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Sega is keeping mini consoles alive
- cactusplant7374 4y agoI hope they bring Dreamcast back. Modding the old dreamcast is a hassle. Also, hopefully there would be an easy way to load all the games on the mini version.
- pcurve 4y agoah what a fantastic console that was. Still remember first time playing Soul Caliber, thinking how the graphics was possible. (not to mention all the cool characters like Sung Mina, Yoshimitsu, Cervantes...)
- psychstudio 4y agoWasn't Yoshi from Tekken?
- CTDOCodebases 4y agoFor me this was the console where the home console experience was as good as the arcade. Sure the Neo Geo AES was technically the same as the Neo Geo MVS but they weren’t sold in my region.
- causality0 4y agoYes. Just the brand-new high quality controller would be worth the asking price for use with PC emulation.
- YurgenJurgensen 4y ago6th gen mini consoles seem unlikely for a variety of reasons. There's the more powerful hardware needed, which will push the price up, along with the more complex controllers, which basically won't be any cheaper to make now than they were at launch. Then there's storage. If people are expecting 30-60 games, and all of those games are a gig each, you're probably going to need a 64GB micro SD card, which is another increase to the BoM bill. The PS Classic probably avoided putting too many multi-disc games and analogue sticks for this reason, but you can't ignore this in the 6th gen. The big killer is going to be licensing costs though. 5th gen and earlier games generate basically no revenue. Even the more popular ones only sell for $5-$10 when they're rereleased, and most don't sell at all. By the 6th gen though, the basic level of graphical fidelity is high enough that "HD Remasters" are now a thing that you can sell for $30 each, or maybe $60 as a trilogy and can be produced for very little upfront investment. This makes convincing rightsholders to license inclusion of a game for probably $1 per unit a hard sell, as for most of them, that's severely undercutting themselves with the same target audience.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoThanks for the detailed explanation. Given all the roadblocks you mentioned towards getting a legit way to play such old games, is anyone surprised that piracy is still a thing?
- vanattab 4y agoWhat roadblocks did he mention? Paying $30, hardly seems like a road block you just don't want to pay so you steal.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoI didn't steal anything. The roadblock is that vintage games are not available for purchase in present time for present systems. Nintendo doesn't loose any money if download and emulate a ROM of a game they stopped selling 30 years ago.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago> Modding the old dreamcast is a hassle What? The DreamCast is one of the easiest systems to mod, assuming you mean replacing the optical drive with an ODE. You don't need to solder anything. Besides, the mini would just be an emulator anyway.
- mysterydip 4y agoI love mini consoles. I know some of them have been a mixed bag, but it's difficult to find any other affordable means to play that many old game libraries legally. Old hardware can get expensive quick with repairs or modernization. And don't get me started on ebay retro game pricing for original copies.
- stormbrew 4y agoThe fixed selection of games on them means that if your goal is to play the games legally, the cost is either very reasonable or effectively infinity, depending on what you want to play. Post-composite and pre-cd hardware doesn't really need to be all that expensive, if you don't go wild with modding (and use something like a retrotink to upscale composite directly, regardless of console). But of course some games are quite expensive. CD consoles and games do fail a lot more, though.
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- ChuckNorris89 4y agoOh boy, wait till you hear about what retroarch can do and what pirate ROMs can get you.
- stormbrew 4y agoThe topic is playing games "legally." I think you can assume people who are talking about that are aware of the concept of getting them "illegally" as well.
- MegaDeKay 4y agoModern Vintage Gamer says this mini is awesome. A great deal for $99. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgb6alm3M1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgb6alm3M1M
- bluedino 4y agoThe Sega Genesis mini consoles are great - the problem was there's no sports games. I realize there's licensing issues and all that, but sports games was one of the biggest things that the Genesis had over the SNES.
- User23 4y agoIn my recollection is was Sonic. And the uncensored Mortal Kombat.
- Larrikin 4y agoIt's almost certainly the difference between high school gamers remembering the sports games and elementary/middle school gamers remembering sonic. Mortal Kombat straddles the line between.
- majormajor 4y agoI had a SNES and the suite of EA Sports games + NBA Jam - were there different brands/variants on Sega?
- ihatepython 4y agoSomehow they were better on the Genesis. NHL '94 for example
- bluedino 4y agoThe Genesis was faster in certain ways than the Super NES. So when you played (for example) the same EA Sports title on both consoles, the Genesis version usually played faster/smoother. Probably because of the Blast Processing (tm)
- droptablemain 4y agoI don't get it. Aren't these things glorified emulators with some styled plastic wrapping? Why not just load up GENS or something and play on your laptop?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kristianp 4y agoConvenience, original style controllers, reliability, fun.
