Tomb Raider originally for 32X?

Originally posted by IronMongeR@Jun 27, 2004 @ 12:31 PM

I remember reading that Tomb Raider was planned for the Jaguar, so it's quite possible that a 32x version was discussed.

I also remember hearing that MK3 may have been on the way to the 32x but of course it never happened.
 
Alien vs Predator

Alien Trilogy

Super Street Fighter II Turbo

Those were also rumored for 32x.

Man.. there was a site that had all these rumored games for 32x, and it's dead now!

Man.. one of my favorite sites too....
 
Originally posted by IronMongeR@Jun 27, 2004 @ 03:52 PM

32x Memorial? That was a cool site. I'm surprised, and saddened, that it's down. :(

Yeah! That was it!

I found a list of rumored 32x games.

Unreleased/Rumored



32 Xtreme (32x version of ESPN Xtreme Games on PSX)

36 Great Holes Starring Fred Couples CD (Why? Waste of a disc, when there's the cart version)

Actua Football

Alien Trilogy (Oh hell yeah!)

Alien Vs. Predator (GREATEST FUCKING 32X GAME EVER!!!!)

Alone in the Dark

A*M*O*K

Apache

Batman Forever

B.I.O.S. Fear

BloodStorm

Clay Fighter 2: Judgment Clay

Casper

College Basketball's National Championship

Comix Zone (Eh? What good would've this done?)

Converse City Basketball Tour

Converse Hoops

Cuberwar

Darkstalkers (Hm... Can we say Street Fighter Alpha as well? :D)

Darxide (USA release. This game looks amazing)

Daytona USA (Hm.. would've been a bad port. I just know it)

Descent (Interesting... curious as to how it would've turned out)

Destruxor CD

Dogfight CD

Dracula X :eek: (You gotta be shitting me! Although it'd most likely be a port of the SFC version)

Dragon’s Lair 2: Time Warp CD

Dynamite Heddy

Ecco the Dolphin

Ecco Jr.

FIFA Soccer '96

Flying Aces

Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball

Garfield

Head-On Soccer

Heavy Machinery

Helioblades

Hosenose & Booger

Izzy's Quest for the Olympic Rings

Jack Nicholas Golf '95

Jet Ski Rage

Judge Dredd

Kingdom: The Far Reaches

Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine CD

Maximum Surge CD

Midnight Raiders CD

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

NBA Action

NFL Instant Replay

NHL 95

Norse by Norsewest: The Lost Vikings 2

Outpost

PGA Tour Golf '95

Primal Rage CD

Prime Time NFL

Quarantine

Race Drivin'

Rachet & Bolt

Rayman

Revolution X

Road Rash 3: Tour De Force

Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV

Shadow of Atlantis CD

Shell Shock

Sonic 4 (Wishful thinking... Although I enjoy Chaotix quite a bit)

Soul Star X

Spectre VR

Spider-Man & Venom

Spot Goes To Hollywood

Street Fighter: The Movie

Street Racer

Super Street Fighter II Turbo (Second only to AVP as best 32x game)

Surgical Strike CD

Tee Off

Thunder Strike 2

Thunderhawk 2

Tee Time

Tomcat Alley Deluxe CD

Top Gear: Overdrive

Vara's Code

Virtua Cop (See Daytona. Would've been a bad port)

Virtual Golf

Voyager Star 2

VR Troopers

Wing War

Wirehead CD

Wrath Squadron

Zero Tolerance

Zorro
 
Most of those games probably never even began being developed on the 32X, since they're mostly ports of existing PC/arcade/other console games.

They were announced because developers assumed the 32X would be fairly powerfull, and ports would probably work, but in the end it didn't live up to the expectations.

But seriously, goddamn DraculaX could've been ported to SegaCD no problemo.
 
Originally posted by M3d10n@Jun 28, 2004 @ 03:45 PM

They were announced because developers assumed the 32X would be fairly powerfull, and ports would probably work, but in the end it didn't live up to the expectations.


No they were cancelled because sega pulled the plug and also because of dire sales. The 32x was powerful enoguh for its time.
 
