Sega Mega Drive/CD/32X

[elder briar]

i think it's a way better game than sonic 1 at the very least

[drowsy halo]

Sonic 2 is great. It's got invincible Miles. The best split screen racing. Pretty good emerald levels.

Incredible commercials

[stuck gull]

I don’t know why people say this bc sonic 1 has impeccable vibes

[drowsy halo]

Perhaps people need to be reminded of the many uses of a Sonic 2 Cartridge case.

[stuck gull]

And solid platforming

Sonic 2 has chemical plant zone and tails

Personally I think I’d rank cd over 2

[elder briar]

probably because the speed/pacing of the game completely dies after green hill zone

[stuck gull]

Gotta go fast

[elder briar]

it doesn't pick back up until star light, and by then you've had to suffer through labyrinth zone. it's just boring imo

[stuck gull]

Labyrinth Zone is a bit of a chore

I think the master system version has better gameplay

That hack with the megadrive versions assets somehow squeezed onto the sms was amazing

[drowsy halo]

I own two copies of Sonic 1 and two of Sonic 2

Proof that they are both good

They're that good

[stuck gull]

Compelling argument indeed

I think I own all the game gear ones lol

[void eagle]

I have the US and JP versions of Sonic 1-2 and put the JP versions in the US boxes. I also have the EU SMS version and a few of the GG games.

[drowsy halo]

The evidence keeps on piling up

[void eagle]

Don't forget the infamous act 3 of Scrap Brain Zone

[elder briar]

real

that's another thing i like better in 2; two acts per zone rather than three

[stuck gull]

Metropolis zone though

Did they ever update sonic origins to let you just play the games normally? Without the origins additions to the Christian whitehead versions

[elder briar]

i don't believe so

[drowsy hemlock]

Sonic 2 > Sonic 1. SMS Sonic 1 > Mega Drive Sonic 1

Agree that sonic 1 goes downhill real fast

Except when he doesn’t in every level after green hill zone

Sonic 2’s final bosses though

Like the last 2

[stuck gull]

The 3DS version of sonic 1 is the nicest presentation of it imo

[drowsy hemlock]

And I’ve never played Sonic 3 or Sonic & Knuckles

[stuck gull]

Everything pops with the 3d and the game is slow enough that is looks cool

[elder briar]

wtf

[fickle hemlock]

i like that romhack that adds the like, spin-dash thing and saving

[drowsy hemlock]

I only had Sonic 1 back in the day and I didn’t beat it. I bought a second hand cart of sonic 2 and it didn’t work - then more recently (on the MiSTer actually) I played them, but I didn’t want to move on from each until I beat the preceding game, because what’s the point?

So far I’ve beat Sonic 1, I can consistently get to the end of Sonic 2 but can’t beat the damn final boss, and I got sick to death of replaying it to get that far. I played a bit of Sonic CD but didn’t finish it because the game is terrible; and so I haven’t started Sonic 3 yet 🙂

[fickle hemlock]

use a cheat for infinite lives at least you can avoid some of the grind

[drowsy hemlock]

I can get to the end without problems. Lives are only the issue on the final boss - but why would I cheat? Kinda defeats the point of the game imo

I could equally use an emulator and save states, but again, it’s cheating 🙂

[fickle hemlock]

idk, i find repeating stuff i already did so maddening i'd probably quit instead of ever finishing it

[drowsy hemlock]

And there we are

That’s why I haven’t played Sonic 3 yet 😉

Or any game in the Contra series past the first one, or any Mega Man game past the first one, etc etc

[fickle hemlock]

in a game like contra where yoiu just respawn on the spot, yeah infinite lives kinds of ruins it

[drowsy hemlock]

Or Super Mario Bros 2, 3, Super Mario World etc 😉

[fickle hemlock]

in sonic your going back to at least the last checkpoint anyway

[stone plinth]

Sonic 2's final boss is generally just about keeping calm

[elder briar]

that's crazy, i never thought the final boss of sonic 2 was that bad, but i've been playing it since i was small. the safe strat is just to wait until he lands and ducks

[stone plinth]

Until the collision goes weird and you fall through the boss into the arms and die

[drowsy hemlock]

He’s not the problem. I felt I could beat him, it was Robotnik before

Final Robotnik on the plane is annoying as hell

[stone plinth]

Ohhh

[elder briar]

oh the laser on the ceiling?

[drowsy hemlock]

Yep, that one

[stone plinth]

It can get a bit hectic. My professional gamer advice is to not get hit.

[drowsy hemlock]

And the spike platforms and whatever

[stuck gull]

Sonic 2 is the hardest

Especially getting all emeralds

[stone plinth]

Yeah I hate the sonic 2 special stages

[stuck gull]

I think I’ve done it but it’s annoying

[drowsy hemlock]

That bullshit doesn’t count to me 😄

I don’t like the game that much

[stone plinth]

The game rewards you for getting all 7 chaos emeralds by soft locking when you jump during the act clear screen with 50 or more rings

[elder briar]

yeah that ceiling boss is tough. i usually brute force it with rings lol

fuck the half pipe special stages though. the "bad" ending is the canon one anyway to me lol

[stone plinth]

My issue with Sonic 2 is just that it's so damn long. I usually hit the wall at Oil Ocean Zone.

[drowsy hemlock]

I’d rather grind through SMB1 again. I always run out of lives before I get to world 8 😭

[stone plinth]

I think I've only beaten it on GBC

The save system helps.

People will say it's cheating. I say I don't care and their validation means nothing to me.

[elder briar]

SMB3 is way too long not to have a save system as well imo

[stone plinth]

Oh god yes

I'm 36 years old with a full time job. No chance in hell I'm beating SMB3 in a single sitting.

It's like these games were aimed at unemployed children or something.

[drowsy hemlock]

Save states are valid if you play by the “it’s the same as leaving it on overnight” rule imo

So if you restart and lose all your lives, you have to go back to the beginning, you can’t use the save state 🙂

[elder briar]

agreed

[drowsy hemlock]

I mean, or play how you enjoy the game, but that’s the rule that I use

[stone plinth]

I tend to save state where I'd imagine a well designed game would have a password or save

[drowsy hemlock]

Most of those old games were just endurance games anyway too

As in getting to the end without losing all your lives

[stone plinth]

The exception is if I have to do something tedious. Super Castlevania IV's last boss where you have to go down the invisible stairs to get the power ups. I savestate after that bit because I get nothing from redoing it over and over.

[elder briar]

you lose the satisfaction of finding a cool secret

[drowsy hemlock]

There’s a castlevania after the first one?

(Actually I’ve played SotN)

[stone plinth]

At least the Castlevania games had passwords/saves

Oh here's another good example, games that give you a password when you get a game over. Balls to that. I'm save stating.

[fading hare]

I save state after every few steps. Can't risk losing any progress if I take damage!

[drowsy hemlock]

Ditto

[ivory shale]

Gotta love the ones that give you a password, but no continue option.

[ebon quail]

You aren't even wrong. The only great thing about Sonic 2 is that its development made SoA realize forcing two development teams with different mindsets on design and literal game quality while also having literal language barriers to work together was a terrible idea.

[void eagle]

Interesting that the programmer of Taz and Quadrun on the 2600 was involved with Sonic 2.

[fallow dome]

I mean you live and learn, they were hanging onto the edge of tomorrow.

[pale plover]

Sonic 2 definitely has that problem where the rushed development caused the game to feel inconsistent. Like a classic example of high highs and low lows.

[fallow dome]

Well, live and learn, from the works of yesterday.

The team there probably lived and learned, knew if they begged or borrowed. They would live and learn and never find their way.

https://tenor.com/view/sonic-sonic-the-hedgehog-shadow-the-hedgehog-super-sonic-super-shadow-gif-10055515130327299472

[ebon quail]

Pretty much

[drowsy hemlock]

None of the lows are as low as 70% of sonic 1

[elder briar]

the back half of sonic 2 definitely drags (why is metropolis 3 acts instead of 2?) but it's still an infinitely better game than sonic 1

spindash was an excellent addition to sonic's moveset and the level design compliments his speed far better than anything in the previous game

[drowsy hemlock]

Yep. Metropolis zone definitely drags

Would have been better if that were kept at 2 acts

[elder briar]

absolutely

[brave token]

I'm really curious the difference between "load rom", "reset", and "load core" and if those operations differ a lot between the megadrive core and the genesis core.

If anyone knows anything about this I'd really appreciate it.

(This is for the savestate / rom building tool I made - I'm really struggling to figure out why a few savestates only fail after resets/load roms but not load core and I can't repro on any emulator)

[drowsy hemlock]

Load core = new console
Load rom = play a game on the current console
Reset = reset the console

[brave token]

Yes but there is state remaining on these operations (memory not being reset etc, unclear what vdp and z80 state would be etc) and not clear if this is a soft or hard reset.

Sorry I recognize these are vague questions. Getting a little out of my depth around genesis hardware unfortunately and it is really hard to debug when I can't replicate in a software emulator.

[fading hare]

Unsure if this helps understand anything, but when you have a game loaded, it usually stays in memory even if you switch to a new core. Like for example, if you loaded a Genesis game in the Mega Drive core, you could switch to the old Genesis core and it will sometimes already be loaded and play. I've even had that happen when switching to the Sega CD core from the Genesis core (usually with glitchy results).

[fallow dome]

These questions sound like something Yuji Naka would ask. And he’s in jail.

[brave token]

[fallow dome]

lmao sorry, they’re great questions.

[earnest coyote]

Any Sega Channel fans?

[shut aspen]

oh right, the sega channel leaked stuff works on mister

[earnest coyote]

Just the ROMs themselves. This is something else using a modified core for a working Sega Channel menu that play the ROMs.

[warm carbon]

Doing the lord's work, Shane

[manic ridge]

such a great movie

[broken pewter]

Sega Channel is now being re-implemented in Mister?

Cool

[earnest coyote]

Well not quite yet. This is using a ROM hack that BillyTime! Games makes that only works in a custom emulator.

It uses extra large ROMs and a custom mapped that can address the large ROMs, and the ability to even swap the bank at index 0 for changing the game

So I implemented those features and fixed some bugs in the ROM hack so it would run without asserting the CPU

But after this is done I'm going to start looking at the released firmware and see what it will take to get running.

[manic ridge]

So will this be it's own core?

Looks awesome BTW, my dad had this for a while it's how I played Comix Zone

[manic fractal]

that's so cool, been hoping to see something like that for Sega Channel ever since Satellaview was figured out (on emus anyway)

[earnest coyote]

I think the Sega Channel Revival changes can probably be integrated back into the main code but I don't know if the PR would be accepted since this is to run a hack. My plan is to start doing actual Sega Channel hardware implementations next, which would require its own core most likely.

