Mega Drive Mini, and now... Mega Drive Mini 2!

[Monkeyspill]

Has anyone else added Hellfire? Check if you’re getting sound from it. I’ve tried three different roms and they’re all silent.

[dave7g]

Is there a way to edit all games added without putting them all on again? I want to change them to NTSC.

[Revival]

Might be an interesting thing to add to your mini, Yesterday the previously unrelased but unfinished MD version of Super Star Wars was dumped..

 

 

[Hideous Kojima]

Mega Star Wars

[Dudley]

RJ Badman is still banned from GAME after the incident following the release of this.

 

 

[Jazz Glands]

On 30/12/2019 at 22:54, Monkeyspill said:

Has anyone else added Hellfire? Check if you’re getting sound from it. I’ve tried three different roms and they’re all silent.

Same here unfortunately.

 

Anyone found if it’s possible to add multiple region box art along with added games, so the box art changes when you change the console language? A quick tinker with it yesterday and couldn’t see a way to do it.

[Hideous Kojima]

21 hours ago, Dudley said:

RJ Badman is still banned from GAME after the incident following the release of this.

 

 

 

[SqueakyG]

I'm waiting until they've ironed out some things, so I'll try Project Lunar in another 2 or 3 releases.

 

How does it handle multiple regions? One of the coolest things about the stock MD Mini is that it has regional variant roms when you switch to other languages. Could I make it so that Streets of Rage 3 appears in the English menu but it turns into Bare Knuckle III in the Japanese menu?

[chipsgravy]

1 hour ago, SqueakyG said:

Could I make it so that Streets of Rage 3 appears in the English menu but it turns into Bare Knuckle III in the Japanese menu?

 

I'm not sure about this. What I did was just upload Bare Knuckle 3 artwork to my main page. This way it looks more like my physical collection of mixed games anyway.

 

I like that I can play MegaCD and 32X via Emulation Station. Although I am not going to put any other systems on it. 

[Down by Law]

Project Lunar 1.05 is out now , couple of nice upgrades - you can run 32X and Mega CD games from the stock UI now. You can also add a game to boot with Genesis Plus / Picodrive instead so those games with sound issus like Hellfire, Midnight Resistance and TMNT are now fixed. It supports box arts but I had to use the Sega CD versions, as the UK versions are flipped to fill the space, and there's no way to get them upright. A small price to pay. If you edit the game title with [32X] when adding , you can keep the formats separated this way too  

 

 

 

[Jazz Glands]

Excellent! How do you mean edit the game title with [32X]? Could you explain that a little more please?  Also, is there any way to add multiple box art regions when adding games so when wet to Japanese it shows the Japanese box art, US the Genesis art etc? 

[Monkeyspill]

I couldn’t work out how to force games to run with Genesis Plus. Do I need to use a USB (constantly connected to the controller port)?

[Down by Law]

  @Jazz Glands

When you add a 32X game via the add game button, lets say it's Virtua Fighter, it just goes into the list of games in alphabetical order , so when you power on the Mini, it will just be shuffled in along with the regular MD games. When you're adding a game, once you've used the screenscraper to sort out the box and spine art, you can manually edit the title. So on mine, each 32X games looks like this : [32X] Virtua Fighter , so when the mini menu loads, all the 32X games are shown together like in my picture

 

With 1.05 below the region options you can choose your core. It's set to M2Engage by default but 32X and CD games WONT work with this. I used Picodrive for the 32X and GenesisPlus for the Mega CD. You can download the cores through the Project Lunar menu, and then you'll need to put your memory stick in the USB socket on your PC and add those cores to the cores folder in Retroarch.

 

If using a game with issues , use Picodrive or Genesis Plus and that should sort out any audio errors. To me, the sound is clear and better with those cores so I make Revenge of Shinobi and Streets of Rage boot with them too. I've tested Hellfire, TMNT, Power Drive and Midnight Resistance all which have issues with the stock emulator and they work fine

 

Holding Start for 2 seconds brings up the Retroarch menu and quitting will take you back to the stock UI. If using a wireless Retrobit Six button pad, It detects as a switch controller for some reason but all the key bindings are correct, which is a massive plus.

 

With regards to multiple box art regions, I don't think it's supported unfortunately. You can manually change them - for example the Contra in my picture is actually a hacked US version with the JPN hit point system and I chose the Japanese box art to differentiate it from the in-built Contra. Streets of Rage 3 is actually an English translation of Bare Knuckle III. It's really cool how you can use modified roms with this.

 

8 hours ago, Monkeyspill said:

I couldn’t work out how to force games to run with Genesis Plus. Do I need to use a USB (constantly connected to the controller port)?

 

Make sure you're on 1.05 version of Lunar and it should be at the bottom of the Add Game page. 

