The desktop gaming console
Sega Genesis / Sega Mega Drive (from now on: MD) was pretty famous in the late eighties and early nineties and has received many quality titles, most importantly, the
Sonic series, which are still way better than any native Windows Mobile platformers (except for, maybe,
BoneyBoy). Now that, just as with
NeoGeo / CPS (see article
HERE), some REALLY excellent and almost flawless emulators have been released in the last few months, I found it necessary to devote an entire article to playing MD games under Windows Mobile. (Needless to say, there are no other REAL and up-to-date articles on this subject.)
Should you bother?
The answer is Yes! While the Genesis is definitely old hardware, it has some really excellent titles not quite matched by any ntive (non-emulated) Windows Mobile titles: for example, the above-mentioned
Sonic series is REALLY good. In addition, you WILL want to give a try to other titles like
Xenon 2 (remember to enable the in-game music – it’s disabled by default) and
Risky Woods. The latter two also had PC ports – you may well know these titles already. (I loved them back in 1990-1992 and have spent a lot of time playing them. I’ve even bought the Gameboy version of Xenon 2!)
Now that there are some excellent and, what is more, FREE emulators for Windows Mobile, it’s no longer impossible to play these games full screen, with enabled sound, decent controls and with speed no worse than with the original console. Give these emulators and games a try – I’m absolutely sure you’ll love them!
Again and again, the emulators are free; so are the games. You should, however, own the original cartridges so that you can (legally) download the ROM game images off the Web.
First and foremost, you must know of two major emulators,
Masterall's
PicoDrive (current version:
0.052) and
n0p’s
Genesis Plus (current version:
1.06). These two emulators will be all you need for playing any games on your mobile device.
PicoDrive
First, let’s take a look at the BEST MD emulator available today, PicoDrive. It’s available for download
HERE, at the bottom of the first post. (You’ll need to register yourself in the
Modaco forum to be able to download the file.) Note that
the FinalBurn homepage has an old and almost useless version (0.030).
It’s developed by
Masterall, the author of the Windows Mobile port of the excellent, high-quality
NeoGeo and
CPS emulator
FinalBurn Alpha introduced and explained
HERE. As the user interface (UI) is very similar to that of FinalBurn Alpha, I don’t explain it here: once you get known to FinalBurn Alpha, you’ll also find the UI of PicoDrive familiar. There are very few differences; the most important of them is the lack of invisible screen controls. Hope this will be fixed in a subsequent release.
Please also consult the
comparison / feature chart of the article for usage tips and tricks.
Genesis Plus
Genesis Plus is another, slightly slower but somewhat better thought-out (for example, its active screen tap areas don’t take up any screen estate, unlike with PicoDrive) emulator.
It’s very simple to use: you just download the GenPP.v1.06.7z archive file from
HERE, uncompress all the files and transfer them to your mobile device and start genpp.exe. As you may run into download problems (or, you will want to decompress the file with the built-in ZIP support of Windows Mobile 5+ or Resco File Explorer), I’ve also made the archive available as a standard ZIP file on my database back end
HERE.
After starting
genpp.exe, you’ll be prompted to select a ROM file to load. (It, as with PicoDrive, supports compressed ROM images too. Note that PicoDrive even supports RAR’ed images – using RAR results in an even less storage memory need than with ZIP.) Select it and, then, just start playing. At the bottom of the screen, you will have access to some functionality; of course, the hardware buttons can also be used to control games (Action being mapped to Start by default).
Unlike with all the other emulators, it can’t be configured at all (except for setting the frame drop parameters and disabling the Z80 emulation; you most probably won’t want to do either) in the GUI as can be seen
in this menu screenshot. However, upon the first run, it’ll create a file named genpp.cfg. If you directly edit it, you can fine-tune a lot of parameters, including hardware button assignment; see the comparison / feature chart for more info.
Not recommended emulators
MorphGear 2.4.0.9
(Main page
HERE; while the emulator has commercial modules, the Genesis emulation is free; its (separate) homepage is
HERE. Download the main MG CAB
HERE and the Genesis CAB
HERE. Install both.)
This emulator, as usual, is pretty useless and long superseded by the two above-introduced emulators in every respects. There is absolutely no point in bothering with it.
Mobile Drive 1.1a
(alternative download
HERE and
HERE for the two versions)
This emulator is not recommended either. It has two versions: the
Cyclone-based is faster but less compatible, the
Musashi-based is even slower but more compatible. As both PicoDrive and Genesis Plus are FAR more compatible with existing titles, FAR faster and FAR better, there is absolutely no point in bothering with these two titles.
PocketGenesis v1.0 (Beta 2)
This is a long-forgotten & abandoned project; its
old homepage no longer exists, only an archive
here with the 1.01 ARM / MIPS versions. Version 1.0b2 is ONLY available
HERE, in
Michu’s archive. It wasn’t able to run any of the ROM I’ve thrown it at.
Finally,
darcNESCE
This project has been discontinued too (for example,
its homepage no longer exists either). It seems to be entirely incompatible with the better games.
The feature / comparison / compatibility chart
It’s available HERE. Don’t forget to check it out for
- some usage tips (how some things should be configured / accessed; make sure you follow the screenshot links to see them)
- real-world, dependable compatibility reports
The rows are pretty easy to understand (particularly if you’ve already read my other emulation-related articles); therefore, I won’t elaborate on them in here. Let me know (post a public message / request) if you REALLY don’t understand something.
