Between the Sega 32X and Atari Jaguar, which do you feel had the better game library and why?

[BydoEmpire]

Jag got my vote due to the unique titles.  The 32x library - to me - is more "slightly nicer versions of games that are already good on the Genesis" or versions that aren't as good as platforms' versions.  Maybe the 32x has more good games over all, but the Jag has more good games I can't play elsewhere, despite the number of disappointing games.

Edited April 29, 2021 by BydoEmpire

[Reaperman]

1 hour ago, BydoEmpire said:

Jag got my vote due to the unique titles.  The 32x library is more "slightly nicer versions of games that are already good on the Genesis" 

A lot of the same applies to jag's library which had some solid ports of other system commons. but yea, jag's oddballs were more numerous, even though 32x still had some. I think darxide is jag-levels of unique.

 

Edited April 29, 2021 by Reaperman

[Mikebloke]

I went for jaguar but I don't think I would have 'at the time'. I think on paper and comparison of similar games, the 32x comes on top, but the arguement that it was a slightly better mega drive and a worse saturn applies, while the nuon can't really be labelled a better jaguar in my opinion and Jag is definitely a league above the 7800.

 

I think nostalgia bites for the '2000' games on Jag, even though I don't think they really represent a full game and I think I would have felt cheated buying them full price at the time with low disposable income. In comparison, if I was smart enough to avoid the mega drive ports the "unique" 32x games would have probably got me more interested. 

 

Some of the jaguar games make me think of the amiga cd32, but I don't think that's in a good way! But the St ports and homebrew coming out makes it feel like the winner. Which is why I think it's tailored because of nostalgia rather than at the time. 

 

Whoops just realised it's supposed to be based on original library.. Oh well. I think 2021 head still says Jag, but 1995 head would have said 32x.

[+jgkspsx]

Some additional categories for your consideration:

 

Top Tier Games  

 

These are (in my very personal opinion) games that are particularly interesting, fun, and/or worth playing for anyone interested in video games.

 

32X:

• After Burner Complete
• Blackthorne
• Darxide
• Kolibri
• Knuckles' Chaotix
• Metal Head
• Mortal Kombat II
• NBA Jam Tournament Edition
• Space Harrier
• Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Starship Bridge Simulator
• Star Wars Arcade
• Shadow Squadron / Stellar Assault
• Tempo
• Virtua Fighter
• Virtua Racing Deluxe
• WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game
• Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000 / Motherbase / Parasquad 

Jaguar:

• Alien vs Predator
• Attack of the Mutant Penguins
• Brutal Sports Football
• Cannon Fodder
• Cybermorph
• Doom
• Evolution: Dino Dudes
• Flashback: The Quest for Identity
• I-War
• International Sensible Soccer
• Iron Soldier
• Iron Soldier 2
• Missile Command 3D
• NBA Jam: Tournament Edition
• Pinball Fantasies
• Power Drive Rally
• Raiden
• Rayman
• Ruiner Pinball
• Super Burnout
• Syndicate
• Tempest 2000
• Towers II: Plight of the Stargazer
• Val d'Isère Skiing and Snowboarding
• Wolfenstein 3D
• Worms
• Zero 5
• Zool 2
• Battlemorph
• Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands

Admittedly, some of the Jaguar list is available in very similar form on the regular Genesis. But the Jaguar has a broader, deeper library of top tier games (for my tastes).

 

Exclusives (not including arcade games)

 

32X:

• Brutal Unleashed: Above the Claw
• Cosmic Carnage
• Darxide
• Golf Magazine: 36 Great Holes Starring Fred Couples
• Kolibri
• Knuckles' Chaotix
• Metal Head
• Motocross Championship
• Spider-Man: Web of Fire
• Star Wars Arcade
• Shadow Squadron / Stellar Assault
• T-MEK
• Tempo
• Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000 / Motherbase / Parasquad 

Jaguar:

