Mega Drive Mini, and now... Mega Drive Mini 2!

[Oh Danny Boy]

The Asian version definitely is the best. I presume it has English language versions too. I’d pay £30 extra for it.

[Popo]

Amazon have taken my money and I can see it’s set for delivery tomorrow, which is handy because I’ll be working from home. 
 

On the other hand - will I really be working from home with this sat in a box in the living room? 

[NEG]

My 2nd monitor broke recently so I've had to cancel my pre-order, saving up for monitor is more important for now. I've noticed the PAL tower parts in the SEGA Europe stream the other day and it annoys me to no end that there are currently no plans to sell them outside of the Japanese versions from Japan.

[NEG]

On 28/09/2019 at 11:32, Down by Law said:

These have gone up on Amazon this morning, pricey at £35.99 but it does come with USB and OG dongles and a carry case.

 

Same question for all the controllers: 3 button, 6 button, and this wireless one: Please test the sonic thumb roll. You know what I mean. A couple of Amazon reviews last month complained about exactly that (it not being very good), and I want to know if it's a specific model, all of them or what. Else just stick to 8bitdo's model. It's not perfect (smaller) but the d-pad is fine.

 

Knowing exactly which kind of 3 button we've ended up with would also be nice (and if we can buy any separately). SEGA kept changing the insides throughout the Mega Drive's life, with the Made in Malaysia ones being my favored 3-button D-Pad (even better than the 6-button due to being larger, has a screw in the middle of the d-pad when you open it up) versus the earlier revisions which are stiffer in various ways (some put the D-Pad contacts behind the board!...another kind has no screw). It made me realize it's probably for this very reason third parties haven't been able to replicate the perfect SEGA D-Pad in the earlier days: SEGA themselves couldn't make up their mind for how smooth the thumb rolling should be until the 6-button! Which is, alas, smaller than the 3-button.

[amc]

So this is hopefully arriving tomorrow. I don't know which console I'll be having to pair it up with in my mini console shelves at the end of my bed*. Thinking it should go next to the snes? 

*Yeah not really a conundrum, just an excuse to post a pic showing I'm a fan of these mini retro machines.

[Jazz Glands]

SNES, then the PC Engine Mini can go to the next the NES  

[amc]

I've been playing a lot of SF2 on the Snes lately and I'm really blown away by the quality of the Mini's D-pad. It just feels right. So much better than my 8bitdo sf30 Pro D-pad. I hope Sega have achieved the same robust feel with the Megadrive pad.

[Rex Grossman]

I’d be interested to know how many of you with preorders are like me – I have  never owned the MD.

 

i had an Amiga and SFC at the time but obviously had friends with Mega Drives.

[Flockheart]

55 minutes ago, Rex Grossman said:

I’d be interested to know how many of you with preorders are like me – I have  never owned the MD.

 

i had an Amiga and SFC at the time but obviously had friends with Mega Drives.

I've got a preorder arriving today but never owned a Megadrive myself.  I had an Amiga growing up but my parents always seemed pretty anti console (I don't think they liked the cost of the games).  I had a snes briefly at university and own a SuperNT now but I've never had any megadrive hardware at all, though I have owned a couple of the sega classics collections for various other consoles.

[JohnC]

I never had an MD or SNES, but as of today will have the mini for both. Already have the tower ready to assemble. 

[LaveDisco]

Never got to own a megadrive or a snes (had a master system instead), just played friend's, or the display copy in comet.

 

Now I'll own both. Think mine may gave been delivered yesterday, but went to the depot! And I won't be able to pick it up from there till Tuesday! Woe is me.

 

 

[Mogster]

The Mega Drive was my first home console, so there was no way I could ignore the mini.

[MW_Jimmy]

Megadrive was my 2nd console (after the Master System). The games on this collection with the fondest memories are Strider (lesson learned: rubbish box art doesn't mean rubbish game), Ghouls and Ghosts, Alisa Dragoon, Wonderboy and Sonic 1 obvs.

 

Other notables from childhood that are missing were Rocket Knight, Sword of Vermilion (where I learned to play RPGs) and Revenge of Shinobi. Also have a soft spot for Haunting too.

 

The better games on this collection were just too expensive at the time (RPGS!) or turned up very late on the console. Lots of games only discovered through emulation.

[Mogster]

I never played Rocket Knight Adventures until I bought a replacement Mega Drive from Gamestation, but it remains one of the most inventive "platformers" I've ever played. It's a big shame it didn't make it onto the mini.

 

As I child I got most of my games as birthday or Christmas presents, so I never built up a huge collection. The Sonic games were the big ones, and I'm still amazed at how long I managed to make each one last. I still remember coming downstairs one morning to find a copy of Sonic 2 sitting on top of the Mega Drive.

[amc]

I was pretty late to the party, well I did own a VCS back in the day and my younger sister had an Amiga bought for her to do school work. I wasn't interested in games at all for all of my teens and very early 20s. A few friends would dabble, on a couple of occasions I'd be sitting in the sidelines whilst they played games. I remember being bored out of my mind watching two friends playing Alex Kid on the MS whilst we stayed up one night in someone's flat, and something similar watching a few play Sonic 1 on the MD. I even borrowed a friend's MD to try and click with Sonic et al but it left me cold. 

