This is a first venture into writing something that might be genuinely useful for someone, rather than just shitposting memes and useless reviews of games that were released 30 years ago or pictures of Dolph Lundgren in tiny speedos (I’ll wait here for a moment while you look through the previous articles to find that one).
I won’t call it an idiot’s guide; instead it’s for people that perhaps aren’t technically inclined, maybe don’t have the time to spend reading Reddit or GamesRadar for recommendations, or more likely can’t be arsed; It could even be for the gene-modified pigs (selectively bred for intelligence) that will eventually become sapient and are reading this on Google Memories in 2132, and who want to collect Mega Drive software despite the limited resources left available after that terrible conflict (all hail Lord Porkos!)
Hopefully this will cover all the important bits – if I’ve missed out anything, please let me know below!
An Icon
You stand in a darkened room. Squinting, you can just about make out the outline of what looks to be a table in front of you.
Suddenly, an angelic soprano note assails your ear holes. Your sense of anticipation rising, a beam of light comes down from the ceiling to spotlight the centre of the table.
There, sat resplendent, is the most gorgeous piece of 1980s-stroke-1990s electronic tech that you have ever seen.
Isn't she beautiful?
Original or no?
But, dear reader, you have an important decision to make: Do you get hold of one of the original machines, and have a great conversation piece for any house visits by nerds, or go for something that’s perhaps a bit more practical and just dip your toe in the water? If it’s the latter, and you’re not yet ready to give yourself over entirely to nostalgic whimsy, fortunately there are a fair few options available. Here is a run-through of some of them:
Mega Drive Mini
Cost: £40 - £200 (variable)
Noticing that Nintendo were having some success with their mini-console releases, Sega released their own machine in 2019 and with it reinvigorated the 1990s 16-bit console war (something that many would say was unnecessary, as Sega had already clearly won that battle, having long since tea-bagged the Nintendo machine’s corpse and rolled it off the edge of an old quarry).*
*This is a joke before I receive any death threats.
The main difference with this machine when compared to the original was its small size: this is not to be confused with viewing a Mega Drive that is far away, and therefore looks smaller.
Please see the infographic below to help with this, and let me know in the comments if you are still having difficulty:
Pros:
‘Official’ Sega merchandise. Comes complete with a great selection of games, some of which are obscenely expensive to buy if you were to try and get hold of the original cartridges. Also included are a pair of lovely, responsive control pads.
Loads of ‘mod cons’ – plugs straight into a modern TV with an HDMI, no prayers or swearing necessary, and the games have a ‘save’ and ‘rewind’ feature, if you’re someone that cries when games are too hard or whose reactions have slowed with age.
Cons:
Was released as part of a limited production run and is no longer available from new so prices are starting to creep up. If you don’t mind buying used machines you can probably still get hold of one for £50-60, but don’t hang around for too long!
No way of playing the original cartridges or adding to the library. Although the machine comes with an impressive collection of games installed, if you want to take it any further you will need to look elsewhere (although I should add that there are modding services available in some corners of the internet if you have the coin).
AT Games Sega Mega Drive
Cost: £20 - £100
Over the years there have been a wide variety of ‘clone’ consoles released, some legally and officially licensed (such as this one by AT Games), others that have sprung up from tech workshops in Hong Kong and China since the 90s and are still available if you look under rocks on eBay or even new from Alibaba or those shops that pop over before Christmas selling landfill. Most offer a generally straightforward way to do some mega drive gaming, plugging directly into your TV, but if buying from overseas make sure you have the correct plug fitting and voltage.
The AT Games Sega Mega Drive. Some would say you would be hard pressed to tell the difference from the original hardware.
Pros:
Very straightforward way to play, cheap, and many versions allow you to use genuine cartridges. For the most part they are commonly available too.
Cons:
Quite often dodgy build quality and image/sound can be poor (some older models still just come with an aerial cable, check before you buy!)
Some games won’t work on certain models.
Due to the emulation software responsiveness on some games can be noticeably slow, which can be a problem on games from the 16-bit era.
Due to Chinese mistranslation you may have accidentally received some sort of autonomous and aggressive enema and/or rectal inspection machine.
Raspberry Pi
Cost: Around £50, depending on appendages
Pros:
Apparently useful for educational stuff and learning things? Can be programmed with a robotic arm to wipe your arse.
Cons:
Become an insufferable twat the moment you buy a Raspberry Pi, as the fact that you have one needs to be inserted into every conversation that you now have, regardless of the topic. “Hey Dave did you see the football last night? Good goal by United.” “Yeah it was. I’ve programmed the robotic arm on my Raspberry Pi to wipe my arse.” Like Pi itself, they just go on and on! (I’m pleased with myself for that one).