 

It's worth using a USB stick simply to avoid space and OS issues , remember you can buy a OTG adapter on ebay for about £2.50 so you can put both the power and the USB in the back of the mini to free up your controller ports (handy for the PS Classic hack too)

 

Just some other advice:

 

When using Lunar 1.05 for the first time leave the USB stick out of the front - if you go right ahead and create your build on USB, then in future need to remove the stick from your console, the Mini won't boot - there's no games synced to it.

What I did was add a couple of the glaring omissions (Streets of Rage, Revenge of Shinobi, Rocket Knight and S3&K in my instance) then Sync that to the unit as the main build. So if I need to quickly grab the console and take it somewhere and I don't have the USB for whatever reason, it will still boot and I will  still have those games available.

 

Once that's done, connect to Lunar with the USB in Port 2 so it recognises it as a mass storage device and use this as your main build. You won't ever need to worry about space with an 8gb stick, that was enough for about 30 extra MD games, 6 32X and 6 Mega CD with no issues.

 

When adding Mega CD Games make sure you have the bios_CD_U file in the retroarch system folder. When you add the game, use the .cue format, select Genesis Plus as the executable and add art as standard. When you're finished, take the USB out the mini and into your computer and you will need to copy the Mega CD .bin files into the 'roms' folder that will have been automatically created on your memory stick.

 

Fingers crossed, everything should work nicely on boot up. I find these hacks a bit temperamental even when following instructions to the letter, but nothing good comes easy I guess. For example, I had a build where everything was working great, I added another 32X game and the whole thing shit itself and wouldn't play anything after that, displaying a 'project lunar default rom' screen, on anything that didn't use the M2 emulator. Though I hadn't tinkered with anything else.

….

Any probs let me know and I'll try to help the best I can.

 

[Ketchup]

Is there a guide for all this? How many extra games can you fit into the machine without a usb stick?

[moosegrinder]

I also need an idiot proof guide. Seriously, I'm talking as basic as can be. I managed to do the Hackchi on my SNES mini but I watched a Lunar video and I couldn't even tell if my roms were the right file type, or even if there's more than one file type.

 

1 hour ago, Ketchup said:

Is there a guide for all this? How many extra games can you fit into the machine without a usb stick?

 

The second part of that has been answered a few pages back, let me see if I can find it.

[moosegrinder]

On 29/12/2019 at 01:55, dave7g said:

I've had to do a system restore. Apparently you need to keep at least 60 megs free, I'll give it another go tomorrow.

 

EDIT: Keep it to 60 games and leave 85 megs free

@Ketchup

[Down by Law]

There's a guy on youtube called Restalgia who has a good tutorial for Lunar 1.05.

 

 

There are also other videos specifically for Mega CD and 32X support

 

RE Hakchi I tried it but really didn't like the Mega Drive build. It erases all the synopsis for the games when you select them, and the spine art isn't accurate - there's basically a bunch of set templates and you use google images to 'create' the spine, it looks naff. It's a faster front end and there's more internal room for games, but that wasn't worth the loss in customisation for me.

 

 

 

[Jazz Glands]

9 hours ago, Down by Law said:

  @Jazz Glands

When you add a 32X game via the add game button, lets say it's Virtua Fighter, it just goes into the list of games in alphabetical order , so when you power on the Mini, it will just be shuffled in along with the regular MD games. When you're adding a game, once you've used the screenscraper to sort out the box and spine art, you can manually edit the title. So on mine, each 32X games looks like this : [32X] Virtua Fighter , so when the mini menu loads, all the 32X games are shown together like in my picture

 

With 1.05 below the region options you can choose your core. It's set to M2Engage by default but 32X and CD games WONT work with this. I used Picodrive for the 32X and GenesisPlus for the Mega CD. You can download the cores through the Project Lunar menu, and then you'll need to put your memory stick in the USB socket on your PC and add those cores to the cores folder in Retroarch.

 

If using a game with issues , use Picodrive or Genesis Plus and that should sort out any audio errors. To me, the sound is clear and better with those cores so I make Revenge of Shinobi and Streets of Rage boot with them too. I've tested Hellfire, TMNT, Power Drive and Midnight Resistance all which have issues with the stock emulator and they work fine

 

Holding Start for 2 seconds brings up the Retroarch menu and quitting will take you back to the stock UI. If using a wireless Retrobit Six button pad, It detects as a switch controller for some reason but all the key bindings are correct, which is a massive plus.

 

With regards to multiple box art regions, I don't think it's supported unfortunately. You can manually change them - for example the Contra in my picture is actually a hacked US version with the JPN hit point system and I chose the Japanese box art to differentiate it from the in-built Contra. Streets of Rage 3 is actually an English translation of Bare Knuckle III. It's really cool how you can use modified roms with this.

 

 

Make sure you're on 1.05 version of Lunar and it should be at the bottom of the Add Game page. 

