Sega Genesis Mini Announced!

[Shannon]

6 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

I hadn't read that in the FAQ though so I must have missed it?

The issue was reported to them and confirmed after they had released the Lunar Project.  The FAQ had not been updated.

 

6 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

And I just checked the compatiblity list again and it has been updated from what I was working with yesterday afternoon.

They put this whole thing together in 3 months.  So you figure they had 3 months to check the compatibility of the built in emulator during that testing period.  So there is bound to be mistakes.  Also some games were fixed via use of an IPS patch.  As it stands now the install included all of the current patch.

 

47 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

I didn't read a lot into it, but are you forced to use that wretched retroarch or can you just toss a handful of games on there and use the original emulator like Hakchi did for the Nintendo's?

 

When you install Genesis games through the Project Lunar interface they use the internal emulator which is not the most accurate.  It has sound issues with some games, no sound with others and it can't handle games that use SRAM?  It's either SRAM or EEPROM plus it's compatibility rate is not 100%  They include the Retroarch verisons of Genesis Plus and Picodrive.  Both of which are not required to be used and really are only useful if you put ROMS on an external USB drive.  They have not really made a method to allow use of them on games on the internal SRAM.

 

The unreleased Hackchi SE apparently has this ability.  But I would recommend being cautious in the beginning because apparently there is a conflict between Hackchi SE and the Lunar Project and it may take a while for them to work through that issue.

 

27 minutes ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

Yes for now as I understand it the Retroarch part is required and does something on the back end of things. I've read in some forums where many of these games work as well as they do because it is retroarch kicking in transparently when you select an add in game instead of one of the originals. Then I've read other forums messages that stated the extra games are using the internal emulator and the retroarch piece is there for some requirement in accessing the extra partition with the games and adding it in seamlessly to the original UI and emulation?

 

Not true.  As it stands right now.  All games use the internal emulator.  Although not mentioned I suppose at some point they will allow the user to decide which emulator to use for each game.

 

29 minutes ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

Because of this you will also see a Retroarch icon listed along with your new games and I believe another one for Emustation even though it isn't installed and apparently they have to be there for the whole thing to work. It really does work well for the games that I've got put on in that they do work 100% provided they aren't on the list of games known to not work. It does surprise me though that TMNT doesn't work but most all other Konami titles do.

 

To be honest I'm not sure why they include the Retroarch Icon.  At least for internal SRAM use.  Because the PC interface provides no means of connecting the game to Retroarch ( yet ).  The Retroarch icon is only useful when a USB drive is inserted in one of the ports.  Also even though there is an Emustation icon you cannot use it unless you download the module and then install it on the USB drive.  The main menu that shows up also allows you to have it autoboot straight into either the default mini interface, Retroarch or Emustation.  So you don't even have to see those icons on boot.

 

34 minutes ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

I'm curious to go back and undo it all and redo it with all original rom files being Zipped up vs in their unzipped form when I first installed them. Then again, the installer might be unzipping them and placing them in the partition unzipped to begin with?

 

I'm pretty sure at this point the ROMs are unzipped when placed on the internal SRAM.

 

One final note.  They only include the retroarch cores ( Genesis Plus and PicoDrive ).  Genesis Plus can pretty much play any Genesis/Megadrive game.  Including Sega CD.  It can also play SG1000, SMS and GG.  PicoDrive can play Genesis/Megadrive games but it's big appeal is that it can play 32x games.  As it stand now, though, they don't really provide an easy means to use the retroarch cores unless you have a USB drive slapped into your Genesis mini.

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Oh I get that the list isn't complete etc. But if you list a game as working I'm under the assumption that it was tested to confirm that by more than one person? But it appears that the list was made with all games listed as working initially and then being modified when games are found to not actually work. But I'm not that bothered by it honestly. Just test a game and if it works..Great! If not, then I find another that does.

