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.
What I don’t understand is why they made the 32x at all. Sega should have instead delayed the Sega CD, made it as powerful as the Saturn (except without the excessive complexity), and then release it sometime around 1994-1995. Then cancel the Saturn entirely and tout the Sega CD as a next gen addon for your current console. Sell the addon for $199. Then maybe they would have stood a chance against the Playstation.
Just scrap the Sega CD and 32x, then release a less powerful Saturn optimized for low cost as both a standalone console and an add-on for the Genesis for a bit less money. They would have done very well.
The Sega CD had a purpose. The CD quality sound and FMVs were clearly something that couldn’t be done on a stock SNES or Genesis. But the 32x… I played one in a Funcoland once and I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between it and a normal Genesis game. Some extra superfluous scaling effects that the SNES could do natively and the Genesis could do if you were a clever programmer?