Since players are tethered to other characters, you are essentially controlling two characters at the same time. There are five primary characters to choose from, and each has their own unique abilities – like climbing walls, walking on ceilings, and running in air. The big innovation in Knuckles’ Chaotix is that the player is tethered to another character throughout the entire game. Speed still plays a role in the game, and the stages are still full of springboards to leap off of and loops to run around in. Knuckles’ Chaotix certainly looks and sounds like a typical Sonic game, but the gameplay is radically different. As a spinoff of the Sonic the Hedgehog series, expectations were high. Knuckles’ Chaotix is a very polarizing game that’s a little rough around the edges. Only 40 32X titles were released, but a surprising number of them are worth a second look. Developers had little incentive to create new titles for the system, so many of its games were enhanced Genesis ports or watered-down arcade titles. (The 32X didn’t hit Japanese store shelves until after the Saturn launched!) Sega presented the 32X as a “poor man’s 32-bit machine” and its library is indicative of that. By that point, Sega and consumers alike were already focused on the Saturn.

There was next-to-no hype surrounding the 32X, and Sega didn’t even announce it until six months before its release. This did not bode well for Sega’s second major Genesis upgrade. The Sega CD sold less than three million units at the height of the 16-bit wars and was barely supported by Sega. It contains its own processor and effectively upgrades Sega’s iconic 16-bit console to a 32-bit machine, but the concept was destined to fail for a number of reasons. The 32X is an add-on that was intended to extend the life of the Genesis and act as a low-cost alternative to the new generation of consoles.

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