Japan execs were upset that Kalinske was allowed to resign w/o taking blame for 32X

[Gryson]

By all means, call people out and ask for facts, but at least produce them too.
What's the sale data for Doom on the PC, Doom on the consoles; same goes for Quake, Quake 2 and Dark Forces on the PC and consoles?

What does any of this matter? Why are you so fixated on the number of sales of Doom, a completely irrelevant number?

Since you don't seem to know much about the PC market then, allow me to fill you in: Doom was a self-published shareware release. Sales are completely irrelevant for the install base of Doom because the vast majority of people were playing the shareware version. Gabe Newell, who developed the Windows 95 port of Doom while at Microsoft, said Doom was the most-used PC program, even ahead of Windows 95. There are countless similar stories of how massively popular it was.

Doom had a very novel distribution method that was focused on getting as many people to play it as possible, with the intention that a small percent would fork up cash for a full copy. It is beyond ridiculous to compare it to number of copies sold via traditional publisher.

Please study more about PC gaming history.

[Barone]

I think we also need to explain to TA that:
- N64's GoldenEye 007 was, uh, having a sales boost by using a 007 movie license which, alone, had millions of dollars put into advertising.
- N64's GoldenEye 007 could make use of the legendary music score and design assets attached to the 007 license.
- N64's GoldenEye 007 was developed by Rare, so Nintendo promoted the shit out of it.
- N64's GoldenEye 007 didn't have much competition on the N64 since the N64 had nowhere near as many monthly releases as the PS1 (for example) and much less did it have many games that were targeted at a less childish audience.
- If you look at the PS1's best-sellers lists there are 007 games there as well. It can't be that a 007 license would boost sales, right? No, not at all.
- Licenses have a cost and a 007 movie license wasn't and isn't cheap.

[axel]

What does any of this matter? Why are you so fixated on the number of sales of Doom, a completely irrelevant number?

Since you don't seem to know much about the PC market then, allow me to fill you in: Doom was a self-published shareware release. Sales are completely irrelevant for the install base of Doom because the vast majority of people were playing the shareware version. Gabe Newell, who developed the Windows 95 port of Doom while at Microsoft, said Doom was the most-used PC program, even ahead of Windows 95. There are countless similar stories of how massively popular it was.

Doom had a very novel distribution method that was focused on getting as many people to play it as possible, with the intention that a small percent would fork up cash for a full copy. It is beyond ridiculous to compare it to number of copies sold via traditional publisher.

Please study more about PC gaming history.

Correct, on the PC side nothing else came close. Myst may have sold a comparable number of copies but many of those were due to Myst being bundled with PCs and CD-ROM drives. Doom had none of that, in fact Sega may have been the only company to try to use it to sell new hardware by promoting it as a launch title for the 32X.

It makes me wonder if one of the design considerations for the 32X was to make sure it would be able to run a port of Doom (or other FPS) or if Virtua Racing was the main goal.

[Gryson]

- N64's GoldenEye 007 didn't have much competition on the N64 since the N64 had nowhere near as many monthly releases as the PS1 (for example) and much less did it have many games that were targeted at a less childish audience.

This is an extreme understatement. I'm struggling to even come up with other N64-exclusive Western-developed non-all-ages titles that made a splash. Turok? What else? No sane publisher wanted to go anywhere near the N64.

[gamevet]

Rogue Squadron and Episode One Racer. DMA Design did create Body Harvest for the console. They would later become Rock Star Games.

RARE also released Perfect Dark. It ran like ass, even with the expansion pack.

[Gryson]

Those Star Wars games were also on PC - I think Episode 1 Racer was originally a PC release that was ported to the N64. But that reminded me there was also Shadows of the Empire, which was an N64 exclusive (later ported to PC).

Regardless, the hits on the N64 ended up selling a ton of copies because there just wasn't any competition.

[gamevet]

The Original Turok sold a lot of copies, because there wasn't much to play. I had to wait a long time to get that game and for the whole year it was just bread crumbs.

EA had their sports titles on the console, but they weren't lighting up an charts on that thing.

