Sega Mega Drive/CD/32X

[bright totem]

So I recently updated to the newest mister unstable and now all my Genesis library is missing

[warm carbon]

Are you using names.txt?

[bright totem]

I dont think so

[fading hare]

In the Genesis folder or the MegaDrive folder?

[bright totem]

genesis

I can see them when i ftp to the mister

[fading hare]

Those are two separate folders. Genesis is for the old core. MegaDrive is the new core.

[fading hare]

So you're using the old core?

[bright totem]

so just change it to MegaDrive?

no i was using the megadrive core

[fading hare]

If you're using the new core, then they should be in the MegaDrive folder.

[plucky flare]

how do you force the megacd to go to the cd audio player when a game is in the drive?

ah, got it

[plucky flare]

the INDEX 02 on Links is kinda nuts, it's in the middle of a data track. you can't directly seek to an index, so I wonder why it is there

(well you can but you can't know how to do so until you've seen it)

[fallow dome]

MSU-MD working for anyone else with the Mega CD core?

[fading hare]

I've used it for a few games.

[fallow dome]

Ok cool, thanks for verifying. I must’ve screwed something up.

[faint onyx]

Make sure that the mega drive rom in any MSU-MD game folder is called cart.rom.

This syntax works:

cart.rom
Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (USA, Europe) (MSU-MD).cue
Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (USA, Europe) (MSU-MD).bin

[fallow dome]

Thank you, that was exactly it

[fallow dome]

Now time to figure out why some of my MSU-MD games don’t play their music

[fallow dome]

Well I couldn’t figure it out so that’s the end of that

[fading hare]

So some of them do work, but others don't?

[fallow dome]

Yeah, they used to work but now they don’t

[torn dome]

https://x.com/gabrielpyron/status/1958117348415578472?s=46

Pyron (@GabrielPyron)

One of the biggest sins is never having released #Konami #Parodius for the #MegaDrive #SegaGenesis

Many claimed it would be impossible due to the console's limitations, so I put myself to the test and here is the result: almost all the arcade art is intact
#pixelart #shmup

X · Aug 20, 2025, 10:42 AM

[ivory shale]

Damn, nice

[torn dome]

nintendo’s iron grip on 3rd parties into the 16bit era was a tragedy

[fallow dome]

I think so too and I love SNES

I think the Genesis homebrew scene might be my favorite part of retro gaming

It’s the console that is always giving

[drowsy hemlock]

I love the PCE version

[fading hare]

But does it love you back?

If it doesn't, might I suggest Sexy Parodius? 😏

[lethal prairie]

wait i don’t see how the megadrive wouldn’t have been able to handle it??

wasn’t the arcade hardware 68000-based?

[torn dome]

Exactly

The companies were rightfully concerned about / scared of Nintendo blackballing them

that would at least for the short term lose them the home market

[lethal prairie]

True

[ebon quail]

Also iirc, Nintendo gave out a bonus to devs who included graphical effects that the console produced like Mode 7. So I wouldn't be surprised if part of the reason Parodius never made it to the MD, also had to do with Konami basically making excuses that the MD doesn't have those same effects.

Even then any excuse wouldn't work simply cause Parodius was also released onto the PC Engine (which was weaker spec wise to either console)

[drowsy hemlock]

No 😔

[fallow osprey]

I am not sure if it has been discussed yet, but there is now a Python script on archive.org that will decrypt the Earthion game.bin from Steam into the roms. So you can now decrypt your own purchased Steam game. It might be useful as new updates are released on Steam.

[plain quiver]

A new demo version of IRENA - GENESIS METAL FURY will be available tomorrow.
The devs have announced it just a minute ago on a live stream.

[faint onyx]

I hope they improved the graphics. The old demo 3-4 years ago looked underwhelming.

[spare summit]

Earthion is such a cool game that after I completed it on MiSTer FPGA, I immediately bought it on Steam

[glass shale]

In my case I instantly knew it it was GOTY since it was announced so I made sure to purchase it on Steam even before I was able to play it on MiSTer!

[tropic juniper]

1st bought it on steam than organized the Steam Rom to Mister compatibility cause looks
so much better on Mister 🙂

[tropic juniper]

Update all no Sega Mega Drive Core anymore ?

[tulip surge]

The megadrive core is still there, the older/deprecated genesis core is no longer part of the main distribution

If you enable the 'alt cores' option in the update_all settings, it'll get the genesis core (and some others) and put them in the _other folder

[tropic juniper]

yeah i also found my Games again navigating for Games in the Genesis folder...

[tulip surge]

Best to move them to /games/megadrive, then symlink /games/genesis to that

[tropic juniper]

worked instant thx

[harsh iron]

Megadora... too much feeling... a system made by protoculture beings in another dimension... Too much power... SuperNova power.

[narrow panther]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvWaQKkUEA8

[plain quiver]

Latest sys module updated + seed 10 + all the last changes on the SH-2 -from the Saturn core- with newer accuracy tests (2025-08-24).
Order and priorities of instructions were changed.

[woeful goblet]

I finished MK2 using Sub-Zero and didn’t notice any slowdown, even against Johnny Cage, Shang Tsung, Kintaro, and Shao Kahn.

[warm carbon]

oh?

[old sierra]

Potential release candidate?

[dawn ginkgo]

Just tested MK2 here using the last Unstable Mister Main on today's Core, and the slowdowns are still there on Johnny Cage's Shadow Kick, Shadow Uppercut and normal Uppercuts, sometimes at flyng kicks as well, especially at Dead Pool stage.

[lapis topaz]

Can you post a video of the slowdown? I have been testing the game for a while but can't seem to notice the slowdown, using 2 player mode with both playing as Jhonny cage.

[plain quiver]

I'd also like a video if possible one day for a better understanding.

I only tried to synchronize a video of Barone from 2022 with a real system against today's core in attract mode for 20 minutes.

And it was perfect.

[pine crystal]

I haven't noticed any slowdown with the latest unstable core and MiSTer main either.

[fading hare]

We're talking about the release version of the game and not the improvement hack right? Just making sure everyone is on the same page with the game.

[plain quiver]

We're talking about the original release.

The current core is running Motocross Championship too fast (and it's been like this for at least 3 years).

[pine crystal]

Yeah, I'm referring to the original. I actually keep forgetting about the 'Arcade Edition' version.

[dawn ginkgo]

The slowdowns are present on both versions.

[warm carbon]

Can you take a video?

As we are having trouble reproducing

[dawn ginkgo]

See if you guys can access the video on this link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zukLcR7AMT2IBss0kISvc0iXt7eKBPDb/view?usp=sharing

[plain quiver]

Thank you, I will try to reproduce it later.

[fading hare]

Just tested it myself, and I'm noticing it on my end as well.

Sometimes it doesn't slow down, sometimes it does. No idea how it runs on real hardware though to compare.

[old sierra]

Do we have any idea what part of the core could be causing these handful of too fast/too slow issues?

[plain quiver]

I'm more inclined towards a priority somewhere else.
But only srg320 could say better.

SH-2 module originates from Saturn's core and has passed all current tests about timings, and now order + priorities.
Today's fixes also seem to have a positive effect on Kolibri.

[warm carbon]

does the current stable have the MK slowdowns?

[plain quiver]

From the reports, yes.

[warm carbon]

Then I would vote to push a new stable and call it a day for now. The MK2 stuff is going to take some more intense digging, it seems

this core is already a vast improvement over the current stable

[old sierra]

I concur, ship it. No downside to this, everyone wins.

[harsh iron]

moral kombat... the combat about morals.

[velvet mural]

Not sure, but I assume that pushing a new stable would also require a new stable MiSTer Main to be pushed.

And if that's happening, I would then ask Sorg to push a new stable release of TG16

[warm carbon]

I thought all the stuff in the unstable was cd drive related?

[velvet mural]

Sorry - I thought this was discsussion about Saturn

But it's all the same - if a new Mister Main is needed, I'd push for a TG16 as well

[warm carbon]

well, the other saturn :p

oh right, CD+G stuff is still unstable only?

[velvet mural]

yes

Last Main_MiSTer release was 3 months ago

[plucky flare]

oh hmm, I should probably add chd support for that

[old sierra]

Might be worth seeing if Grey Rogue is needing anything in main for Jag CD, that sounds like it is getting close to release

[ivory shale]

Sounds awesome, I have been considering converting more of my games other than PSX to CHD because I need the space

[fallow dome]

What, this core already works with CHD lol

[plucky flare]

I meant for CD+G/subchannel

but for another core, not this one

[velvet mural]

Sure, if you can make it go

[plucky flare]

I look forward to listening to that Information Society CD again

PURE ENERGY

[pine crystal]

I want to know... what you're thinking.

[velvet mural]

hahaha

[plucky flare]

of course I no longer have any bin/cue/sub laying around

[plucky flare]

bin/cue/sub that works fine on pce core -> complete mess on megacd. chd that works mostly ok on megacd -> doesn't on pce. I wonder if whatever rips i found when I did megacd were just crap

[velvet mural]

dunno about those rips, but there had always seemed to be something inconsistent about the MegaCD CD+G. It had dropouts from time to time

People were also complaining about the audio seeming to have noise/tiny gaps in it at the time too. Not sure if that got addressed since then though

[plucky flare]

I think the audio thing did get addressed, but I can't remember what fixed it. it was something srg did I think

[warm carbon]

was it this? https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Hardware_MiSTer/issues/33

[plucky flare]

no, different issue

megacd core used to have occasional (sometimes hard to hear) audio pops. I think it was a buffer issue

ah yeah, Paul fixed it

probably right around when he did the workfor neogeocd, since he used the megacd cdrom code for that

[split moth]

I remember that issue

[plucky flare]

so much ecco the dolphin

[split moth]

https://tenor.com/view/its-been84years-titanic-rose-dawson-gif-5372593

[stone plinth]

The Fleetway comics were great

[torn dome]

americans when sonic lives upto his “attitude” moniker

those two images are all archiephiles know of.
they saw nothing of his character growth

[torn fog]

Fleetway is bri'ish innit?

[torn dome]

it’s the bestist

[drowsy hemlock]

Innit

[stone plinth]

I still think Richard Elson did the best Sonic and Robotnik drawings

[torn dome]

anyone who disagrees is sus

[kindred anchor]

milton knight is the greatest drawer of robotniks in the world

[torn dome]

you misspelled Penders

[kindred anchor]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EZ54vXrcVU

i have undeniable proof of my claims

[stone plinth]

AoStH Robotnik is my favourite

Long John Baldry is Robotnik imo

And I hear his voice when reading the Fleetway comics as they used the same (albeit more on-model) design. Less ass.

[kindred anchor]

https://tenor.com/view/shake-ass-playing-piano-piano-gif-14391809

[kindred anchor]

they're not more on model, THESE are the model sheets '

[stone plinth]

Lmao those were based on the first western design (where he looks like he has rabbit teeth) I think

This one

AoStH took that and went "what if we added more ass"

[kindred anchor]

hmmm

i looked up that and it says its from a 1994 style book (most certainly after AOSTH)

so right now it seems like sega took the aosth design and REMOVED the ass

as far i'm aware that specific western robotnik design comes from adventures of sonic the hedgehog and thus ass is the model sheet

[pine crystal]

Don't half-ass anything.

