We first wrote about the MegaSD here at OSGM towers back in June, and while now barely released, it appears the developer has been hard at work making it the best product it can possibly be. For those not in the know, the MegaSD is an FPGA-based piece of hardware that allows Mega/SegaCD ROM’s and ISO’s to be played through original and reproduction Genesis and Mega Drive consoles. Utilising FPGA is huge, as there hasn’t quite been a product like this on the market before.

Following manufacturer, Terraionion’s official forum, it appears there have been at least three major firmware updates since late June fixing and adding various things, but the next update will be a real doozy. 3D-racer Virtua Racing is set to get support, which is big news for the emulation world. It’s also fitting since the MegaSD’s cartridge is a homage to what Virtua Racing itself was released in back in the nineties.

Virtua Racing is notoriously difficult to emulate since it was the only released game on the Genesis to use the SVP (Sega Virtua Processor) – which enabled the rendering of 3D polygons. This comes about because of Ukrainian developer srg320 (Sergey Dvodnenko) who recently integrated SVP support into the Mister’s Genesis core. This work was then licenced and implemented into the MegaSD by Terraonion. Here’s a video of it in action running on the MegaSD:

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You might notice visual glitches like the RPM bar (which shows double) but otherwise, it appears to be running quite smoothly. Terraonion hopes to have these creases ironed out for the first round of shipping. If their Twitter account is anything to go by, early pre-orders have already been shipped out with a second wave scheduled in a week or so.

If you’re in the market for one yourself, you can still pre-order but be warned by the high-price point. €232 is a huge amount of moolah for most, but updates like this do at least go to show how much of a premium product the MegaSD is.

PS: Not that I usually tout my YouTube channel in these ramblings, but what the heck – I reviewed Virtua Racing a few months ago if you’re interested in discovering more about the game and how it plays. It’s worth watching to at least compare the gameplay on real hardware, I suppose.

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Brendan Meharry (149 Posts)

Growing up while the fifth generation of consoles reigned supreme meant that Brendan missed out on much of the 80’s and early 90’s of gaming the first time around. He either lacked the cognitive ability to play them, as naturally, he was a baby - or he simply didn’t exist yet. Undeterred, Brendan started a blog called Retro Game On in 2011. This followed his exploits as he collected and played everything he could get his hands on no matter what the release date. While RGO is mainly YouTube focused these days concentrating on video reviews and historical features, the itch to do some old fashion writing never went away. More recently, Brendan has been a staff writer for the gaming website, GameCloud, mostly focusing on the indie gaming scene in his locale of Perth, Australia.