 

I then had an epiphany with an all night session on Virtua Racing at a service station and it literally blew my mind. Came home and loaded up Indy 500 off of some demo disc for my sister's A500 and was shocked at the disparity in graphics (it's probably a fantastic game but I had no clue about what CPU's or ram etc were and it was an eye opener how far behind home gaming was at the time). So I skulked off completely affected but wanting something unavailable. I did grab a Snes in late 94, enjoyed the 3D games mostly, Star Fox, Stunt Race etc but I sold it to fund a Jaguar, shudder.

 

Out comes the PS1 and a few pretenders I gave a try a little beforehand, said Jag, Neo Geo CD etc and off I go. Game crazy ever since.

 

I've owned lots of machines that are predominantly 16 bit game players since then, stuff like the Nomad and earlier Nintendo handhelds but it's only recently I've begun to seriously look back at the machines I'd dismissed before my gaming addiction really took hold. I've watched a lot of MD game videos on YouTube and I'm blown away at some the machine's visuals and tricks, I'd always thought the Snes was way ahead in the gfx department but now I'm not so sure. Anyway, for me all these little consoles are a way to go back and give machines I hadn't given much consideration to a reappraisal. I've played emulation of titles before, and yes these machines still are emulation, but owning an approximation of the hardware is a great little way to carry on my schooling of older games. Having a lot of fun.

 

TLDR No, I've never owned an MD before.

[MW_Jimmy]

Mine has arrived! It's really nice!

 

I played a few levels of Dynamite Headdy, Sonic 2 and Streets of Rage 2. Haven't noticed anything untoward and the sound in particular is perfect. One of my pads has a more clicky sounding B button than the other.

 

Also booted up Darius and the soundtrack on that is pretty great too!

[Kramer]

Had a SNES, played Megadrive at my friend’s house - fond memories of lots of games.

 

Got my Megadrive Mini through from Amazon yesterday and had a play last night - v. happy with it.
 

Love the controller, even though I should expect to prefer the SNES’.

[amc]

Despite being a Prime member and buying the vast majority of my things off of Amazon I went with someone called 365 games. I don't normally care too much about saving a couple of quid but for some reason went with the cheaper option for this. Hopefully get it today/tomorrow.

[Popo]

Mine has arrived! Sad to report that the 8bitdo wireless receiver does not work, hopefully they’ll do a firmware update later for this. 
 

Had a quick squirt on Shinobi 3 and it’s lovely, pad cables are of course too short meaning one has to sit too close to the TV. Very annoying that Nintendo decided to go with their own proprietary connector rather than USB, otherwise the extenders I got for the SNES/NES minis would do just the trick. Ah well. 

[Sketch]

Can anyone who has the UK model please confirm the following:

 

* Are all 3 regions of each game accessible by changing language? I'm told that putting the UK model into Korean via the language menu will give access to the American versions. Is this true?

 

* Is the Japanese Castlevania, along with American Bloodlines and British New Generation all accessible? Same for JP Contra, US Contra, and UK Probotector?

 

* Does the European "Mega Drive" version of Spinball have music which plays too fast due to them boosting the game to 60Hz even though the original PAL 50Hz game had been optmised?

 

* Can you access the US Genesis version of Spinball on the UK Mini hardware? I'm not interested in Japanese Spinball, just specifically the Genesis version.

 

* The above two questions again, but with Comix Zone. I've heard reports the music is borked.

 

* When accessing games through the Korean/Chinese language menu, which allegedly gives access to English American Genesis games, do any of the American Genesis ROMs show the Japanese box art instead of the US box art? I've heard that the ROMs which load are the US Genesis ROMs, even though the box art is not from the Genesis versions. Or, does it actually load Japanese ROMs?

 

* From what you can tell, are there any US Genesis games/ROMs which cannot be accessed via any language menu on the UK model of Mini?

 

Games to check for include:

- Spinball (sound issues - but I specifically want the US version)

- Comix Zone (sound issues)

- LandStalker (EU version had a subtitle)

- Streets of Rage II (instead of 2)

- Beyond Oasis/Story of Thor (name change, languages)

- Contra/Probotector

- Vampire Killer/Bloodlines/The New Generation

- Light Crusader

- Space Harrier II (apparently you can access the Genesis ROM, but the system itself does not in any way contain the Genesis box art?)

- Shinobi, for the same reason as Space Harrier II

 

I've asked both Strider on here and M2 themselves, and got definitive answers, but then I check videos online, and Twitter, and no one is sure, and I get conflicting answers (notably a lot of confusion regarding Spinball). Both of Strider and M2 explicitly told me that Bloodlines is accessible via the Korean menu, but photos online show only the Vampire Killer box art in the Korean menu, not the Bloodlines box art, which implies that either you can't access the American Bloodlines, only Vampire Killer, or you can in fact access Bloodlines, but it will incorrectly show the Vampire Killer box art instead.

 

I need definitive confirmation on both ROM type and box art.

