32X talk

[Steven Pendleton]

22 minutes ago, Mittens0407 said:

Did Chaotix run over your dog or something? You'd seriously rather play that broken mess? At least Chaotix is inoffensive in it's obscurity, it wasn't a buggy, ill-conceived unnecessary reboot with a time travel plot so stupid it literally undoes itself, making the entire story basically worthless. You need to be more specific for me to understand how Chaotix could be worse than that.

I never said that Chaotix is worse than Sonic 06, and it isn't. Sonic 06 is a broken wreck, and that provides entertainment.

 

Chaotix is simply boring. Does it have interesting level design? No. Is it difficult? No. It can't have a proper difficulty curve because the stages are random. Does it have interesting glitches? Well, it has  **********, but that's about it. You do know about  **********, right? Does it have awesome music and some good animations? Yes. That's about it. The game is unremarkable and inoffensive, but it doesn't actually bother to do anything, and being boring is a greater failure than being a broken and glitchy pile of trash.

[Mittens0407]

41 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

I never said that Chaotix is worse than Sonic 06, and it isn't. Sonic 06 is a broken wreck, and that provides entertainment.

 

Chaotix is simply boring. Does it have interesting level design? No. Is it difficult? No. It can't have a proper difficulty curve because the stages are random. Does it have interesting glitches? Well, it has  **********, but that's about it. You do know about  **********, right? Does it have awesome music and some good animations? Yes. That's about it. The game is unremarkable and inoffensive, but it doesn't actually bother to do anything, and being boring is a greater failure than being a broken and glitchy pile of trash.

It does sort of have a difficulty curve with the day/night system, but that's less of a difficulty curve and more of a difficulty... oscillation?  I'd agree that the game would favor a more linear level progression system. The random selection undermines the visual changes between the acts. I disagree about the difficulty. It's easy just running through the levels but I had a pretty tough time getting all the chaos rings. The minibosses in Amazing Arena were a huge pain. I'll stand by the level design and ring system, the more open level design compliments the greater speed you can achieve, and I enjoy the new movement options the tether gives. Techno Tower is a highlight for its vertical design. You're making a mistake by playing as Charmy though, he completely nullifies the point of the momentum based gameplay with his ridiculous flying, and he makes for the least fun two-player experience I've ever had. I firmly disagree with the notion that the game doesn't try to do anything, in my opinion it's trying to do far too many things. In their attempt to freshen up the series, they turned it on its head. I definitely wouldn't call it boring, for me it can carry itself with the visuals and audio alone, but I enjoy the gameplay as well.

[+Cafeman]

Like others, I don’t find 32X chaotix very fun. But I still appreciate it and enjoy it at times. The reason being, its parts are unique and somewhat nice, some nice music, interesting use of color and concepts, I like the 3-D bonus rounds with flat shaded polygons, and I like the big red Metal Sonic boss too.
 

it doesn’t compare to Sonic The Hedgehog however!  Sonic is a 10/10 game to me, and Chaotix is a 6/10 at best.    

[Austin]

12 hours ago, Mittens0407 said:

There's a lot of style, but it's also easy to see how unrealized the game is. Still, I enjoy it for what it is, and it's impressive that they managed to produce something as good as it is, as I imagine it wasn't a very high priority project.

Due to this thread I was reading up on it last week, apparently it was originally slated to be a Saturn project but was larger in scope. Because it wasn't going to be ready for the system launch, they shifted it over to 32X.

 

Sega really did make some oddball decisions then, heh. I can only imagine what it would have been like on Saturn with its far more capable hardware.

 

Also, agreed regarding the game's difficulty. The levels themselves can be a breeze, but when you start trying to gather all the Chaos Rings (or whatever they are called), it becomes a lot more tense trying to get through each level with enough rings. Then actually trying to learn and survive the 3D bonus levels (the last one or two in particular get pretty tough and I fail them consistently).

 

Always preferred Mighty myself as his wall jumping is insanely good, but it's also just fun from a mechanics standpoint.

Edited March 15, 2023 by Austin

[Trinity32]

so...for those that played it, how bad was cosmic carnage?