I'm just starting with this fork and rom hack first and seeing where things go.

[brave token]

I've noticed that too! It was funny since I had a bug where it didn't load on megadrive and I was shocked when I switched and the game just started running

So the current issue is the rom runs properly if it is the first rom opened after "load core". If you hit "reset" or load the same rom again or a different rom and go back to it, it fails. So it is some state that is reset with "load core" and nothing else. So hard to debug though .

And also something where every genesis emulator I've tried and the genesis core seem to also clear that state.

[velvet mural]

You're implementing server side ? Or is it a client-only implementation ?

[earnest coyote]

Client only is my focus for now

The BillyTime hack has everything together as one giant binary but when I start looking into Sega Channel hardware emulation I'm going to look into streaming the games through a VHD or something

I'd love to have it reading the data on a loop just like it did on coax and having to wait for the right data.

[velvet mural]

Any idea how long the loop was ?

Did it run for multiple hours, or less than an hour ?

[old sierra]

Is this going to be doable on the Nuked MD core? That one by all accounts is pretty horrible to work on and pretty full

JesusFish has a fork of the old Genesis core with updated .sys if you were needing to dig about with that one incidentally

[earnest coyote]

That's the core I'm using for this current hack and it is indeed a pain because it takes forever to compile heh

[old sierra]

Maybe worth doing on the old Genesis core and then porting that over to Nuked once it is working?

[earnest coyote]

The cartridge and SDRAM implementations were nice in the new core though, so it was still a good candidate

Typically I prototype on the old Genesis core for that reason.

[earnest coyote]

I believe the loop itself was just a few minutes long but it was on 24/7

Going off some really old memories I can't remember ever waiting for more than 5 minutes for something to load.

[velvet mural]

Ah OK. Sounds cool. the loop could be inplemented like a HDD or a CD just playing on repeat

[earnest coyote]

Right exactly. That's why I was thinking VHD maybe.

The current method of loading the whole thing into RAM first before the core starts isn't ideal.

[manic ridge]

would be sweet if Shane picked a different game every week and the core connected to read a file off github or whatever and load the game lol

or games, rather

[earnest coyote]

You could have a script that swaps in the binary based on the date

Waking up early on the 1st of the month to check out the new games for the full nostalgia trip.

[drowsy hemlock]

Hitting a server and getting a list of games could be very cool for a #game-of-the-month style thing

Obviously game dumps would need to be provided by the users

[velvet mural]

Oh I see what you mean... the core boots while the HPS continues to fill DDR. At some point, the directory becomes availabe, and you can choose, and if the game is within the area in DDR (or rather, when it is eventually in DDR), then it can download, and it even though it works the same as it would have back then, the delays are probably going to be smaller, and load times less boring.

You don't have to wait for it all to be present; you just have to see the directory

[earnest coyote]

Currently it doesn't boot until the whole thing is loaded but that is one improvement that could be made. But I'd rather have that next iteration be authentic with a loop.

Current core is just a custom bank mapper

[velvet mural]

Did the loop ever vary ? i.e month-to-month ?

[earnest coyote]

That can address a LOT of bank offsets

[earnest coyote]

That's a good quest. I assume it's based on the total game data. I don't know if it's a static size with buffer as needed or not.

I still need to poke around everything that was found in the recent drop.

[fallow dome]

bone_thugs.mp3

[ivory shale]

Feeling like it's own core might be a better idea at this point, I know that it's branching it out for one thing, but it's pretty extensive, especially if it will be built upon nuked.

Also I feel that intentionally limiting yourself to making the games cycle every month is trying a bit too hard to relive the nostalgia 🤣

Would rather have the everything at once list idea

Think of it as accesing a "Everything is here final update" version 😛

[versed rapids]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/S32X_MiSTer/commit/c02128054e8eb7b08c659a3a1b90c53a3feeafda

[plain quiver]

One more down.

srg320 is the beast.

[lethal prairie]

Pretty sure that’s impossible with the de-10 and the nuked md core

[fringe zodiac]

Well, just 6 official games used that AFAIR. And not an important one among them. And most games had better ports on 3DO and other consoles. Maybe the tower of power Surgical Strike being slightly better than the MegaCD version?

[old sierra]

It isn't happening on the DE-10 Nano, but if CD32x ever does happen in the future I don't think the Megadrive core is actually needed, it would be "just" the Mega CD and 32x cores.

[old sierra]

I am running on the assumption that the Mega CD and 32x core have all the Mega Drive parts in them already

[spring lantern]

Sega problems demand Sega solutions. Start stacking DE-10 nanos together

[versed rapids]

You miss also the VPD for virtua racing MD version

[spring lantern]

Virtua Racing (Gen) is incompatible with 32X, no?

[plain quiver]

No SVP code on the s32x core.

[fallow dome]

pins also updated

[sage prairie]

Such a diligent Pinist.
A Pinisseur even.

[elder briar]

if anyone could try out spiderman: web of fire on the latest core, that would be nice. i want to make sure i'm not crazy before i open an issue ticket on github lol. looking specifically for corrupted graphics and slowdown (presumably where there shouldn't be)

[manic coral]

I'll give it a try in 30-60 minutes

[elder briar]

thank you 🫂

[plain quiver]

I checked against some videos last week, but didn't see any more slowdown than on the real game so far.
But a second check is necessary.

If you see some sorrupted graphics, it should be better to have some screenshots, just to be sure when comparing.

[manic coral]

i will capture some video of the game running on MiSTer. it would be good if someone with a 32X and the game could capture it running on hardware as well for comparison. there aren't many videos i can find on youtube

i will say i didn't really see anything glitched visually on hardware, just that the game itself is kind of janky and slippery. it was all composite capture (as one might expect for 32x), so detail can be at a premium

@elder briar what kind of glitches were you seeing?

[elder briar]

mostly garbled graphics on the player and enemy sprites iirc, and significant slowdown in level 2 that i didn't see on real hardware capture

[night cape]

32X have the Dtack line disconnected from cart slot input, reconnect it again and Genesis VR runs with 32X attached.

[manic coral]

i don't think this happens on hardware, but someone with a 32X and capture card please prove me wrong

tons of one-frame graphics glitches and corruptions on The Amazing Spider-Man: Web of Fire (32X)

i'm not sure some of the slowdown i saw on the core occurs on hardware either but that one will need careful testing unless the game really just never fully slows down like that on hardware

i've got about 20 minutes of footage of the game on MiSTer that shows the graphics glitching in a variety of ways. we still lack good hardware footage for comparison unless someone can provide

also like... is the game supposed to sound like it is clipping the mister audio? lol

sounds truly awful

also also... it sounds like the same death sound effect as jurassic park 🙂

@elder briar https://youtu.be/n0wIpziaFmEh

might need a minute to process...

[night cape]

Is the date on the rbf file correct? Or it should be 2025? I mean, the rbf is 20251222 and not 20231222

[elder briar]

thank you for all the testing! video is still processing but yes, those single frame glitches are exactly what i was experiencing

[manic coral]

thanks, fixed. it is indeed 20251222

also scenes where this is just flickering in and out over the HUD

here's a pretty sustained bout of slowdown: https://youtu.be/n0wIpziaFmE?si=VWjsId2ZtT7oYEcA&t=592

you get this 'T' flickering over the HUD on level 3

and more of these in heavier moments

i put the images in this album https://imgur.com/a/T1diZPp in case you need them for your github issue

[elder briar]

thanks so much for the pictures and video meauxdal, working on opening the issue ticket now

opened!

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/S32X_MiSTer/issues/65

[torn dome]

MiSTer be like

[manic coral]

srg320 confirmed the issue, great catch finding those! it still mostly plays OK but it'd be great to have that game working flawlessly

not the best game but the web-swinging is honestly pretty fun, there's nice momentum to it

the combat is a bit shite lol

[plain quiver]

Great work, I missed that issue when playing rapidly on the game.

[manic coral]

are there other 32X games we need footage for? Mortal Kombat? Kolibri?

[plain quiver]

Kolibri & Mortal Kombat, we should have them somewhere in the issue log.

Here for Kolibri.
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/S32X_MiSTer/issues/37

For MK II, we should have a footage from another user from some weeks ago.
Desktop archaeology in progress

[manic coral]

Looks like most of that is covered. If you end up not finding the MK2 footage you need, i'm happy to upload some more

[plain quiver]

#1096614378968727652 message

[manic coral]

nice

[versed rapids]

https://fxtwitter.com/Jaume96749222/status/1995480576560611672?s=20

TheNomCognom (@Jaume96749222)

#SGDK Testing raster on video to cut down half the size. The paletre issues are my bad.

**💬 2 🔁 7 ❤️ 34 👁️ 2.3K **

▶ Play video

FxTwitter · Dec 1, 2025, 1:10 PM

[versed rapids]

Working on MiSTer but no music because require a specific chip

[plucky flare]

no

[warm carbon]

no room and, iirc, it was kind of a ridiculous implementation

but the default is always no room

that's the real joy of the mega drive core

1. We could probably do this on the Genesis core, but the Mega Drive core is the more accurate one, so all feature should be done there.

2. There is no room for features on the Mega Drive core. There may be room on the Genesis core for it.

3. Goto 1

yeah I think so? at least there was some sort of basic support

[plucky flare]

it was still a 'just play these recorded sound file' variety of support

I'm not sure if all the reversing of the sound chip was completed

[glass shale]

Paprium is just a mediocre game that doesn't deserve more LEs from the DE10-Nano 😌

[carmine pine]

It's a workaround like zakk said yeah.

[glass shale]

Wanna play crappy games in a crappy way, there's RA!

And Rasp Pi!

[ivory shale]

I would love to see Paprium on MiSTer, but done properly. The current implementation on RetroArch and Everdrive is an incomplete hackish solution

The music hardware has not been reverse engineered, so they just took the game's soundtrack ripped into wav files from the soundtrack cd and make the game play those for it's music

[vital idol]

is that any different from the generally accepted technique of using sound samples in other situations? Don’t some of the arcade cores use them?

[ivory shale]

Reminds me of when the SDD-1 was not fully implemented in ZSNES yet and you had to run a program on the ROM that decrypted the graphics into like 20MB of files that you had in a folder with the same name as the ROM that the emulator would load in their place

[ivory shale]

If the game was originally doing that then that's what would be implemented, but this is a bypass because the hardware is not fully emulated

[carmine pine]

Yes, that's the same, and I wish that compromise wasn't made originally, but it is what it is now.

[ivory shale]

The problem is when you use a hackish solution like this to bypass doing something for real, people tend to rely on that solution for years to come and not care about doing it properly because "Well, we got it working now"

This bypass solution also tends to break over the years as technology advances

[woeful goblet]

Paprium should be on MiSTer, even if the only reason is to wish Fonzie a Merry Christmas.

