The Sega Tower of Power!

[Cobra!]

During the early 90s, when the Mega Drive started to show it's age, Sega released a series of add-ons, the Mega CD and the 32x.

The Mega CD (Known as the Sega CD in North America), was released in 1992, and as well as being adding CD drive to the Mega Drive, it added new hardware that brought the Mega Drive closer to the SNES., achieving more colours and having it's equivalent to the SNES mode 7.

Problem was, the system got mostly FMV games, like most early CD systems did, so it has had a bad reputation over the years, but it does have some excellent games, most notably Sonic CD! It was also a system whose existence was justified and has it's place in history.

The 32x was a system that gave the Mega Drive 32-bit power and the ability to achieve 3D graphics. The idea was to be a stop gap for Sega's next system.
However, that console, which became known as the Saturn, came out much earlier than anticipated, so the 32x's purpose was gone before it even released, but Sega of America had a lot of faith in the system, so it came out anyway.
As expected, flopped hard and helped damage Sega's reputation.

Why am I talking about these? Well recently, I won an auction for a 32x unit, and got it for a pretty good price. From what I've been able to test with it, it seems to work fine.

So I plopped it onto my Mega Drive Model 1 with a Mega CD attached, to create what is known as The Sega Tower of Power!



Right now I only have one 32x game, which is Virtua Racing Deluxe, and since I lack the cable to properly connect the 32x to the TV, I'm stuck watching the backdrop of the game.



This is because the 32x requires what people call a "patch" cable to connect the Mega Drive to the 32x, and the display cables comes from the 32x to the TV. I got the formet cable, but not the latter, that's still to arrive.

I also need to fix my Mega CD not starting up, but once I resolve these issues, I'll have access to the entire Mega Drive library!

Anyway, has anyone here had any history with these add-ons, what do you think of them?

[Memory]

I have history with Sega consoles and have considered buying a 32X and/or a Mega CD for a long time. I've never used either of them but I have been fascinated by them for years. It's awesome to see a thread here talking about it!

I know more about the 32X than the Mega CD and have read/watched videos about them in the past. The 32X had a tiny library of games (only 40!), even less of them were released in PAL regions (I'm in Australia). It really is unfortunate, it seemed like they had great plans for these two add-ons, but they were pretty much dead-on-arrival as soon as they were released and the Saturn swooped in pretty quickly afterwards, relegating the 32X and Mega CD into a state of obscurity, both becoming largely forgotten.

There are several games for the 32X I am interested in but have never been able to play, those games being Knuckles' Chaotix, Darxide, Tempo, Kolibri, and Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000. Somehow I actually have Kolibri in my Sega collection, but I've never had a 32X so I've never been able to play it.

Another game I'm very interested in is Tempo. I've played it on an emulator before and while the gameplay isn't the best, the art is cute and the game's concept is pretty fun! I reckon it had potential. They made a sequel for the Saturn, Super Tempo, only released in Japan, and I have that and have played it on my Saturn. It's a pretty wacky game but I love it. 

As for the Mega CD, I know a lot less about it unfortunately. :( I do know that a lot of the titles for it are the same you would see on the Sega MD/Genesis. I think there's around 36 games that are exclusive to the Mega CD.

I'd love to see a follow-up to this thread once you get the patch cable, @Cobra! I hope you can get the Mega CD working too, fingers crossed!

[purelyconstructive]

Why am I talking about these? Well recently, I won an auction for a 32x unit, and got it for a pretty good price. From what I've been able to test with it, it seems to work fine...

Nice! I hope the Mega CD is easy to fix and everything runs smoothly together!

Long ago, my sister had gotten a Genesis, a Sega CD, a Master System Converter, and a box of games from a garage sale for super cheap, like $20 or something. I think the woman who sold them thought they were broken and/or didn't care much about them. I had tried out a couple of the Sega CD games that came with it, but they were so scratched up that it was hard to get them to play. One was based on Jeopardy!, the game show. The other one was called Sol-Feace, a side-scrolling shmup similar to R-Type. Unfortunately, the one that I wanted to play the most, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, I couldn't get to run at all. Maybe I will get it on Steam sometime in the far future...

If I was able to play some other Sega CD games, I wouldn't mind trying Fahrenheit, Sewer Shark, Puggsy, Popful Mail, Radical Rex, Keio Flying Squadron, and the two Lunar RPGs. Funnily enough, I've played a bunch of Sonic CD already because I had it on PC as a child. If I recall correctly, my mom found a copy of it at a discount store for about $10.

There are several games for the 32X I am interested in but have never been able to play, those games being Knuckles' Chaotix, Darxide, Tempo, Kolibri, and Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000. Somehow I actually have Kolibri in my Sega collection, but I've never had a 32X so I've never been able to play it.

Great taste in games. I wouldn't mind trying all of those as well! Kolibri looks beautiful. Ed Annunziata seems like an interesting person. I really enjoyed Ecco The Dolphin, especially since reading more deeply into the inspirations behind it. To explain:

"Ending To Ecco The Dolphin"

There was a neuroscientist by the name of John C. Lilly who speculated that humanity would eventually find intelligent, non-human life throughout The Universe. The catch was, he didn't think that it would come from outer space, but from right here on Earth through interspecies communication! He was involved in some rather infamous experiments that attempted to teach dolphins human language. These same experiments were the inspiration behind one of my favorite movies, The Day of the Dolphin, starring George C. Scott. It is worth watching if you can find a copy of it. The soundtrack has a couple of very beautiful songs too. To continue...

John C. Lilly also invented the sensory deprivation tank. Later in his career, he started to personally experiment with large doses of psychoactive substances while floating around within one. He ended up having some really interesting psychedelic experiences where he met benevolent aliens that he claimed were helping to increase the consciousness of people on Earth through the creation of synchronicities. He referred to them as "ECCO". This is an acronym that stands for: "Earth Coincidence Control Office".

Here is where it gets really interesting, and somewhat ominous in its relevance to us now...He also experienced another being that he called, "The Solid State Entity" (or SSE for short). While ECCO was trying to help humanity, SSE was trying to control humanity through computer technology and artificial intelligence with the eventual aim of completely destroying it. A writer by the name of S.J. Kerrigan has an interesting article that elaborates on the SSE for anyone who is curious.

Anyway, this is where Ecco The Dolphin gets its name, and why one encounters an alien as a final boss. The dolphins within Ecco's pod, the ones that get taken away at the beginning of the game, were actually abducted!

[close]