...Star Wars: The Arcade Game, for the Sega 32X. It's a pretty common game, one of the most common 32X games there is, actually. It was one of the launch titles for the 32X, along with Doom and Virtua Fighter. So what's significant about it?
Well, this was the final game I needed to have a 100% complete in box North American Sega 32X collection. That's right, all 31 cartridge games and 5 CD-32X games, all complete with boxes and manuals.
It's funny looking at the whole thing and realizing that this is it. This is the entire library. Really puts into perspective what a failure the console was. And also the fact that Doom is the only box where the "32X" is backwards and that bugs the crap out of me.
My 32X collection technically has been complete for some time now, but I didn't really consider it "finished" just yet because I only had cartridges for Doom and Star Wars and needed to get the boxes/manuals for them. The reason for this is because when I first bought a 32X about 4 years ago, I didn't foresee myself going after the entire library. In truth, I just wanted to play Knuckles' Chaotix. However, when I got it I also picked up Star Wars and Doom with it, which were just available at the store because as I mentioned, they're two of the most common games for the console.
Anyway, with that box and manual, I can now say I officially have the entire library. It's kinda funny that I actually needed to obtain two of the most common games in order to complete it, meanwhile one of the first complete games I got was the rarest one of them all (The Amazing Spiderman: Web Of Fire- for those who aren't too well-versed in 32X rarity- which is up to about $500 complete these days).
I may be done with the 32X for now, but really I'm still not done yet, for several different reasons. First off, I need a new box for Virtua Fighter..because, well, look at it:
Now that's unsightly. Thankfully I didn't pay anything for this one- it was given to me by a friend when I first got a 32X. Most of the other games are in pretty good condition, but this is the ugliest one out of all of them by far. But as I said before, Virtua Fighter is one of the most common ones out there, so I shouldn't have a very hard time replacing it without spending much.
So once I get that one, then I'll finally be happy, right? Right?
Well....
I may have a complete North American library, but I'm just short on the worldwide collection. See, there were two games released exclusively in Europe and one in Japan. I do own two of those games:
That's FIFA '96 for the European 32X, and San Goku Shi IV (a.k.a. Romance of the Three Kingdoms 4) for the Japanese 32X. Funny enough, both of these games can be played on an American 32X without modification, since they contain no internal region lockout chips. FIFA is really no different from any other soccer game and San Goku Shi is a heavily text-based strategy game, and since I can't read Japanese it's pretty much useless to me as a game.
However, I'm still missing one game...a game perhaps rarer than any other, even more so than The Amazing Spiderman. That game is a little European game called Darxide, which was the final 32X game released for any country. Apparently the game had a very limited print run and was quickly scrubbed away when the plug was pulled on the 32X in early 1996, making it extremely rare nowadays.
I've only seen a handful of complete copies appear on eBay and they've gone for some ridiculous prices, and even then I'm always a tad skeptical about authenticity, since games can be so easily reproduced these days. I'd have to see a complete copy with the motherboard showing before I'd even consider buying one...and I'd also probably have to blow quite a bit of dough in order to obtain one. Then my quest would finally be complete and I'd have the greatest 32X collection in the world. Right?
....right?
Well...
There's apparently one last game even beyond Darxide, but I'm not 100% convinced that it even exists. There have been reports that a sixth CD-32X game was released in Brazil at some point in the mid-90s by Sega's South American distributor Tec Toy. Apparently, it was a CD-32X version of the Sega CD game Surgical Strike. This makes some sense; with the exception of the game Fahrenheit, all of the other CD-32X games were initially released as Sega CD games, then re-released as slightly upgraded versions that utilized the 32X hardware as well. Also, the American release of Surgical Strike even had an offer printed right on the front of the manual for a 32X upgrade (apparently, it was a mail-in coupon for a free CD-32X version. Wonder how many actually tried to redeem it back in the day?). Websites like Gamefaqs and Wikipedia list the Brazilian version as an official 32X game and a picture of the box has floated around on the internet for quite some time now. Lots of strange and conflicting stories have been told about it on a lot of back-alley websites, should you go looking for the truth in the dark corners of the internet. Any info I could dig up on it is murky at best; it's truly a mystery. I've never seen anything resembling a copy for sale anywhere, and seeing as most pictures I can find of the box are all of the same copy, I'm skeptical that it was actually commercially released at all. Then again, I wasn't living in Brazil in the mid-90s, so I guess I couldn't tell you for certain. If anyone out there knows the answer, feel free to tell me because I'd love to know.
Anyway, for now I'm pretty happy with my complete North American library. I'll be even happier once I get a better copy of Virtua Fighter, but I'm content knowing that I finally did it. So thanks for reading, and since I've posted links to this blog in public now, I'm aware I have a bit of an expanded audience. I definitely appreciate all the publicity I can get. Stay tuned for more entries soon, I have a lot of them currently in the works and I plan on trying to do at least two posts a week. So stick around and as always, game on!
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