[ivory shale]

I mean, you could load retroarch on the de-10's ARM cpu if you wanted...

Utterly defeats the purpose of the mister and would be a horrible expirence since it's ARM cpu is pretty lacking but technically that would have "paprium on mister"

In the same way that this is technically water on Mars:

[fallow dome]

Someone said Pi, I’m here

[faint onyx]

Glutton! Back to health, it seems to me.

[proper agate]

I believe Pitfall II is often emulated using a dump that contains the 255 bytes that are output by the hardware pseudo random number generator. Dunno if Mister has to do that or not.

[elder briar]

the sega CD core supports MSU-MD right? maybe someone could make a hack of paprium that just loads the music that way

also i will stand by the fact that i don't think the old genesis core should've been depreciated. it's still my preferred option and deserves further development imo

[stone plinth]

I agree that the genesis core has a lot of potential

Its great that other cores are getting additional features and improvements, it's just a bit of a shame that the new Megadrive core has kind of hit a wall. In no way am I trying to minimise the colossal work that has gone into both cores btw

[elder briar]

we've seen a bunch of other cores get some very notable improvements lately thanks to the hard work of various devs. NES, SNES, PS1, N64, etc. i would love to see SMS and genesis get some more time in the limelight too

[sage prairie]

See #1096614378968727652 message for Genesis improvements

[elder briar]

i specifically mentioned the old genesis core though

[sage prairie]

So did I

[elder briar]

https://tenor.com/view/cat-holding-head-cat-sad-cat-rahh-wahhhh-gif-11843610789762008433

[earnest coyote]

I'd love to play the game I purchased years ago and never received.

@warm carbon I think someone mentioned you were maintaining a Genesis core with updated sys and whatnot? I may want to rebase some things off of that fork.

[warm carbon]

absolutely, man. https://github.com/TheJesusFish/Genesis_MiSTer

i haven't done a sys update in 6 months, but it should be as easy as swapping the folder - I don't think anything else needs to change

I can do that real quicxk

[earnest coyote]

Awesome, thanks

Oh yeah not much going on there but swapping sys. I sort of wish the old core wasn't archived.

[woeful goblet]

I would add Mega Cd to the list too

Unfortunately, it seems that the SMS and Mega CD cores have been forgotten.

[elder briar]

all of them need some love honestly

32X has been receiving steady updates, which is awesome, but it's mostly just optimizations found in the saturn core being backported

[old sierra]

SMS core definitely could benefit from some love

[fallow dome]

I’m honestly completely fine if the MiSTer core never supports Paprium.

I don’t have any desire to ever play that game and I think I’ll be fine.

[past magnet]

You don’t get to decide that

[fallow dome]

[elder briar]

i'm a big advocate of having as much to play as possible, but paprium is so bizarre (technically speaking), i don't think i'd lose any sleep over it not being supported

[fallow dome]

Yeah that’s basically where I’m conning from

[earnest coyote]

Even the Mega Everdrive Pro implementation is wonky

[woeful goblet]

Fonzie deserves to see Paprium running everywhere for free

Now seriously, I think Paprium is a great game and one of the best beat’n’up game from any console

[fallow dome]

I don’t know about him deserving anything, I have no emotional attachment to it.

If it’s a cool game then awesome, but it’s a very complex hardware setup for just one game. I don’t think anyone should lose sleep over integrating it since it’s such an outlier. Not saying you think they should, it’s just my own perspective.

If someone wants to do it then awesome, more power to them. Obviously I can’t and I don’t want to stop anyone from chasing their dreams.

[vital idol]

Not with that attitude you can’t

[fallow dome]

I know you’re joking but yeah you’re right. I’m pooping on something someone loves and that doesn’t help.

[warm carbon]

Sys updating @earnest coyote. Core feels a little wonky. Takes a longer amount of time to "start" than I would expect. probably could use a tune up if you're going under the hood

I'll submit the updated core to the alt core database so it should come down one moondandy wakes up

[earnest coyote]

I was thinking of aligning some of the outer layers to be closer to Mega Drive so I could potentially dev on Genesis and more easily port to Mega Drive

I really like Cartridge.sv in Mega Drive, for example

Compile times on Mega Driver 😭

[warm carbon]

you could also fork it and make it its own core for sega channel (assuming that's what you're doing)

oh dude, and mega drive never meets timing either

core is just unruly

[earnest coyote]

Sega Channel Revival is already built and running on the Mega Drive core

Basically done now since I can't really do some features I'd like without a more major overhaul. I'll save that for doing a full implementation with real firmware.

If I tweak some things I could try for a PR into Mega Drive but it feels a bit weird since these are ROM hacks

I need a bit more time to consider how I want to do it because I wouldn't want to have to argue to get this into the main core then a few months later have a "real" Sega Channel implementation.

[fallow dome]

I don’t fully understand what you’re doing @earnest coyote but we are so very fortunate to have you here with us and helping revive such an amazingly cool service.

[ivory shale]

I just want to have homebrew/hacks that work on real hardware to run on the mister cores too.

[earnest coyote]

So BillyTime, an awesome ROM hacker, took some of the Sega Channel data and built ROMs that mimic the various monthly releases with all the correct intros, load screens, menus, games, etc

But it only runs on a specific emulator (mostly by chance)

[ivory shale]

There's also some kind of Master one that has all them at once right?

[earnest coyote]

So I worked with him to fix the bugs in his ROMs and then I implemented the features needed to run on MiSTer. Custom mapper, 128MB SDRAM support, etc

[fallow dome]

That’s wonderful of you!

[earnest coyote]

If there is that would be way too massive.

The largest is already 80+ MB

Largest monthly release

One feature I can't do is stream in the games so it all has to load into RAM first, which is a bummer

[ivory shale]

I think it was mentioned loading it as a hard drive image or CHD

Ah

[earnest coyote]

Right, so if I do a "real" Sega Channel core I'd implement the cable TV data loop by using a VHD or something

Out of scope for the hacks

Last night I did do a test where I started the ROM after the first 4MB loaded then had the ROM loop on the load screen until the rest of the ROM loaded

The initial load screen on Sega Channel is interactive

However, MiSTer will show the loading bar and won't let you read USB controller inputs

SNAC still works

[ivory shale]

I am guessing a full image would be larger than a CD?

[velvet mural]

Hey by the way, remember we talked about XE-1AP a while back ? Turns out that I only implemented the "Computer" mode, and I still have to check a few things before the "console" mode can be available, so it's not ready for plug-and-play just yet. But I think I know what's needed, I just need to find time to get to the research again

Maybe springtime

[elder briar]

i thought the version from the genesis mini was only possible on theoretical hardware

would be cool to see it implemented in an emulator or something, but might not be worth the effort since no other games outside of space harrier II make use of it iirc

i think that puyo puyo VS game was dumped as well right?

[ivory shale]

Do we know for sure if they basically added additional hardware to pull it off?

[earnest coyote]

I added a "more sprites" mode to the Genesis core as one of my first MiSTer contributions way back when. Does it help this game?

[manic ridge]

You probably can't lol

[hard oar]

it's accurate up to the cracking part 😄

those ROMs stayed undumped for a while, but we have them now

I remember M2 did give out some specs of their imaginary hardware, but I can't find them

[spare urchin]

I think it was described in the documentation that came with the Sega 3D Classics Collection for 3DS

[earnest coyote]

Oh I meant does it get rid of the clicker from the original MD ROMs

[hard oar]

That's a different imaginary hardware

[spare urchin]

Oh. I need to keep better track of imaginary hardware

[hard oar]

What they did could differ, or maybe not. As for the emulator, somebody with the skills to do it should care about it, and I doubt they do

M2 also did some shenanigans to make their GG Aleste unemulable I think

[earnest coyote]

GG Aleste 3 has been playable for a bit now. There were some hooks into the emulator that were outside normal calls but not critical.

[earnest coyote]

If anyone is interested in checking out the Sega Channel Revival ROMs on their MiSTer, a core has been released that supports them. https://x.com/i/status/2005184741050577140

BillyTime!Games (@BillytimeG)

Huge Thanks for 2000 followers! @iequalshane has finished and allowed me to release the Sega Channel Revival core for MiSTer!!

A 128 SDRAM module is required, now you too can enjoy Sega Channel as It was presented back in 1996!

Link in the comments!

X · Dec 28, 2025, 7:51 AM

[idle shuttle]

Trying out the September 96 release. This is amazing! It works with all of them? I haven't messed with the sc revival stuff before so not aware if all of them are in a self contained rom like the ones released recently are

[earnest coyote]

All the monthly ones should work for 94-96

Whatever BillyTime has released. He did an update to fix some bugs I found on them all iirc

Any new one should also work

[warm carbon]

I’m saving myself for a sega channel core. I’d hate for my first experience with the sega channel to be cycle inaccurate:)

[ivory shale]

Is this still being worked on for now or are all the monthly releases ready?

[edgy ruin]

Just in case you missed it, someone recently added Sega Channel hardware emulation in MAME. It can be used to run the .img file that was released some time ago and contains Sep, 1996 Sega Channel data stream
https://bsky.app/profile/superctr.bsky.social/post/3mao3spc6us2a
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/14712

ian karlsson (@superctr.bsky.social)

The Sega Channel adapter is now emulated! This uses the very same data packets that were broadcast in September 1996 and preserved on a transmission disc that was recently dumped.

Currently it lives in my MAME branch. I'll try to clean up the packet loading and then hopefully get it merged.

▶ Play video

Bluesky · Dec 23, 2025, 3:46 PM

[earnest coyote]

1994 and 1995 are done and he's been rolling out 1996 months still.

[earnest coyote]

This is eventually what I want to have running on MiSTer with streaming data.

[old sierra]

Unrelated, but did you ever look into the Mega Play and Mega Tech arcade systems? They seem to be just the Mega Drive and SMS consoles in arcade form with a BIOS baked into the ROM, but I have no idea how Mame handles them. Potentially something that could be supported?

[fallow dome]

Ok, I updated the [Important Info](#1096614378968727652 message) pin to clean it up and add a link to the Sega Channel Revival project

[earnest coyote]

Believe it or not, I've already hacked the Mega Play bios to play all Genesis games.

Which is step 1 of my longer plan for that hardware.

Mega Play has an additional z80 and SMS VDP for handling arcade support. The games that run on it operate more similar to arcade games where the Mega Tech is just time limits.

Mega Play was difficult hardware to get my hands on 😅

[void eagle]

What about system C, which Thunder Force AC is based on?

and Sega's arcade Tetris (two variants already on mister) also has a variant on Taito hardware. Bloxeed has a system C variant.

[elder briar]

system C is awesome, but i think there's a lot more going on under the hood with that, despite being genesis-based

[earnest coyote]

I was going to do System C years ago but someone had claimed it I thought.

