Yup I had the original that piggybacked on the Genesis. I think it made the Genesis 32-bit iirc? The games were largely garbage...the extra space CD provided was often mainly used to add early-cellphone-porn-quality-video content rather than graphics or gameplay.
It was a victim of my parents house getting ransacked and I used my little chunk of the insurance cash for a Panasonic 3DO. That was an awesome system for the time.
What is this Q-sound of which you speak?
QSound (I was spelling it wrong with the dash) is a virtual surround technology that creates an almost binaural experience when listening to any media with more than one channel on at least two speakers (or headphones). They're still around, and the tech still works, but they've been on life support for years.
You can embed it in the audio for play on any device, or embed it in the device for use with any audio.
Set your speakers up pointing in the proper directions for this, and don't use headphones:
Small Demos:
1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5QMA2Q9bP4&ab_channel=roschler
2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtQ6jNjIONI&ab_channel=jasonteknut
Music mixed with Qsound processing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocR8IaX6s8c&ab_channel=YouCan%27tDownloadVinyl
These guys showed up at least a
decade before anyone notable got in the game; and that includes beating out Dolby Headphone and Virtual Speaker... While handily producing just as good a sound field with any two stereo speakers; no headphones required!
They just showed up too early. There wasn't anyone around to buy it. Didn't even fly in radio. Perfect tech for laptops equipped with good stereo speakers, but by the time such laptops were developed, Qsound was already fading. Now they'd do very well in phones and tablets with front-facing stereo speakers.
I just don't think they know how to market themselves. They never have; games were great, but that's not where they needed to focus. I get the feeling they're just sitting around waiting to lock the doors. If it wasn't an innovation that could be stored in a fortune cookie, they'd have been gone years ago.
Should this tech be used for everything? Absolutely not. It's perfect for small devices and limited home theaters, though. Any person with any two speakers already has what they need.
The Sega CD wasn't actually 32 bit, unfortunately. You needed to add the 32X as well for that capability, which turned it into a bit of a bear to position in the home. Still, the Sega CD gave us "Lunar: The Silver Star". Can't ask much more out of three black boxes than that.
Check the attachment to see what they look like decked out for 32 bit. Just a shot I grabbed off the net, but mine's set up that same way, with the first-gen console, the additional support with top loading drive, and the 32X uncomfortably growing out of the top. For the record, that was a perfect description of the Sega CD video quality. :rofl:
Believe it or not, that all came down to the color palate. Nintendo always had them beat there.
Cheers,
Kennith