 

The biggest issue is the internal storage. I did some experimenting and found that the 170Mb partition space was left as that is where the original game roms store their save states. Each game requires 4Mb of space for all four slots. There are 42 games. The math comes up with the 42 games requiring 168Mb roughly of space for each game to have 4 save states on it. That means there isn't enough room to even add one game to thing and still use all four save states. Especially as the installation of PL itself takes up some of that space of course. So yeah it looks like you are really limited on how many more games you want to store on it and still have save states and even then you can only have like 2 actual save states per game in that case. 

 

It would be nice if we could actually remove some of the original games to reclaim some of that and remove clutter from the UI menu at the same time. For now I'm going to reset everything back to factory defaults, reinstall PL and then only add like 20 maybe 30 games max to this thing and that might allow me 2 save states for each game that I'm actually likely to play.

 

[Tanooki]

6 hours ago, Shannon said:

When you install Genesis games through the Project Lunar interface they use the internal emulator which is not the most accurate.  It has sound issues with some games, no sound with others and it can't handle games that use SRAM?  It's either SRAM or EEPROM plus it's compatibility rate is not 100%  They include the Retroarch verisons of Genesis Plus and Picodrive.  Both of which are not required to be used and really are only useful if you put ROMS on an external USB drive.  They have not really made a method to allow use of them on games on the internal SRAM.

 

The unreleased Hackchi SE apparently has this ability.  But I would recommend being cautious in the beginning because apparently there is a conflict between Hackchi SE and the Lunar Project and it may take a while for them to work through that issue.

 

I'm maybe not understanding how you're wording that, but what does some conflict between both those teams and their projects cause an issue to get worked through?  I would think they're both competing teams making the similar end game of loading more Genesis titles to the device than Sega intended.  I'm aware though of the compatibility list as I skimmed it pretty well for things I'd want, and annoyingly TMNT has problems with audio.

[Shannon]

How each project sends its "payload" to the mini is where the conflict is and since each project was developed independently without much communication, if any,  between the teams.  Also it does not help that there is a stupid war going on in the console "mini" community. 

 

That being said I just slap a USB stick in the sucker and stuff everything on that.  Problem solved!  You can get USB drives that are small and not intrusive.  Just cant do 2 player games without a hub.  No limiter like the PSC either!  Later down the line when the software gets better it should be possible to have a small set of "must have" games on the mini internal and a bunch of games slapped on a USB.  That is what I do with my SNESC and NESC.

[Zoyous]

12 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

It would be nice if we could actually remove some of the original games to reclaim some of that and remove clutter from the UI menu at the same time. For now I'm going to reset everything back to factory defaults, reinstall PL and then only add like 20 maybe 30 games max to this thing and that might allow me 2 save states for each game that I'm actually likely to play.

 

Personally I kind of like having a smaller collection of games, rather than the entire library of hundreds of games... you just end up spending what feels like minutes scrolling past all the NFL and NHL and NBA games to get to what you really want! Of course, the hard part is actually choosing those 20 or 30 games once you get down to it.

 

Did they say that eventually they'll make it so you can remove some of the factory-installed games? I thought I saw that as a future goal but maybe I just imagined it...

[Guest]

So glad to see I'm not the only person messing around with this.

So far only 3 games are giving me issues. Phelios-black screen with error code, TMNT-No sound, and Desert Strike-locks up at mission briefing.

I installed about 80 games all zipped. I also togged the higher speed on. Sometimes the system locks up when exiting a game back to the UI.

If you wait long enough it will fix itself and reboot or drop back to the game selection screen. Playing my first homebrew (Fix it Felix) game on it was fun!

Anyone know if Xenon 2:Megablast has a patched rom so it'll run on a Genesis? 

 

I'm lovin what the team has accomplished!

Gotta run. 

 

 

[Greg2600]

Assuming everyone is referencing this tutorial??

 

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

3 hours ago, Greg2600 said:

Assuming everyone is referencing this tutorial??

