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[Dash Kappei]

what did he do? man I miss Next gen magazine, it was the best games journalism bar none.

Ehmmm, just subscribe to Edge? It's dirty cheap in digital form

 

[east of eastside]

herzogzwei and I disagreed about the fact that all of this Sega hardware that failed was just a distraction from the fact that Sega was destined to drop out against giants like Microsoft and Sony that dwarfed a small corp like Sega.

If 32X, Nomad, and Neptune hadn't existed and Saturn hadn't been bad hardware and mismanaged, Sega would have long dropped out by now in any case.

 

[TheSeks]

Wow, that "Model 3" hardware looks downright primitive in comparison to the Playstation. Sure it, looks good and probably has more polygons going on, but it looks like Daytona USA which itself wasn't too much of a looker in 1995.

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

Ehmmm, just subscribe to Edge? It's dirty cheap in digital form

it's not the same feeling anymore. I guess it's mostly nostalgia talking. you know, back in junior high school/high school talking with friends over lunch break about the latest arcades or games that are out wasting all yuor money playing arcades, etc.

 

[Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!]

it's not the same feeling anymore. I guess it's mostly nostalgia talking. you know, back in junior high school/high school talking with friends over lunch break about the latest arcades or games that are out wasting all yuor money playing arcades, etc.

IDK, I like the fact that Next Gen started around the time the PS1 and Saturn were coming out and ended right as the generation after that started (the last issue was the Xbox launch issue I think). It captures that era so nicely.

 

[kswiston]

Wow, that "Model 3" hardware looks downright primitive in comparison to the Playstation. Sure it, looks good and probably has more polygons going on, but it looks like Daytona USA which itself wasn't too much of a looker in 1995.

Those shots are from the Model 2 board. Daytona USA for arcades was first released in 1993.

The Model 3 arcade board came out in 1996 and hosted Virtua Fighter 3, Sega Bass Fishing, Sega Rally 2, and other games that eventually came to Dreamcast. They were well beyond PS1 levels.

Also, if you go back, 1994-1995 era PS1 games were pretty rough.

 

[Agent X]

The Nomad had several problems, really. First, as you say, it got absolutely atrocious battery life, to the point where it's barely "portable". But almost as importantly, second, it released in 1995, exactly that same point that Sega of Japan was significantly scaling back its Genesis support. As a result, it never quite could catch that Genesis wave; it released too late. It released as the system faded, not when it was at its peak. And last, the games it could play were Genesis games, which weren't designed for portable systems. The difference does matter, particularly back then when so many Genesis games had no saving or anything; the same was true on the GG, all too often, but the games weren't as long in general.

Between those three problems, I just don't think that releasing it made much sense, particularly if it was released instead of a better actual handheld, which it might have been. I have no confidence that Sega could have released what they should have -- that is, something with much better battery life -- but really, that's what they needed. That, and to not abandon the handheld market. The GG had done alright, I think that ditching handhelds was probably a mistake.

Good points about the Nomad. I have a soft spot in my heart for the system (and I own 2 of them), but yeah, in retrospect it might've been better to release a smaller Game Gear with a better LCD and improved battery life. It wouldn't be as powerful or versatile, but like you said, it might have been much better suited as a portable to compete against the aging Game Boy (which was starting to weaken around that time--this was before Pokemon revitalized it).

I will say that a lot of Genesis games do make great portable games. I've got the Sega Genesis Collection on PSP, and most of the games look terrific. The thing with the Nomad is that you've got a big, bulky system with big, bulky cartridges, and the rather blurry LCD isn't quite up to the task of expressing the full fidelity of Genesis graphics. Now you can get compilation packs on modern portables, or even licensed portable Genesis clones with a collection of games built in, that do a great job with those games. (As an aside, NEC successfully addressed a couple of those problems with the TurboExpress a few years earlier, but that machine had a few issues of its own as well.)

Wow, that "Model 3" hardware looks downright primitive in comparison to the Playstation. Sure it, looks good and probably has more polygons going on, but it looks like Daytona USA which itself wasn't too much of a looker in 1995.

You're joking, right?

 

[IMACOMPUTA]

HerzogZwei wasn't banned for the magazine "scans" was he?

Is it allowed if they're really old like these?

 

[Version 3.0]

IDK, I like the fact that Next Gen started around the time the PS1 and Saturn were coming out and ended right as the generation after that started (the last issue was the Xbox launch issue I think). It captures that era so nicely.

Actually, that was the 2nd-to-last issue; the last one covered the US Gamecube launch lineup (not the actual launch, which occurred after print, as did the Xbox launch). The magazine really wasn't what it once was by then, in my opinion. It might've been for the best that it retired.

 

[MrCunningham]

However, it's not really true that Sega of Japan never supported the 32X at all. The idea for another Genesis addon can be traced to Japan every bit as much as it can the US -- the idea came from there first, as a basic more-colors addon, that Sega of America added to. It ended up as a kind of compromise system, not powerful enough for Sega of America, but too expensive to be an easy sale...

