General Questions and Information Thread

There's no Mega Drive/Genesis revision with an eject button, but it's not going to effect the cartridges. It's either going to be a person pulling the cartridges from the front or an eject button pushing them out from the bottom. I guess it could be bad for the console if you tried to pull it out leaning backwards or forwards instead of straight up, but that's neither here nor there, really.

 

Thank you GerbilSoft & Caniad Bach for answers. So, just ejecting them vertically, without "tilting", and there shouldn't be any trouble? Good to know. I was asking, because I've heard in one of the videoreviews, that ejecting cartridges "by force" cause (with time) attrition of... Ok, I don't remember if it was about slot in console or integrated circuits inside the cartridge, but for sure one of these.

 

It's once more me :P I've got some question about possible "slowing downs" in case of playing on Mega Drive II. I'm just after playing in Sonic, Sonic 2 & Sonic 3 on my console. And surprisingly, I've experienced some slowing downs. Once during multiplayer in Sonic 2 (fortunately, it was rather accident). In multiplayer. In single, I've noticed that I've experienced sometimes slowing down, especially after losing many rings. And something a bit disturbing - music played slower than it's supposed to in Sonic 1. I know that I could experience such thing in case of some emulating machine, like these from At Games. But I'm playing on Mega Drive II, so it (probably) shouldn't happen. The issue with music occured only in case of Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic 1). But slowing down - occasionaly in most of the titles. Is that natural, or it could be the simptom, that there is something wrong with console/cartirdges?

 

It is completely natural. Console games are just computers with different/custom hardware and more limited input and expansibility. They don't magically run all games at maximum speeds all the time. If someone writes code that lags down, it will lag down. If a game has so much going on at the same time that it can't keep up the framerate, it will slow down.

 

It's nothing different to framerate drops on current consoles: The game requires more than the hardware can handle effectively, so something has to give. You might want to consider overclocking your Mega Drive to 10mhz, upping the CPU clock speed will reduce slowdown dramatically, and there are a bunch of tutorials on the internet.

If there's a lot of stuff going on on the screen, and you end up losing your rings (throwing a bunch of sprites around the screen) the Mega Drive can't process everything at the right speed so it slows down. This is especially prevalent in Sonic 2's two player as it's pushing the system as is.

Long and short is, as Meat Miracle said: There's nothing to worry about.

 

I don't know if this is know or not so I'll post this here... I found a pic of a really early prototype sketch of the Out Run cabinet. It seems to be earlier than the proto cabinet pics from Yu Suzuki Gameworks books. It might be interesting for Sega Retro

 

@Caniad Bach & Meat Miracle - thanks for reply, I don't have too much experience in case of consoles. I'm playing generally on PC, so far my biggest experience in this case was contact with Famicom/Pegasus and I didn't experience in these days any delays or frame drop (and probably that's why I was led to believe, that such things shouldn't happen in case of "old" consoles).

Have hope that the audience won't be too irritated If I'll ask one more question This time it's something completely different. I've recently noticed in some "places" of the internet, that people were mentioning about playing in multiplayer in classic Sonic games (Sonic 2, Sonic 3) online/through internet. How is that possible? Through some emulators with "playing online" feature? (I understand, that in this case I'll need the rom - probably it's not possible to use roms from all these Sega MegaDrive Classic Collection (thanks to different "format"), even If I have DRM-free version from DotEmu?). Or is that possible in some different way? People who were throwing some youtube movies from their "online gameplay" were surprisingly reserved in case of sharing the details.

 

If it's not on the wiki, it's not common knowledge

 

Question, does anyone here own Battletoads in battlemaniacs for Master System? It's a Tec-Toy exclusive. I own it, but mine lacks booklet, and I was wondering if anyone could be kind enough to scan their manual and upload it, so I can print one for myself. It could be used for the Sega Retro wiki too.

 

I've slowly been uploading TV adverts to Sega Retro, and there's something I've been meaning to ask:

The Segata Sanshiro adverts from the 90s. My gut feeling is there's some high-ish quality versions out there because these ones actually have a fanbase. Is this true, and if so, where can I find them? Preference is mp4 format because that's what the wiki wanted a few months ago.



The alternative is I convert things from YouTube and quality can really vary with that.

 

The highest quality versions are the ones from that complete VHS (Zen CF Shuu). Madroms has it ripped, it is up on youtube.

There are also very good quality MPGs in the Segata Sanshiro Choujin Densetsu pc cd-rom, however they are the 15-second versions for most ads.

 

I was thinking recently about buying some spare gamepads (no urgent need, "just in case") for my Mega Drive 2. Buying the genuine new, 100% original gamepad is quite pricy thing, but I've noticed that there are plenty of "replacements", like these. Anyone has some experience with these? Is their quality/durability noticeably worser, or there is nothing I should bother?

 

They're cheap and nasty compared to the official stuff, but they serve a purpose.

But there are better options, many with turbo switches. That SG-18 is a pretty reasonable choice I suppose.

 

@Overlord, Black Squirell - thanks, that's the info I'm looking for (I mean opinions of people, who tested by themselves some models of these controllers and can tell, which one they can recommend). Althogh I'm looking for something less... Well, less "fancy" (to be honest, I don't like these colorful multiple switches in the middle of this controller which Overlord mentioned) The best would be the shape and buttons (so close as possible) to these original asian 6-buttons controllers (I mean these attached to Taiwan/Thailand edition of Mega Drive 2) or european 3-button controllers.

 

Honestly the only option I could recommend is to get an original Mega Drive pad. Can't beat the original.

 

The original MD pad had quite a bunch of different versions, some which are trash, some which are extremely responsive. They also varied in cable length.

6-button pad is a better choice, but they have a ton of bootlegs. If the connector doesn't have a little "sega" engraving on the rubber part of the connector (and the connector is a little plastic box instead of a rubber mould), it is a bootleg. This only applies to the Japanese pads though, as far as I know the USA and EU 6-button pads did not have bootlegs. You can tell the different versions from being marked as Genesis, and having different coloured buttons. JP pads all had blue start buttons, EU ones had red, dunno about the USA ones. Non-jp pads also don't have a metal choke in the connector plug either.

 

I've recently watched some videos on YT about various third-party controllers (and tried to look on some other forums) - I've noticed that Hyperkin's controllers (they're developed in two different versions - for Mega Drive, with "classic" 9-pin plug, and for PC). have quite good reputation (they're not the cheapest though, but I've seen more expensive controllers). And their shape & buttons look quite "normal", without any special gimmicks/additional buttons/etc.

By the way (that could make my searching much easier) - can anyone tell, from his/her experience, how much cost usually good controller (third party, new) for MD? There is really big dispertion of prices on ebay, and I don't know, if there's even sense to look "cheap & good" one. Probably not, but it won't hurt to ask.

(not to mention that for guy from middle Europe the "moderate price" is something different than moderate price for someone from US/Western Europe).

 

Case in point: http://www.ebay.es/itm/Mando-Pad-Sega-Megadrive-SJ-6000-caja-Genesis-NEW-NUEVO-Amiga-Atari-Commodore-/201238127140?pt=ES_Videojuegos&hash=item2edaba2224

Looks legit until you notice that the controller itself doesn't have the SEGA logo, and the box says "FOR SEGA".