• AirCars
• Alien vs Predator
• Atari Karts
• Breakout 2000
• Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales
• Checkered Flag
• Club Drive
• Cybermorph
• Defender 2000
• Fever Pitch Soccer
• Fight For Life
• Hover Strike
• I-War
• Iron Soldier
• Iron Soldier 2
• Kasumi Ninja
• Missile Command 3D
• Power Drive Rally (there are other games called Power Drive but this is EXTREMELY different)
• Ruiner Pinball
• Super Burnout
• Supercross 3D
• Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy
• Ultra Vortek
• Val d'Isère Skiing and Snowboarding
• White Men Can't Jump
• Zero 5
• Battlemorph
• Blue Lightning
• Highlander: The Last of the MacLeods
• Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands
• Vid Grid
• World Tour Racing

 

While, admittedly, some of these were not ported to other consoles for good reasons, the 32X's list of exclusives is about half the size of the Jaguar's, and the number of great games in the exclusive list is also about half the size. If you include games that were exclusive to the Jaguar when they launched (Rayman, Tempest 2000, FlipOut!, Attack of the Mutant Penguins) the Jaguar advantage grows, and if you include homebrew and post-life releases, it's no contest at all.

 

Ports and enduring popularity of games 

 

The exclusives for the 32X were evolutionary dead ends. None of them to my knowledge saw any followup or reissue. The 32X version of Blackthorne was recently rereleased on the Switch and PS4, but that's as far as the 32X's lasting legacy goes. I like the 32X versions of Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter better than any other versions, but too bad for me.

 

The Jaguar's main legacy is Rayman, and that is admittedly a mixed legacy with some tremendous heights and some really embarrassing lows. (Worst of all, the Rabbids were copied by the Despicable Me Minions and Ubisoft didn't even sue.) But Tempest 2000 has had a long legacy of followups as well, and every Yak production since then has reflected the advances Jeff made in his personal style in T2K. Attack of the Mutant Penguins and FlipOut! were ported to the PC.

 

I don't know of any forums dedicated to the 32X or any communities around it that begin to rival the communities that have developed around the Jaguar. If people think of the 32X at all, it's as a joke. Which isn't fair, but it's how it is. Games like AvP, Tempest 2K, and even Attack of the Mutant Penguins have penetrated the popular consciousness a lot more than anything in the 32X's library (for better or for worse). Again, the advantage is to the Jaguar.

[NeonSpaceBeagle]

Was it the 32X games that had mismatched spines? or was it jaguar?  I don't mean different colors and variants, I mean like some were printed mirrored or something.

[+jgkspsx]

Hahah, indeed! OCD spine fanatics tremble in fear!

 

[NeonSpaceBeagle]

LOL, thanks for posting that, i knew i wasn't crazy!
OOOOH, you have BC Racers..  I wanted that one when I had the 32x.  Never wound up getting a copy, but when I went to play it on an emulator on the playstation classic with retroarch, i wasn't too impressed.. (kart racers is one of my fav. sub genres).  How is 32X emulation in retroarch decent?  It seems fine to me, but who knows.

[+jgkspsx]

BC Racers is... maybe better than the Sega CD version, but not by much. Maybe I just suck, but it seems like you can only win races as two or three of the characters at most. It looks better than the CD version. Road Rash it ain’t. Heck, BC’s Quest for Tires it ain’t. I would rather play any version of Chuck Rock or Chuck II (which I do like a lot). I really wanted to like it, but it never clicked. Atari Karts for all its flaws is a lot more fun to my tastes.

I had frequent crashes for 32X games on my Genesis Mini. I generally just don’t feel like playing games on my computer. My Steam backlog has been neglected so long half of it is probably out of print.

[phoenixdownita]

On 5/3/2021 at 5:00 AM, jgkspsx said:

Some additional categories for your consideration:

 

Top Tier Games  

 

These are (in my very personal opinion) games that are particularly interesting, fun, and/or worth playing for anyone interested in video games.

 

32X:

• ... 

Jaguar:

• ....

... the Jaguar has a broader, deeper library of top tier games (for my tastes).

