{"id":90615,"date":"2019-03-25T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-25T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2019\/03\/hardware_review_analogue_mega_sg_forget_the_mega_drive_mini_this_is_the_real_deal"},"modified":"2019-03-25T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-25T15:00:00","slug":"hardware-review-analogue-mega-sg-forget-the-mega-drive-mini-this-is-the-real-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/03\/25\/hardware-review-analogue-mega-sg-forget-the-mega-drive-mini-this-is-the-real-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Hardware Review: Analogue Mega Sg: Forget The Mega Drive Mini, This Is The Real Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For many, the Super Nintendo remains the absolute pinnacle<\/em> of gaming hardware. The is 16-bit powerhouse was home to some amazing games, and via titles like Super Mario World<\/a><\/strong>, Zelda: Link to the Past<\/a><\/strong> and Street Fighter II<\/a><\/strong>, did much to expand the interactive entertainment market and turn an entire generation into diehard Nintendo fans. However, it’s almost impossible to talk about the SNES without also<\/em> referencing its biggest rival: the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis, as it was known in North America). After failing to make a dent in Nintendo’s market share with the 8-bit Master System (outside of Europe, at least), Sega bet everything on its 16-bit successor, and thanks in no small part to some amazing arcade conversions, EA-made sports titles and a certain blue Erinaceinae<\/a>, it managed to challenge Nintendo on even terms, doing the unthinkable and actually rivalling (and, at points, outselling) the creator of the SNES on North American soil \u2013 something that had been utterly unthinkable during the NES era.<\/p>\n

The famous ‘Console Wars’<\/a> of the ’90s have gone down in legend, and those old enough to recall this period will no doubt have expressed a preference for one of these two video game titans, but in 2019, it’s easy to admit that if you wanted to sample the best the industry had to offer, you needed both in your life. That’s why the release of the Analogue Mega Sg<\/a> is such a noteworthy event, even in the world of Nintendo; it’s the perfect opportunity to reacquaint yourself with the console that fought the SNES tooth and nail for living room supremacy.<\/p>\n

We’ve already reviewed Analogue’s other systems \u2013 such as the brilliant Nt Mini<\/a> and Super Nt<\/a> \u2013 both of which are based on Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology which uses configurable logic blocks to replicate the performance of vintage systems on a hardware rather than software level. The Mega Sg adopts an identical approach, even using the same versatile and powerful Altera Cyclone V FPGA chipset. This chip can be programmed to behave exactly<\/em> like an original Sega Mega Drive in hardware terms, thus avoiding the usual issues and inconsistencies that are introduced by software emulation. Because of this, the Mega Sg boasts complete compatibility with not just the entire Mega Drive \/ Genesis library (and that includes all regions, as you can toggle the console’s region encoding in its settings), but also the whole 8-bit Master System range, thanks to the fact that the machine comes bundled with a special adapter that allows you to load up 8-bit Sega games, too.<\/p>\n