Review of Retro Gamer's 32X "Retroinspection"

[StarMist]

@ pg 3: so 16 bitter's real name was Angus Swan?
This magazine's clear horseshit, I didn't read everything but they guaranteed Sor 4 and that write-up of Keio Yugekitai is sheer delusion.

[sheath]

@ pg 3: so 16 bitter's real name was Angus Swan?
This magazine's clear horseshit, I didn't read everything but they guaranteed Sor 4 and that write-up of Keio Yugekitai is sheer delusion.
In their scoring system what is 'VFM'?

Definitely aimed at a younger audience I would say. I haven't read everything yet, but most of the 32X stuff I browsed was pure promotion. The Q&A stuff was horribly formatted but informative.

It certainly is another piece of evidence that nobody in the industry at the time thought the 32X could outclass the Saturn in any way.

[Chilly Willy]

You'll also notice that they were saying the Saturn wouldn't be out for "ages" and recommended getting the 32X in the meantime. That was the opinion of virtually every magazine in late 94/early 95 in the US and UK.

And yes, the game scores are high. Clearly SEGA made sure they got their bribe like all game magazines before and since. As long as you don't piss off the people at the magazines, ALL games are ranked on a scale of 8 to 10... sometimes 9 to 10.

Any time you see a game under 8 (or 4 if using the 4 to 5 scale), it's a clear indication the distributor pissed off the magazine, like by forgetting their bribes.

[sheath]

Sometimes a lower score will have better content in the actual text of the view, or higher reviews will have ridiculously out of place complaints in the text. I tend to ignore the scores entirely and look in the text for details on how much the reviewer played the game.

[Team Andromeda]

That's not a lie - the 32X is MORE than capable of VHS quality FMV. Have you ever bothered to play any of the CD32X FMV games

Looking over the Mega Drive can't even handle a screen res to that a VHS video , 256 colors does not equal VHS standards - That's how it was sold that the 32X would be able to handle FMV like that of a VHS video . I played many PC games on my old Dos and 256 does not come close to VHS quality in the way SEGA tried to sell it

Mean Machines Sega on the 32X, December 1994

Nice one , Why no scans of Mean Means SEGA a few months down the Line Seath ? Let old TA help you and unlike this board doesn't need our friend Google, because he owns the stuff in question . Was buying hardware and games at magazines the time time, remembers exactly what happen very well and still sad enough to hold on to all of it




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And on the shopping front it really wasn't much better




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[Team Andromeda]

You'll also notice that they were saying the Saturn wouldn't be out for "ages" and recommended getting the 32X in the meantime. That was the opinion of virtually every magazine in late 94/early 95 in the US and UK.

Well as the above scan will prove. Mags were staring to change their tune on the 32X and start to save for the Saturn , before the Saturn hit our streets while the 32X was letting everyone down and the 2nd wave of sofware not up to much along with piss poor 3rd party software . or does one really need to post other scans of Mags , the like SEGA's mag, SEGA pro , Gamefan Ect .

[sheath]

TA, I just figured I'd take it easy on the bandwidth and post a mag a day at a time, giving people time to discuss each issue. Thanks for posting more.

Care to share what issue that is? The prices don't look much different to me. Hardly fire sale discounts.

[Chilly Willy]

Looking over the Mega Drive can't even handle a screen res to that a VHS video , 256 colors does not equal VHS standards - That's how it was sold that the 32X would be able to handle FMV like that of a VHS video . I played many PC games on my old Dos and 256 does not come close to VHS quality in the way SEGA tried to sell it

The 32X can do 320x204 in 15-bit direct color... which is well beyond most VHS specs. The only thing VHS has that the 32X doesn't is interlace, and interlace doesn't extend the resolution that much, and only vertically, which is unimportant in most cases. VHS is only about 260 lines horizontally, and only about 12 bit for color (It's YIQ filitered asymmetrically, so it's harder to make exact comparisons other than it's better than 256 color, but not as good as 15-bit color).