 

Exclusives (not including arcade games)

 

32X:

• ....

Jaguar:

• ....

 

... , the 32X's list of exclusives is about half the size of the Jaguar's, and the number of great games in the exclusive list is also about half the size. .... the Jaguar advantage grows, and if you include homebrew and post-life releases, it's no contest at all.

 

Ports and enduring popularity of games 

 

.... Again, the advantage is to the Jaguar.

We get it you like the Jaguar more, but if you put anyone that went to the Arcade during that timeframe playing a Jag vs a 32X the presence of the Sega properties on the 32X is a big boost no matter how you slice it and dice it. If instead you propose the challenge to a PC gamer then Jag it is via Wolf3D and Doom.

 

The Jag has a few interesting and unique games but same for 32X, the "quantity" argument is meh at best, no amount of garbage (on either system) compensates for the lack of a solid lineup that is not single-digit. 
Also many of the exclusives while not being garbage by any stretch are just not as fun most of the time, take Tempo on 32X I found it boring (Bubsy on the Jag too but both looks well packaged at least so not garbage for sure).
But the Jag has such lows like Fight For Life, Club Drive and more that left me speechless .... didn't feel like that on the 32X but I have not played yet Motocross Championship or Brutal Unleashed: Above the Claw ... not sure I care to try even after I actually played Supercross 3D and Kasumi Ninja on the Jag (I actually finished Kasumi Ninja ... did not like it, Supercross 3D I gave up at the third corner that I happened to slightly cut maybe 3px and the bike keeled over [which part of corner did I not understand !?!], may as well shoot the racers at the start as they already line up pretty neatly, one shot suffices).

 

 

[+jgkspsx]

As a kid who was 14 when the 32X came out, Afterburner and Space Harrier were ancient, old news that I didn’t care about at all. I mean, my arcade didn’t even have those games, it had G-LOC (with a moving cabinet!!!) and STUN Runner. I was a lot more excited about Zaxxon’s Motherbase 2000 than I was about the super scaler stuff. It has taken me many years of perspective to fall in love with super scaler games. Admittedly I bought the system for Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing Deluxe, those are still my favorite versions Saturn be damned, and they are probably the best reasons to buy the console.

 

Kasumi Ninja and Ultra Vortek are much, MUCH better games than Brutal is. Even the Sega CD Brutal is a better game than 32X Brutal is. It’s so far below the bottom of the barrel that it’s in the sewers. People hate on Cosmic Carnage but I think that is a lot better than people give it credit for. It’s probably on a par with Ultra Vortek.

 

Motocross Championship is probably worse than Supercross 3D, but it is a hard-fought battle. I can never not laugh my ass off at the idiotic pile-on that starts every single Motocross race.

 

EDIT: For your amusement, I subjected myself to half an hour of each game. They are both not good games, but honestly once I got to understand both of them again they are not not fun.

Motocross takes place outdoors, so Motocross Championship benefits from more scenic backdrops than the Jaguar game does. Even if they stopped bothering with the background graphics after a certain vertical point, leaving a seam high in the sky that you will see a lot. The graphics are a lot less eye-searing than Supercross, although/because everything is sprites except the track itself, which seems to be textured polygons. The draw distance is laughably short, with the cow pies that are supposed to be mud slicks, which instantly wipe you out if you so much as brush past them, popping up instants before you have to dodge them. The frame rate is usually in the teens, which would be laughably low if we were not comparing it to a PowerPoint presentation.

 

Gameplay is surprisingly fun, with a real sense of speed once you figure out how to lean in and lean back, and some really awesome airtime. It’s the parts that aren’t fun, namely the fact that it is the single worst racing game I’ve ever played for handling vehicle collisions, that make it pretty intolerable. If you touch somebody else, you both just stop dead. This is what creates the pileup at the beginning of every race, and this is what makes it really miserable to play if you fall behind fourth place. There are Road Rash-style melee attacks, but in my experience it is impossible to attack anybody without losing several places and your attacks never connect anyway. Your opponents frequently succeed in attacking you, though, and sometimes you wipe out for no discernable reason. Spooky action at a distance, I guess.

