Genesis/Megadrive

[Upstream illustration: megadrive] [Upstream illustration: genesis]

This console, known as the Mega Drive everywhere except in the USA where it was renamed Genesis, was released by Sega in 1988

Emulators: lr-genesis-plus-gx, lr-picodrive, DGen

lr-genesis-plus-gx is best for the Pi 3/Pi 2 due to its accuracy. lr-picodrive is more suited for use on the Pi 0/Pi 1 due to its speed. DGen has the worst performance and can be tedious to configure the controls for.

ROMS

Accepted File Extensions: .7z .bin .gen .md .sg .smd .zip

Place your ROMS in either

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/megadrive

or

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/genesis (symlinked to megadrive folder to remove confusion)

BIOS

lr-genesis-plus-gx can load MegaDrive TMSS startup ROM (bootrom): bios_MD.bin

Place your bios_MD.bin BIOS file in

/home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS

Controls

lr-genesis-plus-gx and lr-picodrive

lr-genesis-plus-gx and lr-picodrive utilise RetroArch configurations

Add custom retroarch controls to the retroarch.cfg file in

/opt/retropie/configs/megadrive/retroarch.cfg

For more information on custom RetroArch controls see: RetroArch Configuration

6 button controller

The Genesis/Mega Drive had a 6 button controller released, with 3 extra buttons (X, Y, Z) placed above the normal 3 (A, B, C). A small subset of games do not function with the 6 button controller, but the vast majority do. To emulate the 6 button controller, do the following:

lr-genesis-plus-gx

Save a Core Input Remap in the same manner as Core Input Remapping, with User 1 Device Type and User 2 Device Type set to MD Joypad 6 Button.

lr-picodrive

Change the Core Options for Pad 1 Type and Pad 2 Type from 3 Button Pad to 6 Button Pad. See Setting Core Options.

This will also take effect on any other system which you may use lr-picodrive for (eg. Sega 32X, Sega CD).

Mega Drive/Genesis Controller

[Upstream illustration: genesis]

Mega Drive/Genesis Wireless Controller

[Upstream illustration: sega_megadrive_6button_diagram]

Mega Drive ArcadePad Controller

[Upstream illustration: sega_megadrive_6button_arcadepad_diagram]

DGen

DGen uses a configuration file called dgenrc located in

/opt/retropie/configs/megadrive/dgenrc

To set up an exit button: modify this line to match your controller button

# Quit DGen or switch to the next ROM on the command-line.
key_quit = escape
joy_quit = joystick0-button12

Switching EmulationStation to use Sega Genesis instead of Mega Drive

If you are from the United States it is likely that you had the Sega Genesis rather than the Sega Mega Drive. If you want EmulationStation to use the Genesis graphics instead of Mega Drive then you can create a file /opt/retropie/configs/all/platforms.cfg with the following contents:

megadrive_fullname="Sega Genesis"
megadrive_name="genesis"
megadrive_platform="genesis"
megadrive_theme="genesis"

Once this is done, please update any of the currently installed Mega Drive emulators from RetroPie-Setup and Emulation Station will now use the Genesis logo. Scraping from within Emulation Station should also return Genesis artwork.