Seen those mini Genesis consoles with 80 games built in for $40? Yeah, don't bother, they suck.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Isn't it sort of dubious to call this a clone if it is officially licensed by Sega? Since Sega approves it, and it has the Genesis name it should count as a variant of the system rather than a clone. It may have radically different hardware from the Megadrive, but so have other revisions of systems that are counted as "real" versions.

Splitting hairs really.

Sega may license these, but they're FAR closer to UNLICENSED clone hardware than they are to genuine Genesis or MegaDrive hardware.

Any other licensed "variant" in the era of the Genesis/MegaDrive being commercially produced hardware (Genesis 3, JVC X-Eye, Laseractive, etc.) never came close to the compatibility and A/V issues that these Firecore based systems have.

The most appropriate terminology IMO would be "licensed clone", since that's really what they are.

They're not designed or Q/A'ed with the stringency and compatibility testing that any other previously licensed Sega system ever had.

[Ace]

(I just found out that it uses a newer Sony RGB encoder than other systems - of course, cheapass Majesco didn't make good use of it; if you want RGB output you have to mod it)

STOP!!! That is completely wrong. A Genesis 3 natively outputs RGB and Composite from the multi-A/V out, and I'll tell you this: if one applied the full compatibility fix for the Sega 32X and RGB video wasn't on the multi-A/V out, you wouldn't be able to see the Genesis' video layer. I've done the 32X compatibility fix, and I can assure you the Genesis 3 outputs RGB out of the box (this is the earlier VA1 motherboard I'm talking about here, but even the later and even cheaper VA2 motherboard has RGB output out of the box).

May I ask who the hell posted so much false information about the Genesis 3 that people keep repeating to this day even though it's been proven wrong already? I'm seriously getting annoyed by this.

And one more thing:

Yes ATGames piece of shit genesis on a chip that reads real game carts can read a saved game and load it, but it will never write a saved game back to the cart.

First off, AtGames' clones are NOT, I repeat, NOT GOACs. They run on Titan ARM cores and use software emulation to mimic the Genesis (and we all know how well that turned out). Second, at least they can load saved games, but I'm wondering if there's a missing signal on the cartridge slot which is required for writing to the battery-backed SRAM, serial EEPROM and FeRAM chips (depending on what type of chip was used to hold save data). I remember reading somewhere about the Radica PlayTV Legends series of GOAC-based plug & play consoles that they too can't save data to cartridges due to a missing signal, and it makes me wonder if the AtGames consoles that have cartridge slots are missing the same signal. For all we know, it MIGHT be possible to generate this missing signal, but I would need the Genesis Arcade Classic to be able to test this for sure.

[c0ldb33r]

I bought an AtGames Sega Genesis Ultimate Portable Game Player for $25 on Thanksgiving. It works pretty good on most games, with a few exceptions. They used the Japanese version of Super Street Fighter 2 as one of the built-in games, for some reason...

I see from the picture that that comes with MM: Wily Wars

Can this version save? I have the orange version and I don't think it can save any games. So, wouldn't that make Wily Wars unplayable, as there are no passwords?

[zakthedodo]

How can these companies keep screwing up what should be a simple matter of reproducing over 20 year old technology?

[kedawa]

It's simple; they're cheap. Rather than develop a modern solution, they just buy whatever POS Chinese-designed hardware is cheapest.

[Ed Oscuro]

STOP!!! That is completely wrong. A Genesis 3 natively outputs RGB and Composite from the multi-A/V out, and I'll tell you this: if one applied the full compatibility fix for the Sega 32X and RGB video wasn't on the multi-A/V out, you wouldn't be able to see the Genesis' video layer. I've done the 32X compatibility fix, and I can assure you the Genesis 3 outputs RGB out of the box (this is the earlier VA1 motherboard I'm talking about here, but even the later and even cheaper VA2 motherboard has RGB output out of the box).

May I ask who the hell posted so much false information about the Genesis 3 that people keep repeating to this day even though it's been proven wrong already? I'm seriously getting annoyed by this.

Not sure why I wrote that, but here: http://www.gamesx.com/rgbadd/genesis3.htm

Also http://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=av:sony_cxa_series - the CXA2075 has been, regardless of what's posted there, been hacked into Genesis, SNES (Super Famicom?) Jr. (Mini?), and AV Famicom consoles. I assume that Drakon has modified a Genesis 3 with video.

[Ace]

That link is crap. I don't know who wrote that, but the RGB section needs to be removed as it's total BS that the Genesis 3 has no RGB.

A lot of people seem to like the Sony CXA2075, but I won't go there. BA7230LS for me, thank you very much. This encoder encodes from RGB to Component which then reencodes it to Composite and S-Video, the latter two which can be ignored. For me, if something has RGB, it's either pure RGB or Component, nothing else.