Then I moved on to Pico that is uh... still not 100%

[elder briar]

i hope we get system C someday eventually. would be right at home on mister imo

[old sierra]

The SMS core could do with some love if you are interested in that one

[broken pewter]

this sega channel stuff is very impressive, can’t wait to see more

[earnest coyote]

What's not working well there?

[old sierra]

Check the issues on GitHub, but across the board there is a buffet of different issues that could be addressed:
-Test ROM fails
-Audio inaccuracies
-Missing mappers
-OSD BIOS loading
-SC-1000 ROM issues (that are fine on the Colecovision core)
-Keyboard support
-SG-3000 support (building up from other fixes and features)

That is off the top of my head, but the core has plenty of opportunities to be improved if anyone is willing to pick it up.

[fallow dome]

@earnest coyote the Sega Channel stuff is seriously really cool. I have super vague memories of playing it at a friend's house and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Thanks for helping all of us enjoy it again!

[elder briar]

i remember seeing some graphical issues in virtua fighter animation. not sure if there's an issue for that, i can open one later if not

[earnest coyote]

Keyboard support sounds fun.

[fallow dome]

Making MGL files for the Sega Channel games. What index should they be?

index="1"

[old sierra]

That would be one step towards SC-3000 support as well. If you are interested in keyboard support then the Saturn keyboard can also be rewired to work on a Mega Drive and some homebrew make use of it, so that could be used by both those cores.

[tidal python]

I was working on that at one point (System C-2, actually), but never got very far and completely stalled it out after losing my source code for the Konami GX400 hardware.

[elder briar]

that's unfortunate, i'm sorry that happened to you 😔

[tidal python]

That moment put me on a lengthy hiatus from making more cores, and I also have far less time than I used to for actually putting cores together.

Frankly, I'm done with the GX400 stuff, I'll leave that in Raki's hands.

However, if I do manage to get back to the System C-2 hardware, you can bet your ass Thunder Force AC is the first game I'll get running on that core. 😛

[light wind]

argh archive.org is down and I want to look at the sega channel thing 😛

[light wind]

and its back 😮

[polar cargo]

So I can't access the tweety, can someone post the link for the Sega Channel Revival?

[tulip surge]

https://youtu.be/kv8u_0Ey6-w
Check the vid's description

[old sierra]

I am a bit confused by the Sega Channel stuff, so has someone gone and dropped a core for it or am I misreading things?

[tulip surge]

Yep, Shane has released a core that runs billytime's sega channel revival ROMs 🙂

It's archived so need to go via the twitter or yt links

[fallow dome]

I got a link to it in the pins - https://x.com/BillytimeG/status/2005184741050577140

BillyTime!Games (@BillytimeG)

Huge Thanks for 2000 followers! @iequalshane has finished and allowed me to release the Sega Channel Revival core for MiSTer!!

A 128 SDRAM module is required, now you too can enjoy Sega Channel as It was presented back in 1996!

Link in the comments!

X · Dec 28, 2025, 7:51 AM

Since it's literally one link away from the archive page, maybe it shouldn't be pinnned? Something to consider.

It's a big rom per month of service. But you need a custom MegaDrive core to run it.

It's all in the twitter / x link

[earnest coyote]

COAX SNAC adapter when?

[velvet mural]

Magic 8-ball says: "Outlook not so good"

[fallow dome]

The mail client or the future?

[velvet mural]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_8_Ball

[sage prairie]

why not both?

[velvet mural]

Have you never seen a "magic 8-ball" ?

[earnest coyote]

My daughter got one in her stocking this year

[velvet mural]

Oh, that's a coincidence

I haven't seen one in several decades; it was a joke as far as I was concerned

[earnest coyote]

Yeah, I hadn't seen one in ages but she had offhandedly asked for one

I guess a friend had one

[velvet mural]

wild

Hey, did you ever find out whether there was monthly (or periodic) variation in the Segavision feed(s) ?

[warm carbon]

my son also got one from his aunt...I dunno about the quality of your daughter's but I guess enshittification has trickled down magic 8 balls as well

thing is absolute garbage

[earnest coyote]

Which Segavision are we referring to?

[velvet mural]

The cable service which you just reimplemented on MiSTer

I probably used the wrong name, didn't I

[earnest coyote]

Oh, Sega Channel hah

[velvet mural]

Anyway, were there different feeds over time ?

[earnest coyote]

Each month was a different menu ROM and set of game ROMs

I assume they changed the feed to match this

[velvet mural]

How many "months" of feed have been recovered ?

[earnest coyote]

I have to look through all the data but I think most or all the menus and any Sega Channel specific game ROMs have been recovered.

Not all have been put together as a single ROM for the Sega Channel Revival project

Just the first 2 years and now part of the 3rd year.

Service started in 94 and closed in 98

I had it from like mid-94 until EOL

[velvet mural]

cool

Back then, a lot of stuff that was in the USA never reached Canada (and was often regional even within the USA)

[earnest coyote]

I was surprised we had the service at all. Iirc, when we signed up for cable that had just come to our neighborhood after moving, they had it as part of a package deal with various channels

[velvet mural]

Cool

Rogers was the big cable company up here, and they never started anything until it was several years old in the USA. They were never trying to be cutting edge; just maximum ROI in every way possible.

[old sierra]

We had Telewest back then and I had a Mega Drive, but I never even heard of there being a Sega Channel

We were definitely Telewest in Edinburgh

Although no way my Dad would have paid £10 a month for Sega game streaming

[earnest coyote]

Micro Machines was on there

They had non-jcart variants on cart too iirc

[carmine pine]

the ultimate sega look

[warm carbon]

100% this is a dude who owns a "your mom plays nintendo" shirt

[carmine pine]

now i want that shirt

[past magnet]

https://tenor.com/view/how-do-you-do-fellow-kids-steve-buscemi-30rock-fellow-kids-one-of-us-gif-21904018

Damn I can’t believe the “hume” slang didn’t catch on

What’s up fellow humes

Hope none of you are getting square eyed from all your gaming

[narrow aspen]

Out of curiosity, will the functionality to load the Sega Channel Revival ROMs eventually be added to the main core? Or, will it likely remain its own separate core?

[earnest coyote]

At the moment there is no definitive distinguisher for these ROMs to make a quirk for them, so I'm a little reluctant to go to bat to get the change into the main core.

With the current change SRAM and Super Street Fighter 2 are broken.

Maybe I can get BillyTime to agree to a header for the ROM. However, I think he uses specific headers to trick other software emulators into working.

Short answer: Maybe

[left coral]

https://tenor.com/view/sega-genesis-sega-zaxxon-nintendo-game-console-sega-video-game-gif-20535098

[carmine pine]

i love that there is someone's whole ass home address in one of the headers of a rom i just randomly looked at lol

[carmine pine]

ya'll game devs are funny

[stone plinth]

Hey Clockwork Tortoise, they did Adventures of Batman and Robin didn't they?

Oh wait thats in the header too lmao

I just looked at the name and address of the fella

[narrow aspen]

Just wanted to let you know - found an issue with one of the ROMs on the core, SEGA Channel December 1996. Don’t know if this is a bug with the ROM itself or the core, but thought I should report it in.

Super Hang-On in the “SUPER” GAMES category doesn’t appear to be working; it just seems to crash on the SEGA Channel Revival screen after pressing Start.

[void eagle]

Dang, it's not just the SEGA Channel version. It's in the normal Batman and Robin rom too.

[manic ridge]

Wow this Sega Channel stuff is awesome! My dad had it briefly and that's how I played Comix Zone 🙂

Does this use the Nuked core or the older core?

[woeful goblet]

Where can I find the Sega Channel core?

[tulip surge]

its archived, robby pinned a link to the twitter release post

[tulip surge]

or here

[earnest coyote]

Nuked core

[manic ridge]

oh awesome I figured it didn't have room lol

[earnest coyote]

Thanks. BillyTime mentioned that one wasn't working for some reason so it sounded like a ROM issue.

[earnest coyote]

This doesn't add too much logic thankfully.

[manic ridge]

Well awesome work I love stuff like this!

[earnest coyote]

Glad I could get BillyTimes' awesome work in front of more people.

[old sierra]

Are there plans to get this released officially?

[fallow dome]

STOP

BILLY TIME

https://tenor.com/view/mc-hammer-you-cant-touch-this-dancing-90s-gif-5758313

[left coral]

https://tenor.com/view/billy-billion-dollar-cat-bitcoin-runes-gif-11233033592291970166

[fallow dome]

Ok you win, lmao

[robust flax]

https://tenor.com/view/billy-mays-oxi-clean-wait-theres-more-gif-12134932

[ivory shale]

What did I just walk into?

[left coral]

https://tenor.com/view/knock-bigbangtheory-knocking-bbt-gif-24192829

[earnest coyote]

The gif plague

[trim silo]

I am personally excited to try sega sg when I get a chance

[hard oar]

as a noob/lurker, why exactly is it called "nuked" core? I think I get what's different, more or less, but I can't figure out the label 😄

[split stratus]

It was written by someone named nukeykt

I think that’s the only reason

[elder briar]

because it takes up as much space as the Fat Man nuclear bomb

[ivory shale]

And is about as easy to understand as the Voynich manuscript

[narrow panther]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lyq6yXhSlU

[glad aurora]

That's so wild that so many new games are in development.

Many of them look really damn cool too

Thanks for sharing that

[kindred anchor]

genesis does

[thorny pivot]

I’m a sucker for flat shaded polygons so that Wipeout looking game got me all 👀

[old river]

It's interesting how big the Genesis dev scene is. There's nearly as many people making games now as in the 90s

[thorny pivot]

Good!

Love to see platforms that never die.

Dreamcast has a good scene too. People love their Segas

[old river]

Probably some mix of the excellent tools available and the knowledge that Sega isn't going to sue anyone

[fallow dome]

I think it's grown just as large or larger than the NES homebrew scene

Genesis homebrew is incredible!

[quartz wigeon]

Assume my only chance at playing secret of the four winds is on retroarch on a PC and not mister?

[split moth]

hmm I hadn’t heard about that one. Is there anything special about the game cartridge-wise (extra hardware, copy protection, etc.)?

looks really impressive

ah yep, custom audio enhancement chip on the cart

oh wait’s it optional, I think

[spring lantern]

Seems like you need the cartridge audio pins hooked up for it to work at all, which suggests the chip is needed

[quartz wigeon]

Damn so mister going to miss out on a few great games due to this chip

[glass shale]

Same issue with the just released Death & Lead game

Lots of game carts coming with raspberry pis inside them

[lethal prairie]

On one hand it’s a cool idea, on the other hand if it precluded even some of the original hardware that kinda sucks

Reminds me of how Amiga homebrew sometimes requires those uncommon PPC accelerators and it’s just like, oh

[vital idol]

Still more exclusives than the ps5 🤡

[past magnet]

Yeah that’s lane, they stuffed a bunch of period inaccurate hardware in there and use the Genesis as a glorified speaker for it, it should be relegated to software emus.

