Topic: Mega Drive Mini

@ThanosReXXX lol thanks for the videos but check when this thread was created....

Funny what you've all said about Nintendo not being so popular here in the UK. My experience was that the SNES and mega drive were the big dogs, as popular as eachother really. Then the PlayStation came out and both of them became less popular as a result. The N64 and Dreamcast/Saturn were way more niche due to PlayStation popularity but before that both Nintendo and Sega reigned supreme...

I feel like more people I knew of in the UK had a Master System or Mega Drive than a NES or SNES, but having said that I can only remember playing 2 MD games - Sonic and Ecco, which I equalled on SNES - Street Fighter 2 and Mario Kart. My family owned neither, just Amiga.

I decided to pre-order a MD mini as soon as I heard M2 were involved. The UK Sega store then throwing in a free t-shirt sweetened the deal too.

@Gamecuber Hm, so what games included in the European edition of Mega Drive Mini would have compatibility issues with the six-button controller and which ones would benefit from the six-button controller apart from Street Fighter II?

@BlueOcean not sure if that will be an issue (as I said, the full list is in the manual that came with the original controller) but it is definitely something to think about before importing a 6 button controller from Japan (I’ll be sticking with the three button one. In StreetFighter you just have to hit start to change between punch and kick. The game is fairly slow by today’s standards, though that could be because of the 50hz PAL format...

@Gamecuber Sorry, I couldn't find the manual. By the way, the review that I posted on page 1 states that you can choose the European, Japanese or American version of the included games, that's great. I'm not a Mega Drive expert but the European selection seems fine, right? Except, well, no edition includes Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

@ralphdibny Ah, I stand corrected then, good sir. The confusion probably stems from me seeing your thread popping up on the "forum topics"" table on the main page several days after I made mine, probably because of someone who replied to you at that point, so that was actually the first time I noticed your forum thread.

Well, in that case, I'll just add the videos here as well, so that more people will be able to see them. They're pretty helpful and informative previews, in my opinion.

Original comment:

@ThanosReXXX excellent that's a good idea! To tell you the truth I kept quiet on this thread for a while because I thought it might derail if it was highjacked by nickbotoon who posted second. I say this with the greatest respect to his apparent enthusiasm.

@ralphdibny Oh, fully agreed on that one. He's already been labeled as the "1001 mini console forum topic poster nut" by some of us...

@Gamecuber Maybe the "niceness" of Sega fans was different in the UK.
Not sure what kind of advertising there was in the UK, but in the US during the Genesis era Sega was remembered for almost doing almost as much mud-throwing as politicians in their advertising (not sure how well that expression translates, basically lots of name-calling and such).

After a couple years of that, Nintendo started to sort of retaliate in their marketing but much of the later US SNES advertising (the "Play It Loud!" era, they called it) felt like their marketing team's minds just kind of exploded. And we ended up with ads that felt like they were written by the nine-year-olds they were targeting. "You can play Super Pinball naked." "(Virtua Racing) only lets you pick your nose." (and the most infamous, EarthBound) "This game stinks." All things Nintendo said.

I only remember a few TV spots and longer commercials from the 90s because I was a kid and the ones I remember the most are Nintendo's but I was absolutely impressed by Sonic 3 TV spot. That was when I started dreaming that I had a Mega Drive.

Do you remember that documentary about a cool man (American?) visiting Rare to see Donkey Kong Country? And that one with a guy in an Impossible Mission to check Nintendo 64 when it was called Ultra 64? Wow, that was the first time I saw Super Mario 64. The visuals were incredible and even the sound effects were awesome. I was impressed by the different and satisfactory sounds for Mario's footsteps but not by the music, I've always thought the soundtrack is bad - except Jolly Roger Bay and Menu. I think that Sonic had better music than Mario but Super Mario World features a brilliant soundtrack.

@KingMike advertising is different in the UK, it’s very rare that an advert for a product can ‘call out’ a specific competitor. That was a real surprise for me when I started visiting the US, just how aggressive the marketing could be (I.e. SEGA could literally saying that Nintendo sucked and that they were better).

In the UK the main adverts were things like:

SEGA tried to be seen as the cool console, but they were not really competing with Nintendo in the UK, as due to Nintendo messing around with distribution of the NES, SEGA were able to undercut them. The Master System was popular but the Mega Drive was the clear winner over the SNES. Not to say Nintendo weren’t around, but in my experience at least the competition was more among playground fan baiting. In terms of sales and install base SEGA were king 1989-1995.

However, SEGA was really up against the home computers (Amiga, Commodore, Amstrad and Spectrum Sinclair). These were far more popular in the 80s and the games were very cheap. It was the Mega Drive that was the real first console that kicked them into touch (only the Amiga was more impressive at the time).

SEGA pretty much rules the roost, until the PlayStation. If SEGA has not dropped the ball with the Saturn and the whole Mega CD/ 32X rubbish it may have been a two horse race between them and Sony in the mid 90s.

John from Digital Foundry's review of Mega Drive Mini:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-sega-m...

It includes a ton of details absent from Nintendo Life's superficial review.

@BlueOcean that's brilliant, I'm glad they went into detail about the input lag and audio issues. The input lag was something that annoyed me a bit about NLs review of the mega drive collection on switch which was wholly innacurate on its appraisal of the emulation. This led me to buying it and being disappointed. At least I'm armed with the knowledge for this release and like I've said, its mainly going to be a collector's piece and a way to get my hands on official usb versions of that 3 button controller ♥️

@ralphdibny You are right. Nintendo Life omitted those issues but Digital Foundry has measured a longer input lag on the Mega Drive Collection than on Mega Drive Mini. I'm going to get a Mega Drive Mini as well.

Those US tower of powers sent to journos fills me with some hope.... But I need a UK one... As It stands I could combine a japanese mega cd with a US sonic and knuckles and have a UK tower lol....
Or sega could just do that themselves and release the damn thing in England!

@DarthNocturnal I know of one other game, also a fighter, namely Eternal Champions, but that actually also has an option to play with 3 button controllers, so in that case, the 6 button pad isn't even mandatory.

From what I've heard, there's supposed to be 3 games in total (can't remember the third one, though), Street Fighter and Eternal Champions included, that would make use of the extra buttons, so considering there's 40 games in total, I'd say that there's really nothing to fuss over for most of us, and NLife is making FAR too big of a thing from it.