The 16-bit era was a time of transition. 3D gaming hadn't quite taken hold, but it was looming large and we all seemed to know it was going to take over eventually. Newspaper articles and dreamy science-fiction glamorized the idea of "virtual reality" as the next wave of entertainment, and first-person shooters began to boom in the wake of Wolfenstein 3-D. Meanwhile, CD-ROM technology was proving to be a revolution in its own right, giving developers a seemingly infinite amount of space to fill and no idea how to really take advantage of it.
There's an interesting parallel between 1993 through 1994, and the dark age of a decade earlier that we know as "the crash." While the commonly accepted narrative claims that a flood of failed systems and games of questionable quality may have caused the downturn, the same things could be said of the early 32-bit systems. FMV games and clumsy attempts at 3D are ridiculed now, and a wave of new systems were vying to even get shelf space. And yet, unlike in the '80s, the industry stayed level, thanks to the two market leaders carrying us until the true 32-bit contenders arrived.
But that doesn't mean we should shrug all of these systems off. For all their failures they did help to blaze the trail for the more successful systems that would follow in their wake. They were interesting times, full of flashy, experimental new games as well as a heaping spoonful of irony.
FM-Towns Marty
The vision: The Marty was the first CD-based, 32-bit console out of the gate, and in 1991, it was a seriously impressive piece of hardware. The idea was to create a consolized version of the FM-Towns computer, which was itself the first Japanese computer with a standard CD-ROM drive. With a 386 CPU and VGA-like video, this was basically a well-equipped gaming PC in a console, and on paper it could blow away any system on the market. The sleek, gray console played the very same games as its PC counterpart, and even came equipped with a floppy drive for the games that needed it. There were also a few original Marty games, but for the most part, it was designed to share its successes and failures with its desktop brother.
The Marty arrived so early that it's almost difficult to compare to other 32-bit consoles. While the system was definitely capable of running some early 3D games like Alone in the Dark, most of the software was still rooted in the 16-bit era. Later upgraded versions had some serious potential to compete in the 3D space, but it was never exploited.
What went wrong: Since it basically had all the hardware of a heavy-duty PC, and business model that meant selling the system at a profit, the Marty launched with a hefty price tag of 98,000 Yen, about $710 at the time and over $1000 when adjusted for inflation. The Marty 2 launched in 1994 at a more reasonable 66,000 Yen, but it was still well out of range of the average gamer.
FM-Towns computers never managed to get a huge chunk the market either, and this proved to be an albatross around the Marty's neck. In Japan, the older NEC PC-9800 series still dominated the market for much of the Marty's life, despite vastly inferior hardware, and the Sharp X68000 had a sizable niche with the gamer market. Ultimately, the software library was limited and, thanks to the similar architecture, it became a dumping ground for ports of Western PC games that were never big in Japan to begin with.
Worth playing: The Marty library is sizable, but there aren't a lot of exclusives. It did, however, get superior versions of a number of games. Shadow of the Beast and its sequel got excellent remakes for the FM-Towns, with gigantic sprites and redbook audio. Zak McKracken's elusive 256-color version is also an FM-Towns exclusive. There are a few excellent arcade ports as well, like Image Fight and Splatterhouse.
Amiga CD32
The vision: Much like the Marty, the CD32 was an effort to sell a computer in console form. Amiga AGA computers had launched a year before, and the CD32 was pretty much identical in spec, allowing Commodore to make a relatively affordable system without the need for custom hardware. The CD32 could also be fitted with various Amiga accessories, and effectively turned into a full-featured computer.
What went wrong: The CD32 surprised a few people early in its life, taking a commanding lead of the CD gaming market in western Europe, even against the SEGA CD and PC CD-ROM platforms. It seemed like there was real potential for the system to thrive, but legal squabbles prevented the system's launch in the US, and with the company already in financial turmoil, it wasn't long before the bottom fell out.
