After 20 years of its discontinuation, the SEGA Mega Drive (or SEGA Genesis) has finally been dusted off by game developer Matt Phillips, who developed the game Tanglewood, using the original tool kit (found in garage sales), programming and coding styles from classic 90s games.
Phillips worked his childhood dream with all the limitations of the 90s era kit, and to get his hands around the equipment he claims to have spent hours browsing the web for car boot sales in order to get his equipment for the new Genesis game. He stated that he just wanted to follow his dreams and give SEGA fans some new 2D scrolling material.
Tanglewood is already available to pre-order for £54 ($74) it has been announced to be released around June 2018.
You can play a demo of TANGLEWOOD right now, using either a Mega Drive emulator or an Everdrive flash cartridge on your real console: https://t.co/GSW1oN9jDb
— TANGLEWOOD (@tanglewoodgame) February 11, 2018
How Tanglewood was made
Phillips’s gear was put together through garage sales and web browsing until he found his Mega CD development Kit and a Windows 95 engine as a core. However, in order for him to start the game he first had to get his gear up and running since these pieces don’t really work anymore and wear out by the lack of use, Phillips had more repairs than niceness.
The developer stated also that in order for him to get his head around the mechanics, he needed to learn the writing on other classics like Pong and Tetris. However 2D screen-scrolling games were made on very small ROM (Read Only Memory) which made Phillips use compression techniques so he could, later on, pass the information into a cartridge.
Cartridges have been long gone from the gaming world so in order to get these items Phillips had to approach a factory in China so he could make a mold for the cartridges, later he contacted someone in Canada to get the PCB (Printed Circuit Boards).
Windows 95, however, was one of the first consumer-oriented operating systems, and it was a response to Apple’ OS/2.20, yet Windows 95 was one the first operating systems that saw Internet Explorer’s 1.0 version and it was one of the biggest leaps for technology in that time.
We made it to BBC News! https://t.co/jWGLZRK7vp
— TANGLEWOOD (@tanglewoodgame) February 9, 2018
SEGA Genesis gets a new title after 20 years
The initial game library for the Genesis was initially reduced but with many classics, this is the console that saw Sonic the hedgehog being born into a fan favorite, and it was followed by some other games like the Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. The point of interest for Phillips, however, was to provide gamers with a good nostalgic yet fresh blow.
Source: BBC
