The Sega Mega Drive/Genesis Thread (NEW)!!!

[Shoryukev]

Lol, hadn't seen this

I wish they would have put a 90° headphone connector end on the cable, I might cut it down and put my own end on it, it would really help hide the ugliness of connecting things in the front of the system...same thing with my Neo Geo AES if I ever get a SCART cable for it. It's just ugly, hence the mullet comment lol

[Udderdude]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWVmPtr9O0g

This demo is amazing.

[WelshMegalodon]

Genesis Plus GX and BlastEm are still the only emulators that can play certain parts of the original "Overdrive" demo correctly. And if this is any indication, this new demo makes even them look bad.*

*

Spoiler

Of course, homebrew is hardly the best metric by which to measure the practical accuracy of an emulator...

EDIT:

Spoiler

The latest BlastEm nightly (look for one dated April 19th or later) can play most of the demo correctly. The Titancade and rotating cube/rectangular prism(s) sections still have some fairly major issues though and there are a couple of more minor issues as well. I'm currently working on fixing my handling of the V30 mode bit (I was led to believe it was latched once per frame and these kind of shenanigans were not possible, but that's obviously wrong). The rotating cube problem looks like it's probably timing related, but I haven't looked into it yet.
Some of this stuff was on my radar already, but was considered low priority since nothing used it. Some of it was completely new to me though. Even for stuff that I was aware of, the additional documentation is definitely appreciated. The existing documentation on the VDP test register in particular was really incomplete/inaccurate

[soprano1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWVmPtr9O0g

This demo is amazing.

Damn, so good...

[trap15]

Some of it's pretty good, but I have a strong strong feeling that a very large amount of it is pre-rendered, hence the 8MB ROM size. It's stylish, but other than the transparency stuff (which is abusing a neat VDP "bug") my impression is it's basically just streaming frames and/or tiles, which is much less impressive to me. It would be nice to see a write-up.

[Udderdude]

According to the guys who made it on Pouet, 45% of that 8 MB size is the music .. http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=69648

[trap15]

There's no way they're using nearly 4MB just for music, regardless of the quality, unless it's a huge sample stream, I can tell you that.

[null1024]

There's no way they're using nearly 4MB just for music, regardless of the quality, unless it's a huge sample stream, I can tell you that.

It's pretty believable. The sound's not compressed at all, it's just plain 8-bit PCM being streamed straight from ROM. The Genesis music channels are being played as well, so all you'll hear is the drums/chords/special fx if you just play the ROM back in an audio editor.

Opened it up in audacity, the selected bit is sampled audio.

Of course, this doesn't include the space for the note data for the FM channels, but I doubt that's too significant to the size.

[mikejmoffitt]

I am excited for the tech notes. This makes a lot of use of the largely undocumented VDP Debug Register. A while back, after someone in that group drew my attention to the register itself, I played with some of the bits that do odd things, like seemingly disabling Plane B. After some playing I found that a combination of some debug bits produced instead a bit of a Logical AND effect between Plane A and Plane B's indexed color values. On early revision Megadrives, sprites would also have screwy vertical lines every 8 pixels.

Some old experiments on the same register show some cool blending effects:



Another configuration of the register made the overscan borders reveal some interesting things:
* What looks like BG tile fetches, or the nametable, in the upper border
* The 41st / -1th column on the left/right sides, normally cut off when scrolled off
* Sprite fetches one scanline early, on the right side of the screen

Look at the more or less complete sonic sprite on the right side, and the repetitive patterns on the top.



This mode is certainly used for a lot of the alpha-blending scenes (which I expect have no more than 8 unique colors per blended source), and I'd be surprised if the top-fetch-garbage wasn't used for the arcade scene where the border is extended for the first demo in Megadrive history.

[MintyTheCat]

I added support for the VDP Debug register to UMDK along with some other handy VRAM commands. It needs to pass the 'beauty' test though before it is permitted into the main tree.

[Udderdude]

It's too bad some of the effects that are possible with the debug register don't work on all units. Maybe someone can come up with a fix, but I have a feeling it's going to be completely replacing the VDP with one from a donor board ..

[null1024]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ST9 ... V8saY8/pub
They've put the first bit of the Overdrive 2 writeup online for the public. This one's primarily a detailed look into the VDP's behavior and quirks. Documentation on the debug bits is near the bottom.

[Xyga]

First run of Panorama Cotton in many years, and I'm still amazed.

