cut their losses and immediately pivot to something like the Neptune, getting another leg up on Nintendo the way they had with the Genesis. Instead they poured all their money into those ubiquitous annoying ads telling us how cool and edgy they were compared to Nintendo, as if we couldn't see for ourselves how increasingly dated their half decade old hardware was. They came across as greedy and like they thought we were stupid.

The first time I felt burned by Sega was with the Menacer, a cool peripheral that Sega stopped supporting as soon as it hit shelves. But they really crossed a line with the Sega CD, a $300 piece of hardware that I enjoyed precisely one game for, Lunar. Everything else seemed like either a slightly enhanced Genesis game, or FMV trash. It was more of a gimmick than a system, and once again it seemed like they gave up supporting it almost instantly. You really had to stretch yourself to have any loyalty or trust in Sega after that.

By 1994 upcoming systems like the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 were hot topics on message boards and in magazines, but I was so uncertain which current or future console would be worth the money, so bored by everything on the SNES, and felt so unforgivably burned by the Sega CD that I gave up on gaming for life, gave away my systems and games to friends and took a complete pass on the fifth generation of consoles. By the time 32X games started showing up in stores I was just an idle observer. But even I got the sense that Sega had no idea what they were doing and were competing against themselves, sporadically pumping out games for a variety of consoles in parallel, with no clear commitment to any one console.

I wanted a 32X for years, but they were always expensive as heck here in Brazil. Thank God this dream never became a reality. One less regret! 😂

Are you kidding me with those beginning quotes? Tom Kalinske was seldom wrong when it came to the gaming industry. However, it appears he and Sega bit off more than they could chew and it cost them dearly. Like you I supported the Sega 32X as well. Although I practically jumped ship when I got my Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation on September 9, 1995 (yes, at the same time). Why oh why didn't Sega give us full backwards compatibility with the Saturn? They were one of the first to embrace this idea with all of their Mark systems and the Genesis. They could have really struck a huge early blow to the PlayStation while keeping everything before it viable. For God sake the Saturn had a freaking Motorola 68k 16-bit processor inside. Can you imagine a Sega Genesis, Sega CD, 32X, and Saturn in one machine?! They could have even made upgraded Genesis carts to take advantage of the extended color palette.

Addendum- I don't know if it's safe to say that any PC of the time (that could run Doom) was significantly more powerful than the 32X. PC's definitely had the 32X beat in the RAM department and processor to processor comparison but...the 32X had two of them. I know the 32X could have very easily run Doom in full screen had ID more time and include the entire game with simplified geometry. I wonder if it could run the full PC version of the original Doom if given the proper development time and enough cart space? I think it just might be able to. The original Doom for PC did not require hardware acceleration and ran typically off of on-board video.

Sega should have stuck with their original plan, which was to release a device with a built-in SVP chip meaning they didn't need to put it into individual carts. Just dump that out for £50 max with Virtua Fighter as a launch title and I think people would have been interested. Going with a half-baked attempt to upgrade the Mega Drive/Genesis to a 32-bit machine was crazy, it would only have worked if Sega had fully committed to it and stated that the Genesis, with the upgrade, was going to remain their focus going forward. But everyone knew the Saturn was coming, so the 32X only ever looked like an attempt to squeeze a bit more juice out of the Genesis.

I remember Toys R Us having shelves full of $20 32X's. I didn't end up getting one til I was older and into collecting. I got it before prices skyrocketed. Sadly I sold it a few years ago when I needed some cash.

Love your channel a ton thanks for the content 👌🏽

sega should have been in one of the mortal kombat games cause they sure did a fatality to themselves lol

I'd rather have the sega cd than this

A friend of mine owned a 32X and Virtua Fighter.... man was I jealous. I was amazed by the visuals. In retrospect the Genesis was still a hot brand. Sega should have focused on releasing more high quality games for it like Nintendo did with the Super NES late in it’s lifespan. The additional equity may have helped convince people to look into the Saturn rather than take the wait and see approach.

If the 32X technology was something that came built into the Sega CD from the get go, it would be a different story. People wouldn't have to shell out for two extra peripherals. And it would allow the Genesis to better compete with the latter output of the SNES and even the upcoming PlayStation, meaning Sega could spend more time improving the Saturn instead of rushing it to market.

32x was being sold all it's existence in my country for $360 and each game was $100 to $120 , so it was a nope for me.

God, those quotes by Kalinske in the beginning are chilling to read, even all these years later. The failure of the 32x reminds me of the failure of the PC Engine SuperGrafx. At least not as embarassing as the Virtual Boy.

Genesis 32X was for Canada and u.s.a