 

The game’s presentation is atrocious, with clipart infesting everything and not even a save function. The game lets you earn money but not spend it. I guess it’s your points or something. I cannot believe Sega let their logo be put on this game.

 

I have to say I had a lot of fun with it anyway. I am a sucker for ridiculous airtime from jumps. But realistically you are better off playing any Road Rash game, Quad Challenge, or even Motocross Maniacs for the Game Boy unless you are trying to prove a point. Actually this could be a lot of fun two player, especially if alcohol is involved.

 

Supercross 3D couldn’t be more different. It captures the claustrophobic nature of arena racing and then amplifies it tenfold. The fully polygonal riders can only fit three abreast across the track, and yet interbike collisions are rare. You cannot just constantly accelerate - you have to continuously tap the throttle or else you will crash every second. It’s very slow and very methodical. They have tricks built in, but they don’t seem to do anything since there is no score and thus no points for style.

 

Somebody involved with the development clearly did care a lot, which I can’t say about the 32X game. You can tune your bike in any mode, which has major impact in how the game plays. Few games took this approach in the mid 90s, and I have to say I’m impressed.

 

The thing that hurts the game the most is its aesthetic in audio and visuals. No music during actual gameplay, as is the Jaguar tradition. The audio of each race, then, consists exclusively of poorly-recorded engine noises, and it sounds like a bathroom full of constipated cacodemons grunting and groaning. Really. Continuing the poop theme, every track looks like poop. Different colors, different textures, but it’s all recognizably poop. Because the tracks are in arenas, they all look exactly the same. I played all 14 tracks and swore that I just played three or four tracks over and over again.

 

Most infamously, the framerate is in the teens when racing alone, and drops down into single digits when multiple riders are on the track at one time. It very frequently resembles a slideshow more than a video game.

 

Despite all this, I actually had a fair amount of fun with it too after I stopped playing it with my clicky thumbstick controller. (Something about that controller makes it even more impossible to play than it usually is.) I was able to come in second place in a race series, and, heck, I’ll take it.

 

The only real way to win this competition is not to play. There are many more enjoyable ways to spend your time than either of these games - philately, numismatism, autotrepanation - but if you are forced to play them you can probably find some shred of entertainment in either.

[phoenixdownita]

On 5/4/2021 at 4:17 PM, jgkspsx said:

...

EDIT: For your amusement, I subjected myself to half an hour of each game. They are both not good games, but honestly once I got to understand both of them again they are not not fun.

...

I bow to you, it's always nice to try things first hand vs hearsay  maybe!!!

 

Wrt 32X I recently looked at:

if nothing else it made me wanted to go and check the manual for Kolibri ( https://www.digitpress.com/library/manuals/32x/kolibri.pdf ) and a guide for Darxide  ( http://segabits.com/blog/2014/08/28/a-users-guide-to-darxide/) and the guy talking about Zaxxon Motherbase 2000 also made me want to give it another try.

I don't expect any of those to radically change my judgment but neither of them particularly appealed to me for one reason or the other and I rarely ventured past the first level thinking (like they mention in the video) that that was all there was to them.

[+jgkspsx]

Those are all some of the best reasons to own the system! I suck at Darxide too.

[Austin]

The 32X is a solid little add-on when you really give its games a chance and it complements the Genesis/CD well, but overall the Jaguar just has more to choose from with its quirky library, not to mention plenty of post-Atari era releases and years of homebrew support. I voted Jaguar.

[Cobra Kai]

I like both, but Jaguar is the clear winner. I'm stunned  by the poll results, honestly. The very best of the Jaguar is so far and above anything ever produced on the 32X. I don't even think it's fair to compare them, as the 3DO has always been the Jaguar's contemporary.

