Category : Sega Genesis

Retro gamer fans, I hope you are all doing well on this fine election day in the US of A. I absolutely refuse to put any political stuff on my blog. However, you can always elect King Koopa or Medusa for president – you decide! However, if you are wanting a nice distraction from the election… how about this…

According to a story posted by GameZone and many other outlets, the Sega Genesis is back! Well… it will be back in June 2017.

The weird thing is that it’s not shipping from Japan… it’s shipping from Brazil! And before you go ape about it being a knock off product, it actually was blessed by Sega themselves! That means that the official console will actually serve as a release of a console that’s old enough to drink in the US! But why?

That’s an honest question! Turns out that TecToy, a Brazilian gadget shop makes lots of neat techie things and people are always asking about Sega. Why? It’s one of the most popular consoles in Brazil even 20+ years after release. How’s that for staying power? So, they concocted a way to make a new Genesis console and Sega blessed it. That’s pretty cool!

The new system should be using identical hardware to the original system with the only exception being that it will come with an SD slot to side load games. It comes with about 22 games out of the box. I am not yet sure if it will allow you to play ROMs by side loading them (provided you can still find a Sega ROM), but it might. Perhaps Sega will somehow relaunch their old titles with some agreement with TecToy but I have no details yet. It will allow you to play your old game cartridges if you still have them (sounds like we need to hunt a Vintage Stock or eBay list down).

The only caveat is that the new system comes with a $138 USD price tag. However, if you REALLY loved your Genesis and it broke somewhere down the line, you can probably start playing your Sonic and Tails with this spiffy console. Thanks TecToy for rekindling a much loved (though oft misunderstood) system.

RGB out!

Finally Working on a New Game to Review

Hey everybody! I am enjoying the fact that I have one more month of free time (more or less) until I start teaching classes again. As a result, I am trying to play through an RPG that I have never played before. It took some tweaking, but I was finally able to get a Sega Genesis emulator to start working (WAY more complicated than an NES/SNES Emulator). I tried playing an old favorite of mine, Toe Jam and Earl, but I simply could not motivate myself. I took a bit of time to play through and beat Bastion (a newer RPG/Platform game on the PC) before delving back into the emulator world. Finally, I ended up selecting Phantasy Star II (Probably stylized form of “Fantasy” to avoid trying to cash in on the success of ANYTHING with Fantasy in it and avoid a lawsuit with Nintendo). It’s cool because it takes the old-school RPG into a space age world. I know that the series was hugely successful and even now there is an MMORPG series of the same name but it’s only available in Japan and some European markets.

So far the game has been fun to play, it’s definitely a unique system and I am still getting used to the way Sega did things with the Sega, Master System, CD System, 32X, etc and finding the right pieces to make it work but I am coming along. It’s a very different RPG, that’s for sure. Nothing like fighting battles with monsters on this weird, blue grid that looks like the cover of the Neuromancer book and having a character who cannot fight in my party – seriously – the girl character Nei is not capable of fighting – her whole purpose is to heal which is cool but weird. Anyway, I am still very early in the play through, only halfway through the first dungeon, but I hope that I can get more accustomed to the game’s controls and rhythm enough to finish it and write a review before my classes start.

Stay tuned!