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The Almighty Buck United States Entertainment Games Hardware Technology

The Sega Genesis Is Officially Back In Production (dailydot.com) 117

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Daily Dot: Sega may be done making the Genesis (known as the Mega Drive outside of the U.S.), but that doesn't mean people aren't still buying them. In Brazil, the 16-bit system is still hugely popular, and now it's being brought back into production. TecToy, which produces all manner of gadgets and toys, has launched preorders for all-new Sega Mega Drive stock, complete with support for the original game library and controllers. But what's even more astounding about the announcement is that it's all being done with Sega's blessing, making these official, brand new, Sega-branded consoles. The new consoles are spitting images of the originals, aside from the addition of an SD card slot, which makes it great for emulation. They're even complete with support for A/V cables, though there's no HDMI or other bells or whistles. That might seem like a bad move, but for the Brazilian market, it's a perfect fit, not to mention that you can easily pick up an A/V-to-HDMI converter for fairly cheap. The system costs roughly $125 (BRL399) and includes a SD card with 22 games.
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The Sega Genesis Is Officially Back In Production

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  • Complete? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @02:20AM (#53235329)
    Not providing HDMI is indeed a mistake, but what's unforgivable is the lack of even COMPONENT outputs, or even VGA. It would have been easier to convert the output to RGB than to convert it to composite, and you would have way better clarity on today's televisions.
    • Re:Complete? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @02:25AM (#53235347) Homepage

      This is a $125 decades old 16-bit games console being sold in a market of $50 Android TV boxes.
      I think the lack of HDMI is just about the least strange thing about it.

      • Re:Complete? (Score:4, Informative)

        by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @05:13AM (#53235737)

        This is a $125 decades old 16-bit games console being sold in a market of $50 Android TV boxes. I think the lack of HDMI is just about the least strange thing about it.

        This is a $125 product being touted as "new" when we all know that Genesis consoles (along with Atari 2600 consoles) have been sold for years now, and one can easily find them at less than half this advertised price, and with three times as many built in games.

        The largest unexplained oddity is why the retro-game-loving people of Brazil are completely unaware of this.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Because these are not sold in Brazil, are likely illegal anyway [standard Brazilian outlook on this kind of stuff], and after you factor in the need for an international credit card, US$->BRL conversion and shipping, cost just as much (but have no warranty at all -- shipping makes it prohibitive to use any internationally valid warranty in Brazil that requires shipping overseas).

          Oh, and TecToy stuff usually ends up being sold on toy stores across the country, with discounted prices and 10x in your credit

          • What's the OPEX of a modern console? Buying new games is CAPEX. Power consumption is negligible. You probably have the internet connection anyway at a fixed monthly rate. Xbox Live/PSN isn't mandatory.

            • by tepples ( 727027 )

              modern console [...] Power consumption is negligible.

              You'd be surprised. "Hardcore" consoles from the past decade (PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, and Xbox One) can burn 100 W or more if made before the process shrinks incorporated in "slim" redesigns.

              You probably have the internet connection anyway at a fixed monthly rate.

              Unless you live in a rural area, where the monthly data allowance under the "fixed monthly rate" often isn't enough to download modern games. I know nothing about the home Internet market in Brazil, but wireless (satellite or cellular) home Internet plans in the United States tend to run $5 per GB or more.

              Buying new games is CAPEX.

              Until the game's p

              • You'd be surprised. "Hardcore" consoles from the past decade (PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, and Xbox One) can burn 100 W or more if made before the process shrinks incorporated in "slim" redesigns.

                Don't "Fat" PS3's hit more than 250W sometimes? That thing is a powersucker...I didn't leave that thing on running Linux like I did the PS2.

                [quote]unless you live in a rural area, where the monthly data allowance under the "fixed monthly rate" often isn't enough to download modern games, but wireless (satellite or cellular) home Internet plans in the United States tend to run $5 per GB or more. [/quote]

                Even in rural areas, most people live in the towns...and probably have access to at least DSL, if not hig

      • but it should work with the 32X and sega cd then.

        sonic and knuckles lock on as well.

      • You are completely ignoring the feeling of putting in the cartridge, sliding the power button, and using the real controller. Sure, this thing takes SD cards (which makes me kinda want one), but there is something to be said about the "feel" of the original over some android box with some odd controller.

        As someone who grew up with genesis and SNES, playing Sonic with an xbox360 controller just feels weird.
      • i dont think it is strange at all .. its memberberries ... more of the old instead of the new
        personally ... screw the NES and SEGA systems for they areth consoles. If i had actual decent money i would be more than happy to fork out for an original atari 2600 and most of all , the C-64, just to put them in my hardware room (considering i have money for a hardware museumroom lol)
        as in looking exactly like the original that stomed a generation of coding with the original tapedeck which functionally could be
    • Re:Complete? (Score:4, Informative)

      by TuringTest ( 533084 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2016 @04:49AM (#53235647) Journal

      It would have been easier to convert the output to RGB than to convert it to composite, and you would have way better clarity on today's televisions.