 

 

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, Cobra Kai said:

I like both, but Jaguar is the clear winner. I'm stunned  by the poll results, honestly. The very best of the Jaguar is so far and above anything ever produced on the 32X. I don't even think it's fair to compare them, as the 3DO has always been the Jaguar's contemporary.

So where do you class Fight For Life (in the fighter category), Checkered Flag (in the Racer category), Supercross 3D (Racer category), Club Drive (racer category).  I only tout these, as this is all the shit games we got for racing and fighting.  Mostly the same in other genres.  Same as the 32X, plenty of 16-bit ports which back in the day of "64-bits kicks your ass, do the math" ads, were totally counter-intuitive.

[+jgkspsx]

The 32X got Virtua Racing Deluxe. The Jaguar got Power Drive Rally and Super Burnout. I don’t know that those two add up to Virtua Racing, and they would not have for 14 year old me, but at this point in my life they’re more my speed. Neither Power Drive Rally nor Super Burnout could have been done on 16 bit systems. I’d love to be proven wrong. If the 32X had gotten Outrunners then there would be no doubt. Alas, it didn’t, and all the other racing games are bad. Fun bad, but then Supercross 3D and Club Drive are fun bad for me too. Checkered Flag is not-fun bad, and the naked yearning to be Virtua Racing definitely gives the whole system a worse name than it deserves.

 

The 32X solidly wallops the Jaguar on fighting games. There’s no arguing that, but also... who is playing fighting games anymore? They don’t show up often on the “what are you playing” boards.

 

Both systems have plenty of exclusives for failed systems. I agree that the 32X has more impressive polygonal ones, but only by a hair and only if you exclude Skyhammer and Battlesphere, and the Jaguar has a far wider variety.

[Matt_B]

You've got to love Checkered Flag. There are few games out there that give you the feeling of racing through soupy thick fog like it does. ?

[Cobra Kai]

50 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

The 32X got Virtua Racing Deluxe. The Jaguar got Power Drive Rally and Super Burnout. I don’t know that those two add up to Virtua Racing, and they would not have for 14 year old me, but at this point in my life they’re more my speed. Neither Power Drive Rally nor Super Burnout could have been done on 16 bit systems. I’d love to be proven wrong. If the 32X had gotten Outrunners then there would be no doubt. Alas, it didn’t, and all the other racing games are bad. Fun bad, but then Supercross 3D and Club Drive are fun bad for me too. Checkered Flag is not-fun bad, and the naked yearning to be Virtua Racing definitely gives the whole system a worse name than it deserves.

 

The 32X solidly wallops the Jaguar on fighting games. There’s no arguing that, but also... who is playing fighting games anymore? They don’t show up often on the “what are you playing” boards.

 

Both systems have plenty of exclusives for failed systems. I agree that the 32X has more impressive polygonal ones, but only by a hair and only if you exclude Skyhammer and Battlesphere, and the Jaguar has a far wider variety.

Well, Power Drive Rally is on the Genesis, I think it's simply Power Drive there. The Jaguar version has significant upgrades in graphical detail, however. And, as a game play experience, I think Super Hang-On is a better game than Super Burnout, which I find far too vanilla. If they could have bolted on the career mode of SHO to SB, with the experience points and upgrading bikes with nitro boost, yeah that would have been sweet.

 

Disagree with your opinion of the fighting games. So MKII is on 32X, ok that's the clear winner overall, but Jag has a better Primal Rage, and I have always enjoyed both Kasumi Ninja and Ultra Vortek. I've never understood the visceral hatred towards them as MK clones. Sure, Kasumi Ninja has some elements that make you wince, like the narrator voice, and the Scottish kilt fireball thing. But, just in gameplay I like it, I mean it does what Mortal Kombat does, it just doesn't control quite as well. If I had a real joystick for the Jaguar I could definitely put some serious time into all the Jag fighting games, except DD5. 

 

Mortal Kombat is a great game, but it's always had a huge advantage over the clones, with people getting good at it in the arcades and being familiar with all the controls right off the bat. I think it's normal and natural to prefer familiarity. Street Fighter 2 shared this advantage as well.

