Round Table: Our Favorite SEGA 32X Games

roundtablefavroties The 32x might be an add-on with only under 40 games released for the short lived unit, but it wasn’t hard for most of the staff here to pick their favorite game. Even though the library was small there was quite a few good original titles and faithful arcade ports that make all us SEGA fans mouth’s drool. Some games really showed off what the 32x was capable of, others focused more on delivering great game over graphics. Check out the games we chose after the break and you can tell us in the comments what your favorite 32x game is.

The Weekly Five: Why every Sonic fan needs to play Knuckles’ Chaotix

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The 32X gets a lot of shit, and with good reason. The system stands as SEGA’s most abject failure, featuring the smallest library and shortest lifespan of any SEGA platform. It failed to live up to the promises SEGA made to its consumers and is a classic example of SEGA’s mid-90’s mismanagement.

An unfortunate side-effect of the 32X’s infamy is that the system’s better games are often ignored, or even worse, get the same shit that the 32X does. Knuckles’ Chaotix is a game that unfortunately suffers from both of these issues, and after having spent several days playing the game for 32X month, I’ve got to say that it’s a real shame. As far as I’m concerned, Knuckles’ Chaotix is a game every Sonic fan ought to play at least once, and here are five reasons why.

Tuesday Tunes: Knuckles Chaotix’s Speed Slider Zone

 
Knuckles Chaotix was the black sheep Sonic game of its era. Standing as one of the few major releases for an infamous peripheral, Chaotix had strange team based game play that played with Sonic physics in a way no game has done before or since, it featured an eclectic cast of characters that stand out even by modern Sonic standards, and it didn’t even feature Sonic or Tails among them. Even so, Knuckles Chaotix does contain one element that would be very familiar to any classic Sonic fan: a spectacular soundtrack.

Speed Slider is quintessential Sonic sound, chaotic and fast. It perfectly captures the speedy nature of its stage and the colorful, cheerful atmosphere of the game itself. Despite how infamous the 32X’s sound capabilities are, Knuckles Chaotix proves what the hardware was capable of in the right hands. In the hands of the Chaotix development team, the 32X sang.

Stick with us throughout the month as we examine some other great soundtracks from the 32X!

SEGA Channel Retro: SEGA Multiplayer Showcase & Knuckles’ Chaotix

Last weekend saw an extravaganza of rarely seen footage of more multiplayer madness with SEGA featuring me and some of my friends. Last time we went through several Sonic games from the Game Boy Advance line-up rummaging for chao, racing to the finish, exchanging fists and more. This time we’ve not only gone back to Sonic Advance 3 with a full house of four players, we also got to check out the multiplayer mode of the Game Boy Advance conversion of Jet Set Radio from the developers behind the GBA version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. Finally our last surprise was us racing in the future with San Francisco Rush 2049 on SEGA Dreamcast.

Also appearing only on Twitch is a silent longplay of Knuckles’ Chaotix running at 60 frames per second as part of SEGAbits’ 32X month. If you missed out on these liveshowings, be sure to subscribe to us on Twitch or YouTube for updates when we go live again or to catch up on our previous showings.

Sonic Talk #26: Genesis with SEGA’s Aaron Webber

[MP3] (iTunes Link coming soon)

Now with 100% more of Sega’s beloved Aaron Webber! In this months Sonic Talk Aaron, Shigs, Nuckles87 and Sonic Revolutions’ own Shayne Edwards discuss the Genesis Era of Sonic. Games include Sonic 1-3 and Knuckles, Sonic Spinball, Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, Sonic 3-D Blast, Sonic CD and Knuckles Chaotix. We also go into what makes Eggman tick and more!

CONTEST TIME! Listen in on this episode for a Sonic trivia question. Be the FIFTH person to answer (and answer correctly) to win an AtGames Sega Genesis (which I reviewed here the other day) with Street Fighter II and a Sega 6-Pack cartridge. Yeah, yeah. It’s not a great prize, but it’s better than nothing.

RULES: Be the fifth person to answer to win. Why fifth? I want more people to listen of course! If there is not a fifth person to answer, then the very first person will win the system and carts. Winner must join the Segabits forums and PM me their address. U.S. CITIZENS ONLY (I can’t afford the U.K. postage. Sorry.)

Tuesday Tunes: “Door into Summer” from Knuckles Chaotix

I’ve always thought of SEGA as the video game company of the summer. Many of their most memorable games start off in bright and sunny tropical paradises with endless blue skies. Stuff like Daytona USA, After Burner, Out Run, NiGHTS into Dreams, Sonic the Hedgehog and Ristar invoke the spirit of summer like few other games do.

I’ll be featuring a few of “songs of the summer” over the next month or so. Hope you enjoy them! Figured I’d start with something I’ve wanted to put up for a little while: Knuckles Chaotix’s “Door into Summer”. It not only has an appropriate name, but also has a nice, memorable tune.