It's doubtful that the CD32 could have lasted, even if the circumstances were different. While it had a capable CPU, the graphics hardware was still 16-bit, and not particularly impressive at that. Because of its computer roots, most of the games were just quick conversions of disk-based Amiga games, usually with not much more than an FMV intro or some redbook audio to boast as an enhancement. It wasn't really capable of quality 3D graphics, and the handful of first-person shooters like Alien Breed 3D and Gloom only served to show how wimpy the system was.
Worth playing: There are hardly any exclusives for the system at all, but if you're curious about the system, there are plenty of great games to be found. The 3D shooter Guardian may smack of 16-bit, but it's a fan-favorite all the same, and superior versions of Superfrog, Alien Breed, Exile, and many other Amiga favorites are a good consolation for the lack of originals.
3DO
The vision: Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins left behind the company he created with a bold vision for the future of the gaming industry. He wanted to abandon the old business model of tyrannical first parties that strictly controlled licensing and charged outrageous fees to subsidize the cost of their systems. Instead, he would create an open system like other entertainment electronics, where anyone could make a game with a small per-disc license fee of 3 Dollars Only. With that dream in mind, he called his company 3DO.
He knew that an idea as radical as his would need a serious piece of hardware. To accomplish this, he merged his efforts with a small company called New Technologies Group, founded by RJ Mical and Dave Needle. The two engineers had previously helped to design the Commodore Amiga and the Atari Lynx, two systems with a reputation for visionary hardware design. The 3DO was no different. Of all the systems jumping prematurely into the 32-bit race, the 3DO came closest to delivering on the promises of a new gen, with a system that seemed easily capable of throwing around large, texture-mapped, 3D landscapes.
What went wrong: The idea was always to have multiple hardware manufactures making the system and selling it at a profit, but when it came time for the 3DO launch in late September, 1993, only Panasonic had signed on. With no competition, they marketed the unit as a high-end entertainment system, and saddled it with a price tag $699. The price point proved to be prohibitively expensive, topping even NeoGeo, the most notorious "rich kid's" system of the day.
The 3DO struggled to get any kind of market share, but the high price proved to be a major obstacle. This, in turn, left many major third parties wary of the system, save for a few dedicated companies in love with the idea of a developer's console. Smaller developers, on the other hand, were still attracted to the low overhead of developing for the 3DO, but many of their games only served to strengthen the perception that 3DO's library was riddled with crap. The infamous Plumber Don't Wear Ties became the symbol for everything that was wrong with giving a license to anyone that wanted one. The open license also made the system attractive to developers of adult games, with some particularly awful releases making the system the subject of ridicule.
Worth playing: The 3DO was short lived, but it amassed a library of hundreds of games. Many of these releases are indeed very poor, and some of the system's more famous originals have been ported to other systems, but there is still plenty of reason to explore the library. Excellent ports of Samurai Showdown and Super Street Fighter II Turbo probably don't mean much now, but the excellent remake of Wing Commander and enhanced port of Star Control II certainly do. If you can stomach the cheesy FMV, you can find a lot to like about EA's Shockwave series, too.
Atari Jaguar
The vision: The Jaguar was meant to be the great comeback for Atari, the once great software giant that had been shamed out of the home console market since the failure of the 7800. While it was never a huge success, the handheld Lynx helped Atari get rolling again with a talented in-house development studio (formerly Epyx), and a brand that meant something to the '90s gamer. Emboldened by their lack of failure, they set out to make a triumphant return to the console market with a system they would market as the first 64-bit console. The "bit wars" are a laughable relic of the past now, but in the wake of the "Genesis Does" ad campaign, that little number that no one understood meant the world to Joe Gamer.
Atari didn't really have in-house hardware R&D any more (they had bought the Lynx with the purchase of Epyx) so they bought a British hardware developer called Flare Technology to develop two prototypes. The first, codenamed Panther, would have been released in 1991. The second, Jaguar, finally made it to shelves in November of 1993, just behind the 3DO. It promised to be the ultimate 2D beast and blow away the current generation at a modest $250 asking price.
