TwistedPear

Hopefully it won't take five or six years between showing a prototype and production as it was with the Saturn Pro controller.

It's early in the year 1994, and the 32-bit era is just taking off with the PSX around the corner. Other cd-based systems are already on the market.

Hypothetically, you as a customer are ready to upgrade, but have a sizable library of carts. Boom, 32X.

On paper, the 32X is an entry point into the next era that is both modular and backward compatible. The base unit gets you started, but also owning a Sega CD can unlock the full potential of the Genesis ecosystem with Sega CD 32X titles, and of course retain Sega CD compatibility.

A modern work like the Doom 32X Resurrection romhack gives a glimpse into a scenario where Sega fully committed to this premise. The way it works is the Genesis processor becomes a delegator, handing off tasks to the other processors found in the 32X and CD (if present). By all accounts, this handoff works much smoother than one might think.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting going all-in on 32X hardware would have changed anything for the better. Obviously, obviously they should have just been patient and devoted that much more resources toward the Saturn instead of panicking.

I just get where their heads were at - right? It made sense. Sorta.

I'm on a quest to finish the game at difficulty 16 (Maximum) without taking a hit. During my first marathon of the journey, I got a new high score.

The run is visible on Twitch / YouTube if one is keen to that sort of thing.

https://piped.video/watch?v=t4k0A5zNf1c

After silence for a good while, I thought they were done with this project, but apparently not. Additional effects, a lot of optimizations, and the bosses were added back in.

There is so much grunt behind it now, that in the right configuration it uses the combined might of the Genesis, 32X, and Sega CD processing power all together.

Catching anyone up who orignally didn't know about this: Doom 32X Resurrection is an attempt to bring the Sega 32X version of Doom to its full potential. The game now supports a laundry list of features it didn't before: local coop / deathmatch, link cable multiplayer, all the maps, sprites from all angles (they all used to face forward, even rockets), positional sound effects, CD music support, new FM ost by SpoonyBard, improved resolution, improved framerate, additional 6-button configs, and more.

The romhack itself can be found at romhacking.net

As someone whose earliest exposure to Doom was on console, and possibly one of the bottom two or three versions of the game at that, this romhack blows me away. Modders went out of their way to actually make this version playable. Not only playable, but damn good. It adds Deathmatch / Coop, all the maps, new ost, new sprites, the works. It's basically a new game.

If you have never played Doom on the Sega 32X, let me fill you in. This was meant to be a launch title, and there was precious little time to get it up and running. New system + rushed development + small dev team = 32X Doom. All the sprites face forward, even rockets - so you're essentially shooting rockets backwards. The music sounds a bit like the day after Taco Bell. The game is missing most of the maps. And my favorite - the end credits sequence dumps you into a fake DOS prompt. (It displays C:\DOOM that you cannot interact with in any way). That is why Doom 32X Resurrection is such a crazy romhack. The amount of improvement is remarkable. I can't imagine how much better it would have reviewed and sold if this is how it released.

Just like Quake 1, if you already own Quake 2, the enhanced version is available as a free update. Although unlike Quake 1, Quake 2: Enhanced is also available on GOG day 1.

In addition to visual updates, there's a new episode "Call of the Machine", Quake 2 N64, a pass to the enemy AI which changes a few behaviors and attacks, removes machine gun recoil, a new infinite use item that shows the player where to go next, and a number of other qol and accessibility options.

Anecdotally, I find the addition of Q2 N64 very appealing. It's a mish-mash of pared-down maps from vanilla Q2 and the expansions in a strictly linear fashion - no backtracking. Of course, there's also changes to the lighting and a new OST by Aubrey Hodges. Being able to control the game from keyboard / mouse is a godsend. I played the game in emulator with a modern gamepad and it was barely, barely doable, even when I could manually set deadzones and sensitivities and the like. It was awful.

Patreon supporters of Raptor: Call of the Shadows Remixed now have access to a beta SDL2 port of Demon Star in the Discord server

Sure, you could have ran RotT in a number of sourceports, DOSBox, or even a virtual machine if you were determined, but the experience of getting it up and running on a modern system hasn't been great.

Nightdive released Ludicrous Edition and it's finally accessible enough to just launch and play. Includes midi and 2013 soundtracks, all the original episodes, plus one new one, and a couple of qol adjustments in the menus.

I used to have a 32x back in the day, but you know, Sega did what they did, and it didn't really pan out. I thought the mushroom system was cool tech, but lamented how little value it added to the Genesis. I essentially gave it away.

The library was small, and even the top tier A-list games barely even graze competency, let alone "good". Most of them play well enough in emulation (there are exceptions, of course), and even Mister has a core for it now.

Still, I unironically enjoy Cosmic Carnage; Doom on 32x was sadly rushed but the result is hilarious for so many reasons (my favorite is the end of the game dumps you into a fake DOS prompt); and I still remember being legit excited to play Mortal Kombat II on the system, and it got a lot of mileage. So it wasn't all bad.

It may not make a lot of sense to buy it again now for the nostalgia, especially with all the benefits of hindsight I have. Did it anyway.

Caption: "Your Evil is Nothing Compared to Mine"