The Analog Mega SG Wins the War of Retro Game Consoles



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The Mega SG is a small elegant console the size of a CD stack, almost identical to that of the Super NT. The quality of the construction is also top quality: it consists of a matte-finish plastic frame and a rubber footrest, with a subtle design reminiscent of the original Sega material, as evidenced by the color palette of the power and reset buttons. But like the Super NT, it's really the guts of Mega SG.

The device uses FPGA technology (that is, on-site programmable gate matrices, in case you wish) to reproduce the original console at the hardware level. This means that, unlike a software emulator, you do not run any software claiming to be the original console and that needs to be modified to work game by game. With the FPGA, Analog recreated the experience Genesis from the material level. For all intents and purposes, this is as good as the original material itself. He played each of the two dozen carts that I launched him as perfectly as possible, with absolutely none of the delay for which the emulators are famous.

And that's where the real selling point for the Mega SG lies: all this on a modern flat screen TV (even 4K TVs) without any problem.

Anyone who has tinkered with retro games knows that it is possible to get lost quickly in a cable wormhole and compatibility. Check out all the options and features of the best Genesis emulator available for a PC (Maybe People, or Kegan Fusion) – many of these settings are not just for fun, optional tweaks – you have to program them for every game you play try to play.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you want to connect an original console to a modern TV, you'll need an expensive high-end converter and custom cables that will easily overshadow the price of the already high price of the system. Mega SG ($ 190). The other option is a kind of configuration of Raspberry Pi, but again, this will require tweaking the game-by-game emulator. The Mega SG eliminates all that complexity from the get-go. Simply plug it into your HDMI port to play it on your flat screen, automatically resized and set to mimic the 4: 3 aspect ratio of the old school. CRT TVs.

Now, that does not mean that Analog does not give you options to tinker with. Indeed, it's a handyman's dream. As with the Super NT, you can customize video output and smooth pixels. You can activate the scan lines in different ways. Analog advises "to use hybrid scanlines at the default depth with vertical interpolation enabled and to ensure that the vertical resolution is at full scale (4x or 5x, and not 4.5x by default) ". If that's the kind of sentence that makes you happy, then yes, it's the console for you.

Note the audio quality displayed here. The Sega Genesis has been ridiculed for sounding shit because of some models using low quality mass market components. But here, Analogue's audio quality surpasses even the best of the Genesis, producing audio over the entire frequency range (you can also limit the frequency range to that of the original material). There's even a 3.5mm audio jack at the front of the console, like the Genesis, if you want to plug in a premium headset and get stuck in a complete nirvana.

The Mega SG has ports for older Genesis controllers, which also support everything that's right for that location, including all the Bluetooth-enabled Genesis controllers available on the market. Note, however, that the console does not come with a controller, so plan to be released at least 10 to $ 25 extra for controller expenses. As they did for the Super NT, Analogue once again teamed up with the 8BitDo controller maker, this time to market their Genesis wireless controller, the 2.4G m30 – that's $ 25 and I highly recommend it.

If you are at this stage of the exam, you are probably wondering if the Mega SG supports the Sega range of peripherals and hardware add-ons that gave rise to the same "power tower". The answer is yes and no.

Yes, the Mega SG works perfectly with all Sega CD models. So you are in the 90s full motion video capture cheese. You are in gold here (although it looks a little physically inelegant when connected). But no, the Mega SG does not work with the Sega 32X. And yes, a cartridge adapter for Master System games is included, and yes, other adapters are promised, such as a Game Gear adapter. And yes, of course you can take pictures Sonic 3 in Sonic and Knuckles – technology "lock on" realized and preserved.

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<p>The Mega SG costs $ 189.99 without a controller. This is undoubtedly a high price for indulging in a retro gaming hobby, but I think the proposal has more value here than the Super NT console at the similar price.</p>
<p>Unlike Super Nintendo games, Sega Genesis trolleys are currently very cheap. I spent $ 60 in a neighborhood retro store and I left with 10 baskets, including classics like <em>Sonic 2</em> and <em>3</em>, <em>Ecco the dolphin</em>, <em>Modified Beast</em>, S<em>Hinobi 3</em>, and <em>Streets of Rage</em>. The baskets are numerous by lot on eBay, OfferUp and local Goodwills. Of course, there are rare collectibles that are expensive, but even some of the best games ever offered at Genesis are cheap – <em>Gunstar Heroes</em> is $ 50 on eBay and <em>ToeJam & Earl</em> can be acquired for $ 20. In addition, the Super NT was "jailbroken" shortly after it was released, allowing you to boot ROMs from an SD card. We can probably expect the same treatment for the Mega SG, which means that Sega's deep library will soon become very accessible. As a result, $ 189.99 is not as expensive as it seems at first.</p>
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Unlike Super Nintendo games, Sega Genesis trolleys are currently very cheap.

The Mega SG has one last surprise: a Genesis game built and unpublished Battlefield developer, DICE. "Hardcore" (or "Ultracore" as it is called here for licensing problems) is a shooter in the euro that a small team of dedicated developers has recovered from a hard drive died and saved from the dark. The game, a sci-fi-themed shooting festival, exudes the aesthetics of the '90s – though it feels a little half-cooked. The developers claim that the game is 99% complete, but it seems a little anemic conceptually. There is almost no frame or context for which you kill tons of robots, but shooting is a decent and nervous action. Whatever it is, it's a fascinating piece of retro history built into the Mega SG. This is not a super Turrican Director & # 39; s Cutwho came installed on the Super NT – but it's a good thing to have.

In the end, the question remains: who does the Mega SG address to? Yes, it's for nostalgic Sega fans, and yes, that's for retro game historians, although some of them would probably prefer to use original material on old televisions to cathode ray tube (like the Super NT, the Mega SG does not come out on old TVs – only for HDMI compatible devices).

But I would say that, even more than the Super NT, the Mega SG is more accessible for those who have been intrigued by retro games but do not know where to start. The Mega SG may well be the ultimate "retro" gaming console on the market at the moment for one main reason: Sega games are cheap, plentiful and easy to acquire. With Super NT, you're tied to the Super Nintendo cart market, which is a bit of a price bubble. But the Sega Library is deep, abundant and affordable. While the console war is going on, perhaps because of its failures, Sega is once again doing what Nintendon does not do.

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