Whole-ass it!

[kindred anchor]

these are of course from 1992, with the second one probably being older as theyre production artwork for an earlier step in the process

[fallow dome]

why do you know about Sonic comic books

That knowledge puts you on some sort of government watch list

[kindred anchor]

i dont know shit about sonic comic books

[warm carbon]

he gotta go fas

[stone plinth]

Oh well maybe I was wrong then!

I guess by "on-model" I just mean less eggsaggerated proportions etc

[kindred anchor]

an easy mistake to make but now you know that robotniks massive ass is in fact on model

[desert leaf]

Any word on this core getting save states?

[fallow dome]

I haven’t heard of any mention.

[lethal prairie]

something something not having save states is more accurate to real hardware something something

jk i love save states

[warm carbon]

save states have ruined the snes core for me. I was playing SMBW for the first time (i had a genesis - it’s fine, we are all going to get through this revelation together) and now that I can save scum, I am constantly resetting. I will not lose purple yoshi. His name is Gordon and he is the best boy

[desert leaf]

Save states are available for the snes core??

[lethal prairie]

it's either a fork or an experimental build of it, i forget, but yeah

[warm carbon]

It’s in the unstable

[fallow dome]

Oh my god

like first time this year?

[warm carbon]

We are going to get through this together

[ivory shale]

Heh, in my severalth playthrough of SMW I started using savestates just to avoid going all the way back to a level to get a cape when I die on a hard level, but I still decided to just do it legit on MiSter for another 100% save... well... 99% save... then hacked my save file to basically copy my Slot 1 save to Slot 2 and 100% that so I can have a save both with and without the altered enemies XD

By the way, whatever happened to the SegaCD core? The whole scratchy audio over analog thing

[warm carbon]

It’s fixed in the unstable (it was a meta stability thing). I think sorg just has to push it live

[gritty tide]

I hear some talk about a possible MegaCD core rewrite. Is that really planned or just desired by the community?

[warm carbon]

It is not planned. It’s more of a “it should happen” rather than “it’s going to happen”

Not planned *to our knowledge, I should say

[ivory shale]

Not planned eh? got it

files "Rewrite MegaCD Core" next to "3DO Core"

[fallow dome]

Wait no, I need help

All this time, you were like “nah, not gonna play”

Like, it’s been over 30 years since the game came out

And not even once you were interested in playing?

[light mist]

raving nintendo fanboys can sour the mood

[warm carbon]

So I missed the bus the first time. And I went from genesis > N64. I played a handful of SMBW levels, but never to completion, and i never got hooked enough to want to go back.

Then I watched some video 6 or so months ago where they were like "no, when the spot on the map is red, it means there are multiple exits" and that somehow really hooked me. So I was like "ok, fine, gonna play this game"

It's not like I missed the cultural significance, or it's place in the grander video game lexicon. But it was always one of those "man, SMBW is great" and I was like "yeah, I believe you!"

(and now, with actual experience, I can reiterate - it's fucking great...maybe the best 2d mario game of all time)

can't say that for sure because I haven't yet beaten it (thanks largely to the aforementioned Gordon issue)

[fallow dome]

Aw come on. I wasn’t being serious.

Don’t do me like that.

[light mist]

Did not even think about you with this 🤷‍♂️

[fallow dome]

Oh phew ok, thank you. Sorry about that.

[light mist]

It were the wars back in the 90's, lines drawn...

[warm carbon]

I was going to say, having worked retail during the bad years that there was no group of people more toxic than Sega Fanboys.....

But then you have gamergate and what spun out of that so maybe Sega Fanboys are like....the 2nd most toxic group of gamers

[fading hare]

War. Console war never changes.

https://tenor.com/view/sonic-the-hedgehog-mario-bros-mario-wold-console-wars-gif-18094900864080359640

[split moth]

war is hell

[drowsy halo]

Yeah this is the appropriate use of save states.

[old sierra]

This is interesting, I didn't realise Laseractive had finally been successfully emulated

https://www.readonlymemo.com/this-is-the-first-the-16-year-odyssey-of-time-money-wrong-turns-and-frustration-it-took-to-finally-emulate-the-pioneer-laseractive/

A long but good read

[elder briar]

i think a fork of ares recently added support for it

[old sierra]

Interesting nugget at the end which may be if interest to @velvet mural
He's now looking into the prospect of preserving the PC Engine PAC, which will — fingers crossed — not be too much more complicated than plugging Ares' existing PC Engine CD code into the new LaserActive code. But that's a story for another day.

[elder briar]

very preliminary though

would love to see the pc engine LD games emulated too

the vajra games are cool

[old sierra]

Article reads like ares emulation is solid

[elder briar]

it's definitely not lol

last i saw

[old sierra]

Has anyone tried it?

Ah, video from two weeks ago from VGEsoterica

It looks pretty great from the video, assuming the video issues are due to the LD dumps that will improve once more copies of the discs are dumped to make a better composite

Ah I see now, maybe the large areas on screen that looks like there is a dark translucent mask is slapped on for a couple of seconds is maybe the emulator at fault, as I see the small image issues from the LD as I see those on some of my film discs

[velvet mural]

Ares is still pretty weak on PCE CDROM, but I have already reached out to the author of the article to see if he can get us in touch

Would be interesting to see if Mesen is interested as well

[old sierra]

Would definitely be great to see these LD systems preserved and documented more widely

Any idea if a MiSTer core would even be feasible? These 20-30gb files seem like they could be a major issue

[velvet mural]

Almost certainly requires too high of a data transfer rate

[old sierra]

That's what I figured

[vital idol]

Encode to mpeg and use slamys new mpeg decoder? 😉

[old sierra]

Reading the article the way the videos and images work on the disc is a lot more complex than I had imagined, these dumps aren't just a video file that can be re-encoded into something else

I imagine down the line someone may come up with a good way to compress down and create a new format, but who knows. Maybe they will have to stay as massive files

In ten years time 20gb will likely seem a pretty trivial amount of data compared with harddrive and SD storage costs and even internet speeds

[light mist]

Dunno, still waiting for those affordable 8tb m.2 ssds

[old sierra]

Apparently there is a new format for Ares already, so hope is maybe not lost there

[ivory shale]

Having anything laserdisk on mister would obliterate it's storage...

[elder briar]

the video runs at 240p right? surely it could be encoded to be smaller without any noticeable quality loss

[ebon quail]

There will probably be a way to compress LaserActive game files someday, especially now that the floodgates can be opened.

[ivory shale]

Laserdisks are analog, there are no files for the video/audio

Highest quality rip you can get off a laserdisk is with a domesday dumping device, and it results in like 50-75gb files

I suppose you could encode the video in a modern codec, but then you have effected the original quality and will have to fudge the emulation by swapping in a video file in place of emulating reading the disk

Speaking of laserdisk, has anyone ever worked on a dragon's lair core?

[stoic flame]

I've seen a bunch of discussion about that. I didn't follow all of it, but it sounds like conventional video codecs aren't compatible with LD's seeking capabilities. Basically, a game can tell the player to jump directly to a specific frame and it's expected to happen with pretty low latency. It would need to be something like MJPEG where all frames are compressed independently, which greatly reduces the compression ratio compared to modern codecs.

That's for the general case; I imagine individual games could be optimized.

[ivory shale]

We likely can't have too high a compression due to the DE-10's limited hardware anyway

But how big would such files be?

[old sierra]

The file size issue is explained in the article I posted above:

There's one final wrinkle to LaserActive emulation, and that's the disc image files themselves. Basically, they're huge, in the dozens of gigabytes range. And that, again, is because the way LaserActive games utvi makes them allergic to compression. They may want to jump to specific frames in an instant, play backwards, or interleave frames, all of which means a specific moment in time needs to be a keyframe, not a compressed, modified frame that only contains the small amount of data that's changed from the frame before it, which is how video files are greatly reduced in size. You could still compress a LaserActive game to about 10GB per size with every frame preserved as a keyframe...

"That still isn’t suitable though, as heavyweight video codecs are too intensive to decode alongside emulating an entire Mega Drive + MegaCD in realtime without involving hardware decoding," Nemesis says. "In order to keep everything running at 60fps, you have to be able to do everything in under 16ms per frame. Using hardware decoding would take decoding burden off the CPU, but the video mixing with the graphics output from the Mega Drive now becomes more complex, and you also now place specific GPU requirements on any system that’s going to try and play these games."

So they stuck to a lossless format that preserves quality and takes the pressure off the CPU (and puts none at all on a graphics card). Any system that can currently run Ares should have no trouble with the LaserActive, with the caveat that you'll definitely want to have these mondo files on an SSD rather than an old spinning platter to avoid any issues with read speeds.

[ivory shale]

Would you really need a SSD for something like that? I had no trouble even capturing 4K video on a modern HDD

I've also had no trouble seeking in 1080p video on a hdd

[old sierra]

The biggest game is 135GB

[glass shale]

Pirated copies of Earthion are plaguing Aliexpress 😔

Damn pirates

[robust flax]

And that's a version that issues right?

[ivory shale]

Probably, though a patched version came out quick and was also extracted

[fallow dome]

I know it’s real easy for me to say this after the fact but they really should’ve led with a console release first.

[ivory shale]

I assume it was contract terms with LRG or something, or EXA

[fallow dome]

Oh true, also I imagine is much more difficult going through lot check for three platforms when you’re just two dudes

Who am I kidding, the Switch is cracked wide open anyways, they’d probably extract the rom from that release.

[plucky flare]

I'm not sure it was a contract thing, I think they always wanted this order of release because they were afraid of shipping carts and having to deal with bugs after the fact

[fallow dome]

Yeah, I mean ship ahead of the PC release

But my point is irrelevant anyways cause of Switch piracy

[old sierra]

How much is a bootleg cart compared with how much a LRG one will cost?

[elder briar]

what's the difference

[robust flax]

Bootlegs might source better chips

[ebon quail]

Also having a digital release is a good way to find and patch up any mistakes that might have slipped through the cracks.

So these unofficial carts are not only taking momey away from the creators, but buyers also end up probably paying more for a worse version of a game they could have simply gotten on Steam. Everyone ends up getting screwed over.

[old sierra]

I don't condone bootlegging something when there is an official option, and I think people should wait until the LRG version is released (with updated version) and buy that to support the makers.

I am idly curious what the price difference is.

[ebon quail]

That or if they have the game on Steam already, just rip the rom from there whenever a new update comes out, slap it into a MegaEverdrive or MiSTer and play it there when you feel like it.

[elder briar]

i don't condone bootlegging either unless it takes away sales from LRG

[old sierra]

So we know what the differences are between the first version released digitally and what will be on the cart? Have they updated the digital version yet?

[plucky flare]

yeah, there was a patch like a week or two after release

[ivory shale]

The ROM is likely going to be coded in the exact same way for the Switch release, both because like you said, it's been cracked open, and because it would be more work to make the emulator read it in a different format than on PC.

[ebon quail]

I think for the most part the changes were more related to stability or bug fixing rather than anything content related.

[ivory shale]

Depends if you consider making the bullets more visible content or bug fixing

Not like that was technically a bug

[old sierra]

Oh, if it was patched awhile ago I wonder what version are on these bootleg carts then.

