¶ Technical data
- Manufacturer: Sega
- Year of release: 1988
- Units sold: 30.75 millions
- Best-selling game: Sonic the Hedgehog
- CPU: Motorola 68000 @ 7.6 MHz, backed by a Zilog Z80 @ 3.58 MHz
- RAM: 64 KB
- VRAM: 64 KB
- Video: Yamaha YM7101 VDP
- Resolution: 320x224, 64 simultaneous colors out of 512
- Sound chip: Yamaha YM2612 (6 FM channels) + Texas Instruments SN76489 (PSG)
- Media: Cartridge
¶ Presentation
The Mega Drive, sold as the Genesis in North America, is Sega's fourth generation console. Released on October 29, 1988 in Japan, in 1989 in the United States and in 1990 in Europe, it succeeds the Master System and is built around a 16-bit Motorola 68000 assisted by the 8-bit Z80 inherited from the previous generation, which drives the sound hardware and provides a form of backward compatibility.
Carried by aggressive marketing — the famous "Genesis does what Nintendon't" — and by the arrival of Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991, the Mega Drive became the first Sega console to seriously worry Nintendo. It led the North American market for a while and sold more than 30 million units worldwide, by far the biggest commercial success of the brand.
Its library remains one of the richest of the 16-bit era: the Sonic series, Streets of Rage, Gunstar Heroes, Shining Force, Phantasy Star IV, Comix Zone, Sega's arcade conversions, plus a wealth of sports games and the uncensored Mortal Kombat episodes. The console also served as the base for two add-ons, the Mega-CD and the 32X, each of which has its own system in Recalbox.
¶ Emulators
New in Recalbox 10.1: netplay has been reworked — online play, synchronization mode and "GameLink" are enabled. Every Mega Drive core benefits from it.
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro picodrive | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro genesisplusgx | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro genesisplusgxwide | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro fbneo | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro genesisplusgx_ex | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
The default emulator is picodrive, available on every board and very fast even on RPi3 and RPi Zero 2. genesisplusgx is the reference alternative for accuracy; genesisplusgxwide is a variant that widens the picture to 16:9; fbneo emulates the arcade versions (Mega Play / Mega-Tech) of the games; genesisplusgx_ex is a derivative of genesisplusgx that is not available on RPi3 and RPi Zero 2.
Netplay is supported by all five cores. Softpatching works with all of them except fbneo. CRT output is handled by picodrive, genesisplusgx and genesisplusgx_ex. RetroAchievements are available on this system.
A light gun is recommended on the Mega Drive: games compatible with the Menacer or the Justifier (Lethal Enforcers, T2: The Arcade Game…) are played with a gun.
¶ BIOS
| File name | Description | MD5 | Emulators |
|---|---|---|---|
bios_MD.bin |
Mega Drive BIOS (optional) | 45e298905a08f9cfb38fd504cd6dbc84 | genesisplusgx, genesisplusgxwide |
Place the BIOS file like this:
/recalbox/share/bios/megadrive/
└── bios_MD.bin
Recalbox also declares the three regional Mega-CD BIOS files on the Mega Drive platform, but they are only used by Mega-CD games: see the Mega-CD page to install them.
¶ Roms
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/megadrive/
Supported extensions per emulator:
| Emulator | Extensions |
|---|---|
| picodrive | .68k .bin .gen .md .sgd .smd .zip .7z |
| genesisplusgx | .68k .bin .gen .md .mdx .smd .zip .7z |
| genesisplusgxwide | .68k .bin .gen .md .mdx .smd .zip .7z |
| fbneo | .zip .7z |
| genesisplusgx_ex | .68k .bin .gen .md .mdx .smd .zip .7z |
No-Intro romsets are recommended for cartridge games. 32X and Mega-CD games do not belong here: each has its own folder (roms/sega32x/ and roms/segacd/).
To play 6-button games comfortably, a modern controller does the job perfectly, such as the 8BitDo Pro 3.