Victor Luchitz has just published 32x Doom ‘Resurrection’ v3.0. I imagine some may have thought the game couldn't improve anymore at this point and they'd be very much in the wrong!: https://twitter.com/vluchitz/status/1693004325595775146
I won't cover every single new change in this post, but I
After silence for a good while, I thought they were done with this project, but apparently not. Additional effects, a lot of optimizations, and the bosses were added back in.
There is so much grunt behind it now, that in the right configuration it uses the combined might of the Genesis, 32X, and Sega CD processing power all together.
Catching anyone up who orignally didn't know about this: Doom 32X Resurrection is an attempt to bring the Sega 32X version of Doom to its full potential. The game now supports a laundry list of features it didn't before: local coop / deathmatch, link cable multiplayer, all the maps, sprites from all angles (they all used to face forward, even rockets), positional sound effects, CD music support, new FM ost by SpoonyBard, improved resolution, improved framerate, additional 6-button configs, and more.
32X Doom tried to be like the original PC game, but it was rushed through development as a launch title with a small team. The result is.....tragic. Specifically: half the maps were missing, both the game window and resolution are reduced to get playable framerates, the original soundtrack famously sounds a bit like a farts at times, several visual effects like parallax texture scrolling, transparency, and lighting effects are gone. (there's a room in E1M5 near the end that the lights alternate between on/off, but the monsters on 32x are always visible.) This also means no invisibility power-up, or Spectre monsters.
My favorite jank is after the credits when you finish the game, it dumps you into a fake DOS prompt. It just shows C:\DOOM> and you are unable to interact with it in any way.
This sounds super cool! Is this a romhack of the 32x cart, that would need to be run from something like an Everdrive, or is it somehow running from the Sega CD, off of a burned disk? It sounds like the former, but I've never heard of a 32x cart accessing the Sega CD, just the other way around.
"Verified as working on Kega Fusion 3.64, a Model 2 Genesis + Model 2 CD + launch 32X, a CDX + 32X, with a NeoFlash NeoMyth MD and the V1 Mega EverDrive, and also with Mega EverDrive Pro and MegaSD."
This is a 32X romhack, correct. If you run it from a flash cart (like the Everdrive) and also have a Sega CD attached, then that enables the other features.