Knuckles Chaotics is not a very good game to use as an argument in talking about 3D graphic power of the 32X as that game was and still is a 2D platformer game. Games like Virtua Racing Deluxe, Doom, and Virtua Fighter were true 3D games for the 32X.
Also why on earth are you comparing Snatcher with DKC which are two entirely different games. DKC is a side scrolling adventure like Sonic the Hedgehog which in my opinon is miles ahead of DKC, in fact the whole idea of controlling both Donkey and Diddy Kong was an idea stolen from Sonic 2 with Sonic and Tails.
Overall in the discussion of the Mega Drive successes and failures, its important to note that the Mega Drive was a complete failure in other countries outside of the United States. Sega of Japan had not made any market share gains with the Mega Drive, just as they didn't make any gains with their prior system the Mark III over Nintendo's popular Famicom and Super Famicom.
Most of the success and appraisal that Sega got and still get thanks to some of us old Sega gamers that remember it was based in large parts to the Japanese company giving Sega of America full control of marketing the Mega Drive. It is the American market, that birth the radical marketing of the Sega Genesis that SoA execs help choreograph that elevated Sega from small game company in 1989 to a dominating organization in the early 90s. I kid you not folks, if you look up the console war from the 1990s Sega vs Nintendo on your university's electronic library resource journals you will find many articles that headlines the hey day successes Sega of America had in those times.
Sega actually had a 65% market share on the gaming industry in 1993, when it was marketing the Sega Genesis, Game Gear and Sega CD, against SNES, NeoGeo, and 3DO.
It was 1994 that became the year that Nintendo began pushing back harder and getting tougher in their marketing to try to shift the momentum.
I think it was 1995 the year Sega's market share fall rapidly, as they shifted focus from 16-bit to 32-bit push and pushed out the Sega Saturn way to early. while not providing any backward compatibility to their previous console (I still don't get why the Saturn's cartridge port didn't support a Genesis/32x cart :x), secondly the whole vibe that made Sega a big hit during the 16-bit era "WELCOME TO THE NEXT LEVEL", the anti-Nintendo ads, where they would go after Nintendo at every turn had ceased.
It's safe to say now that their next foe SONY was way out Sega's lead.
I know now from reading that interview that the former Sega of America President Michael Katz did with Sega 16 is that things began to fall apart for Sega around the Saturn launch was due to the parent Sega of Japan demanding more control of their satelite regions.
clsmithj
OK, fair enough, even if Doom isn't true 3D from a technical perspective. Still, the add-on had crap 3D capabilities. You didn't see that many textures, just filled in polygons, and the polygon count wasn't really that high. Hell, I looked it up, and the 32X could render only 50,000 polygons per second, while the Saturn could do 200-500,000 per second. Do you see the difference?
I don't even remember, I think it was about how both could be construed as overrated.
Wait, universities have video game history articles? Where the hell are these gaming historians? Why haven't they made themselves well known? I'm tired of video game history being dominated by amateurs like us :P:|!.
I think it would've been a bit weird for a CD-based console to have cartridge based backward compatability. Just seems...odd. And I'd say there were other problems with the Saturn in addition to being pushed out early, like not telling retailers it was being pushed out early, and making a hard-to-program-for system at a pivotal time in video game history.
That's all I have.
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