What went wrong: The decision to scrap the Panther and wait two years may have been Atari's biggest mistake. The Jaguar was ultimately a system that seemed trapped between generations. It was cartridge-based and had a Motorola 68000 CPU not unlike the Genesis, but it also had some powerful and complicated video hardware and was capable of simple 3D games. Next to the Genesis and the Super Nintendo it was a powerhouse, but it wasn't the 16-bit consoles that would end Atari's last stand.
Like all the systems in this article, the Jaguar also suffered from a very uneven library of games that included some notorious stinkers like Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy and the horrid Mortal Kombat clone, Kasumi Ninja. With the Lynx, Atari proved that they had some talented folks in their employ, but too often their 64-bit output wasn't up to par. Aggressive and ironically sarcastic advertising was not enough to squash the Jaguar's growing image problem.
The Jaguar actually managed to have a healthy first year, but as the PlayStation and Saturn loomed larger on the horizon, it became increasingly apparent which systems would be the real next generation powerhouse. Tough talk from Atari execs did little to convince people that the Jaguar could hang with the new guys. A CD add-on made it to market late in the system's life, but was dead almost as soon as it was out.
Worth playing: It's easy to make fun of the Jaguar's library, but there are a handful of games that are worth hunting down. Jeff Minter, a big supporter of Flare's earlier vaporware console, the Konix Multisystem, created the system's best loved classic, Tempest 2000, and the oft-forgotten follow-up, Defender 2000, both of which belong in any retro-gamer's library. Atari's famous first-person shooter, Aliens vs. Predator was a real showcase at the time, and while it isn't what it used to be, it's still a fun game. Iron Soldier and its sequel are also among the best mech combat games of their day.
Sega 32X
The vision: We've been talking a lot about the 32X on IGN Retro lately. Its promise was simple: We'll bring your musty old Genesis up to date for a paltry $170, and never mind those expensive new systems. The sales pitch was pretty attractive. In the small mushroom-shaped add-on there were two 32-bit Hitachi processors and a new graphics chip – everything you need to be a legit next gen system. For those with a SEGA CD, there would even be games that supported both add-ons. What more could you need?
What went wrong: The 32X was doomed from the very start. SEGA was never committed to the upgrade strategy, and their true next generation system, the Saturn, was launching in Japan just after the 32X was launched in the US. The truth is, the different branches of SEGA were in disagreement about their next gen strategy, and they ended up competing with themselves.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg for the ill-fated system. With an apparent short shelf life ahead of it, the system became a dumping ground for quick cash-in ports that were sometimes barely distinguishable from their 16-bit counterparts. Even the first-party releases were largely outsourced to small studios of uneven quality, and certainly not the standard you would expect from SEGA. Many games literally started as Genesis projects and had some 32X effects tacked on late in their development. The idea was just to get as many games on the shelf as quickly as possible before the inevitable collapse.
The hardware itself was needlessly complicated, inheriting the Saturn's twin-CPU dilemma and pairing it with an architecture that made all that power run through the same clunky old Genesis. The "upgrade" strategy seemed to be more of a burden than an advantage. There was no need for the Genesis hardware, but since it was there, most developers used it extensively, leading to games that looked like a mash up of Genesis and Saturn bits. Just as problematic, the cartridges didn't increase in size, so there wasn't really room for giant sprites with deep palettes even if the power was there to display them. Games like Metal Head and Darxide proved that there was some real 32-bit muscle in there, but we rarely got to see it.
Worth playing: Levi is going through the library now in its entirety, so check the Review-a-Day calendar for a full breakdown as it unfolds. Despite a lot of lazy shovelware, there are a few games well worth firing up, even if there aren't any truly timeless classics. Shadow Squadron, Star Wars Arcade, and the uber-collectible Darxide show that the system could pull off a good 3D space shooter, and Tempo and Knuckles Chaotix are at least interesting, if somewhat flawed. Very solid ports of Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter are perhaps the crown jewels of the 32X collection.