Darxide is the most 3D-intensive 32X game I ever saw, and it features slow down on stuff that would run just fine in a 3DO.

And Sega didn't pull the plug. They never really plugged it to begin with, it was just loosely placed, and fell off naturally. A console developed and supported nearly entirely by SOA alone, ignored by SOJ, that was only interested in the Saturn, never got full support at any point of it's life. Also, the whole system was rushed up to the limits, and development was far from straightfoward.

The 32X was a bad decision. They should've used the money to cheapen and market the SegaCD and fund development of *original* CD titles that made good use of it's capabilities, not create another add-on.

Or develop extra chips, like the VR chip but cheaper and not *that* powerfull, to use whithin the cartrigdes themselves. *That* was the major advantage to the SNES, not really the extra color pallete and better sound (that *maybe* could've been improved by special chips in the cart, but I don't know that much of the Genesis hardware to be sure of it). If SNES games were stuck to the default hardware, they would have a hard time matching Genesis games (and SNES games, in the beginning, were considered slower than Genny games).

The VR chip was awesome, and kicked the SuperFX in the arse, but Sega overdid it. It was just too expensive and came out way too late.
 
But officially Sega did pull the plug on the 32X. They had announced all official support for the 32x and Sega CD would be discontinued on a specific date.
 
When you see the zyrinx demo, you can see that tombrider was possible with 32x (with 2D objects maybe).

Thunderhawk 2

I chatted with the 3d programmer of thunderhawk 2.

He told me that the only thing they did are some 3d engine test.

The project was discontinued before the game starts.

So the video shown at E3 was a fake...


I have some screens of the prototype (with the dev cart).

the game was pretty finished but there wan't any BG because i think they did the 32x stuff before (front plane+sprites) and the genesis stuff after (background).

Maybe one day, we'll be able to dump these sooooo cool carts.

Because, the funny thing is that there is more betas than releases for the 32x.
 
I'm downloading the Zyrinx demo now. I expect no less for them than total ownage, since Red Zone is goddamn amazing. It could be a better game, but I can't think of many other games that came to push the genny as much as it did, having a fully rotating polygon background that didn't look like ass, and all those pseudo-3D effects, all running at stunning framerates.

But...

...you can see that tombrider was possible with 32x (with 2D objects maybe).

I have yet to see the demo, but most objects in Tomb Raider were 2D already. Only the characters/enemies, levers, and a few things, like spikes, saws and big rocks were 3D (as well as the levels themselves). And considering the Saturn version slows down at slightly more expansive rooms, the 32X version would require a good deal of extra effort I'm not sure Core would deliver. Maybe Zyrinx could do it, but not Core.

But I should't bash core. TR1 was a real hardware pusher for it's time, and even if doesn't look as pretty as, say, Burning Rangers, or Croc, it had a LOT more on-screen polygons that most of the games of it's time, and most Saturn games *ever*. The game engine was good, it was just a matter of tinkering with the art itself to get it looking better (using lower contrast/slightly blurred textures and better-made "mipmaps" would reduce the graininess a LOT, by making them shimmer less under the Saturn's rough point sampling, as well as fine tuning the vertex colors and lighting to increase color contrast between vertices - that would make the shading looks a LOT better and less blocky.)

But... hey, there is a N-cage version. Never played it, but I'm sure it might have even lower res models (if that's even possible), and smaller draw distance (that would require some levels to be re-designed to account things you can't see), as well as a smaller resolution. Maybe a 32X version could be done, with smaller view distances, and if the gouraud shading were completely elliminated (it would drain too much from the 32X).

--EDIT--

Holy mother of ALL cows! I just saw the demo. I can't believe I missed this all these yers! It's fucking AMAZING! That gouraud shading and that fog look smoother than any I've seen on the Saturn itself! The shading is easily PSX-level, and the framerate was unbelievable. I can barely believe this is running in the same system that ran Darxside and Metal Head. And they even got additive blending and framebuffer effects, with alpha blending and some blurring! WTF? Either Sega secretly put additive blending sprite flags into the 32X and forgot to tell anyone (and to implement it into the Saturn), or these guys came out with their own renderer (maybe they mix their own SW rendering with the 32X's own framebuffer rendering).

