PAL region and NTSC region I would say.
SEGA would be stupid, doing the same mistake, Sony did with the PS1 classic.
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MegaDrive Genesis Mini available on Sep.19 worldwide (NTSC + PAL; $79.99 with 2 controllers) - M2 doing emulation, Yuzo Koshiro doing menu music!?
- Thread starter --R
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PAL region and NTSC region I would say.
SEGA would be stupid, doing the same mistake, Sony did with the PS1 classic.
Great to see Sega stepping up and doing this right after all the garbage they've put out from ATGames, Backbone (Digital Eclipse) and d3t over the years. I was prepared for another disappointment given their track record but this looks to do the Mega Drive justice.
You can play all regional variants of games. In the case of Castlevania, you can play Vampire Killer (JPN), Bloodlines (US), or The New Generation (EUR).
Kotaku state a bit more info about games being regional, the 6 button controller and Bloodlines.
https://kotaku.com/sega-will-release-the-genesis-mini-on-september-19-1833681956
I never played bloodlines but from what people say here it was censored in Europe so it looks like we may get the euro release.
https://kotaku.com/sega-will-release-the-genesis-mini-on-september-19-1833681956
I never played bloodlines but from what people say here it was censored in Europe so it looks like we may get the euro release.
That and M2 mean I am in no matter whatCASTLEVANIA BLOODLINES HOLY SHIT:
Wow, I clicked on the thread expecting to see the exact same boring list of games that nobody really wants (y'know, Columns 1, Sonic Spinball, Altered Beast, Thunder Blade etc.) they've been trotting out in collections for years, certainly not rare and unique titles like Bloodlines, Rent a Hero or Mado Monogatari. Considering my interest piqued, this might not be FPGA lika the Analogue SG but the huge postage costs have put that into a far different price bracket.
M2? 40 games?
Well that's a no brainer day one purchase.
I want SoR1-3 and I'm good.
New Yuzo Koshiro music is great. But announce he's doing SoR4's music already.
Well that's a no brainer day one purchase.
I want SoR1-3 and I'm good.
New Yuzo Koshiro music is great. But announce he's doing SoR4's music already.
Mega Drive forever!
(Hopefully modding would be easy so I can put Adventures of Batman and Robin in this bitch. Oh and UMK3!)
(Hopefully modding would be easy so I can put Adventures of Batman and Robin in this bitch. Oh and UMK3!)
Solid lineup so far. Hope it gets some shmups.
Yeah, for a second I was excited, then I thought exactly that.
I always mix up Whitehead's and M2's work as they're both excellent.
Fantastic. I just read that it was released for the virtual console too so maybe it does have a chance.
Even though I love Genesis, a Saturn Mini is really what the world needs.
Really? Master System carried the same name as Sega's portable in the US? Never knew That.you are thinking of the master system, which was the 8-bit console before the sega genesis:
The master system is perhaps better known in the US as the Game Gear.
Something I noticed is every game so far is a MD original except the Compile titles, and really even those sort of are since Madou Monogatari I is an upgraded remake and Puyo Puyo 2 originated on the MD based C-2 board. It makes me wonder if every game with be ground up MD based stuff and no ports?
My dream would be the ability to add a Mega CD mini and 32X mini to the thing, each with an assortment of additional games.
That'd be interesting but part of me wonders whether they'd really want to exclude a game as big as SF2--they did include the six-button controllers, after all.
Sega seems to think westerners still go batshit for Altered Beast and Golden Axe, so I guess their inclusion or lack thereof will be the best indicator of the tack they're taking with the roster.
I'm not actually sure that's true. Both are lost to time, but the Master System comes up in recounting the NES' history, whereas the Game Gear is spoken of very little.
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Uh, no it's not. The Game Gear is known as Sega's portable system that was competing with the gameboy. The master system is their 8 bit home console that was competing with NES.
I was a teenager in high school when the Master System came out and was graduated when GG and GB came out and your claim about the hardware being the same in the Master System and Game Gear, are the first I ever heard of it. Are you sure you aren't thinking of the Nomad? Which was Sega's portable Genesis and literally used the same carts as the console?
I think what he's getting at is that the Game Gear is effectively a Master System in handheld form. Many MS games are the same version or very similar for the GG, although the GG had a slightly lower graphics resolution so the viewable game area was smaller on the GG. (See sonic 2)
Ha ha, no. The Game Gear was pretty much a portable Master System, but no one ever confused the two. They both played their own carts natively. But if you played Game Gear games you can probably get away with saying you've played Master System games or vice versa. Unlike say, the Nomad which was a portable Genny but never had exclusive software released for it, all it played was Genesis/MD carts.
No one really remembers the Game Gear over the Master System, though.
GG also had slightly upgraded specs. It's not exactly the same but a bit like Gamecube and Wii: same architecture but different platform.
Did they say I'd they will allow you to use custom ROMs on it?
Will pre order it as soon as they put it up near me.
Will pre order it as soon as they put it up near me.
Oh right: anyone else concerned that the existence (and proliferation) of the ATGames Genesis Flashback and the failure of Sony's Playstation Classic is going to cause difficulties for the new Genesis Mini to find an audience? Will brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy balk at stocking them after the bloodbath and price slashing the PS classic endured? Am I being overly paranoid?