      Why would you want better clarity? The art in those games was designed to be shown in blurry screens. Showing them with increased clarity distorts the original game looks, as if they were processed by a sharpen filter.

      • Well, yes and no. The games were meant to be show on CRTs, which slightly fuzz the pixels by design. But Composite video simply sucks ass, it has color bleed, ringing, ghosting, a whole host of problems.

        Try hooking up a console with RGB SCART or Component to a good-quality CRT and be amazed, especially if you've only ever used RF or Composite video. 2D games in particular look absolutely amazing when given the best possible conditions. The CRT itself does all the blurring and fuzz you need, there is no reas

        • I wonder how many european countries or other had SCART, but I remember SCART to be the default, all 8/16 bit consoles used it and 1980s TVs would support only RGB not composite. PS1, PS2, N64 etc. then came out with composite cables and the RCA to SCART adapter, so the PS2 would display a worse pictures than Master System, SNES, Megadrive. (NES looked a bit weird, but quite good enough)
          RF was for Atari 2600, C64, Pong clones i.e. prehistoric cavemen stuff.

          S-Video might have been useful but most experience

          • SCART was pretty much exclusively a European thing, dreamed up by the French to protect their own TV manufacturers. Japan has/had the JP21 standard which uses the same connectors with a different pin assignment.

            99% of consoles hooked up using SCART connectors output Composite video, RGB was either not available or required an expensive add-on cable. All TVs with SCART plugs support Composite over SCART, some support S-Video, and the best TVs support RGB and sometimes even Component (YPbPr). Some consoles (m

            • Thanks, so RGB-only SCART was a French thing? Fun fact, there were never such a thing as composite SECAM.
              The classic consoles were wired for RGB in the French market at least. The NES couldn't do RGB, so the French NES uses a built-in composite to RGB converter. Only later did French TV support composite PAL, such that after a SNES that only did RGB, we got an N64 that only did composite.

              • That's really interesting stuff, I didn't know that about SECAM :-)

                I would assume not all console had native RGB output, so a lot of them probably used internal composite to RGB converters.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        uh what? If you were alive when the SNES and Genesis were the dominant consoles you would know that people wanted the sharpest possible picture, they did not just hook it up with a coat hanger as a wire and say "this is what the game designers intended."

    • Not providing HDMI means more cables and connections. People want to live easy nowadays.
    • VGA out, and it runs a host of old hardware. Sega, NES, Amiga, C64, Apple II, too many to mention. [github.com]

      And they come with a full development kit. Altera Quartus and GCC, and you can make it do pretty much anything you want.

    • by Nyder ( 754090 )

      Not providing HDMI is indeed a mistake, but what's unforgivable is the lack of even COMPONENT outputs, or even VGA. It would have been easier to convert the output to RGB than to convert it to composite, and you would have way better clarity on today's televisions.

      As the summary says, it's for the Brazil market, a market that is mostly Standard Definition TV's.

      So it's not a mistake, it's intentional because they aren't selling it to the USA or Europe. Since Sega seems willing to have the Megadrive be produced again, why don't you put together a company, throw some specs at Sega and get their permission to make a modern Megadrive? Then you an correct all the wrongs you see done and make some money.

    • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      It would have been easier to convert the output to RGB than to convert it to composite

      What makes you think the connector doesn't support both RGB and composite like the old Genesis/Mega Drive did? Where are you getting your information?

      • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        Okay, I read the FAQ [tectoy.com.br] translated into English, and you're right, it will not support RGB:

        Frequently Asked Questions

        Soon to celebrate its 30th anniversary, Tectoy could not fail to celebrate such an important date. And the way we find to celebrate this moment will be the re-launch of the most successful videogame of the '90s, Mega Drive, in a limited edition. Attending to the requests of thousands of fans, Tectoy was committed to reproduce to the maximum the unforgettable experiences that only the Mega Drive

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Couldn't I do an RPi based emulator with controllers for like $50? Or for $25 get a PS Vita? or for $25 less get an Android tablet?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Due to Brazilian import tariffs on electronics, a Pi might cost $100-$150.

      Brazil might be able to manufacture its own version of the the Pi, but then it's a question of scale and market viability.

    • by aliquis ( 678370 )

      But this seem to be the original + more rather than something modern using an emulator. This isn't a modern design with much more efficient components and manufacturing.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      You have to think about the distorted/inflated prices found in anything electronic in Brazil.

      A RPi3 or Odroid c2 plus controllers is about US$ 125 here. Even then they are better alternatives of course but I understand the Genesys appeal for the layman.

  • Any A/V-to-HDMI converter you could reasonably call "fairly cheap" is going to have horrendous amounts of input lag and be total crap for playing games on. There's a reason people spend several hundreds of dollars importing Micomsoft's XRGB-series upscalers from Japan.
    • There's a reason people spend several hundreds of dollars importing Micomsoft's XRGB-series upscalers from Japan.

      Because their TV has a crappy scaler? I've played retro games on my 52" Sharp 1080p LCD and they look great. And the scaler has basically no lag.

      • That depends heavily on your TV and its processing lag, and which connections it has.