[+atari2600land]

So I bought Kolibri. This is leading me to believe I have a bad 32x because it froze on level 1. I guess I need to buy another 32x. Does anyone have any tips or anything I should look out for when buying one on eBay?

[+atari2600land]

So I have two Sega Genesises (Genesii?) and I looked at the bottom of the one I was currently using and it said it was model MK-1631A. So I looked at the bottom of the one that wasn't hooked up and it said MK-1631. So I took the 32X out of the 1631A and put it into the MK-1631. I think the Kolibri game crashed because I died. So I played Kolibri and got to level 1 and I died and it didn't freeze on me. I don't know what the revision difference is but the first one (without the A in front) seems to work. Does that make any sense?

[Tanooki]

Actually it does.  Depending how big some fanboyism of the console wars goes this may annoy or go over someones head but it kind of fits.

 

SNES

It had a few revisions over time.  Like Game Gear it went from having more or less chips around that.  SNES started with some dedicated parts, mid-life you had the fanboy fodder favorite the 1CHIP, and then because it was cheaper later in life of the original model back to two lower cost and quality chips once more (then the mini model was basically 1chip again, go figure.)

 

The clean up of the visuals isn't where I'm going why 1CHIP is best, it's compatibility.  Not all, but enough 1CHIP have issues with specific games causing some malfunctions.  It can range on a spectrum of them to either by the V1.0 1.1 etc of the game itself or perhaps revision of the 1CHIP die over time.  The 1CHIP despite the obviously superior video if you get the wrong(right) combination of cart vs 1CHIP usually largely you get graphics issues that intermittently pop up, or are present but minor.  There are a very few games that have serious issues like Kolibri but it seems Super Turrican has bad sound problems and eventually it erodes into the game crashing with a hard freeze to it.

 

If I remember right my original release SUper Ghouls n Ghosts I noticed on my 1CHIP when I used to use it, the far left and right edges (say 1" on a near 30" screen) seemed to move at a slightly different speed I guess causing this warped distortion effect.  It's odd, maybe disorienting if you watch it, but since nothing flies in fast it won't get you killed but it is there.

 

Maybe that's your issue.  Your version of Kolibri and/or of the console and/or the 32X itself the combination creates a memory pit of death where it just crashes not clearing what it needs to so it can restart the stage as normal.

[+Cafeman]

4 hours ago, Trinity32 said:

so...for those that played it, how bad was cosmic carnage?

 

I think it is terrible.  But I still play a few rounds now and then. Maybe I'm missing its charms. 

[+H454]

6 hours ago, Trinity32 said:

so...for those that played it, how bad was cosmic carnage?

 

If you are good at Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, you will probably find it boring.

I was not very good at fighting games and when I played it ('98 - 8th grade) I thought  it was 'good'. I liked the armor that broke off and the relatively easy combat system.

It's not broken and is fully playable. It's at the bottom end of 'good' games on the 32x.

[Austin]

I have a soft spot for Cosmic Carnage. It's not what I would call "good", but it's interesting in many ways, from the fact you have to get through the game in a certain amount of time to get the good ending, to its neat use of scaling, to enemies getting amputated if you defeat them with a special move, to the armor system. It does play pretty stiff however and its move set is very limited. I can still find myself getting into a rhythm with it though and enjoying myself. The soundtrack is quite good to my ears and a bunch of the tunes are catchy, so that's a highlight of it for me and helps me enjoy it more overall, as good soundtracks usually do. It's also cool they have the Japanese variation on the same cart as a hidden option, which does have some differences. It's not great compared to MK2 or Virtua Fighter on the same hardware, but it's unique enough and is still leagues above games like Ballz, Rise of the Robots, or even the Jaguar's fighting games (as much as those fans rave about Ultra Vortek, I'd still rather play Cosmic Carnage, it's got a lot more charm to it).

[Austin]

14 hours ago, atari2600land said:

So I have two Sega Genesises (Genesii?) and I looked at the bottom of the one I was currently using and it said it was model MK-1631A. So I looked at the bottom of the one that wasn't hooked up and it said MK-1631. So I took the 32X out of the 1631A and put it into the MK-1631. I think the Kolibri game crashed because I died. So I played Kolibri and got to level 1 and I died and it didn't freeze on me. I don't know what the revision difference is but the first one (without the A in front) seems to work. Does that make any sense?