An average Raspberry Pi setup, about to become sentient and determined to destroy humanity after several years of enforced bottom scrubbing
Analogue MD / Polymega
Cost: £200 for the Analogue, £300+ for the Polymega
One of the main reasons to Retro game always used to be (increasingly less so nowadays) because it was cheaper. So when you’re paying money that would be a good chunk towards a PS5 or Xbox Series S, what are you getting exactly?
Pros:
With the Analogue MD you’re getting an attempt to build a chipset that mimics the Mega Drive itself, rather than using software emulation. This is expensive but apparently means you get a ‘true’ reflection of the game, with zero lag, excellent colour replication and an output to a modern TV.
The Polymega doesn’t do this an uses software emulation (in the same way as the Mega Drive Mini and AT Games machines mentioned above), but apparently lag has been reduced to a minimum and it has a high level of compatibility.
The Polymega is also capable of replicating a whole bunch of other games machines as well, so there is that, and it can automatically backup games as you play them; great for if you don’t have much storage space and need to cycle through a games collection.
Cons:
As well as the astronomical price, beware heavy customs tax if ordering from outside the US (neither have EU distribution at the time of writing). The P&P cost of the Analogue in particular leads you to believe that it would be transported by private jet, then hand-delivered by the re-animated corpse of Alan Turing (your P&P money having been used to develop this technology).
The Polymega requires an expansion pack to play Mega Drive cartridges, making it even MORE expensive. Oh yeah and there is a waiting list for the machine if you order it today.
Lovely hardware, and showing it off on social media is the equivalent of repeatedly thrusting your groin into people’s faces while telling them you are superior. But be prepared to pay.
Game collection for your Xbox, PlayStation, Switch
Cost: £5-£30
Probably the simplest and cheapest way of all if you want just want to play some games and already own a console that was released in the last decade or so. There have been a number of different releases across almost every console and most carry a collection of some of the most popular titles. Some even allow you to game online with others and record high scores globally, so you can laugh at implausibly high scores left by players with literally no life who sit in their parent’s basement like the sad, hacker losers that they are (take that KiLlErTRoLL! That will teach you for getting an implausibly high score on Flicky)
Most consoles released over the past decade or more have a Mega Drive compilation disk released for them. You can usually buy most of these games online from virtual stores the PS4/5, Xbox and even on PC.
Recently Nintendo have released an additional online service allowing you to play Mega Drive games as part of their Nintendo Online package. It's pretty remarkable how things have changed, Sega games being released like that on a Nintendo being viewed as the same likelihood as God and the devil joining forces back in the 90s!
You can make something known as the Tower of Power with expansions for the Mega Drive mini. Basically a representation of all of the add-on hardware the MD received over its lifespan. Although it doesn’t have any practical function (you can’t play 32x or Mega CD Games) it is probably the only way you will realistically get hold of the 'hardware' with current prices for the originals meaning you would need to marry then divorce Jeff Bezos. A price that most probably wouldn’t be prepared to pay, as I bet he is into kinky stuff.
The Real McCoy
So you have got this far into the article. Emulation machines and compilation discs are fine but they are not what you are after. You remember that feeling of holding the Mega Drive controller in your hands as a kid, the excitement of a new edition of Mean Machines, and opening a present from grannie whilst praying to any God that would listen that it wasn’t a copy of Shaq-Fu? You want to recreate that feeling, drinking deep from the well of nostalgia, and have that awesome little 16-bit machine under the TV again. You’re sure your partner will understand; it’s a better type of midlife crisis than buying a sports car, getting a pony-tail/earing combo or finally learning to play the banjo surely?
One or Two?
Some years after the original machine was released (I can’t be bothered to find out when, look it up on Wikipedia) Sega released a stripped down, cheaper looking machine known unoriginally as the Mega Drive II.
Two reasons that you shouldn’t consider this and should instead stick with the original:
One: the original machine has this, the volume control, allowing you to plug in a pair of headphones and play late at night without your parents knowing about it. Thirty years later the same might still apply, and you don’t want mum coming down the stairs with a rolling pin again (she might be getting older now, but she still packs a punch). Or, most likely, you won’t ever use it again. But it does still look cool.
Two: The Mega Drive 2 looks like fucking shit. I haven’t posted a picture of it here cause it would ruin the look of the whole article, even next to the picture of the asshole from Weatherspoons below. It just shows you were late to the party and, like someone finally deciding to become a hipster in 2021, deserving of ridicule.
Where to Buy?
