Blue Swirl wrote:

retroking1981 wrote:

I've read about this over the years, it's absolutely bonkers when you think about it.

Think about this... the 32X came out AFTER the Saturn in Japan. Madness.

I didn't realise that, must have seemed bizarre to Japanese gamers at the time.

Playing the historical What If game, maybe if there'd been no 32X, a clearer vision with the Saturn coupled with a $299 price tag, we might still have SEGA hardware today.

Maybe.

The Mega Drive barely registered in Japan, so it's not a complete surprise the 32X released late there.

I have sympathy with Sega over the price comparison between Saturn and Playstation. In the US the Saturn was $399 with Virtua Fighter and inbuilt memory. The PS was $299, but a game and memory card would add about $70-80 perhaps.

I've read and watched too much about Sega's fall, and it's depressing, and pretty obvious in hindsight where they went wrong, but you can also understand some of the decisions.

They did pretty much everything right with Dreamcast though, just couldn't match Sony's manipulation of PS2's supposed abilities.

And yes. I'm still bitter

Sorry Davy, phone wouldn't let me quote and comment.

I just wanted to say it's a lovely collection.

Blue Swirl wrote:

davyK wrote:

Those Frankenstein MD add-ons were money pits into which Sega pissed themselves whilst indulging in managerial infighting.

Yeah. IIRC, the 32X was Sega of America's baby, while the Saturn project was Sega of Japan's. A classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing. Neither side would back down so they ended up doing both. I also remember reading another story that the innards for the Saturn were decided by a high-up in Sega of Japan during a game of golf with a hardware manufacturing exec. The hardware division at Sega basically got told "this is what's going to be inside, make it work, bitches". Possibly apocryphal, but sounds like a plausible explanation for the Saturn's infamously bat-shit insane architecture.

I saw another story where sega of America were first approached by silicon graphics to power their next console. Sega Japan hardware guys dissed the processor and then again after silicon graphics improved their chip based on criticism, were dissed again. They realised they were getting the run around and then made the innards for the n64 (possibly at the suggestion of sega America head honcho)

mistercrayon wrote:

That super play mag bonus "retro gamer" had some real shade on mega drive this month. Apparently the mega drive couldn't do a game gear "super game boy" because the mega drive could only display 512 colours compared to the game gear's 4000 odd.

The Mega Drive did only have a colour palette of 512 colours (displaying 64 at once iirc). No idea if that's true of Game Gear though, doesn't sound right to me.

Watching a R.O.B video now.  Ridiculous yet amazing curio.

Gamegear was a handheld master system running at lower resolution and clockspeed.
So yeah, palette and colors displayed were probably the same as that's dictated by the hw.

Blue Swirl wrote:

Yup. Like the 32X, really. It had the best console version of DOOM, but did that justify the add-on?

Speaking of Doom...

https://youtu.be/784MUbDoLjQ

Trufax: I used the shotgun sound for my A-level media film after the replica handgun we borrowed refused to fire in the actual take (a scene where I got shot in the head and bundled in the trunk of a car, high angle shot from the roof of a handily parked caravan).  So it was DOOMBOOM, bundle, cut to black with boot slam, True Playaz Anthem by DJ Hype and credits.

optimark_prime wrote:

The Mega Drive barely registered in Japan, so it's not a complete surprise the 32X released late there.

Hold the phone, this is news to me. I thought the general gist of the situation in Japan was Mega Drive monstered it early on, but SNES played the long game, and by the time the next generation came out, SNES was the bigger seller, but only fractionally. I know that the Master System equivalents didn't do super well in Japan, though. Wasn't it also mostly PlayStation vs Saturn (with the former winning by a country mile), as the Japanese weren't that enthralled with the N64?

regmcfly wrote:

Mega Drive was biggest in USA I thought, due to the In Yo Face attitude of the 90s ad team.

That was my understanding of the US situation, too.

A couple of random facts:

PS4 still hasn't outsold the N64 in Japan and it's been out for close to 4 years. By 2000 the N64 wasn't selling much over there so their sell rate isn't a million miles apart. Of course it will beat it but I think it's a good example of how much the Japanese market has moved away from home consoles.

There was a year or two between 1987-89 where the PC Engine was Japan's top selling console, beating out the ageing Famicom before the arrival of the SFC.

The Saturn led the PlayStation for quite some time in Japan, it had a really strong start. The PlayStation was actually a slow burner, it didn't really explode on a global scale until 1997. N64s lack of an arcade fighter in an era when they meant so much damaged it quite significantly in Japan.

Here's that PlayStation 1997 explosion:

MS VS NES in France:

Master System France
1988: 10.000
1989: 29.000
1990: 140.000
1991: 375.000
1992: 235.000
1993: 181.000

Total: 970.000


NES France
1988: 33.000
1989: 89.000
1990: 327.000
1991: 697.000
1992: 436.000
1993: 206.000

Total: 1.788.000

http://www.mastersystem-france.com/t...e-20-ans-apres

Good stuff from Mr. R. King, there.

retroking1981 wrote:

This data also finishes in 96, the SNES had a much longer tail.

Probably because the SNES was the SNES, while the Mega Drive was... a thousand bits of hardware. That and Nintendo had to release something while they got the N64 ready.

Blue Swirl wrote:

retroking1981 wrote:

N64s lack of an arcade fighter in an era when they meant so much damaged it quite significantly in Japan.

Thought it was more to do with lack of Final Fantasy, and Japan being slower to take to 3D games than the West?

The FF blow was a few years into the gen, I was referring more to the early years when Tekken and VF were the huge games on PS/Sat.