Hacker News Reader

Comment by droptablemain | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it. Aren't these things glorified emulators with some styled plastic wrapping? Why not just load up GENS or something and play on your laptop?

View on HN

You get a curated experience with a bunch of good games, and an authentic controller.

Additionally, the Genesis Mini 2 (one of the minis discussed in the article) comes with a bunch of games that you can't find elsewhere. There's brand new Genesis ports of Fantasy Zone, Super Locomotive, and Patter (old arcade games from the 80s), there's old unreleased games (Star Mobile and the English version of Rainbow Islands Extra), and most impressively, there's brand new versions of Space Harrier 1 and 2 for prototype Genesis hardware that supported sprite scaling (it got cut out of the retail hardware because the functionality took up too much die space). If you're not a Sega fan you might not care about any of this, but there's lots of new stuff for the fans even if they've played all the previously released games.

Convenience, original style controllers, reliability, fun.

Most people can't legally acquire the games to play on a PC emulator. This provides a large number of games for a reasonable price, a plug-and-play experience on an actual TV, and a controller.

(Also, these devices can usually be hacked to play your own ROMs.)

Sega have been publishing Mega Drive collections for PC/PS4/Xbox for years though, and it costs like £20. The controller is possibly worth it though.

Yes, but if you compare the collections, every one of those have a different set of games: whether the Steam version, the PS3/360 version, the PS4/Switch/xone version, and the two "official" Minis (there were licensed, unofficial "bad" ones before) also have per-region/language differences.

I'd be curious to see a Venn diagram now.

I bought the Genesis mini as well as the SNES mini because they look cool on the shelf over my desk. I've played them a little but mostly it's just a nostalgic conversation piece.

The form factor is a nice gimmick and fuels nostalgia for people who played these games as kids.

I have a SNES mini, but it’s mostly collecting dust by now. I simply don’t have the time with 2 young kids, and to be honest: I underestimated how limiting it is to have to use the family tv for this. Much more convenient to do some handheld gaming in the sofa on a phone or tablet…

The collection of games is curated so yes it’s a nice selection but in my case I mostly just played Mario and Zelda.

You're basically paying for well-integrated software (sometimes even exclusive), and the assurance that it's 100% legal. So, in a sense, yes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com