Special video effects
The scanline effect in the Mega Sg has three settings: no scanlines, Normal scanlines, and Hybrid scanlines. The first one should be obvious: for those who don’t like the effect, it’s disabled entirely. The “Normal scanlines” option draws evenly-thick lines all throughout the image. You can see this effect in just about every software emulator in existence. As with those emulators, the thickness of the lines can be adjusted on the Mega Sg with a slider.
My preferred effect on the system is the Hybrid option, though. This version of the scanline effect increases the thickness of the line when neighboring pixels are dark and thins it out in lighter areas of the image. This seems to reproduce the bloom effect of a CRT and gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling in this cold, digital age. In the images below, Ryu’s flesh tones have narrow lines, where his darker costume has much thicker lines.
Left: Hybrid Scanlines at 720p. Right: Hybrid Scanlines at 1080p
In the Mega Sg’s manual, Analogue recommends using 720p for scanlines. The effect certainly works differently on 720p versus 1080p. In 720p mode, the hybrid scanlines disappear entirely on white and near-white colors, an effect I really like. The scanlines don’t disappear entirely at 1080p, but they’re much thinner. Perhaps it’s the lack of sharpness caused by scaling on my TV, but I really liked it better at 720p.
Scanlines aren’t the only video effect the Mega Sg can do, though. Because composite video looks†so soft, many developers used dithering patterns in an effort to create additional colors. The Mega Sg attempts to simulate those blurred pixels with the Dither Blending effect. The algorithm looks for alternating pixels that should be blended to create new colors and combines them. You can control how aggressive the blending is with a slider. The effect really shines in†checkerboard or vertical line patterns of exactly two colors.
The Genesis game library is full of titles that employ dithering. Street Fighter II†Special Champion Edition uses a lot of dithering in stage backgrounds to blend one row into the next and create the appearance of extra colors, and the default setting is usually sufficient to recreate the effect. What’s odd is that as you turn up the effect, there are certain filter levels that completely undo all the good work that it does.
Left: no dither blending. Center: dither blending at default. Right: dither blending at maximum
There are trade-offs with dither blending, though. Sometimes text may wind up blended when it shouldn’t be, making it a little harder to read. For example, look at the KO indicator in Street Fighter. Those pixels probably don’t need to be blended, but the system does it anyway. Everything is a candidate for blending, and sometimes you can lose detail. Ryu’s face starts to gravitate towards all one color as the effect gets turned up. You may want to dial in the dither setting based on the game you’re playing. For the most part, the default setting value of 0 does enough to blend most patterns without making things too blurry.
Sonic the Hedgehog has scenes throughout Green Hill Zone with faux-transparent waterfalls. When you play on a higher-quality display or in an emulator, you can see how the sausage is made. The effect is made up of alternating columns of pixels. One column is blue, the next is whatever is visible in the background. The Dither Blending effect does pretty well here, too. The waterfall animates and looks great. In motion, I thought it looked completely transparent. However, when I paused the game to capture images, I saw that the waterfalls weren’t totally transparent yet. Turning the effect up to the max helped, but though there were†still visible gaps.
Left: no dither blending. Center: dither blending at maximum. Right: dither blending at default
In Streets of Rage 2, this bar scene uses diagonal patterns to form a mesh transparency. When the Dither Blending effect is turned on, the background looks great, for the most part. The light is transparent and the billiards table looks correct. However,†you can see halos appear around foreground objects. In the images below, look at protagonist Axel Stone standing in the spotlight next to a table and stool. The stronger the Dither Blending effect is applied, the less apparent the halo, but the weird edges are always there. Other objects, like the billiards table in the background, look fantastic. Take a closer look below.
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Ben Funk
This has nothing really to do with the article I guess, but the whole thing reminded me of when a friend of mine’s dad had someone who was on a business travel and brought my friend back a Famicon with the floppy disc drive and it was so cool that you could just rent Nintendo games and clone them to those floppy drives. I don’t know why, but this article reminded me of that.