 

 

Yeap... But once you have PL installed, it is really quite easy from there. Maybe even simpler than using Hakchi on the NES/SNES minis.

 

3 hours ago, Zeptari1 said:

So glad to see I'm not the only person messing around with this.

So far only 3 games are giving me issues. Phelios-black screen with error code, TMNT-No sound, and Desert Strike-locks up at mission briefing.

I installed about 80 games all zipped. 

All of these games are on the compatibility list as having issues so that isn't surprising. The only version of Phelios that apparently works is the JPN Virtual Console release of the game? Also, I was able to confirm that selecting zipped roms doesn't copy them over in zipped format. PL unzips them and installs them onto the Genesis Mini in uncompressed format. I'm not surprised you were able to fit 80 games in there as even with the 50 or so I had in place, I still had over 40mb or something of space left. But... as I said above, the save game states also occupy this space. So if you put 80 games in there, you aren't likely to get more than a few save states. You will know the space is full because you will try and save a game and it will simply go back to the Save option without a game actually being saved.

 

[Shannon]

I've been busy having fun with the emulation station portion of project lunar.  I managed to find a PC based media scraper that can scrape data from a PC.  I wrote a batch file to handle the different media types.  It is still preliminary but I can pick the media I want to scrape and it downloads the stuff into folders.  I can then copy the generated "playlist.xml" file and the downloaded images over to my USB stick and wala!

 

No need to buy a wifi adapter in order to do it from the Genesis mini itself.  So that will save me a little money for the time being.  

 

[Tanooki]

Hey I was curious since it was mentioned and I'd love to see the drama if it's a public spat, but back on Project Lunar vs upcoming Hakchi program hack.  What's the deal with them competing, arguing, not sharing, whatever the stink is as I'm very curious about that.  Also if hakchi has their own public face to their project I'd like to read up.

[Shannon]

I have not quite figured out the deal going on.  But it sounds like an individual was trying to control other individuals with other projects by telling them what they could and could not do.  When the PSC came out that individual tried to take control over things.  Everything fell all apart.  Everyone split up.. some quit.  PSC didn't get much love this year likely because of that.  Sega Mini comes out.. two groups do their work secretly ( Lunar and Hackchi ).  Project Lunar came out first.. On discord some random user started a debate over the lunar vs hakchi.  Lunar guys didn't like it.. kicked the hakchi team out of their Discord server.  Best I can tell it is one individual that is part of the MMC ( ModMyConsole) group that instigates a lot of this conflict.

 

What makes this ugly ( in regards to the sega mini ) is it seems there is a software conflict between Hakchi2 CE and Lunar.  So it would be wise to uninstall one before using the other.  I'll likely just pick up another Sega mini and use on for each.  It's going to be a while before there is a clear winner and with all the in fighting it is not worth screwing up a mini trying to check them both out.  At least on the PSC one can easily switch betwen the three options without any conflict and of course for the NES / SNES Hakchi rules!

 

Before this started each group had their own server.   Someone from the Lunar team would periodically come over to the other one and harass people there.  Typical "namethatconsole" scene in fighting.  So yeah it ain't pretty and the scene, in particular the PSC is suffering from it.  Sega Mini seems ok but it seems the line has been drawn and sides taken.

 

I've seen this type of thing go on in the xbox homebrew scene and sadly these type of things typically don't end until one or more persons get bored and move on to another scene where they can create problems.

 

As far as Hakchi CE.. try doing a search on KMFDManic updates.  Look on youtube for "Patton Plays".

 

Oh and then there is this.  https://github.com/TeamShinkansen/hakchi2/releases

 

Edited January 3, 2020 by Shannon

[Tanooki]

I've dealt with this level of childish crap but it has been years, decades actually.  Back when I was in college in the back half of the 90s the same cancerous turds in the earlier internet days did this with the upstart new amazing emulators that came out of nowhere pitting one against another or group of followers.  Some would even try and find if someone was using real original tech info and rat them out to piracy emails/phone lines companies had like the many times Nintendo's so called secret warioworld.com site was busted open repeatedly and all the tech docs for the N64, GBC later GBA were stolen.  You'd get testers jumping ship, authors playing games, it was all just one douchy time and we move 20 years later, same crap.