        A lot of modern TVs don't have SCART/Component inputs, so you have to convert the signal to HDMI somehow. The XRGB does this with very little lag, unlike a lot of cheap converters/upscalers.

        • Even many TVs with appropriate inputs will not scale the output of old game consoles properly. Old game consoles used non-standard hacks to get 240-line progressive video out of a 480-line interlaced display. Many newer TVs will incorrectly interpret these "240p" signals as 480i signals and attempt to deinterlace them. This not only results in terrible picture quality but also introduces a ton of lag. You need a proper upscaler to correct this.
      • I've always believed that those "input lag" people are basically the video game equivalent of those "gold unidirectional cables make HDMI sound warmer" people.

        • I've always believed that those "input lag" people are basically the video game equivalent of those "gold unidirectional cables make HDMI sound warmer" people.

          Well, their math seems pretty convincing to me. If it takes multiple frames to perform a scaling operation, and that adds up to approach human reaction times, it makes sense that it would produce a perceptible lag. I don't play fighting games and I'm not a platformer hero (my big accomplishment was beating Ninja Gaiden back in the day) so it's of little consequence to me. But even so, the primary thing that really separated SHARP AQUOS from other TVs (except maybe Bravia, this is the most substantive differ

        • Well, input lag exists and can be measured, that much is not up for debate. Whether you notice will depend on the severity of the lag, the types of games you play, and, to put it bluntly, how skilled you are. You can adapt to a certain degree of lag, but once it gets very bad, it will impact your ability to play the twitchy action games that were the bread and butter of the Sega Genesis. Cheap upscalers tend to add several frames of latency on top of your TV's latency. It's cumulative and can easily add up
    • I've tried to figure out what exactly the video was trying to prove, but the audio was bad and the video was worse. Perhaps you could tell us what exactly goes on in that video?
    • Heart on Fire and everything. It's not a SOC, So it'll run the games just fine. The real question I have is will it have the proper Yamaha sound chip
  • Why are we touting this as new?

    I've seen "brand new" Sega Genesis console packages alongside "brand new" Atari 2600 consoles being sold in stores for years now. I'll probably be able to pick up one for less than $30 when Black Friday rolls around, and many of these consoles come with three times as many built-in games.

    For some odd reason the people of Brazil representing the target market are unaware that this product already exists and for less than half the cost? What the hell am I missing here? Are th

    • by tepples ( 727027 )

      For some odd reason the people of Brazil representing the target market are unaware that this product already exists and for less than half the cost? What the hell am I missing here? Are they really charging a 400% markup on the new(er) console because of the addition of an SD card slot?

      They're charging 400 percent markup because the manufacturer got it past Brazilian customs and into toy stores.

      • For some odd reason the people of Brazil representing the target market are unaware that this product already exists and for less than half the cost? What the hell am I missing here? Are they really charging a 400% markup on the new(er) console because of the addition of an SD card slot?

        They're charging 400 percent markup because the manufacturer got it past Brazilian customs and into toy stores.

        Sadly, yes. TFA should focus on the fact that this has a hell of a lot more to do with trade/commerce agreements and licensing instead of claiming that the Genesis is "back" in production.

    • by Luthair ( 847766 )
      Are you referring to the AT Games Sega device? If so its a bad emulator (sound distortion and lag iirc) not real hardware. Though it isn't really clear whether the TecToy device will also use original chips or something else.
  • There are still many TSOP-reflashable Xbox (original, that is) units lying around at flea markets for basically no money. If you want to play classic genesis games, that's a much better way to go. Google for "GenRen" to find roms. All of them. You could buy carts and dump them of course, either with a ~$60 tool or with a Sega CD and your PC [retrodev.com]. You can get a Sega CD and a real Genesis at the flea market, of course. I think I got rid of my Sega CD already...

  • Emulators are good enough. you can get USB genesis controllers. If you want the REAL thing, get the real thing and the mega everdrive. Flash cart an SD card slot to load all your games so you can play them on the real hardware, even romhacks.
  • I'd really like to know what hardware this has inside. It might very well be something similar to the new NES, i.e.: an ARM SOC running an emulator.
    It'd be really cool if this was running on the original chips. As opposed to the NES it seems the Genesis used pretty standard hardware: A Motorola 68K, a Z80 a pretty common Yamaha sound chip.
    Alas, it's probably more expensive to build a device with those chips nowadays than to use the ARM and emulator option.
    • According to the site Faq: It is not emulated, they are using one single chip for the 16Bit and 8 Bit processors. Compatible with original cartridge ( with few exceptions like Virtua Racing and Sonic & Knuckles ) and original controllers They are keeping the original design, even the box will be based on the original. No promises about compatibility with Game Genie, Sega CD, Power Base Converter, 32x Meganet, Activator, e Mega Mouse
  • It seems odd to me that Sega would pick the Genesis not the Dreamcast.
    I mean wasn't the Dreamcast way more iconic and popular than the Genesis?

  • Curso NR 10 online [institutosc.com.br] curso NR 10 curso NR 10 online

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