[ivory shale]

I guess it depends when production started, not like the patched version runs on any different hardware or has additional DRM or something compared to the first version

Also IIRC you can hold down a button when entering the options screen to get the version number

[fading hare]

The biggest update was changing enemy bullets from Doritos into crystal balls.

[ebon quail]

Well tbf, I was just trying to paraphrase

[safe ridge]

Hey all.

I was playing Zombies Ate My Neighbors, and I think I am seeing graphical glitches.

The firing of the gun, for example, seems wrong. Not sure if its my ROM or the Core.

Aaaaand it's definitely my ROM. Interesting. I had a .bin file from who knows when back, and I replaced it with an .md file, works perfectly now.

Wonder what caused the graphical problems. But basically any time you fired a water gunm instead of seeing the water shoot out, you'd see like a square of garbled mass shooting out.

Here is what I found.

I still have some old Bin files (I think I got these waaaay back in the early 2000s)

I think they are headered.

*Genesis/Mega Drive ROMs are always stored in multiples of 512 KB (or more commonly, powers of 2 like 256 KB, 512 KB, 1 MB, 2 MB, etc.).

If your file size is not a multiple of 512 bytes, there’s a good chance it has an extra 512-byte header tacked on.*

So yeah time to replace.

[fallow dome]

I didn’t know bad roms were a thing until MiSTer but yeah, loads of bad dumps out there.

[night cape]

There was a dumper that saved the games using a .smd format, it was called super magic drive, was those extra headered?

[night cape]

There is a convert tool that may help if you need.
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/383/ SBWin

[ivory shale]

I remember those from the Nesticle and ZSNES eras. It was impossible to find Breath of Fire 2 back then that didn't have some annoying trainer attached to it that not only didn't work, but broke the save feature. Or a copy of Megaman X2 that was not a bad half-dump, since no emulator supported the Cx4 chip yet. There were plenty in the older days where I was using Yahoo and Metacrawler to find random Geocities and Angelfire pages that had a small handful of games.

[chrome moss]

The dark days....thank the gods for late 90's/early 2000's SegaXtreme and their FTP section. I got so many good Japanese imports and other games I couldn't find elsewhere there. I'm glad we have curated sets now with verified dumps. I highly suggest learning how to use the .dat files from places like no-intro to verify your sets. Takes awhile but it's nice to know your files are complete and verified even before you boot them up.

[fallow dome]

Yeah I don’t know shit, I just put the roms in the folder and go “heeeehahaha Italian man says Bing Bing wahoo!”

[warm carbon]

he doesn't say that

how dare you

[ebon quail]

Erm acktually he goes "Yah! Hoo-hoo! Yah hoo!" 🤓

[fallow dome]

Big if true

[drowsy hemlock]

“Thank you for playing my game”

[elder briar]

thank you so much for to playing my game

[fading hare]

Sirs, this is a Sega thread!

[elder briar]

[warm carbon]

robby started it tbf

[elder briar]

^

ban him

get his ass

[drowsy hemlock]

https://tenor.com/view/mario-sonic-jackbox-gay-gif-23781240

[stone plinth]

Lmao wtf

[safe ridge]

I think they were bad because some emulators needed 'em

But now we got much more accurate ways to play games

So we don't need no headers

[safe ridge]

NESticle was my first emulator. I remember running it on a very old PC at the time haha. I was so amazed back then I could play any NES game really...

Bomberman I had never played until I discovered NESticle and I played the crap out of that (for some reason). I mean, I liked it, but that game will always make me nostalgic for not playing on the real NES, but actually, NESticle on our old Compaq Presario 😄

[ivory shale]

They weren't really bad because emulators needed them, they were just bad. They would actually play wrong even in those emulators

Also IIRC we still need headers to know what chips a game used

I had Bomberman... On a 128-in-1 pirate cart that I didn't know at the time was just pirated games XD

[safe ridge]

In the earlier days, headers told emulators which mapper, mirroring, PRG/CHR size, etc. to use.

No Intro = no headers... which is why i prefer the No Intro collections

[ivory shale]

How do emulators know what chips the game uses?

[night cape]

No intro were actually... No intro. Back then on old computers games, all the way to Game Boy Advance, but also going through PS1 and several other systems, dumped or cracked games had intros with animations and texts added, before the game first screens. The no intro project pursued removing such intros, making the dump behave like an original cart, including its headers when the cart had them.

[lethal prairie]

SNES games for example had headers because Nintendo mandated them. They weren’t required by the hardware to run but they were always there

[ebon quail]

That explains it

A bit funny how people decided to work together to make good quality rom dumps cause they were basically annoyed at crack group animations and trainers lol

[lethal prairie]

For real. I get that there was culture behind the intro animations and whatnot but like. They got old fast

i remember playing a rom of Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland that had like, a 10 or 15 second intro animation that couldn’t be skipped

[plain quiver]

Some groups like Mode7 tried to mine their later releases after that, and to slow down the process of removal.
Cat and mouse game.

The rest is history in the making.

[ebon quail]

Slow down the process of people just wanting to skip seeing a crack group's intro? Lmao

Imagine adding a form of prevention in your cracked rom release just cause people wanted to bypass your stuff. I feel like that's a bit ironic

[lethal prairie]

Oh yeah I think that was literally the group that did that one I was thinking of

But like. I don’t think GBA games needed to be cracked either

I don’t think they were encrypted

Maybe beyond a few that had anti piracy checks

[plain quiver]

It was more for signing and day-0 releases.

[fallow dome]

Press often leaked games back then so it was to prevent them

[ivory shale]

Yeah, I can see it getting real annoying for console games, like I said back then it was hard to find a copy of Breath of Fire 2 that didn't have this intro with a trainer in it that not only did it's cheats not work, but it broke the game's save function

oops, I was scrolled up

Anyway, I was also trying some random Commodore64 games on my Mister, and they all had some "cracktro" intro and trainer, have to wait for it load, display it's annoying intro, then I try to start the game and...

"Do you want infinite lives?" "Do you want infinite health?" "Do you want level skip?" "Do you want to jump to a specific level?" "Do you want infinite lasers?" "Do you want infinite flamethrowers?" "Do you want to see the ending?" "Do you-" JUST LET ME PLAY THE GAME!

[ivory shale]

Console games didn't really have protection beyond either what was built into the console or the very medium itself until like... Gen 7? Even then most relied on the console's protection anyway, all of which was generally moot if the purpose was to run it in an emulator

If anything you spend more time delaying your release by trying to hack in an intro

[blissful lagoon]

If you weren’t part of or adjacent to the scene when it happened I suppose it seems weird and unnecessary.. But if you were, the scene was the point and playing the games was secondary. Also, spending 5 seconds skipping an intro is quite insignificant compared to the 1-2 minutes it took loading the dump from 3.5” diskettes (and indeed the much more lengthy process of downloading a game at 9600, 14400 (or 16800 if you were really well off!) bps, unpacking and writing to disks).

[velvet mural]

Not to mention that some protection mechanisms were simply unstable, and interfered with the loading/operation of the game on occasional, random intervals

[fallow dome]

The cracktros never bothered me unless they were shitty lol.

[velvet mural]

Well, most cracktros were only about self-aggrandizement

[ivory shale]

I find the cracktros annoying, but the ones I really hated were the ones that included a trainer in the beginning that plays 20 questions with you before letting you play

[winged goblet]

What in the world is that?!

[shut aspen]

i don't see the problem

[warm carbon]

Love

[winged goblet]

lol

No!

[drowsy halo]

the 90s console wars were just about sexual tension the whole time

[plain quiver]

Latest sys module updated + seed 10 + all the last changes on the SH-2 -from the Saturn core- from 2025-09-10.

[inland quail]

Does this update by any chance make the games better?

[elder briar]

be nice

[plain quiver]

Just to be up to date on the SH-2 module, no changes since last time.

The MK II slowdowns should be there, but even with the video sent, we haven't made any progress on this issue.

srg320 is focused on the Saturn, SNES and 3D0.

And I don't know how he can do everything at the same time.

[warm carbon]

I posted on the issue but I am pretty sure the CX4 issue is solved in the SNES core

absolute madman

[drowsy hemlock]

What’s wrong with it?

[winged goblet]

Uuuh everything?!

[warm carbon]

https://tenor.com/bnfAb.gif

[lethal prairie]

LOVE IS LOVE DONT BE A HATER

[ivory shale]

The SNES core had a Cx4 issue?

[warm carbon]

yeah, on some stacks

[inland quail]

I think it was some kind of regression

Or a new mister build introduced the issue

[ivory shale]

What was the issue?

[warm carbon]

Mega Man X2 and X3 would crash https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/SNES_MiSTer/issues/404

[ivory shale]

*Issue #404

Well no wonder I coulden't find it

[warm carbon]

https://tenor.com/xvDw.gif

[ivory shale]

Please, not the tomatoes

Anyway, so ths curent core still has this issue?

[warm carbon]

the stable yes. but it's fixed in the unstable

and the unstable has save states now too

[ivory shale]

Nice

[inland quail]

For all games? 😮

[warm carbon]

yep

[ivory shale]

Time to load some crazy SNES tech demos and see if the save state restores properly

[old sierra]

Is there anything holding back this 32x build being a release candidate?

[plain quiver]

Some timings are off.

On Kolibri and MK II.

I just 1cc'ed the new update of Earthion released today (v3.3.0).
So far, so good.

[split stratus]

New Earthion?! Awesome, I’ll go get the update

[plain quiver]

#games-and-patches message

[glass shale]

Wondering if it’s already decrypted ?

[split stratus]

Yup it is

New decryption script is already out there too

[hollow shore]

Save states still aren’t working for Megaman x2 and x3 for me. The option is blurred out

[elder briar]

i don't think savestates work with some of the games that use special chips, at least not yet

[warm carbon]

oh? https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/09/the-ark-is-an-alien-inspired-point-and-click-horror-for-your-genesis-mega-drive

[fading hare]

Yeah, support hasn't been added for that chip yet.

[ivory shale]

Is there anywhere I can see which chips are supported?

[warm carbon]

#1096636309679919136 message

[plain quiver]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/SNES_MiSTer/issues/288#issuecomment-3279890679

I added a note today here too.

[light mist]

This is the megadrive thread,
I had hopes that is would be saturn save states,
but just boring old snes

[warm carbon]

*Genesis

[light mist]

I will never accept that heathen name

[warm carbon]

Genesis Does What Nintendon’t

[ivory shale]

Mega Drive always sounded like some obscure proprietary floppy disk format from some forgotten '80s computer brand to me

[stone plinth]

So it sounds cool AF then

[warm carbon]

We got it right with the console’s name, y’all got the CD addon’s name right

[faint onyx]

Jesus he knows me...that's Genesis!

[warm carbon]

SegaCD was a bad name

MegaCD so much cooler

[faint onyx]

The console wasn't named Mega Drive in the US because there was already a company with that name. I don't know if that was really the truth, but i read it somewhere ages ago.

[stone plinth]

It was definitely some copyright thing

[ivory shale]

Were there also a company named PC Engine? Or was it just because TurboGrafix was an EXXXXXXTREEEEEEME name?

