“Some of you might say ‘it’s not a Sega Saturn Mini’ or ‘I wanted a Dreamcast Mini’, but it’s not for lack of considering it.“, said Okunari about the new version of the Mega Drive Mini. Scheduled for October 27 in Japan to celebrate the 34th anniversary of the machine, this new design inspired by the Mega Drive 2 will automatically include 50 new games, including “20 tracks from the Mega CD” and other surprises – like a new port of Fantasy Zone made by the fans of the game at M2, specialists in retro ports.
According to the producer in charge of hardwares retro, it is above all a question of feasibility, implying costs. “The development of new cards has stalled due to the pandemic, of course, which would make the product quite expensive in terms of cost“, regrets Okunari. But the hardware already existing for the Mega Drive Mini remains insufficient to run Saturn and other games. “32X games are not included in this version“, specifies the person in charge on this subject, “because the 32X is based on two processors, just like the Saturn. If we were able to reproduce this kind of configuration, we could develop a “Saturn Mini”.“
These constantly increasing costs in the context of a pandemic also explain why the project for a second wave of Game Gear Micro was nipped in the bud, to the chagrin of ophthalmologists. “When we made an estimate for the second Game Gear Micro, the manufacturing cost was about 1.5 times higher. If we had sold it for the same price, we would have lost money, and we didn’t want to end up in a situation where only the second version was more expensive.“.
The inflation of the Mega Drive Mini 2 is justified by the new design, the addition of Mega CD games and an increase in the number of integrated titles from 42 to 50, according to the team. Even if the emulation of CD titles has obviously still put M2’s expertise to the test. In this little game, it was Silpheed, the machine’s emblematic shoot-them-up, which served as a standard meter. “We thought porting Silpheed would be the hardest part, so we started developing it first. We said to ourselves: ‘If Silpheed works, then everything else will work! (laughs). In fact, it took us a while to get it to spin properly“.
Okunari finally explains that the idea of a Mega Drive germinated the day after the announcement of a Famicom Mini, which immediately set the high objectives to be achieved to pay homage to the machine, new games included, in the wake of a Star Fox 2 integrated into the Super NES Mini. As for seeing the Mega Drive Mini 2 as far as Europe, all hopes are allowed: “To be honest, the Mega Drive Mini sold a lot more in North America and Europe than it did in Japan. Of course, we are preparing for an overseas operation, but our sales volume is centered on Japan this time. What’s more, the shortage of semiconductors and the increase in the cost of transportation had an effect, so the price inevitably rose.“
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