New Games produced by the company who make RetroGen Portable

Munkyears · Post by **Munkyears** » Mon Sep 07, 2009 8:00 pm

After a few months playing around with coding etc i have always wanted to purchase a nomad and see how the flash cart method runs but at the price, blah its not worth it...well i noticed the Retro gen portable system which is a new handheld which kind of shocked me.

A few of this consoles hit the market recently but the thing that caught me was the fact that games will be produced again and licensed by Sega...

i just wanted to know your thoughts on this

Thanks

Not the slickest of deals but if you're a retro gamer fan and have some old Sega Genesis Games you want to play you can pre-order the Sega Retro Gen.

The only portable gaming system that not only plays SEGA Genesis and Megadrive games but is also licensed by SEGA itself. With new titles scheduled after its release there is no reason not to pick up this awesome portable system. The Retro Gen also includes a built-in battery that can be charged via USB and has a six-button layout mimicking that of the second Genesis controller that had an improved layout. It also includes an SD card that can be used to play “licensed games that have been downloaded and saved to an SD card using a special development cart.”

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Christuserloeser · Post by **Christuserloeser** » Mon Sep 07, 2009 10:34 pm

These will be "new games", but they won't be using blast processing... read: they'll not use MD hardware.

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Mon Sep 07, 2009 11:50 pm

I've got one of these pre-ordered. They're supposed to ship a little after the middle of Sept. Like all MD "compatibles" made in the last several years, it's really a SoC (System on Chip) that is running an emulator, not a "real" MegaDrive.

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Mon Sep 07, 2009 11:57 pm

The poster says it is compatible with cartridges. Does it have standart cartridge slot?

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 2:00 am

Shiru wrote:The poster says it is compatible with cartridges. Does it have standart cartridge slot?

Yes, but it won't play either VR or SSF2 from early reports, so it sounds like the MD3 and other clones - it's missing the extra lines to the cart port for such things. Flash carts should be fine, though. I'll be trying it with the MD-Pro 64 and Neo Myth once it comes in.

plee · Post by **plee** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 2:29 am

Chilly Willy wrote:I've got one of these pre-ordered. They're supposed to ship a little after the middle of Sept. Like all MD "compatibles" made in the last several years, it's really a SoC (System on Chip) that is running an emulator, not a "real" MegaDrive.

Same here, I'm also curious to see how the development aspect of it works...

Munkyears · Post by **Munkyears** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 11:38 am

Yeah, i would like to know who and what games are produced. Possible remakes of classics. Possibility of drafting in original games designers. I am actually quite excited of this, the idea of new production games and not a community based project (not that its a bad thing) is a great idea.

i guess there slogan lives by this.

To be this good takes AGES, to be this good takes SEGA

Christuserloeser · Post by **Christuserloeser** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:08 pm

Sega got nothing to do with it. Sadly, I am sure that the games will be horrible. Again, they don't use Mega Drive / Genesis hardware for these games but the 32-bit Arm hardware that runs the emulator.

Munkyears · Post by **Munkyears** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:24 pm

So its going to be handheld games that are not even related to the damn megadrive. handheld primarily emulating the megadrive with some free games being included by Innek Inc.

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 4:57 pm

Munkyears wrote:So its going to be handheld games that are not even related to the damn megadrive. handheld primarily emulating the megadrive with some free games being included by Innek Inc.

Yes, but I'm just interested in a cheap Nomad.

As long as it plays most Genesis games acceptably, and works with the flash cart so I can play homebrew, that's fine with me. Don't expect to see anything from SEGA itself... it's all just (good/bad) licensed hardware at this point.

plee · Post by **plee** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 5:47 pm

I don't mind the emulation either (this probably avoids any copyright issues)... heck they probably don't make a 68000 that slow anymore

Would be interesting to see if you can dev on the Arm also...

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 7:58 pm

plee wrote:I don't mind the emulation either (this probably avoids any copyright issues)... heck they probably don't make a 68000 that slow anymore

Would be interesting to see if you can dev on the Arm also...

They are supposed to play native games as well, using an SD card and an adapter for the cart port, or something like that. It's a good idea - old games handled automatically, and new games that run on the hardware instead of the emulation.

LocalH · Post by **LocalH** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 11:55 pm

plee wrote:I don't mind the emulation either (this probably avoids any copyright issues)

There shouldn't be any copyright or trademark issues anyway, this thing is licensed by SEGA so they naturally have the right to implement the hardware. It was probably just cheaper (and more featureful) to do it this way instead of developing a MDOAC and then being limited to base MD specs. If this thing gathers any sort of homebrew following, you might even see emus for other systems (SEGA or not).

plee · Post by **plee** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 3:09 am

LocalH wrote:
plee wrote:I don't mind the emulation either (this probably avoids any copyright issues)
There shouldn't be any copyright or trademark issues anyway, this thing is licensed by SEGA so they naturally have the right to implement the hardware. It was probably just cheaper (and more featureful) to do it this way instead of developing a MDOAC and then being limited to base MD specs. If this thing gathers any sort of homebrew following, you might even see emus for other systems (SEGA or not).

if you look at the fine print, it's just the software that is copyrighted. (They probably don't care about 80's hardware)

But I do agree that your just handcuffing yourself if you keep the specs like the original Genesis...and hopefully you can create other emulators, just depends on what kind of dev. they will allow...

Got an email saying mine has been shipped so it should arrive next week!

8bitwizard · Post by **8bitwizard** » Thu Sep 17, 2009 1:59 pm

You don't copyright hardware, you patent it. And patents don't last nearly as long as copyrights. (Because Mickey Mouse isn't patented, if you know what I mean.) In the US, at least, it's a non-renewable 20 years.

The MD first appeared in 1998, so it's been over 20 years, and all of Sega's patents would have expired. Maybe that's why we're starting to see MD clones appear in the past year or two?