Probably for the retro-developers!

[Anonymous]

Hi guys, I should probably ask this on an emulation forum or something but is it actually possible to program and design games for the Sega Mega Drive because if it is, I’d like to give it a try.

[Anonymous]

Probably best to concentrate on creating a game on PC. There are a lot of tools and support out there for doing that.

[Anonymous]

Has to be possible – might be difficult as original tools were never released to my knowledge but will look into it for you. Getting your game on a cart might be the big issue unless there is some hack with a soldering iron to by pass that need. If you just want to make mega drive style games try program for the GP2x handheld as with mame it plays megadrive games so is clearly capable of running that style of game and has a decent community support and tool set.

[Anonymous]

First result I got in google . Buy a TerraDrive. Actually remember a friend that had one of these as a kid but never knew you could program for the megadrive hardware with it (I thought it was just a space saving combination of a megadrive and pc). Again though need to look at how you make a cart to run on a standard megadrive. Will keep looking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_TeraDrive

[Anonymous]

Ahh further investigation reveals my friend had an "Amstrad Mega PC" which while it looked similar was basically just the two separate machines in one box. TerraDrives are rare I hear so links below might be better options.

For development tools take a look at:
http://www.genny4ever.net/index.php?page=tools
http://cgfm2.emuviews.com/gen.php

Flash carts
http://www.gbax.com/tototekmd.html

If you are handy with a soldering iron you can make your own cart!
http://www.raphnet.net/electronique/genesis_cart/genesis_cart_en.php

[Anonymous]

You’d be suprised how many old dev kits would be lying about. Find one of them, and you’re sorted.

[Anonymous]

Find one of them, and you’re sorted.[/quote:da590b83c4]

Yep, just that small matter of knowing how to code, design and do the art

(ooow catty!)

[Anonymous]

Yep, just that small matter of knowing how to code, design and do the art [/quote:97efc2747a]
Have to agree. Even with dev kit might be talking assembly or maybe C if lucky compiled into 68000 code but don’t know for sure. All I know is I would rather be programming on something that is currently supported – again plug for GP2x.

But (megacdforever) if you do get something working would love to hear how you do it – will gladly go to my attic and dust off my megadrive to try it out.

Art can’t be that weird though can it – its all pixels in some format, emulation forums will likely have a utility or you would just have to research what the hardware specs were and write a raw converter to megadrive format utility yourself:
At a basic level you would be restricted on the number of colours as there was 64K of graphics memory. You could have 64 unique colours on screen at once of a max 512 color range.

Hope that helps

[Anonymous]

megacdforever, if you REALLY want to impress by developing on a retro system, code a game for the Atari 2600!

A great 2600 site for new games – yep, you read that right! :)
http://www.atariage.com/

Programming Page…
http://www.atariage.com/2600/programming/index.html

An article on 2600 dev…
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,857607,00.asp

If you make any games, you’ll be able to upload them to a website, and let people play them via a Java emulator!

http://jstella.sourceforge.net/

Many technical directors of overseas games companies will have cut their teeth on systems like these, so you might get major kudos points for having 2600 dev under your belt ( ie making something out of very little anything – memory, speed etc ).

Mal

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info guys, anyway I was asking cause I’m a long term Mega Drive fan and I always wanted to do a game for it and I’ll (hopefully) be going into the 2nd year of my course in IADT in September and I want to see if I can apply skills to that sort of thing (and maybe make some scratch out of it too!), and I also might try making an internet cartoon sometime.

[Anonymous]

I PASSED GUYS!! :D I’M IN THE SECOND YEAR OF MY COURSE! :wink:

[Author]

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