Yeah, there are some ports/conversions I'd still really like to get like SF2CE, Wily Wars, Mega Bomberman and Virtua Racing.
the entirtey of the difference between the Game Gear and the Master System is that the game gear has 1 byte of extra optional CRAM, and there is a single extra register to allow stereo output from the PSG. They're the same hardware, there is less variation between the Sega Master System and the Game Gear than there is the Sega Mark III and the Master System.
This is like a dream come true, M2, Yuzo Koshiro, Castlevania Bloodlines, and no AtGames trash! Also: We're getting SEGA hardware in 2019, how crazy is that!?
He's not wrong about the hardware - Master System & Game Gear are both Z-80 processors. That's why there was a Master System adaptor for the GG which was just a pass through, remapping the pins.
It's more than the Z80. They use the same major revision VDP, the Game Gear using a minor revision later than the SMS, which used a minor revision later than the Mark III, which used a major revision later than the SG-1000. It uses the exact same tile format, exact same nametable format, same memory map, same addressing, same PSG. Same number of hardware sprites in the same addresses, same VDP registers, same number of access slots in the VDP cycle, same VDP access timing and scheduling, same everything.
the minor revisions to the VDP are things like a slightly different video mode selection allowing one new resolution -- half resolution, which the vast majority of game gear games don't even use. Games like Mickey Mouse: Castle of Illusion are litterally the exact same SMS game running on a differently shaped cart, by bypassing the game gear's screen's scalar you can prove it:
Fills the entire screen
vs a game using the game gear custom resolution:
Only a tiny portion of GG games actually use this custom resolution. The vast majority of the other games in the GG library are literally SMS roms in different shaped carts. The game gear's screen has a scaling feature to automatically handle larger screen resolutions:
What happens is that the horizontal resolution of the screen is mapped out according to two-subpixel "pixel" groupings on the game gear's LCD screen. This means individual red, green, and blue subchannels, which would normally represent one pixel, are broken up into groups of two to make up more resolution. The mapping is as follows:
Let's label these 1-4. This is 12 subpixels, which is 4 pixels.
SMS pixels:
Code:
..1.....2.....3.....4....
[RGB] [rgb] [RGB] [rgb]GG pixels: the same number of subpixels (12) now becomes 6 actual pixels
Code:
..1....2....3....4....5....6....
[RG] [Br] [gb] [RG] [Br] [gb]Note that, in the above, 3 groups of RGB sub pixels maps onto 2 groups of RGB subpixels. This is a 3:2 pulldown. The SMS's horizontal resolution is 256, but as I said they ignore the edge-most 8 pixels on each side, meaning it considers only 240 pixels. The game gear's screen resolution is 160 pixels wide. (240*2)/3 = 160.
They map like so:
GG R1 = SMS R1
GG G1 = SMS G1
--------------------------
GG B2 = SMS b2
GG r2 = SMS r2
--------------------------
GG g3 = SMS G3
GG b3 = SMS B3
--------------------------
GG R4 = SMS r4
GG G4 = SMS g4
etc.
If you note, this means you lose a sub pixel across the SMS image as it scales. This creates a slight blurring effect horizontally across the screen. The Game Gear screen demonstrated color bleed like other CRT screens of the era, so this loss of color information was usually masked by the bleeding pixels. Of our original 12 subpixels, we only use 8 of them (again, (12*2)/3=8, 3:2 pulldown).
This is what the result of this horizontal scalilng looks like:
With vertical resolution, there is a real time two-step blurring process that purposely bleeds values among pixels above and below. In alternating fashion, either 3 pixels will be turned into corresponding 2 pixels that are half-blurs of each pixel, or 4 rows of pixels will be turned into 3 rows of pixels with the same type of blurring. The blurring ratio goes as follows:
Even numbered raster lines: X = current line
(X - 2 * 1/6) +
(X - 1 * 1/3) +
(X * 1/3) +
(X + 1 * 1/6)
You can see the two tail ends at the top and bottom (about 1 line "above" and "below" the 2 line thick selected area) are considered at half the rate that the other two lines are, essentially converting those two tailing selections into a weight equal the other 2 (i.e. 1/3).
For odd numbered raster lines: X = current line
(X - 1 * 1/3) +
(X * 1/3) +
(X + 1 * 1/3)
For this part of the pattern, all 3 lines are considered equally in weight.
This can be seen by scrolling a horizontal line down the game gear screen:
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There's a Master System adapter for Mega Drive as well which was just a pass through, remapping the pins.
It's literally not the same hardware, Game Gear is enhanced but backward compatible via a converter. The Master System is incapable of playing Game Gear games without modifying the game roms.
The Mark III is compatible with all Master System games via a pin converter and vice versa too, so that comparison is false on an actual practical level. M3 and MS are the same hardware, GG is not.
Wow... this is probably the best sounding mini-console we've had so far... there has to be a monkey paw catch to some part of it.
Deffo buying, just need desert strike, jungle strike, general chaos, streets of rage trilogy golden axe, alien storm, skitchin, road rash 2, shinobi, out run and the sonic games
The Japanese one is so nostalgic for me, but I'll get the EU one so I can actually play whatever text-heavy games they put on it.
On the other hand, if it goes the way of the other retro consoles for emulation, the sexier shell of the JP model would be nicer.
On the other hand, if it goes the way of the other retro consoles for emulation, the sexier shell of the JP model would be nicer.
