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

[Down by Law]

I actually sat down and played MD Virtua Fighter 2 properly this evening. I've always thought it sucked. but.... It plays as well as a 2D version of that game should. I just plowed through arcade mode as Akira and was surprised how many of the original VF2 moves are actually in it. The chiptune version of Ride the Tiger is pretty sweet too. Plays great with the 3 button controller. I take it all back. It's a solid pick. Also played Toejam & Earl in co-op with the wife for 2 hours having a right laugh. Where has this game been all my life? It's brilliant!

One good thing about these mini consoles is you actually bother to try everything out before it's hacked and  you chuck on all the games you've played to death before 

9 hours ago, Colonel Panic said:

So as someone who only had Nintendo consoles back in the day and played an MD a handful of times at friend's houses, what's considered MUST PLAY out of this lot?

 

 

My top 10

 

Streets of Rage 2

Shinobi III

Sonic 2

Gunstar Heroes

Monster World IV

Super Fantasy Zone

Castlevania TNG (Play Bloodlines through the korean menu though, it's uncensored. Save a state as soon as you boot it then change back to english in the menu, and you can quick load it)

Castle of Illusion

Toejam and Earl

Comix Zone

 

My top 10 that's going on when it's inevitably hacked:

 

Rocket Knight Adventures 

Streets of Rage

Revenge of Shinobi

Sonic 3 & Knuckles

Aladdin

Splatterhouse 3

Zero Wing

Soleil (Crusader of Centy)

Musha

Robocop Vs Terminator

 

 

[gratuitous sax]

32 minutes ago, Down by Law said:Revenge of Shinobi

 

33 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

Revenge of Shinobi

 

Did you not say Super Shinobi is already accessible if you change the language to Korean?

[ulala]

32 minutes ago, gratuitous sax said:

Did you not say Super Shinobi is already accessible if you change the language to Korean?

 

i think it changes the games region, but not the games that are actually on the console

[Down by Law]

In Korean Shinobi III becomes the Super Shinobi II which the same as it's Japanese title

 

Revenge of Shinobi = Super Shinobi (I) and isn't on this unit. Only JP or ASIA got it unfortunately.

 

Streets of Rage 1 is the biggest first party omission IMO in all regions

[gratuitous sax]

Ah, thanks for confirming. Yes, shame Shinobi 2 didn’t make the cut but on the other hand I’ve never tried Shinobi 3, so looking forward to that.

[Keyboard Koala]

3 hours ago, Down by Law said:

Castlevania TNG (Play Bloodlines through the korean menu though, it's uncensored. Save a state as soon as you boot it then change back to english in the menu, and you can quick load it)

 

Awesome tip. Cheers!

[Down by Law]

No probs.I think @MW_Jimmy discovered that. Great trick, I did it for Probotector as well, so it boots into JPN Contra , with hit points. I might actually beat it that way !

[Meh]

Wait - this outputs at 720p? Why on earth? 720p looks like garbage on the vast majority of tellies.

[Fry Crayola]

I hear the games look really low resolution - you can even see the pixels in Sonic 2.

[Dudley]

15 hours ago, Colonel Panic said:

So as someone who only had Nintendo consoles back in the day and played an MD a handful of times at friend's houses, what's considered MUST PLAY out of this lot?

 

Into ARPGs, traditional shooters, platformers and have already played Darius to death recently.

 

I love the menu music!!

 

EDIT: Oh, Megaman is the first 3 NES games... YAY!

 

 

Again I wave at my sig but if you've never played any of these games...

 

Obvious : 

Sonic 1 (and 2 later but play 1 first, 2 will ruin 1)

Shinobi 3

Contra / Probotector

Castle of Illusion

 

Less Obvious

Gunstar Heroes

Toe Jam and Earl

Super Fantasy Zone

Golden Axe

Story of Thor

Sonic Spinball (No really)

 

And obviously Street Fighter but if you had a SNES that's not gonna surprise you.

[Keyboard Koala]

2 hours ago, Down by Law said:

No probs.I think @MW_Jimmy discovered that. Great trick, I did it for Probotector as well, so it boots into JPN Contra , with hit points. I might actually beat it that way !

 

Contra as well?! Take all my poss good sir.

 

[MW_Jimmy]

1 hour ago, Meh said:

Wait - this outputs at 720p? Why on earth? 720p looks like garbage on the vast majority of tellies.

 

Looks bloody amazing on my 720p telly.