NEC PC-FX
The vision: In the US, the TurboGrafx is usually thought of as an interesting also-ran, but its Japanese counterpart, the PC Engine, was a legitimate contender, even outpacing SEGA's console for a time. It made sense, then, that NEC would have a successor ready when the PC Engine market dried up. They developed a system in 1992 that would be ready for the next generation of gaming – or at least the 1992 concept of the next generation. It made up for some of the shortcomings of the PC Engine CD: It could display true-color images, and some of the best FMV out there. It also packed a 32-bit first-party CPU that could more than make up for the wimpy 8-bit heart of their last system.
What went wrong: When NEC started rallying support for their new platform, they realized that many developers just weren't ready to move on from the 16-bit era. They shelved their next gen plans for the time being, but when the Saturn and PlayStation came bearing down on them in 1994, they leapt to market without updating the spec, and they were left with a system that was ill-equipped to compete in the real next generation playing field. NEC put more emphasis on quality FMV than they did on 3D because that seemed to be the trend in 1992.
As a result, the PC-FX ended up attracting dated FMV games and ports of computer adventure games. "Cinematic battle" games were particularly popular on the system. These simple rock-paper-scissors FMV fighters could be pieced together from existing animation from a popular TV show for very little money and consistently make a quick buck. If the system had any 3D power, it barely got to show it, and even real 2D action games were rare. The system managed to maintain a niche that far outlasted the 32X, but with only 100,000 systems sold, it really couldn't be called much more successful.
Worth playing: Unless you like FMV games, your options are very limited. The overhead view shooter Chojin Heiki Zeroigar and the side-scrolling beat 'em up Kishin Doji Zenki are generally the system's most revered action games, and a handful of RPGs are sure to entertain the Japanese literate, but for those saddled with a language barrier, the PC-FX is pretty much for collectors only.
And the rest…
In this article we've tried to focus on the legitimate contenders up to the end of 1994, but that's not quite the end of the story. There were a number of other systems that tried their hand in the mid-'90s and didn't even make it as far as the half dozen failures discussed so far.
The Casio Loopy was an underpowered 32-bit console released in the fall of 1995. The unique system was one of the few to be actively marketed at a predominantly female demographic. In addition to a library of female-centric dating games, the system could print stickers and capture images from outside inputs. Only 10 game carts were ever released for the system, leaving the system a brief footnote on the pages of gaming history.
Learning nothing from the trials of the CD32 and Marty, Apple decided to take a stab at their own consolized computer, the Pippin. Rather than manufacture the system themselves, they followed in 3DO's footsteps and licensed the technology to Bandai. The result was another very costly system ($599) that was as much a computer as it was a game machine. By the time it released in 1995 it had no chance of really competing with Sony or SEGA, and Bandai ended up marketing it as a multimedia/internet device rather than a game console.
Lastly, we must not forget the strangest of all 32-bit consoles, the Virtual Boy. Obviously, Nintendo never meant the system as a true contender, and frankly, it's not really clear what market they were after, but we know they were in it to make money all the same. Their headset-on-a-stand was trapped somewhere between portable and console, but the red LED display sealed its fate as a gimmick that would never be a serious alternative. The system was more or less dead in six months, and its creator, the legendary Gunpei Yokoi, was shamed in the company he helped so much to build.
None of this even includes the handful of underpowered CD-based multimedia consoles like the Playdia and CD-i that aimed to compete with the 16-bitters with full motion video, despite drastically underpowered hardware the fell behind even the current generation. It's really startling just how many of these systems made it to market, and I'm at a loss to really say why it happened then and not before or since. Perhaps the industry, emboldened by the success of the 16-bit generation and a widening gamer demographic, thought the time had come for a larger race. And it may be their failure that has kept it from happening again. Whatever the reason, it seems to be a compelling answer to anyone who claims a flood of systems and bad games alone can crash an entire industry.