Yes, it makes sense. As we stated earlier in the thread, the 32X has problems with certain Genesis revisions due to a bug and you need the extension unit (or a Sega CD attached) to fix it.

 

Unfortunately, the model numbers you provide don't have clear indicators what the actual motherboard revision is. You will likely not know what your board revision is until you actually open up the console and look for it on the motherboard. It's just a few screws and isn't hard to take apart or put back together (the Genesis 2 is a pretty simple design).

 

There's a guide here that says you might be able to figure out what the revision is by looking through the vents and the cartridge slot. It's near the bottom of the first post: https://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?7796-GUIDE-Telling-apart-good-Genesis-1s-and-Genesis-2s-from-bad-ones

[Marcos Moutta]

Nobody in this thread seems to be talking about Doom Resurrection

Amazing hack, needs to be seen to be believed. I maxed out the resolution and still got a great framerate + mapped shoulder buttons to the strafe buttons and it was a lot of fun

Just wish it had the ending screen with the rabbit but I guess you can't win them all

[Chilly Willy]

Vic and I are still working on it. We're close to the next major update, but still no bunny at the end. 😎   I think the bunny ending was removed from the Jaguar version (and all related derivatives) was for space reasons. It's a pretty BIG background pic that was deemed not important.

 

The main thing we're waiting on before the release is the fix of the levels with the Cyber Demon and the Spider Mastermind.

[Punisher5.0]

9 hours ago, Marcos Moutta said:

Nobody in this thread seems to be talking about Doom Resurrection

Amazing hack, needs to be seen to be believed. I maxed out the resolution and still got a great framerate + mapped shoulder buttons to the strafe buttons and it was a lot of fun

Just wish it had the ending screen with the rabbit but I guess you can't win them all

We already have a dedicated thread to Resurrection:

 

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/326468-doom-32x-resurrection/

[+atari2600land]

Whatever happened to the Santa Claus game for the 32X? It was looking promising.

[Austin]

On 4/4/2023 at 8:54 PM, atari2600land said:

Whatever happened to the Santa Claus game for the 32X? It was looking promising.

Not really seeing much that says it was actually being made to take advantage of the 32X. Looks like a Genesis game to me. Have no idea what happened, assuming this is the same one: https://gendev.spritesmind.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3314

[Austin]

On 3/9/2023 at 12:55 PM, Austin said:

There is, but not specifically for Knuckles. If you have a certain Model 2 Genesis and do not have the expansion slot populated, games in general will randomly crash. It's a bug Sega was aware of and why they included 32X units with the "Extension Unit" that plugs into the Genesis expansion slot. This is specifically for VA-2 model Genesis 2 systems, but there are so many variations of the hardware that it may affect other revisions too.

I am an idiot and was giving the wrong information. It's VA0 models. Some units you may not know until you open up the console (I had to do that for mine).

[sirlynxalot]

I never thought cosmic carnage was bad. The music is definitely above average. The gameplay is average but as others said, it wasn't broken. I'd rather play it over most of the other fighting games in the Genesis library that aren't street fighter or mortal Kombat.  Brutal paws of fury is a much worse game imo.

 

Btw I don't think I've chimed in here yet but I love the 32x and a fair chunk of it's library. Especially the 3d titles sega programmed or produced.

Edited April 17, 2023 by sirlynxalot

[sirlynxalot]

Here's my take on chaotix, a game I've beaten several times.

 

The game has little challenge to it. Compared to Sonic games, there are very few enemies in the stages.  In that regard it feels unfinished to me.  It's also disappointing to Sonic fans because the level design is much more vertical and most levels don't feel like sonic levels, and of course the divisive ring mechanics. 

 

Personally, I really like the games graphics and music. I get enjoyment out of it as something to just mindlessly chill out with. It does have style, but disappoints many because you'd expect it to play like a sonic game and it just doesn't...