[stone plinth]

I guess there was confusion about PCs but also adding "turbo" to anything makes it 7x cooler

TurboWarts

[ivory shale]

Ugh, that nonsense. I wonder how many people basically downclocked their PCs without even realizing when they thought they were making it go faster

I also wonder if anyone assumed that it was like some kind of "overdrive" that you shoulden't over-use and that's why it was a button XD

[faint onyx]

And the TurboGrafx had to be bigger. The butt ugly shit is awful. The original white PC-Engine is still a beauty.

[ivory shale]

And it needs a superhero!

With his own comic!

[stone plinth]

Johnny Turbo!

[ivory shale]

I can't believe he was actually put into a modern game, hell of a deep cut

[stone plinth]

I was obsessed with that comic when I was a teen

Feka and Fony with their CD based systems; don't people know Lords of Thunder was originally on the Turbo?!

[faint onyx]

And books like this...scary!

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/A19RRKsFGvL._SL1500_.jpg

[ivory shale]

And they had Sherlock Holmes months before Feka!

Why, Feka even lied that theirs was the first CD add-on and that you need a genesis to use it! (They didn't, they never advertised it was the first and made it clear you needed a genesis)

Behold! Johnny Turbo's legacy!
https://youtu.be/aKqxBwqOlwI?t=81

[stone plinth]

What in god's name

Where's the Tony DLC

[ivory shale]

For some reason, they put him in the cast of a game that's bsically Super Puzzle Fighter

[stone plinth]

That was his "friend" wasn't it?

[ivory shale]

Sadly I don't think he made the cut

maybe he's in the ending?

... also for some reason Astro Boy is in the game

[stone plinth]

Incredible

[ivory shale]

Shame he wasn't in the fighting game that had most of those characters in the cast

The intro had a mecha-X86000 in it XD

At least I am prety sure it's a x86000

[stone plinth]

Looks like it with the double disk thingy

Though I'm far from an expert on that thing

[ivory shale]

same

[drowsy halo]

Sega CD alliterates

[ivory shale]

Genesis does what Nintendon't

SegaCD alliterates what Nintendo... affiliates?

[stone plinth]

Genesis Denesis

[drowsy halo]

SegaCD alliterates while NintendoCD hibernates

[glass shale]

Just used the script to decrypt my steam ROM. Now we need a patch in order to bring the "PRESS START BUTTON" message back! lol

[ivory shale]

https://tenor.com/view/homer-any-key-wheres-the-key-gif-12793542

[lapis topaz]

Are save states technically possible on the Megadrive core?

Kinda like how snes got them

[foggy ice]

Patched version is out already

[ivory shale]

Wait, really? Someone actually patched it to say start again?

[fading hare]

One could say that this is starting to get out of hand!

[ivory shale]

https://tenor.com/view/rimshot-pun-joke-ba-dum-tss-drum-gif-15808941

[tropic juniper]

Latest Earthion Update on Mister is pure Fire 🔥

[foggy ice]

Yes. Even with a .txt explaining what’s going on.

[faint onyx]

There is a SRAM patch for Earthion, for highscore saving.

[ivory shale]

Oh right, it uses passwords. Kind of annoying that the emulator does not let you save

Tanglewood also uses passwords, but the emulator in the PC version hooks into it to auto save/load for you, you only need the passwords if you play it in another emulator or a real console (or Mister)

[astral merlin]

A+++ for the Pirates! reference. For anyone with an Apple Vision Pro, it was natively filmed in 3D and looks amazing in stereo on its OLED displays

[ivory shale]

I... actually have no idea where that is from, I have just seen it used often

Also who needs a $2000 pair of robo-glasses for stereoscopic movies? I have both a 3D monitor and 3D TV... 🙂

[woeful goblet]

There’s some graphic glitches at my side with this build playing Knucles Chaotix as seens at this video and images . Can anyone confirm it please? Just live the game at attract mode

[plain quiver]

I finish with your other issue on the Saturn/ST-V, and I will check after that.

[plain quiver]

I can confirm and reproduce that glitch.

And I will need to check some previous compilations.

[woeful goblet]

I tested it with that last unstable and it was working fine

[plain quiver]

Okay, it works on 2025-08-24.
#1096614378968727652 message

So the 2025-09-10 have an issue here, use the older unstable build.

[woeful goblet]

Thank you for taking a look at it

[plain quiver]

Not my build, someone else did it before me & shared it to me.
From my first tests, the previous regression seen on Chaotix is fixed.

[narrow panther]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu64jkUJ9nU

This looks nice!

[elder briar]

ai cover art 🤢

[stone plinth]

That would explain why it looks so woefully uninspired

Just had a look at it up close, definitely AI 🙁

[narrow panther]

Seems overly critical to be so against a developer using tools that are available. It's the same guy who's porting Final Fight to the Mega Drive and it's going to be available for free. He's got about 5 other Mega Drive projects on the go as well. It's unrealistic to expect a programmer to be super talented at artwork, or pay for an artist when it's a hobby. He's also had a bunch of health issues

[stone plinth]

There might have been people who wanted to contribute, maybe even for free. Could have got their name out there, who knows.

I don't think anyone expects the programmer to be super talented at art though.

[narrow panther]

These are what he's working on at the moment

[elder briar]

i'm excited for final fight md, but i do think it's lame to use ai for your cover art, and frankly it's enough to turn me away from playing it entirely

you're absolutely correct that a programmer shouldn't be expected to have top-notch art skills, but i'm sure more than a few artists would've been happy to contribute their skill to making an actual cover for the game

[stone plinth]

I've contributed art for free when I was first starting out, it was a great opportunity for me that eventually lead to paid work.

[narrow panther]

With all the palette restrictions on the Mega Drive, it's going to be a pretty niche skill set required

[stone plinth]

I did the same thing with music as well. Those opportunities were vital for me.

[narrow panther]

Anyway nobody's stopping artists getting in touch to contribute, I guess

[elder briar]

i hope they do and the game gets some nicer cover art eventually

[stone plinth]

If I a) had more free time and b) was remotely decent at drawing cars I'd be up for it

I guess even the outrun master system artist wasn't good at drawing cars though lmao

[elder briar]

still had more soul than ai art lol

[stone plinth]

Yeah I think that's the difference

And before the advent of AI art, people still had ways of getting help. I've had lunch bought for me in exchange for doing some art.

Someone once bought me some paint to use etc

I just hope they're able to get the support so they don't need to use ai art as it's kind of a reputation smearer

[elder briar]

as a bit of an artist myself i can confidently say that being commissioned to make game art means more to us than people realize, in a time when it feels like ai is everywhere

[narrow panther]

Anyway, he says that box art is just a mockup:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/driftin-rage-for-138026741

[glad aurora]

Children will be children.

I'll happily enjoy this fellas work whether he uses A.I. for some silly box art or not.

[fading hare]

Honestly, if it was me, I would just take an image from within the game itself and use that as the cover art. The in-game visuals look good enough to do it.

And there were a handful of games back in the day that actually did that. And I always liked that style of box art.

[stone plinth]

I think the Mega Man 1 boxart proves you don't have to be good at art to make history

[ivory shale]

I don't think that's the kind of history most people would want to be remembered for 😛

I remember a streamer I was watching was watching a funny 20 or so minute video, he and the chat of thousands loved it, then during the credits it mentioned some AI was used.... suddenly half the chat hated it. It was a little ridiculous, like, they would have still all loved it if that was not mentioned. This video was also made before everyone started hating on AI.

[stone plinth]

I think it depends on the circumstances. I work in a job where AI can be useful. When it gets into the creative realm, it gets a little muddy.

I personally just don't like the way AI art looks, I think it looks soulless, boring and completely uninspired.

People don't like being duped I guess.

[lethal prairie]

Gen AI is good at pattern matching and that can be useful for digital art tools. Way more so that the “draw me mediocre pictures” tools

[stone plinth]

It can most certainly be useful. Photoshop has some cool new features that can enhance the workflow. Last I saw, they have some great selection tools.

Unfortunately, from what I've seen, most of the use of AI in art has been the "draw me mediocre pictures" category

[ivory shale]

I have used it to write a batch file to help me compress folders of bin/cue files to chds, put the chd back in the folder, and delete the original bin/cue if it was successful

[glad aurora]

That's pretty nifty

[spare summit]

Welcome to the Next Level in 32X World!

[simple mica]

This is my CRT desperately trying to sync to the Mega-CD core, with vga_scaler=0. I have an alternate .ini file where I managed to have a stable picture by using vga_scaler=1 and providing a modeline (video_mode=320,28,31,47,224,12,3,23,6700). Is it worth opening a bug in the GitHub repo? I've seen some rumors about an upcoming rewrite, would that include taking a fresh look at sync timings?

[noble thunder]

For some reason that looks like the CRT's being fed a 31kHz signal

Maybe not the case but that's what it reminds me of

[manic ridge]

What version is it up to

[tropic juniper]

3.3.0

[simple mica]

I managed to take a photo of a "frame" with the OSD open, and the AV output is as expected, at 15,70kHz. I've seen my TV behave like that in two scenarios: (1) if I go in the service mode and set the horizontal frequency way outside its nominal range, or (2) if I open the back of the TV and short-circuit pin 5 to ground (pin 9) on the sync processor, essentially disabling the sync separator (this is something you need to do to adjust the horizontal freq to its nominal value). So yeah, it looks like the Mega-CD core is outputting a signal that's really out of spec for my TV. I've even tried setting it to the EU region, but no dice.

[broken pewter]

Will Paprium support ever be implemented using Krikzz mega-ppm mapper?

[normal rivet]

Hopefully not. It’s far from perfect.

[plucky flare]

have they made any more progress on the sound side of things?

[normal rivet]

Krikzz hasn’t released any further updates to that mapper beyond the initial release

[fallow dome]

Paprium 🥱

[drowsy halo]

He updated the kickstarter as recently as February

[glass shale]

Who? Fonzie?

[fallow dome]

@tulip surge did you throw a chancleta at me lmao

my mom did that when I was a kid when I misbehaved lmao

[glass shale]

Those are very common in Brazil! We call them “chinelo” and the havaianas brand is the most popular! They are really great to throw at misbehaving kids! 😌

[tulip surge]

We call them thongs in Aus.
I hear Fonzie likes them 🙂

[woeful goblet]

Well, at least you heard something about Fonzie.

[glass shale]

Last news I’ve heard about him was he was kaput because of a coke OD

[spare summit]

Wow! A new build, judging by the photo. Glad they haven't abandoned the project.

[floral ingot]

It's in active development, stay tuned.

[elder briar]

they should port it to saturn tbh :p

[lunar plaza]

man, seeing it running on a real 32X is insane, and it plays well too! happy to know it is still being developed

[fallow dome]

Sonic Robo Blast 2 is a cool game

[elder briar]

if you want to upset sonic fans, just call it the best 3D sonic game. the debate will go on for days

[fallow dome]

[fading hare]

The funny part is that's probably true!

[ivory shale]

Yeah, I know the game is nowhere near as good as it was hyped up to be but it's a bit sad to see that as soon as people got the game somewhat working by any hackish method possible everyone said good enough and moved on, feels like the ZSNES days of just making a game run at all even if with many hacks. It's sound isn't even properly supported it, they are just using music from the soundtrack in place of in-game music.