*my* problem with these low powered devices (RetroPi included) is that you don’t have the spare power to decode new video codecs or, more on topic, do mods like the brand new high res Mode 7 thing for the SNES (which is so good, the original emulator author, byuu, is implementing it into the emulator itself): [url<]https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/bee9tq/hd_emulation_mod_makes_mode_7_snes_games_look/[/url<]
[quote<]The biggest problem I had with Sewer Shark is that it's just not a very good game—nevertheless, it ran just fine.[/quote<] You take that back!
Never!
I like some FMV games. Star Wars Rebel Assault is pretty good, for example. Road Avenger is amazing. Sewer Shark just isn’t for me.
Night Trap FTW!
For posterity:
Two things changed right around the time the review was published. VideoGamePerfection moved from England to Ireland, and their shop was recently updated to use Euros instead of Pounds. The denomination didn’t change in that conversion, so for international buyers, the price effectively went from 135 GBP ($175 US) to 135 Euro ($150-ish) without VAT. That means the OSSC got like a 15 percent price cut, or at least it will once the store re-opens to non-European buyers. They’re still getting shipping and logistics squared away. Plus it’s still not even in stock, so there’s a wait associated with getting one right now.
That’s a nice price cut, but not enough to make it price-competitive. Not sure that’s even the goal of the device, since people will still want to use original hardware regardless. Instead of $300 for a full-fat Genesis setup from scratch, it’s $275.
The other is that I finally got to test the 4.4 firmware update (rather, the 7.4 Jailbreak firmware) last night. It fixed almost all of my Sega CD problems, but the db Electronics Ultra CD Backup still won’t load my Shining Force CD book 2 save game. 🙁
None of this affects any of our conclusions. The aftermarket save cart was finicky before and it still is. The $25 price cut still doesn’t put original hardware + scaling into the same price category as the Mega Sg. Plus, the Mega Sg is even better than it was before with the other CD-related fixes.
Excellent article Ben.
I remember sitting around watching my brother play “The Immortal” for hours.
[url<]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8Omszkd5KQ[/url<]
Dude, I haven’t thought about that game since high school. I used to rent games on the weekends, and this one was a multiple-rental game, though I never did get to own it. Where I grew up, the only places to get games was Walmart and Kmart, and they only had the commercially-successful ones on display. Anywhere else to get my hands on some deep cuts (like Shining Force, which is amazing but didn’t sell well) was like an hour away.
This thing is a brilliant piece of hardware. Eagerly awaiting mine!!
Awesome review
WOW, this is TR review. Amazing. Thank you.
Great review. I want one of these… and the Nintendo ones, too…
Also, After Burner is my favorite series (II is my fav).
The Sega Mega Drive is probably my most cherished console of all time. Runner ups would include the NES, PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2 and SNES. Other nice but largely forgotten consoles would be the 3DO, N64 and Saturn.
Yea I love the MD / MegaCD – probably my favorite console ever. Another for your forgotten consoles list, but worth mentioning: PC Engine / Turbo Grafx 16 (and of course the CD variants).
I restored a PC Engine Duo last year, fantastic system.
PC Engine CD in MiSTer is going to get me to buy a DE10-nano. The base system support is already excellent, from what I’ve read. The guy doing the CD work, Ash Evans, is very capable. He’s already got Rondo of Blood booting an ISO from the SD slot. No CD audio yet though. He also hinted on Twitter that official CD a support may be possible through USB disc readers.
Add to that the Neo Geo work that’s going on and the possibility of CPS-1/2 down the road and MiSTer is something to watch.
Interesting! Will look into this.
Do you think it’s still possible to buy a brand new CRT TV today, just keep it in its box, and do an unboxing video of it in 2050?
CRTs aren’t made today, which is unfortunate. A while back I passed up a chance at a new-old-stock 20″ Magnavox TV with a couple composite inputs. The box said it was a new model for 1989. I kind of regret not picking it up. It was only $25.
CRTs were killed off because you can’t make an unit that would confine to RoHS/eWaste standards.
RoHS compliances is what really killed off CRTs.
Yes, thanks for stalking me and replying with useless facts every time I comment.
Not useless information. Just explaining the final nail in their coffin.
I’m not stalking you either, too much paranoia eh?