The inability to produce additional colours on the Sega CD was a fault of the Genesis hardware, and not the Sega CD itself. Even if the Sega CD could produce additional colours, it would still be limited by the Sega Genesis's own video display processor. Which was in control of outputting all the video of the Sega CD.

Sega did solve this with the 32x crudely, by using an additional external wire that ran from the Sega Genesis A/V out to an A/V in connection on the 32x itself. This basically reversed the order of the hardware, and allowed the 32x to be in control of the video out signal through its own display processor. Which was capable of displaying a larger array of colours.

This was a convoluted way of doing things, to be honest. But it was the only way they could get a Sega Genesis add-on to display more colours on a TV screen.

The 32x is a really odd piece of hardware, because it has all the necessary components needed to be its own independent system. It has two Hitachi processors (Like the Sega Saturn). a dedicated sound chip, a video display processor, a cartridge slot, an external power supply and its own A/V out. If Sega removed the genesis cartridge connector and added two controller ports, the Sega 32x could be a stand alone system. And probably could have performed better without the extra layer of complexity from the Sega Genesis.

But of course releasing the Sega 32x as a standalone cartridge based system right along side the Sega Saturn, would've even been a stupider idea than releasing an add on for the Genesis.

They also did very little with the scaling and rotation powers of the Sega CD -- the few Japanese games they published that did use it like Afterburner III or F1: Beyond the Limit were externally developed in Japan. And this coming from Sega, the scaling-sprites-game arcade masters. Basically, Sega of Japan seems to have mostly released stuff with lots of (often anime) FMV on it on Sega CD, and ports of Japanese computer games, etc... early-90s-disc-system stuff, quite different from the library on the Genesis and 32X. Some games that were supposed to be major Sega of Japan titles for the Sega CD, like Phantasy Star IV and the game that became Outrun 2019, ended up on the Genesis, too.

Sega's own teams made poor use of that hardware. The only developers that ever took advantage of it were the British developer Core, and to a lesser extent Sega's USA teams with the Batman games. Core made great use of it with games like Soul Star, BC Racers, Jaguar (racing game), Thunderhawk and a few other titles I can't remember. Soul Star alone really shows how incredible the scaling and rotation hardware on the Sega CD could have been. At times Soul Star almost looked comparable to Galaxy Force II which ran on Sega's Y arcade board.

I was very disappointed that Sega never ported any of their scaling hardware arcade games to the Sega CD back then.

 

[Hatten]

Sega did solve this with the 32x crudely, by using an additional external wire that ran from the Sega Genesis A/V out to an A/V in connection on the 32x itself. This basically reversed the order of the hardware, and allowed the 32x to be in control of the video out signal through its own display processor. Which was capable of displaying a larger array of colours.

This was a convoluted way of doing things, to be honest. But it was the only way they could get a Sega Genesis add-on to display more colours on a TV screen.

The 32x is a really odd piece of hardware, because it has all the necessary components needed to be its own independent system. It has two Hitachi processors (Like the Sega Saturn). a dedicated sound chip, a video display processor, a cartridge slot, an external power supply and its own A/V out. If Sega removed the genesis cartridge connector and added two controller ports, the Sega 32x could be a stand alone system. And probably could have performed better without the extra layer of complexity from the Sega Genesis. .

That's something I could never understand: why two addon with better specs than the original system were engineered to be little more than accessories for the Genesis to use?

At the time the problem was obvious: the Genesis had been made to compete against the NES and TG16, NOT the Snes. Sega couldn't throw it away because gamers would kill them, so they launch these addons instead. In its core it's pure marketing, the Genesis had hardware bottlenecks that couldn't be solved but because you can't tell people to throw their consoles away you sell them a new console disguised as an accessory.

The problem is that at some point the "accessory" part became real, and both the SegaCD and 32X had to actually use the Genesis hardware, instead of say using it just for controllers or maybe the 68000 of the Genesis for audio like the Saturn did (and that's a long shot).

The SegaCD should have done this from the start: just use the faster 68000 of the unit with a kickass VDP, let the Genesis handle I/O and use the slot for memory carts. So gamers get a great system and think they are getting more from their old Genesis, everybody happy.

Instead we got a CD thingy with Genesis ports full of godawful FMVs and a mushroom that if you didn't connect all the cables the right way would only display the backgrounds of the game.

 

[M3d10n]

That's something I could never understand: why two addon with better specs than the original system were engineered to be little more than accessories for the Genesis to use?

At the time the problem was obvious: the Genesis had been made to compete against the NES and TG16, NOT the Snes. Sega couldn't throw it away because gamers would kill them, so they launch these addons instead. In its core it's pure marketing, the Genesis had hardware bottlenecks that couldn't be solved but because you can't tell people to throw their consoles away you sell them a new console disguised as an accessory.

The problem is that at some point the "accessory" part became real, and both the SegaCD and 32X had to actually use the Genesis hardware, instead of say using it just for controllers or maybe the 68000 of the Genesis for audio like the Saturn did (and that's a long shot).

The SegaCD should have done this from the start: just use the faster 68000 of the unit with a kickass VDP, let the Genesis handle I/O and use the slot for memory carts. So gamers get a great system and think they are getting more from their old Genesis, everybody happy.

