Image: Flickr/aaronmjr. Edited by author
Some people associate feelings of childhood nostalgia with the fuzzily rendered pixel forms of Nintendo's Mario or Donkey Kong, but I was always more of a Sega kid. This is because my older cousin had a Sega Genesis and gave it to my family, probably because she bought a Nintendo.Whatever the reason, nostalgia will always sound like Sonic 2's Emerald Hill Zone theme emanating from the tinny speakers of a tube TV. But while Nintendo has seen fit to reissue the NES in the form of a PC emulator in a box, Sega fans have until now been left out. I say "until now" because, my friends, the Sega Genesis is coming back in the form of a reissue that faithfully recreates the original system's hardware specs.This is what we need right now, goddamnit.The company behind the reissue is Brazilian company Tectoy, which distributed the original Sega console back in the 1990s. The reissue is billed as the "Sega Mega Drive," which was the name the Genesis got in markets outside of North America. The reissue is an official partnership with Sega. Tectoy is taking pre-orders now and says the systems will be delivered by June of next year.Not only will the reissued console play digital versions of classic games on an SD card, but Tectoy says it can play most original cartridges, too. This is because, unlike Nintendo's NES reissue, the new Genesis is built with components similar to the original system. This means that it has a 16 bit CPU, onboard FM synthesis to faithfully render those legendary soundtracks, and even outputs the Genesis' original video resolution.Players will get an extremely low-res, extremely awesome experience similar to the original system, but this also means that there's no modern conveniences like an HDMI output, so you'll have to find a TV that still has composite video inputs.God bless.Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day by signing up for our newsletter.
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