#imagesoft

Chaotix, like most 32X software, was extremely rushed, and probably shouldn't have even existed at all. There's multiple versions of what went wrong with the 32X, some of them conflicting, but the one I believe in the most is:

After the deal with Nintendo fell through for the SNES CD console, Sony was looking for somebody else to partner with for the Playstation. They had a good relationship with Sega -- Sony Imagesoft was a big publisher for the Sega CD. They had created Sewer Shark, the pack-in game with a lot of Sega CD consoles.

Imagesoft apparently approached Sega of America about building a brand new CD-based console. I guess they did this because Sega of America was the most successful branch of Sega at the time. When Sega of America contacted Sega of Japan about the possibility of this deal, Japan rejected it outright.

But, from the ashes of that thought, Sega of America began to formulate their own plan: why couldn't they just make their own console hardware? Sega of America's CEO, Tom Kalinske, had an idea: what if, instead of making consumers buy a brand new piece of hardware, they just sold an upgrade kit? Something for the existing system, that was cheaper than the other guys? They could undercut the entire market.

That ended up being the 32X. There was just one problem: Sega of Japan was also working on their own hardware at that exact same time. Neither side of the company was talking to the other about what they were doing, because of the well-documented internal war between the two.

When Sega of Japan found out, they were furious. In particular because Sega of America was so far along on the 32X that they had business deals lined up that could not be canceled. The same was apparently true of what Sega of Japan was doing: they were readying the Sega Saturn. Both things were going to come out, one way or another.

The 32X was effectively rushed to market. Sent out to die. It launched in America the day before the Saturn launched in Japan. It lacked the development needed to bring costs down and was priced like a standalone console, destroying its intended market. It had months worth of software, mostly whatever deals Sega of America cobbled together before Japan dropped the hammer.

Close to 70% of the 32X's pitifully small library were games developed in America or Europe, at a time where Japan was dominating the industry. And, of the nearly non-existent Japanese support for the 32X, most of them were ports of pre-existing Sega games, like Space Harrier.

Obviously, the 32X was a disaster. It caused Sega to misfire on the Saturn's launch in America as well, creating a domino effect that probably killed the Dreamcast. It caused Tom Kalinske to resign. In Japan, where the 32X was quietly swept under the rug, the Saturn sold respectably, and lead a short, but somewhat fulfilling life. But elsewhere, the 32X was like Sega got punched in the stomach so hard it damaged their internal organs.

But the short answer to all of this is that even compared to how rushed and under-developed other Sonic games got to be, Chaotix was even moreso. It is a collection of barely coherent ideas hung around the framework of a familiar Sonic game. Top class art direction, fantastic music, but the level design is a nightmare and the mechanics don't make any sense.

I heard recently that was apparently intended to be a Saturn game, but it got flipped and dumped on the 32X. I don't know if that information is true. But, given how rapidly and dramatically we know the game evolved, it wouldn't surprise me if Sega of Japan shoved it out just so they could get away from it. Though it was by some of the members behind Sonic CD, they were not formally part of Sonic Team, and most of them them did not work on any Sonic games after Chaotix.