You remember it don't you? Yes. Yes, you do. It was the other add-on for the Mega Drive - the cartridge-based one, rather than the one with the flat, shiny, roundies. It was able to play games with real nice 3D graphics and stuff, but get this: everybody in the land hated it.
I remember going to the UK launch, and being rather impressed with it. I was surprised by the amount of stick it got for all sorts of things - not least its version of Doom, which was played inside a smallish window that PC owners found hysterical. Really, though... by that point, I think people just wanted reasons to hate anything Sega did.
Truth is, if you were a Mega Drive owner, being able to play any sort of Doom was still pretty impressive. Star Wars Arcade was decent enough. Knuckles Chaotic was an interesting - oh-hoh! - "spin" on the Sonic forumla, and there were respectable ports of Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing.
So, in theory - in isolation - the 32X wasn't, in and of itself, bad. It refreshed the Mega Drive at a point where the Mega Drive needed refreshing. Unfortunately, timing is everything, and the 32X had the worst timing in gaming history. Indeed, were the 32X a stand-up comedian it would've taken a two-week holiday prior to delivering the punchline to the opening joke of its set.
Sega fans didn't want it, because they knew the Saturn was around the corner, and had been burned once already by an add-on - the Mega CD. Nobody else wanted it, because they were waiting for the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation. Not enough third-party developers made games for it. And, well, Sega pulled the plug after little more than a year.
Which meant that there were a lot of already-announced 32X games left in limbo. Some of these were reworked for the Saturn or other consoles. Some simply disappeared altogether. Here are ten of the latter.
Admittedly, you can sort of understand why. The game was designed to show off the 32X's polygon-shifting capabilities, and would've seen you racing a rocket-propelled hamster on a skateboard through various tunnels n' tubes - right into Richard Gere's bumhole!!!!
Allegedly.
Why... why there no more Dynamite Headdy games, Sega?
Yes, there was a Mega CD game, but after the cancellation of a proposed 32X instalment, Ecco was confined to history.
Reports suggest that the 32X title may have - briefly - shifted development onto the Saturn. Either way - neither game got released. Ultimately, Ecco the Dolphin drowned when Sega bunged-up his blowhole with tissue paper.
All of which is a shame, as if rumours are to be believed, the action in the 32X version would've shifted from the deep ocean to the interior of Richard Gere's bumhole!!!!!
Given that the Saturn version was derided for its weak, clippy, visuals and grinding frame-rate - and suffered terribly in comparison to Ridge Racer on the PlayStation, and likely contributed to the Saturn's defeat at the hands of its rival - there's little guarantee that a 32X version would have been any better.
In all honesty, I never hated the Saturn's version of Daytona as much as everybody else seemed to. I thought it played well enough that I could overlook the choppy graphics. Yes, Ridge Racer looked and played better on the PlayStation, but - for me - Daytona had more character and charm. I'm a sucker for charm.
Charm me, daddy!
Its immediate follow-up, Shadow Dancer, lacked something special, and every sequel since - there have been more Shinobi games released than you might have realised (most recently in 2011 on the 3DS) - has failed to live up to that first Mega Drive instalment.
Of course, the fact that Digital Shinobi was cancelled suggests it wouldn't have fared any better, but still... the grass is always greener (browner)... up Richard Gere's bum!!!!!
Despite rumours in the years since the 32X's demise, it's likely that Sonic 2: Special Edition never existed, and was merely the result of a cruel internet hoax. Like those rumours about Richard Gere.
By all accounts, Sonic Mars never got beyond a short proof-of-concept demo, and a pitch document which tied the game into the Sonic The Hedgehog TV cartoon series.
Also: it was no relation to the pop singer Bruno. Do you see?
No doubt Richard Gere would've preferred something called X-Men: Bum Games!!!!!!!!