Thankfully the Mega Drive sold shed loads back in the day, and while it’s becoming more of a collectors item over the last year or so, it is still possible to get a fairly good quality console for relatively little money (expect to pay around £30 to £40).
The machine itself is also relatively robust and reliable; few delicate moving parts (certainly compared to more modern, CD-ROM based machines) mean that it should keep soldiering on. The one weak spot is the capacitors inside the machine which can occasionally pop, but this is fairly straightforward to get repaired if it does happen and there are several online repair shops that offer the service (try RetroSix for example, who are known to have a good reputation: https://retrosix.co.uk/Sega-Mega-Drive-Repair-Service-UK-Only-p353798488 )
But where to buy your machine?
Retro Gaming Store
These range from popular pawn shop CEX, who have started to take interest in Retro, through to dedicated Retro gaming stores, which have started to become increasingly popular. You might pay a bit more for the machine, but the chances it will have at least had a rudimentary check and clean and some stores will offer limited guarantees with hardware. And, if you take it home and it immediately explodes, you’ll know exactly where to return it.
The Bay
Possibly the cheapest choice and you can certainly get some bargains, but purchase with care. Beyond the mandatory feedback check has the seller provided a full description and photos of the machine, as well as pointed out any marks or damage? Is the machine tested? If this isn’t explicitly listed and the machine is pictured with all components, send them a message and ask them to plug it in. If there is no reply or they are evasive, then you have your answer.
That being said you can get some great machine and game bundles, so look out for these and take advantage of listings that attracted loads of bidders or perhaps have been set to finish at an odd time (then you can slip in with a sneaky snipe!)
Bloke Down the Pub
Like anything you buy from Frank, you pays yer money, you takes yer chances. Is it a Mega Drive in the box? A Gameboy? A human hand? You’ll only find out when you get home. This is probably the most exciting method of obtaining a Mega Drive, but the least recommended.
Controllers
If you’ve bought a machine as a package, chances are it came with an original controller or two. Most likely the classic 3-button model (which still feels comfortable today), possibly some survivor third party model or even the Justin Bieber of Mega Drive controllers which was the fancy 6-button version.
But the chances are that that controller put up with repeated screams of rage and extended button mashing trying to save Simba from the buffalo stampede, and the rubber pressure sensors behind the D-Pad, like you, are starting to creak with age.
Fortunately, thanks to the growing retro market, there are modern alternatives available: check out the Retro 8-bit classic Mega Drive controller (which has prices starting at about £15) or even splash out on a lovely 8bitdo version, which has a really cool lagless Bluetooth connection bit that slots into the front of your machine and mean that you can slouch on the sofa 20ft away like a complete slob.
Cable Funk
You’ve got your machine now, it’s plugged in, you’re holding the controller in your hands but oh no! The video cable! Surely it’s simple right, just plug straight into the back of your Samsung QLED and it will look awesome? Right?
Unfortunately no. There are good, bad and ugly ways (mostly ugly) of doing it, so please see this handy guide below, where I have included visual examples of what you can expect to see on screen through a tenuously stretched metaphor:
RF/Aerial Cable
A video option that only a mother could love. To be fair, it does still transmit a signal of video and audio, and allows you to play games, and most TVs (even very new ones) should have an aerial socket. However, unless this is literally the only way you can play, perhaps if it came in boxed with the console or you’re playing from inside a prison, you should immediately look at other options.
Composite Cable
Once again, pretty disgusting. The red, white and yellow cable that most people will be at least partly familiar with, as it was used on a wide variety of A/V equipment (videos, DVD, gaming machines) for some years. Will give a slightly better picture than the RF Aerial cable, and you have the advantage of the separate audio cables, but it still produces a pretty mushy image that will make the picture look like it has been dropped in a vat of sulfuric acid.
S-Video
Now we’re getting a bit more serious; Rugged, workmanlike, edgy, the dirtbag of the cable options (?!). Do that many modern TVs still have S-Video connections? Probably not. However if your TV does have one, and for some reason you don’t read any further in the article and stop at this point, then S-Video gives a sharper picture on account of it having a double/split video signal.
RGB Scart
Not quite the perfect, final form of A/V cable solutions for the Mega Drive, but damned close. Make sure that the SCART cable you are buying is labelled specifically as RGB (some SCART cables will just carry a composite or S-Video arrangement; if it’s only a fiver that is usually an indicator). The little headphone audio cable goes into the headphone jack on the front of the Mega Drive 1 for the stereo sound (there we go, a genuine reason to buy that version!)
Check out shops such as retrogamingcables.co.uk for a good quality cable, it will cost £20+ but is definitely worth the money for the difference in quality it provides.