Instead we got a CD thingy with Genesis ports full of godawful FMVs and a mushroom that if you didn't connect all the cables the right way would only display the backgrounds of the game.

You could say the Sega CD and 32X were victims of their era. Using today's knowledge, the most sane decision would be launch the Sega CD (which came earlier) as a stand alone console that was backwards compatible with genesis games.

But again, back then technology was moving way, way too fast in console space and mid-gen upgrades were probably never going to work and investing in making the most our of the Genesis without diluting focus with the add-ons could have been a better choice.

 

[SquiddyCracker]

Sega did so bad
I wonder if they'd still be around today if they had paced themselves with the release of new hardware.

For an example, after the Megadrive, they'd wait until the N64 generation to release a beefed up Saturn (with CD-roms) and profit from the hype of CDROM that Playstation took advantage of. Then they could have positioned their Dreamcast as a proper PS2 competitor and alternative, and able to hold up against the Gamecube and X-box - with its revolutionary online infrastructure and forward thinking such as the VMU.

 

[east of eastside]

Sega did so bad
I wonder if they'd still be around today if they had paced themselves with the release of new hardware.

No. The market changed on Sega and there was nothing they could have done differently to avoid their fate.

 

[Hatten]

You could say the Sega CD and 32X were victims of their era. Using today's knowledge, the most sane decision would be launch the Sega CD (which came earlier) as a stand alone console that was backwards compatible with genesis games.

No, terrible, you would have the same situation than with the Saturn prototype that had to have a Genesis built-in to run the games and because of that was going to be even more expensive than the final version. Besides imagine if after just 2 years Sega even when it was winning big-time with the Genesis said it was over and you had to buy an entirely new console?

The situation I propose is simpler: the SegaCD is a new console but sold as an upgrade, and when you want to play Genesis games you just boot to the Genesis. That way you don't have to pay for the hardware of both consoles into one, you just buy the new "upgrade" and have both, or use just a Genesis which would still be supported as the "cheap" option (like Nintendo kept the SNES going for years after the N64 launched)

And technology was glacial back then, it took forever for decent 3D graphics to be affordable, a NeoGeo was literally the Ferrari of consoles because it was not only really goddamn expensive to buy but also expensive to own since the games cost more than a new Genesis or Snes (console! not carts)

 

[Zizbuka]

Ehmmm, just subscribe to Edge? It's dirty cheap in digital form

How about US readers? I used to pick up Edge at the local B&N, really enjoyed reading it. Would subscribe if it's not overpriced, especially with no postage involved. I also used to pick up Total PC Gaming from the UK.

I miss those mage....................

 

[MrCunningham]

The problem is that at some point the "accessory" part became real, and both the SegaCD and 32X had to actually use the Genesis hardware, instead of say using it just for controllers or maybe the 68000 of the Genesis for audio like the Saturn did (and that's a long shot).

The SegaCD should have done this from the start: just use the faster 68000 of the unit with a kickass VDP, let the Genesis handle I/O and use the slot for memory carts. So gamers get a great system and think they are getting more from their old Genesis, everybody happy.

Instead we got a CD thingy with Genesis ports full of godawful FMVs and a mushroom that if you didn't connect all the cables the right way would only display the backgrounds of the game.

yeah, I agree with that. the Sega CD could've been a decent piece of hardware if it was capable of outputting video on its own without the need for the Sega Genesis. But instead the performance was gimped by the Genesis hardware. As far as I know, the Sega Genesis more of less treated the Sega CD like a cartridge. The Sega CD would pre-process data through its 12.5-MHz 68000 and hand it off to the slower 7.67 MHz 68000 in the Genesis to be displayed on the TV. The hand off between these two processors apparently caused a decrease in performance for Sega CD 68000, making it a very inefficient design.

If the Sega CD performance wasn't bottlenecked by the Sega Genesis, it could've been closer to the Neo Geo CD in performance with superior hardware scaling and rotation. Though the Neo-Geo CD would've still been a better 2D sprite machine, since it contained roughly 7MBs of RAM total with 4MB's dedicated to video. While the Sega CD would've had about 1.5MB's of ram with 512kB dedicated to system/ video.

In comparison, the Sony Playstation had roughly 4MB's of RAM with 1MB dedicated to video. The Saturn had something like 5MB's of RAM split up into different pools for different video processors. But could be expanded with a 1MB or 4MB RAM cartridge for Neo-Geo and Capcom arcade ports.

But anyway, the Sega CD could've been a really decent arcade porting machine. Capable of running quite a few of Sega's arcade scaling sprite games. But it wasn't meant to be. Sega was in 3RD place in sales in Japan, lagging behind the PC Engine, they Made the Sega CD to Compete with the PC Engine CD. Sega of America had no idea what to do with the add on, so they started producing FMV games in hopes that it could generate some buzz as being unique. Most of their FMV attempts were cheesy and shallow experiences that got mediocre responses.

I still love my Sega CD though, and it has a few gems that are worth owning. But they could've done much more with it. Even as it was, it could still do some nice things with sprite scaling and rotation. But very few developers took advantage of that.