The thing that is possibly more addicting than actually playing thru the personalized retro gaming catalogue I’ve been building on my hacked Sega Mini is oftentimes the discovery process of finding and trying out all the games I never had a chance to play when I was a kid growing up in the 80s & 90s. A lot of the time, I’ll end up going “meh, I don’t see myself wanting to play this one again” or “that hasn’t aged well” but it’s the anticipation of getting to that moment that really reminds me of the excitement you’d feel as a kid coming back from Blockbuster with a new video game rental. And isn’t getting shots of nostalgia the whole point of having a Sega Mini?

So, since I have already successfully hacked my Mini to be able to play any Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, and NES game, and since I have already done my own trials and experiments to come up with a personal list of the top 50 games still worth playing in 2020 from those 3 systems (20 Sega, 20 SNES, 10 NES games), and even though I also have about 175 other Sega / SNES / NES titles on my Mini that didn’t make my Top 50 but are still worth keeping around because retro games are tiny file sizes & you can fit quite a lot of them on the Mini’s relatively small internal memory, recently I started getting the itch to try and explore a few more retro gaming systems catalogues.

Now, from what my noob brain understands about the Sega Mini’s computing capabilities, it is recommended that you don’t try going beyond the 16 bit era, especially if you plan on sticking to what you can fit on the Mini’s 169 mb internal memory (ie. if you don’t want to complicate things by incorporating a USB stick and bios files and etc into your new video game hacker life). This limitation doesn’t leave a tonne of console options left to consider once you’ve already got the Genesis, SNES, and NES taken care of, but there was one retro system that kept coming up when Youtube researching NES games + there was another retro system that I vaguely remember from my childhood: and those 2 systems were the Sega Master System and the Turbo Grafx-16.

ADDING Sega Master System GAMES

I was not familiar with the Sega Master System growing up because I did not know anyone who had a Sega Master System growing up and that was pretty much the only way you found out about stuff as a kid before the internet was a think (the Master System was also more of a thing in Europe and South America). But I guess the Master System was Sega’s version of the 8-bit NES system, which means it should be a perfect fit for adding to my hacked Sega Mini.

And, in theory, it was—if you’ve already hacked your Mini to be able to play Genesis games that don’t work on the factory emulator, than you’ve probably already installed the Genesis Plus GX core on Hakchi, which means your Mini is already capable of playing Master System games. The problem for me was that the handy site I had found for quickly downloading whichever Genesis, SNES and NES roms that I could ever want to try, for some reason that site didn’t have any Master System games available (probably because this site seems to mostly deal with North American releases). So I decided to go fishing again for another site where I could safely download roms.

And since I don’t want to be the guy that outs a good spot for downloading roms and ruins things for everyone else, I will just recommend that you do a search like ‘safe place to download roms reddit’ and then check out some of the sites people recommend on there. For the all my Genesis / SNES / NES roms, I got them from a site the rhymes with “Jim’s Hair”. And for all my Master System roms (and Turbo Grafx-16 roms), I used a site that rhymes with “The-Rye dot Eee You”.

Once you’ve found a place to get your Master System roms, you just add them to Hakchi the same way you added all your other games — just make sure you set the console to Genesis Plus GX, and now you can make a new folder with all the Master System titles you want to use some of your Mini’s remaining internal storage on.

ADDING TURBO GRAFX-16 / PC ENGINE GAMES

After I discovered a new rom site for downloading Master System games, I figured I should look into whether they had any Turbo Grafx-16 games (also known as ‘PC Engine’ outside of North America) and, if so, whether it would be possible to set up my Sega Mini to be able to play those games.

The answer to those questions was “yep” and “yep, more or less”.

The process is basically the same as adding any Sega or Nintendo games, you just have to install the Mednafen PCE Fast core on Hakchi in order to play Turbo Grafx-16 / PC Engine roms on your Mini. The only extra thing worth mentioning is that there is a note about needing to upload some bios files, but that only applies if you are going to be trying to add some of the games that came out on CD later on in the console’s life. If you stick to just the 16-bit cartridge games, you don’t need to mess around with any extra file downloads, uploads or trying to wrap your brain around how to find/deal with bios files (but, like with most things in life, there’s Youtube videos on how to upload bios files if you feel the need to go down that slightly more complicated road—for me, I was more than fine with keeping things 16-bit & under simple).

If sticking with the Turbo Grafx-16 / PC Engine titles that will play without bios files (which is a lot of them), all you need to do is add your roms the same way you’ve added all your other games — just make sure you set the core to PCE Fast, and now you can make a new folder with all the Turbo Grafx-16 / PC Engine titles you want to use some of your Mini’s remaining internal storage on.

I’m not familiar with the original controllers for either of these systems, but I think the Retrobit 6-button controller that I setup for being able to play Super Nintendo games translates fine for playing both systems (you just have to do some trial & error to figure out which buttons do what). Which means I can now start exploring the back catalogue of two new-to-me old video game consoles, which means later this month I will probably expand on my ‘Retro Games To Add To Your Hacked Sega Mini (If You're Also An Old Millennial With Similar Gaming Tastes As Me)’ lists so they also include some Sega Master System + Turbo Grafx-16 titles.

And if I still have some internal memory left, I might look into adding some Atari games/systems (I did actually try adding some 32-bit Atari Jaguar games, but the available Hakchi core for that system has a “(slow)” in the title and they weren’t lying about the “slow” — but maybe I’ll look into some Atari 7800 games, although I’m not old enough to be nostalgic for Atari, and the games I’ve seen on Youtube don’t look especially appealing, so maybe I’ll just leave that generation of gaming alone).

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Jeremy / @HI54LOFI

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* 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 80s/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.