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Does anyone have any experience with these? I thought the idea of a PC and MegaDrive hybrid to be pretty badass. I've heard it had some issues like the fact that it's CPU was outdated at the time of release, but it's pretty cool in theory. I don't think most people have actually dabbled with them. How much are they going for?
Segaedge has one, I think. If he sees this thread he may comment on it.
I believe it was just an Intel 286 PC.
Edit*
Yep, it had a 286. The CPU was already 10 years old by that time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_TeraDrive
More or less the same as the 68000 at the launch of the Megadrive :)Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
Except consoles were meant to be cheaper and also made up for it with specialized hardware (a PC would still have a hard time blitting lots of sprites). Maybe a bigger offense was the CPU being 10MHz, and Sega being unable to reduce the price due to a lawsuit.
I saw a clip of the Puzzle Construction set on YouTube and it wasn't all that great. Nowadays, you could just as easily mod a Raspberry Pi with a MegaDrive slot. Now that would be a cool project. Make an adapter with the Raspberry add-on slot for Genesis/MD cartridges.
It was kind of useless as a computer, considering how old the PC hardware inside was. It made no sense to even offer it. The Pioneer LaserActive at least functioned as a video player and could layer Genesis graphics over LD images, so it served a more realistic purpose.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sik
As far as Genesis novelties go, I think the Aiwa Mega CD is way more astounding then what I've seen so far on the TeraDrive.
I think the Aiwa Mega CD is cool but for me the majority of the novelty is just the fact that it's extremely rare and doubles as a boombox (like the CDX doubled as a discman). Of the weird Sega hardware that is made I appreciate the Laseractive the most since it has its own group of games that are pretty much only playable on it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeckidy
The Aiwa Mega-CD seemed like a cheap gimmicky novelty item when it came out and even more so as time goes on.
The CDX is genuinely astounding. The only appeal the Aiwa has is perceived rarity to rarity enthusiasts.
So did the Sega Tera Drive let you program and play your own Genesis games? I was talking about wanting something like this in the other thread about what we want to see happening with the Genesis in the future.
In theory, yes, if you load the game from the PC side and can get the 68000 to run off the RAM. I don't think it ever came with a devkit for it though, so this would be in theory by providing your own tools.
On the other hand, it should be possible to have both PC and MD sides to run at the same time... that'd be the interesting part of it. Puzzle Construction supposedly does this, but it looks like it's just "sometimes VGA displays stuff and sometimes VDP does" ¯\(º_o)/¯
So is there any advantage to having them both in one machine? Or what was the purpose of it, other than the cool factor?
From my impression so far, I think the Sharp X68000 was more closer to what Sega Tera Drive should've been. After all, it had ports of Wolf Team games, among other classics from that era, including Twinbee and Castlevania. If they had done that, they could have had something pretty badass going.
I think it was a failed attempt at trying to get the console more popular in Japan. Except the PC side was awful and this was before Windows destroyed any computer that wasn't a PC =P (Japan didn't care about them until Windows took over and made it a must)Quote:
Originally Posted by Bones Justice