[Team Andromeda]

It’s not that hard for you to look up. I’ve only looked up DOOM for PC, with @3.5 million sold at retail and 1.15 million with mail-in. Europe was estimated to sell about another 25%, which would put it at @5 million units. Then there’s the DOOM Dual pack that sold another 5-6 million, which would put the sales number of DOOM around 12 million, before including another 2 million for a 2016 reboot.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(franchise)#Sales

Not 20 million and like I said Goldeneye on the N64 sold better

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/th.../1100-2857556/



But I don't really care for the PC, it was more consoles and one look at NDP top 50 PS selling games of all time show Doom or Quake 2 or really any PC port doing much on the PS list. Think Tekken was a bigger deal

3,261,557 PSX Gran Turismo (Sony)
3,156,882 PSX Gran Turismo 2 (Sony)
3,120,190 PSX Crash Bandicoot 2 (Sony)
3,056,691 PSX Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped (Sony)
2,948,058 PSX Frogger (Atari)
2,756,288 PSX Spyro the Dragon (Sony)
2,751,213 PSX Crash Bandicoot (Sony)
2,701,372 PSX Tekken 3 (Namco)
2,628,911 PSX Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (Activision)
2,623,706 PSX Driver (Activision)
2,513,441 PSX Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (Activision)
2,457,962 PSX Final Fantasy VII (SquareSoft)
2,435,785 PSX Metal Gear Solid (Konami)
2,197,590 PSX WWE Warzone (Acclaim)
2,056,246 PSX Driver 2 (Atari)
2,031,548 PSX Namco Museum Vol. 3 (Namco)
1,913,888 PSX Final Fantasy VIII (SquareSoft)
1,909,410 PSX Crash Team Racing (Sony)
1,885,919 PSX Resident Evil (Capcom)
1,872,640 PSX Tomb Raider (Eidos)
1,782,076 PSX Tomb Raider 2 (Eidos)
1,753,966 PSX Tekken 2 (Namco)
1,748,631 PSX Resident Evil 2 (Capcom)
1,743,961 PSX Twisted Metal 2 (Sony)
1,740,721 PSX Spyro the Dragon 2: Ripto's Rage (Sony)
1,699,910 PSX Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (Electronic Arts)
1,657,490 PSX Namco Museum Vol. 1 (Namco)
1,570,440 PSX WWF Smackdown! 2: Know Your Role (THQ)
1,545,974 PSX Syphon Filter (Sony)
1,534,029 PSX Tetris Plus (Jaleco)
1,505,485 PSX A Bug's Life (Sony)
1,495,792 PSX Spider-Man (Activision)
1,456,265 PSX Rugrats: Search Reptar (THQ)
1,450,096 PSX Mortal Kombat Trilogy (Midway)
1,423,771 PSX Spyro: Year of the Dragon (Sony)
1,420,846 PSX 007: Tomorrow Never Dies (Electronic Arts)
1,367,214 PSX Rayman (Ubisoft)
1,366,186 PSX WWF Smackdown! (THQ)
1,347,964 PSX Final Fantasy IX (SquareSoft)
1,311,955 PSX NFL Gameday 98 (Sony)
1,299,038 PSX Madden NFL 99 (Electronic Arts)
1,298,364 PSX Tomb Raider 3 (Eidos)
1,281,620 PSX Madden NFL 2000 (Electronic Arts)
1,273,027 PSX Spec Ops (Take 2 Interactive)
1,246,978 PSX Cool Boarders 3 (Sony)
1,245,866 PSX Medal of Honor (Electronic Arts)
1,219,671 PSX Cool Boarders 2 (Sony)
1,215,784 PSX Need for Speed: High Stakes (Electronic Arts)
1,210,246 PSX Madden NFL 2001 (Electronic Arts)
1,188,386 PSX Croc: Legend of Gobbos (Fox Interactive)

[gamevet]

No it didn’t TA. This is why I said that it would be a waste of time with you. Same old shit, different day.

DOOM sold somewhere around 12 million. Nobody knows the exact number, because Europe sales numbers are impossible to track.Throw in piracy and number of people playing DOOM on PC is likely 10 fold.

[zyrobs]

Why are you responding to that guy? Just put him on ignore. He lives in his own fantasy world.

The Original Turok sold a lot of copies, because there wasn't much to play. I had to wait a long time to get that game and for the whole year it was just bread crumbs.

Turok was very popular for the time, since it looked very advanced. Typical PC fps games at the time were stuff built on the BUILD engine, so having a full 3d environment was very impressive. There were even rumours when Acclaim were doing badly, that they'll port the game to Playstation. There was a PC port too, but it still had extreme fogging so it didn't do well against Duke 3d, Blood, Quake, even Redneck Rampage.

Nothing was big as Doom in 1993. It was on over 20 million PCs, before the SNES got its version. Doom is on just about every platform you can think of, including a fan made version for the Amiga.

The entire GENRE of fps games was called "Doom clones" for many years. There was even a C64 game called "Boom", released commercially in the mid-90s. It was closer dungeon crawlers since you could only move and turn in fixed steps, but it was clearly riding on the success of Doom. The magazine that developed it specifically called it as such, and, well, just look at the title.

