Old Games: 15 Minutes with the Sega Genesis Mini

Oh my god, for the brief period I worked at Target, I was that dude telling people that the AtGames Flashback Genesis was garbage. I feel so attacked by Peter.

What's the purpose of embargoing (Or at least using a time-limit embargo) a retro/classic video game console full of games everybody already knows?

A time limit embargo? Quick, get Vinny to draw some pictures!

@pontoon_yacht: Look at list of games, boot up emulator.

The whole time limit thing doesn't make sense to me in general, what if you remove every other frame of your footage, are you then able to record 30 minutes? I do love GB's workaround for the Killzone 2 embargo.

The audio delay is pretty bad though, check out the guillotines at 11:00.

Dig into those weeds. I for one want to hear all the quibbles about the audio chips/emulation. Thanks Peter!

edit: What were the headphone port peaking issues mentioned in older models?

Thanks so much Peter for giving love to Bloodlines. The Vinnyvania playthrough hurt because of all the hate thrown its way when it was always one of my favorite installments in the franchise. I couldn't find anything on Google to back up his assertion that it was made by future Treasure employees, though, and everybody I looked up who worked on the game stayed with Konami for a while after it was made, so maybe he's thinking of a different game. Regardless, it's definitely worth a shot for anybody who picks up the Genesis Mini.

What YouTube channel is Peter talking about? Something like “Miley from Gaming”?

@krolikoff: My Life In Gaming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbr5eP6KO_o&t=9s

Nothing like that sweet MegaDrive music

@amreese: thanks! Lol I totally know who these guys are. The way he was saying it threw me off.

Brad does not do well under time limit pressure. So much wasted time!

I hope they do come back and play the games properly. Would be nice to see a Jeff and Peter stream after release.

@happenstance:Agreed. Jeff and Peter are the go-to guys for this sort of thing. Jeff is great for old game knowledge, while Peter is great for old hardware knowledge. Both know a lot about emulation in general as well.

I have heard on several occasions now (podcasts and videos) that the other classic consoles don't include a USB power brick. Both, my NES and SNES Classic included one. Did this change at some point? I got my NES upon the re-release, but got the SNES on day one.

My Life in Gaming.

@banko: I believe the NES and SNES Classics were the only ones to include the "brick" to plug into the wall, and even then, that was only for the North American versions. The Japanese and UK versions skipped including it, a practice that carried over worldwide with the PS Classic and (I believe) the upcoming TurboGrafx Mini.

I'm guessing M2 saw what the guy was doing and DMed him like "hey bud you wanna mfin' job?"

IIRC a lot of those folks came up in the hacking community and probably headhunt on emulation forums

@billymaysrip: Lol dude same! I don't think I ever said it was outright trash but I definitely told people it wasn't good.

This was fun. Hope they get Peter back at some point for a longer video on this. I always enjoy watching him geek out talking about old hardware.

I really wish there wasn't an embargo. i enjoy watching literally 2 hours of playing old games.

I don't want to be a hater but the Genesis controller super sucks. The Sega Saturn controller perfected ever element of it and is the best feeling non-joystick controller, imo. When I emulate Genesis games, I use a Saturn controller these days. I just can't go back to the original.

please get gamespot's peter brown on the bombcast thanks!!

They should have some kind of title for shorter videos about games. Maybe "Fast View" :-p

Thank you Peter, when i first heard about the full tower stack for the genesis mini it was only for Japan residents. Even amazon Japan wouldn’t ship to US buyers at that time. After hearing you preordered it, I quickly jumped on Amazon Japan and sure enough I was able to get it now. Awesome video guys, keep up the good work

@pontoon_yacht: Because there is a new game on there

@generalbison: That's not how video works. There is roughly 30 frames for every second of footage. Removing a frame every second would do nothing except ruin the audio even further than the sync issues already apparent.

Hey Jan and/or Jason, whenever you guys feel the need to throw a meaningless or superfluous graphic up on the screen, please don't! The video is called 15 minutes with the Sega Genesis Mini, I trust that they can only show 15 minutes of it. I don't need a countdown timer on the screen. If I really wanted to know for some reason how much time they had left I would just look at how much time was left in the video.

@400lb_gorilla: Stop it.

@killem_dafoe: No. Somebody has to fight the good fight.

@400lb_gorilla: Bitching about things that's don't matter at all is definitely not a good fight. That counter was tiny and in the corner of the screen almost the entire video.

That's what I heard too!

I'm disturbed that the retro games guy said the m30 controller is from Analogue... It isn't, it's from 8bitdo, Analogue just advertises them on their site. They don't even sell them. Oh well.

I don't think you're a hater at all. If you consider controllers as an evolving product through the '70s, '80s and early '90s, it makes sense that all of them are inferior to the Saturn pad, which was the apotheosis of "the digital gamepad." (I use the Retrobit Saturn pad when I play older games on my PC, too.)

why is there an embargo on a product that just plays old games?

what is there to hide? I can find plenty of footage of Sonic the Hedgehog if I really wanted to.

Peter and Brad are a great combo. Hopefully they do a proper deep dive on all the games when Jeff gets back. Lineup is ok but there are some glaring omissions: Rocket Knight Adventures, Alien Soldier, MUSHA, Sub-Terrania, Zoop and even Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Really Sega you couldn't include all the Sonic games? But hey at least we got Dynamite Headdy and Contra Hard Corps so i'm in!

Good thing that embargo exists. We wouldn't want to see too much of these 30+ year old games. Ya know, for SPOILERS.

That having been said: I've spent dumber money getting Phantasy Star IV...

That Darius story was super interesting. Also: wow, we really couldn't defeat Airman. (I'm sorry.)

@billymaysrip: Apologize for nothing. You were doing God's work.

I won't be able to help myself once this comes out. I've bought many of these games 10 times over, and I own the original hardware, but there are some cool offerings here and some games that are expensive and rare.

An embargo... on what is basically an emulator for 20+ year old games. Sure. Go ahead.

I like Light Crusader a lot honestly and it's an isometric action RPG (Zelda) with a style that is in distinct homage to Western RPG's.

Even needing the 6-button controller for ONE game means they should have included it over the 3-button version for this box. Japan gets the 6-button controller, so it's especially baffling they did this and borders on it being a big middle finger to the North American market (or at the least, a shameless way to drive sales of the Retrobit licensed controller line).

The 8bitdo M30 is a really wonderful 6-button controller so if that works with this I'd definitely go that route (though I am one of those people who will take a Raspberry Pi over something like this, any day of the week).

edit: My only complaint about the on-screen timer is that it probably should have been kept off the Genesis screen feed entirely so as not to clutter it up (they did get there eventually though!).

How did Jan not do a 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 countdown??!?!?!

Yeah, as others have said, putting a time limit embargo on 25 year old video games is incredibly stupid. So stupid it actually feels suspicious. Are they actively trying to hide something? Does this thing melt down after an hour of play?

Also, I was sort of hoping for 15 minutes of menus.

smaller market in japan thus it gets the premium treatment. We are larger market thus cut cost get larger profit margin.

I've seen claims of the Genesis Mini having 11 frames (!) of audio lag. If true, that's insane - that's nearly two tenths of a second! Hope it's a typo.

Any one else get a double playing video, I think the youtube versions and giant bomb version are playing at the same time.

Love a bit of Peter Brown! He seems pretty knowledgable!

This was a really good video, Brad and Peter are great together.