It’s like other similar carts on things like Atari that have basically a supercomputer for the consoles time period in the cart and still say they are an atari game or whatever. People should just make a modern game if they want to make a modern game

[lethal prairie]

the SuperFX 3 is an example of that idea done right because as far as the SNES and game know, they're talking to a "real" SuperFX 3 chip

[stone plinth]

Feels kinda cheaty to me

Wasn't there a Doom port that was just running on an FPGA in a cart?

[lethal prairie]

for what platform?

[stone plinth]

Uhhh I can't remember, it was in a Game Sack video

Might have been Mega Drive?

[fallow dome]

someone said Pi, I'm here

[lethal prairie]

the only recent doom port I've heard about is the one I was just talking about with the SuperFX 3

and that's not what that one is doing

[kindred anchor]

wasnt superfx 3 that pi chip or something

[fallow dome]

yeah the Super FX 3 is using a Pi Pico

[vital idol]

Have to be careful when making these arguments- even maxing out the rom in a cartridge isn’t really period accent due to cost. Remember when memory was incredibly expensive?

[fallow dome]

yeah, I lived it on the DS lol

"time to cut half the levels, Activision won't spring for the higher cart size"

oh ok...

[lethal prairie]

it's a Pi Pico running a software emulation of the SuperFX 3 chip

[kindred anchor]

super nintendo is a cheater console though, most that consoles game need extra help in the cart

unlike GENESIS!!!!!!!

another victory for blast processing i say

[stone plinth]

I liked those Mega Drive carts with the 2 controller ports

[proven frigate]

And virtua racing ?

[stone plinth]

Playing Micro Machines 2 4 player with my 0 friends was awesome

[fallow dome]

doesn't count

[kindred anchor]

robby gets it

[fallow dome]

virtua racing is using true sega technology, which is honest and beautiful

unlike the gross snes add-on chips

[kindred anchor]

yeah NO snes add-on chip use any true sega technology

16-bit crysis port with a i5, a couple gigabytes of ram and a mobile GPU crammed into a cartridge

thats how the 32x works right?!? someone could just take a modern-ish computer and make it part of a sega genesis tower of power and all they need to do is to put an unrealistic amount of effort to make all the parts fit together for a end result thats practically the same as playing crysis on a laptop

[ivory shale]

That was NES, and it was basically a RaspberryPi stuffed into a NES cart. It was running entirely on the Pi and just using the NES for output, lame.

[ivory shale]

"The Sega Virtua Processor was designed by Hiromitsu Yagi of the now-defunct Clarkspur, the same engineer responsible for designing the PPU of the Famicom"

Also it was based on a Samsung core

[stone plinth]

Yeah that kinda sucks

My thoughts on the matter is that you should use the hardware that would have been available at the time. I dont care if you use modern software etc to create it, but if you're running it using hardware that wouldn't have been available it feels a bit cheaty

[ivory shale]

I don't mind some enhancement chips that are newer than the period, IF the game is still almost entirely running on the original console. If the game is pretty much just running on the newer-period enhancement chips then I don't see the point

[vital idol]

What about period appropriate chips that would have been financially unviable- sega Genesis cart with a 486dx 🤡

[ivory shale]

Can you even provide enough power from the cart port for that?

[vital idol]

The 32x had its own power brick

[ivory shale]

Right, so a 486 likely would not be able to be powered from the cart slot then

The cart ITSELF would need it's own power brick XD

[light mist]

A sega model 3 cart would have been nice

[ivory shale]

?

[fallow dome]

lol that reminds me of those NES devs who are using “period appropriate hardware” but would in reality never have been financially viable

[lethal prairie]

What do you mean you don’t develop NES games on an SGI IRIS workstation?!

[vital idol]

Don’t people use pdps to develop 2600 games?

Let’s embed a pdp-11 into a 2600 cart!

Then we could bug kitrinx to build a pdp-11 core 😉

[lethal prairie]

I’m actually a little surprised there isn’t one on mister since there’s a couple of PDP11 FPGA implementations out there apparently

Extremely, extremely niche appeal even within the mister community though 😂

[vital idol]

Well we have the pdp1. Someone was porting a pdp-11 but there were issues and they stopped.

[ivory shale]

Former Dawn, IIRC they are claiming it would have been viable in 1994?

[ivory shale]

Same since the PDP-11 was pretty substantial for it's time. Wasn't Unix developed on it at first?

[past magnet]

Here come the PDPeople

[ivory shale]

Never used one. Was just saying I'm surprised an influential computer like that does not already have a core when there's so many random obscure unheard of computers that have a core right now

[ivory shale]

Anyone else messing with the Sega Channel revival thing? I was trying random games and saw that for May Baranstein Bears Piko crashes if I try to load it, even though it works on the other months it's avaliable

Hmm, seems like there's several broken entries

[earnest coyote]

Let me know which are broken and I can take a look.

Also, do you have 128MB of RAM?

[ivory shale]

yes

So far on May 94 Bersnetain Bears Pico under Text Drive crashed (It worked in the April and June versions), July 94 Batman and Robin under Express Games crashed (Even though it again worked in June under Test Drives), and in August of 94 I saw some weird behavior. Trying to choose Express Games dosen't bring up a menu, but intead opens the Game Guide. If I try to go to the Game Guide it looks like it's about to load a game, before opening the Game Guide anyway.

Mind you this is not a through list, just random stuff I ran into, I wasn't trying every option one by one

Hmm, just ran into the same behavior with the express games menu in october

Also not sure if it counts but the two express games in November give an error message that you have not purchased them

[earnest coyote]

That's intentional I believe.

It's what really happened if you didn't pay for them at least heh

I know I saw one that claimed it was purchased and still showed the error and another that showed paid and worked.

[old sierra]

Do you want to chuck it in Test Cores, Shane, and get some more eyes on it?

[earnest coyote]

As in #test-builds ?

[old sierra]

Yeah

[earnest coyote]

Ah yeah that might be an idea. I can't really link to the ROMs though.

[old sierra]

Just give some people here obtuse hint on how to find them and that will be fine. Does it need some sort of BIOS as well?

[ivory shale]

AFAIK you just need the core and roms

[fallow dome]

I linked to the tweet in the pins (which has the archive link). I think that’s fine but what do you think?

[plucky flare]

here come the feds

[old sierra]

I think that's fine in this case, we aren't directly breaking Discord TOS

[fallow dome]

@earnest coyote because of the nature of the hardware that needs to be emulated, these Sega Channel Revival roms just can't be loaded on any old Genesis emulator, correct?

[earnest coyote]

Right, they need much larger ROM support and different banking.

This could potentially be integrated into the main core if I get Billy to pick a universal header formal for all the ROMs that can be easily distinguished for quirks.

[fallow dome]

The core changes you implemented necessitated a new core because of the lack of available space on the FPGA to incorporate it as part of the Nukey core?

[earnest coyote]

But I hesitate to try to get such a change in for a ROM hack

No, this uses Nukey but it's also using more precious space when little remains.

[fallow dome]

oh sorry that's what I meant

Thank you for answering my questions.

I really enjoy the work you and BillyTimeGames have done.

thank you!!!!

[earnest coyote]

One thing this doesn't do is it doesn't emulate the actual Sega Channel adapter outside of the bank switching, which is something I want to do. I don't know if Nukey will have enough space but I'll try to use it here first.

This would require loading broadcast streams instead of ROMs but would also work with 32MB of ram, unlike the ROM hacks. It would not likely end up being it's own core in the same way 32X or Mega CD are.

[fallow dome]

What would emulating the actual adapter provide in terms of end-user utilization? It sounds super cool.,

[earnest coyote]

Using the official Sega BIOS and Menu ROMs, emulating the real loading of data, loading the original broadcast data (these are being restored now from the released data).

You wouldn't have a long load time in the beginning, instead it would load the menu and then load the selected game instead of all the content like it does now

Revival works by loading EVERYTHING into RAM first, the menu, guides, all the games, etc. Then when you select a game it bank switching to the appropriate game. The real Sega Channel on the otherhand is reading a broadcast loop and waits for the data it needs to show up and loads that. First, it downloads the menu, then when the menu selects a game that isn't already loaded, it waits until the broacast loop reache that game's data and downloads it into RAM and bank switches to it when it's done.

It changes games by switching Bank 0, something other mappers can't do, and resets the hardware. Revival emulates this by Switching bank 0 and then in software it sets the program counter to the right starting point based on the game.

Revival also has to do something a bit strange here to do the bank switching since if you switched the bank where the code was currently running it would suddenly be running something else before it finishes. To get around this, it core allows the game code to run from RAM, so the Revival ROMs load the code needed to bank switch and reset the game into RAM first then sets the pogram counter to that location

Now it can safely bank switch any and all banks

[old sierra]

Seen this doing the rounds, can you do a reset that works like on original hardware for this?

https://x.com/i/status/2008013145273778314

🏴‍☠️Maddox🏴‍☠️ (@realmaddox)

Every now and then I'll remember the 5th stage of X-Men on Sega Genesis, where the game prompts you to "reset" as the giant computer in the stage is supposedly glitching. The only way to pass it is to physically press the reset button on the Genesis. I never did that because why

X · Jan 5, 2026, 3:10 AM

[elder briar]

the user button acts as a soft reset in the genesis core no?

[plain quiver]

It works on the core.

There was an issue ticket about it in 2023.

[earnest coyote]

Yeah I added that years ago. I assume it made it to the MD core.

It's also required in X-Men 2 to get a different starting character

[compact plover]

That game is amazing as it’s the only game I’m ever seen that goes straight into gameplay. No company logos or title screens, straight into the first level. Even 2nd gen games like on the Atari 2600 have the game select toggle. This game just goes straight in with a random character that you can select by just spamming reset until you’ve picked your preferred character. Pretty neat

I wasn’t even aware that you had to hit reset midway through the game to beat it. That’s just as creative lol. Gotta play through this some time

[old sierra]

Might be worth someone confirming it does work in the Nuked MD core as expected and hasn't slipped through the cracks

[plain quiver]

It was checked on the Nuked MD core, on Oct. 28, 2023.

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/MegaDrive_MiSTer/issues/35

[old river]

Being able to play the Sega Channel and recreate the experience as it was with archived broadcast data is such a cool concept.

[plain quiver]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/MegaDrive_MiSTer/issues/76
Since I was just testing homebrews or games on Megadrive, I might as well document this bug too.

[ivory shale]

IIRC even the Sega Nomad could not complete that game because it lacked a reset button

[earnest coyote]

Yep, there's now a hack by Billytime that works around that.