[Cobra Kai]

58 minutes ago, Matt_B said:

You've got to love Checkered Flag. There are few games out there that give you the feeling of racing through soupy thick fog like it does. ?

You could say this exact thing about N64 San Fransisco Rush, but the context would be completely different.

[Cobra Kai]

3 hours ago, Stephen said:

So where do you class Fight For Life (in the fighter category), Checkered Flag (in the Racer category), Supercross 3D (Racer category), Club Drive (racer category).  I only tout these, as this is all the shit games we got for racing and fighting.  Mostly the same in other genres.  Same as the 32X, plenty of 16-bit ports which back in the day of "64-bits kicks your ass, do the math" ads, were totally counter-intuitive.

Hey Stephen, I see what your asking, and I believe my initial response is because I misinterpreted the topic. I still like the Jag library overall, even with the stinkers, which I'm not forced to play. Maybe the Jag had a few titles that didn't perform quite as well as established Sega arcade hits programmed with the backing of Sega. But, when you put the best of what the Jag did, like T2000 and D2000, it leaves the 32X in the dust. Even if the 32X had some technically better games in specific genres, I don't get the feeling of being blown away by them. I only see a missed opportunity for the Jaguar, not a feeling of 'damn the Jaguar could never match this!'. 

[+jgkspsx]

15 minutes ago, Cobra Kai said:

Well, Power Drive Rally is on the Genesis, I think it's simply Power Drive there. The Jaguar version has significant upgrades in graphical detail, however. 

It’s really not the same game. Different cars, different tracks, different game feel.

Quote

And, as a game play experience, I think Super Hang-On is a better game than Super Burnout, which I find far too vanilla.

I don’t disagree, but there isn’t a decent home version of SHO until *the Xbox 360*. There’s nothing on the 32X that compares, that’s for sure.

 

Cosmic Carnage is as good as Ultra Vortek. It’s an unfairly maligned game. The 32X also has the best home port of Virtua Fighter ever. I like it better than the arcade game gameplay wise. Is Jag Primal Rage really much better, or just graphically?

 

Also, if you add the 32X WWF games to the fighting game mix, they’re both great. Jaguar has nothing.

[Matt_B]

18 minutes ago, Cobra Kai said:

You could say this exact thing about N64 San Fransisco Rush, but the context would be completely different.

Yeah, they weren't just trying to hide a ludicrously short render distance with that game, for starters.

[roots.genoa]

5 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

who is playing fighting games anymore? They don’t show up often on the “what are you playing” boards.

A lot of people, but aficionados of fighting (and racing) games tend to prefer modern games, or at least more evolved one. It's less true for 2D fighting games though, but then amateurs of the genre clearly prefer Capcom and SNK games. Mortal Kombat was never taken seriously by pro players until recently. I loved Mortal Kombat as a teen partly because special moves were incredibly easier to pull off for me than in Street Fighter (at least on Genesis, you just had to hold the button and press directions one after the other). I always loved the concept of fighting games but always sucked at them. ?

[Classic Pac]

I know you could argue about games, but doesn't it really comes down to the number of games you actually want to play? Otherwise they will be sitting on your shelf collecting dust. Both do have a limited number of good games, unfortunate for the 32X they got a lot of Genesis games with an amped up color scale and little else, and there are less than a handful of games that actually use the hardware to it's advantage. On the other hand the Homebrew scene on the Jaguar is fantastic, there are some great games. The rest comes down to you.

[+Stephen]

Speaking of Super Burnout (which I definitely find to be a top tier game and fun to play), is there anything on 32X comparable to Val D'Isere Skiing?  I see very little mention of that game, and found it to be fun to play as well as graphically impressive.  I guess that one would be considered a "super scaler" style of game.  It's a shame Phase Zero was not released.  These three examples though all go to prove the point that the Jag shouldn't have been trying to focus on polygon based games because overall it did a very poor job with them.