Why Sega Genesis Games Are A Perfect Fit for the Revolution
With Sega’s recent interest in the Nintendo Revolution Virtual Console, I wanted to touch on a few thoughts on why Sega offering Genesis/MegaDrive downloads is very probable.
- There is already a perfect (as far as I can tell) emulator that runs Genesis games on the Gamecube — The Sonic Mega Collection. The Revolution’s hardware is essentially going to be an extension of the Gamecube’s hardware. This makes it very easy to both port software from the Gamecube and Revolution and offers easy backwards compatibility with Gamecube software.
- It is undeniable the Sega has a wealth of old-school titles that many fans would enjoy. The Genesis was also Sega’s most successful console system.
- Sega is understandably hesitant about putting together compilation discs of various games as the majority of gamers would not want to pay $20 or more for a handful of 16-bit games. However, they may be willing to pay a few dollars for an individual game here and there.
- Game downloads would be MUCH easier and cost effective than putting together compilation discs. No menus and such need to be developed. Essentially, they would just transfer a game ROM and the end user would play it with the Revolution’s embedded Genesis emulator.
- Virtually no extra work would be required on Sega’s end — other than possible licensing issues.
Sega Master System, 32X, and possibly Sega CD games may also be fairly easy to emulated — especially with the Revolution’s extra power.
Unfortunately, I would be very surprised to see Saturn or Dreamcast games running on any new console as emulators for those great systems have yet to mature on PCs, let alone consoles.
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Sega, Genesis, Revolution
2 Comments:
Well, for the Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast comment, I would think you would be wrong. First of all, SEGA would be making these emulators, they would not be taking the freeware ones off the internet. I really doubt the Sonic Mega Collection is using AGES. Since SEGA would be making the emulators, they would be very adpet at creating code for a system they themselves built, and probably already have in house emulators for. I would think the problem for the Dreamcast emulation would more be a problem of raw power, as the dreamcast still is too powerful for something like the revolution to do purely with software. Also, you would have to remember that Sega Saturn and SEGA CD games are from 120mb to 500mb, o storing them on a proprietary media disc instead of a SD card or so would be cheaper and that is why they are doing that for the PS2. I just hope that they put House of the Dead and Virtua Cop on the Revolution.
well, you have to remember that they might not have emulators for those systems as they gave up on them. And even if they did there would be the question of making it run on the revolution. As for the freeware versions being inferior from what I’ve readon online SEGA was so impressed with the giri giri emulator that they had bought the rights to it. And it’s not a perfect emulator either. But hey, who knows, it’s a matter of wait and see I guess.
As for the game sizes on the sega cd and saturn… well, if people are downloading them it’d depend on connection speeds and on the type of compression the game uses. Sega CD emulators can use mp3 instead of the original wav’s, greatly reducing the size of the game. And some other game isos are floating out there. Some when compressed are reduced by very little, others are reduced to less than 50MB. This means that if they are being offered for download by Sega/Nintendo it could be feasible depending on the game, the price, and the downloader’s connection. And remember, they’d not be offered on SD cards or the like, they’d be stored on the internal memory (which would be insufficient for many games, it’s true)
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