[ivory shale]

Nice

[earnest coyote]

Do you know if this runs on real hardware?

[plain quiver]

I've seen a few videos on YouTube, but I asked a friend a moment ago if he could do a test on his Mega Drive too.
Just to be sure.
I'm waiting for a reply on his part later.

[elder briar]

for the record, there are some hacks that don't run on real hardware, but will run on the old genesis core. sonic 2: advanced edit hangs before loading the first level on my original console via everdrive, but works fine on the old genesis core

[kindred anchor]

genesis core more accurate than real hardware?!?

[manic coral]

https://www.youtube.com/live/EM__Y3U_8xk?si=SygvO001MrPZI8MI&t=1497 it runs on real hardware

[earnest coyote]

Thanks for verifying

Sometimes emulators are less strict about things like bad addresses

Or don't mirror memory in certain address ranges, etc

[manic coral]

thanks for working on Sega Channel support for MiSTer! really excellent work

[trim silo]

when booting games in the genesis core, does anyone know how I can change the default directory from games/mega-drive to games/genesis? Just so I don't have to scroll to my updated folder every time

been testing sega channel, really cool piece of history

[drowsy hemlock]

symlink the two?

That’s what I do

[trim silo]

how do I do that?

[drowsy hemlock]

Open Linux terminal
Log in
cd /media/fat/games (or wherever your games are)
ln -s MegaDrive Genesis

(Can’t remember if they’re the exact directory names, but you know what I mean)

Maybe you need to rmdir Genesis, if it already exists

[coral shell]

I copied the megadrive games folder and renamed the second one to genesis haha

it took the trouble of figuring out how to swap the directory out 😂

[trim silo]

I feel like that’s what I did but it still auto points to mega drive lol

[frank finch]

Ooh!
I can't test it now currently, but does that mean SRB2 doesn't flag up any issues when playing now or is there still some issues to iron out?

[fallow dome]

I dunno

I am helpful!

[plain quiver]

I'm not absolutely 100% sure about the speed of the game on the core, but the issues found some weeks ago were fixed.

EDIT : I just checked some videos done with the 0.1 and 0.2 versions of the game, and compared quickly against the core : seems consistent between the real hardware + Everdrive vs. the current S32x core.

LIke here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSLSY0NmnuE

[spring lantern]

I streamed the whole demo on real hardware if you need that

[plain quiver]

I will take a look later, yes.

Same for Vigilant Paradise on Saturn, I see.
Most interesting.

[versed rapids]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/S32X_MiSTer/pull/66

[versed rapids]

I have tested this game and it shows black screen on Megadrive Core it required a specific peripheral
https://tcrf.net/Outback_Joey

[plain quiver]

That's normal, unless you have a SNAC and the original peripheral (I don't know anyone who have it).

Only BlastEm could load it so far, by bypassing some checks.

[void swallow]

Anyone else getting graphical corruption in Mortal Kombat II 32x arcade edition with the latest unstable build? Thanks

The main menu is corrupted and in fights the levels show graphical corruption

[plain quiver]

I just checked, no issue on my side.

[static tartan]

Experiencing graphical corruption in Knuckles Chaotix on my Mister Pi using the latest unstable. Is it just me?

[plain quiver]

Let me fire up my MiSTer Pi.

No Issue for me too on Chaotix.

[warm carbon]

I can check in a little bit

[plain quiver]

MiSTer 20260108
S32x 20260109

Same for MKII Arcade Edition (hack).

[void swallow]

Chains graphics going in and out
Mister pi

[plain quiver]

I need some tests from @warm carbon.
Two persons with some corruption, on two different games.
Strange, at least.

[void swallow]

Tried it on 2 different Mister pi same results

Also in Knuckles chaotix

[plain quiver]

Can you search for a new ROM dump of the game and/or redo the patching once more ? Just to be sure.
I know that some older ROM dumps are floating on the Net, and people patched the game with those instead of clean ones.

My version is 1.5c patched for MKII.

CRC32 - 1b4901d9, for comparison

[plain quiver]

Could you check your ROM dump too for Chaotix ?

CRC32 - d0b0b842

[spring lantern]

Pretty funny that it clearly spells out "DADALOLO"

[plain quiver]

Okay, so it's not a ROM dump issue.

It was too easy...

[static tartan]

Just tried it using this ROM with this CRC32. Running into the same issue. I am using the unstable mister file from 260108 if that has an effect on it.

[plain quiver]

Your MiSTer have a RAM stick or integrated to the PCB directly ?

We have the same ROM dump, same MiSTer Main file and same core.

Do you load the game from the SD card, NAS, USB ?

[static tartan]

I have a dual ram setup with one integrated to the PCB. Let me try it on my older mister with the DE-10 nano

[void swallow]

I have 2 dual ram setups Mister pi both have dual module ram sticks

SD card loaded

[warm carbon]

I think that is every mister pi batch covered

i guess it doesn't cover batch 5, but I didn't order a batch 5 because that seemed like overkill :p

[static tartan]

Okay I figured it out, sorta. It's settings related for sure. I went and reset my core settings for the 32X and tried again. Looked normal

Now I gotta see what triggers it

[warm carbon]

yeah, that was going to be my next question

I wondered if it was a setting

[void swallow]

I'll try that as well thanks

[warm carbon]

maybe 6 button?

[plain quiver]

6 button mode is safe for Mortal Kombat II.

[static tartan]

It's the Sprite Limit. Set it to High and it corrupts the graphics

Good to know now

[warm carbon]

thanks for figuring that out

[fallow dome]

sprite limit catches another victim!

[static tartan]

I got too greedy and wanted more sprites

[split stratus]

Sprite limit being changeable is mostly a holdover from the old Genesis core, right? Does it improve any of the 32x games?

If not, maybe the option should be removed. But if so, leave it and document it of course

[elder briar]

i'm sure there's some instances where it helps

[fallow dome]

It’s a good thing no one listens to me because I’d remove any option that breaks games!

[split stratus]

Reason I’m asking is that the 32x works by drawing over the Genesis video signal, so I’m guessing the sprite limit is only relevant to the Genesis VDP

So I guess that just calls into question whether any games are using Genesis sprites vs 32x ones

I don’t know enough about the system to say

I guess they must because those 2 games were busted

It’s probably fine to leave it, I’m just curious

[elder briar]

i don't think i would lament it's removal from the 32X core, especially if it's leading to more problems than solutions. it's also not present in the sega CD core either, for consistency's sake. that said, i do like using it in the old genesis core; it's a very nice upgrade for a good chunk of games

[old sierra]

Might need someone to test the library with the sprite limit on and log what has issues and document it.

[ivory shale]

You realize this means removing the option to make the NES core run as an actual NES instead of a Famicom because that breaks a small amount of Famicom versions of games right?

[ivory shale]

Can you give some examples? I don't think I've ever tried using Sprite limit removal options in emulators before

[elder briar]

it helps a lot in any of the sonic games when you lose rings; they fly everywhere and start to flicker quite a bit

it crops up quite a bit in some of the more visually intense/busy games as well, like contra hard corps, gunstar heroes and mega man: the wily wars

[ivory shale]

I'll have to try that. I recall seeimg that option in many NES I used in the past but I don't think I ever tried it

[void eagle]

I tested Chaotix and MKII on the 32X core using the Mister Pi with dual rams (one of them embedded) and didn't get any corruption. I think it's from the 4th batch.

[warm carbon]

It was a menu setting (extra sprites)

But thanks for testing 🙂

[earnest coyote]

What's funny is it also gives Sonic a potbelly on Sonic 1 if you enable it because they used sprite limits to cut off some of his image.

[narrow panther]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EX-xvSuG-Q

[elder briar]

that's true, it's pretty funny lol. interesting how they intentionally used sprite limits to make certain things invisible like that

[earnest coyote]

It's a weird decision since there's other ways to mask sprites on a line. I wonder if they just didn't know about it at the time.

[ivory shale]

Sure that's not just than Sonic XXL mod? 🤣

[earnest coyote]

Hah, I wonder if the original sprite inspired that mod.

[stone plinth]

That hack put me off onion rings

I wasn't the biggest fan anyway but that sort of sealed it for me

[ivory shale]

I misread sealed it as seared it XD

[atomic socket]

Wondering (as I saw a video about a raspberry Pi inside a genesis), if there might be any value in an overclocked build of the megadrive/genesis core?

[fading hare]

The old Genesis core already has a turbo mode. The newer Mega Drive core has no room for it.

I keep the old Genesis core installed just for the patched Road Rash games so they can run at 30fps.

[fallow dome]

The pinned comments in this channel have a link to where you can manually download the old Genesis core but here’s a link - https://github.com/ajgowans/alt-cores/blob/main/_Other/Genesis_20250720.rbf

[old sierra]

It is also part of the Alt Cores DB you can enable via update all

[elder briar]

turbo mode is one of the reasons i still prefer the old genesis core :p it's a godsend in some games

[fallow dome]

I should probably just link to that, right?

[old sierra]

Where you linked is where the core lives now, but I expect most people wanting to play the old core would rather just enable the DB to grab it automatically (along with the other turbo cores)

JesusFish has been very good at keeping .sys up to date on them, so people who want to use them would be advised to just enable the DB and they will get updated versions going forward (as long as JF keeps updating them obviously)

[earnest coyote]

I like to play Sonic Spinball at 60fps with turbo mode. It's a bit more difficult that way but it feels nice.

[stuck gull]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR1enUVta4s

just noticed this is live atm

[earnest coyote]

Aw, I missed it because I was sleeping.

[stuck gull]

thats how they get ya

[void eagle]

Viewpoint is another good one for Turbo mode. Genesis Mini 2 version is actually the original MD ROM running overclocked. Then again, the original game runs great in the NeoGeo core.

[atomic socket]

AWESOME, somehow I didn't know that was in that core, thanks for letting me know 🙂. Interestingly, I already had that version of the core in my "others", because from another "HELP ME" moment, you told me how to have those alternate cores auto download with the upddate now process LOL.

[fervent rain]

Oh shit, never thought to look for patched versions of thosez

I loved Road Rash 2 on RetroPi but the fps on mister/original hardware was… not great.

[manic ridge]

DADALOLO is normal that's how it was intended to play

I know I'm way late

[earnest coyote]

I decided to add an overclock setting to the Mega Drive core and while it works for a bit eventually the game crashes. I think I see why the option wasn't implemented yet.

Wolf3D runs okay. It goes from 18 to 24 fps with turbo on without crashing (yet).