[fallow dome]

Blame the developer for making such an arcane and ridiculous copy protection for a mediocre game.

I’m perfectly fine never playing that game. Looks like I’m not missing anything and even if I was, who cares.

[glass shale]

Clearly they have spent more time and resources on the DRM than on the game itself

[versed rapids]

There is also a mini game that works on MiSTer 🙂

[fallow dome]

Sorry, I want the people who paid for their game to have it. I guess o shouldn’t be so callous about it.

[ivory shale]

It's not even the copy protection, that's been broken, it's the music hardware that has not been properly reverse-engineered. And the "supposedly" other features it has that can't even be verified if they do anything like taking advantage of SegaCD hardware for better AI

Though Mister can't even play it at all 🙁

[fallow dome]

Oh my bad, I just thought the dude went all out lol.

Anyways I had a bad take earlier. I shouldn’t poop on people wanting to play a new game. Sorry.

[ebon quail]

Plus it's in that weird gray area where even if it isn't a good game, it would be great to see it fully playable on emulator/MiSTer if only to know that it's full possible

[ivory shale]

Oh, I am pretty sure he did. IIRC he was even boasting that his cart would not work in clone systems or even some Genesis revisions because of the copy protection. It still trips for anything that isn't a modified version of the Retroarch core made just for that one game, or a Mega Everdrive Pro. (That's what the minigame is, it's only supposed to play once and never again, if it plays every time that's the copy protection IIRC)

[ivory shale]

It's ok, don't worry about it.

[ivory shale]

Yeah, I would like to see basically anything that runs on real hardware (And isn't literally a Pi in a cartridge like the Doom NES thing is) to work on Mister too, especially homebrew games that released on a real cart.

Still some homebrew NES games that won't run, or romhacks for N64 that do work on real hardware.

[fading hare]

That's to be expected on the N64 core at least since it isn't perfect even for every retail game (e.g., exploding players in Madden).

[ivory shale]

"exploding players in Madden" ... wait, what?

[fading hare]

Exploding polygons on the players. Happens randomly and pretty frequently in the Madden games.

[ivory shale]

Oh, vertex explosions. I see.

To be fair, out of all the romhacks I tried that are supposed to work on real hardware, so far I have only run into one that does not work

For N64

[drowsy halo]

I haven't played Sonic Robo Blast. Can we play it on the 32x core or do I get to plug in my 32x?

[warm carbon]

pretty sure it works great on teh core

[elder briar]

maybe even better with the turbo functions and such

[drowsy halo]

I haven't plugged in my 32x since I got a MiSTer.

It requires a lot of time for all the plugs. I gotta get one of those adapters/cord that let's you use fewer outlets

[elder briar]

i would leave mine permanently plugged in if it didn't mean i lose access to sega cd games via the mega everdrive pro

that's a big part of the reason i prefer the mister for genesis games; i don't have to screw with cables and adapters every time i want to play the various genesis add-ons

[lethal prairie]

Genesis does what Nintendon’t! (need a rats nest of cables and plugs for it’s add-ons)

[ivory shale]

Well, Nintendo did have crazy addons with cables that only a handful of games were on, just that they only came out in Japan

[bright pivot]

Genesisn't what nintendo is

[glass shale]

lol

[fading hare]

Ah, but you see, the Genesis was in North America! And Nintendo didn't do that in North America!

https://tenor.com/view/feel-me-think-about-it-meme-gif-7715402

[ivory shale]

Ah, but Nintendo is an entire company, not just a console. Do you see SEGA making baby strollers and extendable arm toys and ||love hotels|| and owning baseball teams?

[fading hare]

Hey, my parents called video games "Nintendo" when I was a kid! Everyone knows that Nintendo is the Kleenex of video games!

[ebon quail]

No but Sega made slot machines at first

So like eh close enough

[torn dome]

somewhere, in a japanese landfill, there’s a nintendo branded ||condom|| from their hotel days and if it could be found it would be worth a fortune

[ivory shale]

Strangely, that part of their history was omitted from the Nintendo museum

[pale plover]

AFAIK, there isn't any evidence Nintendo had love hotels. It's all an urban legend spread around on the internet and picked up as a "fact".

[torn dome]

reggie and shigsy have an entire department of trained monkeys spreading counter disinformation

[kindred anchor]

stop ruining our dreams of nintendo condoms!!!

[fallow dome]

so uhhhh, Earthion kind of came and went, huh. Zero fanfare or buzz for the console release.

[glass shale]

Has the Earthion cartridge been officially released????

Only saw the cheapo bootlegs on Aliexpress

[velvet mural]

No, that's 2026

[fallow dome]

It’s a cool game, amazing it runs on a Genesis

[ebon quail]

Well it's already part of a niche genre as well as being co-developed by someone known more for their music in the game industry than him as a developer.

So even it getting some talk during its launch period is pretty big given the contexts.

[torn dome]

the kids only care about hollow knight

and even that doesn’t mean they’re buying it

they’re just watching twitch streams

this is why the entire industry spiraled into the f2p skins or AAA sony-over-the-shoulder-sad-dad hustle

[fallow dome]

I was just hoping for continued hype for the game, that’s all.

[rotund bluff]

Should they have sold the ROM digitally, I would have bought it.
And if they release it digitally, I will still buy it, even if I have already finished the game in two difficulty levels on the MiSTer and on GenesisPlusGX on RetroArch.

But forcing me to register on Steam to play a MegaDrive game? NO F*CKING WAY.
Steam stinks. They can put their DRM and their client to launch games up their rear holes. When I want to play a game, I load it MY WAY, from a tty, from a script, whatever I want, no through some stupid client.

[lethal prairie]

A book recommendation perhaps

[fallow dome]

Yeah but Steam lets me buy hats for my Demolition Man, what does your tty offer?

[rotund bluff]

Personal and collective digital freedom 😄

[fallow dome]

That sounds like a cool hat, ngl

[ebon quail]

Right I remember hearing something about how these days more people watch videos/streams/whatever about games rather than actually playing them.

[narrow aspen]

SRB2 is great, and most Sonic fans will agree with you lol

[elder briar]

you haven't seen the sonic fans on twitter

[pale plover]

Statistically there is a Sonic fan out there that thinks the Game.Com version of Sonic Jam is an "unappreciated masterpiece".

[elder briar]

i recall seeing a fangame that was attempting to recreate the levels from game.com sonic jam, so you're not far off

[chrome moss]

Earthion slaps. All those who would actually buy and support MD development will buy it on Steam, physical cart, etc. i am still convinced most of the people complaining about how the game is being distributed were never going to give money for it anyhow.

If you want a release on GOG or direct ROM purchase then you should e-mail the company and ask about it or use social media to start up a bit of a campaign. Complaining in places like here gets nothing productive done. Go throw them 20 bucks and download the high seas version if you hate using Steam.

[elder briar]

gog would be a good place to have the game available for sale

partnering with LRG for a physical release is still a dumb move though. i'll stand by that much

[chrome moss]

LRG is the biggest name in the business AND they have a Japanese affiliate (goes by a different name but owned by the same people I believe). I am not sure who else was supposed to do it. The 2 person team? If the game sells super well perhaps the next game can be self-released.

[narrow aspen]

I am willing to defend the Game.com versions of RE2 and Symphony of the Night, as they’re both really quite ambitious ports. Considering how slow the hardware is, they both manage to do a lot with it.

But, yeah - Sonic Jam on the Game.com is pretty indefensibly awful. Granted, it’s awful because of its poor framerate - the game runs consistently below 10 FPS with constant slowdowns. Recreating the level layouts in a proper Sonic engine does at least give the game a fighting chance, even if those are just as poorly designed as the rest of the game.

[elder briar]

i think it was a mistake to try from the beginning but i'll give them credit for trying to do it i suppose

[elder briar]

lots of devs have published their own genesis games without partnering with LRG. demons of asteborg, petscii robots and xeno crisis were all given physical runs without their help

[narrow aspen]

Yeah - Genesis games are pretty straightforward to manufacture. Many publishers exist for short-run releases, and you can buy all of the individual components from different sellers (shells, burnable or pre-written boards, cases, custom labels & box covers).

Plus, LRG mostly farms out cartridge production for classic console releases to other companies, right? I know they had some serious QC issues in the past with recent titles, which lead them to switch their suppliers recently.

[chrome moss]

I don’t think it’s the manufacturing but the whole logistics of ordering, shipping, packaging, etc. it’s not trivial and likely something the 2 person dev team wasn’t willing to take on. If that’s so, what other company is there that does what LRG does? Honest question because outside of some smaller teams doing their own stuff I don’t know. RetroBit maybe?

I agree LRG is shite but I also recognize they don’t really have competition. I wish they did. My hope is that Earthion is successful enough to fund another game and a bigger team. I’ll be buying it in multiple forms to show support

[narrow aspen]

RetroBit, Mega Cat Studios, Bitmap Bureau, iam8bit, CollectorVision - there are quite a few studios outside of LRG that do Genesis cartridge production. (RetroBit’s probably been the most consistent, though - they’ve done some really great releases over the the years.)

[chrome moss]

Do any of those have presence or a team in Japan like LRG? That, I think, would be required if any of those others were to get a contract for their next game.

[ebon quail]

I think Retro Bit has worked with a couple of Japanese companies before.

[chrome moss]

That’s a good sign then.

[narrow aspen]

Retro-Bit’s done some good work with Japanese publishers, yeah - they’ve worked with Jaleco, Capcom, and Irem for rereleases, and even worked with Sega themselves on reissued Genesis controllers.

[ivory shale]

The lack of any way to legally get a ROM definitely was a blow for many people. It's not a "I wanted to pirate it anyway" thing, a large amount of such games that get a Steam release generally include the ROM, some even advertise this on their Steam page. The dev made it clear he had no intention of offering the ROM in any way, meaning the only way anyone would be able to play this game on a Genesis would be either to wait until 2026 and buy an expensive cart from LRG... who is infamous for being shoddy with production and delaying shipments for years, or to rip the ROM from a digital version.

Some like Neofid's games even offer to just buy the rom alone

[chrome moss]

Oh, I agree but I also understand that this is a 2 person team and not a 6 or 8 or 10 person team. They are also old. Not many old people are making genesis games and opening up their own store front.

It’ll be interesting if the ROM gets sent out raw with the Steam release after the cart gets released from LRG. If you want to support it there is a mechanism today even if it’s not every person’s individual preferred place and method. The game is great and worth the hassle of buying on Steam. First Steam game I’ve bought in probably a decade. I’m normally a gog guy

[ivory shale]

I have like, 1500 games on my Steam account, I don't have an issue with buying on Steam itself, just saying that not including a ROM either with Steam or a way to just buy it was a turn off for many

[void eagle]

Ancient, a company related to Yuzo Kushiro, released a free NES rom before (Amazon's Running Diet) and Honoo no Rangerman/Blazing Rangers is available for 12 USD digitally (though first press games, the company selling it, is another can of worms).

I have a few of the retro bit MD game. I especially liked the Toaplan releases, though Gleylancer was somewhat disappointing with the stolen translation and botched manual.

and Strictly Limited was a mixed bag. Something was usually messed up in production. Panaorama Cotton had a botched translation that pales in comparison to the fan translation. Mega Turrican was pretty much Mega Turrican + Slightly altered repeat of Mega Turrican + filler and froze on some systems. I did like the Darius Extra release, though.