Sure it is barely playable maybe 80% of the time, what a mess! but man, even with that low-ass framerate it's a technical, visual, and audible wonder.
Among the awesome 'style over substance' 16-bit games Panorama is one of the most fun IMHO, even though it's the kind you only dig out once in every 5 years or so.

The people who made that game were incredibly good and definitely took too much, too much.

[Strider77]

Is it just me or does TMNT on the MD control more snappier than the SFC TMNT... not to mention the run button.

[BrianC]

Is it just me or does TMNT on the MD control more snappier than the SFC TMNT... not to mention the run button.

I'm tempted to say "it's just you", but I agree. Not to mention that the run button works much better than setting the run to manual on SNES.

[neorichieb1971]

Can someone please see if Bonkers PAL Megadrive works on a Genesis 2 via the emulation software some of you guys have?

Pretty please.

thanks,

Richie.

[soprano1]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017- ... ds-on-ebay
Christ...

[neorichieb1971]

Its still live.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ultra-Rare-La ... SwiQ9ZUmi0

3 days to go.

[Heavy Viper]

Can someone please see if Bonkers PAL Megadrive works on a Genesis 2 via the emulation software some of you guys have?

From what I can see, Bonkers is an NTSC-U/PAL cross-region ROM, so it should be fine on any model.

[neorichieb1971]

Can someone please see if Bonkers PAL Megadrive works on a Genesis 2 via the emulation software some of you guys have?

From what I can see, Bonkers is an NTSC-U/PAL cross-region ROM, so it should be fine on any model.

Thank you. Looks like a nice game. I only like clamshell games and I believe this was a cardboard ripper in the USA.

[WelshMegalodon]

Twinkle Tale's music and sprite art have a very "Japanese PC game" feel to them. One wonders whether the game's developers were more familiar with the PC-98 side of things, though GDRI doesn't suggest anything of the sort.

[Xyga]

Watched a buddy 2-all both SGX and MD G'nG in a row on the same CRT this week-end.

Good opportunity to clear my mind about which is superior, must say that SGX port is pure gold. <3

[Sumez]

You can't really go wrong with either. SGX version is prettier and has better music, but it's definitely not worth the extra $$$$$, when better options still exist.

[Xyga]

Well I don't know how much the SGX and the game are worth today be he got both from release (1st hour NEC fan)

[OmegaFlareX]

I imagine that probably cost $70US+ to import back then. Not to mention importing the SGX itself.

[Xyga]

Since he's French the situation was a bit different here at the time because we had an official NEC consoles and games distributor called Sodipeng. The whole thing was probably not much more expensive than Sega stuff. Although largely unnoticed in comparison, iirc what he said his dad was for spending money only on what he believed was the best stuff and that's what happened lol. Kinda similar stories from the happy few who later formed the necstasy community.

Actually I don't even want to know how much this stuff is worth today.

[BIL]

SGX Dai's not tooo pricey or hard to find, even new. SGX 1941 will bum a man into next week, though.

Ah, the SuperGrafx. Or as I like to think of it, the JohnCazaleGrafx. Weird-lookin'. Tragically short-lived. A tiny but remarkably solid oeuvre. ;-;7

I love both MD and SGX Dais, one of the rare instances where I wanted multiple 16-bit ports of the same game. And I am no indiscriminate collector - where MD Strider is an admirable effort, PCE Strider is a fucking travesty! SGX Dai is the overall winner for sure, as you might expect with it being a later release on younger hardware, but it's got one critical flaw: it requires a SuperGrafx. Hard to begrudge MD Dai's weaker audiovisuals when its console is so ubiquitous and has several dozen other killer action games minimum.

Sega shoulda commissioned a 32X redux, so we could've had great Dai ports for two doomed stopgap machines.

Both ports' boxes feature unique yet equally fine depictions of Prin-Prin's sweet titties.

Spoiler

Spoiler

[OmegaFlareX]

Since he's French the situation was a bit different here at the time because we had an official NEC consoles and games distributor called Sodipeng. The whole thing was probably not much more expensive than Sega stuff.

Neat, I did not know this. The French were lucky then. Could you also get computers and stuff like the PC-88/98?

[Xyga]

Neat, I did not know this. The French were lucky then. Could you also get computers and stuff like the PC-88/98?

Only the NEC consoles IIRC, the name 'sodipeng' meant something like 'pcengine distributor society', entirely dedicated, the consoles were even sold pre-modded with their own custom-made RGB cables.

[Sumez]

Both ports' boxes feature unique yet equally fine depictions of Prin-Prin's sweet titties.

B83 W50 H89

Interesting enough she grew a bit for the sequel (B88 W58 H90)