[light mist]

faster than snes \o/
Megadrive wins again

[earnest coyote]

Interesting- Genesis seems to run faster than Mega Drive with turbo off ever so slightly

Genesis is like 19-20 FPS where Mega Drive is 18-19 in the same scene

With turbo on medium Genesis is mostly at 30 but dips down to 25 where 25 is the high on Mega Drive on medium

Genesis is solid 30 on high but Mega Drive crashes on high

Well, it was an okay first attempt I guess heh

[fallow dome]

@earnest coyote keep on kicking ass brother, that’s exciting news

[stone plinth]

Sounds like maybe the Genesis core could use some love 👀

I do wonder how far off it is from passing those accuracy tests

[elder briar]

the genesis core deserves to come out of retirement imo

[drowsy hemlock]

MegaDrive core FTW

[earnest coyote]

Genesis core was retired for the new Mega Drive core.

[drowsy hemlock]

Some people have "brain worms" about the Genesis core...

[elder briar]

i still prefer it 🤐

[drowsy hemlock]

It constantly comes up 😄

[earnest coyote]

The Mega Drive core sucks to compile 😅

[warm carbon]

some asshole keeps updating the genesis core

[drowsy hemlock]

dat u?

[stone plinth]

Yup but it seems like the Mega Drive core is a bit of a beast in itself

[warm carbon]

they should take away their quartus

https://tenor.com/btNs5.gif

[earnest coyote]

I almost did the Sega Channel Revival core on the Genesis core for my own sanity

[elder briar]

imo if cores like the NES and SNES cores didn't take the "wire for wire" approach like the mega drive core did, yet still achieved cycle-accuracy, i'm confident the same could be done for the genesis core

[warm carbon]

I don't think you can close timings on the mega drive core, Shane. Just so you know

(I'm sure you have already discovered this)

[drowsy hemlock]

Sure, but I think Sorg is a pragmatist when it comes to this

There's nothing stopping someone fixing up the Genesis core - but I guess it wasn't happening, which is why he went for the MD core

[stone plinth]

Googles pragmatist

[light mist]

imagine how great the core could be if Kitrinx hated it enough

[drowsy hemlock]

We're dev limited, so we can't be picky about the implementation details. Only yellow names get to complain about things like that 😉

[stone plinth]

That's why I like to be positive! Go Devs, you can do it!

[elder briar]

if it's true what i hear about how full the mega drive core is, if anything it seems like the genesis core is the more "pragmatist" solution. sorg is amazing but sometimes his decisions are a bit odd

[earnest coyote]

I think I got so used to ignoring timing errors from working with the Genesis core on Pocket.

[stone plinth]

The Mega Drive core is spectacular in how accurate it is but it sounds like a bit of a monolith of a core

[warm carbon]

#1096614378968727652 message ever green

I should pin that

[stone plinth]

If only the Mega Drive weren't my favourite 16 bit console

[sage prairie]

You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?

[earnest coyote]

I still use the Genesis core as a basis for Pico. I wonder if it would fit with the MD core.

[drowsy hemlock]

Woah, shit – THERE'S A PICO CORE?!

[earnest coyote]

It's uh... well it runs most games

Sometimes it also screams in your ears

[drowsy hemlock]

That's amazing!

My younger brother had one when he was a kid 😄

[earnest coyote]

I was resurrecting it over the holiday and made some audio improvements but the audio doesn't work properly on all games yet

A few games lock up most most seem playable.

[drowsy hemlock]

I don't remember exactly how it worked, but how do you handle seeing the pages or whatever?

Wasn't it pages on the top and a tablet at the bottom, or something weird like that?

[earnest coyote]

NA version of Sonic Game World audio is fine but JP version isn't... fun stuff like that.

I added the ability to load "books" that will draw over the screen when you activate "book mode" where the cursor counts as touching the book pages instead of the tablet surface.

Then you have a buttons to flip pages

[drowsy hemlock]

Is this public? 😄

[earnest coyote]

No, and it's been an on and off projects for a very long time

I've been iterating on the Pocket because the build times are much faster so the MiSTer core is pretty out of date

[drowsy hemlock]

No worries. Looking forward to giving it a spin if/when you're at the stage where you want testers or whatever

But it's super cool that you're tackling it 😄

[earnest coyote]

I need to back port my work and update the framework sometime soon to get a feel for how it's performing on MiSTer

It's kind of neat to use with a wacom tablet.

[drowsy hemlock]

Yeah, a wacom would be ideal

[earnest coyote]

The project halted when an ADPCM implementation I was doing was going pretty poorly but then Jotego let me know he was working on the same chip for an arcade core, so I waited for it. I pulled that into the core, which solved a ton of audio issues I was having a couple years ago but then life stuff happened and it went pretty low priority.

[old sierra]

Maybe the Genesis core can be brought back to Main under the guise of a different core, like a Pico core

[earnest coyote]

It was nice to load it up and get plugging away at it again over the holiday though.

[earnest coyote]

As long as you don't need things like a z80, or the ym2612 FM chip 😉

Both of those are not in the core

[visual temple]

I hated genesis enough to do a fair amount of work on it

[old sierra]

Did you have to strip them out for space reasons?

[earnest coyote]

I didn't bring them over because they weren't in the model 1 hardware and it saves compilation time.

[warm carbon]

thatsmysecret.gif

[old sierra]

The SMS core could also use some hate 😉

[warm carbon]

lol

[earnest coyote]

Now they ARE in the later model hardware but they aren't wired up all the way

That's why later models can boot Genesis games (but no FM audio or controls)

You can do some weird stuff with the models that use the GOAC from the Sega Genesis 3

[thorny pivot]

Is the Genesis core based on GOAC?

Seems like a good idea to target the one-chip but I don’t know enough about these things.

[elder briar]

i think the goac is pretty nerfed/different compared to the discrete hardwares

[thorny pivot]

YM2612 purists will be against it, of course.

[earnest coyote]

No, it's not.

[thorny pivot]

GOAC sounds great though. I have a Model 3 VA1 with triple bypass and it sounds awesome

[earnest coyote]

Biggest issue with the Model 3 imo is the mono output, which can be solved. That and depending which GOAC model you have, you may not be able to modify it to get 32X support.

[thorny pivot]

VA1 is the one you want. 5 wires reenables all the signals and buses

Well, not the sidecar bus for obvious reasons lol

[earnest coyote]

Yep

[split stratus]

I have a model 3 VA2 put onto a new pcb and it does have great video and audio. But no 32x support, and I had some issues with a couple of games. Demons of Asteborg won’t start, for instance

It’s decent but not something I’d use as a reference

[earnest coyote]

I like to use my Model 3 VA2 with a tiny white 13" trinitron I have

The TV is mono audio, so it's a good fit

[thorny pivot]

Imagine a decap and trace of the VA1 GOAC 😍

[old sierra]

So what needs to still be done before your PICO core can be released?

[earnest coyote]

My original vs newer model Pico where they upgraded to GOAC.

[thorny pivot]

I love SEGA pcbs. Never seen a pico before

[earnest coyote]

Some games need to not make your ears bleed

My next step is pulling out the PCM data from the ROMs that have issue to compare them to what is working and see where the issue is

[stone plinth]

I thought the Genesis 3 was cute, never been able to find one for cheap over here in the UK though

[earnest coyote]

Yeah, I think it's great. If it's your ONLY Genesis then it's not great but it's awesome as a mini genesis of sorts.

[thorny pivot]

I use a Genesis 3 as my Master System and Genesis so that I don’t have to pull my 32X off the tower of power.

[elder briar]

that's smart

[split stratus]

Oh yeah that reminds me that model 3 VA2 doesn’t support master system either, which is sad

Va1 sounds much better

[stone plinth]

A 3BP modded Genesis 3 should be good though right?

[earnest coyote]

If it's VA1

[stone plinth]

I don't even know why I'm asking, my wife will kill me

[earnest coyote]

lol

Just get a Mega Jet to really make her upset.

[thorny pivot]

“This Game Gear doesn’t even have a screen, babe!!”

[stone plinth]

Sometimes we'll be hanging out and I'll say "hey, I should get a game gear" and I can feel the hate

[thorny pivot]

It’s not a game gear! It’s a Nomad! …without a screen!”

[stone plinth]

We've had a bunch of Megadrive controllers come into the house lately as I've been trying to find a decent one but they all have issues.

[earnest coyote]

and without batteries

[stone plinth]

She's probably sick of walking into the kitchen to find a deconstructed controller and a bunch of q-tips

[earnest coyote]

I've managed to misplace 2 button genesis controller somewhere in my house

I wonder what I was testing and where

[stone plinth]

The recent one I got gets... Sticky I guess?

Hard to describe but when you go from one diagonal to another, it feels like the actuator (or whatever it is) gets stuck on the rubber membrane

It's one of the 3 button controllers where the actuator goes through the PCB and the contacts for the d pad are on the back of the PCB

[thorny pivot]

Are you me? lol

[stone plinth]

If anyone knows any resources for controller repair/servicing, I'd be very interested

[thorny pivot]

My wife doesn’t question it anymore.

[stone plinth]

Same, but I can feel the disappointment

[thorny pivot]

lol! Same here brother.

I bought one of those little table top ultrasonic cleaners. I run it in the kitchen cleaning Cheeto encrusted buttons right next to her crockpot. The seeth.

[stone plinth]

She bought me one of those for Christmas!

[stuck gull]

i love my sega game gear

[ivory shale]

IIRC it failed quite a decent chunk of them, would probably take some work

[cursive perch]

What’s the reason some people have an attachment to the Genesis core?

[elder briar]

extra sprites and CPU turbo mode mostly

[fading hare]

Turbo mode for me. But only for a few games. I use the Mega Drive core 99% of the time.

[elder briar]

it's silly but i also use it for the sake of consistency, seeing as the SCD and 32X cores are based off of the old genesis core as well i believe

[earnest coyote]

Glad some people cared about extra sprites. It was my first ever MiSTer contribution 😅

[elder briar]

thank you for your contribution 🙂 it's one of my favorite things about the old genesis core. helps out a lot in some games

[earnest coyote]

Maybe after I get turbo on MD stable I'll look into adding extra sprites to MD.

[split moth]

I had a Pico back in the day. I think the only game I ever had or played was Richard Scarry’s Busytown

I already had a Genesis at that point. It was a gift from my Aunt and Uncle who lived out of state and had older kids so they always treated my sister and I like we were 3-4 years younger than we actually were 😅

[ivory shale]

The DADALOLO sprites?

[ivory shale]

It takes less FPGA space, is easier to work on by a large margin, is used for the CD and 32X, and has extra features. Cleaning and fixing it up could allow for improved CD/32X cores and a potential 32XCD core on a newer board with more FPGA space.

[earnest coyote]

And finally MiSTer users can pay the superior version of Corpse Killer.

[cursive perch]

32XCD would be great for Doom 32XCD Fusion that came out recently

[ivory shale]

Finally, a way to play Doom on MiSTer!