And then there comes a voxel demo that looks a lot like Amok (but with light backgrounds), and runs as smooth as the Saturn version, with seemly the same amount of detail! These guys are GODS. I wonder what they coudl've done with the Saturn itself...
 
Wow all this cool info so sad about that never TR1 did not show up on 32X.

But hey Grand Theft Auto was due for release on the Amiga in `95 or 96 but no one belives me.But if you all read 1 of the PS2 mags out now I forgot the name will get it later it actually mentions this great fact.

So can I have a sparkly pinkey thing too Mal?
 
Yes, this demo is amazing and shows the capacities of their 3D engine (Flat, Gourdau, Textured, Textured Gourdau, 2d half transparency...)

But its possible since the programmer of darxide (yes, i also chatted with him) told me that darxide's 3d engine shows more textured polygons/sec than the sega saturn hardware can do (you can see this on them website too).

And the power of the 32x isn't very very smallest than the saturn power (with pure calcul with both cpus).

For the vorxel, i'm sorry but its pretty easy to do compared to the 3d engine.

("Just" rotate and decrease the colors of the whole screen while youre adding color from a "point" of the screen).

The things which very impressed me is the demo in the desert with lots of 2d objects and 3d buildings.

And the gourdau scene with the moving source of light (like clouds in virtua tennis).
 
Originally posted by fonzievoltonov@Jun 30, 2004 @ 08:31 PM

For the vorxel, i'm sorry but its pretty easy to do compared to the 3d engine.

("Just" rotate and decrease the colors of the whole screen while youre adding color from a "point" of the screen).

The things which very impressed me is the demo in the desert with lots of 2d objects and 3d buildings.

And the gourdau scene with the moving source of light (like clouds in virtua tennis).

You seem to have misunderstood voxels.

That desert demo *IS* running on a voxel engine, and the art looks a LOT like Amok.

Voxels are like "3D pixels". A voxel image is like a bitmap, but with X, Y and Z coordinates. Since such images would eat LOTS of RAM, in the past programmers came with more limited voxel engines that used heightmaps to draw terrains. It's like a enhanced "mode7" effect: you have a plane, and each pixel has a height, then you draw a collumn for each pixel, based on the height and perspective.

Try to trackdown/download a copy of Amok on the Saturn (there is a PC version too - the demo shouldn't be hard to find) and see by yourself.

The problem with those vixel terrain engines is that "geometry" looks blocky when up close, because it *is* made of blocks. It is possible to use bilinear filtering (in 3D) with voxels, but I've only seen demos using it. It became unpratical beyond the behemot of HW accelerated polygons.

On Darxside... I only played the first level... it looked far simplier than most Saturn stuff, seriously. There is a major slowdown during the "take off" sequence, inside the mothership, where there are a few more polygons (but still pretty low-poly for Saturn and PSX standards) and lots of breaks ups, plus during the game the framerate seems almost random...
 
Originally posted by fonzievoltonov@Jun 30, 2004 @ 08:31 PM

But its possible since the programmer of darxide (yes, i also chatted with him) told me that darxide's 3d engine shows more textured polygons/sec than the sega saturn hardware can do (you can see this on them website too).

And the power of the 32x isn't very very smallest than the saturn power (with pure calcul with both cpus).

Are you really that sure that the 32x can display more polygons than the saturn? Saturn = 250,000 Textured etc where as 32x is about 50,000 flat i think.
 
I'm sorry, for the "vorxel" i was talking about the Blue rotative things with sort of white particles :rolleyes: .

For the polygons :ph34r: ,

The guy told me that his SOFTWARE 3d engine was displaying more polygons than the HARDWARE 3d render of the saturn, i don't know if its true but its possible (because by using software tricks...).

Anyway, the 32x isn't able to render polygons without software...

And personaly i think darxide's programmer hasn't make fun of me (if yes, its stupid, the game is outdated).

Bye

Fonzie
 
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