 

I'm not sure what that's about at your link, someone doing their own naughty still updated version of hakchi?  I never personally used it on a system I had since they were gifts and kind of felt wrong about it, that and I have real hardware and flash kits so it was senseless.  Sega Mini though, I don't and never will again, so if I can load a few on one of those 100% safely and clean in the default emulator/menu I'm in.  I'd trust Hakchi before these new guys due to their history, but whoever is the troll and wherever they are coming out of, they should be punished but likely won't be.

[NE146]

Hey I just got mine today! I couldn't pass on the $35 price Gamestop was selling new units so now I finally got one. I normally would have bought it at launch at 80 bucks but with the holidays it just kind of fell by the wayside.. Glad I waited.

 

[Shannon]

@NE146 congrats!.. I've been having a ball playing with emulation station on this.  Just got to get used to linux and it's damn picky case sensitivity! 

 

I'm currently working up a dos shell script to scrape all the media stuff from my PC using a PC based scraper program.  It'll save me some money buying a wi-fi adapter and I might be able to use it for other systems like the xbox..

 

[Shannon]

4 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I'm not sure what that's about at your link, someone doing their own naughty still updated version of hakchi?  I never personally used it on a system I had since they were gifts and kind of felt wrong about it, that and I have real hardware and flash kits so it was senseless.  Sega Mini though, I don't and never will again, so if I can load a few on one of those 100% safely and clean in the default emulator/menu I'm in.  I'd trust Hakchi before these new guys due to their history, but whoever is the troll and wherever they are coming out of, they should be punished but likely won't be.

 

The creator of Hakchi left the project and it was continued as Hakchi2 CE ( community edition ).  I have not tried Hakchi2 on the Genesis mini yet but if I remember it integrates into the Sega mini interface rather nicely.  Both Patton and KMFDManic have videos of it in action.  Project Lunar for the most part integrates into the interface as well.  I myself just bypass the interface and go straight into emustation.  But I'll probably keep the Genesis games in the built in interface for completions sake.  Only downside with PL at the moment is you can't edit the box image after adding a game without removing and adding it.  Plus the savestates are all screwed up.  So I'll probably wait until they get a few more things hashed out before I continue with it.

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by Shannon

[NE146]

18 hours ago, Shannon said:

@NE146 congrats!.. I've been having a ball playing with emulation station on this.  Just got to get used to linux and it's damn picky case sensitivity! 

 

I'm currently working up a dos shell script to scrape all the media stuff from my PC using a PC based scraper program.  It'll save me some money buying a wi-fi adapter and I might be able to use it for other systems like the xbox..

 

Sup man!.. dang you're still dinking around the with Xbox eh. That's awesome   I still have mine set up on a tv in the office, although it hasn't exactly been modified/touched in a LONG time lol.   Lots of other things around these days obviously with fpga consoles, the flashcarts, the raspberry pis, and the MiSters to keep everyone occupied. It's a good time to be gaming 

 

But yeah I'm glad about the Genesis Mini. With all the other options available it's not that I would use it for games realistically but I just couldn't turn down having that official mini model especially at that price.

 

 

[Tanooki]

19 hours ago, Shannon said:

 

The creator of Hakchi left the project and it was continued as Hakchi2 CE ( community edition ).  I have not tried Hakchi2 on the Genesis mini yet but if I remember it integrates into the Sega mini interface rather nicely.  Both Patton and KMFDManic have videos of it in action.  Project Lunar for the most part integrates into the interface as well.  I myself just bypass the interface and go straight into emustation.  But I'll probably keep the Genesis games in the built in interface for completions sake.  Only downside with PL at the moment is you can't edit the box image after adding a game without removing and adding it.  Plus the savestates are all screwed up.  So I'll probably wait until they get a few more things hashed out before I continue with it.

