Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-679780-20170331170636/@comment-1669199-20170331181326

Mystic Monkey wrote: In the collectors edition of Sonic Mania you can get a Sega cartridge cast with a golden ring inside it. The Sega cartridge isn't the actual game, as in you can't put it in your Mega Drive and expect it to play.

But given Sonic Mania is programmed to appear like a 32-bit game, would it be possible for the entire game to be programmed into a Mega Drive cartridge and be playable? While Mega Drive is an obsolete console, I think it would make the collectors editional all the more worth while if it was a genuine game for the old console. I would be proud to have the game for my Mega Drive than just for todays consoles. There are a lot of retro-inspired games coming out from the Indie market these days, but many of them require computing power that is above what the Mega Drive could do in order to play properly, even if on the surface you wouldn't think it to be the case. In Sonic Mania's case it would depend on the hardware/software requirements to run the game on minimum settings, and whether or not those setting can be properly run on old hardware like the Mega Drive. If, say, the engine being used to develop the game isn't compatible with the Mega Drive hardware for whatever reason, even if the game could technically run on the console, then it won't really matter if they could make the game run on that hardware if the software being used can't be run properly (if at all).

I doubt these would be the only issues, either. Like, say, making genuine cartridges that can run on the older hardware. Even to this day manufacturers of clone consoles seem to have difficulty accurately emulating the older hardware they are basing their clone consoles on, or they are just simply unwilling to invest the time and money into making good hardware. For all we know it this could be applicable to cartridges, too, especially if certain parts needed to make them are no longer in production by anyone. Then there's the issue with determining how many of these cartridges they would need to make, because just how many people have or can gain access to a working Mega Drive?

In some instances, you'd be surprised how difficult it is to accurately emulate and preserve older hardware and software on newer hardware/software, or even just being able to manufacture the parts needed to repair/make the older hardware.

I won't lie, though, if I did own a Mega Drive it would be pretty cool to get a working port of a new Sonic game and be able to play it on the older hardware.