Sega Genesis/Megadrive Mini (Official Thread)

[Leynos]

I'll grant you that MUSHA probably should have been thrown in over the never-released in the US Super Fantasy Zone, but as crazy as it sounds, you know there will be many more people excited for the likes of Eternal Champions, Sonic Spinball, and Road Rash II than MUSHA in the grand scheme of people who buy this thing. The games do need to be palletable to a general audience. Hence why games like Galaga and Defender II made it onto the NES Classic.

Eh Sonic Spinball has been re-released a ton of times on Sonic and Genesis collections. MUSHA without emulators is still only Genesis

[Vector]

Buy the japan version if you want MUSHA, I'm buying the south asia varient with alien soldier and out run http://www.nintendolife.com/news/201...ega_drive_mini

According to this video, Sega mini 6 button controllers will release 1 month before mini in u.s. https://youtu.be/UiKmuBxU41k

[Zebbe]

Okay, I'm just saying I see a lot of experts saying 32 and a lot saying 40
http://gendev.spritesmind.net/forum/...pic.php?t=1878
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards...3431804?page=3 and https://www.gamespot.com/forums/game...esis-28927124/

None of your links state the game is 32 MEGA POWER.

So Strider is 1 MByte (how many mega bits is megabyte idk) because it is = 8 mega powah? Like a math class bro LOL.

Yes.

How many Genesis games could fit onto a 3.5 floppy disk?

Depends on how big the games are.

[chilled]

most popular floppy disk were 1.44 MB so roughly 11 MEGA POWER after formatting. So you could only fit one 8 meg and three 1 meg games at most, or two 4 meg (very popular size up until 1992) and three 1 meg or the likes. Let's play:
1 Columns
2 Rambo III
8 Thunder Force IV
= 11

or
4 Sonic 1
4 MUSHA
2 Flicky
1 Columns
= 11

or even
5 Ghouls'n'Ghosts
6 Phantasy Star II
= 11


Mega Man: ok I was stretching it too much, but still, if you haven't played/known the NES originals before, you see it as only one game, not 3 nor 4, just as with any regular game with different worlds/stages/sections etc. I mean there are other games which even change completely their gameplay halfway and nobody speaks of them in terms of 2-in-1 games or compilations, except for marketing purposes.

[Gryson]

The upcoming issue of Famitsu in Japan is going to have a 46-page feature on the Mega Drive Mini.

That's more coverage than the original Mega Drive received in Famitsu over six years! (exaggeration, but not by much)

People are already guessing, based on the initial hype, that the MD Mini will sell more than 3.58 million units in Japan. Will the Mega Drive finally get the recognition it deserves there?

[chilled]

The upcoming issue of Famitsu in Japan is going to have a 46-page feature on the Mega Drive Mini.

That's more coverage than the original Mega Drive received in Famitsu over six years! (exaggeration, but not by much)

People are already guessing, based on the initial hype, that the MD Mini will sell more than 3.58 million units in Japan. Will the Mega Drive finally get the recognition it deserves there?

Now that would be interesting. We live in a time when emulation of a 20 year dead hardware would sell more than the actual hardware did!
I'm not that optimistic, though. I still don't think it 'll reach one million, which would already be great.

Also you cannot use your original old controllers on it, not that it'll matter in selling terms, but it's another flaw which hasn't been mentioned that much imo.

[Mega Drive Bowlsey]

The upcoming issue of Famitsu in Japan is going to have a 46-page feature on the Mega Drive Mini.

That's more coverage than the original Mega Drive received in Famitsu over six years! (exaggeration, but not by much)

People are already guessing, based on the initial hype, that the MD Mini will sell more than 3.58 million units in Japan. Will the Mega Drive finally get the recognition it deserves there?

Nostalgia will play a huge part no doubt. Not necessarily for the Mega Drive itself in Japan, but more a nostalgia towards the era of gaming it represents. It would actually be ironic if, as you suggest, the Mega Drive might finally get the recognition it always deserved in Japan thirty years on from it's initial launch.

[Vector]

To Zebbe, thank you for answering my questions. About them mentioned 32 megapowah, all 3 links suggested biggest Genesis and SNES cart sizes are 32 mp or megamemory by chilly willy and others which was SSF2 for Genesis and SFA2 for SNES. I underlined their mention of 32 mp from all 3 links into this screenshot here.

https://ibb.co/rs3m6J7 (I could have underlined even more mentions of 32 mp in those thread posts/links/screenshots, but CLEARY it was mentioned in my links I provided so I don't even know why you said there wasn't any mention of 32 mp honestly - and my screenshot above from said links proves it). Please feel free to zoom in the screenshot above and read the posts or questions yourself.