I wish there was one of these for the nes, snes and n64 and I wish i had all my old cartridges.
sigh
You didn’t read the article. I talked about how the Super Nt and RetroUSB AVS do two of those three. 😉
Ya, but the super Nt says only snes and no controllers included
so $190 + $40 + $40 (1.35) exchange = $365 x.13 = $412 cnd
and I don’t have any cartridges anymore, so + more $$
Interesting product, I think the snes classic from nintendo (if it was readily available) at its $80 mrsp would probably be better value.
Oh I see, you want a 3-in-1 thing, kind of like the RetroN 5 but not crappy. LOL
lol ya with the price of a nes/snes classic
If nintendo would have been on the ball, they would have made such a unit and sold it.
why the fuck would nintendo sell one all in one device when they can sell two for twice the price. think, bueller. any engineer can buy a raspberry pi and two usb controllers and run every arcade, 8 bit, and 16 bit game for under 100 bucks.
Good article. Myself I have the Original Sega Genius. With the guns, the glasses and the controllers and the boxes. My goal is to resurrect my 27inch Panasonic and have a dedicated arcade area. I got 20 to 30 games too and all of it is in excellent condition.
The whole irony of this is today’s “service” in the video gaming industry is everything is going digital. A terrible mistake and because of this you have companies trying to preserve what we took for granted those many years ago.
Games were fun back then… instead of mirco tranactions, look crates and a grind that never ends with a rental style of mentality.
You NEVER own your current digital games.
They only work as long as the servers are up to play them.
If you said this to me in person, I would definitely punch you directly in the balls as hard as I possibly could.
Digital games are MORE secure than physical games. Physical games will fail, they’ll rot away. Physical games can’t be updated to work with modern systems. Physical games are subject to entropy.
This whole thing about “you never own your digital games” is such a crock of crap that I can’t even believe people are still repeating it. It’s fearmongering of the most ignorant sort. Have you ever heard of such thing as a game crack? It’s not as if the game data was deleted off your hard drive, or from your back ups. If you want to play a game and the service hosting it went down, just crack it and keep playing it.
This is why I get pissed off when people start complaining about pirates, because they’re out there fighting the good fight. You already obviously agree that these companies are doing the wrong thing by linking the licenses for these games to online services. You should be thankful that these “pirates” are doing the work to make preservation of this software possible.
And yeah, there are some games that you simply can’t play after the servers go down, like MMORPGs and stuff, except that people have even made private server software for some of those games. And anyway, that’s not really the same issue; obviously you can’t keep playing an online game if there’s no “online game” to play.
The solution to software-as-a-service is not going backward to physical media. The solution is to simply give these companies the middle finger. I’m not saying to stop buying games; I buy games on Steam and other services all the time (although I strongly prefer GOG) to support the developers. And then I mostly crack them and play them offline because their DRM isn’t helping my game experience in any way. And if Steam went down tomorrow, I could keep playing my cracked games just fine.
Well that’s a little extreme.
well that’s nerds for you.
[quote<]I am the tallest of mountains, I am the roughest of waves I am the toughest of terrors, I am the darkest of days I'm the last one that's standing, Don't try to stand in my way 'Cause I've been up against better, Just take a look at my face 'Cause If you're messing with me I am a dangerous weapon I am the sharpest of blades, I'll cut you down in a second 'Cause I was born in this pain, it only hurts if you let it So if you think you can take me then you should go and forget it![/quote<] (｡･｀ω´･｡) Oh yeah, and a nice review too. (*'▽')
Not ashamed to admit I haven’t played Sonic Forces so I had to look up the reference. 😆
Internet Tough Gal, activate!
If TR did a Game of Thrones parody, then I guess you’d be Auxy, Breaker of Encryption, and Puncher of Balls.
[quote<]If you said this to me in person, I would definitely punch you directly in the balls as hard as I possibly could.[/quote<] Physical violence because of differing opinions about toys is a really great look for a grown up.
One suspects this is why she’s gotten temporarily banned before.
Boy you sure told me! I’m glad you and all the other disapproving nannies looking down from your moral high horses presented all these dissenting arguments! I’ll definitely change my opinion now!
The world could use a little more physical violence. People are too ready to spout off with uneducated, ignorant bull crap. Once upon a time, if you said something real dumb, you might get slapped for it. Maybe getting punched in the mouth for spouting off would improve the world. ┐(￣ヘ￣)┌
[quote<]Maybe getting punched in the mouth for spouting off would improve the world.[/quote<] Nah. It leads back to a world where whoever can physically hit the hardest ends up being right all the time. (Pretty sure that having massive biceps has no bearing on whether or not you know what you're talking about....)