[ulala]

1 hour ago, Meh said:

Wait - this outputs at 720p? Why on earth? 720p looks like garbage on the vast majority of tellies.

 

720 seems to scale precicely to 4k

 

 

[Meh]

1 hour ago, Fry Crayola said:

I hear the games look really low resolution - you can even see the pixels in Sonic 2.

 

Yes, the games are low resolution, but when the resolution of the emulator is displayed on a 1080p tv... it doesn't tend to look very good. Surely the hardware could have handled 1080p?

[Ketchup]

Just now, Meh said:

 

Yes, the games are low resolution, but when the resolution of the emulator is displayed on a 1080p tv... it doesn't tend to look very good. Surely the hardware could have handled 1080p?

It's all about how it scales. The Mega Drive resolution doesn't scale great to 1080p (same with the snes etc) where as it does scale to 720p perfectly. Of course if you have the equipment you can then line double it to 4k and it'll look great still.

[Meh]

Surely there's a 'softness' to the image like any other game not displaying at a native resolution, though?

[Lumpy]

13 minutes ago, Meh said:

 

Yes, the games are low resolution, but when the resolution of the emulator is displayed on a 1080p tv... it doesn't tend to look very good. Surely the hardware could have handled 1080p?

 

I took it that fry was joking personally.

[Fry Crayola]

Yeah, I had a tongue in my cheek at the time. 

 

Personally, I don't find an issue. The games are blown up 3x their native resolution (at least on the vertical axis - the horizontal depends on the base resolution of the game, as it'll stretch to fit a 4:3 aspect ratio), so any artifacting introduced by the 720 to 1080 upscale is on - from the game's perspective - the subpixel level.

 

As Ketchup notes, 720p scales nicely to 4K resolutions. So does 1080p, of course, but where 224 fits three times into 720, it fits four times into 1080 and nine times into 2160. So a 720p image formed from a 224-line source (the Mega Drive) scales very neatly to 4K, and a 1080p one doesn't...

[spanky debrest]

1 hour ago, Meh said:

 

Yes, the games are low resolution, but when the resolution of the emulator is displayed on a 1080p tv... it doesn't tend to look very good. Surely the hardware could have handled 1080p?

 

It turns out that the MD Mini can output 1080p (unlike other existing official Mini consoles). 

 

Having the games render at 1080p without taking a performance hit is another story though and likely not possible without significantly upgraded / pricier innards, I would have thought.

[Keyboard Koala]

On 09/10/2019 at 12:15, Down by Law said:

No probs.I think @MW_Jimmy discovered that. Great trick, I did it for Probotector as well, so it boots into JPN Contra , with hit points. I might actually beat it that way !

 

Btw, does this work for Dynamite Headdy as well?

 

 

 

 

EDIT: Alas, it doesn't...

[Sketch]

4 hours ago, MW_Jimmy said:

 

Looks bloody amazing on my 720p telly.

 

Any idea why it looks rubbish on my 720 TV (as in the banding scanlines photo I posted a while back)?

 

Is my model of Samsung just a poor TV?

[Popo]

3 hours ago, Fry Crayola said:

Yeah, I had a tongue in my cheek at the time. 

Who’s tongue?

[Flockheart]

So despite having this preordered and getting the console on launch day I've only just plugged this in this evening.  I've been reading people's impressions with interest and, if I'm honest, dismissing most of the negative comments as people being overly fussy.

 

It turns out I was wrong to dismiss them as the audio lag really is awful. I'm genuinely shocked how far behind the video the sound is.  I went back and tested the same game on a hacked PSX classic and the difference was night and day.  My simple test was to load Sonic 1, on the first level stand next to a tree and press the jump button. Sonic reaches near the top of the tree/the peak of his jump before the jump sound effect plays.  Repeating this on the PSX classic and the sound effect plays as sonic leaves the ground.  For reference I had no issue with audio lag with either the nes or snes classic and if anybody thinks there isn't an issue I urge them to try this simple test and see what they think.

 

I believe I've read elsewhere that this lag has been fixed via a hack that ups the CPU clock speed?

 

The direction input is also really dodgy/overly sensitive on the menu screen and shouldn't have passed QA or shipped in that state.

 

On more positive notes the hardware is lovely, the joypads feel good and the menu music is great.