OSSC Scan Line Converter
One of the biggest challenges for retro gaming is that, due to the low resolution output of old technology, it quite often looks rubbish on massive modern TVs that have a crazy-high resolution. For this, the OSSC might be the best solution.
Although it might look like something that a Raspberry Pi owner might use to program with ass-wiping software, it’s actually fairly simple to use, so not even the technologically inept need not fear it. Plug in your SCART RGB, an HDMI cable goes out from the box and into the back of your swanky TV, and the OSSC box does its magic of doubling the native resolution without introducing any blur or lag. It really is good, but unfortunately it doesn’t come cheap: expect to pay £150+ (immediately putting this into the same bracket as the expensive emulation machines listed above) and you'll have to think about ways that you can hide or explain the purchase on the credit card bill. Certainly one that's better than "but it doubles native output resolution."
It’s worth pointing out that there are lots of other devices that carry out a similar function. But, this is the only one I have experience of, and can attest that it really does help buff up the image for HD TVs beyond the SCART RGB option.
CRT TVs
Some retro game enthusiasts swear by these, and they are certainly the best way to get an authentic experience, with a picture that still looks damned good (machines such as the Mega Drive were actually designed to work on these devices after all!).
The downside? Unless you want a tiny shite 14-inch screen, CRT TVs are regarded as being some of the heaviest objects ever created by man. Rub your back in painful memory of the time you finally got rid of the Sony Triniton, carried out the house by 4 fully grown, steroid-enhanced men, and think of your other half’s dramatic eye roll as you start moving furniture out of the spare room to fit in a TV that is probably the exact same one you sold to someone down the pub 15 years ago for 20 quid. Unless you have acres of space with very forgiving co-inhabitants, or actually live in the 1990s and have no other technology available, then it’s definitely worth asking yourself whether it’s worth the bother.
Similar to the mass of a collapsed neutron star, there were probably more than a few slipped disks caused by having to move these things around. Picture courtesy of Reddit.
Arcade Quality Sound
It does indeed! Did you know that the Yamaha company logo is actually three tuning forks together, due to the company’s origins making Pianos back in Japan? Go and take a look if you’re not familiar with it, I’ll wait.
There you go, if you didn’t know that already at least this article has been good for something.
Yamaha looked at the next thing they could invest in after Pianos, motorbikes and jet skis and decided that the next logical step would be audio equipment and processors (it feels like their investment meetings must have been chaired by a 7-year old, although that’s not to say I don’t think it’s awesome! And yes I can completely see the link from pianos to keyboards and musical electronics, so am just being facetious). Part of this was their YM2612 processor for Sega’s machine. This integrated chip produced stereo sound, and was capable of matching the quality of the Arcade machines at the time, which makes sense as the very same chip was used in those machines!
The Yamaha sound chip. Incidentally the Wiki page that contains all of this information has a link to a song from Streets of Rage 2; well done to the gentleman (or lady) that posted that there, you are obviously a person of exquisite tastes sir or madam, and I shall shake your hand should we ever meet in public.
The Sega hardware was backed up by some absolutely thumping soundtracks, by the likes of Yuzo Koshiro (who composed the absolutely wank-worthy soundtrack to Shinobi and Streets of Rage amongst others).
Your shopping list:
But how to get the most out of this musical tech? You don’t need anything fancy, but a little bit of relatively cheap equipment goes a long way.
A stereo amplifier. Available relatively cheaply (especially if buying second hand) hook an audio output from your TV into the back of this.
A half-decent pair of speakers. The amplifier plugs into these via speaker cable. Again, you get what you pay for, but even the most modest pair will knock the tits off of most Soundbars and certainly any modern TVs.
Crank up the volume and jump around your living room like a mad thing in your Sonic the Hedgehog pants (so actually the thing to put on your shopping list here is Sonic the Hedgehog pants).
A selection of Sonic the Hedgehog underwear is available
You absolutely can get away with just a standard soundbar, and to be fair those are a vast improvement on the weedy speakers that have been squeezed into a modern flatscreen TV, but are we going 90s here or are going 90s? And are we or are we not upsetting our neighbour with the awesome sound of Streets of Rage Axle kneeing somone in the balls at 110db? Thank you.
The Games
Probably the important part right? Well this is already well over word count, and I have to have something else to write in the next guide! Is anyone actually still even reading this by this point?! (other than you mum? Thanks! Sorry for the crude jokes, I know I am a disappointment..)
Another guide to retro collecting will come, soon !
Follow Sumo Cat on Twitter for more shitposting, arguments with strangers about which was the best character in Golden Axe, and the occasional article or review!
Commentaires