That’s not any different from the way the world actually works, though. Everything comes down to force eventually. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m not saying it’s just. It clearly isn’t.
That said, I did actually mean “in a hypothetical world where there’s an unfailing arbiter of truth who can mete such punishments when they are correctly due.” Sadly such an entity doesn’t exist and humans are infinitely fallible.
People who take this position tend to think they’ll be [i<]giving[/i<] the slaps. They might be in for a rude surprise.
You’re not wrong. A lot of people make that same mistake (see: champagne tankies who think they’ll be spared when their revolution hits).
I’m not one of them, though. I’ll take my slaps when I’m wrong. You can look anywhere I’ve posted on these forums or comment threads, or elsewhere. I always own up to my mistakes. Actions have consequences and nobody is above them.
whoosh
This (tangentially) is why I try not to make multiple points in one post (on the rare occasion I post).. I swear, I will make a long, thought out, and well researched post, and people will find one tangent line, often said in jest, or at the very least definitely, and obviously, not the meat/point of the post in general, and not why I made the post, and and they will respond to that, and only that, and completely ignore the actual point being made
nono.. you misspelled a word, that invalidates your entire argument, I win
When someone leads with “I want to punch you in the sac” that kind of invalidates their entire argument. It’s not just one argument, it’s the premise. Like, auxy said “we can’t debate civilly, so I’ll just wish for pain.” and so I was done reading.
I had several paragraphs written in response to this, but, upon proofreading, I felt it could be taken.. I dunno, harsh? combative?.. which was/is not my intent, at all, so I’ll just put a TLDR here, and, if further debate is wanted.. I dunno.. anyways
No, in no way does somebody expressing their anger invalidate their argument, anger happens, getting heated mostly just means you’ve either got a dog in the fight, or it rubs you the wrong way enough, as a fellow rage monster, I know how hard it often is not to go nuclear.. getting too long for tldr.. I’ll leave it there
mind you, this isn’t the type of thing I let myself get riled up over (those are mostly all in R&P+economics, so, no examples here)
I’d like to end this quoting PCU, given who I’m responding to, but, even though it would be meant in a 100% jovial way, there’s no way it would be seen as such (as the quote was not at all friendly in the movie).. damnit me, shut up and click sub…
You’re saying lots of dumb stuff. And getting slapped for it socially. How fitting.
I guess you would rather have 14 punches in the mouth than 14 down-votes though. That’s fine I guess, you are a consenting adult. Stop by sometime and if you ask nicely I could punch you 14 times in the mouth so that you receive what you think you should for spouting off stupid stuff.
this does nothing to de-escalate.
auxy’s a brat for sure, but she was (comedically)threatening violence out of frustration. Your post both contributes less and is ruder than either of hers. Have some self-awareness.
Perhaps the joke was not funny. I grok she’s non-neurotypical, but I’m not either and I get that this is hard to get across in text-only.
I think she forgets, when posting on the internet, that her friends have the context that she is an extraordinarily tiny and grotesquely adorable person.
Physical games will fail, they’ll rot away… true. but people rot faster and are forgotten. and lets face it, that a 100 year old CD-rom of Myst or wing commander 3 will most likely last another extra lifetime, if not longer since there was no drm preventing you to copy that floppy…errr…i mean CD-rom, for backup. plastic erodes much much slower than people do. some of us still enjoy holding onto that game box like a piece of art.
What’s a Sega Genius??
I think he meant Genesis but the Master System is the one that had 3D glasses
It’s a Sega Genesis with a Power Base Converter. It’s pretty much backward compatible for a regular Genesis to use Master System games and peripherals. One of the best upgrades at the time for a regular Sega Genesis.
[url<]http://gametrog.com/sega-powerbase-converter-information-specs/[/url<] [url<]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=149&v=P9hIQ_WXzVE[/url<]
So the glasses adapter for the My Card slot works with the Power Base Converter? That’s pretty cool.
It’s the person that tells you that the liquid indicators in your Sega device were triggered and therefore not eligable for service and that you should by a new Sega device.
