HACKING A SEGA GENESIS MINI FOR SELF-QUARANTINE PURPOSES
**UPDATE: I have since re-hacked my Sega Mini with Hakchi, which worked/has been working a lot smoother for me and my mac than the Project Lunar hack described below (and also includes info on adding 16 consoles, including Playstation 1 games), so if you’re interested in checking out my more recent blog post: CLICK HERE TO READ **I am not a hacker, nor am I what the kids would call a “gamer” (I pretty much dropped out around the original Playstation, and most of my heavy gaming came in the 90s on the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis) — so I will not attempt to break down the nuts & bolts of how to hack a Sega Mini or what games you definitely need to add. Besides, “hacking” your Sega Mini is really more about following detailed instructions on how to instal an already functioning program that smarter people than me built called ‘Project Lunar’…
…so if you’re interested in getting a Sega Mini so that you can hack & add any game that wasn’t included as one of the 42 games that come with the original unhacked Sega Mini (which, even on it’s own, is a pretty good self-isolating bargain at around $80) go check out Project Lunar for all your detailed Sega Mini hacking instructions & updates.
But, here’s the gist…
Project Lunar is an evolving project, but here’s a pretty good breakdown of how easy it is to get it installed for the first time (although there’s already been an updated 1.05 version that includes some extra emulators for dealing with some of the Sega games that weren’t working with the Mini’s built-in system / version 1.0):
All you need to do is watch one tutorial video (there’s a bunch out there if you want to watch more) and you’ll see that the whole process has been made pretty easy for you, regardless of your lack of hack skills — especially if you have a PC. But if you’re like me and only have Apple computers, they also have some slightly more involved step-by-step written instructions on how to setup Virtual Box so you can pretend your Mac is a PC for hacking purposes.
Since virutal-box-on-a-mac is the process I went through, I will just add that the one road block I ran into was (besides the fact that Virtual Box ran slow as all hell for me) when The Project Lunar instructions say “your host operating system should detect a new device plugged into its USB port” my Mac wasn’t showing any new USB device being added in my Finder window, and that got me thinking that the microUSB cable I was trying wasn’t capable of data transfer (some microUSB cables, including the one that comes with your Sega Mini, do not transfer data) — which got me trying that step over-and-over with every microUSB cable I could find in the flat.
Eventually, I found a Reddit thread that linked to an article on how to hack the SNES classic and I was able to work out that just because my iMac isn’t registering that I plugged my Sega Mini into a USB drive on the Mac end, when I get to the ‘Activate the USB-Controller’ part of the Virtual Box setup instructions, my Sega Mini was actually showing up when hitting the ‘Add New USB’ button (look for something called ‘Onda’).
I definitely lost an hour or so searching the internet for answers (and, as is often the case with sneaky computer/internet stuff… I ended up finding the answer by including ‘reddit’ at the end of the questions I was Googling), but once I got over that hump it was pretty much as simple as just following the instructions and being a little bit patient.
Which leads to the most obvious next question you’ll probably have after wrapping your head around how relatively easy it is to hack your Sega Mini: Where do I get the games to add once I’ve hacked in?
And the short answer to that is I can’t really say because I don’t want to be that guy that blows up anybody’s spot. So I will just pass on the advice that I saw someone else say, which was “just search ‘sega roms’ and you’ll be on your way” and then I would add-on my previously mentioned trick of adding ‘reddit’ on the end whatever you’re searching Google for (ie. search ‘sega roms reddit’) and you should find some threads/links that come with a bit more context on which sites you can probably trust.
By following that process, I think I found a good website for future downloading of individual games from any gaming platform (which is another cool thing about Project Lunar, there’s the ability to play games from NES and SNES on your Sega Mini — but that requires some extra hacking so I’ve just stuck with Sega games for now) and I also found a thread that had a big ZIP file containing basically every game released on the Sega Genesis.
