I used to have a 32x back in the day, but you know, Sega did what they did, and it didn't really pan out. I thought the mushroom system was cool tech, but lamented how little value it added to the Genesis. I essentially gave it away.
The library was small, and even the top tier A-list games barely even graze competency, let alone "good". Most of them play well enough in emulation (there are exceptions, of course), and even Mister has a core for it now.
Still, I unironically enjoy Cosmic Carnage; Doom on 32x was sadly rushed but the result is hilarious for so many reasons (my favorite is the end of the game dumps you into a fake DOS prompt); and I still remember being legit excited to play Mortal Kombat II on the system, and it got a lot of mileage. So it wasn't all bad.
It may not make a lot of sense to buy it again now for the nostalgia, especially with all the benefits of hindsight I have. Did it anyway.
Sega has a really fun history to research into, from console ideas to their place in the Japanese arcade market.
For a time, they were really innovative, even if most of it didn't work out the way they had hoped. Just throw it at a wall, see if it sticks.
This is a stupid one, but as a kid, E.A titles always stuck out to me because they had these unique cartridges. They were taller, and had this weird yellow tab on the side. Turns out it was to bypass some restrictions Sega had in place, but as a kid, I just thought it was neat that they looked different. It made me want to get them just to have more cool carts.
Remember the Tengen Nintendo games?
Those things always looked so gloriously bootleg to me, somehow even more than the Wisdom Tree releases.
Didn't they also almost get sued by Nintendo over those? Or am I thinking of Atari and their love of lawsuits?
Pretty sure they figured out how to beat Nintendo's propitiatory cartridge check...https://nicole.express/2022/the-center-point-can-not-hold.html