Great review. I might have to get one of these now that I know the power base converter is fully supported. The Master System was my first console 30+ years ago, and living in the U.S. it seemed like I was the only kid that had one so it’s been near impossible to relive any of these experiences, and this seems like a solid option for that. I tried a Retron 5 + power base converter a few years back. Don’t get me started on that piece of garbage.
The original versions of the Power Base Converter won’t fit. I think it’s Game Sack’s video on the Mega Sg (might have been MLiG, I forget now) that shows the lip on the back pushes against the HDMI cable. But the faux PBC in the box works great.
My wife’s first console was the Master System, too. Her brother has it now, but we’ve still got a handful of games. Up until I got my Mega Sg, I didn’t know if any of them worked.
Master System was completely overshadowed by the NES in its heyday in NA. It had a larger presence elsewhere. SEGA didn’t start capturing significant NA marketshare until the Genesis.
Depends on region/country. Around here I could count the people who owned NES/SNES systems on half of one hand.
Master System did very well in Europe, Australia, and Brazil from what I’ve read. So your experience seems to be normal in your neck of the woods.
The European Master System’s game library is around 2x what it was in the US and games seem to have been released there all the way up to like 1996.
The reason for that, I think and as far as I could tell when I was a kid, was that SNES cartridges were [i<]insanely[/i<] expensive. Mega Drive carts were $$$ enough, but the SNES ones were on another level. Also, the demo stations supermarkets and movie rental places (like the local one) were all Sega.
The Master System sold well in developing countries because the games were pretty cheap to make, and the consoles used easily available parts, like the Z80 and SN76489 sound chips (both used in everything 8-bit).
Keep in mind that Europe in the 1980s was still recovering from The Berlin Wall, and the former Soviet Bloc countries were not ready for expensive entertainment. Portugal was also still recovering from the Carnation Revolution, and right next door Spain also transition to democracy at the same time. The Master System was a pretty capable console to sell to these folks at low costs, even as the Genesis and SNES were being sold to the rest of the world.
Also, Sega had to sell the very idea of a Game Console to rich countries like Great Britain, West Germany and France, who had missed out on the Atari 2600 invasion. Theirs was a market already owned by gaming computer companies (Commodore, Sinclair, BBC Micro). It’s no surprise that they were the only success there, as Nintendo was too busy marketing exclusively to the USA and Japan.
I can’t believe you didn’t mention if it emulates the Genesis’s most important feature: Blast Processing.
I love that old commercial with the TV strapped to the back of the dragster: [url<]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlulSyBI2aY[/url<] But Blast Processing is a real thing, too, and I should have covered it. 🙁 The short story is that during the H-blank interval, the system is capable of accessing the VDP to change the color palette. Sega used it in simple ways to add tons of color to the system. Anywhere you see Sonic underwater and part of the screen has a different color palette than the above-water section, it's because of a mid-frame palette swap. The technique introduces some noise into the image, and Sega cleverly disguised it as waves on top of the water. That's Blast Processing in action. And yes, the Mega Sg supports it. In more recent years, it's also been discovered that you could update the palette [i<]mid-scanline[/i<], and that means 512-color static images are possible. Jon Burton, founder of Traveler's Tales (LEGO series including LEGO Star Wars), runs a YouTube channel called Game Hut. He covers the technique in depth. Since it required such tight timing, there's basically no time to process any game logic. It would have been cool to have full-color title screens, but such is life. Here's his YouTube video: [url<]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8qgArSqMsc[/url<]
Fantastic write-up! Now we just need to convince Secret Squirrel to do a “formal” edit of his ongoing PacMan arcade resto in the forum.
Seriously. Anyone that isn’t already following along needs to [url=https://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=121338<]check it out[/url<].
At first I was wondering why SecretSquirrel needs to write any more than he’s already done. Then I reread “formal” … and smacked myself in the forehead. You’re probably right. It’s insanely interesting. Pageviews City.
If you squint, the outer packaging looks like a 3.5″ floppy.
“Gotta go fast!”
*Plays Green Hills Zone theme*
Emerald Hill Zone [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-ACSqCfeZc&t=8s<]had the better theme[/url<]! (。-`ω-)
Funky, thorough and most excellent review Ben!