 

See I did not know about that.  I don't follow the whole mod community much other than on the fringes of things I'd stick my nose into doing on my own stuff.  I loved following the growth and arrival of Hakchi but never understood the reason why there was a 2 or a CE, I guess now I do.  What you say about their Sega setup though, I do like that a lot and it sounds perfect.  That was very convenient on the Nintendo side with easy as pie add/sub of both games and box arts without going through some run around PL appears to demand.  I'd love to follow that hakchi2/ce development then on the Sega side of things as I'd do love to take another crack at a few items but not enough to get into retroarch bloat and other annoyances over just a few titles.

 

So is that Hakchi2 SE 3.6.0 capable of being added to the Sega Genesis Mini or is that still on the Nintendo emulating Sega stuff?

Edited January 5, 2020 by Tanooki

[Shannon]

3 hours ago, NE146 said:

Sup man!.. dang you're still dinking around the with Xbox eh. That's awesome   I still have mine set up on a tv in the office, although it hasn't exactly been modified/touched in a LONG time lol.   Lots of other things around these days obviously with fpga consoles, the flashcarts, the raspberry pis, and the MiSters to keep everyone occupied. It's a good time to be gaming 

 

But yeah I'm glad about the Genesis Mini. With all the other options available it's not that I would use it for games realistically but I just couldn't turn down having that official mini model especially at that price.

 

Yeah.  Maybe not as much as I used to.  It's hard to find time to dig into the emulator code but I have been making tweaks and adjustments from time to time.  My two main xbox's died last year due to the clock capacitor leak.  A member of emuxtras who lives near by was nice enough to donate one to me and I was able to also Chimp a bigger drive into my other xbox.  So I have one for dev and the other to use for non dev related stuff if need be.  A guy made something called XBMC Emustation which is a modified XBMC made to look and act similar to emu station it is pretty nice!

A lot of my time has been taken up messing with the mini's released the last year or so.  I was looking into the Raspberry PI late last year but then stuff came up that shot that one down for the time being.  I'd like to get a network adapter for the mini so I can play with the online aspect of ES ( scraping ) and retroarch ( achievements ).

 

2 hours ago, Tanooki said:

So is that Hakchi2 SE 3.6.0 capable of being added to the Sega Genesis Mini or is that still on the Nintendo emulating Sega stuff?

 

I'm not sure what the 3.6.0 version is capable of yet.  I know it can recognize the Sega mini.. I'm just not sure to what extent you can do things.  That is why I suggested the videos.  Although the ones that made the video are using a build not released yet?  I'd try it myself but then I'd have to remove the Lunar Project and ES.  I'm not quite ready to do that.

 

[Shannon]

Haha... I stumbled across a site where another user created a batch file to scrape data on a PC.  It's not quite as elaborate as I wanted to make mind.  But it does some things I didn't think of.  I'm going to set mine up so it can be geared towards scraping data for the xbox.  Although source sites don't seem to carry title images.

[Shannon]

Just an update of various observations I've made as well as some new regarding the lunar project and Hakchi.  I've been spending a good amount of time messing with my scraping batch file and scraping images.  Mostly related to the Atari series of systems.  Since I'm a big fan of them.   Most images are pretty decent.  The only exception ( at least on the Atari systems ) is the 3d boxart.  I noticed on a lot of Atari 800 titles they use incorrect spine art.  For example on a silver box title.  Also I don't think I ever cared to much for the 3d boxart images available.  Even if they do get the box and spine correct the size / ratio is way off.  So I highly recommend avoiding them.  Although having them on the 3 mix images is not toooo bad.  My recommendation..  Stick to the 3mix if you want 3d boxes and if the incorrect spine bothers you just delete that image. 

