As I mentioned back in the early days of ‘hashtag quarantine life’, I got myself a Sega Mini partly because I had recently won a large flat screen tv and was trying to think of ways to make use of now having a large flat screen tv without any tv channels AND partly because I discovered on Youtube that the Sega Mini could be hacked to add any retro games you wanted — even games from the Nintendo and Super Nintendo world (see this post for details on how I hacked my Mini).

And since getting my Mini-hack-on, I’ve been trying out 100s of different NES/SEGA/SNES games over the last couple months to try and put together the perfect mix of titles that not only tickle my nostalgic 90s bone, but, more importantly, also still feel entertaining to play as an elder millennial in the year 2020. Because, as fun as it is for the blogger in me to curate a nice big collection of NES/SEGA/SNES games that’ll fit onto the Mini’s available internal storage (which is surprisingly A LOT for only 180 MB of space — turns out old retro video game cartridges turn into super small file sizes in the modern era), when it comes to using one’s limited free time to actually sit down and play old video games, the competition from other easily accessed indoor distractions is pretty fierce these days (ie. unlimited movies & tv shows + just general internetting). Also, a lot of those old games just don’t hold ones attention like they would have done with the 1990s teenage version of myself, who only had 3 channels on the tv and a handful of worn out VHS tapes as distraction competition (and also no girlfriend back then and/or any adult responsibilities).

So, now that I’ve done a pretty thorough trial run on a huge chunk of NES/SEGA/SNES games I’ve seen ranked & recommended out on the interwebs and have narrowed down my hacked Sega Mini’s library to around 200 games that seem decent to still play (that number includes the 42 Sega games that came pre-installed, which are not all decent to still play), I figured I would put together a list of the 10 games that I have been finding myself actually returning to and playing after my initial testing stage.

In other words, here’s 10 of the games that you should definitely add to your hacked Sega Mini… if you happen to also be spending some of the quarantine going down a similar retro video game rabbit hole:

***

***

***

***

***

***

***

***

***

***

Ok, so that’s my personal list of 10 games that I would recommend making sure you add to your hacked Sega Mini if you’re an old millennial like me who pretty much stopped playing video games in the late 90s but is now looking to revisit that golden era of gaming with hard-to-impress 2020 glasses on. I’m not saying they’re the BEST 10 games (I’ve seen the comments section on other video game lists to know better than to make that kind of statement), I’m just saying these are the games that I come back to play more than all the others.

Of course, you can add well over 200 games to your Sega Mini’s internal storage (and you can add infinite games if you add a USB stick to your hack) but with 1000s of different titles available between the NES/SEGA/SNES libraries, sometimes too much choice can be a bit overwhelming, so I thought it might be helpful getting a small list of solid recommendations from a guy who has watched all kinds of ‘Underrated SNES Games’ or ‘Best Sega Games’ videos on Youtube in search of titles that still hold up—I promise, these 10 still hold up.

Since I had to hum & haw about a few cuts while making this list, and since I’m still working on getting my overall NES/SEGA/SNES library pruned down to a more tight collection of games that appeal to my current sensibilities, I will probably be back with some more lists like this over the next while.

But, until then, feel free to holler at me with whichever NES/SEGA/SNES games you think I should definitely have added to my hacked Sega Mini—because the best game of all is the first few minutes of trying to figure out whether a game you’ve never played before is worth making space for in the overall collection.

--

Jeremy / @HI54LOFI

.

.

.

* For legal reasons, I suppose I should add that this post is entirely a work of fiction and I would never actually hack my Sega Mini with games I did not acquire in whatever the proper legal manner is for acquiring old 90s games in 2020 — in fact I would never even hack my Sega Mini, period, because hacking is bad, kids. "Follow the rules and always do things the way you were told to do them" — that's my motto. SEGA! (also NES! and SNES!)