Sega Mega Drive Mini announced in Japan

Sega wants in on the “classic edition” action for the Mega Drive’s 30’s anniversary

To commemorate the console’s upcoming 30th anniversary, Sega took the opportunity to unveil its own miniature “classic edition” version of the legendary 16-bit Genesis (or, as it was called in the rest of the world, the Mega Drive). The so-called “Mega Drive Mini” will be released in 2018, in Japan at least, Sega announced at a fan event today.

「メガドライブ」誕生30周年記念！
『メガドライブ ミニ』（仮称）2018年発売決定！

思い出の名作ゲームの数々が、これ1台で楽しめます！#セガフェス #メガドライブ #メガドライブ30周年https://t.co/HWj6NFL96y pic.twitter.com/0C9QH1l5Mr

— セガ公式アカウント (@SEGA_OFFICIAL) April 14, 2018

This could be a change in direction from the company’s long-standing relationship with AtGames, whose Sega Genesis Flashback console tried, and failed, to match Nintendo’s efforts last year. From our review:

As a one-time Genesis kid whose nostalgic sweet spot is a Sega Genesis, I feel qualified to say that the Genesis deserves better from its owner. But as long as Sega is willing to license out its platform instead of making its own hardware, it seems unlikely to get better than this, the most declarative console war victory imaginable.

Just last week, Sega’s COO said the company was interested in getting back into the hardware business, following the explosive success of Nintendo’s classic reissues. Sega famously exited the hardware business after the failure of the Sega Dreamcast in 2001.

Sega’s COO says they’re looking at getting back into the hardware game with a proper reissue of the Genesis/Mega Drive, no doubt inspired by Nintendo’s wild success with the NES and SNES classic. https://t.co/Glh8tssTVW

— Sam Kennedy (@capnsmak) April 8, 2018

As promising as that sounds, the source interview linked appears to suggest that Sega is simply interested in distributing the AtGames Mega Drive Flashback which, per the review above … is not great. The model in the image above, with a cleaner version shared by Sega on Twitter which you can see below, don’t resemble the AtGames variant. For starters, it’s smaller than the Flashback console, missing a full-sized cartridge post and adding the console’s original volume slider.

Of course, we don’t know many details about the Mega Drive Mini; the hardware quality, what games will be included, the software emulation powering the games, whether Sega plans to release it in the west, or whether it’s just a redesign of the AtGame units all remain a mystery for now. We’ve reached out to Sega for details and will update this post accordingly.

Sega

An image of the Mega Drive Mini

Source: Polygon – Full