Just how powerful was the 32x?

[404NotFound]

I know this is an entirely out of left-field retorical question about Sega, but over the last few days i've been intrigued by the whole... Genesis "system." The Sega CD, 32x, and the console itself.

By pure specs, a Genesis with SegaCD/32x attached would have at it's disposal:

Genesis: Motorola 68000 7.67 MHz in NTSC consoles plus a Zilog Z80 running at 3.58 MHz in NTSC consoles
32xProcessor: Twin Hitachi (SH2) 32 bit RISC processors with a clock speed of 23 MHZ 40 MIPS
SegaCD processor:12.5-MHz 16-bit Motorola 68000 processor.


That, to me anyway, seems to be quite a chunk of processing power. Then i stumbled across this site:
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=10686

I know it's just a tech demo, but it got me to thinking.... Just how powerful would such a trio of systems be? Could something like this ever rival say.... a PSX? (SegaCD for storage, 32X for full screen FMVs, 32x for 3D processing)

I'm not quite sure it would be impossible to have a fairly equivalent game of say... FFVII on the 32x.

Any thoughs?

[Nick]

The whole rig couldn't match a PSX, nowhere even close. The color lpalate is the biggest limitation. That's why those Sega CD FMV games look like ass.

You might, with a whole lot of finesse, be able to pull a somewhat grainy version of Turok out of the set of machines, but that'd be kind of pushing it.

[IiLuSiv]

I've had the same fascination myself.

While I regard your opinion Nick, I am wondering what someone who has actually programmed for the system has to say.

I am not that well versed in how processors work but for the era, am I correct to say the Jaguar was 26 mhz, and this combo has about 42 mhz at its disposal, this shows its a bit potent?

Of course, a lot more factors come into play, I imagine.

I wonder what would have come into play if the hardware had been taken advantage of? Most games on cd with a ram cart always plugged into the 32x and new 3d controllers released?

[Prophet][]

Well, I have to design processors at uni, mainly RISC MIPS32 and 68000 and similar ones for specific applications. According to 404, the SH2 was a similar MIPS chip. Now you can make thousands of variations and not just in terms of speed, but in the instruction set, pipelines, single or multi cycle, CPI etc. It jues depends what you are using it for and the limitations you put on it. I could say design 2 RISC processors both that are 20MHz, but I could make one of these 4 times faster, even though they have the same clock speed.

So in short, you can't really tell which is better unless you have benchmarks or are given a lot of information about the processor. Also you can't really just add up all the power, it doesn't always work like that, their are a lot of factors especially as each uses a different (but similar) instruction set and I could see some time being wasted to make to chips work together.

[Lunchbox]

It colud barely handle DOOM if i'm not mistaken

[butters]

The 32x sure handled Virtua Fighter well, so there's really no telling what it could handle if someone had actually put some developement time into a game. Nick, the 32x had a 32,768 color pallette, compared to 256 (I think...) for the Sega CD, which is usually enough color that the human eye can't distinguish differences.

[Nico0020]

It colud barely handle DOOM if i'm not mistaken

I loved DOOM on 32X. jesus I have that game for way too many systems. and yet for some reason I ejoy nxDOOM the most.

[Juan]

I always heard that Doom 32X was the worst version.

[mariobro]

Thing is, the 32X was pretty much dead on arrival. So we'll never know its true potential.

A few months ago, I watched a video that purported to be a 32X technical demo. For its time, it was amazing. Somewhere along the lines of N64 quality.

Remember, the 3DO could also pump out some amazing technical demos. But lack of support killed them before both systems could realize their true potential.

[Ex-Cyber]

My wild-ass guess would be that 32X, properly programmed, would compete with 3DO. Seriously getting to the level of PSX/Saturn/N64 is out of the question, as the graphics hardware simply isn't there.

[Veggita2099]

It colud barely handle DOOM if i'm not mistaken

Doom on SNES was probably just as good as the 32X doom. In fact the 32X doom was very poorly made. They basically took half of Doom 1 and stuck in on a cart and called it a game. If im not mistaken it ends without any type of ending on about episode 2 mission 5 or something like that?

[IiLuSiv]

It colud barely handle DOOM if i'm not mistaken

Doom on SNES was probably just as good as the 32X doom. In fact the 32X doom was very poorly made. They basically took half of Doom 1 and stuck in on a cart and called it a game. If im not mistaken it ends without any type of ending on about episode 2 mission 5 or something like that?

Honestly.

I dont think you guys know what you're talking about.

Playing Doom on 32x was like a less colorful version of the PC game, while in some ways it seemed rushed, it didn't suffer from slowdown to a great degree, ran very smoothly and had graphics comparable to the PC version.

Doom on SNES was inferior by far, it was a great achievement in itself to even get Doom to play on such an underpowered console DONT GET ME WRONG, it was very hard to even get it to run. But honestly, it was a pile of dogshet compared to the 32x version.

I own both, and can say the 32x version is far better.

[az_bont]

Metal Head was about the most graphically-impressive 3D game on the system, beating quite a few early Playstation games, in my opinion. It really shined on 2D games, though, especially when you compared the number of colours on-screen between Knuckles CHaotix and one of the old Sonic games.

[Smiley]

From my experience, and imo, the best console version of Doom was the one for the Atari Jaguar.

As for the 32x, I'm sure it had untapped potential but for the most part the games for it were nothing more than souped up genesis titles. And the sound still sucked even with the 32x.

[Syd]

It colud barely handle DOOM if i'm not mistaken

Doom on SNES was probably just as good as the 32X doom. In fact the 32X doom was very poorly made. They basically took half of Doom 1 and stuck in on a cart and called it a game. If im not mistaken it ends without any type of ending on about episode 2 mission 5 or something like that?

I played both versions back in the day, neither one was close to the PC version of course, but the SNES version was by far the worst of the two. No port of Doom will ever exist that will be worse than the SNES version. The GBA version is probably better.

[Hawq]

Metal Head was about the most graphically-impressive 3D game on the system, beating quite a few early Playstation games, in my opinion.

I still have my copy of that, a truely great mech game thats probably not been heard of by most people

It colud barely handle DOOM if i'm not mistaken

Doom on SNES was probably just as good as the 32X doom. In fact the 32X doom was very poorly made. They basically took half of Doom 1 and stuck in on a cart and called it a game. If im not mistaken it ends without any type of ending on about episode 2 mission 5 or something like that?

I played both versions back in the day, neither one was close to the PC version of course, but the SNES version was by far the worst of the two. No port of Doom will ever exist that will be worse than the SNES version. The GBA version is probably better.

Those sticky walls on the Snes version were murder, the 32X one didnt have anything like that though so had that going for it over the Snes version, even though the 32X version had a smaller window to make it smotth, kind of like zero tolerance did on the megadrive really

[bizzle]

Look at the draw distance. Would you want to play a game with a draw distance like that?

[az_bont]

The draw distance seems fine to me .



I've seen a lot worse on the current generation of consoles.

[Lartrak]

Playing Doom on 32x was like a less colorful version of the PC game, while in some ways it seemed rushed, it didn't suffer from slowdown to a great degree, ran very smoothly and had graphics comparable to the PC version.

The biggest change was that the monsters had three of their angles removed, that is the ones where they weren't facing you. Annoying.

[bizzle]

The draw distance seems fine to me .



I've seen a lot worse on the current generation of consoles.

I mean that tech demo.