Support NeoGAF

[Jeffahn]

Sorry if this has been posted before.

Well, it's been roughly a decade since the release of the magic mushroom and I thought a small retrospective might be in order.

I found this movie of the 32X Scavenger demo which I remember reading about (and gwaking at) in an old 'Sega Saturn' UK mag (the official one). The movie is a capture from a tape cassette apparently retreived from a waste paper basket.

http://www.scene.org/file.php?file=...rinx_sega32x_demotape_1995-hirmu.wmv&fileinfo

The demo is 46 meg and about 7 mins long, though the last minute or so is just 'blank tape'. For 1995, everything is remarkably solid and the number of effects used in combination is quite astonishing. Bear in mind that this was at the start of 32X development.

The first section was done by Zyrinx and deomonstrates a number of texture and lighting effects, as well as sprite handling/fill-rate demo. Zyrinx made Red Zone and Subterrania for the Genesis, and would go on to make Scorcher for the Saturn (perhaps the Saturn's most under-rated game).

The second section is Lemon's voxel-based demo which would eventually become the much-loved (for those who played it) Amok on the Saturn.

There were some other Scavenger demos for both the 32X and Saturn (I think). I know there was the 32X X-men demo, which some say used RDAT, whcih made it the probable forerunner of Terminus (unreleased for the Saturn) and Messiah.

I would love to see any of this stuff running on the actual hardware or under emulation.

Thoughts?

 

[Argyle]

From my recollection, Scorcher and Amok were kinda crappy games. Very pretty and cool technology, though...

 

[Orange]

Kind of tragic, what the 32X did to sega. Who's idea was this? SOA or SOJ?

Cool seeing these demos pop up though. Thanks.

 

[xsarien]

Kind of tragic, what the 32X did to sega. Who's idea was this? SOA or SOJ?

Cool seeing these demos pop up though. Thanks.

The 32X came out of SOA, at least as far as I know the sequence of events.

 

[Koshiro]

Scorcher for the Saturn (perhaps the Saturn's most under-rated game).

Are you on crack? Visually it looked good but that was because it was prerendered backgrounds or some crap, while the riders looked pathetic put against them. The gameplay was really.. not good. I have it sitting right here, this isn't just random negativity.

 

[madara]

Lets not, first time was hard enough, eh? :lol

 

[Jeffahn]

Are you on crack? Visually it looked good but that was because it was prerendered backgrounds or some crap, while the riders looked pathetic put against them. The gameplay was really.. not good. I have it sitting right here, this isn't just random negativity.

No, it just takes a massive amount of skill to play. Understanding the physics of a rocket powered marble is just part of it. Experiment with the racing perspectives (I prefer 1st, whilst I know people who are better than me and only use 3rd) and learn to play with the 'cross-thumb' technique; for using A, B and C in different combinations. You need to be able to do this to race properly. Then it's mostly just a matter of finding your way through the courses; overcoming the abstacles and finishing in 1st place on all the tracks. Honestly, something like the entire Wipeout series is piss compared to this game, and I honestly hesitate to lump it in the same 'futuristic racing' genre -I prefer to call it an arcade-puzzle racer, as odd as it sounds. Much more challenging and ultimately unfathomably more rewarding than anything else it may have been compared to. And then once you've done all that you go start on your stunt career: super jumps, outrunnimg the graphics engine and playing hopscotch.

 

[Dave Long]

I dug the 32X. Bought one at launch in fact. I let my games for it dwindle away as trade-ins but I've considered rebuilding the collection. Star Wars Arcade, Virtua Racing, Zaxxon, Knuckles Chaotix, Shadow Squadron and Mortal Kombat II were well worth the price for me. It's a bummer that they pretty much ignored it in favor of Saturn, but Saturn was so satisfying that I didn't mind too much.

 

[Jeffahn]

After a little more digging I realised that I was somewhat wrong about the X-men game and Terminus.

Update:

"My interest in character systems started more than four years ago, when I was working at Scavenger, a now-defunct development studio. I was assigned to develop a "next-generation" X-Men game for the Sega Saturn. Sega wanted motion-captured characters and chose to use pre-rendered sprites to represent them. I observed the planning of the motion-capture sessions, examined the raw mo-cap data that these sessions generated, saw it applied to high-resolution characters on SGIs, and then received the frames which I was to integrate into the game.

The results were disappointing. The motion-capture data, which could have driven characters at 60 frames per second (FPS), was reduced to little bursts of looping animation running at12 to 15 FPS, and could only be seen from four angles at most. The characters were reduced to only 80 to 100 pixels high, and still I still had problems fitting them in memory. The models we spent weeks creating came out as fuzzy, blurry sprites.

