Play Mega Drives on your PC!! For Free! (GENS Win)

Member Name: rob_writer

Product:	GENS Win
Date:	31/01/02 (353 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free, Great

Disadvantages: Not as good as Snes9x, but then that dont emulate a mega drive

Ever since I got in to PCs I've been in to emulators. Infact, I probably play more games for old systems on emulators on my PC than I do new PC games. I had a Mega Drive years ago, infact I think it's still lying around gathering dust somewhere. I guess to have the real experience I should dust it off and play it for real, complete with the Mega Drive joypads, but to be honest I've become used to playing Mega Drive games (and indeed games for other systems) on my PCs on emulators. You don't need to hook anything up to your tv, don't need to mess around with cartridges, and although it's cheating, you can save games at any point you want.

For ages I used a Mega Drive emulator called DGen, and while it works well I have found something that is better, Gens. Not only does Gen also emulate the MegaCD, it offers a whole host of features that DGen doesn't offer.

I never used the MegaCD emulator, simply because I don't have CDs to play, but the author himself admits that it is still in its early days. Mega Drive emulation is what Gens does best, claiming a massive 97% compatibility (92% perfect, 5% with glitches, 3% not working) which is a very impressive figure.

For people who don't use emulators, or know much about them, what they do is make your PC pretend to be the machine being emulated, in this case a Mega Drive. You then load ROM images, which are files made from the original game cartridges, and the emulator plays them like it would be on a Mega Drive. In effect, it turns your PC in to a Mega Drive. One point to note is that unless you own the original game cartridge it is illegal to download the ROM image file, as it is copyrighted. On the other hand these games are old, and no one gets done for downloading Sonic The Hedgehog!

Apart from playing the Mega Drive game Gens offers a few features that make it better than the original Mega Drive. First of all you can save and load state, meaning y
ou can save your game at any point, and not just the points that you could in the original game. Obviously this can make the game in question much easier, as you can save before all the tough bits, but on the other hand you don't have to start a game again just because you have to go and you haven't reached a save point. If used sparingly they can make games better, otherwise they're just a cool way of cheating!

Of course, you could also use the built in Game Genie to cheat on games, using codes that were available when the Mega Drive was on sale (although they can still be found online!). If you fancy playing games against friends then you don't even have to be in front of the same monitor - you can play games over the internet. In effect the game acts as if you were sitting in front of the same TV, displaying the same picture on both players screens, it just lets you play two player (or more) games with people from across the world. How well it works on a 56K modem I am unsure of, as I have only used the feature on a network.

The last major feature are the graphic modes, with rendering engines used to make the graphics look better. We're not talking a massive difference, rather making everything look smooth, it does make it look a lot better. However, this comes at a price, on a lower spec PC it could make the game run slower. My Pentium 3 runs on top rendering mode with full frame rate, but my K6-300 struggles, so instead must be played on a different mode. This is one area where the emulator could be better, as the rendering modes aren't as varied as those in other emulators (SNES9x being a good example). Generally though, I find Gens to give a good framerate when compared with other emulators, while still letting people with powerful PCs make the game look better.

As a free download you can't really complain at Gens usefulness, it's one of the best Mega Drive emualtors available and is perfect for rel
iving those old classic gaming moments, as well as playing some of the all time classic games, including the Sonic series, the Shining Force series and Super Streetfighter 2 Turbo!

Official Site: http://gens.consolemul.com

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