 

I can put up with the dodgy menu input but I'm not sure I can put up with the audio lag so may be returning the system.  I'm slightly at a loss at why so many of the reviews for this have been so positive when audio lag is so pronounced, maybe the at games stuff was so bad this seems like a massive step up but, in my opinion, it still should be better than it is. It reminds me a bit of the PSX classic (though it's not as bad as that!) in that lovely hardware is being let down by the software.

[Down by Law]

I think it's worse/more noticeable on Sonic than any other game TBH. Playing SOR2 and the schwack sounds as you pummel someone seem on point to me. 

[geldra]

I don’t have Sonic 1 on mine but Sonic 2 seems pretty spot on with the same type of jump test. 

[Flockheart]

8 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

I think it's worse/more noticeable on Sonic than any other game TBH. Playing SOR2 and the schwack sounds as you pummel someone seem on point to me. 

 

5 minutes ago, geldra said:

I don’t have Sonic 1 on mine but Sonic 2 seems pretty spot on with the same type of jump test. 

I've tried sonic 2 and agree it doesn't seem as bad as sonic 1 which is really strange. But I still maintain that that the lag in sonic 1 is really awful, even when compared to another open source emulator. I wonder why it would vary per game, I would have thought frames would drop or audio stutter rather than lag more if it was a performance issue?

[geldra]

Yeah agreed, it’s an odd one. Especially considering the flagship status of that game. You’d think they’d make sure that one ran flawlessly. 

[spanky debrest]

1 hour ago, Flockheart said:

I believe I've read elsewhere that this lag has been fixed via a hack that ups the CPU clock speed?

 

Apparently the system shipped with a config which underclocks the CPU - something that will be easily / safely remedied via an option in the hacking tool. Whether this will improve the audio lag will have to be determined I guess.

 

And on that note, audio lag seems to be fairly consistent with what you find on other common emulation platforms according to fairly forensic testing of the US unit by RetroRGB (between 4-7 frames was his assessment in his dedicated video) - but it's not consistent across all games and even sections within them.

[spanky debrest]

On 07/10/2019 at 12:25, Sketch said:

Also, Shinobi III. I have the 6 button controller, but because the Mode button isn't a proper "Mode button", it's just for accessing the menu, I cannot enable the 6 button code. I did a google search and only found one person, on one forum, talking about this. I refuse to play Shinobi III unless it's in 6 button mode. Sloppy, so goddamned sloppy.

 

Which is weird, because M2 knew about a special Mode button code for one of the games on the Japanese Mini (it's either Dyna or Snow Bros, one of the two), and recoded it to not require that Mode be held down to apply the code. But Shinobi III? Pffft, no 6 button mode for you!

 

Which means when it's finally hacked, I'm going to need to either HEX edit the raw code of a fresh Shinobi III ROM to force 6 button mode without the Mode button code, or create my own custom IPS patch. I should not need to be programming my own custom hacks just to play these games properly.

 

By the way, I'd thought I'd give Shinobi III a bash with the MIJET patch which adds in various customisable options including an easier-to-access 6-button mode. The last time I'd played the game was when it was reissued on 3DS (whilst my real cartridge had only ever seen 3-button pad play before that) so it was my first exposure to the expanded moveset on real hardware.

 

Anyway at the risk of boring you with something you already know it turns out that switching the game to 6-button mode in this patched ROM is as simple as going into the options menu and...  pressing the Mode button - so presumably 6-button mode still won't be accessible on the Mini unless some kind of fix is applied by the hack authors (or you knock up and apply your own mode-button-eliminating patch).

 

I just wasn't previously aware that the 6-button mode for whatever reason had remained hidden in the game's code until MIJET discovered it years later and made it easier to access via their enhancement patch; it was never an officially supported or documented feature.

[Down by Law]

The Shinobi III six button mode thing is weird as it plays blindingly well with three. I appreciate it gives you more control over the character but the hitbox detections pretty fucking good as it is. I can't say I've ever wished he slashed someone instead of throw a shuriken or whatever. 

 

Finished Golden Axe and Streets of Rage 2 last night. Streets of Rage 2 is just so good, I play through it every few years, thinking, is this going to be the time the nostalgia wears off? But no, it is the definition of a timeless game, everything about it is so satisfying. In fact playing it on a whopping big screen with those tunes pumping through a good sound system, it was probably my favourite play through to date. Golden Axe is better than I remembered too. It's really short but full of character, and memorable music. The magic effects for an early title are really well done, too. It's a shame that Golden Axe II is a dissapointing follow up and Golden Axe III, for a mid 1993 release, is an absolute embarrassment.