And since I had to wait a week for my Sega Mini to arrive in the mail, and because I could no longer do my usual watching of NBA highlights while I rode the exercise bike, I went on a deep dive of Sega videos on Youtube (which is a whole world unto itself) and I slowly started putting together the list of games I was going to try to add to my Mini once it arrived.
As nerdy as it sounds, I even watched this video of EVERY Sega game ever released (I obviously increased the playback speed so it wasn’t a full 2.5hrs runtime) to help filter out which games I wanted to try out. Project Lunar also has a link to a worksheet of compatible roms that work with the Mini over on their ‘How To Add Games’ page — but it should be noted that version 1.05 now has some extra emulators that can be chosen to use instead of the built-in Sega Mini emulator (and there’s more info on how to change emulators on the 1.05 Project Lunar tutorials) — and that worksheet was helpful to figure out which games are maybe not even worth trying or which ones probably require changing emulators.
So, when my Sega Mini officially arrived in the mail last week (and it really is mini)…
… I did not wait too long before jumping straight into the hacking. I basically gave the original 42 games a once over, and later that night I jumped straight into hacker mode so I could start adding some of the games I really had my nostalgia on.
And the great thing is that once you do the original instal of Project Lunar (which is more of a pain if you have a Mac, but still relatively painless given the payoff) the actual adding and removing of games is really easy going forward. The above tutorial videos already walk you through the steps, so I guess I will just jump straight into sharing with you the games catalogue I have my Sega Mini setup with:
Now, it should be noted that it is currently recommended that you don’t have more than 100 games showing on a menu screen, otherwise things can start crashing. And because the ability to create folders (ie. create more than one games menu screen) is a feature coming on the next Project Lunar update…
…and because the Sega Mini comes with 42 games already installed that you can’t currently remove/hide, and because Project Lunar creates 2 ‘game covers’ for accessing setting menus, and because games are organized in rows of 6, I decided that it would be best to keep my current menu screen at 96 titles.
Which means I could only select another 52 Sega Games to add to my Mini. So, besides some definitive titles from my youth that were not included in the original 42 games (stuff like NHL, NBA Live/Jam, Madden, Alladin and FIFA), I started doing quick tests on the list of games I had filtered down from my earlier research, and eventually I narrowed things down to the games I felt the most likely to play now as an old millenial.
And I gotta say, I think I narrowed it down to a pretty sweet collection of games. I mean, 90s teenager me would’ve lost his shit to have access to this collection of games.
The wild thing is that even thought there is not much internal memory included on the Sega Mini (it’s like 180mb total) — vintage games are actually super small file sizes in the modern era. So once Project Lunar releases the ability to add folders, I could probably fit in another 54 games on another menu screen.
Project Lunar even comes with the ability to set things up so that you can play games off a USB stick, which basically opens things up to being able to include every game ever released — although I think I am more interested in having a ‘smaller’ curated selection (in fact, putting together the collection has been almost as fun as sitting down and playing). Eventually, I’ll probably look into how to get SNES and NES games, as I am more of a Mario guy than a Sonic guy — but for now, I think I’m good on games to add and can just move my attention over to actually playing the games (current faves: Alladin, NHL, NBA Jam/Live, Zero Tolerance and Mega-Bomberman — plus, me and the missus beat World Of Illusion all the way thru, which was made easier but the handy modern feature of being able to save/load the game at any point).
Anyways… the long story short is that if you’re looking for a good self-quarantine project to take on, as it seems like society is going to be doing the opposite of our parents telling us to “turn off that video game and go play outside” for the next few weeks/months at least— I HI54LOFI-LY RECOMMEND that you look into hacking a Sega Mini. It’ll literally provide you with hours of nostalgic entertainment / distraction (and if you have kids, a good bonding opportunity).
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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 90s games in 2020 — in fact I would never even hack my Sega Mini, period. Hacking is bad kids. Follow the rules and do things the way you were told to do them. That's my motto. SEGA!!!
