General Questions and Information Thread

Open up a Megadrive and the board will be marked as IC BD M5. A Master System is similarly labelled as IC BD M4 Jr (except for PAL units, which are labelled Power Base). If that does not cement it, I don't know what else could.

That magazine prototype shot looks like an artists impression to me, especially considering how similar it looks to what is labelled as the Super Famicom (aka SNES) next to it.

 

That's neat indeed! Out of curiosity, I tried to look at the "non-sega" category on Sega Retro, and I didn't see any SNES game. Which Sega games are available for that console?

 

Columns

it was a limited release for the Super Famicom but it still counts.

 

Thank you

 

Anyone knows what manufacturer does the "S" code stand for in serials? I've only seen those used for the Mega Jet, and certain refurbished Saturns (some retrofitted as devkits) and Game Gears. However, from 1996 the refurbished units also had the code "AC" that stands for Sega Logistics Service (who started operation in 1995 according to their website). The "S" code was used up to at least 1997 for Saturns however.

 

Nothing really important, but I just wanted to share: I walked to the local burger place today and on the way back I saw a VMU case next to a trash can. The box was black.

 

New TV Series Mr. Robot uses a distinct font for its opening title.

Do we know if it got a physical release? I've never seen one, which leads me to suspect it might have been a Satellaview download.

 

Just found this in one of the Bonanza Bros flyers in the wiki:


What's going on here? Is he looking for clues or something?

 

He's checking himself out in the mirror.

He has that sprite in-game, it's his idle animation.

 

Oh, never knew that. False alarm, then.

 

French speakers needed:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A9l%C3%A9visator_2
between 1993 and 1994 there was a two hour programming block on French television called "Télévisator 2". In between airing cartoons there was video game news and reviews.

There are bits uploaded to YouTube but I can't make much sense of them - most are incomplete and aren't dated. My initial plan was just to extract review scores for Sega Retro, but then I saw footage of a prototype Land of Illusion calling itself "Mickey Mouse II". And if they're filming preview copies... well there's a chance of seeing Sonic the Hedgehog prototype footage too.

I think it warrants some investigation. Someone must be interested.

 

Someone posted pictures of a Dreamcast SDK on /r/dreamcast. Not sure if any of the pictures there are better than the ones already on Sega Retro.

 

Oh wow, until now I never realized it, but the power and reset buttons on the Dreamcast devkit are re-used Saturn buttons.

 

SoA 1993 Sega Catalog originally from here. Missing a handful of pages, a few I added from Ebay images, the others left blank for now. This was a catalog for dealers from early 1993 (maybe from winter CES?). Includes some pages on Sega VR including game descriptions and screenshots. It looks like they mixed up Outlaw Racing and Nuclear Rush screenshots (that's not the only time that occurs in the catalog). I think that's the only screenshots I've ever seen of those (although Outlaw Racing is just a title). Looking at a video of the Iron Hammer proto on a 4:3 screen it seems that these were anamorphic 8:3 (probably more commonly referred to as 24:9), with the Sega VR stretching the aspect ratio by doubling the horizontal resolution. It appears squished horizontally on a standard 4:3 screen. Also pages including unreleased Monster Hunter for the Menacer, and Action Pack for the Activator. Probably includes some other unreleased and prototype shots.

 

I'd seen segments of that catalogue before but nothing on the Sega VR stuff - nice find!

They also released one in 1995 - there might be a full set of clean scans somewhere.

 

Oh cool, Genesis Kids + Pad, never seen that before. Looks like there was a 1994 one too, but no hits on Google for either "1994 Sega Catalog" or "1995 Sega Catalog". Here's some clear footage of Iron Hammer, Matrix Runner, and Nuclear Rush respectively, just a few seconds of each. Nuclear Rush looks a bit Star Foxish, with really low FPS. Need to find some free software to edit that out of the video for SegaRetro.

 

Genuine question.

Let's say I accidentally stumble across a bunch of Italian SC-3000 games. In text form. *Cough*.

Obviously back in the day you would sit and type this into the SC-3000's BASIC prompt (it was far more common for the Spectrum or C64 but the idea is the same) - is there a method of typing this out in say, a .txt file, and then load it onto an emulator? I.e. one button types this all out in the emulated BASIC prompt and then runs it?

I've tried typing code out on the emulated machine before now, but it didn't go well. One mistake and you lose everything.


Last time I checked, SC-3000 emulation was pretty shocking. When I took screenshots for Sega Retro many moons ago, I'd find myself using an MSX emulator that just happened to have some SC-3000 support built-in.

 

To make matters worse it wasn't unheard of for there to be errors in the type in programs, which if you were lucky were corrected in the next issue. I don't know if any SC-3000 emulators can autotype from text files, but you can use save states in Meka to save your progress so that you can correct any typos. Just be sure to save before trying to run the program.

 

I can't help with the SC-3000 specific question, but you already know I would be up to translate anything Italian for you.