Can the Sega Genesis Mini Save Classic Gaming?

If you count Pong—the first commercially successful video game—as the beginning of the video game market, the industry has been around for nearly 50 years. That's not quite as long as film or television, but video games have grown by leaps and bounds in terms of complexity, play mechanics, and mainstream adoption. Yet it wasn't until very recently that the industry took great strides to keep its history not only alive, but accessible and playable.

I've been thinking a lot about this topic since writing about cloud gaming's potential problems, especially when it comes to exclusive games that may become lost to time should Google Stadia, or other similar platform, call it quits. Traditional video consoles have suffered this fate, too, and this issue is not confined to video games. The music and film industries have lost ridiculous amounts of content over time, but the video game industry has the potential to fall into a worse position due to incompatible formats, missing code, aging console hardware, and other woes.

That said, two companies—M2 and Digital Eclipse—are actively working to make sure that cherished video games from yesteryear are playable on today's hardware.

Old School, New School

Retro compilations aren't anything new. One of my first exposures to the video game collections came via Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden Trilogy, which collected the three NES Ninja Gaiden games in one Super NES cartridge. In the years since, I've enjoyed various collections from Atari, Capcom, Namco, Sega, and other notable video game publishers.

Yet, there's a difference between yesterday's and today's retro compilations: the latter's compatibility with high-definition televisions and gaming monitors, as well as the sheer amount of supplemental material that comes with the packages to make them attractive and important offerings from a historical perspective.

The Genesis of It All

Let's start with the technological importance and convenience of contemporary classic video game collections. An excellent example of those concepts is Sega's recently released Genesis Mini, a palm-sized version of the revered 16-bit machine that includes a whopping 42 games.

The micro console connects to a TV or monitor, and due to developer M2's emulation and upscaling prowess, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Earthworm Jim, Mega Man: The Wily Wars, Street Fighter II': Special Championship Edition, and other titles look and run great on HD displays. It's a terrific way to replay classic games if you don't already own a console or gaming PC and a copy of Sega Genesis Collection. Unfortunately, due to licensing reasons, Sega Genesis Mini doesn't include notable Genesis sports games, such as NBA Jam or Sports Talk Baseball, but that's where guerilla game preservers in the ROM-ripping scene prove incredibly clutch.

If you wanted to play the titles packed into Sega Genesis Mini the old-fashioned way, you'd have to hunt down an OG Sega Genesis console, the individual games, and get a quality upscaler (and maybe mod the system for RGB output!) if you don't want the retro, low-resolution sprites to look like a rorschach test on an HD screen. It's not at all convenient for the average person who wants to relive childhood memories, and the entire endeavor may prove quite pricey.

I Spy an Eclipse

Digital Eclipse also does vital emulation work. While M2 has dipped its toe in the retro mini-console space, Digital Eclipse has so far focused on rereleasing classic titles on PC and console. My favorite collection in the company's catalog is the excellent Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection. Though there have been other Street Fighter compilations in the past, Digital Eclipse's release adds never-before-seen design documents, a sprite viewer, a jukebox, and online play for select titles. There's extreme care on display; Digital Eclipse strives for its retro compilations to serve as digital museums where you absorb video game history.

Street Fighter is a big name around the globe, but Digital Eclipse has also taken up the mantle of preserving lesser-known properties. Its SNK 40th Anniversary Collection ignores SNK's most well-known titles—the games released on the company's Neo Geo platform—and focuses on the titles produced before the groundbreaking arcade and home console. You may have heard of Crystalis, Ikari Warriors, or P.OW.: Prisoners of War, but what about Munch Mobile, Ozma Wars, or TNKIII?

Besides the deep cuts, what makes SNK 40th Anniversary Collection unique is that it includes the original arcade game and the home port (or ports!), as well as the SNK Museum mode that lets you view high-definition artwork and promotional assets. Like its Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection brother, SNK 40th Anniversary Collection brings the past to the present.

In fact, Digital Eclipse's built what it calls the Eclipse Engine, software that places the porting weight on the engine itself, not the games, so once a title is converted to the Eclipse format, it will run anywhere Eclipse does. So, games running on Digital Eclipse tech is future-proofed to work on PlayStation 5, Xbox Scarlet, and other video game platforms with, hopefully, a minimum of fuss.

A Way to Go

Despite the many games preservation advances that have emerged in recent years, the industry still has a mountain to climb. After all, releasing old games is a business move, and some potential projects may not be perceived as having the commercial appeal to warrant a contemporary rerelease. Once again, this is where members of the ROM community are super-valuable, as they dump the ROMs and write the emulators that let you play older games that aren't available on modern hardware. Digital Eclipse's Frank Cifaldi, a video game historian and archivist, has two terrific GDC talks on the matter: "It's Just Emulation!" and "It's Still Emulation: Saving Video Game History Before It's Too Late."

There's another problem that must be addressed. Although video games are most certainly art, even game publishers treat them as nothing more than product, which puts the titles on a Roy Batty-ish guaranteed short lifespan. Racing and sports games are the frequent victims of this, with their licensed cars, music, teams, and legaues.

The magnificent Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast, for example, was yanked from digital marketplaces due to Sega letting the Ferrari license lapse. In hindset, Sega affixing the Ferrari license to the car was a huge mistake; it's not as though a true Outrun fan would ignore the game if it lacked that branding. Want more proof? You can't even digitally purchase the games that came before Forza Horizon 4. This may be my lack of caring talking, but car licenses aren't essential to the racing game experience; in fact, two of my favorite racers—Split/Second and Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed Collection—lack car licenses.

Sports games like the beloved NBA 2K series face a double whammy of carrying sports and music licenses. In fact, 2K goes out of its way to promote that celebrities, such as Grimes and Michael B. Jordan, help curate game soundtracks with popular and underground licensed music. This makes the games plummet into obsolescence as soon as they're released. At the time of this writing, you cannot digitally purchase a NBA 2K game that came before 2K18.

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Until the trainwreck that is licensed brands and music finds a happy zone that lets them exist in digital form into perpetuity, buying physical copies, whether new or used, is the way to ensure that certain games are playable in the future.

What to Do

Yet all isn't bleak. If you want a simple way to play classic games, there are many options available. Sega Genesis Mini isn't the only retro console on the market. The Nintendo NES Classic Edition, Nintendo SNES Classic Edition, and SNK Neo Geo Mini are all good to great ways to easily play favorite old games (just avoid the hot garbage that is the Sony PlayStation Classic).

Additionally, M2 is handling the emulation for the upcoming TurboGrafx-16 Mini, a mini console that will boast Bomberman '93, Bonk's Revenge, Lords of Thunder, R-Type, Space Harrier, and dozens of other titles. It's set to arrive in 2020.

Digital Eclipse's Samurai Shodown Neo Geo Collection, which includes Samurai Shodown, Samurai Shodown II, Samurai Shodown III: Blades of Blood, Samurai Shodown IV: Akamkusa's Revenge, Samurai Shodown V, and Samurai Shodown V Special, is headed to PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Switch this fall. I expect it to contain the design documents and other touches that Digital Eclipse is known for including in its retro game compilations.

The gaming industry may never have a central location where people can legally download the entirety of video game history. The closest we have to that is GOG.com (a storefront that offers DRM-free versions of classic games that the company's obtained the rights to redistribute) and Xbox One Backward Compatibility (a fabulous feature that lets you play many Xbox 360 and original Xbox games on the current system).

Until that time comes when classic games are easily available on all platforms, let publishers know your thirst for older titles with emails, calls, petitions, and social media messages. Nothing is guaranteed, of course, but maybe, just maybe, something good will happen.

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