Sega Genesis Mini: How nostalgia and classic gaming will always be relevant!
Sega reached out to us to review the Sega Genesis mini for the upcoming holiday season.
I want to be as transparent as possible in saying that I grew up and sided with Sega from the Master System until they stopped making hardware with the Dreamcast.
My gut will always love Sega, but as a 42 year old collector and parent, is the Sega Genesis Mini all what it is cracked up to be? At first, I was floored with the packaging presentation. It looked like the Genesis packaging and hit me in all the nostalgia feels. It all permeated into my brain, pulling out memories of Christmas’
past when I first got the Genesis system!
Opening the box and pulling out this tiny little replica of an actual Sega Genesis completely blew me away. This system is 55% smaller than the OG (For obvious reasons, it should be smaller. It is called the Mini for a reason.)
The set up is super easy, HDMI and USB power supply: and with that you are ready to go.
The two controllers are full size so they feel and play as if it they were original Sega controllers. It’s almost too good to be true. The controllers also have very long cords, which is absolutely necessary in this day and age.
The boot up is fast and sleek, and with that you have access to 42 pre-installed games. Some games are classics like Altered Beast, Strider, Streets of Rage 2, Sonic the Hedgehog and many others. What is really cool, and you have to dig around a bit to find it, is that certain games have multiple regional variations that can be played by changing the system’s language. Games like Contra: Hard Corps becomes Probotector when played with a PAL-region language and on Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine going into the Japanese setting will change it to Puyo Puyo (this was the original game before the Western localized name of Robotnik). The games have a saved state feature to pause and resume progress and can be played in either the original 4:3 ratio or stretched 16:9 widescreen with HUD elements modified to fit onto the screen.
When you are in the game screen option, you get amazing artwork for the North American games with the ability to switch to the side to see spine artwork (that extra bit just adds so much more). And, once again, if you switch the language you will get the Japanese box art as well.
So, you may say to yourself, “Now, I have a new Sega Genesis mini with games I remember, what else does it have?” Well let me tell you, it also has two bonus games, Darius and Tetris, And yes, you would be correct in saying that Tetris was never on the original Sega Genesis console. Well, to be honest, it wasn’t not an official title. Tetris was teased to come out for it, but was pulled before being released. Darius is a game that never got a console release either, so I am happy it was added to the Mini.
I’ve been a fan of the Sega since 1987 and I am more than happy to tell you guys. this game system is done right and you shouldn’t think about NOT buying it. Get it, ask a loved one to buy it, or quickly get Santa to bring it for Christmas.
Genesis does what it always has done and that’s be fun and entertaining.
We want to thank Sega for the review copy and hope you guys all have a fantastic holiday season filled with so much video game history.