[ebon quail]

Oh yeah Strictly Limited/ININ are not good

Like the collection they published for a number of Ninja Jajamaru games has broken trophies on PS4. And they still haven't released a patch for it.

[broken pewter]

I’m gonna be straight up, it’s a Sega Genesis retro revival shmup, it isn’t really anything that hasn’t been done before but it’s made a splash in its niche and I think that’s what matters

For its content, I don’t think it could sustain continued hype that much unless there’s substantial additions made

I hope Yuzo Koshiro keeps doing new games for Sega consoles, it’s really cool

The thing that surprises me the most is that it isn’t getting a Dreamcast release

[elder briar]

if yuzo koshiro wasn't involved i doubt it would've gotten as much traction/coverage as it did

[light mist]

True

[hasty void]

Hello

I'm working actually on a 68k core that synchronize at each memory access (without threaded mecanism).

I'm stressing my core with JSON Test Suit : https://github.com/SingleStepTests/ProcessorTests

I have problem with this test :

"name": "000 ADD.l D5, (d8, A3, Xn) dbb3",

Initial important states are :

"d5": 0x14fbcc8
"a3": 0x3e4d4a5b
"d0": 0xa1e940b7
prefetch 0 : 0xdbb3 (the opcode)
prefetch 1 : 0xc4f (extension word)

The test attempt cpu write at this adress (in order) :

0x4542aa : 0xc606
0x4542a6 : 0x2313
0x4542a8 : 0x70
0x4542a4 : 0xdbb3
0x4542a2: 0xdbb3
0x45429e : 0x8b61
0x4542a0 : 0xee036

I don't understand how (d8, A3, Xn) can give write access at this effective adress.

I must miss something so any help is appreciated !

[fallow dome]

I don’t think you’d see a lot of YouTubers shilling for it either

[ebon quail]

Maybe not as many, cause usually whenever one of these "new Mega Drive games" comes out there is at least some talk within the retro community, though Koshiro's studio being the developer helped.

[hasty void]

I found the reason. This test is making a "address error" exception. Thèse access correspond to push to ssp pc, sr, ir and address access

[desert leaf]

Can’t wait for this core to have save states

[warm carbon]

you don't have to wait, you can install the unstable 🙂

[hollow shore]

Wait really?

[warm carbon]

oh wait, I thought this was the super nes channel - sorry, sorry

[shut aspen]

nintendoes what genedon't

[desert leaf]

I was about to say lol

[void eagle]

The analog screen centering seems to be slightly off on the latest MD core. It's fine on the Genesis core.

[warm carbon]

yup, i see it too. might be worth filing an issue

[ivory shale]

By the way, how does the core determine if a game has SRAM for saving?

[fallow dome]

I guess through a rom header?

[ivory shale]

Do the headers for Genesis games contain that information?

[fallow dome]

I think so, looking at this utility - https://github.com/jcfieldsdev/genesis-rom-utility

[faint onyx]

New game Demo. Nightvein: Just played it a bit. Reminds me a bit of True Lies or Chaos Engine. Quite nice so far.

https://wesleymarques.com/

[worldly dust]

What is Castlevania Bloodlines doing?

My OSSC loses sync when getting to character select and then starting a stage

[split stratus]

It is switching horizontal resolutions

[worldly dust]

I believe it would be the same thing on actual hardware

[split stratus]

From 320 to 256 wide, and back

[worldly dust]

Ahh

[split stratus]

Yeah it’s a pain to record on hardware too unless you use a generic profile. Though the tink 4K does a good job with it

Avoiding sync drops requires triple buffer mode I think

[stone plinth]

Yeah, Sonic 2 does the same thing when you enter a special stage.

Many Konami games do this too, especially during bootup. The sega logo is 320, the Konami logo is 256.

[drowsy halo]

We need more Sega CD games. So many Genesis rom hacks are cool, but I crave that Sega CD startup.

[thorny pivot]

Would be cool to see more Sega CD games that utilize the scaling and rotation features that the system offers.

[chrome moss]

Is there any game that pushes the SCD to its limits?

[thorny pivot]

Soulstar is probably the best example followed by the Batman driving stages

[drowsy halo]

Ooh i didn't know it had those features.

[fading hare]

It's right on the bios screen!

[drowsy halo]

Also, is it just my imagination, but do sega cd loading times seem very reasonable?

[thorny pivot]

The actual game data isn’t much more than a cartridge. Most of the CD was used for redbook audio

[fading hare]

There's a reason why the Sega CD is a separate core. It's not like the Turbografx-CD where that is just a TG16 with a CD drive. Sega CD adds actual additional capabilities to the machine beyond CD.

[drowsy halo]

Don't tell the psx thread i said this, but those ps1 games take forever to load.

[chrome moss]

Yeah, the scaling and rotation is way more advanced than the SNES’s IIRC. We could have easily seen a kart racer or something like fzero but fancier.

I do think there are some weird limitations though when it comes to using it with the 32x. Like I don’t think you can use the 32x CPUs and the 68000 in the SCD at the same time.

That’s be nuts if somehow it worked like that though and you had 2x 68000’s and 2..SH1’s I think they are in the 32x? All at the same time. The genesis would melt

[velvet mural]

Regardless, if they could be made to coexist in the same core (which fit in the DE10-Nano), they would have been, with functionality being enabled/disabled

If cartridges have extensions in them, those take up space in a similar way to how CD capabilites take up space. Even when not enabled, they have to take up real estate in the core.

[ivory shale]

Significant ones, to the point where some SegaCD games ran entirely on the SegaCD hardware. Though, a big part of that was that apparently it was a total PITA to communicate between the SegaCD and Genesis across the bus connector

[ivory shale]

Yeah, it's unfortunate that the cores can't be loaded in pieces, so you don't need to load a massive core with dozens of components if no game will ever use even a quarter of those at once. Would solve a lot of the capacity problems of the FPGA, but then again, I don't think it would be possible for most systems/games to anticipate what hardware a game would use upon loading it?

[velvet mural]

That's not how circuits work

And not how 99.9% of programs work either.

Anyway, I have a feeling that srg320 will revisit it and try to make those two fit at some point. but not 32X

That would be a step too far

[warm carbon]

for the de25 you think too?

[velvet mural]

Dunno what is possible on DE25

Going to take a while before even trivial things are working there

[ivory shale]

I don't have high hopes for the DE25, it's a pretty small upgrade over the DE10. If anything, it's main advantage seems to be built in SDRAM.

I guess with the extra space it might be possible to combine the current 32X and CD cores if the SVP is stripped out, but I am not sure if we can even get a 32X or CD core cobined with the nuked core

Woulden't give us 100% N64 too since a big part of that is memory access latency 🙁

[velvet mural]

Well, "pretty small" is an exaggeration. Much faster fabric, and multiple parallel RAM channels. This addresses 2 of the major limitations of DE10-Nano

It isn't double or triple the number of LEs, but it's 25% more

Which is still fairly substantial. Not trivial

[elder briar]

i don't think a combined gen+cd+32x core is out of reach, would definitely be more work to maintain but i think people would love the convenience. i know i would

[velvet mural]

It's also 25% more fast internal BRAM (though partitioned differently), so this may also make some things easier to fit

[elder briar]

if we had a combo core, that might mean the 32XCD games would work as well, right? not that any of the titles are particularly interesting, but would be worth it for preservation's sake

i think doom resurrection has a 32X+ mode that uses that configuration as well

[velvet mural]

I don't know enough about the systems to comment. But I recall hearing that srg320 wanted to come back 32X to improve a few things after having made advances on Saturn.

[ivory shale]

Wasn't aware of the ram channels, that can be big, especially if you can dedicate a part of the DDR ram exclusively to the FPGA

[ivory shale]

Maybe by removing SVP support, but that's with the old Geneais core, I doubt even a 32x or cd core can be done with nuked

Unless it gets heavily optimized

[elder briar]

i had said that assuming it would be with the old genesis core, yeah. nuked genesis alone takes up way too much space to make it a possibility

personally i enjoy and still use the old genesis core, so i wouldn't mind if a combo core were based on that

[thorny pivot]

Adding CD support might be possible if the system works like @chrome moss mentioned. I recall reading as well that the extra hardware in the Sega CD isn’t used with 32X, so the scaling and rotation engine from the CD isn’t used and it’s performed in software on the 32X’s hardware. This means the CD isn’t used; it’s merely functioning as a transport for streaming data to the Genesis + 32X. If that’s the case though then it might still mean two separate cores. A 32X CD and Genesis (because you can’t have 32X without Genesis) and then a separate Sega CD core which also would be a Genesis core lol.

I’m just pulling this out of my ass though. I’m no D. Shadoff, but it makes sense to me.

[fickle hemlock]

you can't load a core dynamically bit by bit as required but you could always launch a different core with that part built in right

like to the user it looks like one core but behind the scenes its multiple rbfs for different scenarios

[thorny pivot]

Exactly.

It would be a waste to flesh out the vestigial Sega CD hardware in a 32X CD core. Would probably be better as a separate core.

[ivory shale]

Nuked is also very unoptimized for FPGA space, so if someone could work through it there might be significant space savings

[viscid gyro]

How is the 32x now days in terms of accuracy etc?

[elder briar]

not perfect but many fixes/optimizations found during development of the saturn core have been backported to the 32X one

maybe a new stable release soon since saturn just got one yesterday

[drowsy halo]

Anywhere that isn't 100% accurate is still a superior experience to hooking up a real 32x.

maybe I'll hook mine back up in 2026

[elder briar]

having a genesis with a sega cd and 32x is a nightmare of cables and compatibility issues. mister core wins on convenience alone

[drowsy halo]

Yeah i want to get one of those single outlet power adapters for all three

But mister core still wins. The main reason i am interested in 32x is to compare composite output to mister.

[thorny pivot]

It’s not that bad these days. I have a 3-way cable that connects all 3 consoles into a single 9v 3A switching power supply.

Compatibility wise it works fine! 🤷‍♂️

[elder briar]

the main issue is when using an everdrive. the sega cd core on the med pro won't work with a 32X connected

master system games and some larger genesis roms don't load either

[thorny pivot]

Ahh I see what you mean. Yeah, that’s certainly a limitation.

I have a separate Genesis for Master System and SCD via flash cart so that I don’t have to take apart the tower of power.

[elder briar]

i would love to use a real genesis again but i can't be bothered when the mister cores are as good as they are

if there was a way to have genesis, scd, 32x and master system all work on an everdrive without having to unplug anything, i would do it

[thorny pivot]

Yeah, I was hoping a mod PCB might come along to allow bus signaling for MS and SCD through the 32X but that’s wishful thinking.

I’ve considered offloading much of my real systems but in the back of my mind I feel like I’d end up buying them again. I got most of them dirt cheap before all things retro went bonkers and fixed most of them up myself, so I’m not really out much cash on them.

[prisma fiber]

Wasn’t there going to be a Nuked Master System core? I thought I heard that was their next project.

[drowsy halo]

How many Genesii do we need to run master system, Genesis, 32x, and sega cd without fpga cores?