This is an extreme understatement. I'm struggling to even come up with other N64-exclusive Western-developed non-all-ages titles that made a splash. Turok? What else? No sane publisher wanted to go anywhere near the N64.

Over here, Shadows of the Empire was on displays EVERYWHERE where there was a N64. Of course it helped that by the time it reached Europe, we had the Star Wars Special Editions showing in cinemas, and TV ads with Lord Vader having lightsabre duels with cinema ticket attendants after he crushes the pepsi bottle of a kid in the audience. They were good times.

[gamevet]

I know. I once put him on ignore for 6 months a couple of years ago. Yet, people kept quoting him, so it still showed up.

[Barone]

So looking at that list, I would have been surprised to see many games like Pinocchio or Mickey Mania on the 32X. The 32X was aiming for an older audience, people in their teens and 20s. Castlevania: The Bloodletting could have been huge, since it was the same team that went on to make Symphony of the Night. Rayman would have been another good choice to show off the capabilities of the 32X.

Agreed but this is the crux of the 32X proposition: had to differentiate itself from all the other options available in order to carve out a market, however, by promoting the 32X as a Doom machine/arcade at home/3D games machine/etc. it also resulted in reducing the number of potential buyers quite a bit.
I'd assume that people from 15-20+ were the first ones to quit buying dated/run-of-the-mill 16-bit software and start chasing new/more advanced experiences.

DKC series wasn't exactly for that audience and it sold a lot, created a huge buzz, etc.
And, uhm, does Chaotix appeal to "an older audience"? I don't think so.
I think Ristar is a very good platformer and it could have been a much better showcase of the new platform. It even has music tracks that badly need a PWM upgrade for the samples playback.

I'd pick Mickey Mania or a Mickey Mania 2 over Tempo, Chaotix and Pitfall TMA any day of the week though. Pitfall TMA is quite better than Pinocchio.

Ultimately though I wish they had gone more for 3D or raycast games as those would have shown the 32X as a true next gen system. Tempo and Pitfall TMA were terrible. Gex is cool but at the time few people had heard of it. It's a shame Spider-Man: Web of Fire wasn't more polished. It had a lot of potential.

Pitfall TMA in itself isn't terrible (surely better than Soccer Kid which was ported to the 3DO and Jaguar); it's a competent platformer, however, the 32X version is indeed terrible. And the game has too much regular 16-bit platforming and collecting for a 32-bit system.

Tempo is such a mess. The camera is really, really bad; you simply can't see the platforms you're supposed to jump to. And the boss fights, lol, they're atrocious. Busy, convoluted visuals too.
Gex relied too much on the cool phrases and digitized stuff; I think it really was tailored for the CD format.

The window for raycasting games would've been 1994/1995 (prior to November when PS1 Doom was launched) I believe. In other words, 1 year at most.
Wolfenstein 3D probably had to be a launch title as well, since both SNES and Jaguar ports were released in 1994.
SOA could have paid to reskin it as an Eternal Champions FPS in 1995 and make it super violent/gory.

Jaguar's AvP should have been ported too.

Doom is quite clear now that could have been (much) better and, probably, Star Wars: Dark Forces was also doable.
Doom II, Final Doom (and the other expansions) IDK if could run at 320px on the 32X if we were to preserve how the maps are supposed to be structured, but that's something that we may/may not see answered some time from now. Doom II had appeal, for sure.
Final Doom on the PSX was already panned by some of the magazines for the lack of innovations and the framerate issues (due to more complex maps), so IDK how commercially and technically viable the game would have been for the 32X.

Hexen: Beyond Heretic certainly had an appeal but IDK about the 32X having enough RAM to run it properly.
Strife could have been a good swan song if it could fit in the 32X's specs.

Let's see how far XProger goes with his 32X port of Tomb Raider. I wonder how much ROM is necessary to cover sounds and music; and if it's possible to reach average 12-15 fps on the system. I think that would have the bare minimum for it to be considered playable back then.
This is a very, very interesting project to keep an eye on.

Other than that, in terms of action games, something like a less flashy Loaded and something along the lines of 3DO's Captain Quazar (gameplay, not the lame character) could have been good picks for co-op action games on the system that would also deliver something beyond the regular 16-bit experience.

Re: your comments on the arcades, this is exactly what I was saying a few pages back. The advanced arcade games were getting very expensive, often $1 per credit. Plus with the arcade scene declining, developers were taking fewer risks and instead making the same kinds of games over and over because they knew what would sell. Compare that to the variety in arcade games in the 1980s and it's not even close. Walk into a mid 90s arcade and it was 31 flavors of one on one fighters and racing games, plus a few rail shooters. The only thing that really stood was out seeing games like Dance Dance Revolution in the late 90s, stuff even casual players could get into.

