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Sega CD flashcart is now for sale!


Punisher5.0

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On ‎6‎/‎19‎/‎2019 at 12:00 PM, glazball said:

It says gamesaves are stored on the microSD.  Pretty cool item, but price is a bit too steep for me.

Yea, thinking the same thing. It's kind of expensive.  Very cool, well at least my original Sega CD works perfect for the time being....

 

The price should drop over time and I might jump on then... Till then my X3 will do fine..

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1 hour ago, Yurkie said:

Would be awesome if there where a colecovision and atari 2600 emulator that ran off this cart too.

We can dream :)  But, the lowest I've seen an Atari 2600 emulator go was the GBA.  Even that was only partially able to run.

 

Not sure about the coleco.  Maybe someone could make something like that Super Maryo Bros for the genesis where they disassemble and re-compile the code. 

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On 6/19/2019 at 11:11 PM, chuckwalla said:

You can download Sega CD ROMS as zip files. Check it out.

 

Yep and there is no copy protection on Sega CD games. SO you could grab a CD, burn it and play it.  *IF* you wanted.  Not saying you should tho

 

Still this is very pricey for a cart...

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On 7/26/2019 at 1:46 PM, TheCoolDave said:

 

Yep and there is no copy protection on Sega CD games. SO you could grab a CD, burn it and play it.  *IF* you wanted.  Not saying you should tho

 

Still this is very pricey for a cart...

It is pricey, no doubt, but hear me out.

 

A good-condition Sega CD (if you don't already own one) is around $170, and you're taking a gamble that it works when you get it and will continue to work. 

 

A RAM cart (again, if you don't already own one) is around $50 brand new for the db Electronics mega cart. If you have a Mega SG, it's not compatible with all the games that use the backup cart, so you need an original Sega one. On eBay those are going for $60+. If you instead want a flash cart for Genesis games that also backs up CD games, an Everdrive X5 is $90, and it doesn't do FM for Master System games or support save states like the X7. That's another $170+.

 

A stack of 100 Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs is $40+ on Amazon right now.

 

So to get all the functionality this thing has, you're looking at $370-380 or more. To get the most important pieces, it's more like $250-260. After shipping, the Mega SD is $280-ish (250 Euros), and you're also going to get Virtua Racing SVP support. 

 

I mean, yeah, if you play carts and original discs, you were never going to buy this thing in the first place. That audience has no business saying "I won't buy one because it's expensive" because they weren't going to buy one for free.

 

But if you're not going to play carts and original discs, and if you don't already have the flash cart and Sega CD, this looking like basically the cheapest way to go, if you want all the features. It's basically a no brainer. 

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10 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

But who is coming into SEGA CD cold in 2019? I would assume the vast majority of people who would care about the 25yo platform already have some of the gear. 

That would be me!  I always wanted a Sega CD but never got one or even played one for that matter. Whenever I check out the best CD games list though it puts me off. There isn't much there to warrant the purchase price. Id imagine the loading times are horrendous too considering its only a 1X.

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17 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

But who is coming into SEGA CD cold in 2019? I would assume the vast majority of people who would care about the 25yo platform already have some of the gear. 

 

It does look like a neat thing, just a lot of money for what it can do. 

I'm not coming in cold but once I get one I'll be selling my real deal Sega CD while it still works. Everdrive, too. It'll basically pay for itself. 

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13 hours ago, Punisher5.0 said:

That would be me!  I always wanted a Sega CD but never got one or even played one for that matter. Whenever I check out the best CD games list though it puts me off. There isn't much there to warrant the purchase price. Id imagine the loading times are horrendous too considering its only a 1X.

Me too.  I have a few games that in the years past ran on emulators via PC or Xbox DVD drives, but never had an interest in the unit itself.  One reason is that I prefer the Model 1 Genesis, and the Model 1 CD is too slow, costly, and problematic.

 

12 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

I know lots of people, especially around here, like the "real thing" but SEGA CD emulates pretty well, no moving parts! Just saying 

True, but I want to do it on original hardware.  Yes, I realize with this device you're forgoing the OEM CD module entirely, but everything else remains intact.

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15 hours ago, Punisher5.0 said:

Id imagine the loading times are horrendous too considering its only a 1X.

Load times on the Sega CD mostly aren't bad at all. There are exceptions to the rule like with any CD-based console, but they are just that.

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Yep, the SEGA CD didn't have much memory, so it wasn't like it had to load giant scenes or textures. Audio and video were streamed from disc. The worst loading I noticed was in fighting games like mortal kombat or eternal champions and that was more annoying for the intrusion in the action then the length of time spent waiting. 

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I received mine today, got to spend some time with it. I use my own backups, so I've been hitting some issues because TerraOnion's manual is very vague on what is expected to work. 

 

Using cdrdao to make the copy, and then using toc2cue, I've hit the following issues:

  • Some games which launch fine with my stock US Sega CD get recognized as EU disk images instead of US, and demand an EU BIOS. Not sure exactly what they are using.
  • Games that rely on CD Audio are indexing into the wrong spot in the file. An example is Sonic CD where the first zone starts at the very end of the right track, and then plays into the next track instead of looping.  

Beyond that, it seems to work fine. But I think the warning is that it is picky about the format of the rip (or the cue), and the manual doesn't give enough details on what it's expecting to know ahead of time what will work. So you are left twisting in the wind trying to figure it out if you are making your own rips.

 

What makes things weirder is that the games recognized as US load and play fine, and the audio isn't corrupted (tracks just don't start/stop in the right place). I don't yet have an EU BIOS to see what happens if I load one of the rips it recognizes as EU.

 

I need to do more testing with a couple different rips to see if I can figure out what's going on. cdrdao rips at 2048 bytes per sector by default, which seems to work, mostly.

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