Around that time, two new modelers, Darran and Mike, were hired for my team (and the three of us still work together at Shiny). These two talented modelers wanted to create the best-looking characters possible, but we didn’t know how to justify the time spent on modeling super-sharp characters when the resulting sprites came out looking average at best.

Eventually, Sega Software stopped developing first-party games and X-Men was canned. Soon thereafter we were asked to develop our own game. That provided me with the incentive to figure out how to represent characters in a game better. We knew we wanted at least ten or more characters on the screen simultaneously, but all the low-resolution polygonal characters we had seen just didn’t cut it. So I decided to keep pursuing a solution based on what I had been working on for X-Men, hoping that I’d come up with something that would eventually yield better results.

At first I flirted with a voxel-like solution, and developed a character system which was shown at E3 in 1996 in a game called Terminus. This system allowed a player to see characters from any angle rotating around one axis, which solved a basic problem inherent to sprite-based systems. Still, you couldn’t see the character from any angle, and while everybody liked the look of the "sprite from any angle" solution, many people wanted to get a closer look at the characters’ faces. This caused the whole voxel idea to fall apart. Any attempt to zoom in on characters made the lack of detail in the voxel routine obvious to people, and the computation time shot up (just try to get a character close-up in West-wood’s Blade Runner and you’ll see what I mean). I tried a million different ways to fix the detail problem, but I was never satisfied. The other problem with a voxel-based engine was the absence of a real-time skeletal deformation system. Rotating every visible point on the surface of a character in relation to a bone beneath the surface was not a viable solution, so we had to pre-store frames and again, as in X-Men, cut down in the playback speed and resolution. At that point I was ready to try a different solution.

When my team and I were hired by Shiny a little less than two-and-a-half years ago, I had done the prototype of a new character system after leaving Scavenger. Shiny was really excited about it and I continued to develop the system for the game that would eventually become Messiah. Let’s look at that system and examine the solutions I came up with."

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19990924/messiah_printer.htm

 

[Argyle]

I dug the 32X. Bought one at launch in fact. I let my games for it dwindle away as trade-ins but I've considered rebuilding the collection. Star Wars Arcade, Virtua Racing, Zaxxon, Knuckles Chaotix, Shadow Squadron and Mortal Kombat II were well worth the price for me. It's a bummer that they pretty much ignored it in favor of Saturn, but Saturn was so satisfying that I didn't mind too much.

Yeah, as bad as the 32X was, I still maintain it had more worthwhile games than say, the Atari Jaguar

I got mine for Space Harrier and After Burner, which were nice arcade ports. Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, and Shadow Squadron were nice too...

 

[COCKLES]

32X would have been great if it happend 2-3 years earlier. But at the same time as Saturn...it was kinda doom. Still I was damn excited at the prospect of playing DOOM on a console at the time...until I got a job and was able to buy my first PC - SX-33 - which ran Doom smooth as butter!

 

[Seth C]

The fog is blinding!

But seriously, I know one thing that isn't being done in hardware by the 32X...and it's that music.

 

[AstroLad]

Yeah, as bad as the 32X was, I still maintain it had more worthwhile games than say, the Atari Jaguar

I got mine for Space Harrier and After Burner, which were nice arcade ports. Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, and Shadow Squadron were nice too...

Hmmm... I dunno, that's a tough one. Jaguar had AvP, Cannon Fodder, Power Drive Rally, Raiden, Rayman, Tempest 2000, and a couple others. It's close, but you're still probably right.

 

[neptunes]

They should have released the 32x built in, as a new genesis revision.

Neptune ;_:

 

[Jeffahn]

The fog is blinding!

But seriously, I know one thing that isn't being done in hardware by the 32X...and it's that music.

It's the simplest kind of graphic 'fog' and it's basically just an arbitirary way of regulating on-screen geometry to make sure it doesn't choke the engine. I say arbitrary because some of the time it's clearly preventing the display of geometry which wouldn't choke the engine.

Amok had some nice exponential fog on the underwater sections:

I don't know what build this screenshot is from but I'm certain the sharks were 3D in the final version.

Edit: typos.

 

[Seth C]

Jeffahn: I'm just giving the old 32X a hard time. Seriously, I never saw fog like that in any 32X game and I had one at launch.

 

[Jeffahn]

Actually, from what I understand, the ORIGINAL American design of the 32x was much more powerful, putting it on par with the Saturn. It also, apparently, had its own sound chip, initially, designed to play higher resolution samples and produce more voices. The problem was supposedly Sega of Japan wanting to drop the production costs to make the unit profitable to sell, thus castrating the original device into the sad exercise of market rape the actual 32x became.