3?

Schnoogums is doing it on two systems, but the sega cd is fpga, right?

[plucky flare]

there IS a nuked sms

it's not ported to mister

[prisma fiber]

Oh! My bad

[plucky flare]

Sorg ported the original nuked megadrive to mister. he seems to not want to port SMS after that experience

[prisma fiber]

Someday I plan to play thru Phantasy Star …will be my first exp with Master System. I never had one back in the day.

[old sierra]

The SMS core does so much more than just play SMS, so would be many steps back if Nuked core was available. That being said, could be useful as a reference on his to update the SMS core to make it more accurate and pass those tests that fail

[viscid gyro]

Thanks for answers on 32x. I like having the tower of power set up, but it is a bit unsightly lol. I'll stick with it for now until the 32x core matures a bit more.

[ivory shale]

How accurate is the SMS core?

[drowsy hemlock]

I was hoping there’d be a nuked SMS core one day

Just for the accuracy 😎

[woeful goblet]

We need a hero

[old sierra]

It would be better if someone were to look at fixing the test fails and doing a bit of polish on the current core, rather than us getting a bloated Nuked SMS core that can't do a lot of things the current SMS core can

[woeful goblet]

That would be great 2

[jade turret]

Don't forget that the Nuked MegaDrive core can also play SMS games, I use that instead of the SMS core.

[old sierra]

I do keep forgetting that. I wonder if there is scope to port over some of the SMS parts to the SMS core and increase accuracy there.

[glass shale]

Bloated Nuked SMS core? That’s a little bit harsh on something that would be super cool if it came to fruition!

[elder briar]

there is those custom sega neptune boards which, while they look awesome, are unfortunately saddled with the same issues as a regular genesis+32X setup. i was hoping there might be jumpers on the pcb or something to disable the 32X side when needed, but i guess that's not possible

i've sold off a good chunk of my real hardware and flash carts after getting a mister, since i find that the fpga cores are genuinely the best way to play. nes, snes, genesis, pc engine and neo geo are all best experienced on mister imo. i've owned all manner of consoles and flash solutions for snes, pc engine, etc. and nothing beats the convenience, accuracy, and all the extra features/tweaks the cores offer

the only consoles i've kept are ps1, saturn and n64. those cores are incredible, but not a replacement for the real deal just yet

[ivory shale]

I think it would be better to try to focus on optimizing the Nuked Megadrive core. It takes up practically all the FPGA due to being a wire-by-wire clone of the Genesis hardware, it was not optimized for being loaded on a FPGA. If we can reduce the space it takes we might be able to add 32X or CD to it rather than using the older Genesis core on those.

[stoic flame]

I haven't looked too closely at it, but I'd bet just making sure that it's using BRAMs for RAM (including VDP line buffers or whatever) would make a huge difference.

Just based on the assumption that a netlist-level clone is going to use a lot of async and dual-port stuff that made perfect sense for the tech at the time but won't infer the hard blocks on an FPGA.

[fading ermine]

Yupp but it's ported to MiST/SiDi though 😉

[plucky flare]

yeah, I don't think Sorg feels the effort is worth it. it would mean a lot of lost features over the existing one and he's prefer to not have two cores for one system

[fading ermine]

Right it makes sense and moreover the nuked core doesn't play GameGear games either which is a nice feature and would be a great loss 😑

[thorny pivot]

Aren’t there a couple of games that cannot be played outside of a real SMS?

[fallow dome]

Not minimizing your point but don’t we already have a Game Gear core?

Or are you saying that from the perspective of a “hardware complete” Mega Drive core?

[plucky flare]

the game gear core IS the sms core

[fallow dome]

is that bad?

[plucky flare]

no?

[fallow dome]

But you’re right we don’t have a game gear core, we have a SMS core

That’s what you meant

[plucky flare]

the current sms core does GG and some SMS based arcade games

nuked only does one model of the SMS

[fallow dome]

oh I didn’t even know it did SMS

right I’m silly, Mega Drive hardware wouldn’t do Game Gear

It would just do SMS

right?

[old sierra]

Yeah, part of the issue is GG has a higher colour range if I remember, so you can get a converter to play SMS games on a GG, but not vice versa

Likewise you can play SMS games on a Megadrive but not GG on a Megadrive

Despite SMS and GG Hardware being so similar

[fallow dome]

Thank you!

[spring lantern]

It’s a shame i can’t use my Game Gear TV tuner on my Mega Drive

[tulip surge]

2013 Microsoft here, we're excited by your idea

[woeful goblet]

I miss playing Super Boy I on the Master System core

[drowsy hemlock]

SMS is an underrated console. Probably the one I have the most nostalgia for outside of the PSX

[ivory shale]

Never had an SMS

In fact, first SEGA system I got was a Dreamcast, the only SEGA system I ever got that was still on store shelves when I got it.... I got a Saturn a few years later, and a Genesis about 8 or so years ago XD

Kinda went backwards with SEGA, I guess this means I will get a SMS someday then a SG-1000 when I am in my geriatrics 🤣

[drowsy hemlock]

SMS has Alex Kidd in Miracle World and a fantastic version of Fantasy Zone

[ivory shale]

And the first Phantasy Star

[drowsy hemlock]

I’ve never played it

[ivory shale]

I played through the first few hours

Plan tto play it in full some day

.. on an emulator on a 128MB flashdrive between classes in my college computer lab

Since my shitty schedule sometimes had hours of nothing between classes

I doubt I still have that save file, it was about 20 years ago XD

[fading hare]

You call yourself a SMS fan!?

Phantasy Star is the 🐐 Master System game!

[ivory shale]

Didn't it use some sort of FM addon accessory or something

[woeful goblet]

I am brazilian and SMS was released here when I had 11 years old (1989). SMS ruled in Brazil at the time. When I got mine, it seens like a dream came true

[fading hare]

I believe only in Japan.

[ebon quail]

I think so, a number of games used it, I think even some American exclusive ones did despite the addon never being released outside Japan

[ivory shale]

Oh, the US version does not have the FM audio? 🙁

[ebon quail]

Oh you meant the console as a whole, I thought you meant just Phantasy Star

[ebon quail]

Depends on the game iirc

[ivory shale]

Phantasy Star

[ebon quail]

Ok so looking it up, seems the American version removed the FM sound

[ivory shale]

Aww

[ebon quail]

But there are translations of the OG Japanese version, meaning you can still enjoy the game in English with FM if you want

[ivory shale]

Yeah, was going to ask if there are romhacks to add the english text to the Japanese version

Is it just putting the text from the english version in the japanese verison, or is it a fan translation?

[fading hare]

It's such a great game. Was legit mind blowing at the time of its release and holds up very well.

[ebon quail]

Fan translation

[ivory shale]

I would rather play the original translation for my first time

Ah 🙁

[ebon quail]

I recommend the fan translation tbh

It improves the experience a whole lot

[fading hare]

The Switch Sega Ages version is also very good.

[ivory shale]

How so? Fan translations are great if there is no other option but I find they can be hit or miss depending on how many liberties the translator decided to take. Remember that line about Ashe in Tales of Phantasia?

[chrome moss]

That’s not how you spell Alex Kidd in Shinobi World 🥷

[drowsy hemlock]

Shinobi on SMS is also good

https://youtu.be/IFADMoJP-bA

[ivory shale]

Hmm, I see two different translations for Phantasy Star, both re-translate the game and change some other things, not sure if I want either of them though. Wish I could just play the US version with FM sound, just for my first playthrough at least.

[jade turret]

Hey Zet, played a few games with this core and noticed Golf Magazine Presents - 36 great Holes Starring Fred Couples locks up at the beginning Sega Sports logo.

[timber bear]

Does the Sega CD core support cheats?

[carmine pine]

Yes

[timber bear]

Just discovered Bari-Arm. An amazing shooter

[carmine pine]

Oh yeah that one is super fun

[timber bear]

How did I miss this freaking cracker of a game

Amazing ost as well

[elder briar]

bari-arm is pretty great. robo aleste and sol-feace are good shmups as well

lords of thunder too though that's probably better experienced on pc engine

[timber bear]

That one got a great ost as well

[plain quiver]

Sorry for the late reply, I was searching when the core regressed.

Regression appeared between 20250618 (done myself) and 20250623 (unstable, until now)

[jade turret]

Thanks for checking, will open a ticket for it tomorrow on github.

[plain quiver]

Already done.

[jade turret]

You're the best, thanks again.

[glass shale]

Thanks LRG! 🙏

[ebon quail]

Trust me mate, the re translation is honestly the best way to go if you want to play Phantasy Star but with FM

[ebon quail]

Sorta, yeah it's technically the better version but luckily the base gameplay is so good that no matter what port, you'll have a great time

[elder briar]

very true. it's a great time either way

everyone owes it to themselves to play it at least once

[thorny pivot]

My favorite shooter on the SCD. The soundtrack is great. Track 11 boss music is a banger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brE3Cs4muok&list=PLREYF4RnDeQBbl2sN5ik5lYa-74rJShRV&index=11

I still have never beaten it though. Bayside Boss always gets me.

[timber bear]

Any other Sega CD shmups worth checking out?

[plain quiver]

Lords of Thunder.

Keio Flying Dragon.

Robo Aleste.

[elder briar]

sol-feace is alright as well, and a nice upgrade from the genesis original. silpheed is a lot of fun too if you can consider that a shmup

lords of thunder is excellent but i would recommend playing the pc engine version if you can

the sega cd library is certainly small, and not nearly as interesting as the pc engine cd, but there's absolutely some gems worth playing

[ivory shale]

That reminds me, was the SegaCD stable ever updated to fix those audio issues over analog?

[warm carbon]

no :/

I pinged sorg about it

but nothing yet, unfortunately

[ivory shale]

🙁 It's been quite a while at this point, not like it's a small bug either

[warm carbon]

Might be worth pinging him on your issue to say that it's been resolved with the unstable https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/MegaCD_MiSTer/issues/112

[ivory shale]

Not sure how to do that

[warm carbon]

I think you can just @ him on the issue

[ivory shale]

You mean here or on github?

[old sierra]

GitHub, Sorg isn't on Discord

[drowsy hemlock]

Could you imagine how many DMs he’d get if he was? Probably best for his sanity

[ivory shale]

Reminds me of when I was watching a streamer with a large chat try out Fortnite.... every two seconds the game went "You got a friend request!" "You got a friend request!" "Aww, someone wants to be friends!" "Somoeone sent you a friend request!" ... many times they were overlapping over each other XD

[fading hare]

But maybe he really is here, just in disguise! Maybe he's really Robby! Or maybe you're really Sorg!

[stone plinth]

Just reading over stuff; the new core is considered bloated as it's wire by wire? I thought that was what made it so badass?

I'll also add that I know absolutely nothing about FPGA cores other than they're actual magic.

[ivory shale]

https://youtu.be/FCo3gGDO2Uo?t=27

[drowsy hemlock]

Getting some incredibly weird behaviour on James Pond “stage 3” (actually the second stage if you pass the first) where if I die, or something goes wrong, the screen ends up going black and flickering or whatever. Game seems buggy as hell

No idea if it’s like this on original hardware though (don’t have my mega drive with me)

Latest stable MD core, default settings, no intro verified rom. And it’s the “underwater agent” game in the series

Genesis core seems to have disappeared on my MiSTer, so I can’t double check against that tonight

Will try and reproduce after a reboot in case it’s memory weirdness

[glass shale]

What game?