Unless you were right and just talked about without bank switching or w/e. Chilly said 32 mp with banker but theoretically 14mb if you had a homebrew rom on everdrive. But you can read their answers on forums to people/OP starting thread asking what is biggest Genesis and SNES games, their answers were for real hardware, 32 mp. (Why not answer 64mp for Pier Solar, it released by then)? You could very well be right but I just wanted to provide you with proof with what I was discussing.

If an expert like Chilly Willy stated it was 40 mp instead of 32 mp I would take heed, but he even wrote 32 so idk where this SSF2 40 mp/5mb is coming from? To my knowledge not even SFA2 on SNES was 40 mp, just 32. However if it is 40 mp, cool. But I see some saying 32 and some saying 40 so idk. If an expert like Sik commented and said its 40 mp, okay I'd believe it.

chilled, Wow thank you very much for your answer. I really appreciate you breaking it down like that. Essentially from what you wrote I could have 8-Strider, 1-Columns and 2-Space Harrior II (11 mp) on 1 of 3 1/2 1.44 mb disk. So for a 3 1/2 2.88 mb disk (very rare, but they exist by Toshiba) I could have 22 megapowah, yes? So 8-Strider, 5-Ghouls N Ghosts, 6-Phantasy Star 2, 1-Columns and 2-Altered Beast (22 mp) =0 wow. A shame I can't get 24 mp SF2SCE but maybe the cleaned up Pyron&Stef SF2SCEv7 rom might fit if it was 22 mp LOL?

To Gryson and MegaDriveBowlsey, they called me delusional in this thread for suggesting it would sell more than 1, 2, 3 or near 5 million, looks like I'm right !!! So almost 4 million in Japan alone? Imagine WorldWide! This is the best Mini launch ever imo, youtube blew up about this Mini. I think this has the potential to outsell SNES Mini and get near 10 million after all is said and done. Do you know how many people are buying 2 of these? I'm buying U.S. and Asia units myself, plus the autistic add ons =)

Will the Mega Drive finally get the recognition it deserves there?

Not only there, but by people worldwide who slept on this diamond for the past 3 decades because they were Nintendo only heads. They say the truth always comes out, well 2019 is Sega and Genesis time to shine. The fact Sega outsmarted Sony in hardware almost 2 decades after Dreamcast rested, has me shocked.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming...genesis-games/
<iframe src='//players.brightcove.net/5340004208001/Hkov7xwff_/index.html?videoId=5718034091001' allowfullscreen frameborder=0></iframe>

The only thing that would get me just as hype, would be a TurboDuo Mini with 16 bit Card games like SF2 and 16 bit CD games like Rondo Iso and the 8 bit looking Bonk games (after all these decades I still don't know if TG16 is truly 8 bit or 16 bit but it has the capacity to hang with Genesis and SNES which is amazing) Lord Of Thunder CD iso and 46 other great games. Would be fitting if NEC did that since it was first to have a console CD add on historically correct? Hell yeah 25 TG16 gems like Splatterhouse and 25 CD gems like Rondo iso/CD with hdmi out, I'll buy 2 of those too !

Anyway I'm just looking foward to Genesis Mini getting hacked 1 minute after its release so I can play gas68 Wolf3D v11 and Pyron & Stef SF2SCE v7 which are diamonds themselves!

[Sik]

Mega Man: ok I was stretching it too much, but still, if you haven't played/known the NES originals before, you see it as only one game, not 3 nor 4, just as with any regular game with different worlds/stages/sections etc. I mean there are other games which even change completely their gameplay halfway and nobody speaks of them in terms of 2-in-1 games or compilations, except for marketing purposes.

Yeah but…



It's very explicit about being a compilation.

EDIT: comparing Mega Man Wily Wars to the recent Crash remakes is probably accurate (as they remade three games but they come packaged together and all use the same engine).

[Vector]

Good evidence Sik. Since you are here Sik and you are an expert to me in many things, is the SSF2 Genesis port 40 mp/5mb or 32 mp? I think SFA2 is only 32mp, but I could be wrong about that too. As mentioned above I see conflicting reports on google about it. Perhaps Zebbe is correct which is cool with me.

edit looks like Zebbe was right, "Originally Posted by Black_Tiger View Post
My understanding is that SSFII MD is 40 megs because the tiles aren't compressed and that all other 16-bit console SFII games have compressed tiles, while no version could decompress sprites fast enough.

SFA2, Star Ocean and Far East of Eden Zero use a chip for hardware compression. SFA2 doesn't use any other chips."

[Vector]

Now that would be interesting. We live in a time when emulation of a 20 year dead hardware would sell more than the actual hardware did!

The Genesis sold 40 million, I'd argue with all 20 of its variants it actually sold more than SNES at 50 million but that can't be proven historically.