I think the mid-90s Midway wave in the US was the beginning of the end. A sign of the times to come.

Also, True Pinball is on the European list of PS1's best-sellers. Another missed opportunity on the 32X line-up, I think. Jaguar, 3DO, CD32, PS1, SAT; all of them had pinball games. They appealed to the older audiences and they didn't require super-powerful graphics hardware.

Maybe something else that could have been explored would be a Road Rash game with graphics similar to the arcade's Super Hang-On. For the US market, I think that would have had far more appeal than Space Harrier (probably a good product for the Japanese market due to its legendary history and relevance to the arcades).
By the way, I played both After Burner Complete and Space Harrier the other day, and I found After Burner to look and feel significantly better in terms of how it was ported to the system. Far better coloring and more consistent framerate in After Burner Complete.

[gamevet]

I'd thought that Space Harrier was an amazing port for the 32X. It was a pretty dated arcade game by then though.

[Gryson]

Here's a fun piece of relevant history. I stumbled across this fanzine archive and found an article from 1994 about the 32X before its release:

32X: SYSTEM SCAM?

Well, Sega really blew it this time. They've made some big mistakes before with their overload of Sonic games, the Genesis' lack of RPGs, and being all but absent at this years Summer CES, but the 32X takes the cake. This system is overpriced and won't likely be supported for very long. DON'T buy it.

Although Sega will most likely boast about the affordability of the 32X, it is, in fact, overpriced. First of all, Sega has said before that the 32X will contain no pack-in title (see Paradox #17). If this is true, it'll cost an additional $69.99 (manufacturer's suggested retail of virtually all 32X carts) to even use your upgrade. That $70 is on top of the $149 for the 32X, plus $89 (minimum) for the Genesis, plus $200 (approximately) should you decide to include a Sega CD. So, an investment of $500 is necessary for a fully loaded 32X plus a game. Even if it DOES come with a game and you don't get a Sega CD, an investment of $238 is still necessary, a price tag roughly comparable to that of the Jaguar, a clearly superior system.

Okay, so let's assume you're willing to throw all this money out the window for a 32X. What can we assume to be its lifespan? Well, EGM2 #1 (I believe) reported that Sega will bring out their Saturn system in America in April of 1995. If this is true, Sega will effectively obsolete the 32X less than half a year after its release. Seeing as the Saturn will likely cost close to $400, I find it highly unlikely that Sega will even allow any 32X titles to even come close to the quality of their Saturn games. Hmmm, gee... Sega has a $149 system to support and a four hundred dollar one... which one will be best supported?!?!?

The 32X certainly seems to be one of the biggest rip-offs ever, don't it? Sega has created a deceptively priced system which it seems will only get a half year or so of support (a year at best). For $149, we deserve more than a year of support.

This is a great perspective from the average user on the 32X.

[Team Andromeda]

No it didn’t TA. This is why I said that it would be a waste of time with you. Same old shit, different day.

DOOM sold somewhere around 12 million. Nobody knows the exact number, because Europe sales numbers are impossible to track.Throw in piracy and number of people playing DOOM on PC is likely 10 fold.

Look I know better than to have a debate with you. You asked for facts and then go to Wikipedia.
EA took over a house and turned in to a virtual Sims house for the day, to celebrate Sims becoming the best selling PC game of all time and all with sales of less than 7 million , that's a fact and to bring in Piracy is quite frankly laughable
Not that I care about the PC side and I'll say no more on it


What's is in no doubt, is how Doom, Quake and Quake 2 made no major impact on the consoles and sadly the same was true for the likes of Duke Nukem 3D (one of the best games of that gen) You look at the Saturn, N64, PS tops sellers and they're not there, Doom isn't even the best selling game on the Jag. I think it was more the prestige of getting an advanced PC game running on the console that really had a bigger impact and is all a smokescreen
People didn't rush out to buy a PS in 95 or 96 for PC ports compared to the Saturn or 32X IMO. It was more than SONY looked to totally embrace the Nextgen and 32Bit gaming, while SEGA desperately tried to hang on to ageing, oversaturated declining 16bit market, that so many totally bored 2D users couldn't wait to see the back off, add in the ineptitude of SEGA America; not up to the task of 32 bit production and fecking up the most important IP tp SEGA in SONIC

You called it so right too, look at how well Gameday did, and what did SEGA have? despite having a brilliant and successful NFL series of its own...