 

I've been looking over the emulation station wiki for each emulated system and I'd have to say that so far I'm pretty impressed.  It has most all the information one would need to get things going.  I'd have to say that ES is far easier to set up system playlists than the built in system used by retroarch.  I can't wait until those bleemsync clowns release ES for the PSC!  It will be so much better.

 

OK.  Moving along.  An update just came out for Hakchi2 CE ( 3.7.0 ) with more Sega Genesis Mini goodness.  Plus it takes advantage of some extra "hidden" space on all Mini's.  So check it out!  As for me I'm sticking with Lunar for now mostly because of ES.

 

As for the Lunar Project.  The new pc side app is not out yet but it will be soon and it fixes things like the savestate issue and finally adds the abililty to custom launch whatever emulator you wish for games loaded and has been modified to "scrape" images for each system and some other junk.  Right now you can download an "update" for the mini itself in preparation for this.

 

So there you have it.  Check the appropriate sites for more detailed info.

 

 

 

[Tanooki]

You reminded me then made the post.  I was going to bring up Hakchi2 CE 3.7.0

 

I'm curious how good that is if someone has used it.  I've never actually attempted to build something out like this before as I was satisfied leaving the Nintendo systems stock with the other hardware and kits I have it was senseless to hack it.  I wonder if you can just in 3.7.0 use the base Sega emulator and menu without adding extra baggage as it would be nice to take it easy and not get greedy.

[Shannon]

Hakchi has always been built around on relying on the built in menu system of the mini's.  Anything it does add is in the background and is mainly there to make things easier for the end user.  Any "non-sega" games you add would still be accessible using the built in menu system, etc.  Project Lunar is different in that it adds a "main" main menu where you select between the internal menu, ES and setting options.  Although it does allow you to set a quick boot so you don't even see the opening menu.  I can't speak for the future additions where they allow you to select which emu "core" is used for each game.  But it sounds like it will all be run from within the sega internal menu.

 

Just so you know.. Emulastation is NOT a requirement of the Lunar Project and if you do "opt" to use it it's stored on a USB drive so no internal storage is used for it other then some stuff they put on the NAND to allow support for it.

 

As for me I will be unable to comment on how good the latest Hakchi is because at this point I'm not willing to give up emulation station for Hakchi.

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I noticed when I was messing around with PL on its first public release something else I might not have mentioned. When I first installed PL I had just under 160Mb available as I recall. Well, when I was doing my testing on the space that everything seems to take up, I uninstalled PL from my Gen Mini and then did a factory reset on the Mini from the Gen Mini settings area. When I reinstalled PL a second time, I notice I only had about 140MB? So it would seem that something gets left behind once PL is installed.

 

Anyone know how to completely restore a Gen Mini back to out of the box factory load? I'd like to check out the new Hakchi as well but wanted to start with a fresh clean loadout on the Gen Mini first.

 

[Zoyous]

7 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

I noticed when I was messing around with PL on its first public release something else I might not have mentioned. When I first installed PL I had just under 160Mb available as I recall. Well, when I was doing my testing on the space that everything seems to take up, I uninstalled PL from my Gen Mini and then did a factory reset on the Mini from the Gen Mini settings area. When I reinstalled PL a second time, I notice I only had about 140MB? So it would seem that something gets left behind once PL is installed.

 

Anyone know how to completely restore a Gen Mini back to out of the box factory load? I'd like to check out the new Hakchi as well but wanted to start with a fresh clean loadout on the Gen Mini first.

 

Did you create any new save states?

[+-^CrossBow^-]

1 minute ago, Zoyous said:

Did you create any new save states?

You mean when i reset it and had less space? No..in fact that was what really threw me. I had saved states at first and after doing the factory reset through the actual UI, I verified there weren't any save states for any of the games. So yes, I was surprised when I had less space to start off with when I re-installed PL again.