I'm not that optimistic, though. I still don't think it 'll reach one million, which would already be great.

Judging by numbers Gryson posted for Japan near 4 million and the fact many people in U.S. are buying 2 (U.S. versions and Asia versions) and we can apply 4 million in U.S. or worldwide outside Japan based on those projections it is looking to beat SNES Mini way over 5 million. With all the hype around it and people acting like its the best Mini launch ever, I'd agree it will sell like 4 to 10 million, hopefully more worldwide by Sept 19 2020 1 year after its release.

Also you cannot use your original old controllers on it, not that it'll matter in selling terms, but it's another flaw which hasn't been mentioned that much imo.

No, but you can buy $5 usb controllers off ebay or use one laying in your closet or ask a friend to borrow a usb controller. They are everywhere. Only 4 of the 44 games utilize a 6 button controller anyway.

[Zebbe]

Vector: Yeah, the SNES version is 32 MEGA POWER, while the Genesis version 40 MEGA POWER (as seen on the box). It uses a bank switch, which means it has two ROMs, one of 32 MEGA POWER and one of 8 MEGA POWER. The reason why people say Genesis games are max 32 MEGA POWER is because that's the max limit without bank switching.

[chilled]

Vector you're so intense
ok my bad for Mega Man. Still, nobody counts it as 3 games when listing their collections, when doing top lists, etc. but some people do still list Sonic 3 and S&K separately.
Sales figures: I was talking about Japan, where the MD somewhat tanked. No it won't sell from 5 to 10 million worldwide stop dreaming, it won't sell more than the snes/nes mini, not even individually. One million worldwide would already be great. That's original Neo Geo figures.

Bank switching allows to go beyond the size limit the stock system can read (with CD & 32X potentially attached). There are no comercial games that go beyond 32 except for SSF2. You need a special mapper for this (the SSF2 mapper, duh) which makes part of the rom available to the system in chunks of 4 MEGA POWER (512Kb, the size of Sonic 1) so it never goes beyond 32 (but from a total of 40). It does this on the fly, in-game.

There are other mappers, particularly for many 16 MEGA POWER and beyond games which do have save ram.

As for SFA2 SNES vs SSF2 SNES vs SSF2 MD etc, "just a decompressing chip" is quite a lot already. It has often been argued that that was the reason for smaller game sizes on the MD camp vs the SNES (the faster CPU supposedly allowed for better compression). It was probably just that Sega was being cheap and had to reduce manufacturing costs as they had not the sheer industry power Nintendo had. But yes I remember everyone wondering at the time where those extra 8 meg of the MD version went to... maybe it was just that: avoiding to use an addon-chip. Or bad conversion from the SNES version, as usually Capcom did at the time.

[Vector]

To Zebbe and chilled thank you for your answers, appreciated. I still say the Genesis Mini from all the projections will out sell the SNES Mini. Nintendo hording its own stock on NES Mini though (decades own practice from that greedy corp) kept the numbers at like a million, so the Genesis Mini will crush that number as Sega doesn't do that type of scam practice of supply/demand for $ increase.

This is actually a great video about the Mini https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiKmuBxU41k

[gamevet]

Good evidence Sik. Since you are here Sik and you are an expert to me in many things, is the SSF2 Genesis port 40 mp/5mb or 32 mp? I think SFA2 is only 32mp, but I could be wrong about that too. As mentioned above I see conflicting reports on google about it. Perhaps Zebbe is correct which is cool with me.

edit looks like Zebbe was right, "Originally Posted by Black_Tiger View Post
My understanding is that SSFII MD is 40 megs because the tiles aren't compressed and that all other 16-bit console SFII games have compressed tiles, while no version could decompress sprites fast enough.

SFA2, Star Ocean and Far East of Eden Zero use a chip for hardware compression. SFA2 doesn't use any other chips."

I don't know if this was a typo error, but Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the SNES does use the S-DD1 to decompress graphics on-the-fly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter_Alpha_2

The SNES version was also released in 1996. Since third-party publishers such as Capcom were increasingly concentrating on CD-based consoles, outside of Japan this version was published by Nintendo instead of Capcom.[8] It makes use of the S-DD1 chip for on-the-fly graphic decompression. Despite the graphics decompression chip, this version has loading times when entering matches while sounds are loaded onto the sound chip. Unlike the PlayStation and Saturn versions, the only secret character available to the player through normal means is the classic-style Chun-Li. However, it is possible to unlock Shin Akuma as a playable character by using an Action Replay code (7E1C2714 for player 1, 7E1C4F14 for player 2). This port was re-released for the Virtual Console in North America on December 7, 2009[9] and in the PAL region on January 29, 2010 for the Wii, and in North America on May 22, 2014, and in the PAL region on October 2, 2014 for the Wii U.