[Team Andromeda]

TA, I just figured I'd take it easy on the bandwidth and post a mag a day at a time, giving people time to discuss each issue. Thanks for posting more.

Care to share what issue that is? The prices don't look much different to me. Hardly fire sale discounts.

I can post ever issue mate, and those scans are from MM Sega July and June 95 and already Steve and the Gang were talking of don't buy a 32X. Retail had minimal support for the 32X and the games and the system discounted (even the Mega CD were less than 4% of the Market share had better support, which says its all) . I'll post latter issues if I must and its not pretty reading for 32X.

The 32X can do 320x204 in 15-bit direct color... which is well beyond most VHS specs.

Maybe if people recorded in Lp. But Pal VHS is way more than 320X204 so don't come it on that one , even a CDI with Video Card couldn't really offer quality to that of VHS on its Video CD's . It was quite easy to tell 32X video apart from VHS video .

[sheath]

This is getting sad, I'll start looking at January 1995 probably tomorrow morning. I suppose I'll find more than what TA dug up in the June and July issues as well.

[Team Andromeda]

This is getting sad, I'll start looking at January 1995 probably tomorrow morning. I suppose I'll find more than what TA dug up in the June and July issues as well.

Look its all very well being a fan of a system, but sometimes you just have to accept the cold hard facts . I love the Mega CD and the Saturn, but know in my hears of hearts the Mega CD sold like crap in Japan, it didn't really sell that great in Europe and Mega/SEGA games the world over only ever made up a tiny percentage of the sales charts , or how the Saturn sold really poor in the West and after a year and a bit had pretty much dire 3rd party support and that was reflected in press coverage and going to the shops.

Maybe with out SONY SEGA could have got away with the 32X and Saturn, but SONY blew apart all of SEGA plan's for the 32 bit generation.

[Thenewguy]

I love the Mega CD and the Saturn, but know in my hears of hearts the Mega CD sold like crap in Japan

Its sales can't be much higher than it achieved anyway, they can't very well sell more Mega-CDs in Japan than Mega Drives can they?

The Mega Drive itself didn't sell particularly high amounts there in the 1st place, so even with 100% penetration it wasn't going to sell any more than three and a half million odd there at maximum.

30% odd of Japanese Mega Drive owners bought a Mega-CD, I think that's fairly respectable.

[Chilly Willy]

Maybe if people recorded in Lp. But Pal VHS is way more than 320X204 so don't come it on that one , even a CDI with Video Card couldn't really offer quality to that of VHS on its Video CD's . It was quite easy to tell 32X video apart from VHS video .

Nope! VHS is incapable of going higher than about 260 lines horizontal, and 260 is the TOP END for high-end models. SVHS is needed to go beyond 260, and normally tops out at about 400. VHS is interlaced, so it does do better vertically - the standard rule for interlaced resolution is 80% of the two fields, or 0.8*480 (384) for NTSC; however, part of that is lost to overscan with it being closer to 360 visible. Most people prefer horizontal detail to vertical detail, and prefer progressive scan (which the 32X is) over interlace (which VHS is). 320x200 progressive 15-bit is MUCH more pleasing to most people than 260x360 interlaced YIQ.

While PAL has more vertical detail than NTSC, it also has more flicker, being 25 Hz frame rate (50 Hz field rate). I would think progressive would be even MORE important to Europeans than Americans due to that. They were first to make TVs that ran at twice the scan rate (100 Hz) in an effort to get rid of that annoying flicker.

Perhaps that's why you think VHS looks better: you're looking at a decent VHS deck via SCART on a 100 Hz TV with PAL. If you're going to do that, you should also look at the 32X via RGB/SCART on the same 100 Hz TV as well.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Doesn't TA use RGB SCART for everything though? I remember specifically that he bragged about it when going on and on about the 1080p mesh used in Sonic R for transparencies.

[sheath]

Mean Machines Sega January 1995. Definitely still pure promotional PR at a glance, but plenty of other companies were still interested in the add-on.