 

Honest to god the PAL release has been a shit show. It's been out for weeks in Australia, there are a hundred moronic YouTube plebs all grinning like Cheshire cats in their "unboxing" thumbnails, and yet not one of these turd weasels has actually made a video dissecting and examining specifically which ROMs from which region are contained in the EU/Australia model.

 

Please. Somebody be the super anal retentive pedant which I need, and get technical on this for me please.

 

I want to know which regions of ROMs can and cannot be accessed, and of those which can be accessed I want to know which box art is shown.

 

Also, why is there no precision regarding this information? It's been out for weeks, WEEKS! By now this information should be locked in on Wikipedia and be well established. I should not need to be asking for it. This is not weird or esoteric information. This isn't like I'm asking how to beat the secret dragon boss in Dragon Slayer IV on the original MSX. It's the fucking Mega Drive. You cannot get more mainstream. I spent hours trawling YouTube and as far as the eye could see, nothing but clowns and imbeciles smiling like they'd been given a morphine enema, rambling at the camera, devoid of information and utterly intellectually bankrupt.

 

[Super Craig]

[Qazimod]

I'm not picking one up but I do enjoy new console launch hype - pics of minis next to random things for scale will be appreciated  

[Keyboard Koala]

18 minutes ago, Qazimod said:

I'm not picking one up but I do enjoy new console launch hype - pics of minis next to random things for scale will be appreciated.

 

 

 

 

Anyhoo; mine should be arriving tomorrow. Really looking forward to this as I absolutely luuurve them (hacked) minis (except the NeoGeo one).

Haven't played my other consoles in ages as I've been hooked on both my SNES and PS mini, catching up on classics that I either hadn't played before or haven't played in over a decade.

[Super Craig]

Here's the ROM list: https://pastebin.com/fyhRNJfj

 

Doesn't look like that they've included separate UK/US versions for every game. I did a quick check on my UK model and changing it to Korean does show US Genesis art (with ERSB ratings) for a few games, but I'd assume that the rest are the Japanese versions.

[NEG]

1 hour ago, Sketch said:

 

Honest to god the PAL release has been a shit show. It's been out for weeks in Australia, there are a hundred moronic YouTube plebs all grinning like Cheshire cats in their "unboxing" thumbnails, and yet not one of these turd weasels has actually made a video dissecting and examining specifically which ROMs from which region are contained in the EU/Australia model.

 

 

Agreed, even the more normally knowledgable ones have been very lacking in telling us exactly what is being provided on the PAL MD. At the very most one observed that the Virtua Fighter rom still had the Genesis subtitle on the start screen: so it's the Genesis rom, but what about every other game?

 

I've simply assumed that M2 have been lazy and are using US/JP roms for everything. M2 have a habit of ignoring PAL/50hz even in their SEGA AGES releases (would it be so hard to add a toggle/give us the PAL rom too?) so it's no surprise it's a similar thing here.

[Sketch]

24 minutes ago, Super Craig said:

Here's the ROM list: https://pastebin.com/fyhRNJfj

 

Doesn't look like that they've included separate UK/US versions for every game. I did a quick check on my UK model and changing it to Korean does show US Genesis art (with ERSB ratings) for a few games, but I'd assume that the rest are the Japanese versions.

 

Thank you very much. This is precisely what I have wanted all along, all these weeks. And you've handed it to me. Much appreciated Super Craig.

 

Interesting. It seems there are indeed 3 copies of Spinball. A good sign.

 

However, Probotector is not even named - it's filed under "eu_en_Contra_Hard_Corps.bin". Which means you can't really be sure what region each ROM is from.

 

You know? I think I'm just going to order a Genesis from VG+ and pay the import fees. I can't be arsed messing about with this trainwreck.

[MW_Jimmy]

I'm not quite sure what you are asking. Are you trying to make sure that there are 3 versions of each game included (where possible) as is the case with the Genesis Mini?

[strider]

1 minute ago, MW_Jimmy said:

I'm not quite sure what you are asking. Are you trying to make sure that there are 3 versions of each game included (where possible) as is the case with the Genesis Mini?

He would be eternally grateful if you boot up your machine and confirm the title for contra say probotector and shows robots instead of people.

[HKT3030]

All three versions of both Contra and Castlevania are available (and yes, that means Probotector and robots for Europe). Streets Of Rage II/2 displays differently depending on if you choose the European or US version. I'd confirm more but I really need to get back to Essex...

[Super Craig]

13 minutes ago, NEG said:

 

Agreed, even the more normally knowledgable ones have been very lacking in telling us exactly what is being provided on the PAL MD. At the very most one observed that the Virtua Fighter rom still had the Genesis subtitle on the start screen: so it's the Genesis rom, but what about every other game?

 

I've simply assumed that M2 have been lazy and are using US/JP roms for everything. M2 have a habit of ignoring PAL/50hz even in their SEGA AGES releases (would it be so hard to add a toggle/give us the PAL rom too?) so it's no surprise it's a similar thing here.

 

The in-game title screen for Castlevania has it called The New Generation, so I don't think it's as simple as that. Probotector is listed as that on the game selection screen, so I'd imagine it's not Contra on there (by default at least).