It turned out a rather strange beast in the end, with the Genesis still doing some of the graphics (like bg's). They were even planning on making 32XCD games, but I don't think any were ever released.

Here's a good rundown of the 32X stuff:

http://www.eidolons-inn.net/segabase/SegaBase-32XGames.html

 

[Dave Long]

There are about five 32X CD games and I think all of them are of the FMV variety unfortunately.

 

[Jeffahn]

I wished they'd made a 32XCD version of Eternal Champions, or better still, a Saturn rev. That game had so much style, all it needed was time to evolve.

 

[Hotsuma]

The fog is blinding!

But seriously, I know one thing that isn't being done in hardware by the 32X...and it's that music.

I know Yuzo Koshiro got a lot out of the Z-80 (?) for the SOR series, but Knuckles Chaotix couldn't have been all Z-80, could it?

 

[Aika'svyse]

Doom 32X, had some good times with that and WWF Arcade game as well as BC racers :lol

 

[_Angelus_]

Those days were pretty sweet. Because I was so burned outon 16 bit platform side scrollers that were everywhere. The arrival of the first 32 bit systems such as the Jaguar,with games like with CyberMorph,Doom,AVP,Trevur MCFur and the Crescent Galaxy,Tempest 2000 were pretty inspiring. The 32X wasn't too shabby either,the price was stee but you definately got a real bang with the 3D games. I had allot of fun with favorites such as Metal Head,Knuckles Chaotic,Star Wars,Virtua Racing Deluxe,Kolabri,there was also a wannabe StarFox game on the system that played out more along like Star Raiders,damn I forget its name. Anyways yeah those system bombed,people were burned because both those systems didn't last long. But if you could afforfd it,the 3D,even though it was early barebones stuff still was something else.

To me both systems were a preview of what was to come,and I enjoyed them for what they were so I had no regrets. Plus the fact that the 32bit PSX and Saturn era was still some 12-16 months off made the waiting not nearly as bad. Both the Jag and 32X proved to be a really neat 3D preview in games while we all made the transition from 2 to 3D with that era. I really enjoyed both systems allot. I won't even go into the3DO because my gaming funds were both spent on the Jag. and 32X,but I had a friend who owned one and I played some sweet games on that machine as well. Road Rash and Wing Comander were really something else back then.

Oddly enough I miss those days. the arrival of 3D gaming was so damn exciting next to what is happening today. Those days were like a revolutiion because they offered a whole new way to play the games,3D arrived on the Jag.,32X,and 3DO system,and it was only going to get better with the PlayStation,Saturn,and crazy Ultra 64 hype back then.

Those days were pretty awesome. There was also no internet for me,no trolls to put up with,no game spoilers to read through,no horrible sales charts to bypass as well. My free time was spent with playing the games and enjoying every minute of them. Scooping up the latest issues of GameFan and EGM also boosted my enjoyment of gaming back then,they were just as excited about the 3D revolutiion as I was.

 

[GhaleonEB]

From my recollection, Scorcher and Amok were kinda crappy games. Very pretty and cool technology, though...

I freaking love AMOK - best "blow shit up" game ever, even with the limited draw distance. Scorcher was more flawed, but the track design was wicked and the music simply intense.

 

[Jeffahn]

I freaking love AMOK - best "blow shit up" game ever, even with the limited draw distance. Scorcher was more flawed, but the track design was wicked and the music simply intense.

Why do you say Scorcher is flawed? I'd like to know if how long anyone bashing the game spent trying to learn it, or if they even finished it. Zyrinx spent ages on the spooling graphics engine, the PCM soundtrack and, especially, the physics. You can't treat the game like Wipeout clone. The Scorcher concept predates the Wipeout from the game was still know as Vertigo. The concept is fundamentally different. You are racing a 'bike' inside a spherical force field (the green rings) and your bike therefore controls like marble (do they have marbles in America?) with a vectoring thrust ability. The courses are primarily designed as obstacle courses (except for the first track, which is primarily a speed test) and it does take a while to grasp how you are meant to approach them. You need to be able to make full use of the controls to play the game properly; using the the yaw (L & R triggers) in combination with the boost, accelerator and jump functions. It's not simply a matter of finding the best 'racing line' because you won't have the perfect 'racing line' until you've perfected the game, and until then you're subject to too many other variables (obstacles, other 'bikes' etc.). you need to ables to make split second decisions based on on your current predicament. Do you jump over the bike you're hurting towards, or try to skirt a round it? What about the obstacles you see in the distance, if you jump now then where will you be landing? Is it possible to save time on the loop? Yes, but it'll take ages to perfect. Try stalling about a third of the way up the loop then drop and wait to twist as you descend before boosting at just the fight moment to land just past the exit. So many possibilities. All you have to do is experiment.