[drowsy hemlock]

Sorry, I thought I said. James Pond

The fact it seems to skip stage 2 suggests weirdness

[glass shale]

I’m old and almost blind so I apologize

[drowsy hemlock]

No, I actually missed it out 😅

[glass shale]

Will give it a try later on

[glass shale]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Genesis_MiSTer/blob/master/releases/Genesis_20230224.rbf

[plucky flare]

https://github.com/ajgowans/alt-cores

[drowsy hemlock]

Okay, it’s reproducible - skipping stage 2 is intentional, and the black screen can come back if you take enough damage but I can’t figure out what causes it. I think the game might be weird though - it feels janky af anyway

[elder briar]

the term eurojank had to come from somewhere

[drowsy hemlock]

It’s late here so I’ll try and dig into this tomorrow. I suspect it’s a game bug rather than a core problem tbh

[warm carbon]

did you grab the updated genesis core? If not I can check it there too

[drowsy hemlock]

Not yet - I don’t have my laptop to hand 😔

[warm carbon]

is east of eden stage 3?

or the one after that?

[drowsy hemlock]

Umm… something about dynamite and oil underwater

It says stage 3 at the top before the level starts

[warm carbon]

ahh ok

[drowsy hemlock]

No need to trouble yourself testing though. I can pick it up tomorrow

Just thought I’d mention it in case there were any huge James Pond fans who knew about this stuff 😅

[glass shale]

What a crappy game. I can’t play it. Sorry! 😔

[warm carbon]

thank god you said something - I thought I was just bad

[glass shale]

JP Codename Robocod is great though

[warm carbon]

(I am also bad)

[drowsy hemlock]

Just in case you were under the illusion that games journalism has gotten worse - according to Wikipedia, some said it was better than sonic back in the day 😂

And they made… 4 of them?

[split stratus]

I tried James Pond on both the latest unstable MegaDrive core and the older Genesis core and the same black screen issue occurs on both

It’s maybe possible they both have a bug but not likely

Probably game jank

[drowsy hemlock]

This doesn’t surprise me

It’s an EA game 😉

Thanks for testing all ❤️

[ivory shale]

James Pond? Isn't that game still getting re-released to this day?

[stone plinth]

Hell's bells

It wasn't even that good a game. Easy way to make some sales by grabbing onto people's nostalgia.

[drowsy hemlock]

I cleansed my soul by playing the mega drive port of sunset riders afterwards

[stone plinth]

It's an interesting port.

I actually quite like how short it is because I can beat it in like 20 minutes.

[glass shale]

This is a good one. At least the original Genesis version

[ebon quail]

Yeah from what I hear James Pond 2 is usually considered the better game.

[ivory shale]

This was the latest unstable of the SegaCD core with the fixed audio right? Trying to figure out which RBF I should ping sorg about in the github

[warm carbon]

yeah, whatever the latest unstable is. He knows it's good, he probably just forgot. I pinged him on the forums about it a couple of months back

[ivory shale]

Ok

[ivory shale]

Is there any easy way, if any way at all, to get a SegaCD save from my mister onto a real segacd?

[split stratus]

I haven’t done that specifically, but I think you could do that with an Everdrive. If you have a Sega CD connected you can boot a Sega CD bios like a game, and it’ll use the save of the same name as the bios you load

[ivory shale]

Don't have one 🙁

I am expirencing a lot of graphical corruption when playing a SegaCD game, wanted to see if that happens in real hardware too, because it's pretty blatant at times. I tried it in emulators (Had to hex edit my save file for bizhawk... again) and the same thing happened, so I am leaning towards the game is just like that... but some scenes are of the "How could the playtesters have possibly missed that" territory

One of them the entire background corrupts for about 5-10 seconds

I do have a SegaCD I could drag out, if I can get my save on it somehow

[topaz inlet]

Any time I use SNAC with the unstable S32X core from 8.8.25 or the stable Genesis32X core, it always defaults to Player 2. Is this a known issue or is there a setting I might be missing?

[ivory shale]

I remember I had a similar problem when I tried SNAC for Genesis, coulden't figure out how to get it to work right. Started to wonder if I soldered it wrong but there are litearlly no components on it TO solder wrong

I think there is some option though somewhere to swap controller assignments or something like that?

[topaz inlet]

It works like it’s supposed to in the cores for Genesis and SegaCD, just not 32X for some reason. I’ll have to do some digging.

[ivory shale]

Huh, I dind't even try segacd, it didn't work for me in genesis

Mind you that the SegaCD and 32X use the old genesis core

[plain quiver]

The 32x core cannot be updated at the moment, by my side.

Adding the latest SH7604 changes on the core literally brake Virtua Racing, some glitches appear on Chaotix and some other games.

So, we will need srg320 for checking and stabilizing everything another time.

[thorny pivot]

Which game?

[pallid meadow]

Hi all. I wonder if the saves of the MD core are compatible with other emulators, so I can continue with my save on another device.

[ivory shale]

Panic, also called Switch in Japan. Though if it counts as even a "game" is debatable, it's more a click a button and an animation plays thing.

Several scenes have graphical bugs, some only in the US version, some in both, the bit one I mentioned even happens in the PS2 port... though it's glitchy in a different way, hard to say if that one was intentional because it looks exactly like a bugged game

I found there is a code to skip around to where you want in a game so I guess a save isn't needed, but you would also need to know the internal number for that area

[ivory shale]

They should be. Just about all save files are given the extension .sav on MiSTer (n64 being the exception) but they are generally a standard save format just renamed .sav and I have had no trouble getting them to load on most meulators, and even real hardware

.... except Bizhawk because they just have to use their own annoying format

[thorny pivot]

I’ve played it. It’s a fun interactive cartoon. 🙂

If you key me know the codes and sequences I can try on both a burned CD and MegaSD. Won’t be able to try until tomorrow though.

[ivory shale]

I was able to find the code for the most glitchy room, it's 111. Do you know the scene scelect code?

That one was glitchy on both the US and Japanese versions, and the PS2 version, in emulators at least.

IIRC it was the middle bottom button

But the US version I had many other graphical glithces in dozens of other scenes

[thorny pivot]

I don’t know the code but I can do some googling tomorrow.

[ivory shale]

Yeah, it's on gamefaqs, not hard to find

"At the title screen, press: Right, Right, Down, Up, Left, Right, Up, Up, Left, Down."

Problem is then you choose a three digit number for the scene, and AFAIK there is no list of what scene is what number

The game uses a different naming scheme in-game for the scenes

If possible, could you test the US and Japan versions? I think more bugs might have been introduced in the US version

[thorny pivot]

What’s a description of the glitched scene so I know if I’m on the correct one?

[ivory shale]

Code is same for both

The entire background corrupts for like 5-10 seconds

Like, it displays random square tiles everywhere

Let me double check which button it is

Middle one on the bottom set of buttons

That's the biggest example, there are other much smaller ones I ran into in several other scenes, though I don't know their scene number, some I could not replicate in software emulation.

IIRC one scene has you in front of a model globe of the earth, I was getting a grid of dots all over my character when he was animated, I didn't see that happen in the emulated version, wasn't able to test it in the Japanese version mister or emulated

[broken pewter]

I thought a core was gonna drop today based on chatter in the Saturn thread 👀

[pallid meadow]

Thanks!

[plain quiver]

SH7604 updated to 2025-10-11.
Compiled by someone else yesterday and shared with me.

No evident changes found & Golf Magazine Presents - 36 great Holes Starring Fred Couples freezes after the SEGA Sports logo.

[fringe zodiac]

And the Virtua Racing and Chaotix regressions in there?

[plain quiver]

They work this time.

Probably some borked compilations yesterday from my part or I missed to import something to the project.

[versed rapids]

the implementation of ID/OD on SH2 is a new discovery ?

[plain quiver]

Yes.

New finding from celeriyacon on the Saturn system.

[versed rapids]

Great !

[spare summit]

Guys, try running this hack on MiSTer. Did it work for you?
https://shc.zone/entries/contest2025/1391

[drowsy hemlock]

Does it work on original hardware?

[spare summit]

Yes

[versed rapids]

Maybe a specific mapper or sram stuff for this hack

confirmed I have black screen also on my side

[old sierra]

No black screen on previous version?

[versed rapids]

Genesis Core ?

I don't have it on my MiSter

[old sierra]

Oh sorry, I am confusing two issues. I meant to ask, does the 32x Golf Magazine freeze reported happen on previous build

[warm carbon]

yeah, I think the previous unstable? although I have seen it in SAM so maybe the stable

[pallid wind]

Im trying to run MSU games on Mister but they only load to the cd player. I changed the MD names to cart.rom already.

Normal Sega CD games do work. These MSU games also work fine on my Everdrive Pro. Do they need additional patches?

[stuck gull]

dunno if you found what you were looking for but the sega ages switch port might be worth trying. i think i got it for <£5 and it seems to let you do customise options a lot

assuming you have a switch

[faint onyx]

No, you don't need patches for Mister. cart.rom for the game, and and a proper bin/cue for the CDDA tracks is fine. Should look like this:

cart.rom
Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (USA, Europe) (MSU-MD).bin
Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (USA, Europe) (MSU-MD).cue

[ivory shale]

Would have preferred to use my mister though rather than software emulation

[warm carbon]

@ivory shale not sure if you saw this https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/MegaCD_MiSTer/issues/112#issuecomment-3406894063

[ivory shale]

Yeah, just haven't had a chance to test it yet

Wasnt' sure who that was even directed at actually

[warm carbon]

If you have a setup for it, it would be good to have your ears on it. My guess is that he did a bunch of builds and grabbed the best fit and wants to make sure it's ok before promoting it

[ivory shale]

I set it to give me e-mail updates

[pallid wind]

Yeah Im not sure why the games arent working. They just boot to the cd player

[plucky flare]

the metadrive core has no way to read cds though...

[pallid wind]

Ok nvm. It boots the game up but with not cd sound. Hmm

It might be because I'm changing the file names on a Mac. I'll check on my PC later today

[past magnet]

Just saw sorgs patreon, has the day finally come?

[fickle hemlock]

oh did sorg fix that analog audio issue?

[velvet mural]

That's what the comment on the forum said

Time to test, i guess

[warm carbon]

The underlying issue (whatever it is) isn’t fixed. But it can be mitigated by seed, so I believe this build is ok

[past magnet]

Oh didn’t look but saw he mentioned framework and thought maybe it was more

[plain quiver]

Did someone tested Coloco DX (a recent homebrew by MegaCat Studios) on the core ?

[celest mango]

Yeah, the patched version seems to work well, I still don't believe it can save tho

[plain quiver]

Ok, it needs patching.

[fading hare]

A Mac would have nothing to do with it. I use a Mac and have never had issues of any kind with files on MiSTer. Including Genesis/MD MSU1 stuff. Something else would have to be the cause.

[versed rapids]

For Coloco DX FBNeo added some codes to support SRAM of this game

[pallid wind]

No that was the issue. It wasn't changing my extensions