[cursive perch]

Hah it’s more out of curiosity. Ultimate Doom 32X Resurrection attempts to port some of those 32XCD additions to regular Doom 32X Resurrection think

[elder briar]

i think there's an ongoing hack of the saturn version that's making some significant performance upgrades

[edgy ruin]

@earnest coyote Not sure if you are aware of this but Sik (from plutievev.com) has been busy studying Nuked-MD VDP core and put detailled notes, incl. logic diagrams for several functionalities in his github repo: https://github.com/sikthehedgehog/vdpnotes

[earnest coyote]

Sik is the best

[fringe zodiac]

Whoa, that's good news 👾

That might help Sega CD and 32X a lot. First commit from June 2024, so probably quite advanced...

[ivory shale]

IIRC the nuked core takes up almost all the FPGA so unless it can also be shrunk down we likely can't add 32X or CD to it

[compact plover]

Afaik, in order to play the handful of Sega CD + 32X games, you’d only need to combine the Sega CD and 32X cores as the 32X can already play Genesis games

[plucky flare]

this isn't about using nuked directly for 32x/cd. it's about using the understanding of the nuked code to improve those cores

[elder briar]

i know it's wishful thinking but i'd prefer to see the nuked core used to improve the old genesis core 🙂 crazy i know

[rotund bluff]

Not crazy at all. The "old" Genesis core is a better approximation IMHO.
The idea of getting the knowledge from the Nuked core to improve the Genesis one is very logical.

[stone plinth]

Is this how the Dark Priest Shaft felt about resurrecting Dracula?

[kindred anchor]

TOWER OF POWER CORE!!!

[thorny pivot]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Genesis core's audio more accurately tuned via MDForier than the Nuked MD core? I remember reading about it a while back and it's never left my brain.

[stone plinth]

The nuked core has an aggressive LPF on the PSG chip which makes it less accurate to legit hardware

Apparently the solution in the Genesis core was hacky but it worked. It seems like the Nuked MD core is so complex/difficult to work with that a solution has yet to be found.

The LPF is to counter an issue with games like After Burner II that have a squeal to them.

[ivory shale]

Both the CD and 32X cores have the old genesis core in them, because both addons needed the genesis to work, but IIRC there isn't enough room to add both the 32X and CD to the genesis core currently.

[ivory shale]

Well really, the options are either to improve the old Genesis core, better understand and re-write/optimize the nuked core so it takes less space and is easier to work with... or go screw it and make a THIRD core from scratch...

[Insert XKCD comic here]

[spring lantern]

Gotta have a subtly different core for each Genesis revision

[stone plinth]

Mega Jet core coming soon

[ivory shale]

X-Eye Core when?

[frank finch]

So I've found a really weird bug
Trying to play UMK3 with the 8bitDo Mega Drive controller, and it seems that controller inputs are bugged somehow. B becomes X, X becomes B, and Y becomes X
Testing with the old core, the controls work just perfectly fine
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/643861834096705614/1461483016336445624/20260115_220626.mp4?ex=696ab7a0&is=69696620&hm=35a13384d260646328eeef1e3631a9ffef194961e210961d3a6187573a8077bc&

I know it's hard to tell in the video, but in the New Core, I'm trying to push "A B C X Y Z" in order

[earnest coyote]

Make sure you map the controls in the menu.

[plucky flare]

do you have 6 button mode enabled?

[frank finch]

The video was literally showing that--

[frank finch]

I do, I do
The video was literally showing me able to push the extra buttons

[thorny pivot]

Did you literally map in main though?

[past magnet]

He literally should redo his mappings

[fallow dome]

@frank finch delete your controller config for the core in /media/fat/config/inputs, go into the mister main menu and run the mapping again, making sure you don’t exit out early, then go into the MegaDrive core and remap your controller again

Controller inputs are not bugged, you’re doing something wrong

[edgy quiver]

a wise man once said that 95% of problems with electronics is not the gadget but the user.

[tacit quail]

You know what IS bugged, though? Trying to play Fatal Labyrinth on Sega Channel in 1996. Right back to the splash screen every time.

(Owned it growing up, so was curious)

[fallow dome]

It’s a rom hack so who knows what’s working correctly or not

[tacit quail]

Right!!

[fallow dome]

that’s cool you found that though, maybe ping the guy about it

[frank finch]

It worked!
It's so strange, though. I never had this problem up until now as I remember playing MK and MKII on the Mega Drive core. Maybe something happened that I don't remember

[fallow dome]

I’m glad to hear it worked, friend.

[earnest coyote]

Mapping strikes again.

[plucky flare]

my guess is that they had ( a probably accidental) 'button/key remap'

also I implore all of you to stop sending users to the main mapping for controllers with no analog components. you are sending them to literally the most confusing mister dialog made

[fallow dome]

ok I can stop

That’s because gamecontroller.db probably has a default config that already works, right?

[plucky flare]

but also if you watched their video, they mapped it in the core

which means the 'main mapping' is now irrelevant

main map -> virtual snes controller -> automap to core buttons based on core conf string setup by dev

in core map -> direct map to core buttons

[earnest coyote]

So what is the issue here if they mapped their controls in the core?

Why did the config need to be deleted to fix this?

[plucky flare]

likely an accidental key/button remap

[fallow dome]

That’s gotten me before

[earnest coyote]

From the "remap keyboard" option in the main menu?

[plucky flare]

no, "Button/Key remap" in the core

[earnest coyote]

Oh, then they just needed to use the clear function from the menu. No file editing needed.

Yeah, I don't think Billy had done any 1995 months yet for whatever reason.

[warm carbon]

https://tenor.com/bbptk.gif

[thorny pivot]

Almost like main mapping needs a branch option: does this controller have sticks? Y/N if no then just digital mappings.

analog sticks.

That'd probably make stuff worse though so NVM!

[plucky flare]

the only other thing i could think is that maybe at some point they accidentally did some alternative mappings in the core and they stuck. it's the same file as the normal mappings but I don't remember if it clears the alts when you remap or not

[earnest coyote]

I only have US, Canada and Chile menu data from the ROM dumps

So I'm not certain

[cursive perch]

The YouTuber called Kim Justice might at least be able to give insight about what it was like vs the US one and what games were on there because she used it back in the day

[earnest coyote]

Nice. I had the US version from 94-98 but I can't remember exact details outside of what games I enjoyed (and much later learned were never released in the US).

[past magnet]

I think Zakk is underestimating the value of tanking other users by sending them to do awful tasks

Less gaming for them means more gaming for me

“Push a man down to raise yourself up” - Gandhi

[ivory shale]

There are several broken entries, the project is still rather WIP, a lot of the content is even still missing

[stone plinth]

I played Sonic 3 on the Genesis core this evening, don't tell nobody

[past magnet]

..dialing timeextension..

[velvet mural]

How quaint, a "telephone".

Just tweet it, they'll see it

[versed rapids]

On 32X

[cold prism]

demo rom out already?

[narrow panther]

It's for the Mega Drive

[versed rapids]

it is listed on No Intro set today

It is listed at 32x but the rom also works on Megadrive core (tested)

[ivory shale]

I was going to say, that does not look like a 32X game. Also it almost feels like screenshots from two different games. The title screen looks badass... and then... red-haired anime kid 🤣

[versed rapids]

he wears soon a ninja suit

[hard oar]

yeah the title screen looks like a c-tier Interplay game

[solar hemlock]

Has anyone ever gotten Wonder Boy in Monster World IV MSU-MD to properly save?

[drowsy halo]

Monster World is a tricky one. For the non-msu version there are multiple hacked versions to get saves to work on different hardware types.

[stray quail]

Wait wait wait, how long has a 32x core been around?

[warm carbon]

April of 2022

(before that but that is the first official release)

[stray quail]

God not having to use picodrive or kega fusion sounds awesome

[hard oar]

You know what's even better? Not having to plug two power supplies and two video cables to use real hardware

[fallow dome]

This is quite true!!! Although the past is filled with complexity, it is wonderful we can forge a path ahead by simplifying things and making it better for the future!!!!

[ivory shale]

Or three if you have the CD too

Surprised SEGA didn't sell like, a PSU that had three outputs for all of them by then so they take one plug

[drowsy halo]

I believe I was unable to fit all 3 on one normal sized power strip

[ivory shale]

Yeah, you can't

[cursive perch]

Sega sold their own branded power strip so they were aware of the problem lol

[stone plinth]

Make a problem, sell the solution

[earnest coyote]

They make these nice power supplies that can power a Genesis, 32X and Sega CD from one source.

[stuck gull]

didn't even know there was a mwiv msu

[stone plinth]

The Evercade people are gonna be excited to shove this on a cart asap

[fallow dome]

That’s why I posted it there!

I love the Indie Heroes carts, like sincerely

[stone plinth]

I think it's a good way for the games to get exposure. I toyed with the idea of an Evercade but QC seems to be an issue.

[stuck gull]

uncade

[cursive perch]

I like the concept but I’ve owned two EXPs and both have had hardware flaws. It also just doesn’t feel good in the hands. A VS might be okay.

Some of the choices of game versions are also highly questionable. Why make a collection of Sensible Software games and not use the Amiga versions? Why is Worms the diabolical Mega Drive version?

Things seem to be better with newer releases though.

[stone plinth]

Other than homebrew stuff, I've just been making MiSTer playlists with the releases on it. It's like I've got an Evercade but better.

I also remember hearing that the controls themselves were mapped atrociously.

Guess it depends on the game too.

Some PAL developed games run too fast in their NTSC conversions. Like the opposite of a lazy PAL port.

Zool on the Megadrive is always the example I use. The game was originally developed for 50Hz consoles and it feels twitchy af in the 60Hz versions.

[livid spire]

Options always good. Can't play MD Sonic 1 if it's not 50Hz. Optimisation be damned. Sure it isn't as 60Hz intended, but it's how I've played it for decades and was the official release for a good chunk of the world

[stone plinth]

I grew up with the PAL version but I can't go back to it. The entire game feels like water physics.

Compatibility is one thing, optimisation is another. Going back to Zool, okay the 50Hz then 60Hz versions back to back. The 50Hz one controls much closer to the original Amiga release.

I mean, Zool is kind of crap anyway but I think it's an excellent example of a rare PAL W

[livid spire]

Hence the option.
I'll say for my part I wonder how people would feel if you returned to childhood media like songs and it was all 6/5th sped up how people would react 😂

[faint onyx]

Turrican e.g .was designed for pure 50Hz gameplay. That's why the NTSC Amiga/Mega Drive versions sucks. The latter even more, because the company that ported it was cluessless anyway (so it seems).

[stone plinth]

Well there's always that 1% speed increase on a lot of PAL DVDs/videos

I remember watching an episode of Frasier on DVD and then looking up the clip on YouTube only to find it sounded slower