- djur 4y agoMost people can't legally acquire the games to play on a PC emulator. This provides a large number of games for a reasonable price, a plug-and-play experience on an actual TV, and a controller. (Also, these devices can usually be hacked to play your own ROMs.)
- rjh29 4y agoSega have been publishing Mega Drive collections for PC/PS4/Xbox for years though, and it costs like £20. The controller is possibly worth it though.
- Aissen 4y agoYes, but if you compare the collections, every one of those have a different set of games: whether the Steam version, the PS3/360 version, the PS4/Switch/xone version, and the two "official" Minis (there were licensed, unofficial "bad" ones before) also have per-region/language differences. I'd be curious to see a Venn diagram now.
- ndiddy 4y agoYou get a curated experience with a bunch of good games, and an authentic controller. Additionally, the Genesis Mini 2 (one of the minis discussed in the article) comes with a bunch of games that you can't find elsewhere. There's brand new Genesis ports of Fantasy Zone, Super Locomotive, and Patter (old arcade games from the 80s), there's old unreleased games (Star Mobile and the English version of Rainbow Islands Extra), and most impressively, there's brand new versions of Space Harrier 1 and 2 for prototype Genesis hardware that supported sprite scaling (it got cut out of the retail hardware because the functionality took up too much die space). If you're not a Sega fan you might not care about any of this, but there's lots of new stuff for the fans even if they've played all the previously released games.
- yakaccount4 4y agoI find the MISTer or anything from Analogue so much more compelling than any official offering from Nintendo, Sony or Sega.
- YurgenJurgensen 4y agoThe Mega Drive Mini 2 is a complete unit that retails for $99 including 60 games. Just the DE-10 nano alone is more than double that, and a full MISTer kit probably can't be had for less than $400, and you still have to (legally, of course, and those retro carts ain't cheap, and you're going to need to buy some adapters to dump the ROMs). "I'm more compelled by this thing that's at least four times the price, probably more" isn't really saying much.
- aikendrum 4y agoWhy "Of course". Likely the percentage of MISTer owner legally dumping retro cards small. It's a subset of a subset of a subset. Gamer -> retro gamer -> hardcore retrogamer -> hardcore retrogamer that has high enough regard for copyright law that an unenforceable rule that doesn't benefit the original developers should be obeyed.
- postalrat 4y agoThe Sega machine has a correct controller and much cheaper than a mister. Both are great options depending on what your are looking for.
- dakom 4y agoHow close are emulators to the real thing? I mean for someone who spent years in their youth developing muscle memory and would be irritated by slight differences
- netdoll 4y agoBoth Mega Drive Minis are handled by M2, so I would expect the emulation to be excellent based off of that (M2 has something of a reputation in gaming circles for producing extremely accurate emulation/ports with lots of quality of life features that their competitors sometimes lack)
- Findecanor 4y agoMost lag is typically caused by processing in modern flat-screen TVs, not by the emulator. Some TVs have a faster "Game Mode" though. Assume that the emulator will add one frame of lag. The code in 16-bit console games was typically synchronised with the raster beam. If the gamepad adds lag compared to the original is something that someone would have to measure to find out. It depends on the USB version and on how the gamepad's microcontroller is programmed. But in 6-button games, the result from reading an original 6-button controller was typically used first in the next frame anyway because of the weird timing in its protocol.
- marsven_422 4y ago
- Aissen 4y agoLooks like they aren't producing that many (seems out of stock in some regions). Always a hard balance to reduce e-waste and ensure scalpers aren't "balancing the market".
- nsteel 4y agoI'm still waiting for Nintendo to treat us to an N64 mini. And it needs to have 4-player support. Maybe we need to wait for this chip shortage to sort itself out before we can have cool things (at realistic prices).
- havblue 4y agoI think it's pretty understandable why they didn't bother: analog controllers, licensing issues with rare games and finally, they'd rather people just buy the online expansion pass and play multiplayer Switch instead.
- nsteel 4y agoThey seem keen on mini classic consoles. I remain hopeful for next year.
- maratc 4y agoThe NES/SNES were just a stop-gap to fill between the Wii U (having bad sales) and the Switch. I don't think they need any stop-gap now.
- havblue 4y agoI guess what I was trying to say is that for classic consoles, they're more keen on selling collectors edition nostalgia that you play for 15 minutes, then put on your shelf. 4 player consoles that let you play Goldeneye would be expensive to produce (licensing, hardware), niche (violence) and would and cannibalize their current business even if they provided good emulation and a good gameplay experience.
- rwky 4y agoI still have my original genesis. Still works fine!
- Thlom 4y agoSame, but it was branded Mega Drive in Europe. My kids sometimes play the Sonic games on it.
- butz 4y agoWould be great if they figured a way to add (buy) more games later, without buying new mini-console.