iiotenki

The Tony Hawk of Tokimeki Memorial

A most of the time Japanese>English game translator and writer and all the time dating sim wonk.



iiotenki
@iiotenki

Took a chance on a Model 1 Mega Drive for sale on Mercari for about 4000 yen as a junk unit (generally Japanese parlance for untested/sold as-is), partly because I've always liked the look of it as someone who grew up on a Model 2 (Genesis, mind, so no fun power/reset button colors) and also because a copy of Gunstar Heroes I managed to buy fairly cheap a few months back wouldn't play on said Genesis no matter what region unlocking Game Genie codes I threw at it. The headphone volume slider is stuck and it can be finnicky booting stuff in a way that suggests to me it probably needs a cleaning on the inside, which I'll do, but by god, like a lot of junk consoles/games sold here, it still works! Still need to get dedicated RGB cabling for it since unfortunately the Model 2 cables I already have aren't directly compatible without adapters, but definitely looking forward to having it in my regular rotation soon enough. The audio difference is already pretty stark with some games, which that alone makes it money well spent. 😌


iiotenki
@iiotenki

Gave the console a cleaning, including hand washing the shell to get rid of a TON of dust it'd apparently built up in its 30+ years of life and what do you know? It's a lot less fussy about booting carts and the headphone volume slider actually works again (and is very fun to move up and down, surprise). Just goes to show what even a little basic maintenance can do to get old hardware humming along again. 😌

This has also been a good reminder of just how respectable of a job the Retrotink 5X does at upscaling composite. I like to use Star Cruiser when testing stuff since it just has such a cool intro with fantastic music and while it's by no means a replacement for proper RGB output, throw on a CRT filter and it looks perfectly decent and playable enough. There's a certain softness to it's that's charming, even if the look only truly works on a CRT. I'd certainly take it over the bilinear filtering that a lot of old retro compilation emulators liked to hoist on people, at least.


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