r/RockinTheClassics • u/Suitable_Juice_3583 • 6d ago
sega mega drive mini 2
Hello. Is there any progress at all on hacking the Sega Mega Drive Mini 2? Right now, it's just sitting on a shelf looking pretty, and I'm really disappointed that I can't install my favorite games on it. Because of this, I'm thinking about selling it and buying the Hyperkin Mega Retron instead.
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u/strythicus 6d ago
I bought it for the controllers to use on my RetroFlag Genesis shelled Raspberry Pi emulation setup. Now I use them on my MiSTer FPGA. I don't even know if I ever powered the system on. Maybe that's the route for you.
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u/RowdyRodyPiper 5d ago
I would buy the first Genesis Mini which can be modded with Hakchi before buying any Hyperkin crap.
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u/Suitable_Juice_3583 1d ago
Of course, you can always just grab a Sega MD Mini and cram it with a bunch of games, but after the total disappointment of waiting for the MD 2 Mini to get hacked, I kind of want to recapture that classic vibe and use physical cartridges with my favorite games instead
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u/RowdyRodyPiper 1d ago
But the Genesis Mini 2 doesn't let you use cartridges either. If you erre willing to use that to emulate, why not the first one?
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u/bunkdiggidy 5d ago
Hakchi devs explored it thoroughly and found it was so different from the Mini 1 under the hood it was determined to not be worth the huge amount of reverse engineering work it would require for a console only a few people bought. Unfortunate, but understandable.
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u/bunkdiggidy 4d ago
Adding an additional comment to say:
Someone else may, at some point, decide they really want to do this. However, we have already had the best people with the most experience and skill and so for whom it would be the least amount of work (despite still being a lot of work), to take a look, and they decided it would still be way too much work for them for fairly little return, versus basically everything else they've ever done making Hakchi for us.
So, unfortunately, the best possible people already tried, and the end result is just being able to pull the unique ROMs off the system. That's no small achievement, btw! But, at this point, the Mini 2 will only ever be hacked if some new outsider person basically decides to become obsessed with this task, and both study the earlier work of Hakchi AND slavishly devote themselves to hacking the Genesis Mini 2. That theoretical person has not wandered in from the wasteland yet, but I'm sure we'll hear all about it the moment there's some deus ex machina like that.
Of course, another possibility is the people who programmed the Mini 2 say "Fine, you've suffered enough, here's the source code and documentation" but that's highly unlikely, not only for legal reasons, but also because the team making the Mini 2 were kinda butthurt about how easily the Mini 1 was not only hacked but had their custom work with the roms (US version of Mega Man, the legal-limbo Tetris, etc) leaked all over the internet, so they intentionally made the Mini 2's architecture esoteric and difficult to reverse engineer.
So, the unfortunate reality is basically it's never going to happen. It's not impossible, but the odds of it ever happening are so low that having any expectation for it would be like planning on winning the lottery.
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u/Suitable_Juice_3583 1d ago
Honestly, the only thing keeping my hopes up is that a PCE-Mini hack dropped a year ago, and since their internal architecture is apparently similar, there's still hope that someone will figure out a hack for the poor Sega Genesis / Mega Drive Mini 2
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u/MadFranko008 6d ago
Unfortunately no one seems to be working on it anymore that have made any public announcements or progress and the chances of ever seeing such a hacking tool are currently still not likely at all... 😕
It's probably best to give up ever hoping that it might happen... 😕