Gaming

The Sega Mega Drive Mini Is A Tiny Time-Machine Back To A Very Fun Past

42 absolutely perfect nostalgic games in a teensy package.

by Patrick Lenton  26 September 2019
Sega Mega Drive Mini Review

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When I was growing up, I was a Sega kid.

You gotta understand that everyone around me had the Nintendo 64, and were enjoying such staples as various Mario vehicles, and Golden Eye, and those dreadful gorillas and their barrels. But not I — first it was the Mega Drive, and eventually I had my mind blown by the revolutionary blocky 3D graphics of the Sega Saturn.

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This was purely because my best mate Bob was a massive Sega stan, and he lived a few streets away from me and basically forced me to love Sega because he did. I had no idea why he had such brand loyalty — and I didn’t question it. Back in those days, I often remember my brain being a soft, unformed thing, which absorbed other people’s strong opinions without question, and turned them into my own.

Every weekend we’d spend half the day swimming or driving around in a boat, and then sitting in beanbags up in his room, usually surrounded by a smattering of his brothers, playing the Mega Drive. I remember playing Golden Axe for literally an entire weekend. We played Sonic, we played Alex Kidd, we played Castlevania (I LOVED Castlevania).

So, when I was sent a Sega Mega Drive Mini, you can IMAGINE my excitement.

I thought — this was the perfect time to try and recapture that golden, nostalgic feeling of being a kid again. I imagined shirking my responsibilities, letting the heavy yet ragged cloak of adultness fall from my bent and aching back. I even reached out to Bob, and was like “I’m gonna bring this console over, and we’ll play it together, just like old times!!!”

“Name a time” he said, and that’s when everything exploded.

16 Bit Nostalgia

The Sega Mega Drive Mini, as one might expect, looks like a teeny-tiny version of the somewhat clunky original. It’s a baby! It’s so cute!

It’s even got some tiny text claiming “high definition graphics”, little red lights, and working power and reset buttons. Then there’s a bunch of volume controls and flaps and junk that make it look like the original, but they do nothing. I appreciate them, on a deeply spiritual level.

I also got sent a Mega Drive Mini tower, and all stacked up, it looks really cool.

The first thing I noticed about booting up the Mega Drive Mini is the menu music — it immediately washed over me like a wave of nostalgia, and got me hyped in a way I didn’t know I COULD be hyped anymore.

A bit of research tells me that the menu music is brand new, and put together by famed composer Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage, Revenge of Shinobi), and is inspired by some of the system’s greatest musical hits.

I chose to play the original Sonic the Hedgehog — it feels like the most classic game available, and I haven’t touched it in literally decades. The music from the first level is still what I hear when I’m having massive amounts of anxiety.

It’s perfect — all the fun of the game, without any issues from playing games from the ancient past. It all looks and sound awesome. It’s MORE than just nostalgia — it’s a genuinely enjoyable experience. Also, bizarrely, I’m still automatically GOOD at it.

There’s 42 games available to play, which automatically makes it a pretty sound investment. I literally can’t wait to play all the rest of the titles. Castlevania: Bloodlines? Road Rash II? Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition????? It’s all good.

16 Bit Existential Terror

As fun as this console is, and as much as I highly recommend it, there is an unfortunate side effect — the horrifying realisation that no matter how much you might want to, it’s impossible to go back to the carefree days of being a kid.

Simply put, I could not find a single weekend free to play games with my childhood chum FOR THE NEXT FOUR MONTHS. I was looking at NEXT YEAR as the only possibility. And then, in the process of trying to organise this, I got the flu and was bedridden for a week, feeling every aching year weight down on me. I ended up playing this console sick and alone, and I guess that’s adult culture.

But it was fun!

And it’s so fun that I WILL eventually make the time to get my mates around to play with me, and it will be a cool day — it just might take a while to organise.

The Sega Mega Drive Mini is available in Australian retailers now.

Patrick Lenton is the Entertainment Editor at Junkee. He tweets @patricklenton.