 

It's worth using a USB stick simply to avoid space and OS issues , remember you can buy a OTG adapter on ebay for about £2.50 so you can put both the power and the USB in the back of the mini to free up your controller ports (handy for the PS Classic hack too)

 

Just some other advice:

 

When using Lunar 1.05 for the first time leave the USB stick out of the front - if you go right ahead and create your build on USB, then in future need to remove the stick from your console, the Mini won't boot - there's no games synced to it.

What I did was add a couple of the glaring omissions (Streets of Rage, Revenge of Shinobi, Rocket Knight and S3&K in my instance) then Sync that to the unit as the main build. So if I need to quickly grab the console and take it somewhere and I don't have the USB for whatever reason, it will still boot and I will  still have those games available.

 

Once that's done, connect to Lunar with the USB in Port 2 so it recognises it as a mass storage device and use this as your main build. You won't ever need to worry about space with an 8gb stick, that was enough for about 30 extra MD games, 6 32X and 6 Mega CD with no issues.

 

When adding Mega CD Games make sure you have the bios_CD_U file in the retroarch system folder. When you add the game, use the .cue format, select Genesis Plus as the executable and add art as standard. When you're finished, take the USB out the mini and into your computer and you will need to copy the Mega CD .bin files into the 'roms' folder that will have been automatically created on your memory stick.

 

Fingers crossed, everything should work nicely on boot up. I find these hacks a bit temperamental even when following instructions to the letter, but nothing good comes easy I guess. For example, I had a build where everything was working great, I added another 32X game and the whole thing shit itself and wouldn't play anything after that, displaying a 'project lunar default rom' screen, on anything that didn't use the M2 emulator. Though I hadn't tinkered with anything else.

….

Any probs let me know and I'll try to help the best I can.

 

Thanks! Are the Picodrive and Genesis Plus included already in the new update, or do I have to download them? Reason I ask is I the games with sound issues and 32X games I add and change to use picodrive core just hang on startup with some Project Lunar special game message. I only really want to use Lunar on the MD Mini as I have retroarch etc on my Shield and would prefer not to get a USB stick if it can be avoided. Cheers.

[Down by Law]

I don't think they are included...ive not tried without putting them on usb first. 

[dave7g]

The only thing about the picodrive is that when you are quitting a game it kicks you into the retroarch menu and then you need to faff about before you can get back to the game select.

 

Unless someone has a way to fix this?

[Keyboard Koala]

Just installed hakchi2, and while it works like a dream, the only thing I can't manage to change, is the genre and the number of players. They're all set on 1 player adventure games now, and it's pushing my OCD in overdrive.

 

Anyone knows how to fix this?

[Tomdominer]

Not 100% sure if this is helpful, but on the snes hakchi you could adjust the options displayed when mounted the games..

 

[Down by Law]

I think Hakchi is 3.8 on Mega Drive now and you can change the players and genre in the Hakchi menu.

 

Hakchi 3.8 is a great update - all the stock game info now comes over, it's really fast loading and smooth and seems more stable than Lunar. Really easy to set up folders for 32X and Mega CD and is now my preferred option.

 

Adding custom roms like the Bare Knuckle 3 english translation is a piece of cake too.

[Monkeyspill]

Is it easy enough to uninstall Lunar and install hackchi instead?

[Down by Law]

Yeah it's easy enough. This video is pretty comprehensive, starts by showing you how to fully remove Lunar to return to stock, then just download Hakchi 3.8 rather than 3.7 when prompted in the video and follow the instructions. It's nice to not have the boxes for Retroarch and Boot Menu that Lunar has anymore. Spine art generator is still a bit crap but at least now you can upload your own if it bothers you. 

 

Having the Mega CD in it's own folder with all those pal boxes and spines I grew up with is really nice. 

 

 

[Super Craig]

I'll need to get around to doing this. Fancy putting Sonic 3 & Knuckles on there. I remember reading that you needed a specific version. Does anyone know if there's an IPS patch or if I need a specific ROM? Ideally I'd just use the ROM from the Steam collection.

[Down by Law]

Get the Sonic 3 Complete Rom. 

It's really comprehensive - all the options you would ever need.. Got some very nice box art too

 

 

 

 

[Keyboard Koala]

5 hours ago, Down by Law said:

I think Hakchi is 3.8 on Mega Drive now and you can change the players and genre in the Hakchi menu.

 

Hakchi 3.8 is a great update - all the stock game info now comes over, it's really fast loading and smooth and seems more stable than Lunar. Really easy to set up folders for 32X and Mega CD and is now my preferred option.

 

Indeed! 

 

Thanks for the heads up

[Ninja Doctor]

This was £48 on amazon earlier so I decided to indulge. I’ll be modifying my load out slightly via hakchiCE when it comes (sor1, Sonic3). 

[Ninja Doctor]

As an added bonus, I have an old play Sega usb Saturn controller. Turns out it is identified correctly and maps all 6 buttons right. Bonus.